Joseph

 

"Will you sacrifice?"

This isn't real. I'd never let it happen.

I sit cross-legged in a meadow of four colors and all around me blue. Grass grows from my thighs and its blades are blue. Oak roots pierce my back, and their bark is blue. Each plant is ice cold. An umbilical cord connects me to a blue fox that sits on my shoulder and a blue raven that caws on my knee, and many other animals and they smell like blue-raspberry Gatorade. It's life from Earth, but altered as it grows from my memory and flesh.

I might be able to accept this weird alien shit. I could even resign myself to personal sacrifice . . . if not for my team.

Saleema sits across from me, with Katia and Marcus to either side. We are the four points on a compass. A habitat spawns from each of us, grown from our human bodies and themed by color.

"Your life for the lives of you."

Between us floats our captor. A creature truly of this planet, it's four orbs stacked off-center. They are white-absence shrouded in black light. When the alien speaks, its body vibrates and flings plasma like a star. It smells of charcoal—burnt and purifying.

It wants me to sacrifice myself for the community of blue. This raven and fox and oak and grass and a thousand others behind me.

But they aren't real like me.

Not human like my team, who still need my leadership:

"No."

 

#

 

Katia

 

Shitass alien bastards what the HELL!

Our captain refuses the sacrifice and his blue aliens wilt and blacken and rot on fast-forward. Their corpses stink like crude oil and sulfur and fuck them that's dandy except the decay spreads into Joseph too, and his flesh cracks and shrinks and in seconds he's dead to fucking bones.

What's the point of choosing when both choices are death?

A quarter of the meadow is gone and barren—as rocky as when we landed, but now covered in black sludge and bones. With the blue oaks gone and in the absence of my friend, our ship gleams like chrome salvation in the binary stars of this godforsaken system.

Red thistles grow through my arms and neck, and I feel pine roots inside my guts and cords from my stomach bind me to a red jaguar and a red badger and others. They all smell like blood and I taste copper.

"Will you sacrifice?"

The shit-glob alien that captured us pulsates and glows with its black-and-white threat and ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

I wrench my arm free and scream and pain and roots tear out of my muscles and I stand and bleed and PAIN as I stumble toward our ship and Saleena cries out and extends her hand as the jaguar sinks its fangs into my neck and I collapse and my only satisfaction is seeing the red alien bastards thrash and putrefy as I crawl and twitch and can't.

 

#

 

Marcus

 

Breathe, Marcus. Just breathe.

You're fine. It's fine.

Except nothing is fine, is it?

You just witnessed two catastrophes. Not only dead members of your crew, but the destruction of thousands upon thousands of creatures.

"Will you sacrifice?"

I'd like to, of course I would. I'm not Katia with her angry self-interest, nor Joseph denying any of this is real.

A white rabbit huddles on my lap, and a white fawn nestles beneath my arm, and the animals smell like spun sugar. White clover grows from my ankles and my calves. I feel every plant and animal through our connection of umbilical cord or roots. Each life is part of me but separate. They are my descendants.

They hope I will sacrifice my life for them. But they do not understand as I understand.

"Your life for the lives of you."

The alien's spheres pulse with power and purpose.

It's a trick question. This situation requires the lateral thinking of a higher mind.

Saleema says, "We should slow down and discuss this."

The captain did too much slowing and talking in the days since our capture. Now it's time to be decisive.

These creatures are inside us and they know our minds.

Joseph was weak, and Katia was rash.

The context of my answer is what matters. These lesser lives are born of me, making it illogical to sacrifice myself when I'm their source.

Even if my white community dies, I can birth another:

"No."

 

#

 

Saleema

 

 

Marcus and his white ecosystem die and bleach and his skull stares dumbfounded.

If I'm honest, I never liked him.

"Will you sacrifice?"

It's a double-bind. Sacrifice and die, or die with the lives you nourish.

I'm trapped, entirely.

Green moss grows from my skin and my feet are pierced by the roots of a green apple tree. A green snake wraps around my arm and my hands cup a green mouse. They all smell like decaying vegetation, soon to become rich compost.

"Your life for the lives of you."

I can't hide, or run, or outsmart this.

It's change and duty and the forward-flow of time.

It's the fate facing oligarchs and empires and all dominant species.

Our choice isn't between death and life—it's whether to ruin or support.

Not that such distinctions make this easier. I sit in a sliver of meadow surrounded by wasteland and the bones of my friends. Foreign life writhes beneath my skin and I smell my lungs beginning to rot.

I don't want to sacrifice myself to this alien and its strange reproduction or selection or whatever the hell this is.

The fear burning on my lips wants to shape the word NO.

If my end is inevitable, I'd rather surrender it to provide hope for those who come after:

"Yes."

My community of green spreads across the rocky landscape, a tide of life released as I die.