Chapter 1 - The End of Yesteryear

Three friends meet up one last time before embarking on the next phase of their personal journeys in an earth like setting, that isn't earth.

You have to lie real still to shoot a babbit.  One flinch and they scarper, bouncing along on their one foot faster than most animals can run on two.  We were in sight of a big one; it’s ear still drooped lazily over its head, completely unaware of our presence. Any false moves now, and that ear would spring up, senses pricked.  Sometimes I felt bad when we got sent to get babbits, but there are so many of them, and they taste so good that, well, you live with it.

Click. Tunshaw cocked his weapon. The babbit’s ear sprung up faster than a lightning snap.  We held our breath.  One Mississippi. Two Mississippi… not that I remember where the Mississippi was, or is.  Old Earth geography was tough.  Still, as someone once discovered, it was a good word for counting out a second.  Three Mississippi.

The babbit had frozen, ear fully extended.  Four Mississippi. I looked down the barrel of my gun, animal in full view, the grassy scrubland that surrounded us blurring out into the distance.  We always shot five Mississippi’s after Tunshaw clicked.  That was our thing.

Five Mississippi. A loud crack filled the air, echoing into the horizon.  When the smoke cleared, the three of us scrambled to our feet.

“It’s a hit!” Tunshaw said, whooping as he raced over to it.

“A big one too,” Red grinned, picking up the dead babbit by its ear.

“Reckon we’ll get a good stew out of this one,” I added, as we all stared at the stricken animal.  Tunshaw threw it into the hunting bag with the other three we’d shot.

“Big day tomorrow… we should probably head back,” he said, glancing up at the skies.  The first sun was starting its dip down toward the horizon.  No one moved though, our long shadows stretching out in front of us.

“Well, maybe that was our last hunting trip together guys,” Red said, staring off toward the distance.  We fell into silence, following his gaze out across the plains. “I feel like we should mark it somehow, you know?”

We only got to go hunting in the hour or so before the first sun set, straight after school.  We’d got pretty good because Red’s dad had let us use his hunting guns, which had been passed down to him back from the First Settlers.   They were Old Earth guns, like holding a real piece of history.  From tomorrow though, we would be assigned our adult jobs, probably in different sectors.

“You’re assuming we pass our exams,” I replied.

“Ah get out of here, as if we won’t,” Tunshaw replied.  He was right of course; we were too valuable to be sent back to school for another year.  Plus, Tunshaw was Gregoire Magellan’s son, and the Magellan’s had big plans for him, or so it was rumoured.  I doubted whether Mr Magellan even knew Tunshaw hung out with us so much.

“Why don’t we stop by the Baobabs on the way back?  For old times sake,” he shrugged.

It seemed as good a way to round things off as any.  As kids we’d always head for the Baobabs after school  - it was our meeting point for as long as we could remember.  Even now, Tunshaw and I would hang off the old branches, waiting for Red to arrive with his guns.  Sometimes he didn’t, and we had to use the bows we’d fashioned from forest wood �" we weren’t half as successful when that happened.

The three Baobab trees stood about twenty minutes walk away from the Centre, and as we approached them, the wind picked up through their branches and out across the plains.  Apparently Old Earth doesn’t have Sentients �" all their trees are Dumb, even their Baobabs.  Not these.  Ol’ Mel was sentient alright; he showed anger and sadness, happiness and joy, in his own way of course.  He’d been there long before the First Settlers; he’d seen it all.  We called his partner Aunt Grace, and their sapling Suzanne �" no one really knows why.  Ol’ Mel.  There he was towering up above us, his trunk thundering up to the heavens.  What was it about those trees that set them so apart?  Their gnarled branches twisted and turned, thick leaves shading thick branches.  Ol’ Mel was so old that his branches climbed both upwards and down, his trunk wide enough for several people to stand shoulder to shoulder against and still be dwarfed.  There were so many nooks and crannies in his vast frame that he felt like a timeless keeper of secrets, outside the realm of normal time and space.

“Last time you’ll see us together for a while,” Tunshaw said, staring up from amongst the great roots that plunged deep into the dusty earth.  “Guess we owe you a thanks.”

“Yeh…” Red continued, “Like for the time you woke us after we fell asleep under here after last bell.”

“Or for the time you whacked Red round the head for cussing,” I interjected. Red winced at the thought.

“But mainly for just letting us talk things through with you and hang out,” Tunshaw finished.  “We had good times here.”

“The best,” Red agreed.  We fell into silence again.  Ol’ Mel just let the wind blow through his leaves.

“One last climb?” I ventured to squinting up as the sun pierced through the great tree’s branches.  He didn’t always let climbers on; truth be told he was probably getting too old for it.

“Yes Mel! You gnarled legend!” Red called, as Ol’ Mel’s lowest branches slowly descended for us to grab hold of.  I knew he would let us on; Sentients might not have faces but you can just feel their emotions.

We swung, scrabbled and twisted our way to the top-most branches where you could get a great look out over the plains or back toward the Centre.  I was expert at picking a way to the top; you had to be careful on Ol’ Mel’s bark �" he didn’t like you pulling anything away, and it was a long drop to the bottom if you got it wrong.  Still, he was easier to climb than Suzanne, what with her lack of branches and sheer height.  And there was nothing better than nestling down in a crook of his old branches whilst first sun set.  We each had our favourite spots, but it had actually been a while since we’d all climbed together.  Not many at the Centre were any good at climbing �" what with the forests being out of bounds and the fact that Baobabs are few and far between.  I know some of the younger kids head for a Baobab pod on the other side of the Centre, but apart from that, we were the only climbers I could think of.  Most of the other kids whiled away the time digging or playing handball.

“All uptop?” Red called from his vantage point, which was technically the highest. 

All around us the scrubby grassland stretched into the distance; if you squinted hard enough toward the north west you could sometimes make out the glint of the River Vida and the Sunstone Mountains behind it, but otherwise there was nothing but babbit-ridden grassland until the faintest of dark smudges that signified the start of the forests.

“You reckon we’ll still come down here on days off and stuff?” Red ventured.  We all said we would, but knew we probably wouldn’t. 

I looked over at the Centre and my stomach did a little flip.  Tomorrow we’d find out which Sector we’d start our year with.  The dying light of the first sun caught the giant side of the Centre and glinted back at us, shining like a beacon in foreign lands.  Which was a little ironic, as that’s kind of what it was really.  Still, there was comfort in its giant A-frame structure; a visible reminder of home wherever you went within the boundaries of the plains.   Must have taken a hell of a time for the First Settlers to build.  But then, they had access to all that Old Earth technology.  My mind wandered back to classes on Old Earth, and my dad’s stories of Papa Seth, the last of the Old Earthers, though he was no more than a wrinkled prune of a man in my dad’s memories.  My thoughts drifted, and I felt guilty for not thinking of Tunshaw and Red, and our times together.

“Survive, explore, flourish,” Tunshaw shouted out, tapping the badge on his jumpsuit.  His position was to the right of mine, just about visible if I arched my head back a little.

Survive.  Well, I suppose we’d done that �" we were all part of the third generation of humans to be born on the New Earth.  Some of us, like me, were true New Earthers �" the product of unions of people on New Earth, as far back as the First Settlers.  Others, like Red, and my brother Felipe, we called Oldies �" the product of NASA’s gene pool donation.  It was every families’ duty, or privilege, to carry one Oldie for every natural birth.  It meant the gene pool wouldn’t dry up too.

Explore.  In our own way, I felt like we’d done some exploring.  I mean, sure, there were boundaries but they made sense.  After all, anyone who left the plains never came back, so survival was never going to be successful if too much exploration was done.  No, instead we’d taken to exploring every corner of the plains, with the foothills of the Sunstone Mountains, and the surrounding forests as limits.  In fact, most of the First Settlers were botanists and naturalists of a type �" desperate to clock, record and preserve everything; hence the reason for the chambers they dug under the Centre to keep things cool and dry and preserved.  I suppose they may have done a better job if they knew they would be alone for so long.

Flourish. Numerically we had flourished.  We had a good system going on; what were Atherton’s famous opening words in  Nova Terra? Every kid knew it: “This is a land bursting with abundance”  …  as a people we had made the most of that.  Each of the Sectors �" Agriculture, Industry, Sustenance and Livestock �"   had grown and developed, and we were increasing well,  within our limits of course.  When the Old Earthers get back, I think they’d be pretty impressed on the whole �" especially as the electro-magnetic fields here deny us pretty much any Old Earth tech.

“You done thinking to yourself or you going to contribute to the discussion?” Red called over to me. 

Tunshaw chuckled. “Such a dreamer K,” he said.

“Are. You. Capable. Of. Concentration?” Red said, doing his best Senior Gunthrop impression, accentuating every word.

“Glad we’re done with him,” I said nonchalantly.  At least he had been pleased with my final works, though ‘Good’ was all he could stretch to. 

“You’re never done with Gunthrop,” Tunshaw replied.  Our conversations drifted from memory to memory, thoughts stretching out with the dying rays of the first sun.  We chuckled and argued, as we had always done, right from the year Go.  It felt right, just lying there in Ol’Mel’s arms, lazily watching nothing go by below.  We had not done it enough lately.

“Ok, this is it,” Tunshaw said after a while, hoisting himself up.  “Time to go.”

I took one last look at the view; a few babbits bobbed around aimlessy below, a couple of storks slowly flapped their way toward an unknown destination, and the only thing that punctuated the grass were the Baobab pods, stretching outwards and upwards.  This was home.  This was the life all three of us had been happy with, and it was about to change forever.

“See ya around Ol’Mel,” I said softly as I climbed downwards, jumping the last few feet.    We threw our supplies back on and headed out towards the Center �" we would be back for dinner just as the bells rang out, right on cue.