Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever by Phoenix Sullivan (easy readers txt) 📕

“They need someone to head up the offworld excavation. They asked me. I couldn’t say no. It wouldn’t be right.”

“What does that even mean?” She slams her fork down. “You know I always go with you on your trips. But I can’t go with you offworld.”

He nods.

“So I’m just stuck here — by myself.”

“I know, but — It means so much for us. It’s a big opportunity! I can’t stay on an old project when the state-of-the-art is being written out there.”

“Who cares about the state-of-the-art?”

“Geri, this could mean so much more for humanity. It’s a chance to give my previous work a context that’s been … lacking.”

She waits. She palls. It isn’t an affront to her. It is a statement that just makes her wonder about the man her father is. And that makes her wonder about all men.

His crumpled expression tells her he sees it in her eyes.

She starts, coming half out of her chair. “Letting things go …” she struggles for words, “isn’t the virtue you think it is!”

She storms to her bedroom.

~~~

She holds her hand — the one with the ring — out into the night, fingers spread, feeling a web running in her bones that expands beyond her physical hand, out to everything, and at the point where it cruxes, reaching to the sky…

She doesn’t go to the launch, but over the cityscape she catches glimpses of the small transport taking off; even more visible is the ship her father will meet in orbit, on this clear night.

The ship hovers in the sky like a blinking reminder for a higher nature and a lesser world. She’s used to seeing UFOs in these skies. The arc of the expunged fuel from the transport engulfs the moon in its curve, turning the horizon into a jackknifed dream.

She caresses the ring on her middle finger with her thumb as though playing a string on an instrument, then tilts her head down and starts to run after the ship, so far above and so far away.

~~~

When you hang something up in your room, and only later realize why, you understand how the mind works. That’s how it was with her and the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars, and the images of the moons and planets around the ceiling.

In such actions there is a meaning waiting to be realized. Only later can you see how that action really relates to you; that somehow you knew you would realize it, and that’s why you started the series of events in the first place. Why you decorated the walls, why you chose to come in contact with the meaning — and it’s like what must start a thunderstorm. Some fuse jump of electricity like a neuron firing. And maybe she never wanted to think of the stars. Like that. Like beacons from all the individual could-be homes, so distant and calling…

But she knew she’d not be at home on any of them, looking at their pale imitations, their perfect replications. She lies in her bed beneath the cool blanket, making a wish on a plastic star to stay on her home world, in this bed, and find one to land on. Maybe one where they give you a ring to let you know you belong. And she holds on to the ring, and listens to the cool night breeze through the open window, and breathes in with her eyes closed.

~~~

She decides to bury it.

She takes the automatic shovel from the garage.

The moon watched her carry it along the back fence to the yard where the motion light came on and bathed her in a weary yellow light.

Watched it churn up the soil as she poked it into the firm but yielding earth.

And then … pausing…

Tossed her care below.

Neatly covered the site.For future archaeologists to discover.Perhaps after we’re all gone.

And she walks away. Thumbing the possession she still keeps, having only pretended, like playing a string on an instrument, twirling in the moonlight and dancing beneath it, running ahead to catch a ride.

~~~

SCOTT THOMAS SMITH is 26 years old, lives by himself in St. Louis (with two cats) and has been writing seriously since high school. He finished his first novel, Down With Strangers, in the same year he shipped off to Chicago to attend Columbia College. Quickly deciding college was for suckers, he dropped out before completing his first semester. Now he spends most of the day reading and writing. Hard at work on many new projects and stories, you can find out more about what’s going on with Scott at his website and blog at http://www.theneonheart.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GarterBeltSupremeOfTheCosmoDemonicSlagheap

Had it been left to protocols rather than human ingenuity, Commander West’s expedition might have easily overlooked one of Mars’ greatest treasures.

Bones Of Mars

by D Jason Cooper

“You’ve had anomalies before, Casey. Martian soil isn’t uniform—”

“It’s a lot more uniform than Earth’s. No seas here to stop the wander of sand and there are fewer chemical processes to change constituents in the soil and—”

“Casey. Anne.” West paused as if telling his troops not to charge. His muscles relaxed, though that took a conscious effort. “Could we actually have a conversation where we let each other finish sentences?”

“Lose the balls. Seriously. As a scientist, I always look to the widest possible range of explanations that fit the evidence. That means stopping and checking. As commander of the mission, your job is to focus on getting a result and moving on to the next site. We’ll never stop being at loggerheads if we keep working at cross purposes.”

“So you’ll stop fighting if I just let you have your way?”

“More or less,” said Casey without irony.

Commander Howard West looked at the walls. They were supposed to be battleship gray, but in an early defiance of protocol, every bulkhead, girder and rivet was painted a different color — except red. West turned to the porthole and the evening landscape of Mars. This far south the sun set reluctantly