An Ideal Cradle

20251024

Written for Bradley Ramsey's "First Indulgence" event.

At first the planet seemed perfect. Exactly what the mission had been looking for - a new cradle for humanity. Untouched. Unspoiled. A chance to do it right this time.
Potential names were being thrown around before the shuttle even undocked from Geospermia II and entered the planet’s orbit. “Jewel of Andromeda” was leading the vote.
Then they reached the far side of the planet and got visual on a section the long-range scans had flagged as a probable mountain range.
“Is that… skyscrapers?”
“No way.”
“What else can they be?”
“I-I dunno! We’ll see when we land.”
“There’s…” George coughed, forcing the words out of a suddenly dry throat. “There’s a landing pad down there. On top of the… hospital.”
“…No telling that thing’s structurally sound.” Dylan said firmly.
Refusing to label it a building. Refusing to label it at all.
But as they coasted lower it became undeniable. Beneath the skyscrapers were roads. Apartment blocks. Street lights.
“Are you getting deja vu too?”
Dylan growled “I’m trying to concentrate.”
“Seriously, man, this looks like what we left behind, way back-”
“Of all the people to be stuck landing a shuttle with while losing my mind, it had to be a chatterbox like you! Shut up!”
George swallowed a snort and pinged a spot on the terrain scan. “Nice empty parking lot right there.”
While Dylan ground his teeth, he set the target and initiated landing.
As the survey team exited the shuttle they were clearly equally perturbed by this discovery. Scanners held up like wards against mind-warping evil, reports being scribbled frantically, and in some cases people pinching themselves.
“We, er, we’re going to follow standard procedure.” The lead surveyor announced, and Dylan gestured confirmation.
Now all they had to do was mind the shuttle and communication channels. Which left a lot of time to stare out the window at their surroundings.
“…It’s not quite right, is it?” George muttered, zooming in on one of the side cameras. “It’s… it’s like a dream, or something.”
“Mm.” Dylan frowned at his tablet, which was returning no results for the writing-like shapes adorning the storefronts. ‘Does not match any known languages’.
The logos were like that, too. Their shapes, their colours, the ‘writing’, it all felt intimately familiar. Yet not right.
George scrubbed at his arms. “You know those, when you take half of someone’s face and mirror it, so it looks like a face but somehow you know it isn’t?”
“Yeah. It is like that. Or… when you zoom in too far on a painting.”
“Uh-huh.” George forced a smile. “You can tell it’s not home.”
Dylan didn’t prompt him. Didn’t even look up from the tablet. George determinedly continued “No coffeeshops. There’d be at least one, on a street like this.”
“Ugh. Now I want a cappuccino.”
George chuckled and looked back across the square - and froze.
There was a coffeeshop. Not eight meters away. Bold orange building emblazoned with a logo which, while not looking like anything recognisable, was definitely advertising a cafe. And through the glass front he could clearly see the wooden counter and coffee machines and everything.
How had he missed it?
His gaze flicked around the unnaturally generic buildings. The coffeeshop stuck out like a beacon in a nebula cloud. It would’ve been the first thing he looked at. Surely.
Keeping his focus on it, he pointedly mused “There’d be a charity shop, too.”
Dylan shot him an odd look. Clearly confused why he was rambling about a world they’d long left behind, hundreds of years of cryo-sleep ago.
Ignoring him, George counted to thirty and then looked around the square.
There. Cheery white building with blue trim. The front filled with… his brain said clothes and books and soft toys, but even from here he could tell the shapes weren’t… they were like plaster statues of those things, rather than things themselves.
“Can you… see that?”
Dylan followed George’s finger and did a double-take. “What the - I swear that wasn’t-”
“Yeah. I don’t think it was either.”
Dylan hunched over the tablet, flipping through images, then held it up to compare.
Same structure. And the surrounding buildings were exact matches. But in the photo the ‘charity shop’ was the same bland neutral off-white and its sign was just a squiggle which, while definitely a shop sign, could be attached to any kind of shop.
George whispered “You pick something. Remember something.”
“Ahh…” Sweat beaded on Dylan’s brow. “W-well, there’d… be someplace you can buy groceries, yeah? Maybe even a dry cleaners…”
They both looked around wildly. Then Dylan gripped George’s arm with a strangled hiss and pointed at the feed from the rear camera.
There they were. One next to the other.
“I swear I know that logo.” Dylan whispered, his voice trembling. “From when I was a kid.”
George clicked on a line to the survey team. “We’ve got something weird here, this place is-”
“Ideal.”
Was that Dr Clark?
“This place is ideal. Our search is over.” With a crackle his voice was suddenly frantic. “REPEAT, WE-” a flicker more static, and the calm intonation returned. “-have found what we’re looking for.”
George and Dylan exchanged looks, then George muted the line while Dylan brought up communications with the ship.
“Geospermia II, this is Shuttle 1. We have encountered… I don’t even know how to describe this. Uh, it seems this region is… psychic, or something? I-I know this sounds crazy, but I think something’s here, it’s intellegent, and it’s interfering with our communications with the survey team. Please advise. Over.”
Crackling. As if this unit wasn’t equipped to maintain connection through a packed ice belt. They both leant forward, breaths caught, then heard “Affirmative. We are dispatching the colony now.”
“What??” Dylan thumped the button, making sure it was on. “No! No! I’m saying we need to GET OUT-”
With a deafening crack the ‘asphalt’ split open, and the shuttle plunged into darkness with a final whisper of static.

Prompt was “An interstellar mission departs to seek out a new home for humanity in the Andromeda galaxy. The team begins to survey a habitable world, only to discover remnants of an ancient civilisation…”