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LONGING FOR PLANET TURQUOISE

By Terry Dale

Vandar sat down on a rock overlooking the colony.  A shuttle craft approached for a landing probably from one of the other hamlets or villages on the moon they inhabited.  He liked coming up here to watch planet Turquoise rise from the east.  The mother planet, Turquoise, was the original home for his human species.  The first colonizer of this moon named it Austere because of the unforgiving, inhospitable environment they had to eke a living upon and the mother planet, Turquoise, for the green and bluish hue of her surface.  He gazed with nostalgia at the mother planet.  He had been born there 22 years ago.  There he could breathe the air without wearing this artificial life suit he had to wear in Austere’s environment.  That was before the time of the Great Chaos as the tribal historians now called it.  Before the Chaos the mother planet had large cities with industry, great farms with all variety of foods, sandy deserts, blue, white-capped mountains with snow, and amazing landscapes on earthy land masses.  However, the relative peace began to erode gradually over the last hundred years on the mother planet.  First, the separation between the rich and the poor in communities, local governments and even nations began to grow wider and wider.  Greed, suspicion, envy, indifference to suffering, theft and violence began to creep into societies throughout the planet.  Wise men and prophets and philosophers began to warn the people of the importance of charity, respect and kindness in relationships if their species were to survive.  The warnings were ignored.  Great divisions occurred and multiple wars occurred on all continents between tribal groups and even nations.  Prophets warned that the Creator Gods were sorrowed and angry with their behavior especially the slaughter of innocent women and children and warned that cataclysmic events were near which would wipe clean the planet of their wickedness.  Some listened but most did not.  Then it had begun.  In the first year of the Great Chaos hundreds of earthquakes ripped giant gashes in all ocean beds throughout the planet.  The wounds in the ocean floor were so deep that mountains of water poured into the white hot magma below the crust.  In the first count the historical record revealed to Vandar there were 1,250 giant pillars of steam rising out of the oceans into the atmosphere that year and 23 coastal cities had been destroyed by earthquakes and tsunamis.  But that was only the beginning.  The steam changed the climate turning the planet into a giant sauna.  Vicious storms dumped flooding rain throughout the globe accompanied by a 400 percent increase in tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning and flooding rain.  The poles of the planet had tremendous ice caps and glaciers.  They melted at a rapid pace.  The oceans encroached inland covering many cities a little at a time.  The people were driven inland.  The disastrous climate changes made farming almost impossible.  Food was scarce.  At first, for a period of 5 to 6 years after the Great Chaos began, communities rallied to help one another and governments of nations tried to provide aid to those they governed.  More people began to petition the Gods.  Neighbor tried to help neighbor- for a while.  A respite occurred.  A pause in mother nature’s fury.  But then over the space of 2 to 3 years turf wars emerged.  People fought over what remained of property and possessions and food.  Envy, greed, and violence crept in again.  The mother planet seemed to sigh sadly and resumed her efforts to rid herself of the unholy, violent beings that occupied her surface.  

Vandar continued to ponder the history of the greenish mother planet as it rose over the horizon.  He glanced at his wrist.  His oxygen pack had another 45 minutes left.  He did a quick check in all directions.  His helmet, the transparent bubble on his head, allowed for more visibility than the older models.  He had to be wary of the Zoniguns.  When the moon began to be colonized 56 years ago, a shuttle ship from the planet had carried a group of prisoners to do some of the manual labor for the contractor.  An escape occurred.  The Zoniguns had learned how to hide in subterranean caverns, stolen what the needed to survive and often took hostages to trade for supplies or tools.  They had stolen some of the technology needed to supply oxygen to their caverns.  Sometimes if you were alone, they simply killed you and took your life suit and left you naked and dead on the barren surface of the moon to be found by searchers.  In fact, Vandar reminded himself that this had happened to one of their villagers about two weeks ago.

Vandar remembered the last day he had been on planet Turquoise.  He was eleven years old.  His parents handed him, his sister Janar and brother Konar over to his uncle and aunt on a rescue shuttle craft.  His parents wept and hugged them and said they would try to get a ride on the next craft.  They never came.  The wars had continued.  The flooding and storms resumed.  The communication between moon and planet diminished.  And now 11 years later no visible land masses or islands on Turquoise had been seen from Austere and their observatories for years.  It was one complete globe of water.  He sighed sadly.

Suddenly Vandar was aware of a shadow cast over him from behind.  His heart began to race.  Was it the Zoniguns?  For a second he was frozen by fear.  If you don’t move you’ll die, he told himself.  In one rapid movement he lurched to his right while he reached to grab his laser weapon from his thigh holster and twisted his upper body to face the rear as he aimed the laser weapon at the shadow that stood above him.

To be continued….

Copyright Terry Dale September 2011