Morning all. I hope everyone survived Monday and is back into the groove of the work week. My Monday was surprisingly quiet and productive. Which I really appreciate. Here’s hoping today is the same. For now thought, lets kick it off with the morning prompt. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
I haven’t gone sci-fi in a while. I kinda like it.
Tuesday, June 17th: The earth was dried and cracked.
The earth was dried and cracked. The sun beat down mercilessly. Looking off to the side, Alex could see the trail his emergency pod left in the baked ground. The trench was deep and showed the rapidity of his descent. If he cared to look behind him he would see the smoking ruin of his vehicle. The fact that he managed to escape the evacuation pod before it exploded was a minor miracle.
Adding in that he managed to grab the emergency pack as he made his escape and he realized things could have been much worse. It was scant consolation. He walked towards the track he caused, his steps crackling the baked flakes of earth beneath his feet.
‘Is it still earth if it is a different planet?’ he wondered as he moved. Somehow that had not been covered in his familiarization course. ‘Not that they got to finish it.’
Alex stared at the trench. The crispy crust peeled away and although the heat from his escape pod crispy fried a lot of ground, he could see the strata in some places. While the top was hard baked and the few layers underneath were bone dry dust, there was damper ground below. At the moment it was rapidly drying out in the heat, but it was there.
He nodded. So maybe not full time desert,’ he thought. There was some consolation in that. They hadn’t gotten around to terrain before the attack. He snorted. The attack caught everyone by surprise even though he could see now that they should have expected it. The human race destroyed their own planet, odds were high they would end up doing the same to any other planet they landed on in time.
Moderation was not generally a widespread human trait.
It made sense that other races would not be thrilled with the human evacuation and resettlement plan. He turned his eyes and scanned the horizon. He knew his pod wasn’t the only one to have leaned towards this planet. He saw others hit the atmosphere around the same time he did. He knew there would be other humans scattered across this alien world.
‘If they survived the landing.’
He shook his head. His mother always claimed his pessimism would get the better of him in the end. If she had made it through the last pandemic that decimated the global population she would have looked at the resettlement as a bright shiny new opportunity. As he looked for signs of the others he wondered if he didn’t become a pessimist just to balance out her eternal optimism.
‘The yin to her yang,’ Alex thought.
He spotted a thin trail of smoke and a dust cloud not too far away and hoping whoever created it survived, he turned his course towards it.
‘Oh was that an optimistic thought,’ he heard the ghost of his mother chide deem inside his head.
‘Even pessimists have them on occasion,’ he thought back, a smile teasing his lips. He slipped his water bottle from his pouch and allowed himself a deep sip. He was trying to ration his water as he had no idea when he would next find some, so he counted as he drank. Three Mississippi’s and no more.
He recapped the bottle, making sure the lid was screwed down tightly. He put the water back in his bag and kept walking.
Ten til Midnight 