The noise echoed in my ear, the sound of
- The noise echoed in my ear, the sound of the rope hitting the bottom. It came an hour after I threw the one end down the cliff. All I needed to do was get down and save humanity.
- I tied a rope end to the rover & slipped a coil around my waist gradually rapelling down the cliff face of Echus Chasma.The Martian doomsday device threating humaniy's last outpost
- was an artistic paean to the powers of genetic engineering, but it was also my son. As my grav boots crunched onto the Martian soil, I held the dog-eared Hop on Pop book tightly &
- approached the crystalline entity that was my little boy. He caught a gust of Martian dust in his aura and formed the words, "Hi, Daddy!" I offered to read Hop on Pop to him again
- but my crystal child cackled. It cackled in a strange multivoiced way. His words sounded like metal. It said, "Oh daddy, do you think you're little bed time stories could mean anyt
- -hing other than static to my tiny crystal ears?" My crystal child's words pierced through me like a glass knife. I dropped him to the floor where he shattered, along with my heart
- For a moment, I stared at my shattered child, shocked. Then I sprang into action, clearing the kitchen table, finding my glue gun, gathering the crystal shards that had been my son
- His splinters of glass slashed my weak hands as I tried to piece him together hopelessly. How could I let this happen to him? What kind of a parent am I?
- I kept asking myself that question as I collected my shattered child into a basket full of the bloody shards his body. What kind of parent am I? What kind was I? The worse kind.
- The worst kind? *Shaking my head* it's all about perspective. Sure, the child got broken and bloody. But what about all the good times? Swinging on the swingset, yummy dinners...ah
- Started
- 2015-02-01 14:30:29
- Finished
- 2018-07-24 18:50:53
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