By Michael Teasdale
The rising twin suns peeked over shining blue mountains, casting their gaze on Woźniak’s hulking frame as he dipped his paintbrush into the can.
Inside the cabin, a crackling record started playing, and a centuries-old ghost sang about trees of green and the beauty of red roses.
Woźniak watched small droplets spatter the earth as he began the task of covering the offensive graffiti that stained the cabin.
FREAKS GO HOME!
Home? What do these people know about the hardships of building a home?
He worked steadily, his brush rising and falling, erasing the damage, obliterating the streaks of violent red, restoring the plain, cream-colored canvas.
The record player sang about the colors of the rainbow as Woźniak pulled his gaze away from his paintwork and out to his true creation: the grassy hills and valleys he had helped terraform, the dark forests with their secret waterfalls, and cavernous gorges that plunged down into crystal cool lakes. Only an engineer like himself could ever know what had been before. The primitive ugliness of rock and fire. The magma and heat.
“Why do they hate us?”
The question had arrived over a pre-dawn breakfast, as Woźniak served up golden buttered mushrooms to his comrade, forming tiny brown landscapes on the cracked enamel plates.
Seven feet tall, flesh thick as leather, and with the scaly, psoriatic form that all terraforming engineers possessed, Kamiński had glanced over at him, asking with all of the curiosity and sadness of a child.
“It is not just our appearance, mój kolega,” he had answered. “They have come here to forget what they left behind on the dying Earth. We are an inconvenient reminder of what came before.”
On the record player, the song ended and the relentless skip of the needle pulled Woźniak away from the memory and back to the present. He finished painting in silence and dropped the brush into a jar of thinner.
The jar reminded Woźniak of the birthing chambers where engineers like himself floated in brine, tubes extending deep into their nostrils as they coughed, spluttered and choked their way violently into existence. He tried to shut it out as he returned to the porch.
The suns had risen, painting the sky a lurid orange, akin to the lava that once seeped through the crags and cliffs of the mountain range in the early days of the project.
He lit a cigarette and eased himself into a rickety old rocking chair that creaked under his weight, narrowing his focus to the approaching dropship, a silver locust hovering on the horizon. If he squinted, his superior vision could make out the familiar Colony insignia, so omnipresent during that first debriefing.
“You are the first of your kind. Genetically engineered to survive the rigours and dangers of the hostile worlds you will work among. Your task is vital to the survival of humanity, and your service and sacrifices to the Colony will not be forgotten.”
Woźniak grimaced and stubbed out the cigarette.
By the time the first settlers had arrived, the planet was unrecognizable. The nightmare that he, Kamiński, and the rest of the crew had toiled at for the best part of a decade was gone. They had seeded the earth, monitored the cyanobacteria, cultivated plant life, and watched slowly as the acrid deserts bloomed into sustainable grasslands.
Everything about the planet’s appearance had changed. Everything but the engineers.
They had tried, at first, to live among the settlers, expecting respect for the decades of sacrifice spent turning a volcanic netherworld into a lush, green paradise.
But the stares cut deep. Children ran. Men and women turned away from them in the streets. Their unnatural forms, perfect for enduring the hardships of terraforming, were monstrous to the eyes of the settlers. They were freaks. Ogres to be driven away.
Now, because intimidation hadn’t worked, they would be removed by contractual force.
Woźniak had heard about the Colony’s plans for them. Some cursed system on the edge of the Horsehead nebula. Unstable, barren planets where cyanobacteria wouldn’t take. Useless for colonization, but a convenient place to home a redundant workforce.
In the sky above, the dropship peeled away from the crimson clouds and began its descent. Woźniak guided it down, waving his hulking arms. It would make the lie more believable.
“Kamiński is dead?”
The Captain looked suspicious, but Woźniak guided her and the guards to the pyre.
“Cremated, as per terraforming regulations.”
The Captain twisted her face. “We are far removed from the days of terraforming, Mr. Woźniak. There was no need to dispose of him in this manner.”
He felt her gaze drill into him, mining for a hidden truth. Woźniak met the stare head-on, as the wind in the trees whispered secrets.
“Well,” she said eventually, “it’s a shame. So close to your relocation. Still,” she sniffed, “what’s done is done. Let’s get you boarded.”
Woźniak nodded, glanced around one last time, at the beauty of all he had created and, lowering his gaze, headed to the ship.
The twin suns were sinking over the blue mountain range when Kamiński returned from the expedition. He had travelled deep into the forests, at Woźniak’s insistence, foraging for mushrooms, and fishing in a secluded lake.
The cabin was empty when he arrived, but he could hear static and the needle skipping on the record player. Setting aside the food, he lifted the needle with his large, cracked fingers and reverently replaced it, freeing that old ghost of a voice, Woźniak’s favourite, to sing once more about the wonderful world they had shaped together.
Kamiński stepped outside into the cool night air. From the horizon, lights twinkled from the distant towns.
He glanced up at the sky and a star seemed to wink back at him.
In the darkness, he recalled Woźniak’s voice over breakfast.
“One day, mój kolega. One day, I promise they’ll leave you alone.”
Kamiński smiled and, humming to the tune, went inside to start on supper.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This is beautiful, thank you!
Thank you for reading. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
It brought tears. Very bittersweet story. Loved it!
Thank you, Arlan.
Always precious when someone sacrifices for another.