Wednesday, November 10, 2010

The Colonists by Matt C.

The planet was enormous, and the computer had calculated its circumference to be quite large. We approached the planet slowly, the ship edging its way towards the sphere shyly, as a child crawls towards a stranger. And the planet was estranged to us. We had read about far off planets at the Akedemia*, yet never had we dreamt that it was inhabitable. We were close now, and the passengers look out of the windows, their faces perplexed and fixated on the globe that floated in the deepest regions of space-time.

Our trip had been three years to this point, and I had certainly aged, and so had the mass of humans behind me. Their scared faces and sooty eyes looked out into the distance, waiting and yearning for a home. They were starved and looking for permanence and stability, things that they would never have on this ship, things that they could only find on the planet.

The shuttles deployed from the ship, 32 of them, carrying all of us from the ship to the planet surface. We all had the image in our heads. The paradise that awaited us below! The veritable vegetation, the land would be our Petri dish for survival. The computer had told us that their would be copious supplies of food and animal life, and no sentient beings. It was our new Eden, it was our future. We would create more life, and re create our lost culture from the ashes of the great disasters that had sent us on this exodus

The shuttles neared the planet; we came closer and closer to renewed life. We were all anxious as we looked out the windows of the shuttles; all we could see is the planet surface, filling the space our eyes could see, as though we were seeing a vision of future. All our hopes culminated to this moment. We rushed down to the planet surface, and landed smoothly.

We prepared for our egress; we gathered our children, our gear and our emotions. The hatch opened and we exited the shuttles, filling out like God’s chosen fleeing from the Egypt of our former existence. We looked out, at the apparent barren lands, the inhospitable expanse of open desert. We looked out, into the mesmerizing eternity of our tragic existent. No food, no water, no vegetation. A barren wasteland. The planet had been estranged from us. And the computer had been wrong. The shuttles were one way: we were left here to fend for ourselves


*Major University of Study in the future

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