Self-Review – Fragments

Let’s Look at Fragments

Fittingly, I only have fragments of memories of this ultimately haunting short story. I do know, however, that I wrote this story during the third quarter of 2018.

Background

With only the one word title most likely serving as the prompt, I do not have much to go on, reviewing it a good seven years later.

Fragments of a Plot

Deep Space Mission #14 finds a small system where a gas giant planet with four intact moons also has the remains of a fifth. But what secrets does the debris hold?

And then when the crew finds evidence of textiles, and dyed textiles to boot, it seems obvious. There had been some sort of civilization there. But what the hell had happened to it? And, more importantly, why?

Characters

The only character is the unnamed narrator. It is his or her report which has been dictated and is being sent to headquarters. Those headquarters are presumably still on Earth.

Memorable Quotes

Report to HQ: Deep Space Mission #14

It was once a large moon. But then the gravity from the planet must have hit it, hard, and it fell to pieces.

But ‘fell’ is not the right word. Because that is so not the right word. It’s more that it smashed. It seems to have essentially exploded.

We wouldn’t have known, not really. It looks like small asteroids. And that would have been quite the find by itself. An Asteroid Belt outside of the Solar System! But we checked and rechecked once we arrived, and there weren’t a lot of things we thought of as asteroids. Besides, they would have to be older. Older space debris, if it’s large enough, tends to collide and coalesce and become as close to spherical as it can. But this stuff hasn’t.

And so, it’s up to me and the science mission I’m running to try to figure out what’s going on with this cosmic Humpty Dumpty.

Fragments of a Rating

The story has a K rating.

Takeaways

It is highly possible that I was thinking about The End when I was writing this one. Either consciously or unconsciously.

But it doesn’t quite jibe with the end of, heh, The End, where fossil hunters find a much more intact planet with much clearer evidence of a fully functional civilization at its demise.

But that does not matter to our purposes right now.

I just hope that, if it ever turned out that it was our own civilization on the receiving end of such a mission, that the people making such a heartbreaking discovery would show even one-tenth of the compassion and sympathy of the narrator.

Want More of my Short Stories and Novellas?

If this story resonates with you, then I hope you will check out some of my other blog posts about my shorter works.

And finally, for a complete list of my shorter works, please be sure to check out the Hub Page—Short Stories.