-Sci-Fi – 1 Page –
“Cygnus! Cygnus…please come up. Eat something.” He pulled away reluctantly from his work. She wouldn’t possibly leave him alone for any longer. He might as well brave a meal. He had spent the entire day in his work station…she would be getting suspicious and worried.
Cygnus glided upstairs, his mind still levels below his position, set upon his bench, tools, and paints.
She was sitting uneasily at the table, fussing about with the utensils, arranging and re-arranging as if to gain some sort of approval from him.
“I thought I had lost you there for a moment. Hungry, I hope?”
“Famished.” He said falsely, taking a seat and putting a delicate amount of rations on to his plate. They both ate in silence for a moment, she, observing Cygnus through quick glances and peripheral seconds.
“I don’t know how much longer I can bear it, Cygnus.” She said, placing her spoon down noisily.
He looked up from his daintily touched plate and observed her. His art, he thought to himself, must have strangely transformed his eyes; his work, his great work had taken the slot of ‘great beauty’ from his wife. She was no longer a masterpiece, but a close runner-up to the real thing. To the tangible beauty he had created from an idea of ancient text.
“Bear what, Grenea?”
She looked at him with such an expression of pain, of hurt cast deep in the skin.
“I need to see it Cygnus.” She said simply. “Can’t you show me?”
He paused reflectively for a moment, then grasped her hand. He led her gliding down the levels until they reached his work bench, his own sanity. He placed her squarely in the middle of the room and said quietly, “Alright, close your eyes.”
She obeyed his command, shaking with anticipation. She heard the clanking and maneuvering of several unseen gears and felt herself fall in to darkness.
“Grenea, open your eyes.” said Cygnus, happily.
Around her were stars. A black universe coated with stars, twinkling innocently all around her. Then, Cygnus pulled an especially vocal gear, and from what seemed eternal blackness, came an odd sort of planet, circling slowly around the two of them.
“What is this?” Asked Grenea, touching the planet gingerly.
“My own replica…my very own live model of what I call-”
“Earth.” Said Grenea shortly, surveying the project scrupulously.
“Yes.” said Cygnus, watching her face carefully.
“Isn’t this a little…childish, Cygnus?”
“Well, one could say that Earth truly did-”
“Cygnus,” She interrupted, “When we were young, we heard fairy stories about Earth. Idealistic college students try to bring back some sort of morality or law from the ‘lost planet’ but we’ve grown out of that.”
“But Grenea, Earth fell out of our radar billions of years ago! Who knows the sort of advancements it could have made without our supervision? For all we know-”
“For all we know, Cygnus, it was never that glamorous to begin with. It started as something sensible; a lab for our Reptilia preservation Institute. But, once we decided to destroy our experimentation there, what use did we have for it? A vacant piece of rock.”
“We left our technology behind, Grenea,” Said Cygnus calmly, “who knows what after effects our bipartisan and riporicism could have had on that sort of atmosphere. We could have spawned the creation of something truly spectacular.”
“Doubtful, Cygnus. Highly doubtful.”
She glided up the levels, leaving Cygnus in the dark with his lost fables and ideals of what could have been.
Originally Posted 06/01/2005
