The Earth Princess

In the mauve and metal city, suspended in the black recess of space, a lone figure sits tucked away in a tiny room on the edge of the floating colossus. The room, manufactured in steel but draped in reds and browns and greens, is warmed in a scale called Fahrenheit to a temperature alien to the city-dwellers. It is here where the fate of an obsolescent race – once rulers of a bygone planet – remains safely in stasis, but it is here, too, where its fate is eventual.

Young, strong Pertonicus walked calmly down the sterile corridor of chrome that separated the whirring, electronic city hall building from the quiet solitude of the boarder’s hovel. He carried with him a small box in which something round rolled dully in circles. The corridor ended at a set of heavy doors. Pertonicus approached the barrier without slowing and the doors slid open just in time with his stride. He huddled inside the vestibule as the doors swooshed shut behind him. With a few click-flips of the switches, pure oxygen blasted up from channels in the floor and the ceiling, annihilating the toxins that naturally clung to his long slimy body. The surge of air cut out and a further set of doors burst open with pneumatic force. Released from his holding pen, Pertonicus stepped mindfully inside the open room.

The air was far too warm for his wet skin. He felt his muscles contract and tighten, but he was accustomed to the discomfort. He knew comfort in every other moment of his life. A few simple stretches of time surrounded by heat and dryness would not harm him much. He knew pain came to Her who could live only in here.

She was sat, as She often was, in a tall-backed white chair in the center of the half-moon shaped room. She was facing away from Pertonicus, staring out the grand glass window dome at the blanket of stars studding the blackness. She did not speak as he knocked gently on the doorframe in a redundant show of politeness. She remained still and staring.

Pertonicus glanced around the room. The bed to the right, draped in a patchwork of colorful fabric, was unruffled. Clearly, rest was eluding Her. Or perhaps She was eluding it. The shelf of books to the left, filled almost to compacity, was glazed with dust. All the volumes in foreign characters were bound in leather and carbon-based material. The plate of strange looking food on the cluttered desk was untouched and growing darker as it hardened. It was strange soft matter and it smelled damp. But it was available, and She ate it, when she wanted to. Pertonicus rustled up a smile and spoke clearly.

“How are you feeling?”

He received no reply. He stepped further inside, noting the pile of clothing thrown haphazardly on the floor beside the wardrobe. He glanced at the table beside the bed, counting the colorful pills inside the seven-sectioned container and frowning at how many he found. He set down the box in his hands and took the full glass of water from the table to Her.

“You are forgetting your medicine.”

Glancing over Her thin shoulder, he saw on the table in front of her what so demanded Her attention: the game of squares. He smiled softly.

“Have you solved it yet?”

Still no reply. He set the water glass down on the desk and twisted the valve on Her oxygen tank, hearing the hissing sounds of the gas increasing. Her breathing deepened slightly, but nothing more changed. Pertonicus looked to the clock hanging above her. He tried to remember what the figures meant, but it was much more confusing than his own time counter. His voice dipped lower.

“Perhaps it is late. Should I leave you?”

This new silence was more than he could stand. He wanted to hear Her speak. He wanted to hear Her plans for this new day. He wanted just to listen and learn what he could. He crossed back to the side table and retrieved the box.

“I have something for you.”

He moved to stand behind Her.

“I had not intended to use it as a bargaining chop. I wanted it to be a gift. Please look at it.”

With painstaking slowness, the white chair spun around and She faced Pertonicus.

Her face was translucent and marbled with veins of cerulean and violet. Her hair was fair and weightless, laying limp across Her shoulders. Her eyes were blue and glassy, looking flatly at the box. She was cloaked in blankets of white, soft fabric than mirrored her complexion. Her limbs were thin and ridged. Her shoulder stooped low.

“Chip” was the only word that fell from her white lips. Pertonicus smiled.

“Bargaining chip,” he corrected and handed Her the box.

She held the box in fragile hands and cautiously removed the lid. Peering inside, Her eyes cleared and Her furrowed brow flattened.

“It’s…” She whispered with an intake of breath, “My God.”

“Take it. Hold it.”

She reached inside and delicately scooped the white orb into Her hand. Holding it up in Her open palm, light burst out yellow from within it. She stared at it, her eyes swollen with hot tears, her mouth agape in awe.

“It’s your warm blood that lights it,” Pertonicus said, “Only you can do this.”

Her voice trembled as She spun the orb around before her dazzled eyes.

“It’s…It’s the Moon,” she cooed, “The Moon.”

“You’ve only seen its likeness. In your books.”

“Only photographs,” she nodded, “My God, look at it.”

Pertonicus shifted his stance.

“It’s a model I made to give you the inspiration feeling. The one you like so much.”

The yellow light in Her eyes faded slowly. She brought the orb to rest in the box again, extinguishing its light. She let out a somber laugh and wiped her tears away.

“You mean hope,” she sighed.

“Yes, hope. That is what you say: Maybe there is hope.”

She hung Her head down, surveying the game on the table before Her again.

“Hope…”

The word felt round and smooth in Her mouth.

“Hope is the cruelest demon of this life. Of my life.”

Pertonicus frowned, “You used to sing at all times of hope and all the joys that it would bring.”

She spun one of the game pieces around under Her white fingertip, watching the dim ceiling lights catch on its wooden shine.

“Hope propagates pain and misery. Hope is useless. It’s so very, very wicked. Only children love hope. Only fools.”

She gestured Her hand to the gameboard.

“Do you remember this game?”

“I don’t remember its name, only that it’s from your planet.”

She dropped Her hand, unsatisfied.

“It’s chess.”

“Chess,” he repeated.

“In this game, the two kingdoms are at war. The king and queen of light and dark are battling for the world. There are the kings’ men: the bishops and knights and pawns. But in this game, there is no princess, no daughter of the world.”

She moved a knight in a hook around a gaggle of pawns.

“I’ve been playing this game all my life, thinking it will bring me answers, thinking I could somehow find something my parents missed, something that could have saved all of them.”

Pertonicus’ eyes were sad as he watched Her painstakingly analyze the board.

“But you cannot change what has already been done,” he mused, “This is just a plaything to pass the time, this game.”

Another wave of tears poured down Her face. She gritted her teeth.

“This is my life. This is my past,” She insisted, “The war riddled the Earth with death and pestilence. Mother and Father could not survive the Black Kingdom’s devastation. The world was poisoned. Destruction was eminent.”

Pertonicus nodded, “That’s why they saved you.”

“Saved me?” She snorted, “Death would have saved me. They stuck my infant body in a capsule packed with cushions and launched me into the annals of space. You pulled me limp from a tangle of buckles and weighted gravity suits. Alone. With no one and nothing.”

“They sent you with knowledge,” Pertonicus’ raising voice assured Her, “They sent you with all you needed to know about your planet. They sent you with books and chess and plant life and sentiments of love. Everything that would help you understand.”

She was silent a moment as she moved the defense from around her queen.

“And what good has it done me? What have I managed to create without them? Why did they send me alone? Why did they die without me?”

“Someone had to survive. The human race had to continue on.”

She turned to face him with a brutal smile.

“And will it? After me?”

Pertonicus did not reply. He stood stiffly and maintained his gaze with Her. Her face grew a slight hue of pink to it as Her eyes continued to water.

“No. No, no. It’s just me here. There won’t be any more humans. All the humans are dead. They died with the Earth.”

Her trembling fingers traced the heart shaped glass locket at her collarbone. A wave of malice washed through her. She yanked the thing, snapping the chain off, and stared at the green and blue likeness of the planet long since faded into memory. She used her brittle fingernail to open the locket. Inside, there was nothing.

“Hollow,” she whispered, “Like me. No life within.”

Pertonicus straightened, “This is foolish. You still live. You did not die on Earth.”

“I’ll just die here instead. I’ll die after years wasted shuffling pieces around on a field of squares. What am I fighting for? What memory do I keep alive?”

She rose sharply from Her chair, dizzy but screaming.

“What legacy is there left?! How do I honor the fallen?!”

Pertonicus ran to her and held her frail shoulders.

“You live on for them, for all humans before you!”

“I am not human! I have not lived on Earth! How could I call myself human when humans don’t even exist?”

“You exist! You live!” he shouted.

She hesitated and laughed, “But for how much longer?”

He shook his head, eyes burning with determination.

“You will not die. You will not. We have cared for you for 20 of your Earth years and we will care for you always. You will live. You are so small and so young.”

She exhaled and scanned over his face.

“I am young to you, Pertonicus. You who are 4000 years old and still called a child.”

She eased his rough hands from Her arms and held them.

“I am an alien creature,” she spoke, “I am dying in this city. I am brittle and sinewy. My heart flutters and sputters and coughs. I would be young if this were Earth, but Earth is just a memory.”

She turned slowly and sank back into Her chair. She snatched the orb from its box and cradled it shining gold up to Her sullen cheek.

“A waning sliver of memory and suffering. And with me gone…” She whispered to it.

With solemn eyes, She dropped the orb back, watching it darken in its case.

“…It may finally die.”