“I’ve never seen it before,” the stranger murmured, her eyes unfocused on the gleaming surface of the Earth just behind the glass.
He turned to stare. “What? You mean, the Earth?”
Slowly, as though she were trying to memorize every detail behind the viewing glass and it was taking up all of her mental power, she nodded.
“How is that possible?” he pressed.
“No one has lived there for hundreds of years. It’s a toxic wasteland. Uninhabitable, by the long-term. Only good for mining rock.”
“Why?”
“My daughter was on Earth,” she said, as though she hadn’t heard him. “It’s a tourist thing, you know. Put on a good toxin mask and go to Earth. See the pyramids and the mining operations. Look at the nearly-dead oceans. It’s supposed to be ghastly, and harrowing, and set your moral compass to North - as it were.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“My compass has never pointed North. Not even once. And I didn’t want to find out what the sight of a dead ocean would do to me.” Her tone was quiet, self-deprecating, loathsome. “When I heard about the… malfunction, I didn’t rush to the communications system. I still hate myself for it, but I don’t know what good it would have done. There was a problem with one of the mining facilities. It cracked the Earth in two - destroyed it utterly.” She added, more quietly still, “It took my daughter with it.”
“I’m… sorry.”
She let out a rush of breath, and a shaking chuckle. “Don’t be. She would hate the idea of a stranger lamenting her death in any way. She was the positive one - I’m not sure what side of the family she got it from.”
“Her father’s?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never hated the Earth, or those mining operations, for taking my daughter away. Maybe I should.”
(Source: velvetdemon.net)
