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Esteemed neighbors, emissaries, ambassadors, and dignitaries, I write to you today not only as a statesman but as a scientist. We in the city of Omelas have been exceedingly lucky in recent years. The wars, diseases, and financial instability that have rocked the world have so far passed us by. Partly that’s been due to prudent precautions and smart public investments, but it’s also true that our fine city benefits in unique ways from ancient, dearly-held customs.
On Miphre, a planet hardly larger than a moon, jagged mountaintops stab above the cloud cover and harbor small ecosystems in the palms of their hands: rock eels and ribbon mosses and seabirds with rodents clutched to their breasts, each one nestled between those stony fingers. “The perfect nesting spot for gastor,” the captain of The Cyclops Cradles Her Sheep said when they arrived on board a few hours ago. “It’s basically a buffet for them.”
A scream rises from the bush. One last call to the living: a warning of pain. Katarina’s heard that same sound more times than she’s had hot dinners but still a ribbon of unease unfurls in her gut. She sets her cleaver down for a moment, shifting from one foot to the other.
We saw her staggering down the promenade, gills flaring as she sucked for the gods’ aether that no longer fueled her breathing. By her gasping breaths we knew the god had moved on, swimming the invisible aether to another, leaving her gasping in the void as she fell back into the strained, recycled, and slightly fishy-smelling air of the space station.
Baba’s skin splits open with the sound of thunder. A parent’s intuition, he says, switching on the news. A ticker tape warning runs across the screen telling us to leave, leave, leave. The sky over our home is cracking but Baba will not go. He runs up to the roof instead and grows larger than I ever knew him to be.
The Map Sphere consists of thirteen stellar sails, circular in shape, arranged asymmetrically around the host star. They are easy to miss but look closely and you will see them: specks against the dark, clustered in no more than thirty degrees of arc. They are not really a sphere, this is true. Their total power production is so low you would be forgiven for doubting their function.
“This is it,” says Sister Auralee. She stamps on the ground beneath them. “This is where we’ll plant the church.” The turf yields to her bare feet, warm and spongy like bruised flesh. Grass peeks between her toes. She smells moisture, the tang of fibrous peat deep below, a thousand years of bones and dead leaves packed into the dirt.
The dancer switches the camera on as his ship falls into orbit around the black hole; the opening image of his unmuscled chest squeezed beneath translucent polyester blasts out toward a thousand points of watching light. He’s shaved his body for the first time in his life, the nicks of the razor lingering in little scabbing cuts. He hits the music.
It was a different kind of migration when our parents moved to Lagos; Dad, a young accountant, had got a job at the federal secretariat, and Mum, a teacher, lugging three boys aged one, three, and five, transferred later from her state civil service job to the Federal School of Arts and Sciences on the island.
USER: this is a message for Milwaukee Elementary’s curator Jude Towers, I hope this is the right address. anyway thanks for the story you had RIGHTR generate for my 10th graders’ Empathy Week. it was really great! can you tell me more about it?
CURATOR: I am happy to have fulfilled the assignment.
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