Spectacular Short Stories: “War on Saturn”
This March, we’re excited to kick off with a short story, titled “War on Saturn,” by junior Angelina Eberly. “I was inspired to write this short story when my English teacher told us to write a short story that was inspired by the short story ‘The Bookmaking Habit of Select Species, by Ken Liu,” Eberly said. “After reading Ken Liu’s short story, I decided to write a Sci-Fi themed short story, when my mom gave me the idea to write about a teddy bear. The only way I could think of to include a teddy bear in a Sci-Fi story was to include shapeshifters and aliens in the story.”
War on Saturn
Aethereon stared aimlessly into space reminiscing about how he ended up on a space shuttle as the teddy bear of a nine-year-old girl.
I recalled how I was just a normal Morpher (a species of shapeshifters) kid that lived on planet Saturn, when an incident that changed my life forever occurred.
The night of the incident, my sister locked up the bakery and we went up to the second floor to sleep. Everything was normal until there was a loud crash that came from downstairs and then we heard footsteps come up our creaky stairway.
Ariana whispered, “Hurry, get out of bed.” My sister opened the attic, proceeded to grab my shoulders, gave me a serious look, then said, ”Aethereon I am going to lift you into the attic and when I do you need to stay up there and not make a sound. Okay?”
”But, what about you?” I asked.
“I can’t go up there with you,” she replied. “The ladder to the attic is broken so I won’t be able to get up. But don’t worry, the attic door opens up above your bed. Now listen closely, if something happens to me I want you to stay in the attic until it is safe. When it is safe I want you to jump down from the attic. Your bed will cushion your fall.”
She had just lifted me into the attic when the door to my room was suddenly kicked down. I watched everything happening through a hole in the attic door. What I saw next horrified me: three men came into the room armed with weapons. Then, I noticed that their skin was shiny and realized they were Enhancers, a species that had the ability to change their skin into any material in the universe.
One of the men walked forward and said to my sister, “Well, well, well, look what we have here. It’s a Morpher leech. You useless Morphers are the reason us Enhancers are starving. So I believe it is time for our species to get some payback.”
Ariana retorted, “You Enhancers aren’t the only ones starving, Morphers are starving too. You Enhancers going around rioting and destroying Morpher establishments is just making everything worse. Also, it isn’t our fault there was a drought. The Enhancers are just looking for an excuse to eliminate all the Morphers. How typical of an Enhancer to use an underhanded method to get what they want. Pathetic.”
After hearing this, the three men started beating up my sister. Suddenly, one of the guys shot her a few times. Then they all ran for it. The police arrived a short while later after hearing reports of gunshots. The police came into the house and saw my sister’s body.
The cops thought to themselves, “I knew tension between the Enhancers and Morphers was getting to a breaking point, but who could do something so cruel?”
Meanwhile, I was still hiding in the attic. However, I waited for a while before coming out because I was afraid that the cops were paid by the Enhancers to cover up the evidence. When I finally jumped down from the attic the officers jumped. After they composed themselves they asked me who I was and if I saw what happened. I responded by telling them I wouldn’t answer any questions until they told me who they were.
They told me they were half-Morpher and half-Enhancer hybrids that were part of the hybrid police squad, a squadron consisting of hybrids. The squadron was made to act as a neutral party between the Morphers and Enhancers if there was ever a fight between the two species.
After hearing what they said, I told them that my name was Athereon Sola and that my sister was the one lying dead on the floor. Then I told them what happened starting from when my sister and I heard the loud crash downstairs to the moment the officers arrived.
The next day, reports about my sister’s death were all over the news. The Morphers were outraged that a woman only 20-years-old was brutally murdered by the Enhancers and so they started to retaliate against the Enhancers. It was an endless loop of revenge and retaliation that turned into an all out war.
Ten years later…
The war has completely destroyed the planet and decimated the Morphers’ population. However, the result was to be expected. After all, the Enhancers were trained warriors that could harden their skin. Meanwhile, the Morphers could only shapeshift and had never been trained to fight. After ten long years of fighting, the Morphers surrendered in order to cut their losses and for their species to survive. Every Morpher was loaded on to an escape pod or transport ship with their families. I was an orphan now, so I was put in an individual escape pod.
The Morphers then set course to the nearest inhabitable planet, Earth. Unfortunately, they didn’t account for Earth’s atmosphere burning up the escape pods and ships upon entry, so all the ships either exploded in the air or exploded due to the impact of hitting the ground. I was lucky that my escape pod did not explode while I was still in the air and was able to land on a hill. My escape pod slid down the side of the hill and prevented a direct impact, allowing me to narrowly escape my death.
The other members of my species weren’t as fortunate. I was one of the only few to survive or possibly the sole survivor. I started to wander around to find a native of the planet. After walking around for a while, I noticed that there didn’t seem to be many people around. I found out why after reading a notice posted on the wall, the Earth was apparently being abandoned. It was being abandoned because the glaciers were melting causing the water level to rise and flood cities. Soon enough, there wouldn’t be enough land to farm on in order to sustain the human population. I was possibly the only remaining member of my race left. There was no way I was going to let my race die out on some abandoned planet.
So, I made my way to the space station. But when I got there, I found out they were confirming people’s identities. I wouldn’t be able to get in you know, being an alien and all. That’s when I saw a young girl go into the restroom and put down her teddy bear outside. As I stared at the teddy bear, an idea started to form in my head. I grabbed the teddy bear and tossed it behind the stall. Then, after making sure no one was looking, I transformed myself into her teddy bear. Then, when the young girl came out of the restroom, she brought me with her onto the space ship. I was able to get on the ship and avoid being stranded on a desolate planet. My goal has been accomplished but my species has been exterminated.
What should I do now?