Deadearth

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. Millions of stars pierced through the darkness, twinkling in a vast expanse splashed with the deep vermilion hues of the Orion Arm’s distant nebulae. But one light shone brighter than the rest, and as months had turned to years and filled the space of a decade on the Great Atlas’ journey, the light had expanded to reveal the lush superplanet that Cecilia and her fellow Colonists would soon call home: Planet Tiamat.

For the affluent like Rex, whose wealth granted him the luxury of windows in his quarters, this new planet would likely mean freedom beyond anything that had been offered on their late homeplanet. For the indentured like Cecilia, whose poverty stripped her of such luxuries, this would likely mean more ways to suffer.

Yet the man never seemed to look out his window, and it was instead Cecilia who felt the smallest twinge of hope as her eyes explored its marvels. Her fingers mirrored its round, steel frame, tracing the circular lip of the porcelain cup she’d prepared Rex’s tea in. The motion was entrancing - almost magical - and indeed to Cecilia, windows felt more like fantastical portals than manmade structures.

A decade earlier, the same window had seen another planet shrink from its sight until it was a lonely, distant light. This planet, whose desolate lands and poisoned seas hadn’t heard the footsteps of life in years, had now been named Deadearth.

At that time, Cecilia had not seen her homeplanet disappear. She had been shining shoes for Rex and his family to step on more people and more things. But she could hear Colonists weeping - could feel the Great Atlas come alive in a surging and thronging cry that clamored through every of the ship’s halls. Some lamented departing the dying planet in full-bodied hysteria. Others wept quietly, in jerking sobs. Others yet balked, peering out their windows in a stunted sadness - not quite registering that this would be the last time humankind would see the planet that created them.

Though she could not see the collapsed Wonders of the World - the barren hills, the flooded valleys, or the crumbling mountains - Cecilia could feel the Atlas part ways with Deadearth. In the years that followed, she would try to remember what it felt like to be outside - to have the freedom to run for miles in the Earth’s natural elements. How it looked. How it sounded. How it smelled. How it tasted. But as time went on, and the feeling of wind tickling her cheek and caressing her hair was replaced by cold, stagnant air, the feeling would become hard to reimagine.

By the time it was announced that the last Earthern humans had perished, it seemed as though the whole of the human race - or, at least, what was left of it - could finally agree on something: that this fate was no one’s fault but our own.

An entire generation had now grown up in the confines of the Great Atlas, and though it was rightfully hailed as a magnificent craft that represented the possible feats of mankind, the pain and guilt surrounding the follies of that same ingenuity echoed through its stiff and unfeeling metal halls.

But those echoes stopped here, in Rex’s chambers.

Were she still young and poetic, she might have said that these chambers were where her own cries began. But she had long since cried out for help - even when Rex’s depravity had meant unwanted advances toward her child self, and eventually physical violence. When such cries were met with harsh scrutiny at best, these things became very little price to pay for food and shelter.

Rex was a powerful man.

Cecilia studied his features for a brief moment before dropping her head just in time. She stared at her own reflection in the tea’s rippling surface - compared her tired, sagging features to his sharp, angular profile that always cut across her vision. One might think Rex was the one in his 20s, and she in her 50s.

Cecilia hummed in thought.

Before the girl could place her master’s tea on the roundtable in front of him, she heard the loud clanking of porcelain. Rex yanked the teacup and saucer from her hands, and she felt the agonizing burn of the scorching liquid as it splashed onto her palms. She knew better than to make a sound and simply prayed it had only hurt her.

She shivered violently in place, still praying to the marble floor.

Finally, a husky voice broke the silence that seemed to have stretched on for an eternity.

“Two scoops of sugar?”

A meek voice escaped from her lips. “Yes.”

Though…was it really two scoops? As Rex blew on the liquid, swirling it brusquely in its cup, Cecilia tried to recall.

Perhaps it was three.

Ah, well. An extra scoop shouldn’t hurt.

After all, it had been stirred with such care. A calm, knowing motion - much more patient than the man’s current endeavor - like a planet in orbit.

In preparing her master’s final cup of tea, Cecilia had mixed in every feeling of disgust for him, his sordid family, and herself. As the white powder had dissolved into the creamy liquid, it had left no trace. And as Rex touched it to his lips, Cecilia bit back a grin, wincing as pain flared in starbursts inside the apple-sized knot beneath her left eye. As she touched the knot, she thought of Rex’s daughter, who was getting too old to come up with fantastical tales about how she had gotten similar bruises.

Cecilia frowned. When her father had treated her the same way as a child, she was able to run off - and though she would face similar treatment in many forms throughout her life, she would ultimately escape those hands. But here on the Atlas, where everything, everywhere was monitored - unless you could afford the turning of a blind eye - there was nowhere for this little girl to run.

Even still, that was not quite why Cecilia was doing this.

Her thoughts were silenced by a hearty chuckle. She snuck a glance at Rex, whose gaze unabashedly explored her body, taking particular delight in her newfound burns and welts.

A fiery rage pounded inside her chest, crawling up her throat before she quelled it with the politest of smiles. “How is your tea, sir?”

Rex coughed. “Terrible.”

“Would you like me to fix–?”

“At once!” he coughed.

Cecilia glided to the kitchen as Rex continued to gorge himself, and as his coughs became more frequent, the girl’s gaze drifted out the window once more. The past three years had been spent aligning the Atlas with Tiamat’s orbit to descend upon the planet; today would be the day it finally made landfall. As Rex’s coughing fit raged on, glowing wisps sprung from the blue haze of Tiamat’s atmosphere. Cecilia stopped calmly in her tracks, her back to her master.

As the fit reached a crescendo, paired with the clanking of porcelain once more, Cecilia wondered where the spirits of those who die in space go. Would they wander back to their homeplanet and dance with the spirits of Deadearth? Could they get lost and wander on forever? Or would they seek a new home in Tiamat, and find new places to haunt?

A loud crash sounded from behind Cecilia, and her master stumbled forward, catching himself with the same hand he liked to hit women. Rex yelped as the porcelain impaled his palm.

“You…miserable bitch.”

Rex fell to the floor with a loud thump.

Cecilia looked on.

Rex’s voice shrunk. Pathetically, he asked, “Why?”

Cecilia had rehearsed this very moment for years. She had even predicted he would ask this, despite how absurd that question was. But, in truth, though she had as many reasons as there were stars, Cecilia did not know why.

She looked out the window at them, as if they would have the answers.

It was not long before armed guards had burst into Rex’s quarters. The sound of their marching drowned out the sound of Rex’s body as it convulsed against the floor.

Cecilia looked one last time out the steel window, where ionized gasses began furling around the Atlas, flickering in brilliant red-hot hues as they formed a glaring plasma trail. She raised her burned palms and kneeled, but the guards tackled her anyway. As the Atlas began to pitch and yaw, her vision surged forward and crashed into the cold marble.

She saw stars.

Then, there was nothing but darkness.

***

She was back on Earth - in the same cell that she had landed herself in after begging in the wrong area.

No, wait. Her cot…was it always this cold?

It felt more like a cool slab of metal - colder than anything she had felt on the planet.

Cecilia rubbed her eyes, wincing as she folded untreated burns against the knot still bulging beneath her left eye - and the grease she’d just wedged into the other. But as her vision cleared, she recognized this place as one of the Atlas’ many holding cells.

Though all felt calm and the ship had likely landed in the time she had been forced under, the pitch black walls made it feel as though she were still suspended in space.

Cecilia tried to think of Rex’s daughter - of the people who would now be free from further harm - but in this moment, it seemed she couldn’t think of anything. Part of her wished she had put up a fight, or even leapt into the red hot hues of the plasma, burning up in Tiamat’s atmosphere as it tried to protect itself from foreign objects.

Humans had always feared alien life coming to Earth and destroying it. In the darkest of ways, Cecilia thought, it was humorous that humankind thought it needed anything other than itself to accomplish such a feat. And now it was coming to another planet, descending upon its unsuspecting lifeforms with the same terror it sought to ward against - the same sense of manifest destiny human tribes had used to conquer and destroy each other since the dawn of their kind.

Perhaps Cecilia had been afraid of this very moment. Perhaps she was willing to do what she was previously afraid to - just so that she did not have to witness what her kind were truly capable of.

Suddenly, a horrible sound pierced the air.

The screeching of metal thronged every hall at an impossible pitch, as if the Great Atlas itself were screaming out in pain. Every passenger on board the Atlas fell to their knees.

A moment later, the ship began rattling violently, whipping passengers up into the air, throwing them from wall to wall, and slamming them back into the ground.

The cries of passengers joined the chorus of cacophony. Next were blaring alarms that sounded desperately through every corridor - frantic alerts whose only words were: “HIDE! HIDE! HIDE! DO NOT LET IT SEE YOU!”

Cecilia felt its presence before she could see it.

She didn’t quite know how; perhaps, in the same way she could feel the Atlas departing from Deadearth, she could feel Tiamat now creeping through its insides. Enormous fissures erupted through every hall, felling doors and snaking up the walls from the floor to the vaulted ceilings.

Suddenly, it crept into Cecilia’s cell.

Its size was incomprehensible, and Cecilia knew what lay before her was just a fragment of its consciousness. She felt her breath leave her as dark vines the girth of a car and length of a building spun together, morphing into the spindly shape of a great serpent that lowered its head to hers.

She felt eyes that weren’t eyes reading her thoughts, pulling memories from her mind’s eye. She felt all the years of suffering she had ever felt, forced into the space of an instant. She heard screaming all around her - the relentless blaring of sirens - but Tiamat’s presence was louder than anything she had ever experienced.

The next instant, it was gone.

And as Tiamat’s vines unraveled from their serpentine form and slithered back into the fissure, moving to the next cell, Cecilia fell to her knees and sobbed.

With the little sense she had left, she searched endlessly for answers in her head. Had the planet come alive? Was this lifeforce so advanced it had evaded all probes sent from Deadearth decades ago? Or, worse yet: had someone known of this sentient life - and kept it from those who would be subjected to it?

The same thought surged in her mind over and over: we were not alone on this planet. And, unlike the tales we had imagined of our victimhood as Earth was invaded, whatever lived here was expecting us.