SGA ficlet: Misfit, PG
Title: Misfit
Rating: PG
Word Count: 644
Characters: Generic solider.
Genre: Gen
Summary: This place felt all wrong.
Spoilers/Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: All SGA property belongs to their rightful owners (Sci-Fi, MGM...um, all those other really cool people). I'm church-mouse poor and don't make any money from it. Please don't sue.
Notes: Written for the Earthside Challenge at sga_flashfic. I don’t foresee me posting it there, but I was actually kind of proud of this so I wanted to show it off. It’s not the first SGA fic I’ve done, though the first one posted. Possibly the only one. Unbetaed for the obvious reason. The quote was found after I had written the story. It matched fairly well, I think. Okay, I finally found a title I like. Hopefully, it won't change again.
Home is not where you live, but where they understand you.
Christian Morgenstern
It smelled dirty, like when trash had been piled up in the kitchen for two weeks and a few eight-legged creatures (and some furry four-legged ones too) were living underneath it. The smog made him choke and gag. It hurt to breathe, the tight band squeezing lungs so tightly the fear of passing out wasn’t unlikely. Rings around the sun and moon, a depleted ozone, and heat radiating off the streets were familiar yet not.
The months spent off planet had been a reprieve from the maddening rush of humans on this planet. There hadn’t been the chance of almost being run over by a car speeding in a hurry, or of getting robbed while walking down the street to a local fast food joint. Buildings hadn’t stretched into the clouds; glass and steel overshadowing what was left of the history of the country, before being torn down to put up another contemporary temple. There hadn’t been people walking into each other without even a muttered apology or worse, the chance for violence to break out over such a trivial matter.
Water hadn’t been polluted, full of toxins that for some would leave them barren. Land wasn’t bought and bulldozed; adding another half-full strip mall that held the same places with different names than the one across the street. Asphalt wouldn’t keep the heat, insolate and create strange weather systems of drought for too many years. Houses weren’t so close together that you could see your neighbor taking a piss, or something even more intimate and private.
Vegetation hadn’t been destroyed, habitats decimated, for the spreading of man’s reach. People hadn’t abandoned their duties and responsibilities to relive a forgotten or misspent youth; where children weren’t given up at the first moment of trouble, children that ended up being forgotten until they were old enough to support themselves. Those children, the lost lambs, who became the predators instead of prey, of learning such harsh lessons at the hand of those meant to protect them.
Living in Pegasus had inadvertently shown him just how self-centered his species really was. Of how only the things that mattered in life were those that revolved around him and the rest didn’t exist. Crime, war, hatred, and so many other malicious aspects exist in that other place, but it wasn’t like here. Being back on Earth only confirms one fact: this was no longer home; home was eight dials and numerous light years away.
There the land was green, protected from the sun by an intact ozone layer, water was clean, housing was better, and a man knew just what was being defended. There the people were cautious but courteous, unless someone was foolish enough to overstep a diplomatic boundary; that wasn’t so different from Earth, except bombs and mass killings were far less likely, in an effort to fly under the radar of the Wraith and that was something everyone shared. A common goal to work towards; yet on Earth any and all things were fair game, there was no common goal except to be the ruler of all that can be touched and seen. Humanity's need to conquer everything else, to be as a god, even if the term was never used. He thinks the Greeks and Romans had proclaimed themselves as such, but what was ancient history compared to living it?
He remembers the dead, silently honors their sacrifices. His head bows as he prays to the fickle gods and Ancients that made man. Please let me go back, where I belong. There were nothing left for him here but family and as it turned out, that was subjective. This place felt all wrong.
Home was calling to him; with a look into up the stars, searching for it like a beacon in the middle of blackout, he feels it calling. It was time to return.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 644
Characters: Generic solider.
Genre: Gen
Summary: This place felt all wrong.
Spoilers/Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: All SGA property belongs to their rightful owners (Sci-Fi, MGM...um, all those other really cool people). I'm church-mouse poor and don't make any money from it. Please don't sue.
Notes: Written for the Earthside Challenge at sga_flashfic. I don’t foresee me posting it there, but I was actually kind of proud of this so I wanted to show it off. It’s not the first SGA fic I’ve done, though the first one posted. Possibly the only one. Unbetaed for the obvious reason. The quote was found after I had written the story. It matched fairly well, I think. Okay, I finally found a title I like. Hopefully, it won't change again.
Home is not where you live, but where they understand you.
Christian Morgenstern
It smelled dirty, like when trash had been piled up in the kitchen for two weeks and a few eight-legged creatures (and some furry four-legged ones too) were living underneath it. The smog made him choke and gag. It hurt to breathe, the tight band squeezing lungs so tightly the fear of passing out wasn’t unlikely. Rings around the sun and moon, a depleted ozone, and heat radiating off the streets were familiar yet not.
The months spent off planet had been a reprieve from the maddening rush of humans on this planet. There hadn’t been the chance of almost being run over by a car speeding in a hurry, or of getting robbed while walking down the street to a local fast food joint. Buildings hadn’t stretched into the clouds; glass and steel overshadowing what was left of the history of the country, before being torn down to put up another contemporary temple. There hadn’t been people walking into each other without even a muttered apology or worse, the chance for violence to break out over such a trivial matter.
Water hadn’t been polluted, full of toxins that for some would leave them barren. Land wasn’t bought and bulldozed; adding another half-full strip mall that held the same places with different names than the one across the street. Asphalt wouldn’t keep the heat, insolate and create strange weather systems of drought for too many years. Houses weren’t so close together that you could see your neighbor taking a piss, or something even more intimate and private.
Vegetation hadn’t been destroyed, habitats decimated, for the spreading of man’s reach. People hadn’t abandoned their duties and responsibilities to relive a forgotten or misspent youth; where children weren’t given up at the first moment of trouble, children that ended up being forgotten until they were old enough to support themselves. Those children, the lost lambs, who became the predators instead of prey, of learning such harsh lessons at the hand of those meant to protect them.
Living in Pegasus had inadvertently shown him just how self-centered his species really was. Of how only the things that mattered in life were those that revolved around him and the rest didn’t exist. Crime, war, hatred, and so many other malicious aspects exist in that other place, but it wasn’t like here. Being back on Earth only confirms one fact: this was no longer home; home was eight dials and numerous light years away.
There the land was green, protected from the sun by an intact ozone layer, water was clean, housing was better, and a man knew just what was being defended. There the people were cautious but courteous, unless someone was foolish enough to overstep a diplomatic boundary; that wasn’t so different from Earth, except bombs and mass killings were far less likely, in an effort to fly under the radar of the Wraith and that was something everyone shared. A common goal to work towards; yet on Earth any and all things were fair game, there was no common goal except to be the ruler of all that can be touched and seen. Humanity's need to conquer everything else, to be as a god, even if the term was never used. He thinks the Greeks and Romans had proclaimed themselves as such, but what was ancient history compared to living it?
He remembers the dead, silently honors their sacrifices. His head bows as he prays to the fickle gods and Ancients that made man. Please let me go back, where I belong. There were nothing left for him here but family and as it turned out, that was subjective. This place felt all wrong.
Home was calling to him; with a look into up the stars, searching for it like a beacon in the middle of blackout, he feels it calling. It was time to return.