“So what will you do with this now?”
“We will signal the mind when it is time to leave this body and return home.”
“And when will this happen?”
“In three of your years. That’s when I will return for the final time and watch to see if the young boy’s body is discarded.”
“Discarded? What do you mean by discarded?”
“The boy will die.”
Gwin gasped. “You mean you’re going to kill him when he is only three years old? How could you do that to him and his family, to all of us who will love him?”
“It is part of the experiment.”
“I never thought you could be so cold. That your experiment would mean more to you than a person.”
“They’re not considered people by our standards.”
“And so they can just be manipulated as you wish.”
“We need to find a place for our prisoners.”
“Find someplace else where they can build a colony like the Leaders originally planned, like we did.”
“It’s not feasible anymore, now that this will work.”
Gwin turned and walked away from the man she had once loved so much.
“Gwin, wait,” he called. He ran over to her and put his hand on her arm. He turned her to face him. “I know it sounds harsh and cruel but it is no different than the takeover wars that have been fought for centuries by the planets. Every people on every planet tries to enhance their circumstances and if it is at the expense of another race, so be it. That is life.”
“But these people can’t even fight back. They don’t even know they have an enemy.”
“We’re not the enemy.”
“What are you then, benefactors?”
“No. But we plan on coming back here periodically to see how the experiment is going. We’ll be able to help these people, guide them to improving their lives.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
“We can show them how to make better tools, how to build shelters, how to design something to make the transportation of their goods easier. After all, isn’t that what you’ve been doing with your grain and vegetables?”
“They will not understand any of it.”
“It will be introduced slowly over hundreds of years. And as they grasp more they will be taught more.”
“How will you do that?”
“Not all of our convicts are murderers. Many of them are intelligent with skills and knowledge that can be passed on. If any memory of their previous life comes through, there is a chance it will be that intelligence. They will see a need and invent tools to improve the lives of their people. Eventually, they will organize into a society and gather into villages to work together.”
“Just like our ancestors did?”
“Much the same way.”
“So you’ll ultimately turn them into us.”
“Not us exactly. They will remain the same shape, just have our minds.”
“How many do you plan on sending?”
“From what you said about the great meeting, there are thousands of people living on this planet. We plan on sending all the orbital prisoners first then we will be sentencing the lesser criminals. This will eliminate the Fringe and allow for expansion as needed.”
“So once they know our technology they will wreck this planet as we did ours before the big bump.”
“Maybe not,” Mikk said softly. “Maybe we can program them so they won’t make our mistakes.”
Mikk left on the spaceship the next day anxious to make sure the body was properly stored on their planet and to pick another subject. This one would be tried on a different group in a different part of the planet.
* * *
Gwin watched the boy, named Trog, grow. His parents and fellow residents, after their initial shock, adjusted to the birth and accepted him. He grew normally, played games with the other children, and learned the language and ways of his people. Other babies were born but none of them cried. Gwin decided that Mikk and his fellow scientists were waiting to see if the casting off of this body was a success before trying again with these people. She wondered how many other babies being born around the planet were crying at birth.
She wanted to stop the experiment. In the spring of the second year she was tempted to say something to the boy’s parents, to warn them that he might not grow into an adult if they returned to the cave. She wanted to tell Jawn and Georg, get them to help her. But they had not returned in the fall deciding to visit another clan for the winter. In her heart, though, she knew the only way to stop the experiment would be to kill Trog before Mikk returned. And that she couldn’t do.
She thought it was terrible that their lives were now controlled by the Leaders and that they didn’t even know it. And there was no way she could explain it to them.
She wondered, too, that if these people hadn’t befriended the starving aliens, hadn’t taken them in and saved their lives, would their future be in jeopardy now? Or if she still lived on her former planet and had never met them, would she have given them any thought at all? Would she see it Mikk’s way, that it was more important to rid their society of a prisoner than it was to protect a primitive people?
* * *
The children were playing in the remaining snow, making balls and throwing them at each other. Gwin was sitting outside enjoying a warm spring morning and watching them when she saw the spaceship. She immediately looked around for a place to go and hide. She wanted to leave, to head into the trees and not return until it left. She couldn’t bear to watch the boy die. But she knew the family would need her. All family and friends were needed when one of them died.
So she waited for him to come along the path. She was surprised to see that he hadn’t aged much. She, however, knew she looked older. Her body was aging as fast as the inhabitants. She was becoming stooped from the years of working the fields and harvesting the grains and vegetables. She stood and walked slowly towards him.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said, without even saying his name first.
“Yes, I do.”
“But what about us and our feelings for the child?” Gwin asked, tears in her eyes. “We’ve watched him grow for the past three years. We’ve taught him, played with him. Don’t we matter?”
“I’m sorry,” Mikk said. “But this is our experiment and we must carry it through.”
Gwin watched helplessly as Mikk went to the cave, where he was again welcomed. The children quit their playing and headed inside for their meal. Gwin slowly followed them. The meal of boiled meat and vegetables and flatbread was almost over when Trog began choking. His hands clawed at his throat, while his parent frantically tried to dislodge the food. They put their fingers down his throat, pounded him on the back, cried for him to take a breath. Unable to do anything they watched Trog’s face turn red and his eyes bulge. He clung to them, dug his hands into their flesh just before his eyes closed and he slumped to the floor from lack of oxygen.
The cave people were in a state of shock. It had been so sudden. One minute Trog was laughing and the next he was dead. Mela gathered him in her arms and rocked him, tears running down her face. The whole room of dwellers began the mourning chant.
Gwin hissed to Mikk. “Do you think this was worth your experiment?”
He appeared shaken, almost like he’d expected a quiet death, one that was without pain or fear. He stood and left the cave. Gwin found him standing outside.
“I suppose you can now call it a success.”
Mikk nodded.
“And you will continue sending prisoners here.”
“It will be the Leader’s decision.” He started down the path to the village and the waiting ship. Then he turned and looked back at her. “Your mother passed away six months ago and Britt and I were married last month. And the Leaders have decided to call this planet Earth.”
It was the last time Gwin saw Mikk. Over the next few years more babies cried at birth. Gwin watc
hed them grow. She knew that they were being raised by good parents and taught the ways of the people, but she wondered how much of their criminal past would they remember when they were older. She was glad she wouldn’t be alive to see it. She watched the ones who didn’t cry carefully. They were the natural ones, the ones who really belonged here. She hoped they thrived over the thousands of years that lay ahead.
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joan Donaldson-Yarmey began her writing career with a short story, progressed to travel and historical articles, and then on to travel books. She called these books her Backroads series and in the seven of them she described what there is to see and do along the back roads of British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon, and Alaska. She has now switched to fiction writing and is proud to be one of Books We Love Ltd.’s published authors. Through BWL, she has written three mystery novels, Illegally Dead, The Only Shadow in the House, and Whistler’s Murder, published in her Travelling Detective series. They come in a boxed set. In her fourth novel, Gold Fever, she combines mystery with a little romance.
Not one to stick to one genre, Joan has also published West to the Bay. It is the first novel in her new series for young adults titled The Canada West Historical series.
Joan was born in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada, and raised in Edmonton, Alberta. She married soon after graduation and moved to a farm where she had two children. Over the years she worked as a bartender, hotel maid, cashier, bank teller, bookkeeper, printing press operator, meat wrapper, gold prospector, warehouse shipper, house renovator, and nursing attendant. During that time she raised her two children and helped raise her three stepchildren.
Since she loves change, Joan has moved over thirty times in her life, living on acreages and farms and in small towns and cities throughout Alberta and B.C. She now lives on an acreage in the Port Alberni Valley with her husband, four female cats, and one stray male cat.
Joan belongs to Crime Writers of Canada, Federation of B.C. Writers, the Port Alberni Arts Council and the Port Alberni Portal Players. Her short story, A Capital Offense, received Ascent Aspirations Magazine’s first prize for flash fiction in 2010. She has since turned that story into a stage play and presented it at the Fringe Festival in Port Alberni in 2014.
http://thetravellingdetectiveseries.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/writingsbyjoan
https://www.amazon.com/author/joandonaldsonyarmey
ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR
The Criminal Streak – Book One: The Cry of the Guilty – Silence of the Innocent Mini Series
West to the Bay – Book One: The Canada West Historical Series
Gold Fever
The Travelling Detective Series (boxed set)
Betrayed (Cry of the Guilty – Silence of the Innocent Book 2) Page 18