Two Horizons

Two Horizons

A Tale From The Silver Exodus Series

Marcus Abear

Copyright February 2022

mfabear@icloud.com

On my last morning on earth, I decided to get up early and watch the sunrise for the last time. The eastern horizon turned from dark orange to a brown and yellow haze as the rising sunlight filtered through the dust and gas in the atmosphere. Over the last three weeks the Yellowstone Supervolcano had pumped enough dust and gases into the air that the skies had turned into what I could only explain as LA smog on its worse day.

I kept everything quiet about my silver stockpile and trades with the aliens until I left. My neighbors became suspicious a few days before when I gave them my two ponies and told them they could have all the hay and feed in the barn if they were willing to care for them. I joked that I hoped things didn’t get so bad they had to eat the ponies, which was met with looks of sadness as they realized they might have to resort to that if things didn’t improve.

The day before I left, I paid a visit to my cousin and his stepbrothers who I grew up with. I traded two shotguns, three rifles, and all of my ammo for twenty #10 cans of survival food: twelve cans of chili-mac and eight beef stew. Firearms were not allowed on the colony transport and these guys had cornered the market on frieze dried foods after the pandemic panic buying left a massive supply glut when it was over, so it was a good trade.

After watching the sunrise, I loaded my pickup with all the cloths, bedding, cleaning supplies, personal hygiene products, and food. It took about an hour, but I managed to round up all the chickens and put them in transport cages along with all the feed I had on hand. The three goats were easy to load and followed me up onto the trailer where I tied them down to the side rails.

Before leaving my property, I painted an “abandoned house” sign and posted it at the gate. I left a piece of cardboard telling whoever wanted to have the house, and everything that was left, was welcome to it. When I was about a quarter mile down the road my neighbor walked across the road, pulled down the sign, and waved at me as I drove off.

My first stop was the parish community center where I found one of our preachers. I told him there was enough grain to feed the hens and keep them producing eggs for a few months; then he could kill them for food. All three goats gave milk and he could milk them or kill them; I didn’t care as they were nothing but a pain to take care of.

A few of the others in the community center, which had become a shelter, helped us unload all the food, supplies, and survival food. I told the preacher that both tanks in the pickup were gassed up and he could have the pickup if he drove me to the transport site. One of the sisters, who I latterly had known my entire life, began to cry and thanked me profusely for the gifts.

No one asked why I gave up everything! I guess they figured out I was going to the colony and for those that were not too bright understood as soon as I asked for a ride to the spaceport outside of Colorado Springs. I didn’t understand why at the time, but the preacher had five kids and a few adults jump in the back of the pickup for the thirty-mile ride. If I had known his intentions, I would have walked the thirty miles.

When I got to the launch site, one of the aliens asked me for a voiceprint and did some work on a terminal. He said I had “sufficient trade credits remaining,” but I had no idea what he meant. The preacher asked if I had enough for five children and that was when I understood why the kids came along with us.

After a great deal of convincing, I agreed to take the five children with me and told him that I should get some extra credit when I face my maker. The children had become orphaned during the last few weeks, and it was my duty as a Christian to save them from a life of hardship if they were to remain on earth. I reluctantly agreed to take the three girls and two boys with me mainly because their parents were all somewhat friends of mine throughout school, and I knew the parish would be able to care for them for long if the eruptions in Yellowstone continued.

If having five kids between the ages of seven and eleven wasn’t bad enough, once we got off the surface and to the space station, I was confronted by a sea of refugees who all had enough silver to get off the planet, but not enough to buy a farm on the colony. One of the aliens explained to me that some women were willing to become mail-order brides things had gotten so bad in some parts of the world. The alien went on to tell me I had enough trade credits left to buy two of these refugees and I almost vomited at the thought I was being asked to buy an enslaved person.

Two of the women, Russians from outside St. Petersburg, cornered me and begged me to take them to the colony. They said they would work hard on the farm and take care of the children, which was the exact right thing to say. I told the women to stay with the children while I went to the bar, had a few drinks, and thought about what they were asking me to do.

After three drinks I can back and told them that I would pay for them and take them with me if they did their share of the chores and looked after the children. They were free to come and go as they pleased and if they wanted to leave to join another farm that was their decision. The key to my decision was that these two women were perfect buffers between the children and me.

It took three weeks to make the journey from earth to the new planet and I was so thankful that I purchased two Russian mail order brides as the children were a handful for just me. As a twenty-six-year-old bachelor who had worked a small farm for the last five years alone I was not prepared for children. The trip gave me time to ease into my new norm.

When we arrived at our farm I nearly fainted at the sight of what less than four-hundred ounces of silver bought. The farm was about nine acres and highly automated with robots and food processing systems. My new home, the farmhouse, was the largest house I had ever seen and had all the technology I could imagine, more than what I could have bought from the aliens if I decided to stay on earth.

I could not believe this planet was originally a prison colony for another alien civilization. The colony had schools, event centers, social gathering buildings, and even sports complexes. How the current owners came about it I have no idea and they never explained it to us.

On the third day, I decided to take a late-night walk out to an observation tower where I could see the earth, or at least Sol the earth's star. At eleven twenty in the evening the earth could be seen in on the southern horizon for about twenty minutes before the light from Siris blocked it out. Earth wasn’t able to see us, and we never knew this planet existed before the aliens arrived, because the light from Siris blocked the planet out of view.

I never went back to earth and after all the farms had been colonized the exodus stopped. A little more than eighty thousand families had left earth and colonized this planet along with forty thousand refugees and then the transport ships stopped. We never knew if the earth's atmosphere cleared up or if the social strife stopped; no contact was ever made while I was alive.