Space Case

Writing Club Jan 28, 2014

Exercise #1

Prompt: 

Incorporate these word stories:

“You’ve known it the whole time.”

Epitaph: Stupid humans never escaped earth.

It feels so good going insane.

And this is what I came up with… maybe a potential story.

Tom Henderson picked up the metal object, so smooth and cold to the touch.  It was a gun, he thought, maybe.  Still was an archeological find nonetheless.   Whether it functioned was another story.  It took a moment to remember how to open the chamber.  He’d only seen a few examples over the years.  One bullet left, one measly little projectile, he mused.  No wonder technology had moved on.  One pull of the trigger and the weapon would be useless, except for maybe knocking someone over the head.  How archaic!  He gave the barrel a spin.  Around it went clicking into place. Perhaps it still fired too.  There was a safety, wasn’t there?  His fingers slid to the trigger.  The thing was seized.  Tom knew enough not to force it as ancient as it was.  Disappointed, he set it back into the steel box.  It would have to be handed in anyways to Caulder anyways.  The antique would make a nice museum piece and make him a pretty bit of coin too. 

Kneeling back down, he began brushing away the dirt again in the local of his find.  This dig was an important one.  The future of human kind hinged on the discovery of one of the fools that stayed behind on Earth.  Years of radiation had left the current population on Alpha Station with all sorts of new genetic maladies.  Atmospheric shielding has its benefits, why hadn’t the station designers thought of it.  How ironic that leaving for the station was supposed to save them from all the contamination down here on the planet!  He had an axe to grind with whatever numbskull made that decision.  And what with the small portion of the community that had managed to survive in orbit, they were left with a bottleneck population that was rapidly dropping like flies to the bloody Katara virus.  Hence, his mission here in Minnesota: a long shot retrieval of samples from the ancient populations to expand the station’s genome bank.  The thought of genetic manipulation made him shudder, but Pandora’s box was open and already the ripples of consequence had grown into tidal waves.

The find of the gun should lead to a battleground, which in turn, hopefully meant bodies.  With a little persistence, he should be rewarded with at least one decent DNA source as long as there wasn’t too much degradation.  It would give them a chance at producing an antiviral that worked among other things. 

Eureka!  With a gentle swish, the dust cloud dissipated to reveal what appeared to be finger bones. 

That was when he heard the click at the back of his head.  As he turned around, he had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Mr. Peterson, this is the coolest relic you’ve dug up yet.  What’s it for?”

Tom turned to see Dan, his very green research assistant looking cluelessly into the barrel of the handgun.  Idiots abound in every day and age.  The young space cadet had no idea what he held in his clumsy hands. 

Tom was sweating now.  His voice cracked as he spoke, “Dan, I want you to set that down very carefully in the box you found it in.” 

“Whatever you say, boss,” Dan replied thick with sarcasm, tossing the weapon back into the containment bin with a thud.

An audible sigh of relief slowly slipped through Tom’s lips as he reached down, closed the lid and activated the pressurized seal in finality.  Picking up his brush, Tom continued his work gingerly brushing the soil away to reveal an entire hand and then a wrist reaching up in futile desperation.  As he desecrated the grave of this long forgotten soul, Tom silently chided himself once more, ‘You’ve known it this whole time, fool kid had no business on this mission.’  But being General Coleman’s son, Dan was used to getting everything he wanted and the boy nearly got his head blown off because of it.