Saga's Website

The New Homesteader

The wind whistles through the loose hairs on the rider’s neck.

The rider listens to the wind, for something to listen to. They gaze out over a vista that looked a lot more glorious, a lot less desolate, behind a computer screen. For the hundredth or thousandth time they regard it. They exhale, for something else to listen to.

They climb back onto the horse, for the companionship, and spur it on back towards the path down the ridge. “Spur,” used here in the figurative sense. Their sleek boots haven’t got any metal in them at all. More importantly, spurs were one of the many archaic tools of domination to be outlawed by the Cruelty Prevention Mandate handed down in 2164.

Not that the Cruelty Prevention Mandate, or any other mandate, has any real reach here. The planet belongs to the rider. But they wouldn’t hurt the horse. It’s the only horse they have. The only thing approximating a friend on the planet. The sheep still haven’t showed up yet.

Something about a malfunction with the targeting systems causing the rocket to go wildly off course. It should be back around the sun in a couple years, the smiling handler reassured them over the ansible, a couple years ago. The rider wonders if that sort of negligence is covered under the Cruelty Prevention Mandate.

Not towards the sheep. The sheep are embryos that the rider will have to defrost and cultivate once they arrive, using a machine the size of a tool shed that came on its own rocket. But leaving them here alone for so long, with nothing to do except explore… that’s cruelty too, right? The rider wonders if the corporation had to pay a fine for that.

The wind whistles through the rider’s heart.

Coarse black sand crunches under the horse’s feet. Now they’re back in the valley, with its trickle of impure water. Now, the horse knows to follow the stream back towards base camp, and the rider lets their attention wander once more.

Back to a too-clean office, with the handler smiling too wide, makeup hiding her pores completely even under blinding fluorescent scrutiny. To before the rider was the rider, or even a rider. To a brochure promising a new life that’s a return to an old life. A life the rider never knew, a life that died out before the rider’s grandparents were ever conceived.

The rider thinks about the promises.

Become a rancher for us, the corporation had urged. Live the high life on the biggest prairie there’s ever been.

A whole planet, all for you. You’re going to love it.

You could become one of our top suppliers one day with this one. Greenery index is really promising!

Don’t worry, the chances of death during cryosleep are one in a million.

The sheep will be there in a week. You’re almost there!

The rider pulls up on the horse’s reins. There’s a white streak in the sky they didn’t notice before, that’s just now forming. A burning trail. It can only be the sheep, arriving at long last. They click their heels, urging the horse on faster, towards the slope down onto the plains.

From the top of the hill, they get a wonderful, picturesque view of the capsule exploding as it hits the next mountain at terminal velocity.

The rider screams, but nobody’s around to hear it. It’s unclear whether it makes a sound.