Choose Your Destiny

(A short story, based on writing prompts... written while trying to learn to fight brain fog and perfectionism)

The tension was palpable, neither one of them making a sound. The silence had to end sooner or later, and she knew her brother certainly wasn’t going to be the one to end it.



“Please...” her voice echoed against the cold grey walls, the sound so jarring that she almost didn’t continue. She doubted she would ever get used to how differently sound behaved here, but she knew if she didn’t push through the discomfort it would become even harder to speak. “Just tell me what on Earth...” her voice trailed off again as that last word hung in the air like an anvil waiting to drop from above and crush her. No, not Earth. Exo118. She felt the panic rise from her chest to her throat as she tried to figure out a way to gauge how long it had been since she HAD been on Earth.



Her hands twitched as she fought to resist the urge to grab her scope and attempt to once again scan the small patch of visible sky for a glimpse of her home planet.



She sensed her brother’s gaze on her, could feel the disappointment at her weakness. She lost what little composure she had had. “Stop looking at me like that!” Grayce shot the words across the room defensively. “You’d be over here trying to get a look if you could!” Her back was turned, but she could picture the exact expression that would be on Quen’s face; right eyebrow raised, lips pressed together as firmly as his arms across his chest. “Don’t even think it. I know I broke the blasted thing. But you know there was no point looking anyway. Just because it was there to look at doesn’t mean it actually exists. The Earth I saw was probably still overrun with woolly mammoths! It’ll probably take another billion years for the fate of our home to be visible from here!” As she stared out through the reinforced window she waited to hear her brother laugh at her tenuous grasp on time and space, but he didn’t.



She turned to look at him. Was she imagining it, or did he look as scared as she was? Guilt tugged at her chest, pushing all other emotions aside for a moment. “I’m sorry. I know things haven’t exactly been a picnic for you either.” She had often wondered about the origins of that word... picnic. She didn’t actually know exactly what a picnic was, but she was pretty damn sure neither of them had been experiencing anything like one anytime in recent history.



The uncomfortable silence started to creep back into the room. Her hand reached automatically for her locket against her chest, seeking the comfort of something solid and predictable, but it wasn’t there. Of course it’s not there, she chided herself.



She searched her brother’s face, as though she would somehow find answers there, but there were none. She started thinking about all the ways that they were different. He was a quiet, contemplative type, while she found silence unnerving. He was athletic, coordinated... graceful even. She had always been well known for being a klutz. He was always calm and collected in a crisis, while her thoughts had a tendency to spin out of control under the slightest pressure. And then of course there were the vast differences in physical appearances. His olive skin, ebony hair, chocolate eyes were a stark contrast to her own red hair, green eyes and pale, freckled skin.



They weren’t biological siblings of course. Biological siblings had been impossible for so long that some people even thought it was just a myth. But she’d seen them. Well, holograms of them anyway. She wasn’t supposed to have seen them, but she and Quen had slipped out of barracks at the academy one evening and broken into the archives. There had been something utterly mesmerizing about seeing two humans whose facial features were so similar. She remembered wondering if younger siblings ever played pranks by pretending to be a hologram of their older sibling.



A lump started to rise in her throat as she remembered how wonderfully oblivious she’d been of the horrors that had lurked only a few months ahead of that moment. She looked at her brother’s face, still calm and collected despite the tears starting to escape from the corners of her eyes. Frustration and fear collided inside of her and she erupted. “WHY DID YOU MAKE ME GET ON THAT DAMN SHIP?” How dare he just stand there silently, watching her fall apart. She wanted to grab his arms, shake him till he responded, see the gravity of their situation reflected in his face... but she knew it would be futile. He wasn’t going to show any fear, he never did. But he’d always been there for her, in his own way.



The idea of having a sibling had become somewhat of an obsession for her as a child. It hadn’t been her idea to be siblings with him though. When her mother passed, Quen had quietly sat down next to her on a bench in the academy park. After what seemed an eternity of silence, he quietly told her that he was her family now. She might never know how he’d known the exact right thing to say at such a time. They hadn’t even really been friends before that moment.



She pulled her gaze away from her brother, and let it settle on the elephant in the room. Possibly the smallest elephant that had ever darkened any room - two little pills - sat on the table between them, with instructions that were far more cryptic than helpful.



To accept your promotion, take the small pill.

To resign your position, take the large pill.



No matter how long she stared at the note, it refused to make itself any more clear.



What promotion? Was she supposed to know what the note was talking about, or was she supposed to blindly commit to who knows what kind of a future! How could they even call it a promotion when she didn’t have a roll here yet. A chilling thought formed in her mind. She didn’t have a position. What position could she be resigning from? Her position in the colony? Her position on the planet? They WERE on a planet... weren’t they? All the broadcasts had promised that the era of space stations was in the past. They’d promised that a suitable planet had been found. But this note represented a betrayal of another promise they’d made. “Choose your destiny”. If this stab in the dark was what they meant by choosing your destiny, Grayce knew she couldn’t trust that a promotion would be something she wanted.



But resignation did not sound any less ominous. It didn’t really sound like there would be a chance to change her mind after gaining more insight into just what position it was exactly that she was resigning from. It could be so... final.



She looked up at her brother once more. “I wish you could tell me what to do.” She walked across the room to where her locket sat on the otherwise empty chair, picked it up, and closed it, trapping her brother’s image inside once more. She turned to look at the night sky as she fastened the chain at the back of her neck, the locket settling close to her heart where it belonged. Somewhere out there was Earth....or not. Somewhere out there was Quen... or not. “Please be on your way here.”



She tore her eyes away from the window as she reached out and picked up the pill that would seal her fate.



A click in the door mechanism startled her, yanking her from her thoughts and back to the present moment... and causing her to drop the pill she’d held so briefly. The gears inside the door span into motion as the pill spun to a standstill under her bunk. The door opened to reveal a figure whose facial expression looked as cold and uninviting as the hallway behind him.



“Typical.” he said, reaching to pick up the large pill that remained on the table. She stared silently at him, her face betraying her confusion. “Yep, that’s pretty much the same look the other Empties give me too. Don’t worry” he said as he led her down the hall, his voice so void of emotion that she doubted his words were really meant to reassure. He paused with his hand millimeters above a button that would presumably open the door in front of them, and looked at her with unfocused eyes that seemed to not even register her existence as he uttered words that filled her with more worry than any she had ever heard “They say it’s far easier to succeed when you’ve forgotten you’re human.”