Writing Exercise Contest

... And done. It ended up being a short little thing.

30th century America and cloning.

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Twins

The woman looked at the two of them, squinting her four eyes into thin slits. She tilted her head this way and that, as if the different angles would shed light on their features that had not been there before. In the dim florescent light on the Handidra, which stood stark against the darkness of the receding space behind them, that light was hard to come by. She needed every bit of it.

At last, Andriktona, as spelled in the Romanian, leaned back into her chair, its sleek silver design blending into her gray uniform and skin so it seemed to envelop her. She folded her arms. “So …” She said, looking at the two men in front of her, “You two are really twins?”

Harrison rubbed his forehead; caressed his brow. “Yes.”

By his side, his twin broke out into a smile. “Don’t mind Harry, we get this a lot.”

Andriktona smiled too, some of the tension leaked from her shoulders, “I would imagine so. These days when you see similar faces, you just assume – ”

“Yeah, clones.” The other brother said, his teeth gleamed with a glint in the light. “All our lives people didn’t believe us.”

“Doesn’t stop Birkin from hitting on everything that walks pass,” Harrison said as he looked Andriktona in the eye. “Don’t let him fool you.”

“You’d be surprised by how good of a conversation starter it is.”

“Not everything, I assume,” She said, as she gestured down to her gray form with webbed fingers.

But Birkin just smiled, “What can I say?” He said with a shrug.

Harrison sighed. “I’ll be on my way,” He said, before getting up out of his own seat. The mess hall meeted him. Trio of seats huddled around each other in the middle while on the far back end a metallic counter resides with three dispenser above it. A stroll over to it, a couple finger slides on the screen and a can of coffee was deposited into his waiting hand. Harrison left after that, hearing the autodoor slide shut behind him. Andriktona’s eyes, all four of them, followed him with every step.

Once the elder twin had left, the young Indigzami (though to this day her race is still called a “Kepler” on Earth – though it’s been nearly a millennia since Lalisuna’s discovery) nodded her head to Birkin then pushed her seat back. Birkin blinked as he watched Andriktona slip through the door too.

“Well, I’ll be.” He muttered as the door slid shut.

Andriktona followed after Harrison’s footsteps. His boots clanged against the metallic floor with sharp pings. The sound filled the empty hallway. It bounced off the walls and curled beneath the electric lights embedded above. The Indigzami spared a glance towards the thickened darkness of the void outside, the glass windows all that separated her from the all-consuming space, before she glanced back towards where Harrison had just turned a corner.

He stopped at a viewing platform – one of the many which dotted the Handridra. It was, after all, a cruise ship that transported passengers from one end of the galaxy to the other. There Harrison stopped, leaned against the railing, popped opened his coffee and watched. Just watched. As the view of Earth grew larger and larger, expanding from the size of a tennis ball to a basketball.

If the old records are anything to go by, those waters used to be blue.


“Feeling homesick?”

Harrison turned around to see Andriktona there. He should have heard her, after all she had been right behind him. But he hadn’t. Harrison turned his gaze back to the planet below.

“You can’t be homesick for a place you’ve never been to.”

Andriktona fell beside him, her webbed fingers clutched the railing. She, too, glanced at Earth.

“Yes.” She said, “Yes you can.”

“Speaking from experience?”

She slumped a shoulder on the railing. Faced him. “I, for one, do not blame humans for Lalisuna’s demise.”

“You’d be one of the few, even among humans.”

“Still. It is what I think.”

That tore Harrison’s eyes away from the image of Earth. He looked at Andriktona. Really looked at her. Not in the way some humans do with Indigzamis, just glancing over their face with a scan. No. He looked her in the eyes, those black pools in her grey face.

“Why are you here, Andriktona?”

She smiled, revealing those pair of jaws which made James L. Thomas, the first to meet one of her kind, pee himself and pass out. A day for the textbooks.

“I wanted a serious conversation, and – ”

“You wouldn’t get one from Birk.” Harrison said. A chuckle escaped. Then stopped. “What is it?”

“So … how did your parents get away with twins? I thought human planets prohibited more than one child per family.”

“Not all of them.”

The Indigzami’s face contorted some, above her eyes, in what would be a gesture to raise an eyebrow if she had any hair. It took some time before Harrison could read expressions like that. He grew up with only humans. Harrison sighed as he turned back to the view of Earth, the atmosphere pressing up against the windows as the ship descended. The murky-green water and the barren wasteland around their port-of-call stood in contrast with his own childhood memories.

“We – Birkin and I – we grew up on Endrama 64c, or just Endrama since the other planets weren’t habitable. Unlike some of the other colonies which have had hundreds of years to develop it’s laws and government, Endrama was established thirty years ago – when I was around five. It was a large planet, though mostly covered in water, and there was more than enough space to spread out some. I used to imagine that it was a lot like Earth.” That turned him back to the view outside which gave him an eagle-eye view of the city below.

“Still,” Andriktona said, also looking back at the human homeworld again, “You must know more about it than me. Like … where are we?”

“The city?” Harrison said. He furrowed his brow. “Zanthicorpolis.”

“No. Not the name of the company that owns it. It’s original name. It’s real name.”

“Oh.” He said, as the Handidra lowered on a hellipad before a giant skycrapper, the HQ of Zanthicorp, which rose on the middle of the island. Before the smooth concrete steps that lead to the building stood a single monument. That of a hand. A hand that carried a torch.

“New York.”