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The Earthlings

Life Among the Moons

By Randi O'Malley SmithPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 10 min read
7

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.” She turned and faced the class, meeting each student’s eyes in turn. “My parents were among the last generation born on Earth. When they were preparing to leave the planet, people started talking about an old film – that is, something like a physical print of a hologram story that needs special equipment to be seen – that used that line to make people afraid of non-terrestrial life. What they never mentioned is that it wouldn’t matter, because a person in the vacuum of space wouldn’t be able to scream. If one were to leave the biosphere without a breathing suit for more than a few seconds, the lack of atmospheric pressure would cause the air in one’s lungs to escape, and the oxygen in the blood is then drawn into the lungs to try to balance the pressure. Without oxygen reaching the brain and other vital organs, the body cannot survive for more than a minute, or maybe two if the person is very lucky. On the other hand, if the person returns to the biosphere within those first few seconds, there is a very good chance for them to make a full recovery.”

The students gaped. It happened every year; she never knew whether it was surprise that their seemingly prim and proper biology teacher could speak so casually of being spaced to death, as they called it in the hologram stories about interplanetary piracy and criminal gangs, or that she had such a near connection to the Earth culture. For most of them it was their grandparents or even great-grandparents who’d migrated to Ganymede, yet here was Ms. Collins talking about those days almost as if she’d been there herself. She didn’t look that old, but then again, one of the reasons Ganymede had been chosen as a site for colonization was that its distance from the sun, its outer layer of ice, and the much smaller population due the small size of the moon, all meant that climate change and the sun’s effects on human bodies would take longer to progress to a dangerous level than on Earth.

Finally, one student’s hand raised warily. Helen Collins looked to her seating chart. “Yes, Chaldene?” More and more children were being given ancient Greek and Roman names by way of the planets and moons around them. Her own name, Helen, was also from Greek but predated the current celestial trend.

“How can you print a hologram story? It’s made by lasers.” She was used to the question by now, but it was still the easiest shorthand to describe what film was.

She leaned against the edge of her desk. “Before laser technology was invented, people had used another substance called celluloid, which could be exposed to light in certain settings to capture a two-dimensional image of what was in front of it. After working with it for a number of years, people discovered that if they ran a long strip of the celluloid film continuously, they could take many images so quickly that when they were projected at the same speed, they could see the action exactly as it had happened. Eventually when computers became common, people learned to capture these images as data so film was no longer needed, and then developed a way to program that data into laser arrays for the hologram stories that we have now.”

Another hand shot up. “Okay, Callisto, will this be about the lesson or Earth technology?” Despite the popularity of naming children after other bodies in the solar system, it was rare to use the name of an inhabited one. She’d had him in a previous class and he’d explained that as Callisto was a small mining colony that rotated shifts every few moonths, his parents hadn’t considered it to be ‘really’ inhabited and thus had bucked the trend to give him a less common name, especially considering that the Callisto of myth had been a female nymph, although most people thought it was a male name due to the “o” ending. It was just as well that the old mythology wasn’t actually taught; she knew a few Ledas who would have been very dismayed. Her namesake was one of the daughters of Leda so she knew that story very well.

“Umm… Earth technology, Ms. Collins. When they projected this – er, film – if it was a two-dimensional image, how did they watch it? Could only a few people watch it at a time then?”

She knew Callisto was smarter than he sounded. Back in the Earth-time he probably would have been a quarterback, with his thick blond hair and deep blue eyes – she thought that was what her father called it. The tallest, handsomest boy in every high school led the football team. He said that this football was different from the game played on Ganymede, which he had used to call soccer. Because the colony was made up of survivors from many parts of Earth, the international game had become the dominant one. Her father said that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, because even though he had preferred the American game, it had finally been outlawed due to the incredible number of head injuries. Most handsome boys liked to show off for the girls, but Callisto was shy and serious, and a little bit awkward.

“They had to use a flat screen, of course, which meant that all the seats had to face the same way. The screen was very large, and the floors sloped up so that even the people in the last rows could see. We’re used to seats all around the hologram so it can be seen three dimensionally from every angle so it would be strange to us, but since that wasn’t invented until near the end of the Earth-time, most people hadn’t seen it and were happy with the screens they had. They did have round theaters for live performances, but either the stage had to turn or some people only saw the performers’ backs, so many people even preferred the films on screen.” Helen Collins was pleased when the students all nodded thoughtfully. They seemed to think that the Earth-time was some kind of prehistoric wasteland most of the time. It was now, of course, after the famine and bombs, but she secretly hoped that in time it would revert to the natural world that had existed before, and maybe one day the Ganymedian colonists could return. Her parents had never had the chance to go back. They had made it sound like such a wonderful place. She knew they would have stayed if they could.

The nodes implanted in their temples buzzed. Class was over. The students moved out slowly, as if they had more questions that they wanted to ask. Chaldene was the last to the door and turned just before she was out of the room. “How do you know so much about Earth? You talk as if you were there, but you couldn’t have been.”

“I was born not long after my parents arrived on Ganymede. They had waited until the last ships were leaving the launch pads, hoping that there would be a way for them to stay, but there wasn’t enough safe land left to support a healthy population, and they didn’t want me to be left all alone after they died. They still spoke about Earth often enough that when I was a child, I would pretend that I could take my parents back and show them that it was beautiful again. Of course that never happened, and it never will.” She still got choked up thinking about it. As her parents grew older, they began to lose the concept of the world where they now lived, and thought they really were back on Earth. Her father had drowned when he left the biosphere and went down to the underground sea, and her mother had wasted to nothing soon after.

“Would you go back if you could? I mean, if you’ve never been there, how could you live like that?” Chaldene’s eyes flashed, and made Helen worry for a moment. No matter what her secret thoughts, it was frowned upon to promote the idea of returning to Earth. If people wanted to do so, especially now that most of the first-generation Ganymedian immigrants were gone, it would mean the colony was a failure.

“No, of course not. We don’t even know if it would be safe for human life yet. We’ve spent several decades building this colony and developing ways to use the ocean to grow food and produce oxygen. It’s the moon best adapted for life as we know it, once the first scientists and engineers were able to utilize the native resources to build the biospheres and connect them. Now we have most of the surface under biospheres and can move about them freely. Even most of the ships that brought people here were repurposed as the first buildings. We only have the smaller shuttles used to bring workers to and from the mines on Callisto and Europa. Those couldn’t carry the resources for a trip all the way to Earth. We’re here for the long run.”

“Oh, okay.” Chaldene brushed her dark hair out of her eyes with one hand, hoisted the bag with her tablet higher on her shoulder with the other, and closed the door behind her.

Helen was thankful that Chaldene had seemed to accept her explanation of why no one should hope to return. She could not share that when she said “most” of the ships that had brought the last remaining people from Earth had been repurposed as the first buildings, the one that served as a museum and memorial to those original colonists was not the only one largely intact. The last two that arrived, including the one her parents traveled on, were moored below the ice near the southern pole. Very few people were aware of their existence, let alone that if one had a key code and breathing suit, they were not difficult to access.

The Back-To-Earthers – they really needed a better name, she thought, preferably one that could be used in public without drawing attention – had been slowly gathering over many moonths, taking turns to visit the ships in pairs or threes to make minor repairs and store supplies. It was hard collecting the food, as it meant people had to voluntarily forgo some of their allotment. Water was easier, it was plentiful, and the ships’ desalination plants had been the first thing they had got back online. At some point they would need to open the group to younger people – she hated to think of them in such a way, but realistically, they needed breeding stock for the experiment to be worth trying. Callisto would probably want to go. He was always interested in Earth technology. Chaldene seemed to be too, but something about the girl made her uneasy. She wasn’t sure if she could trust her not to expose the plan to the authorities. Of the others, Thalassa and Ares would probably want to go together, and Robert, with his common Earth-name, might be a good candidate. His family clearly still remembered and talked about the before times.

She gathered her tablet and followed her students out the door and into the wider biosphere of the Gany-17 Complex. Stepping into a waiting pod, she punched in the address of her living unit and waited as it hummed and shot through the massive pneumatic tube system that served as a highway, arriving at her door less than a minute later. She would miss this, at least, since there had never been anything like it on the old planet. She thought she could live with that though, if it meant she could see real oceans that she could stand on the shore of, and hills and mountains that could be climbed. Her friend Io Foster had a high-powered telescope and said that Australia looked like it might be livable again. She was willing to take the chance.

FantasySci FiAdventure
7

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Outstanding

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  1. Excellent storytelling

    Original narrative & well developed characters

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    Well-structured & engaging content

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Comments (7)

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  • Dawn Salois2 years ago

    This was a great story!

  • Alan Gold2 years ago

    Terrific! I loved the kids' names, and the future history lessons.

  • Kat Thorne2 years ago

    Really interesting plot, great job!

  • Kelly Sibley 2 years ago

    I wasn't expecting that setting or the main character to be a teacher. It's a really interesting idea and beginning chapter. Well done!

  • Heather Hubler2 years ago

    I think you have the wonderful beginnings of a truly engaging story. I enjoyed the main character and the story premise. I definitely wanted to know more!

  • Cathy holmes2 years ago

    This is very good. I'm curious to know if she makes it back.

  • Babs Iverson2 years ago

    Wonderful new world story!!👏💖😊💕

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