Vale of Tears
It’s the rain.
I wasn’t born here. That’s the problem. And I volunteered. That’s the other problem.
We recognize each other. We nod to each other through the unending sheets of water. We all feel like idiots for signing up. Brave new start on a brave new world in a brave new universe. Suckers.
I pictured frontier life to be like the old wild west in the movies from America on Earth. Hard work, sure, but arid. Dry and dusty.
I didn’t specify a planet. I just had to get off-world. They packaged me up and put me to sleep. I was crated and boxed and stacked and long years later, I woke up here. I don’t have the credits to leave and it’ll take a lifetime to earn that kind of money again.
Not that I’m homesick for Earth. That cesspool can rot.
I just hate the constant drumbeat of raindrops. It’s eternal. It’s this weather system. The air is thick and visibility is always limited by the storms. It’s mostly rock and hardy vegetation here. Billions of tiny lakes and no oceans. Each patch of land looks the same as the last one. It’s easy to get lost.
People go rain-crazy. We have a word for it. Slah-wet. They start screaming and try to punch the sky. It takes slah-wet people weeks to come out of it but when they do, they’re broken. They’ll never leave. The planet owns them after that.
A whole new vocabulary based around water has evolved. Like the Inuit back on the ice caps who had forty words for snow, we too have developed words upon words for different types of rain.
The pattering, skittering, splashing, backdrop for all of the romance, all of the policy decisions, all of the manual labor, all of the crime, all of the dreams.
I can tell that I’ll go crazy soon. I can’t focus on anything except the rain coursing down my face and the sound of it slapping down on the rocks and buildings.
tags
I wasn’t born here. That’s the problem. And I volunteered. That’s the other problem.
We recognize each other. We nod to each other through the unending sheets of water. We all feel like idiots for signing up. Brave new start on a brave new world in a brave new universe. Suckers.
I pictured frontier life to be like the old wild west in the movies from America on Earth. Hard work, sure, but arid. Dry and dusty.
I didn’t specify a planet. I just had to get off-world. They packaged me up and put me to sleep. I was crated and boxed and stacked and long years later, I woke up here. I don’t have the credits to leave and it’ll take a lifetime to earn that kind of money again.
Not that I’m homesick for Earth. That cesspool can rot.
I just hate the constant drumbeat of raindrops. It’s eternal. It’s this weather system. The air is thick and visibility is always limited by the storms. It’s mostly rock and hardy vegetation here. Billions of tiny lakes and no oceans. Each patch of land looks the same as the last one. It’s easy to get lost.
People go rain-crazy. We have a word for it. Slah-wet. They start screaming and try to punch the sky. It takes slah-wet people weeks to come out of it but when they do, they’re broken. They’ll never leave. The planet owns them after that.
A whole new vocabulary based around water has evolved. Like the Inuit back on the ice caps who had forty words for snow, we too have developed words upon words for different types of rain.
The pattering, skittering, splashing, backdrop for all of the romance, all of the policy decisions, all of the manual labor, all of the crime, all of the dreams.
I can tell that I’ll go crazy soon. I can’t focus on anything except the rain coursing down my face and the sound of it slapping down on the rocks and buildings.
tags