The Surviving Earthlings of Planet Wynter
The Surviving Earthlings of Planet Wynter
The University of Liverpool
by delphie levy jones
Two
Hundred and Twenty-One
The bitter
sting of the cold steel prickles my skin, as it does, every moment I wake.
Two
hundred and twenty-one.
The metal
coffin I lay in has become my bed, the wires and tubes penetrating my limbs
become my sustenance, and the cuffs made of chain comfort me in a touch I have been
deprived of for so long.
The
softness of a pillow. My lips tasting, chewing, swallowing. Birdsong, at dawn.
The hooting of owls at dusk. Waking and feeling rested, slumbering when tired.
Seconds, minutes, hours hang lifelessly within the static in the air like little
empty words that once were. Phlegm and wax and tears and blood. Little things.
Things that made us human. Things that are difficult to remember now. I played
with the word. Human. The way it starts in your throat, like a hum, then travels
up and out. The way your tongue hits the roof your mouth- the back of your
teeth. It feels so distant, to say it. To feel it.
On cue, the
syringes stop pumping the juice which makes our eyes close, our bodies wither
and still. The intercom sounds,
Earthlings,
our new name now,
a nice sentiment I suppose, the sun has begun to expand. Hydrogen has been
depleted, helium is burning, and our solar system’s star has become a Red
Giant. Mercury has been vapourised, Venus engulfed. Now much closer, our planet
has become tidally locked to the sun. Half of Earth swelters in blazing heat,
the other is cast in eternal night. I usually close my eyes at this point.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, see how long I can hold it, longer and longer each time
I wake. Sometimes I let myself reach the brink of asphyxiation. My lungs are
clearly still needed but my rebellion is to let them burn. It’s all I can do. My
eyes moisten and blur, a damp sweat flushes my forehead and my temples feel
ready to burst. The moment comes where I’m satiated by the thought of my pulse
succumbing to a weeping surrender. I feel supple, sinking into a realm only my
soul can reach. But then the serum flows. It soaks my arteries and once again
I’m numb. Hushed.
There’s no
point trying to picture it- the outside. You can’t. Yet still, the speaker drones
on, the planet ceased its rotation on the day of the Final Spin. I sometimes
laugh at this part. What a creative name. I guess it’s evident that the
scientists have taken charge, not the artists. High speed winds scoured the
surface clean, stripping Earth of everything we once knew. As Venus was
engulfed, our global political leaders fled in search of distant exoplanets
with habitable zones. We have yet to hear back and we are all who remain, the scientists
and survivors who have made home in bunkers underground. This is where I am
now- where we are now, although from where I’m forced to lie, I can’t see if my
casket sits beside others, or alone.
When I
first woke, confronted by the speaker’s monotonous whirring, I’d strained my
neck fighting to see past my steel confinements, searching for someone else. Anyone
else. I think once, my wrists would’ve been bruised, my knuckles bloodied and
my scalp split and cut, from how hard I’d struggled. But I was uninjured. Impenetrable.
Always
healing, always pumped full of the juices injected into my bloodstream, the
dosage higher when necessary, and lower, when my heartrate was calm. And still
it went on. When the scientists deem our surroundings to be safe, we will,
as a collective, evacuate the bunkers to re-join the surface of the planet.
Until then, vaccinations are currently being distributed to trigger a rapid
evolution, protecting our bodies from the radioactive atmosphere overground.
Your internal and external organs, neurones and biochemistries are in the
process of adaption to endure what now exists as the Dark Half, consumed in a
nuclear winter.
Oh and
here it came, the part that made my insides crawl and itch.
I used to heave
and gag at the thought of what was going on beneath my very own skin. I wanted
to eject the nausea tingling and biting at the crevices of such fragile parts
of me. Fingertips, gentle. Toenails, brittle. Eyelids, frail. I could feel them
all now, so much more than before. But I couldn’t vomit. I had no bile, no
spit, no churning chunks of food or broth. God I missed vomiting. Expelling the
rot from my gut and breathing in the fresh relief of afterwards. Instead I am left to suffer with it. The feeling of everything together and nothing at all.
Adaptations
currently being undertaken include the shell-like tightening of our skin. Keratin
plates inbuilt with additional haemoglobin will act as an external magnetic
field to deflect cosmic radiation. Altercations to pigmentation will allow for
temperature control and ultraviolet desensitisation. The enlargement of our
pupils and incorporation of infrared detectors onto the optical lens will allow
for night and thermal vision. Biochemical additives woven into DNA strands will
allow for immediate cellular and tissue repair, hydration and energy. I wish I was deaf. I wish I was
deaf. I wish I was deaf. What good are ears with no human to listen to anyway?
More
adaptations rumbled on and on. I hated biology in school, I didn’t know what
any of it meant anyway. So I played with the notes my vocal chords could thrum
to drown them out, reminding myself I once spoke, sung, laughed. The bunker supply
of resources required for the sustenance of the human body has been exhausted.
With an incomplete vaccination dose, our atomic makeup and immune systems will
not withstand the outside world. Those who would prefer to terminate the vaccination
process may enter the code zero, zero, zero, on the panel to your left.
Zer0.
Zer0.
Zer0.
Three simple,
little buttons. Buttons I hadn’t yet pressed.
What did
it mean, zero? Absence. Emptiness. Potential. The instructions were clear yet so vague.
Would it end it all? When the serum stops impregnating our bodies with modifications
shaping everything that once made us human, would we begin to decay in our
metallic cots, or be set free into a gaseous airspace which would soon scorch
us dead? And breathe. Perhaps the unvaccinated amongst us would roam the land,
loitering until a slow cancerous decomposition festered them into a mass of
perishing corpses. The living dead. Infectious. A pandemic had hit, when I was
little, and I remember they’d told us something similar, once.
Two
hundred and twenty-one.
It wasn’t
hard to keep count. There wasn’t anything else to do.
At the
beginning I’d scream. Plead. I’d wail help, save me, save me please, help.
Is anyone out there? My sobs were tortured, lonely. They’d rustle the treetops, if there were any
left.
No one
ever came. I’m sure no one even heard. It was like a sound vacuum, the bed,
with no stimulation other than the nuts, bolts and cables keeping my
manipulated heart beating. Artificial strips of dim light kept the casket’s
surroundings visible. All I had to stare at was my porcelain skin, almost luminescent
now. It was becoming increasingly difficult to tell whether my silver glow was
due to the lighting or- I can’t finish
that sentence. I’d believe I were dead if it weren’t for the gushing of my
veins bulging with needles and wires. I also could stare at the panel, of
course. Neon and flashing at me, ZERO TO EXIT. ZERO TO EXIT. Exit what, life? It
was almost comical, and I would’ve laughed but fuck, it was tormenting me. A persistent
reminder that suicide was an option. An encouraging one, even. Perhaps an option
even the scientists were considering. Had considered.
There were
no mornings here, only wakeups. No daylight, twilight, or windows to the sunrise.
Whether it be out there, or in here, those things no longer existed. Whilst our
memories were still intact, if I had money I’d place bets on the serum fucking
with our recollection of the Final Spin. I didn’t know how long ago that was or
how long I’d been confined as a vessel for dystopian clinical trial, but I
could remember my childhood. I’d lived in the countryside. I’d wonder home down
dirt trails fertile with budding shoots and shrubs. My fingers would be sticky
with nectar, sore from thistle stings with a handful of flora and brambles to
present to my sister.
My sister.
No, don’t.
I can’t.
Winter was
beautiful, then. My bed was swaddled in quilts and from it I’d watch the
murmuration of starlings paint the orange sky. The sun would kiss the horizon
and a slither of the crescent moon would splinter the forest floor through the
cracks in the pines. But Spring had been my favourite. It brought hope, new
life, rebirth. I’d let the grassy dew soak my ankles, barefoot in the soil as I foraged rosemary sprouting by the roots of the willows. Pollen would collect on
my lashes dropped from the wings of dragonflies who’d peck my cheeks along
their flight. Those were the things that made you stop. Breathe.
Inhale.
Exhale. Inhale. The petrichor. Fuck, I love that smell. Loved. I guess I’d have
to say goodbye to those things, if the intercom wasn’t lying. Earth no longer
spun, was no longer Earth, and the sun was an imminent death should you step
into its half. Instead I lay here, dying. Only mentally, of
course.
Two
hundred and twenty-one wakeups where I hadn’t entered the code. Where I couldn’t
bring myself to. I guess I still retained that little childhood emotion, as
irritating as it was, that held onto the blossoms of Spring so dearly. But hope is a deathly thing, much worse than fear, or sorrow, or despair, because once
it’s snatched away, there is truly nothing left.
Two
hundred and twenty-one had been the closest I’d ever felt to pressing those
three condemning little buttons.
Two
Hundred and Twenty-Two
Two, two, two.
An angel
number, the rule of three. I was spiritual when I was a teenager, I could
remember that. Although, I guess I wasn’t really, I just pretended to be.
Because I didn’t believe in God or the afterlife, but I liked the thought of
others thinking I was some free-spirited non-conformist. I wasn’t. I even had a
tattoo on my nape, angel numbers, meaning ‘everything happens for a reason’. I didn’t
know if it was still there. There was no implication from the intercom that individuality
was forbidden, but if they were modifying our skin then I could only assume we
were to be a collective of clean slates. I wanted to believe in God. I really did. I wanted to believe in something. The chains seizing my wrists clattered
as I reached for the bridge of my nose. I traced the Orion’s Belt of freckles I
had there, or used to. It was my favourite feature-
Earthlings.
Here we go
again. I wondered if the repetition was to intentionally drive us insane.
The
sun has begun to expand.
Something
I really missed were TV remotes. The mute, specifically. I began to hum.
I see
trees of green,
Red
roses too
I see
them bloom,
For me
and you
And I
think to myself –
What was
that?
My eyes
shot open, my song silenced.
I waited.
Inhale.
Exhale. Inhale.
The chime
of a bell, locks, metal on metal, grinding, rattling.
In
retrospect, I should’ve been more afraid, more cautious at least. Wary of what
to trust. Who not to. But you can’t blame me, for being curious, eager even.
Hopeful. Because wakeup two hundred and twenty-two was different. The intercom
didn’t stop like usual.
Calling
all surviving Earthlings. Do not panic. Prepare for release. The wires connecting
you to the database will soon dismantle. Database? That was new. Before I could begin to
overthink it, the steel above my face morphed into a glaring motion picture.
Congratulations on completing the vaccination process and reaching maximum evolution.
This short hologram will demonstrate what is to be expected upon your
departure. Once the seal to your tank has released, please slowly exit, but
first, welcome to Planet Wynter.
It was
sharp, the sting, like a shard of glass in a salty wound, swelling and scattering
an ache in my chest. Planet Wynter? At least I knew they hadn’t stripped our
feelings from us yet, because ouch, that hurt to hear.
I stared
at the hologram.
PLANET
WYNTER headlined a
devastated landscape. Concrete remains, littered and lost, lay buried beneath a
blanket of frozen mud. There was a darkness to the sky that Earth’s nightfall
couldn’t rival, an ominous dome into the abyss, fractured by rays of violet glare.
Three figures in white hazmat attire wandered the terrain, under towering
floodlights reflecting the stark white of the snow, up and up into clouds of
frosted mist. Snowdrops fell, or was it dust? It floated and settled, feigning
an eery calm atop what I could only imagine matched the acidic stench of a chemical
burn. Like the aftermath of a dithering thunderstorm, the air looked weighted and
I wondered if the new gravitational pull would eventually crumble our bodies
into a disintegration of ash and bone. The figures slowly begun to dismantle
their suits, their gasmasks removed last, revealing faces I didn’t recognise.
Their complexions
were pale, ghostly. Immaculately smooth. Were they taller, perhaps? Whilst the
intercom had described the changes made in uncomfortable depth, the surrealism
of seeing it before me was haunting. It was as if their features were cut from
marble, sharpened cheekbones with defined jaws, their bleach white hair falling
down their backs. Obsidian irises merging into the sclera like a whirlpool into
the midnight zone. Celestial and infernal all in one. They were women- I think.
It was hard to decipher with their faces so foreign, so alien, but their lashes
were long, their movements graceful. The one on the left stepped forward. She
spoke,
“Subject 0222, of the two hundred and
twenty-second vaccine dosage, of the two hundred and twenty-second day of
trial, you have achieved the highest existing form of evolution. We are the
scientists from the Project Wynter Laboratory. We want to personally thank you
for not terminating the vaccination process, placing your faith in us, and the
future of humanity.”
I could’ve
cried, barely even listening to what she said, overwhelmed by her voice. A
voice. The first voice I’d listened to other than my own in two centuries worth
of days. And God, she sounded so human. So English. From the south. But I could
feel the adrenaline spiking in my chest. The voice didn’t match the exterior- like
some creature mimicking what a human should be. Frantic words were echoing in
my ears. Highest existing form. Humanity. With a hiss, the seal to my ‘tank’
was released, the chains unlocked, tubes and wires detaching, leaving no
imprint in my skin.
I guess I
had expected to see rows of us, but there was just me. It was then I was taken
outside.
How
did this happen? Where is everyone? Where the fuck is anybody?
At least I
think that’s what I’d screamed. I’d lost it, when I’d seen.
Gone,
she’d said from
the hologram. The sun’s stable lifetime was supposed to last another five
billion years. Its death is premature.
Her other sentences
had been lost to drift and roam in the surrounding air whilst my ears had
refused to home them. Syllables floated back now, occasionally. If I focused
really, really intently, I could just about make them words. Un-fit to sur-vive, nat-ural sel-ection.
Pri-or sub-jects, de-formed.
Four
Hundred and Seventy-Two
There were
others.
Earthlings,
that is, who begun
to wake after me, but the scientists from the hologram never appeared.
We’d started
to build. Huts, pharmacies, even a townhall. It was all for show. We could
sleep outside and feel no cold, we could feed and heal off the serum. I could
go for another two hundred and fifty wakeups without having to interact with
the others. There was no one left I recognised anyway, not even my sister. In
my solitude, I’d had time to think. Piece it all together, somewhat.
My
vaccination dosage of two hundred and twenty-two days had been correct, the
perfect prescription if you will. They’d known this, the scientists. They’d
known this, yet given less to two hundred and twenty-one humans before me. ‘Trialling’,
they’d called it. ‘Genocide’, I preferred. I’d often visit their graves marked
by two hundred and twenty-one rocks, and remind myself, I was so close.
But I hadn’t been old, or too young, or disabled. Not like they were.
You see, they
could lie to us all they wanted about the radioactive wasteland which had
devoured our planet. But I knew the nuclear winter was far from a plague
bestowed upon us by the sun’s untimely end. It came to me only in glimpses, in twitches
and convulsions. The national warning. My seizures were violent when they hit,
trapping my nerves in a whirlwind of traumatising reminiscence. An emergency
alert on our phones. The sirens. My fingers would cramp and my palms would
sweat, but still I’d manage to cover my ears as if it were happening now,
replaying, replaying. Take cover. Take cover. Imminent enemy attack. The action
would flicker in my eyes, innocent civilians, in a trance which caged and froze
me still. Missile launch. I would remember for a moment, atomic, hydrogen, until
the memory was a mirage, lost in the dimensions between existence and time. Like
human dreams, they wouldn’t linger long before they vanished. I knew it was the
vaccinations causing the amnesia, keeping us subdued, but they also kept us fed. Living.
You couldn’t see the sun, from this half of Planet Wynter, but I imagined if you could, it would not be red, nor giant, but the same old sun I remember. Was it the bombs that stopped us spinning? We’d never know. We’d never truly remember.
A critical commentary discussing how
use of focalisation, voice, and narrative in The Surviving Earthlings of
Planet Wynter encouraged the reader to think about particular issues.
The
Surviving Earthlings of Planet Wynter is
a short story following a nameless protagonist’s experience in a new body and world.
Creating a character who remains unnamed intends to reflect a personal loss of
identity in a new genetically modified body and dystopian environment. In Kevin
Kearney’s interpretation of The Road, it is stated that nameless
characters “intensify the surrealism”, forefronting the eradication of
individuality, where factors like gender and ethnicity which typically form our
identities become “insignificant and erased”.[1] Loss of identity was a
theme I aimed to reiterate throughout the prose, reflected through the physical
adaptations changing the protagonist’s body and forming a new, homogenised human
appearance. I wanted to connect this idea to prevalent aesthetic conformities
in modern society. According to Sarah Bonell et al, unrealistic beauty
standards have rapidly popularised the “medicalisation of appearance” and
cosmetic surgery, forming a uniform surgical look.[2] Whilst Elaine Ostry states
that an “identical genetic structure” isn’t a new concept within science
fiction, I intended to reflect that the notion, in a
futuristic setting, has potential to actualise.[3] In fact, the idea that an
individual body can be destroyed and replaced with a standardised, ‘societal
body’ is reinforced in Clare Hanson’s discussion of fascist eugenics movements’
representations in literature. [4] In the story, I emphasised
the dangers of this during the revelation that insufficient vaccination doses
were given to the humans by scientists who deemed particular bodies inferior or
unfit to survive in the new world. Incorporating these themes into my story
were integral to the message I wanted to portray, being the intrinsic connection
humans have to our natural bodies, but the separation society often enforces
upon us.
Having
discussed the severing of connection the protagonist faces with their body, I
similarly aimed to convey the deep-rooted but dismantled relationship they have
with the natural world and humanity itself. By emphasising their nostalgia for
childhood, wilderness and sensory concepts which inextricably define human
nature, I aimed to create an idyllic representation of Earth. The plot unfolds,
rapidly disassembling the peace of these memories, revealing the speculation
that the cause of Earth’s post-apocalyptic collapse wasn’t climatic, but rather
a human-caused nuclear holocaust. My influences for this plot twist derived
from two sources, the first being Jutta Weldes’ claim that “science fiction is
reflective of world politics” and the idea that this future is possible and a
warning.[5] The second inspiration
being the messages in Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, warning
that human behaviour must change in order to save Earth from environmental
destruction caused by nuclear warfare.[6]
Influenced
by Kip Thorne’s The Science of Interstellar and Elizabeth Tasker’s The
Planet Factory, the original premise of my story was for Planet Wynter to
be set on an exoplanet, with the same context of post-war Earth being rendered
uninhabitable.[7]
However, considering my protagonist’s connections to the natural world and consequent
absence being removed from it, I deemed the setting of a futuristic Earth more ominous.
Discussed by Stephen Kellert, the notion of “biophilia” asserts that the human
search for a “coherent and fulfilling” existence is “intimately dependent” upon
our relationship to nature. He further claims that the tendency to destroy
elements of the natural world can be viewed as an “innate need” to decipher the
vast spectrum of life around us.[8] This research supports the
notion that my dystopian story could reflect a plausible future, particularly
when the politicians are described to flee the planet, rather than prioritising
the preservation of Earth. Aiming to confront the issues of the lack of
environmental priority and action taken in the current political climate, I
intended the setting of a future Earth to feel threatening and inescapable.
In order to further express the plausibility of the plot, I wanted the protagonist to be relatable to the reader. By constructing an informal tone often embellished with dry humour, I ensured the reader had constant access to the character’s internal monologue. Claimed by Gerard Genette, the narrative technique of establishing the protagonist as the only focaliser, can present a “persuasive” and “convincing” fictional world.[9] After reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, I felt both claustrophobic and empathetic being consumed within the similarly unnamed narrator’s internal monologue. Our characters share the loss of power in a dystopian environment, and I was therefore inspired to emanate a similar tone.[10] Much like how the theme of fertility in Atwood’s novel is constructed as both a weapon and punishment, I described the vaccination-serum in my story to be something the adapted humans are dependent on for sustenance whilst it simultaneously suppresses their memories of the old Earth, introducing questions of bodily autonomy. Delia Harrington states bodily autonomy has been a “recurring theme” in recent science fiction given the “ongoing political debates” about LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, where decisions about the body are impacted by “systematic interference”. [11] I therefore intended for this comparison to be a reminder of reality, even representative of the pandemic, in order to evoke a sense of helplessness and discomfort for the reader, where the body is used by systems of power as an interchangeable symbol of both freedom and oppression.
Bibliography
Primary
Texts
Atwood,
Margaret, The Handmaid’s Tale (London: Vintage, 2017)
McCarthy,
Cormac, The Road (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006)
Thorne,
Kip, The Science of Interstellar, (London: W. W. Norton & Company,
2014)
Secondary
Texts
Bonell,
Sarah, Fiona Barlow and Scott Griffiths, ‘The Cosmetic Surgery Paradox: Toward
a Contemporary Understanding of Cosmetic Surgery Popularisation and Attitudes’,
Body Image, 38 (2021) <Available at: The cosmetic surgery paradox:
Toward a contemporary understanding of cosmetic surgery popularisation and
attitudes | Elsevier Enhanced Reader>
[Accessed on 3 May 2023]
Genette, Gerard,
Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (New York: Cornell University
Press, 1983)
Hanson, Clare,
Eugenics, Literature, and Culture in Post-War Britain (New York:
Routledge, 2013)
Harrington,
Delia, We Are Not Things: Shining Examples of Women’s Autonomy in Sci-Fi (2016)
<Available at: We Are Not Things: Women’s Autonomy
in Sci-Fi | The Mary Sue>
[Accessed on 3 May 2023] (para. 1 of 6)
Kearney,
Kevin, ‘Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the Frontier of the Human’, Lit:
Literature Interpretation Theory, 23 (2012) 160-178
Kellert,
Stephen, The Biophilia Hypothesis (Washington DC: Island Press, 2013)
Ostry,
Elaine, ‘Is He Still Human? Are you?:
Young Adult Science Fiction in the Posthuman Age’, The Lion and The Unicorn,
28 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004), 222-246
Weldes,
Jutta, ‘Popular Culture, Science Fiction, and World Politics’, To Seek Out
New Worlds: Science Fiction and World Politics (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003) 1-27
Filmography
The
Day The Earth Stood Still, dir.
by Robert Wise (Twentieth Century Fox, 1951) [Motion Picture]
[1] Kevin Kearney,
‘Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the Frontier of the Human’, Lit:
Literature Interpretation Theory, 23 (2012), p. 164
In reference to: Cormac McCarthy, The
Road (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006).
[2] Sarah Bonell,
Fiona Barlow and Scott Griffiths, ‘The Cosmetic Surgery Paradox: Toward a
Contemporary Understanding of Cosmetic Surgery Popularisation and Attitudes’, Body
Image, 38 (2021) <Available at: The cosmetic
surgery paradox: Toward a contemporary understanding of cosmetic surgery
popularisation and attitudes - ScienceDirect > [Accessed on 3 May 2023], p.
230
[3] Elaine Ostry, ‘Is
He Still Human? Are You?: Young Adult Science Fiction in the Posthuman Age’, The
Lion and the Unicorn, 28 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004), p.
227
[4] Clare Hanson,
‘Genetics and Eugenics’, Eugenics, Literature, and Culture in Post-War
Britain, 11 (New York: Routledge, 2013) p. 66
[5] Jutta
Weldes, ‘Popular Culture, Science Fiction, and World Politics’, To Seek Out
New Worlds: Science Fiction and World Politics (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003) pp. 1-27
[6] The Day The
Earth Stood Still, dir. by Robert Wise (Twentieth Century Fox, 1951)
[Motion Picture].
[7] Kip Thorne, The
Science of Interstellar, (London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2014), p. 19
and Elizabeth Tasker, The Planet
Factory: Exoplanets and the Search for a Second Earth, (London: Bloomsbury
Sigma, 2017), p. 134
[8] Stephen Kellert, The
Biophilia Hypothesis (Washington DC: Island Press, 2013), pp. 42-43
[9] Gerard Genette,
Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (New York: Cornell University
Press, 1983), p. 10
[10] Margaret Atwood,
The Handmaid’s Tale (London: Vintage, 2017).
[11] Delia Harrington, We
Are Not Things: Shining Examples of Women’s Autonomy in Sci-Fi (2016)
<Available at: We Are Not Things:
Women’s Autonomy in Sci-Fi | The Mary Sue> [Accessed on 3 May 2023] (para.
1 of 6).
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