Red Sun
Tags: Fiction Sci-Fi Terraforming Space
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Ahmed awoke to the sound of a blaring alarm. He hit the snooze button and shut his eyelids tightly and tried to will himself back to sleep. It was no use, the sound of the wind wouldn’t let him.
He begrudgingly dragged himself out of bed, letting loose a singular punch on the warden of his prison. The alarm clock seemed rather unfazed. He scoffed.
Time to get to work.
He plumped down onto his desk, and turned on his computer, which immediately started collecting data from the weather instruments of the Lab. He already knew the results, he didn’t know why he even bothered checking. It’s been a relentless storm for 3 months, and it would be a relentless storm for another 3.
His comms were down so he wasn’t even reporting it to anybody. He found it funny, in any other line of work, if someone didn’t report in for 2 months, they’d send a rescue party. Well here they can’t and won’t, not until the storm clears for the year.
The readout stabilized and Ahmed was surprised by what he saw. Today, was a clear day. One of few in the seasonal storm. If he had windows, he would see the red sun shining brightly.
That changes little, the clear weather won’t hold for long.
Still, he appreciated the respite. He streched and got back to his routine. His main work was maintaining the bio-dome: a small piece of earth’s ecosystem and atmosphere. Here, there were some plants and animals, carefully chosen to be able live indepedently of human caretakers for hundreds of years. Some air from here gets sent up to the atmosphere of this planet, SS-19; slowly getting it to mimic Earth’s. It’s seem to be working, before Ahmed lost contact, he heard one of the other labs experienced water rain.
Or atleast that’s how Ahmed understood it. The exact design of the dome was down to hundreds of experts from that many fields; he doubted any single human could truly understand how it works completely. Luckily, he just dealt with the metal bits. He could understand the metal bits.
He goes and checks the various machines necessary to the dome’s function. The CO2 extracters were working. The heating systems seem good. He then enters the maintenance shaft, and checks that the dome’s outer shell hasn’t been breached anywhere.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ahmed notices a photo, half-crumpled in the corner of the maintenance shaft. It’s him, with his family, and he’s laughing. God how long has it been since he laughed? Like, really laughed, with his belly. He missed the feeling.
A thought occurs to Ahmed. Since the weather was good, he could go out of the bio-dome and actually repair his comms himself rather than waiting for the repair corps to fix it for him. He’d love to talk to another human again.
Ahmed began digging through his many closets for a space suit. His work meant that the atmosphere composition of SS-19 had gone from 1% oxygen by mass to 15% oxygen by mass, but there were toxins in the air so it was far from breathable. Eventually, he pulled it out from underneath a pile of dirty laundry Ahmed had not bothered to clean.
He gingerely held his nose out for a sniff. It reeks. But Ahmed had smelled worse, he didn’t know how long the good weather would hold for, and he could wash it after he came back. He donned his stinky armour quickly and filled his oxygen tanks, then practically sprinted outside.
His enthusiasm died very quickly outside the bio-dome. SS-19’s strong gusts rampaged over the surface, having very little care for little men in little space suits who stood in their way. Despite this, Ahmed maintained his balance and began climbing the ladder towards the communication systems.
The bio-dome was a massive metal hemi-sphere that protected the plant and animal life brought here to terraform the planet from the currently not very friendly weather conditions. It blocked signals by necessity, so all antenna had to be positioned outside it, and outside it they had to be repaired.
Ahmed reached his prize, the antenna. Immediately, he noticed the problem. It was unplugged. Just that. Just unplugged. Ahmed was thankful that it was something he could fix. He just plugged it back in. Relief set in.
It was at that exact moment, that Ahmed noticed a small smudge on the horizon.
Shit.
It was the storm. Approaching fast.
Far away now, but the winds were already blowing fast enough to knock Ahmed over, the storm could probably pick him up and fling him to the opposite hemisphere.
Ahmed rushed down the ladder, cursing the fact that he couldn’t quite catch a hold of his breath. He was winded, but that didn’t stop him from charging full force towards the entrance of the bio-dome.
He stumbled through the airlock and landed square on his face, or rather the face-side of his helmet. The winds were slowly getting louder as they swept around the metal surface of the bio-dome.
Ahmed slowly got up and moved inside to his computer.
“H-Hello?”
Words were difficult, it’d been a while since he spoken. He coughed and continued with more confidence.
“Can you read me? This is Engineer Ahmed Rehman, from Lab 814”
For the longest time, there was silence. Ahmed repeated himself.
“Can you read me? This is Engineer Ahmed Rehman, from Lab 814”
Then from within the static, a voice.
“I can read you, this is Dr Eliza Jackson from Lab 816”
“816? They finally got someone over there.”
“Yeah, though I’m not sure what good a physician is for terraforming”
“You’ll be fine, it’s mostly just reading. Speaking of which, been able to get into contact with HQ?”
“Negative, you’re the only person I’ve talked to.”
“Sheesh, then who am I supposed to give these weather reports to? I got a whole novel’s worth here! The first week’s pretty boring because it’s all storm, the next week picks it up by being all storm and then the third week is where there’s a twist.”
“Oh?”
“Yep, it’s all storm”
Ahmed bursts out laughing at the stupidity of his own joke. There was silence on the radio, if Eliza found it funny, she didn’t show it. Not that Ahmed particularly cared, he was simply enjoying the sensation of laughing in a long while.
And then a thought crept up from the back of his mind. A doubt that once raised could not be dismissed.
“Say, you said I’m the only person you’ve talked to?”