Science Fiction Vignettes # 4
A Short SF
Vignette
The Inmate from Mercury
((The Pen Pal) (Year: 2095 A.D.))
Letter One (July, 2093 A.D)
“Dear Harry Harvey, here in my prison cell
on Mercury, it gets between 300 to 800 degrees Fahrenheit. Which for Mercury as you may well know, is
normal. So with your letter I had to read it behind special glass, it was for
the most part evaporated, in fragmented form. Therefore I am sending you some
special chemically protected paper we use here on Mercury, use it and your
letter will be more legible.
“I have never visited Earth but I’ve heard it was beautiful, and
confrontational, or warlike. Also, it has
over ten-billion people.
“On another subject, the heat on Mercury has never been a real problem
for me, even at 500 F, it is pleasant. At eight-hundred, of course it gets
uncomfortable. So you see, I am not a hydro-carbon life form. And to be frank
your letter was sent to me by accident. Let me explain: my number here is M: 4651,
the M stands for Mercury, and I’m the four thousand and six hundred and fifty
fist inmate, out of 5000-inmates here on Mercury.
“I repeat myself, I’m elated the letter came to the likes of me, an
inmate who has been unjustly incarcerated, please continue the correspondence.”
Yours sincerely, M: 4561
. . .
Letter Two (September, 2094 A.D)
“Dear Harry Harvey, I received your first
letter, I mean second letter, and yes there is a way to lower the radioactive
body, in particular mine, to 150-degrees, but it comes with a price in that it
would affect my flow of energy, and none of Earth’s cities would allow me to step
onto its surface.
“I am now fifty-years old, and have twenty-more years to serve of my
sentence, my race has a lifespan of 150-years, thus, one third of my life is
now gone, and by the time I leave, one half will disappear.
“However our race is a superior to yours, as you well know, we also
carry what you call a high atomic weight.
The race that has incarcerated me, is similar to us, but superior to us.
They have used us as slaves, liken to the days of Athens, 450 B.C., when there
were more slaves within the population than citizens. Anyhow, for 25,000-years we have been their
mining tools, compared to 15,000-years ago, when we were sent to dig out the
gold from mines in Peru, gold being a universal substance used in all
spacecraft’s.
“Turning to my imprisonment, I killed an engineer on a maintenance crew,
which stopped the mining on the dwarf planet Ceres, inside the asteroid belt.
The pintsize planet, is about 800-miles wide, it has quite a lot of irregular
shapes and craters, most interesting to our Masters as they prefer to be
called, and I worked in one of those crater-mines.
“We quarried for an assortment of materials, minerals, along with the
many salt mounds on the surface. And several of us rebelled, and we called it
war, and they called it terrorism, and the stronger is always in the right.”
Sincerely, Inmate, M: 4651
. . .
Letter Three (October, 2095 A.D)
Dear Mr. Harry Harvey:
“Just a brief note to answer your question
if you will send a letter to the warden of this prison to lighten my sentence,
this is not unusual, they take all letters very seriously, as to keep a cordial
relationship with Earth, and the mining that they do throughout the solar
system, since we are originally outside it.
“We are as you know quite advance in the history and development of your
solar system. My father won his freedom after his allotted time in the mines as
all our kind must serve, one fifth of our life doing, during his free time he
was allowed to earn his doctorate in the astrophysics, stellar phenomena, and
ancient mythologies pertaining in particularly to your solar system. I will try
to tell you what he said in a nutshell, if indeed it fits:
‘Comets are an ancient creation by the god’s of evil, trying to
duplicate God Almighty’s great creation of the stars, which we know as suns.
Our race found a comet, a rare one that would serve our purpose it was older
than Earth’s solar System, and our kind implanted molecules of oxygen in its
clouds of gas. The comet within its orbit, reacted with other planets within
Earth’s solar system, as it was forming eons ago. Along with its most common
gases, others formed around the comet, such as: water, vapor, carbon monoxide,
and carbon dioxide, and so on and so on. It all remained in its unique form.
The oxygen froze, trapped in clumps of other materials and was released during
this formation of your solar system, as the comet made its long journey around
Earth’s sun, and beyond.’
“The comet is often referred to as “The Devil Comet” actually we
still do refer to it by that name. The reason being, no one knows how it got
here in the first place. And so, as my father inferred, by dropping what he
called seeds, Earth formed a beautiful and thick atmosphere, which produced
materials and minerals, and then life.”
Sincerely, Inmate M: 4651
. . .
Letter from the
Warden to Harry Harvey (December, 2095 A.D)
Penitentiary Mercury
Reference to: M: 4651
Dear Mr. Harry Harvey: “If it looks like a dead fish and smells
like a dead fish and it comes from Denmark, that’s exactly what it is, and that
is what you got for all your time writing M: 4561; my best advice is don’t eat
it! He’s been fishing for someone like you for a long time.”
Sincerely, the Warden.
Written: 11-22-2015 (#4921) reedited,
12-24-2015
Copyright © Dennis L. Siluk, Dr. H.c.
