Featured on Words and Music episode 5
Green was the sky, and blue was the skyfall. Cobalt-bright and acid-sharp, the rain splattered against the reinforced metal roof of Cal’s shelter. It wouldn’t last much longer, he knew that.
‘What’s coming next?’ he said to himself. ‘What will come when the blue ends? Perhaps a calmer time? Perhaps a day of lemon-yellow sunbeams and of plants surviving in pavement cracks?’ He sighed as he spoke, his voice cracking a little and barely to be heard amongst the roar of waterdrops crashing against aluminum. Hollow and almost echoing. He frowned and looked up at the roof, skyfall vibrating and eating into the flimsy roof covering.
‘No thicker than turkey foil,’ he said, remembering the crinkling sound as he’d smooth it over mounts of meat and baking sheets. How they used to spend carefree hours in their unspectacular but divinely functional kitchen, whipping up something from virtually nothing, giggling inanely over the even more inane writings on the wine’s label, and referencing uncool of cookery books, to produce the most retro of meals.
Cal continued his staring for a short while, then a longer while, till his hunger pushed him in the direction of his food stash. His selection: a tin of stewed rhubarb pieces, or a tin of creamed chicken soup. Both watery, nutrient-deficient, and foods that would never have made it anywhere near his usual shopping trolley. But the trolleys were as irrelevant to life now, as the concept of food preferences were. He reluctantly selected the rhubarb. It would see him through till the following morning. He’d then hope for a break in the luminous skyfall, would breakfast on the cold soup, and would be forced to leave the shack. It had been a welcome shelter from the piercing, burning cold, but, food supplies exhausted, he had no choice but to say goodbye and to make his way to forage for supplies.
And that was precisely what he did with head cowed and heart just the same. The skyfall was stopped but had left behind oily blue-green puddles, and Cal ensured he avoided each and every one. Even welded protective metal footwear offered little protection from the skyfall’s caustic nature.
Cal counted each step, though he’d no reason to do so. He was sane enough to question why he did it, but no longer sentient enough to be aware of the answers.
The plain through which he walked had once been a field of potatoes, but the acid had cracked and eroded and warped and pitted the surfaces, removing and destroying organic matter. Each of Cal’s steps uneasily taken, and he moved with great care, so his going was slow and methodical. It didn’t matter. There was nowhere he needed to be, nobody he needed to see.
He’d barely counted to 30, and was still well within access of the shack where he’d spent the last two days and nights, when the surface under his foot gave way slightly, and Cal’s right ankle wobbled. In panic, and acting purely on instinct rather than sensibility, he reached down to steady himself. He retracted in agony as both hands, his right thigh, knee and buttock, his lower back and then his elbow, his shoulder, and his head fell onto and into the seeping, caustic surface.
But no soul heard his cries. No comrades would rush to his assistance. No wild animals would feed on his emaciated, fried carcass. No bacteria would reduce his bodily remains, to leave no trace. Nobody would mourn. Nobody would cry for him and miss him.
Cal would, at least die quickly, and was relieved to be removed from the agonies of this life. His final thought was of how things used to be and of coming here, the worst decision he had ever made. He’d been excited when, after a long and rigorous process, he’d been selected as Captain of the Pioneer Crew. The crew’s mission had been the colonisation of a beautiful, brightly coloured planet. It had been proved to have a perfect earth-like atmosphere of an almost perfumed quality, and so materials for shelter and agriculture had been deposited during the training process of Cal and his 149 colleagues. And yes, it was a beautiful planet. It was perfect, in fact, and shelters were erected, relationships were solidified, and female crew quickly became pregnant, as was always the intention.
But, in the planet’s cycle, and the one thing the colonisers didn’t know, came the irregular and sudden skyfall. It explained the soil’s infertility, and the lack of mature greenery. It explained the lack of settlers, of wildlife and even of insects, despite the apparent perfection of the place. With no way of return, the twenty young colonisers were reduced and destroyed one by one by the inhospitable skyfall. Cal was the last. He was the captain going down with the ship, just as had his chosen wife, their unborn child, and all the others. His life DID flash before him as his frail frame melded with the planet’s surface. And all was over.