New Earth by Linda Akerman

I am not like other people, and before you say anything about how we all are special, stop it. Just stop it and listen to me. I am not like other people and I never will be.

Every day I woke up in a world not my own. Every day it was the same thing, and every day I wondered why I felt like this. There was no reason for it. I was a third generation settler, this was my planet. This place called New Earth. This horrible hellhole still being terraformed into something that we could live on.  Each  morning when I looked outside there were nothing but dark mountains and dead plains ahead of me. And I loved the sight of it all, I wished I could go out and breathe, just breathe! But that was not allowed, we had to stay inside the 7 spheres that made out the Earth Habitat. Outside would poison us in seconds. The outside was not meant for humans. Or that is what they told us, the thing I refused to believe. How could the outside kill us when it was so beautiful? When it just begged to be walked on, climbed, loved.

I told you I was different. If anyone knew how different I am they would kill me on sight. Before the Event they might have studied me, but not after The Fall of 5. That day is burned into the retinas of all of us, even I, and I love my family and friends after all. The Fall of 5 was when everything changed. I can still smell burnt flesh and I feel so divided even thinking of it. It was the day I found myself, when I finally understood that I was not strange, I was only different and this was not my home. There was a reason for it all and the reason was Them. The things that haunted us all now in our sleep. The things that made us fear the terraforming because it had made them angry. They who had raided Platform 5 and killed everyone inside and taunted us when we could not reach them in time. It was the sign of our failure as a race. The sign that we had disturbed something better left undisturbed. We were not alone on this planet, this was not our home.

But as I grew up here I know how these things work. First there is confusion and sadness, and then is idiocy and anger. We are all tense now, this is beginning, this is the first days of war. And I fear, not for those outside, I know them to be plentiful. I fear for my friends and family. They all think guns can win this, but you can’t win against an enemy that could crush you in a second. They are letting us live here, they are curious, that is why I was sent here after all. In my own ignorance.