*****Previously*****
It was warm, light feeling, and so much more than she had ever expected.
*****
Yes, the humans had indeed survived and they had thrived, with passion and intelligence that far outweighed the sterile narrow mindedness of the Amaras.
“What do we do now,” asked Nysa as she fidgeted with nervous excitement between her mothers.
“We find placement and passage to our new home,” replied Sitara with a broad smile as she nodded towards a booth along the far wall that read ‘ECIS--Earth Citizenship and Immigration Services’ above it.
“This is not at all what I expected,” murmured Tasya to her wife as they made their way across the station.
“What did you expect? That we would just find empty space and descend down to Earth’s surface like some Galactic Deities?”
“Not deities, no but...something along those lines at least.”
Laughing, Sitara shook her head and squeezed her wife’s hand. “You and your over romanticized imagination.”
“I thought you loved my romantic side?”
“Trust me, my love, I do,” Sitara assured, giving her wife a soft smile before turning their attention to the booth now just in front of them. “But sometimes you forget the little things that can make all the difference.”
Her wife was right.
The little things had obviously made a significant difference in what she thought and what they were experiencing now.
“Yeah, yeah,” Tasya replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Are we ready?”
All four heads nodding, Tasya took a deep breath along with her wife and stepped forward towards the smiling light skinned green eyed human before them.
“Hello,” she greeted with a warm jovial voice. “My name is Isra, how can I help you?”
“My name is Tasya,” she replied, her voice trembling slightly. She was so nervous. This was a critical step for them. “This is my wife Sitara and our three children. We are seeking a new home, on Earth.”
Nodding her head, seemingly oblivious to the anxious energy vibrating out of the family of five, the girl Isra pulled out a pad and slid it under the glass partition separating them.
“In order to seek Citizenship on Earth, we first need to confirm your identities and previous citizenship from your home planet. Just press your hand on the scan pad there, all of you one at a time, and once I have you in the system we’ll move on to the next step.”
Staring at the pad hesitantly, Tasya glanced at her wife before asking, “What if...what if we don’t show up in your database?”
Giving them a slight quizzical eye, Isra replied, “So long as you were born on one of the three planetside stations or the two colonies, you should be in the system.”
“We are from outside of the colonies,” admitted Sitara, keeping her voice low so only Isra and her family could hear her. “We are descendants...of the Amara.”
The slight girl, who looked so much like Tasya, sat back with wide eyes, her mouth parting slightly in an emotion they could not identify.
Tasya looked around them warily, hoping that they were not about to cause a scene.
“Y-you, you’re, I’m...,” Isra stuttered off, still staring at them.
“Is there someone higher up in charge of citizenship that we can talk to about this,” asked Tasya, leaning closer to the glass as she added, “Privately?”
Nodding her head slowly, in what they could only guess now as shock, Isra slid off her stool and backed up towards a door behind her, still facing them, until she bumped into. Unlocking it without even looking, the girl disappeared from sight just a few seconds later.
“Is this about to go bad,” asked Sitara in a concerned whisper only for Tasya to hear.
Eyes sweeping the station around them warily, she shook her head. “I don’t know, but I sure as hell hope not.”
“Well, I think we can all agree none of us ever expected to have this kind of meeting,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs, turning his lanky frame from the viewport before him to smile at them, his eyes alight with something Tasya recognized right away—fascination.
“I can’t imagine what it must be like for you,” she replied, arms resting atop the shoulders of her children along with Sitara as they sat on the soft blue couch in his office. “But I agree. This experience is...nothing like any of us expected.”
Nodding in understanding, the gray haired man sat down in a comfortable leather chair across from them—his inquisitive eyes bouncing between their faces—before asking the single most important question on his mind. “Why? Return, I mean. Why return now?”
Speaking up for the first time since they had been quietly escorted into the man’s office by plain clothed security, Sitara replied, “Because we are not like our descendants.”
“Which is obvious,” the minister replied with a slight gesture towards them. “I mean, had you not mentioned the Amaras we would have never known. You look nothing like them. Or at least, the last group we had contact with.”
“How long ago was that,” asked Tasya, her curiosity piqued.
Shaking his head slightly, eyes turning to his port window which happened to face towards Earth, he replied, “A century at least. My father’s generation was the last to work with them on the first colonies before the generational ships were completed and they set off never, presumably, to return again.”
Turning back towards them, a flickering of emotions crossing his face as he stared at them, he opened his mouth to ask a question but closed it again with a frown.
“If you are hesitating to ask us if we share Leon’s Key, “ Sitara said after a moment of watching the poor man struggle. “The answer is yes.”
Eyebrows raised, the minister took a deep breath in response before letting it out slowly, his shoulders relaxing slightly with it.
“I suppose that should have went without saying,” he said eventually, clasping his hands in front of him.
“Not necessarily,” replied Tasya, catching his attention. “Yes, we all possess...immortality, but ours is an anomaly of nature—no gene manipulation or cybernetic tech.”
“That’s actually why we are here,” added Sitara. “The Amara’s, our family members, have rejected us, treated us like outcasts because we are not like them.”
A look of understanding finally overcame the minister, before sympathy consumed it. Shaking his head, he stood again and walked towards the viewport, his eyes falling on his beloved planet below.
“Do either of you recall how the Amara’s came about? The devastation that took place to set this all into motion,” he asked, turning, gesturing around him.
“It was the Ides of March,” replied Tasya with a nod.
Yes, she knew the story very well.
“Year twenty one twenty six at a quarter past five in the morning eastern standard time,” she continued, eyes shifting from the minister to the blue orb past him. “The Great Lakes tectonic zone, which had been suffering from a rising series of minor quake bursts over the previous few years did the unthinkable—it splintered, like a fragile mirror—and then ruptured.”
Nodding at her words, he picked up the story from there.
“The wave of earthquakes were devastating, literally pulling parts of the United States into massive swallowing sinkholes that became spewing lava pits. But, the ruptures were just the start. As the Midwest became a volcanic trench, neighboring faults began rapidly shifting, like a shattering crystal ball, and soon the tremors were rattling around the world.”
“The atmospheric storms caused by so much activity must have been hell on Earth,” said Sitara, shaking her head at the tragic series of events.
“Yes,” the minister agreed, returning to his seat. “The booming light shows rained fire down upon the world while Yellowstone Park exploded and tsunamis swallowed most of Indonesia to Australia. Israel and Egypt split from Jordan, cracking the Middle East apart like an egg. And Canada was torn to pieces, some chunks of land so forcefully pushed aside that they just sank, devoured in days and nights like the mythical Atlantis.”
“Then the nuclear like winter came,” added Tasya.
The minister nodded. “Yes. Death swept like a plague then. Within weeks billions were reduced to hundreds of thousands, and in less than six months those hundreds were down to just a handful of thousands. Humanity was on the brink of extinction. After that, the remaining nations found themselves on a broken united council with the harshest of choices to make. Stay? Or abandon Earth.”
“Which is when our descendents came into play,” said Tasya.
“Yes,” he agreed. “While public leaders and researchers spent the previous two hundred years booming private and public space programs in fear of just such a catastrophic event all while arguing the ethics of eugenics—shadow governments had spent their time in hidden bunkers breaking every boundary that they could to find Leon’s Key—the genetic switch for eternal youth.”
And they had succeeded, finding the key hidden within a series of minor dna strands, junk dna as they were previously called—useless in the eyes of scientists, until now. From there, nothing was held back. The brightest, richest and most physically fit for the project underwent gene manipulation to turn Leon’s key on, as well as cybernetic enhancements to ensure that any critical side effects could be eliminated or compensated for.
In just a few short years they were blasted off to the ISS and from there they expanded like an insect colony throughout the galaxy.
After a few minutes of silence had fallen between them, Sitara cleared her throat and wondered aloud, “I am curious, Minister Abrams, if...my family and I are alone in our uniqueness.”
He paused for a second, his brow furrowed in thought, before realization dawned on him of what she was asking about.
“Oh! No, no my dear, none of you are an anomaly here, so to speak,” he replied with a smile.
“So there are others then, on Earth or Mars who have Leon’s key,” clarified Tasya with relief.
“Yes, though the numbers are still few, Leon’s key appeared, oh I say, about two generations ago. Without genetic or cybernetic manipulation.”
So she had been right about that as well.
Tasya couldn’t help but share a satisfied look with her wife.
“What does that mean for us and potential citizenship then,” Sitara finally asked Minister Abrams. Curiosities satisfied and pleasantries completed, it was time to get down to business.
“Well, first we have to enter you and your family into the database,” he replied as he stood and walked over to his desk, retrieving a pad like Isra had given them earlier.
“Then we’ll see what your skill sets are, how or what you would like to do in order to have a steady monetary income, and after that, we’ll be able to settle you into your new home.”
“On Earth?”
It had been their goal, their dream for years.
“On Earth,” confirmed Minister Abram with a heartwarming smile as he handed them the pad.
It was everything they had hoped for and more.
Not only would they be among their own kind, but they would finally have a place to call their own.
“I am curious, Minister Abram,” started Tasya as she placed her hand on the pad to be scanned. “What exactly is Earth like? After the devastation it suffered.”
“Have you ever seen pictures of Hawaii or illustrations of the fabled Garden of Eden?”
She nodded her head, going a century back in her mind to when she was a young twenty five year old in her history class.
“Imagine that, but purer. We live in harmony with our mother land now, and all her creatures. We understand Earth, probably more now than we ever have, and in turn we have far more capabilities to adapt to natural disasters.”
“It sounds like paradise,” replied Sitara with a hopeful smile. “All we’ve ever known are space colonies, ships filled with false environments. None of us have ever been planetside.”
“Well then,” Minister Abram grabbed their hands and gave them a heartfelt squeeze. “It’s time we change that.”
“Are we going home,” asked Nysa, speaking up for the first time, having watched and listened to her parents and the minister talk at length.
“Yes child,” Minister Abram laughed, giving her an affectionate pat on the head. “You and your family are going home.”
Home, Tasya thought, looking at her wife with love, hope and relief.
They were finally going home.
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