Scarlet

It's hard not to get a midnight sunburn here. Even at night when the light-shields surround the planet and make it bearable on the surface, I am usually the only one to come out and stare at the majesty of the triad of stars that scar our planet. I always walk through the spray of protectant that is required before I walk above-ground, but my trysts to the barren landscape are so frequent that my skin is a constant angry red. Granddad thinks it's funny and calls me 'Rosey.' Most people call me 'Scarlet' because I look like the Scarlet Angels in the Records.

I chuckle when I think of the Records. Supposedly they are the account of how our people ended up on a planet not designed to sustain any type of life, but most of it seems like a fairy tale written to explain our impossible existence. They say that a ship was leaving what was once Earth 8 because of genetic experimentation gone wrong, but they had mechanical problems that forced them to land here on Lutum. There are so many unanswered questions that I am shushed for in school. "Where did the shields come from? They couldn't have had that type of technology on a hastily assembled settlement ship." "How could the Scarlet Angels have survived even 10 minutes while assembling the shield? It's impossible that they could've come back with just bad sunburns. We can't even send ships out. Why didn't they burn up?" "Why is our planet named Lutum? It's Latin for dirt. What a dumb name." "How has Latin even survived this long?" But they're never answered. I'm chastised for making light of the Angels "who saved our people from certain death" and for questioning how we survive under the blazing trio of suns.

"What are you doing out here, Rosey?" comes Granddad's soft voice, interrupting my musings.

I turn and squint at him through the diffused light flowing through the shields. His leathery skin is hanging off his bones like the laundry hanging in our quarters and he walks up the hill gingerly as if the ground under him is likely to disappear. I'm more worried about him disappearing. He's nearing his end, I'm sure of it. He meets with the community doctor more and more frequently and he comes outside less and less. He was the one who helped me see the beauty in the blazing night sky, but now he rarely revels in it.

"Feeling the heat of impossibility and discovering the truth." I say. The same response he always gave Mama before she succumbed to the epidemic that passed through our community a few years back. Mama never understood our fascination with the surface. She wasn't even married to Pa on the surface as was the tradition. Her only sight of the triplets was when they glared down at her dead body as we buried her.

"I gotta show you something, girl." Granddad frowns, "Before they burn it."