Today's HYPERSHORT takes us across the Universe to something familiar...
“ARROWS” by Anthony Lawrence
Once upon a time in the future, humankind finally knew it was finished.
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The silvery Arrow 2 had escaped earth’s gravity and now began to pick up speed as it slipped silently through black space like the proverbial knife through butter.
Humankind had tried valiantly to combat climate change but it had waited too long. Now, all that remained was salvaging what they could through Project Arrowsmith. They had discovered a planet in the “Goldilocks Zone” that was habitable but it took their first crewless drone ship thirty years to travel the distance and send back the information that was needed.
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The philosophic justification for the project to send six one-year-old infants across interstellar space to grow up on the way and enter a new world was based on Kahlil Gibran’s words from “The Prophet “. “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”
Donated by their archer astronaut parents, the children were kept in suspended animation inside specially designed capsules that would nourish them with food and data until they reached the age of ten. Their nannies were three robots that would care for their every need on humankind’s longest voyage into adulthood and into space.
Unfortunately, it was in the thirtieth year as they were approaching their new home, and the children had grown into men and women, one of the robots, “Alpha” came down with “isolation sickness”. It’s artificial intelligence developed psychosis and it destroyed the other two nanny-robots. The psychotic robot was threatening the lives of the six humans who had grown to adulthood on the protracted space journey as they now prepared for the long anticipated landing.
The adults who had been well trained by the robots across space were finally able to outwit the psychotic Alpha and were facing other deadly opponents on the new world. But the arrows were saved from death by unique beasts that closely resembled the dogs of earth. Although they were as large as lions, they seemed to share with their earthly counterparts the love of humans and ultimately became, once again, “Man’s best friend.”
©2013AnthonyLawrence
