Mu Arae
Chapter One
. . .
“He injects that stuff into our veins and I do not believe that that stuff is what I should have put in me!” bellowed the old hag. “That stuff is inoculating you against the poisons of nature and is probably the only reason you have lived this long!” retorted Casn, “…and what exactly is wrong with that? Other than the fact you have another precious life cycle on Dee,” he finished more to himself than to the group. “Please, please everyone calm down, old Vrbra has a point,” soothed Jne. “With what we are all acquainted with as the decay of Dee, I have proven that we have now entered into a most dangerous epoch for our society…” but before she could finish- “Rubbish! Absolutely rubbish! My family, as well are yours…” he continued, waving his finger around the room “have been taking the life serum for ages! Now we are going to abandon it just because some old nut job and a self-righteous female scientist tell us so?! What logic is there in this?” The room fell suddenly silent. Jne rolled her eyes crossed her arms and waited for Tkn to relax his angry face. Tkn was not much to look at in the first place and an angry face was just not helping the matter much. “Now if you would just step-down off your layman’s soapbox I will continue with my findings as it is vital to the future of our colony as well as the rest of Dee.” Jne stated matter-of-factly and waited until Tkn made the angry face again acted like he was about to rebuttal the remark looked around the room and finally just sat down. “Now as I was saying– the decay, as I can prove,” Tkn broke her icy stare by looking down at his hands “…has seeped deep into Dee’s mantle penetrating the Asthenosphere -which you may or may not know is where we dig the raw materials from which our precious serum is made.” At this, as if it were pre-rehearsed Jne’s assistant got up fiddled with a black box and then dimmed the lights. Brightly lit upon the wall appeared a cut away of Dee’s crust.
“To obtain the raw materials for our serum we currently mine approximately 200 km deep through Dee’s Lithosphere into, as I said, the Asthenosphere. The Asthenosphere, so named because it helps aids our weak society, contains a semi-solid molten rock material which when mined and cooled becomes the basis of our serum.” Tkn regaining his air of contempt piped in again “Us laymen are having a problem understanding this Asthosphere-or-whatever, so can you um get to the point?” “The point,” Jne continued “is the As-then-o-sphere has become contaminated and severely threatens our ability to produce a pure serum.” She waited for a reaction from the room – other than the bobbing head of agreement from Vrbra none came, so she attempted to further express the gravity of the grave situation. “In other words, we will not have enough pure serum for everyone to continue into their next life cycle and will probably have none for the following cycle.” Cries of outrage vibrated from the group. “Jne are you sure? I mean I know you have been studying our serum production efforts for some time, but could you be mistaken?” asked Casn. “Of course she is not sure!” accused Tkn, “what proof do you have to support these ludicrous claims?!” “This!” she replied holding above her for all to see, a semi-translucent white rectangle “…is an official correspondent from the Federal Chief Scientist himself confirming the results of my brief sent to him just one week ago.” Suddenly faces beamed with fear-struck eyes and slack jaws. Vrbra continued to bob her head in agreement. “But…” croaked Casn, clearing his terror-stricken throat and restarting, “but that means…” — “It means,” interrupted Jne firmly, brow hard set and clenched fists “some of us are going to have to die.”
To be continued…