Winter issue 2024
KADEN L., CHARLIE J., & RAY J.
The Sunset for Humanity
Three space travelers; Franklin, Mirsky, and Yang – to seek a hospitable planet for humanity. It has been three years since the exploration mission began, and the ship is now three lightyears from Mars Base, where almost all communications were severed.
“Engines primed, firing now...” The astronauts’ perspective of space started to blur and blend.
“Re-entering coma in—What is that!?” Yang interrupted.
“Anomaly at two 'o'clock!” All three of them stared out the window, where a singular area seemed to bend and warp spacetime itself. The ship started drifting off course. Franklin's fingers flew across the controls.
“Abort! Abort!” But it was too late to do anything. The ship lurched, throwing them back against their seats and hurtling them into the unknown.
In a tipsy, shaky mess, they stumbled from left to right, upside down, then right-side up, as all their surroundings blurred into one. Then suddenly - stillness.
“What happened?” exclaimed Franklin.
“Engine malfunction? Trajectory miscalculation? Whatever the case, we should land,.” said Yang, scanning their surroundings. “There are two planets nearby. Hmmm... both have atmospheres of pure oxygen.”
“Right, let's go in. Mirsky, try the schematics to find out where we are,” said Franklin.
“Great for human life... “and the schematic comparison is complete!” explained Mirsky as they slowly landed.
“That’s not right,” asserted Franklin. The comparison showed that they were on Mars in Olympus Mons, but it was no where to be seen.
“Olympus Mons not formed – That's nearly 4 billion years ago! Impossible.” Franklin whispered.
Still in disbelief, the three of them stepped outside and were immediately left in awe. The scenery was beautiful; far in the distance, mountains stretched across the horizon with a meandering river tumbling down the side.
Turning their attention to the ship, they found out that the problem was a slight engine malfunction. They fixed it easily but still needed a rare quartz called tridymite, which was crucial for the curvature-propulsion engine to function.
“Progress report: simple flight, operational. Excavating tridymite would be easy if there was an active volcano,” said Franklin.
Mentioning the word volcano, all three pairs of eyes drifted ambivalently to the schematic of Mars. The team’s only hope was to blow apart the already weak crust boundaries at where Olympus Mons is supposed to be. “The backup engine! It would be a simple conversion into a bomb.” said Mirsky. “Then everything must go perfectly,” said Franklin “This is the only chance.”
Positioning the bomb was a long and tedious task, but before they knew it, an explosion rocked the ground and magma spewed out. Moments later, a hot wind buffeted the surrounding area.
“Area check, status report—”
“Area, clear. Lowest depth, 35 miles. Crust breached. Sending drones.”
“Underground sensors, active. Core density, abnormal... strange...” Announced Yang.
Suddenly, a drone went black. “Drone one down... And drone two, and drone three… my word, what is that?" exclaimed Franklin. Right before the last drone cut to black, they caught a glimpse of a creature.
An alien, the length of two buses, with metallic black plated armor and numerous tentacles writhed about from its back.
“Hurry, just hurry,” breathed Franklin. They piloted Aurora towards the crater, the surroundings eerily quiet.
“Tridymite installed. No aliens yet... let’s go,” said Franklin. The ship started to drift upwards, but something hit it off course. The creature stabbed the engine system with its tentacles before falling off, unable to grip onto the ship’s smooth surface. The Aurora soared across the landscape, billowing smoke. “Engine Malfunction! Mayday! Mayday! We’re going down!”
“We’re done for. Nothing left. Learn! Yes, we must learn, and we can escape.”
Yang looked to the others hopefully. But they all knew they were not escaping Mars.
Through much research, they discovered that the aliens feasted off Mars’ core. No wonder they hadn’t appeared until now - Mars’ core had always been dormant, as were the aliens. But back in the future, that was different.
“We must warn the future about these aliens,” said Franklin, “but how?”
“We can preserve information, use the scraps of the Aurora.” replied Mirsky, which everybody agreed to. After weeks of laborious, sleepless engraving, the trio stepped back and took a breath. Their work was finally done.
“There is nothing left to do, our supplies are dwindling, and I will not die at the hands of those creatures.” said Franklin sadly.
Under a Martian sunrise, the trio, standing together, walked up to Olympus Mons.
“Do you think the people in the future will actually understand our message?” wondered Yang.
“Well, they have to, otherwise it might be the end for them too,” replied Mirsky.
“Alas, the only thing keeping humans from progressing is their own ignorance,” remarked Franklin. One last time, they sat together, looking upon the Martian landscape. It was their sunset, but the sunrise for humanity.
Authors’ note: The Sunset for Humanity was originally written as a trilogy; the piece published is the second part. It was nominated by Dulwich College Suzhou to participate in the 2024 Fobisia Short Story Competition.
Writing this trilogy has been an incredibly entertaining and thought-provoking process. Every second of its creation has been an enjoyable moment, and despite having had procrastinated for many weeks at a time, we, like many writers, still got it finished
This story is unlike other stories. It isn’t just a view into what the future might look like, but also conveys metaphors that are very relevant to today’s society. In our opinion, this is exactly what a short story is supposed to do. Being a short story, there is not enough space to build up the things required for a normal story. Of course, we will not tell you what the metaphors are, they are for you, the reader, to find.
Despite being a short story, The Sunset for Humanity’s characters are vividly created, due to how instead of designing a character, putting them in an environment, and making them talk, we imagined their lives from their births. What kind of family did they have? How did this affect their personality later? What did they study? What did they like to eat? Who were their friends? We imagined them on their first day of school, crying when their parents left, only to start smiling since their best friend from daycare was also there (This was Ushiiko Masada), or lying down on their bed in their college dorm, watching the shadows on the ceiling (This was Yang Lifen), or after having their professorship rejected by Heidelberg, being spoken to by a general from Russia to help develop top secret weapons at their Mezhgorye Military Complex (This was Karl Neumann).
Thus, we did not have to spend large amounts of time thinking of what they would do in a situation, we already know based on their experiences and personality. In this way, it is like these characters are real people, with real experiences, having real interactions.
This, in our opinion, is the basis of a realistic story where it is easy to believe such a thing would actually happen, which is the case for many of the sci-fi books we have read in the past; indeed, this method of creating characters is even mentioned in the second book of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series by Liu Cixin.
We sincerely hope you enjoyed the story, and the only disappointing thing you were able to find in it was that it ended.
Kaden L. is currently a student studying in Suzhou. He likes writing short stories in his spare time along with building machines. He has written a number of short stories with his friends and otherwise spends his spare time playing games.