I'm acutely aware that I #_#
Here's the first chapter, anyways.

I - Aluminum

My aluminum clad feet kick up insignificant clouds of dust as I walk across the shell base and come to a standstill at the edge of the steep slope that rose several hundred meters across the ground. I stare at the vast expanse of the dull white planet that is my home.

Titania.

Let me correct myself, Titania isn’t really a planet. It’s a moon. It orbits Uranus. And it’s our home. Well… what’s left of us anyway.

“Mirae!” My head snaps to my right as I see my mother waving to me, wearing her aluminum knee length boots. I wave back, to signal that I’ve heard her and raise my eyebrows. The weightless dry wind tosses some of her auburn hair behind her. She is a pretty woman, my mother.

“Could you go fetch the General for me please? We’re having some technical problems here!” She gestured helplessly around her at the ten other men wielding tools, working hard on repairing a failed spacecraft. I nod at her and she acknowledges by crouching next to her niece – my cousin Jongup – and wearing her eye-shield.

I sigh and turn back to face the front, watching the misty view of the planet from 10,000 metres above. Misty? Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t mist. It’s just a lot of dust being kicked up as land rovers zip across the dry soil and as more of our clan take off on spacecraft.

I spot a tiny figure down there, and instinctively recognize it as Daehyun. Something turns in my chest – in a pleasant way – as I see him stride across the dull white soil in his dark clothes. This is all I need to finally get moving. I consider using my ‘craft to get down there faster, but I decide against it. I have always preferred raw nature than any technology whatsoever.

Nature? What nature? As I’m jogging around the base camp, slowing down on the hairpin bends – you see, Titania is a very hilly terrain – I think about it. The word ‘nature’ was something my mother said her ancestors who lived a million years back, used. She said there used to be things called ‘plants’, ‘trees’ and ‘flowers’. Neither she, nor her grandparents, or her great-grandparents ever lived to see those. These were ancient information passed down each generation. There were pictures, oh there were a lot of pictures. But somehow, in the world I live in, in this age, this era, the picture of green ‘plants’ sprouting out from the soil is just… not imaginable.

 After 15 minutes of speed-walking and jogging, I reach the ground and as I always do, look up at the intimidating hill where I was just a while ago. It is scary, to look at it from the bottom. Sighing, I remember why I came down here. Daehyun. No, not Daehyun, it’s to find the General and tell him my mother asked for him.

I look around me as I walk further. Drones, land rovers, ‘crafts hovering idly above the ground, men wearing goggles and space gear leaving to take off to another celestial body, a few children playing techno games on their iWalls, women hurrying about doing things… this is the kind of life our clan leads. When I say ‘clan’ I don’t mean we all belong to some sort of exquisite community. No, that’s not it. I say ‘clan’ because, a few hundred thousand years ago, the population dwindled. And now only a select few are left living.

It’s a story that my mother’s told me repeatedly, not that I ever witnessed it. I’m only 19. This is how it goes though:

Millions of years back, people similar to us lived on a planet called Earth. It seems they lived a kind of simple life; there was none of the technology you see today. Nothing was as complicated as it has become now.

Earth was… a blue-green planet. Much like a marble, if you looked at it from space. It was probably the prettiest planet in the solar system. I’ve seen pictures, trust me. So Earth, along with the other planets, orbited around the Sun, and because it was at exactly the right distance from the Sun, had the right temperature, it was a habitable planet, and life thrived there. There were things such as ‘water’, ‘greenery’ and ‘animals’. From how the story describes it, it seems it was like a really beautiful place.

Anyway, life continued to thrive and develop there. There were a lot of things, such as ‘doctors’, ‘scientists’ and ‘teachers’. Years passed, population rose, fell, there were fluctuations I suppose… well, humans at that time had predicted that a million years from then, it wouldn’t be so easy to live on Earth anymore. That came true.

Because, at that time, the Sun, you see, was a normal sized star. But it wouldn’t remain a normal sized star forever. And it started expanding.

I’ll be more detailed. Stars are born very frequently. A star, when it is born, is actually very unstable and extremely hot. There are various types of stars though, but generally, hotter stars glow blue, and cooler stars appear red.

The sun, was a normal sized star, pretty much halfway into its life-span. It appeared red. However, due to complicated processes in its core, the Sun expanded, growing larger and larger.

This, was the beginning, for life on Earth to end.

In simplistic terms, the Sun grew larger in size, and therefore the planets Mercury and Venus were… well, eaten up.

The people of Earth – what was left of them anyway, because you see, it had become too hot that two thirds of the population was extinct – were scared. If they continued living there, they would die. So, as technology had progressed a great deal by that time, these people escaped to other planets. They scattered all over the solar system and found refuge there. Because you see, now there were a lot of other planets, which were in the ‘habitable zone’ and could now sustain life.

What happened to earth? Earth, rather than being swallowed up by the still-expanding Sun, was pushed and thrown out of orbit. It now lies 2 million light years away, just a dull lump of scorched out rock. I’ve been to it once, and that was when I was three.

Snap back to the now. I scan my eyes across the mild flurry of activity around me, my eyes lazily pausing for a second to watch a group of 5 young kids around 6 years old, playing a techno game. They next settle on the scene of a woman laughing and talking to another as she proceeds to unload a few oxygen refill tanks from a ‘craft. Her aluminium boots are old and dented in a lot of places, I notice and I realize with a startle that I have never seen her before. Her hair is long, deep brown and silky and her distant laughter tinkled in my ears. Before I can continue to observe this new woman anymore however, the General crosses my vision.

“General!” I call out and he hears me, turns slowly and spots me walking toward him. The General, a slightly imposing man who looks frightening at first is the one who leads our clan. Leads, but not the leader. Since he’s the oldest and the wisest of us, everybody has just naturally assumed him to take decisions and charge. He has a large face, and often looks serious, but only people who know him well, like us lot, will also know that he can crack the silliest jokes around a zoomfire at night.

“Mirae?” He nods and the corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiles. “Is something the matter?” I come to a stop in front of him, my hair fanning over my shoulders and irritating me.

“Yeah, my mother’s having trouble with the failed Nyte again. It’s causing more problems than they thought. She wants help.” Nyte is one of our most modern ‘crafts, still in development. It failed on its test run however and my mom being an expert in ‘craft technology took on the task of fixing it but… well, there are sometimes when even she has trouble fixing something.

“Oh dear,” He sighs, wrinkles creasing on his forehead. “That one again. I’d better go check on it.” He starts walking toward the hilltop where mom and her crew are.

Just before his back disappears behind the view of a huge drone rolling by, he calls out “Mirae! Help out with the new people! They’ve just arrived” And with that, I lose sight of him.

“Eh… new people…” I’m puzzled. Then the woman from before crosses my line of vision again and I realize. They’re new people who’ve probably just arrived from another planet.

Yes, these things occur frequently. Groups join groups, groups separate. A group grows bigger, a group grows smaller. Sometimes a group of people from another planet arrive to join us for some reason or the other and later leave. It happens. So with no big surprise, I walk toward the woman who’s still occupied with unloading oxygen refill tanks and get her attention.

“Um… hey. I’m Mirae.” I shoot her a grin and tilt my head to the side slightly. She stops talking to the woman beside her and looks at me with eyes wide for a moment, forming a small ‘o’. Then she laughs.

“Hi! I’m Ryeong. It’s nice to meet you.” She showcases a row of evenly set white teeth and her silky brown hair shimmers in the occasional passing lights of some of the drones. “We just arrived today from Rhea.”

“I see,” I nod as I move toward the craft to help her with unloading the tanks. Rhea was one of the moons of Saturn. I’ve never been there but from what I know about it, it’s a pretty cold, airless celestial body. “What happened?”

“Oh, our camp was destroyed by a snow storm. Rhea’s a pretty cold place, where there’s no sunlight.” She chuckles. We finish unloading the tanks and my chest heaves lightly. Fully filled oxygen refill tanks are no lightweight thing.

We survive on oxygen. My mother used to tell me that way back, humans on earth survived by eating something called ‘food’, drinking water, and breathing air that contained oxygen. This, is… understandably quite incomprehensible to me now, as I haven’t even understood what ‘food’ was made out of. Not even pictures helped me. We do drink water however. But that, and supplies of oxygen, are pretty much all we need. Our genes and DNA have well… changed. I don’t see how, because I was born in this era, but when you compare humans from a million years ago, and us… I can see why we’re genetically mutated.

“How many of you have arrived?” I ask her as I only see her, another woman beside her and a large ‘craft. Ryeong smiles and says “Five of us. Me, my friend here, Cho,” She gestures at the woman beside her who acknowledges me with a light bow of her head “My brother, sister and my son.” I nod and smile at this realizing that our group had just jumped numbers by five.

“My mother is up there on the hilltop,” I gesture lightly behind me. “She’s fixing a failed ‘craft. Maybe you could meet her later, as we have a zoomfire tonight.” I grin. A zoomfire is where the whole lot of us sit around a tiny fire at night, talking, laughing and some of the older ones drinking.

Ryeong seems delighted as her green eyes light up and she smiles wide. “Oh I’d love that! Sure! Thank you, and for the help by the way.” I grin, nod my head and walk away. As I have nothing else to do for the rest of the day, I let my feet take me wherever they feel like going. Small clouds of white, dull dust are kicked up as I walk at a slow pace.

Idly I walk, taking in the barren, boring landscape of the white, dull moon. There’s nothing much to see on Titania. It’s usually pretty dark here, on the small patch of land we live in and the sky’s always very nearly black, full of stars, asteroids, and other distant objects. From here, the sun is a pretty large ball of anger, frequently spewing out plumes of hot red fire, and seeming almost like it is breathing, pulsing frequently. Drones, ‘crafts and other manmade objects fly and zip above our heads often, with a low whirring sound.

Titania has valleys. Troughs of land several hundred feet deep, created by the fault lines of the moon. I cross the view of a few such valleys when my eyes catch a figure sitting high on top of one of them, alerting my senses and piquing my curiosity. I strain my eyes and realize it’s a boy sitting on the ledge of a valley, swinging his legs which are dangling down the hundred thousand meter drop below him. Dangerous, is the word that enters my mind first.

Curiosity taking the better of me, in another twenty minutes I find myself a few feet away from him looking at his back. He has black hair that looks soft to touch and pretty y shoulders. What the hell, Mirae?

“Um…” I say as I approach him – or his back – slowly, and he turns with a slight start to face me. I stop short as I find myself looking at his face. He has this baby face, with plump lips and almond shaped eyes with long eyelashes. His lips slowly curve to form a tiny grin as he gives me a-

“Hey.”

His voice knocks some of the air out of me even though I don’t move an inch. It’s a voice like I’ve never heard before – somewhat low and y – and… I find myself liking it at once.

“Um… it’s kinda dangerous here, but that’s so obvious really,” I laugh lightly, watching his eyes being lit up with the occasional specks of light of the drones and ‘crafts zipping above our heads.

“Very obvious,” He chuckles, still looking up at me. “Come sit.” He pats the ground next to him invitingly, asking me to take a seat beside him. I oblige willingly – but where is this readiness coming from? – And slowly kneel down beside him and swing my legs over the ledge, letting them dangle down, just like his swing back and forth lazily.

The first thing I notice as I’m sitting next to this total stranger is that he smells nice. No… he smells good. In a matter of two seconds I find myself wanting to sniff his scent over and over again – without him finding out of course. You’re being creepy, I think, mentally slapping myself.

“It’s a bit haunting, don’t you think?” He speaks again and I turn to the direction he points. The whole of the view in front of us. Nearly the entire moon complete with its curvature visible slightly, and the dark, dark sky above us. Sparse life moving about in tiny specks on the ground far below us, and the drones and ‘crafts flitting and zipping high above us. Then the stars glowing brightly in the sky, the blue atmosphere of Uranus to our right, and the angry red pulsing Sun right in front.

It never struck me before, but sitting next to this stranger I suddenly realize. It is haunting.

“Yeah.” I breathe lightly noticing from the corner of my eye that he’s turned to look at me.

“So. I’m Daehyun.” He says and extends his hand which I notice, are covered by cut finger black gloves. I take his hand noticing how warm it feels.

“Mirae.” I say and finally, look up directly into his face. He had a nice face, with thick dark hair which was slightly – very slightly – wavy, and sparkling green eyes. I don’t have to think it, but I already like his face.

“Mirae.” He repeats. “You have a nice voice.” Then his face breaks into a grin and I’m taken totally by surprise. “No, really,” He laughs noticing my expression. “I haven’t heard one like yours before.”

“But… it’s normal.” I protest, the corners of my lips turning into a grin as well, as I watch him laugh. “Thank you though.”

“You’re welcome.” He chuckles. “So you live here?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen you around before though… did you just arrive from-“

“Rhea. Yeah.” He looks directly into my eyes and grins again. “I see you’ve met my mother already. I saw you,” He grins at my wide open eyes, one slender finger pointing down below, far away onto the white ground. “Down there.”

“How did you see me, all the way down there, from all the way up here?” I ask him, sounding incredulous, wide eyed and mouth hanging open. I must look absolutely ridiculous because he convulses into a fit of laughter, shoulders trembling and shaking as he tries to hold it in.

“Wh- Hey! Why are you laughing? Do I look that ridiculous?!” I exclaim, slightly embarrassed and almost on the verge of laughing myself as he let loose, letting his laughter spill into the clipping cool breeze, eyes shut tight, head thrown back and laughing freely. His laughter was infectious.

His laughter – I concentrate on that for the next fifteen minutes as he tries to calm down but fails and bursts into laughter again. It isn’t like anything I’ve heard before. It sounds… yes, it is just laughter, but this is… unique. It’s hearty… soulful… and…

… I like it.

Note: Imagining Titania is really up to you guys, in the end. I don't know how far I picturized it well, but it's all up to you ^^