by A. L. Mengel
Listen to me.
She watched the star as it levitated in front of her. She saw plumes of light dance from its surface, reaching towards the darkness of interstellar space.
“You!” she said. “You are the wandering star…”
Close your eyes and listen to me.
As she closed her eyes, her mind flooded with the image of an ocean. There was a vast ocean; water extended farther than her mind’s eye could see.
She stood on the muddy beach, surrounded by brilliant green tropical foliage. But the sand had been finite; and then after the rising of the trees, they boarded stars and space. Had she left? For she felt she had not returned.
And then she heard a familiar voice.
It was male, reassuring.
“This is not Earth, is it? Is this your vision of what Earth should be? A painting of your own special pallet?”
And then a face appeared in the star. Smiling down on her. Different, unseen before, yet familiar and friendly. The eyes looked down on her, as if waiting for her answer.
“You,” the star said. “It’s always been you. You have always been special. You are unique. There is absolutely no one else in the entire vastness of interstellar space who is quite like…you.”
She gasped.
She saw the familiarity in the face. Unparticular yet acquainted.
There was a warm smile, a certain temperament that she had come to know. A sense of familiarity; and although the star was just a star, a star that served as a guiding beacon, his face had been different.
She saw the face of her father flash through her mind, if only for an instant. She watched him approaching from the bright sunlight; the memory of his approach flooded her mind like a wave, a memory of watching him, through the window, waiting to receive him watching her.
Of smashing her palm against the control panel. And rushing out to his collapsed body with the medical team. Of performing CPR and placing him on a gurney and carrying him to emergency.
“I remember…” she said.
“And then,” he said. “You must open your mind, Abagail. You must let go of your past. Of what you cling to and desperately try to remember. For you must look towards the future; towards new life and new worlds…”
He smiled down at her. “Fall forward, dear Abby. Trust. Take a leap of faith, and all will fall into place.”
But the choice will always remain with you.
She floated towards the star.
It’s always been you, Abagail.
Her eyes clouded with tears as the swirling, white hot sphere enlarged in her view. She closed her eyes as the tears streamed down her face, and as she got closer and closer to the star, the vast darkness of space was swallowed in a bright, and brilliant, white light, warmth and love.
You have always been special.
And when her eyes opened but saw nothing but the blue sphere; was it the same blue marble as they had called it at one time? Was it the same?
How much time had passed?
Could she remember? Did she still exist? Did the blue planet, the sphere of life, which orbited precisely 93 million miles from the sun, still exist?
Had she ever left?
For Song
THE END
5.7.17 | 10:43pm | Second Run
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IN
THE VEGA CHRONICLES
THE
WANDERING
STAR
MANY OF THOSE who remained living on the planet Earth could still remember the days when the oceans shifted towards the poles; and when the sea levels rose, higher, seemingly before their eyes, but certainly within a generation.
For the citizens of the planet, their memory of the water shifting was real and recent; and even years and decades later, many would recall the Great Shift. It became dinner table talk, bedtime stories. Those who were too young to remember the period of the Great Shift were told of the days when the wave came.
In those days, it was when the mass exodus from the Northern states was plastered over every news channel; every blog; throughout the internet and on every street corner. In the years during which the shift took place, and as the rotation of the planet slowed, the coastal population was forced to relocate to inland cities. Those in the Northern Hemisphere (and equally so in the Southern Hemisphere) would relocate a short distance from their previous coastal residence, and then, several years later, would be forced to move once again, as the sea crept closer…and closer…to the population.
As the planet slowed even further, and it became inevitable for those located nearest to the poles that their cities were slowly being inundated and swallowed by the Earth’s waters, it came to a point that entire countries had to be abandoned as great cities were reclaimed by mother nature.
The people of the planet recalled watching in horror as the waters retreated from the tropical zones and spilled towards the north. It wasn’t until the northern cities were completely swallowed, and each metropolis would fall into memory and would lie beneath vast depths of seawater, that the inhabitants of the remaining dry areas towards the equator felt the twinge of uncertainty.
Until then, when the cities were lost, it had simply been disbelief.
Some cites, like Atlanta or Rome, with a more southerly location, were not spared entirely from the assault of the waters, but the skyscrapers, and some crests on taller buildings rose from the sea. Those cities were partially inundated and still abandoned. Others, closer to the poles, were completely submerged – under a mile of water in some cases, and sentenced to decompose in a watery grave. London, New York, Toronto, and Moscow – all were lost. Santiago, Sydney, Cape Town…all underwater.
Forever.
The cities closest to the equator were also not spared.
For there, where there had once been oceans, now faded away to new, vast swaths of land as new arid deserts were born on a massive super-continent which reached around the center of the planet, spanning the equator. Once tropical zones, the land was no longer fertile; nor was it habitable. It was a harsh, sandy landscape with a blistering, relentless sun. The failing troposphere caused increasing radiation levels in these areas during sunlight; the levels lowered during darkness.
The super-continent was devoid of water, for the seas which had once surrounded cities like Havana and Mumbai, had flowed towards the poles. Areas that had once had healthy water tables experienced extreme dry conditions; muddy swamps became sandy deserts as the face of the land changed as the ocean retreated.
The phenomenon, which created new inland cities, once coastal communities, blessed with sea breezes, now were landlocked, dry and hot, many miles from the nearest water; and the air, which had thinned tremendously in the center regions of the planet, became unbreathable as the atmospheric layer of gases, which once blanketed the planet, faded. For the sun – once a harbinger of warmth and sustenance – shined at such a ferocity as to cook any mammal or reptile, and serve as a catalyst for radiation from a dying sun heading towards supernova.
Millions perished around the world, either by drowning, asphyxiation or starvation. There were some that heeded the apocalyptic warnings.
Many others maintained a sense of complacency.
The newscasts barked almost constantly about the impending doom, but until the water spilled over the shores of the coasts, and until the radiation had been felt and measured through a decomposing atmosphere, the people of the planet ignored the problem.
Until the prob
lem became insurmountable.
It was not a cinematic horror like on the film medium; people did not tear into the streets and burn up in the sun; their skin did not boil, or slither off of their bones, nor burn and char. But the population was forced to abandon the cities closest to the equator and develop cities beneath the surface of the planet.
But there were some that ignored the warnings; their stubbornness against the reports and subsequent denial served as a catalyst for their demise – and on one particular day, the ocean rose dramatically in a very short period of time. The surge came forth like that of a cataclysmic hurricane; a giant wave was spotted in the ocean, speeding towards the coasts of the world, flowing towards the north and south poles, threatening to flatten any remaining infrastructure; for the rotation of the planet had slowed to a point that it had nearly stopped.
The wave only gave enough warning for the newscasts to break the news – World’s Coastlines Inundated – and shortly after that, the deed had been done.
Millions drowned who didn’t heed the warnings; the warnings of the event were many, and provided over the course of decades, if not longer. Scientists insisted that the slowing of the Earth’s rotation could very well possibly reach a point where it would slow significantly in a short amount of time, creating massive tsunamis throughout the planet as the oceans displaced.
Man knew that this cataclysmic event was on the horizon, yet it was not understood.
Many could recognize the signs, over the years, indicating that the event was already in progress. But man – as an entirety – did not understand the cause behind the sudden acceleration, whether it was a slow build to a dramatic crescendo, or a sudden, unprecedented cataclysm of change; no matter who commented on the events, whether it be the slow transition or the sudden shift, it did not matter who it was, whether it was those who had been educated their entire lives on the topic, or which stellar University he or she had attended, or how specific a Degree; or how many decades of research they had performed no matter how generalized or specific. It was beyond scientific explanation and reach of man.
No one knew why the change in the planet was taking place, nor did they understand the direct cause of the shift of the oceans. Many who populated the planet during the years of the Great Shift had been studying it (or at least witnessing it) their entire lives, and the generation before them had already witnessed changes in the coastlines – beaches closer towards the poles were getting smaller, while those near the equator were enlarging. But as one generation passed the torch to the new, the problem remained: Had the Earth been truly slowing its rotation? And what was causing it to happen?
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