Star Crossed Lovers

We reach upwards at the same time towards certain death.

We see the bright light on the roof of the airlock get brighter with a power surge and then the glass pulses out into a fantail of diamonds and we’re flying out of the airlock into the darkness.

We hold each other close. We’re already starting to convulse as we freeze. It’s like shivering except our skin is cracking and flaking off like old paint. Our veins stand out like ropes. Our last breath gusts out and goes from steam to crystals in less than a second. It’s beautiful. It’s the last thing I see before my eyes freeze solid. And that’s it. Two naked corpses entwined and flying away from a bad place. We die in love which is better than living in denial of it.

On this space station, there is a carefully planned population stability program. No babies are allowed. It is against the law for a relationship to blossom between potentially fertile couples. Every person here is gay.

We were about to be arrested and shipped back to Earth for betraying our sexuality and upsetting the status quo. We pleaded that we would be careful. We said that even if the contraceptives failed and we did have a child that we would be able to keep it and it wouldn’t harm the station. These people were our friends. We were so naïve. The council was having none of it. The rules were clear. We felt like a modern day Romeo and Juliet. Our memories of Earth were dim at best. This was our home. They would not change us. We wanted to die here.

We formed a suicide pact through coded emails and found a way to get past the house arrest locks on our pod doors. We both brought homemade overload components to sabotage the airlock.

We got into the airlock naked. Hugging each other tight in the cold booth, we kissed and reached up with our devices and touched them to the light.



tags

1845 Resistance

It’s light outside which means that if we leave our hiding place, we will be seen and killed.

They came in 1845. That was the day that human history was exposed and swept clear. Everything we sent at them just bounced off. Its six months later and I have no idea how many of us are left. They seem to have stopped actively hunting us which is good. We’re more like vermin now. They lay traps and go about their business. It’s still very unsafe to travel in the daylight.

They have deep blue dry skin the texture of cork. Bullets go about an inch in and stop. It’s like they’re made of rock wrapped lightly in cotton swaddling. They’re huge. Two massive legs. Two arms that are more like tentacles that split into a mess of smaller tentacles at the end. Very efficient and ridiculously strong. Watching them operate the complex mining machinery the brought with them is almost thrilling.

Watching those tentacles go into a loved one’s head orifices and squeeze is another matter entirely.

They wear what look like black rubber overalls with giant galoshes. About the only weak point we can find is that they need to wear masks to breathe this atmosphere. It’s just a filter. They don’t have backpacks filled with flammable gas or anything.

If you shoot them in the filter and none of their friends are around to give them a replacement, it takes them about half an hour to die. It’s a rather gruesome thing to watch. It’s like their insides are made of slugs and someone is pouring salt down their throats. It looks agonizing. We’d rather give them a quick death like they gave so many of us but beggars can’t be choosers.

I laughed once when Teddy referred to us as ‘the resistance’. As far as I could see, we scavenge for food and try to avoid the new owners of this planet. We fight when cornered and almost always lose. Resistance indeed. Pah.

Gwedolyn’s pregnant now. She’s the only woman with our little group who is of child bearing age. None of the three men in our group is admitting to being the father. She’s not pointing fingers. And anyway, it could be one of the other six of us that have been killed over the last three months as well. It’s maddening not knowing if we’re the last ones in Britain. We met one other person in the last four months but she couldn’t talk. She died not too long after we met her.

We lost.



tags