The World of Myth Magazine

Earth is a terrible place to live. So, I have been told. It is crowded and dirty. Water is scarce and the air is polluted. Wars and crimes are rampage. It's the only planet where reproduction restrictions are still enforced.

"You should be grateful that you were born on The Hub." An oldie always says after telling us about the woes of the planet our ancestors once called home.

I am grateful for being born and raised on The Hub. I am grateful for calling it home, this crappy piece of metal orbiting around the planet q3 in Proxima Centaury is my home. I am grateful for the oldies that guide us and give us the wisdom and the expertise needed to colonize the planet beneath us.

"The planet beneath us is a fertile rock waiting for our taking," Baba Mafeso says every day. He is one of the three oldies left. At a century and half Earth years old the man is still as healthy as a swine. He grew up on Earth, playing near the ocean before volunteering to join the exploratory ship to Proxima centaur q3. The journey took almost 120 years of his life, yet he says he regrets nothing.

"Today we will be exploring the northern pole of this planet," the elderly pauses for a minute," and I will be taking with me only three cadets."

We are in the engineering room, hastily preparing the landing shuttle for the yet to be named descending crew. Three cadets, I can be one of them, I shoot my hand up with eleven others.

"No, I don't want volunteers." Baba Mafeso says," I will choose whom I will go down with."

This is the third visit to the planet, and it makes sense that Baba Mafeso chooses the best and the most capable of his team. Three seats, twelve cadets of varying ages and belonging to multiple genders. I am twenty and the oldest, I think I deserve the seat. The officer's brown eyes stare at each one of us in the room. Wrinkles form on his dark forehead as he thinks why each of us deserve not to go.

Mafeso is the darkest skinned man I have ever seen. He keeps his head bald and is always well shaven as per his job’s requirements, he is the Chief Officer, same as being the Captain. Every day he wears his old blue uniform, the one the guerillas wore when they fought in the war for the restoration of our ancestral planet. He was on the losing side.

"When I was a boy my grandfather used to tell me how he used to play with sand on the beach, it was the purest joy a boy could have." Mafeso once told us," However my father told me a different story, when he was young, he didn't play on the beach, it was one of the dirtiest places in the region. The ocean water had now been filled with plastics, dead fish and nuclear waste. By the time I was born the Port of Beira which my family had called home for hundreds of years was no more, covered with water which continued to rise from the ocean."

Mafeso's family resettled in the inland, it was there he met my grandparents and others who also believed something could be done for the future. For the future, those three words were written everywhere on The Hub. The oldies always say it's to remind us the reason we left Earth.

"Ncube, Munotyei and Joshua." Mafeso's voice jolts me back to the engineering room," Get your gear ready and meet me here in an hour for the drop."

When I think of happiness, I imagine myself walking barefoot on the sand. I imagine holding my sister's hand whilst gazing upon the ocean. I imagine her face dazzling with a smile and her mouth singing songs of joy. I have always looked forward to the day I would find happiness on this planet in Proxima centaur.

What I did not expect was ice, acres of it. Frozen blocks of water as far as the eye could see. I can't stop myself imagining the cold taking hold of my leg and I having to break it off to save my life. I don't need to worry about though, I am wearing bodysuit and it protects every inch of my body.

"We should go the long way,” Munotyei screams on the intercom, her voice louder than necessary," there is a glacier up ahead."

The Chief Officer's voice calmly tells me to follow Munotyei. Munotyei is as ace, a perfect student that outshines in everything. Between she and I, it perfectly makes sense that I carry the heavy equipment whilst she and Mafeso led the way with the fancy tiny computers. Joshua had been ordered to stay with the landing shuttle.

"Ncube please try to keep up." Mafeso barks.

"Yes sir!" I howl back and continue trotting in the barren ice land. With every step I take my foot sink in few inches of condensed water only for me to take it out and sink it somewhere else. Whatever I am going through I know it is not as better as what my sister is going through. She is in the infirmary on The Hub, hooked to the machines that keep her alive.

"Under the cliff there," her voice comes again over the intercom," it's the perfect spot to set up the equipment."

I drag the huge box in the direction she is pointing. There is no need to confirm with the Officer, he always agrees with her. A hundred of yards away I can see why she chose the place; one can appreciate the ugliness and the barrenness of the hopeful planet without freezing to death. A small cave protects the admirer from the raging ice winds.

I am not an admirer, no. I am an explorer preparing for the human colonisation of the planet. The Hub is the first human interstellar ship to visit this solar system, by my rudimentary calculations I am the tenth or eleventh human to set foot on the planet Hope. I feel pride seeping in my suit as I watch Munotyei and Mafeso set up the equipment and machines I help carry.

Those damn machines, they are connected to the hub, the same way my sister is connected to it. She cannot be separated from it without losing her life. She has got the disease of the stomach; hundreds of children lose their lives to the disease every cycle. They bleed in the stomach and die. No one says it out loud but everyone knows it's the food. Recycled nutrients from waste and deceased Hub residents, mixed with plastics then 3D printed and served on a silver platter is the only food we have known our whole lives.

If the planet is as futile as they had taught us on The Hub, we will start seeding and finally have real food. I look around as see ice as far the horizon, hope is not what I feel.

The icy wind continues raging. I check my suit; the temperature is way below negative 200 degrees Celsius. This place is hostile the human species.

"Cadets! Where's is that beeping coming from?" Baba Mafeso asks.

"It's from the atmospheric gauge. It is reading traces amounts of nuclear waste."

I look around for a spot to rest. From the heaps of ice under the cliff I dig small hole and crawl in, I can't be caught naked in this wind.

"Where is it coming from?"

"I don't know maybe from the ground or a fissure," Munotyei doesn't know where to point," You understand we are talking about traces amounts, not enough to do harm right?"

" From a damaged battery maybe?" They stare at me as I lift a cannister up for them to see. " And It's not my battery, don't be horrified please, I found it on ice when I sat down."

It is the same make and model of nuclear-powered battery that each of us have in our suits. The batteries are the main source of power outside The Hub. It does look peculiar to see one laying around, even if it was damaged.

"Where did you get that?" Baba Mafeso asks, and it seems he doesn't understand what it is happening. I tell him again where I had found it.

Baba Mafeso leaps from the fancy computers and start digging with his hands where my buttocks had been a minute earlier. He keeps on mumbling, asking no one in particular where the battery has come from. Munotyei and I share a knowing look. Extended duration in space has been linked to madness, it is an unproven hypothesis though.

We stand few paces away from the maniac digging in the ice. None of us sure what to do. His hands suddenly hit something, he meticulous clears the ice to reveal a bodysuit helmet, identical to us. The glass is shattered, and I can see the human skull clearly.

"No, it can't be." One of us says out loud, I don't know who.

Baba Mafeso tries to pull the helmet and its occupant from the sand. He ends up pulling out the half of the suit. It's orange, none of the suits on The Hub are orange. I try to release a sigh of relief. The suit is old, it had probably been here on the planet years before The Hub had arrived. The dead explorer isn't one of us. Despite the suit being old and torn almost to bits, the three words on the left breast are as clear as light, For the Future.

For the future; three simple words that had propelled us decades into the future, millions of miles from our specie's home. Three simple words we now see on a dead past, a rugged history of bones and hopelessness. Three simple words which meant more in this moment but worth nothing after that.

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