8 minute read
The Aewulnum Flowerets of Chuvushia XII
CUENTO
(Fragmento) Versión completa se encuentra en el blog de Interesante. The Aewulnum Flowerets of Chuvushia XII
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“Only the wise find knowledge in the olden embellished unknown.” –Lieutenant Eduardo Benítez Negrón, 2138. In this ero-poetic, sci-fi, symbolical adventure, a Peruvian space-freighter pilot in the year 2146 tries his best to keep the promise he made to his mother of planting her favorite flower on the planet he is being sent to colonize, Regnius V, with a hoard of embryos and robots on his ship to aid such an endeavor. Priorities, however, are shifted elsewhere and matters become worse when his set course is altered by an unforeseen catastrophe and he is forced to veer toward a floral planet with peculiar, female inhabitants. Will he keep his mother ' s promise? Or will he succumb to what nature has deemed is his fate?
JEREMY SANTIAGO LÓPEZ
@apoetofhope
In the faraway, nebulae-wreathed, mauve-stippled galaxy of Dendrobium Orchid’s Reach, suspended just next to its twin, coiling sister galaxy, Rhododendron’s Atonement X, one may just find mankind’s last and greatest redeemer to be one Peruvian-native flower in its humble, ceramic pot of fertile, nutrient-rich dirt. By it, within a tunnel of light and a tunnel of darkness, light prospered, light became. This flower required only water, but an ounce of it, and the scorching, embracing warmth irradiated by the primordial suns of the three, amalgamated astral systems at about the galaxy’s edge. All systems lacked a habitable planet to call their own, occupied only by just those three, forlorn, outwardly taciturn, enflamed, cerise-hued gnomes of suns and some uninhabitable, indigo gas giants like the likes of Jupiter and Saturn from the Earthen solar system in The Milky Way. I In truth, all except for one of the planetary structures, specifically the Bouvardia Cluster—where Chuvushia XII, the avowed, lost garden of Eden was— was easily decipherable by the naked eye because of its amethyst-tinted masses of land upon its cortex blended with its bluish-purple, beige and ample oceans, its blushing clouded atmosphere surreal and dizzyingly inviting, temptation given, not taken. It lingered amongst the vast, crushing vacuum of blackened and yet gleaming, star peppered net of the endless spacetime continuum, a stark, colorful and florid contrast against the dreary, swallowing, cosmic veil. Receiving light from three angles, night was not a luxury on the lush, proliferating planet of Chuvushia XII, not ever an occurrence for space voyagers to document on future journeys that would bring them to this ostentatious jewel of peaceful, burgeoning subsistence.
Sunlight profusely bled from the three sources unto the sublimely flourishing gorges and clearings of the slow-spinning planet, piercing even through the sumptuously dense awnings of the mazelike, lavender, and tall woodlands infested with wondrous, fantastical, and lithe creatures that had been spoken of before, but never sighted. Every day it was dazzlingly sunny, and every minute Captain Matías Orquídeo Dalia laid siege to the phenomenal sight of the tri-solar systems from the safety of the roomy, steel innards of his space-vessel: the 4-X Precursor. She was a colonization vessel blessed and deemed by South American space travelers on her maiden voyage as La Tempestad de los Mares Oscuros—the Tempest of the Murky Depths. Just now, he had emerged from light speed travel with it, floating through space in preparation of a new star-jump.
El Capitán had been glaring quietly, nearly brooding, at the three, beaming orbs suspended as if unspeakably within the shroud of outer space in utter leisure, in zero gravity, his complexion kissed by the three suns, three different shades of red daubing his face, a cultured painter brushing it, painting him with the softest reds, the gentlest and the bleakest as well. It was a miracle his beloved drooping branch of wild-cherry dyed Cantuta’s—a branch of flowers he had kept alive during his decade-long voyage after his eventful launch from Peru, Southern America in 2146— had not drifted away with its pot around his spacecraft without any gravity detaining it. His mother, long, long ago, had bought him the gorgeous sapling from the marketplace she often visited in her hometown of Lima, Peru. The last words she susurrated to him on her death bed compelled him to take it along with him star-bound trek. Breathlessly, he melancholically reminisced about how she told him she wished to see a cherished fragment of Peru’s garish, poignant, and lively culture elsewhere in the endless cosmos, out of her reach, yet within it, knowing very well that he would abide by his duty to his matriarch. Matías would not fail her, even if his mission was altogether another of considerably different scale. He had the pot fastened to a miniature platform out of the way and by a circular, welded and reinforced windowpane on the left lateral of his vessel’s rounded, commodious cockpit, strewn with all sorts of gadgets and electronics that simplified everything. Beyond the dangling and rosy, trumpetfigured Cantuta buds—which were still tautly and inherently sealed up, their time of blooming not one to speak of for now— lurked the three, illustrious, halo-inducing, lens-distorting globes in their soundless slumber, their names Epestius, Eveskus and Asaskus, as considered by the computer and AI navigator Vales Rodger. The robotic entity was the one responsible of most operations aboard the ship and its automated manning, steering it closer and closer to its destination, not Chuvushia XII, but Regnius V, at least one more FTL-jump (Faster Than Light) away from it, at least a few more weeks once calculations were boiled down and a pen wasn’t urgently, firmly held in tension above holographic papyrus, the paper of the future. Yes, it would take weeks. It would take weeks. It had taken him over ten years to reach Regnius V, an exoplanet with optimal living conditions, and now he was one button’s press away from it, the planet in his grasp. He’d been tasked with a colonization effort enabled by one man piloting a planetary occupation freighter brimming with icily coated human embryos wafting and twitching about in amniotic fluid. It wasn’t only him, however. There were humanoid, corpulent machines docked and dormant in the robotics chamber and quadrant of the large, kilometer-long vessel, ready to assist in the endeavor once the rapacious whale touched down and perched itself on Regnius V with its three landing-gear legs.
“Sire, the auxiliary systems are irresponsive. Shall I reboot them?” then droned out a voice, monotone, robotic, inhumane and following protocols and algorithms to speak properly to its fleshly superior, the Peruvian flower guardian.
“No, no—let’s not do that now, ” he advised, swimming through the buoyant air throughout his cockpit, browsing controls, valves and holographic screens impregnated with navy, glowing data that shifted constantly, a holographic map of their current position in space right by his peripheral view. “But, sire, if we do not, a possible instability may occur and, consequentially, we may upset the electromagnetic pulses around our ship due to the increasing load and stress on our engines. Space matter seems volatile here—which is quite strange and unparalleled. My scanners are incapable of detecting why, ” the AI reasonably retorted, Cpt. Orquídeo’s thick, brown brows furrowing in concern, judging the robot’s suggestions. “Shall I, then, reboot the systems?” the machine pressed, urging El Capitán to permit the execution of the proposal to their untimely predicament. Beads, if they could slither, would be running down the Captain’s crimpled forehead, but they were flying upward, no tension able to break them, rising as droplets of sweat. After a disquieted gulp of anxiety, he gave a commander ' s nod, the machine’s many camera’s heeding it, the ship’s auxiliary systems shutting down, the engines dying down, humming and bellowing until they were silenced, steel creaking lastly.
“What’s taking so long, Vales?” the apprehensive Peruvian enquired, his English accent not particularly too shabby, not that it mattered, since the artificial intelligence computer would understand him, nonetheless. “Impact imminent. Brace, ” the computer murmured, its dry, unfathomable voice slapping the voyager’s sanity with its blatant warnings. “Wh—What?! What do you mean BRACE?!” he shouted, increasingly perplexed. “Brace. Brace. ” Then, a loud thump, metal bending, the screeching shriller, expansive, earsplitting, the beastly, robust, and rotund spacecraft injured, but not compromised, its hull apparently intact. Inside, however, chaos mushroomed, the Captain whirling around uncontrollably within his cockpit as a result from the impact of an unidentified object, the light brought again as he braced himself, covering his head with his crossed arms, eyes closed as the luminous systems of the ship were flickering on. The auxiliary devices had been reinitiated by the all-knowing apparatus, the thrum and humming of the spacecraft’s turbines and nuclearreactor apparent, diving into his ears with their familiar tune, the tune he had heard for over ten years, having been lulled to sleep by it during a myriad of depressive, nostalgic nights where he missed his dear, dear spouse and their prized, blackbrown-furred German Shepherd known as Oswin. {...} Versión completa se encuentra en el blog revistainteresante.pr.blogspot.com
