Short Sci-Fi story

#1 The Beginning

The sun illuminated the dry, dusty ground as it began its steady rise above the horizon. The low-lying morning haze caught its red glow and spread it as far as the eye could see creating strange shadows as it wrapped itself around the small trees and bushes. Beneath a squat thorny tree lay a pack of lions surrounded by the remains of their latest hunt. The lioness chewed lazily on the leg of a zebra, her distended stomach betraying how well she had fed. A lion stood up and shook the dust from his mane startling one of the young members of his pride. He walked around the outside of the dozing lions, his powerful muscles flexing as he went, the deep scars on his face and shoulders marking him as the alpha male. A young contender to his title watched as the alpha found his lioness and attempted to lick the dried blood from her face. She rolled onto her side to submit for a while until her deep growl signalled her annoyance and he stalked nonchalantly away from her towards a flock of birds which were pecking the ground to feed on unseen insects.

The alpha slowed his stalk and lowered his body as close to the ground as he could, his muscles rippling as he prowled ever closer to the flock of birds which continued their relentless pecking. One of the slender blackbirds strayed from the rest and the alpha broke into a sprint almost reaching it before it ran and set off in a frantic bouncing escape joining the rest of its flock as they climbed into the sky, in the air with wings spread wide, bright blue and red feathers could be seen adorning their sides. The lead bird flew powerfully at the head of their formation before tiring and moving out of the way for a fresher bird to take over.

The birds fled over the bare Savannah, before splashing down in the muddy brown water of a small shallow pool. Nearby stood a pair of giraffe calves stretching their slender necks and stripping the sour-tasting leaves from the branches of a tall thin tree with their black tongues. A leaf falls in a slow spiral to the ground and moments later a family of mere cats hurry by and scuttle down into their dark holes in the ground. The leaf starts to move as it is carried away on the backs of a hundred ants marching towards their own nest. Behind the leaf, the ants carry their paralyzed victims and their own dead, all of which will be offered to the queen ant. The procession of ants passes a small hole in the ground and a few venture down into the darkness, their antennae twitching excitedly as they go. They do not return.

In the hole, a star-nosed mole, blind from a life spent underground readily accepts the unexpected snack before turning his attention to devouring a wiggling earthworm caught on the end of his long claws. Flies buzz noisily around the remains of a snake, attacked and killed by something unknown whilst it was halfway through shedding its skin. A lone fly zigzags away, and the snake’s dead eyes look past it to a blue sky painted with thin wispy clouds that drift lazily past. The light of the sun, higher in the sky now, reflects off the clouds onto an ocean teeming with life. As the waves break on a sandy shore, people can be seen on the beach…
‘Astin.’
… bathing in the sun’s rays…
‘Astin!’
… and playing with their children…

The images dissolved into blackness as his mother gently pulled the sensors from his temples. The weight of reality returned with a dull ache, and Astin blinked as his vision shifted from bright white to the familiar green of his irises. His mother stood over him, arms crossed, her expression a mix of exasperation and concern.

“I’ve told you, Astin. Spending too much time in there isn’t good for you,” she said, gesturing toward his eyes.

“I know,” Astin muttered, his voice thick with lingering disappointment. “But it’s important. We need to remember what it was like—before. It must have been... spectacular.”

“Enough of that,” she said, her tone sharp but weary. “What’s done is done. The Happening changed everything, and we’re lucky to even be here. Dwelling on the past won’t bring it back.”

Astin presses a button on the side of his chair, and with a quiet hiss, it converts from its horizontal sleeping position into a seated configuration. Astin tilts his head downwards a fraction to make the chair move forward, its all-terrain adaptive rubber wheels squeaking on the polished floor as he follows his mother out of the room.
‘I know you don’t like it mother — but it’s important to remember our past, what the world, our universe was like before, how we lived. It must have been a spectacular place.’
‘Astin, there’s no point tormenting yourself, looking at things that will never return, it has been hundreds of years since the Happening. We just need to accept that this is how we live now, the records show that we were lucky to survive.’

As she inserted the end of the tube into the permanent cannula in his neck to intravenously feed him his breakfast Astin didn’t feel very lucky to be surviving at all.