This is my entry to the New Scientist science fiction competition (340 words, open until mid-October).
The New Europans Jenkins crashed out in the living quarters, 'mushroom juice' leaking from his lips, eyes bright, mind given up to peace. Europa was hard, desolate work. A slug of his now cold potion and I joined his dream. The transit ship was due tomorrow to take our bodies back to a bliss of gravity they could understand and time away from the plasma bubbled protection from cosmic radiation death that was the truth of space- work. Earth was still the only home we could know, even after the wars of the mid-twenty-first Century. There were homes elsewhere in the universe. Europa had given up peculiar life from its underground ocean, living on radiation and gravity-rift energy from Jupiter and different paced transits of its main moons. Jenko motioned to take another sip of the foul swill that eased the pull of competing gravitation, to dream of not being human or of sweet women and cold beer on sun-warmed sands. I eased the bowl to lips marked by the strange burn of apparently purified water from the depths below, then set some stew to fester on the geo-thermal stove. Dull stuff, but better than we'd get on the weightless voyage and exercise regime via Moonbase Three to our eco-bubble on Earth. We liked to pretend to survive our six-month shift like civilised men discussing philosophy. Other crews were carried out babbling and feet first. This concern with 'face' was a vestige of what was left Anglo-Saxon in our DNA. Chris, the younger man was more spliced up than me and hacked the conditions better until boredom loomed on us like a fog. He was too young to remember fog. I slumped beside him, a last knowing look between our eyes that the morning, whatever one was in these artificial conditions, began our trip to the cold lager we remembered and the women who had forgotten us. New life rested quietly in the sample flask. A first hope, perhaps, of a future beyond the human. The idea is to write a few words based 100 years from now. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
