Join in my daily writing prompt! I don’t promise to respond to them all myself, but will try my best! Here is my response to the latest prompt.
Justice, Earth, Fishing-boat …
Once, it was said, from here you the view was of a giant blue-green ball where the sun shone, dimming into shadows as your boat glided through the vacuum of space, and brightening again with splashes of silver light defying the blackness of night.
Captain Liu closed his eyes, imagining the glory. He’d seen it on the vids, those that had been saved and taken aboard the Ark in the last days. Now he was here, above the once magnificent ball that was Earth. But there were no splashes of silver, not from this distance, if at all. There were no primary greens and blues, despite the sun’s failing efforts. A monochrome darkness draped itself over mountains, valleys, oceans and lakes that Liu knew once existed here. He shook his head. Was one thousand Earth years still too soon?
His commission was to take his boat as close as possible to the planet, to explore the surface and assess whether or not life might still/again exist there. A fishing expedition, as the old saying went, hence his vessel’s name: Fishing Boat.
And what was he to do if life did exist? Liu set his jaw in a firm line, steeled his heart. Anything which resembled the species of mankind was to be gathered up, taken to the new worlds and educated in the ways of civilisation.
Only in this way, it was deemed, could the non-human species, the natural world, have any chance of thriving.
But there was more to it than the future. There was also the past, and serving Earth the justice it deserved and had long awaited.
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