Neo Genesis
Everything was silent as the spacecraft coasted through the halcyon exosphere of a lifeless, brown
orb. Inside the craft, P-58-C and Zero sat in the silence. Behind them was a hatchway, elaborately
colored like the tomb of an Egyptian Pharaoh. This was the doorway to the extra dimensional cargo hold.
It allowed for mass storage using a powerful device that granted entry into the fifth and sixth dimensions
of relative space. A collection of hundreds of thousands of tiny, glowing cubes, only a few inches tall,
were stacked one atop the other within the hold. However, none of these cubes touched each other, as
each remained suspended half an inch from the one below it. They glowed electric blue as if embodying
lightning. A slightly musty scent hung in the dank, oxygenated air.
The alien pair had pale, yellowy skin that glistened with sweat from the stagnant air. Long, lanky
limbs extended from their slightly rounded bodies. They wore plain, dark blue uniforms and no shoes, as
their tentacle-like feet were tough. P-58-C sat in the helm, sitting about a foot taller than his
inexperienced partner, A-0-C, or Zero, his head nearly brushing the top of the modest spacecraft. Zero sat
beside him, searching laboriously through an intergalactic map. P-58-C’s worldliness was shown through
his name—a high rank, high number of successful missions, and esteemed occupation.
Suddenly, Zero looked up and stared at P-58-C with his five eyes and scratched his pale, citrine
scalp with his long-fingered hand. He spoke in a tongue long forgotten by any being around in the current
age, full of whispers and hiccups, and as he spoke, his tone became more urgent. P-58-C’s eyes narrowed
as he listened. Zero’s pupils enlarged and his breath became sharp and uneven.
Upon hearing Zero’s request, P-58-C was suddenly furious, all five of his huge, brown eyes
misting over in utter rage. He hissed and sputtered at Zero, shaking his head and stomping his toeless
feet. Rarely did P-58-C experience such an emotion as anger, for he knew that anger as well as any other
sentiment was unfavorable and potentially detrimental to any mission. He had not encountered these
feelings in any of his missions with his partner, including their previous mission.
***
P-58-C and Zero zipped through the galaxies, stars seeming like only wisps of light through the
spacecraft windows. Inside the craft, a big, green button flashed three times and stopped, three times and
stopped. P-58-C quickly punched it with his thin, sticky finger and instantly the craft came to a halt.
Zero dragged a long, slender pointer finger across an extensive map until he found the desired location
and showed his partner. It was his first mission, and would not be completed for millions of years. After
exchanging a few hiccups and screeches, P-58-C steered the spacecraft towards a tiny, red planet. The
planet grew closer and closer as the spacecraft continued to slow. When the craft was close enough to it,
the reddish-brown globe’s gravity began to work on the vehicle. P-58-C, an expert in his craft, steered
away from the planet, flipping switches and pressing buttons with agile fingers. After about a minute of
adjusting, the craft was hovering safely above the planet.
At closer inspection, it was clear that this planet did not only contain reddish-brown dust and dirt.
Areas of clear, pure water could be seen across the surface of the planet, each one no bigger than a
puddle. At an even closer look, one could even see traces of green in the dust. Tiny, underdeveloped
plants were pushing themselves out of the dry, cracked ground, rising like Icarus to meet the sun, stalks
barely a few inches tall and leaves smaller than dimes.
This was a lot of progress considering it had only been a few hundred years since the two aliens
had planted a life cube on Rubella Regolith. The small, red sphere was one of their most recent life planet
creations, and this was its first check-up. It would be at least another thirty million years before they
could collect DNA samples from the life forms to bring back to Vita Faber, their home planet, to
incorporate into their own DNA. Only when a substantial amount of DNA was brought back and used
would the mission be considered complete. Zero wrote some notes on a thick, wide writing pad and
nodded to P-58-C. Without a word, the pair disappeared into the stars.
***
Despite P-58-C’s obvious disapproval, Zero reached behind him and wrapped his long, sticky
fingers around one of the majestic, sapphire hexahedrons on the top of the organized pile. As he touched
it, a soft whirring noise escaped the cube and echoed around the craft, slowly dying down. Immediately,
his heart rate quickened.
The greed in Zero’s eyes grew evident, as did his longing for what lay hidden behind the six
three-inch-long, impervious, glowing walls. In his eyes was the spark of evil that lay inside every
creature, lingering, anticipating the time when it would slowly, silently smother the warmth inside,
overriding the good nature and well intent. From the moment of their birth when knowledge was
instantly programmed into their minds, they were taught to suppress these feelings of greed, love, passion,
and so on. P-58-C worried that there was very little he could do to stop the desirous creature from getting
what his heart, now dark and cold with greed, wanted. He had seen this happen before, but never had he
seen such an appetite for what was inside the cube that Zero revealed.
What lay inside the cube was neither Heaven nor Hell. It was neither light nor dark. What rested
unscathed inside the cube was not death, but life. The cubes, every one, held the necessary ingredients,
the stupendous potion created for life itself.
The electrifying blue glow from the object could be seen in Zero’s wide, shimmering eyes. Tears
welled up in his eyes as he gazed upon the thing.
P-58-C knew he had to act quickly. He reached for the cube so swiftly his arm was only a blur.
Zero snapped out of his daze quickly and his multiple eyes went from infatuated to infuriated. He tried to
bring his hand away from P-58-C, but his companion was too fast. In a single moment both creatures had
their hands wrapped around the cube. Their thin, gangling fingers were tense, intertwining around the
cube.
This kind of thing was not uncommon for Life Cube Distributors—at least, not in map navigators
like Zero. In the past, P-58-C had had many other partners, hundreds, who suffered from similar
syndromes, deviating from the expected emotionless state they spent millions of years training to possess.
P-58-C suspected that there was something, in the midst of the boundless, copious folds of paper that
composed the maps that changed them. He tried not to think about this too much, as that would be
dangerous and not in the best interest of the collective.
With great sadness, P-58-C realized that Zero’s desire was far too great for him to compete with.
He had to think of something quickly, some way to keep the vital object out of his partner’s greedy hands.
The ways to abuse life were endless. Even P-58-C was unsure of the precise power held by the cube, and
the things that could be done with it.
P-58-C tightened his grip even more on the cube, blue veins bulging on his knuckles, and reached
for one of the securely shut windows in the craft. Zero cocked his head in confusion as his accomplice
wrestled the window open. In one swift motion, P-58-C swung open the window, grabbed an oxygen
mask and pulled it over his mouth, and grabbed onto his seat for dear life. He no longer had a grip on the
cube. Before he could realize what was happening, Zero and the cube were sucked out of the pressurized
craft with a calamitous “whoosh”-ing sound and sent out into the abyss of the exosphere. In the
confusion Zero had dropped the precious cube and was floating farther and farther away from it. The
cube went down, down, down, past the exosphere and into the ionosphere, then the mesosphere,
troposphere, falling faster and faster, an artificial meteorite, until finally it hit the lifeless planet with a
surprisingly soft thud. It arrived undamaged, as the cubes were created to endure such a fall.
Zero continued to orbit the huge, brown body, a silent satellite trapped eternally in the exosphere,
drifting endlessly and without course. Soon he was not visible to P-58-C’s eyes, lost forever in the
immeasurable darkness. Still grasping the chair, P-58-C pulled the window back into place with all his
might. The shutting of the window made a loud banging noise of metal on metal, and finally P-58-C took
off the oxygen mask. He closed his eyes and breathed in slowly, waiting a moment as the craft
reestablished its correct 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and 1 percent other gases throughout. He
had not seen the cube drop to the brown planet, and assumed it was stuck in orbit along with Zero. He
knew Zero would not last long, and he silently mourned the loss of his former companion. He knew
Zero’s inner self had died far before his physical body, as soon as the greed vanquished his heart. He
knew he had to do what he had done, as he did with his corrupted partners in the past. He had acted in the
best interest of their planet, as he did in every situation. Some sacrifices were necessary, he knew, as long
as all was for the good of the collective.
Their journey to the brown planet was their first mission since that day when they checked on
Rubella Regolith. Alone now, P-58-C straightened his rumpled blue uniform and rode away from the
planet, vanishing into space without giving a second thought to the missing cube. The possibility of its
landing on the planet without him realizing did not cross his mind. He slumped, defeated and ashamed at
his evidently failed mission. P-58-C did not record this location in his book of the life-holding planets.
He did not mark it on the appropriate swirling galaxy in the vast map of the universe he kept with him.
He did not count the number of planets from the closest star and mark the small circle indicating the
correct celestial body inhabited by the new life cube. He did not inform the others that this planet now
contained the ingredients for life. He simply flew the spacecraft far away from this planet to deliver
cubes to distant galaxies.
Soon after, great rains fell, the trapped hydrogen and oxygen in the planet's atmosphere crashing
down like drops of ambrosia spilled from the chalice of Zeus. Vast bodies of water churned and rolled
over the planet’s dry, cracked surface, filling the great basins and valleys. The air filled with nitrogen,
oxygen, argon, and other vital gasses. Then the first life forms began to spring up on this brown planet,
turning the sphere from brown to green with vegetation. Organisms emerged, and slowly, archaea,
bacteria, plants, and animals began to roam the newly born life planet.
No alien races learned of this planet’s birth. P-58-C did not venture back to collect DNA from
the organisms of the planet. It continued to grow and prosper in utter isolation, far away from any other
planets that had been given the life-giving cube. One large landmass separated into seven, surrounded by
seemingly boundless oceans. Eventually, two-eyed, two-legged beings of yellow, brown, and pinkish
shades walked the planet, free to develop without intrusion. They could only look up at the stars and
wonder if other intelligent creatures existed outside of their home planet. Years later, P-58-C dreamt
something that both mystified and disturbed him, and he struggled to eradicate it from his mind in the
centuries following—a beautiful, sparkling city under the gleaming light of a single full moon.