---Esme’s perspective---

---Wednesday, 13th of September, 2682 Terran Calendar---

---Central Algeria---

“So, Mr Nasri… would you tell us about where the water comes from to irrigate these crops?” asks Ms Larch, a plump little half Denisovan woman with straight, dark hair and a limp that disqualified her from service.

She is a strong contender for the most boring woman alive… and is also my teacher.

“Of course…” smiles the tall, genial Amazigh man, in fluent (if heavily accented) standard English (as he can’t speak or understand Lallans Scots… which is fairly typical), gesturing at the fields around us “…the water comes from pipes, laid under the Mediterranean sea and Atlantic Ocean where they extend hundreds of kilometres off shore. It comes here, to the Sahara Agricultural Band, and we use it to produce 45% of all Terra’s food!”

“And… could you tell us, why do the pipes need to be so long? Couldn’t the water just be collected at the coast?” asks the teacher, acting like she doesn’t already know.

The man smiles and laughs “Of course!… Mechanically, there wouldn’t be any problem with that! Ecologically, on the other hand, the problem would be that, with the enormous quantity of fresh water we need, we would be creating a huge plume of brine that would make the area around the collection point quite inhospitable to marine life… The desalination happens at the source, with only fresh water being let into the pipes and the salt being left in the ocean. The length of the pipes is necessary to… erm… what is the English word?…*snap* diffuse oversalinated water across a wide enough area not to be toxic to the marine ecosystem… Causing damage of that kind would be harmful to maintaining the habitability of our planet…”

“Fascinating, fascinating…” simpers Larch, seeming like she might have a bit of a crush on the agricultural engineer “…and, Mr Nasri…?”

“Please, call me Hassan!” smiles the good looking man.

“Well… err… Hassan, would you tell us a little about the role the Green Sahara played in the Reset?”

“I’d be honoured to!” he says, swelling with pride and turning to the class “You see, children… err… I mean… young ladies and gentlemen…” he corrects, obviously realising how ridiculous it is to refer to people almost old enough to serve as ‘children’!

He clears his throat and continues on his (obviously) heavily rehearsed spiel “…nearly a thousand years ago, back before the resurrecting of Homo Tshwane, Homo Longi, Homo Denisova or even Homo Neanderthalensis and before the creation of any uplifted or artificial sapients, when Homo sapiens were the only intelligent species living on Earth, our society experience the Industrial Revolution… which was a great thing for our technology and quality of life (generally) but not so great a thing for our planet!… By the late 21st Century, we were about to have a total collapse of Earth’s entire ecology!… It was at that time that Humanity United… Coming together to work to a solution to our dying world, we embarked on a grand project to terraform our own planet. This is known as the ‘Reset’… It took hundreds of years for us to fully undo the damage that had been done and the techniques we developed, here, were what allowed us to settle other planets so easily… The Green Sahara played three vital roles in preserving both our planet and our species: The first thing it did, was produce higher cloud cover, with the increased evaporation and transpiration happening here raising the planet’s overall humidity… This might not sound like much but, because the main problem we were facing was our planet’s increasing temperature, it helped in short term by increasing the albedo (the amount of light our planet reflects back into space). This bought us the precious time we needed to develop the technology that would rescue us from the calamity we had caused!… In medium to long term it made rebuilding the lost ice cover much easier by…”

Not really having the patience to listen (for the millionth time) to the story about how great we are for sorting out our own fuck ups, I lean in to Tommie and mutter “So it’s these guys’ fault that Stranraer is wetter than an otter’s pocket(!)”

Her whiskers swish up and down as she giggles at the joke.

“Is it just me or are you absolutely sweating your tits off out here too?” I ask.

“I’m… a little hot.” she breathes, hesitantly.

“I’ll bet! All that fur, you must be sweltering!... Is it…?”

“Ms Reid!” comes an angry voice.

“Yes, Ms Larch?” I respond, innocently.

“Is it too much to ask that you pay attention while Hassan here is giving up his time to educate us about the history of his region?”

“No… Ms Larch…” I respond, abashed.

The rest of the class have a hearty giggle at my public shaming.

---later---

---Southwestern Scotland---

“The bitch has got it out for me!… Just ’cause she thinks I’m a ‘disruptive student’!” I grizzle, as I try and fail to skip a stone across the water toward the Man Peninsula, visible on the south horizon.

“You are a disruptive student, Mimi…” says Tommie from behind me.

I turn to stare daggers at her but find that she’s looking at her holopad.

“What’s the point in coming out here to nature if you’re just gonna stare at your screen the whole time, Tommie?!” I challenge.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“It’s called homework, Esme(!) Not that you’d know anything about that(!)” she shoots back, coolly.

I scowl and turn back to the water.

“I just don’t really see the point of learning all this shit about history and ecology when I’m gonna be drafted soon!”

“You really want to come home with zero useful skills? Historically, it hasn’t ended well when societies have allowed there to be large numbers of unemployed people whose only talents are those related to killing folk…(!)”

“Easy for you to say… You get to stay here and raise an adorable little litter of kitten-puppy abominations-against-nature with Rex(!)” I tease.

“Actually… Mimi…” she starts, her tone serious.

I turn behind me, my eyes wide with disbelief.

“…I’ve been thinking I might try to… enlist…” she finishes, sheepishly.

I stand, frozen to the spot, for 3 long seconds, before I stride across the stony beach, my feet scattering pebbles with each footfall.

I reach the rock where she’s sitting and take her grey furred face between my hands, forcing her slitpupiled, amber eyes to meet mine.

She makes a silent whimper and folds her ears (more than normal) as I stare down at her, furiously.

“I forbid it!” I state, seething with anger.

“But…!”

“No buts, Tamsin Quinn!!!… I don’t get a choice about whether to fight… you do, but I’ll be bloody damned if I let you throw your life away for nothing!”

She stands up and bats my hands away with her paws “How is it fair that you have to fight and I don’t!?”

I give a slightly hysterical laugh as I answer “Fair?! Fair?!?!?!… Nothing about this stupid fucking War is fair!!!… Was it fair when it took my parents?! When it took your fosterdads?!… We spent our entire recorded history looking at the stars and imagining the people we could meet out there and, it turns out, to them, we’re the equivalent of the fucking xenomorphs!… On the 5th of February, 2679, fairness became an unaffordable luxury! So, you are going to thank your lucky stars that being an uplift means you don’t have to go to the same Hell that I do, you’re going to marry Rex (or maybe someone else, if things don’t work out with him) you’re going to have a million babies and, if I don’t make it back, you are gonna live my fucking share! Is that understood, Tamsin!?”

Looking extremely pained, she lets out a pathetic sob as she nods “OK, Esme…”

“Good!” I say, angrily, before pulling her into a heartfelt cuddle.

She holds me tight as I stroke my hands through the dark grey fur of her back.

I smile and joke “God, your fur is soft, Tommie!… If I make it back from the War and things don’t work out with Rex, how’s about you and me get married(?)”

She giggles as she says “We’re both straight, Mimi… Also, I’m not a muscular Neanderthal man and you aren’t a cute Canis boy!”

“So…(?!)” I grin “…did I say ‘lets get married and have wild, crazy sex every night’?”

“So your idea of marriage would be?”

“Simple(!) I go out to work and you stay home and keep the place clean, have a meal ready when I get home and then let me snuggle your fur(!)”

“It sounds like what you want is a live-in housekeeper more than a spouse(!)” she quips.

“Nah… I’d have to pay a housekeeper…(!) Plus, it’s generally considered harassment to make your employees snuggle with you(!)”

She gives a mirthful sigh as she says “You are incorrigible, Ms Reid!”

“I don’t know the meaning of the word(!)” I say (honestly) as I curl myself around her and sit her back down on the rock, cuddling her from behind now.

We look out to the south as the Sun gets low in the sky.

“I don’t only like muscly Neanderthal guys, you know…” I muse.

She snorts and answers “Oh, nooooo(!)… I’m sure you’re partial to a wide assortment of different types of man…(!) For instance, muscly Neanderthal hybrids, muscly Denisovans, muscly Denisovan hybrids and may even be persuaded to be attracted to a Sapiens or a Longi… if he was hench enough, of course(!)… I have to assume that even the most cut Tshwane would still be too skinny for your tastes.”

“Alright little Miss Only-Dates-Good-Boys(!)” I shoot back.

“Canis are fun and attentive, especially Rex!… I really don’t see the appeal of men who look like they’ve had their bodies carved out of marble and I don’t have the slightest inclination to Neanderthals!” she responds, resolutely.

“You don’t feel any sort of kinship with them… being a Scot?” I ask.

She gives a mirthful frown over her shoulder and demands “Explain exactly what it is that you think us and Neanderthals have in common, Mimi!”

“Well, to me it seems like we’re both proud races of intelligent folk (with lots of red hair) who, historically, got squashed under the bootheel of a more successful competitor, trying to erase our culture and identity and assimilate us into becoming them… Do you not agree?”

“You realise that, as a Sapiens, not only does that make you the Englishwoman of that little analogy but any hybrid kids you had with your lucky husband would also be part of the process of Neanderthal assimilation?”

“You call me an Englishwoman again, Tommie, and your gonna leave me with no choice but to wash your mouth out with soap(!)” I grin.

“I’m quivering(!)” she answers, dryly.

I give her a squeeze as we sit in silence, staring at the water for a while.

“Don’t you think it’s kinda bullshit that, right now, Terra considers me to be a wee baby, doing wee baby things, but, next month, they’re gonna press a gun into my hands and say ‘off to War with you!’” I say, eventually.

“You could always volunteer for Officer Training if you’re so keen to go off and die?” points out Tommie, dryly.

“I’m not…” I correct “…just commenting on the arbitrariness of it; Midnight strikes on my birthday and I magically transform from a poor little defenceless girl into a young body, ripe to be tossed into the meatgrinder, in the government’s eyes…”

She sighs and stays silent for a long time before saying “Promise me you’ll come back, Esme…”

I look to the ground and forlornly say “You know I can’t promise that, Tommie…”

“I know… I guess I just… wish you could!”

“I mean… who knows…? We’ve had the xenos on the run since we broke the Cordon… Maybe, by the time I finish Initial Training, they’ll’ve sued for peace!”

“Yeah… maybe…” she answers, letting me know with her tone exactly how likely she thinks that is!

“Do you think, if the situation was reversed, we’d’ve been any better?” I muse, idly.

“What d’you mean?”

“Like… if we’d discovered a planet with six billion xenomorphs living on it in Victorian conditions? Do you think we’d’ve been able to be all friendly with them, ignoring how absolutely lethal they were and how horrifying they looked to us.”

She shakes her head and answers “I think we’d’ve probably nuked the planet from orbit with someone saying ‘it’s the only way to be sure’… I am quite tickled by the image of a xenomorph wearing a tophat and reaching under his tailcoat to pull a pocketwatch out of his vestjacket, though!”

I giggle and the conversation ceases for another long moment.

Then my alarm sounds, letting me know it’s 6:59 and we’ve only got 40mins to make it back to the home before sunset and 1:01hrs to beat the curfew.

“Alright, Missus… you wanna call a capsule or shall we walk(?)”

“Oh, aye(!)” she smirks over her shoulder “Let’s trudge 50km home, over hill and glen(!)”

“Strathluce isn’t a glen, Tommie… It’s a strath!… Honestly, I thought you were meant to be the canny brainbox(!)” I say, smugly.

“We live in a glen, Mimi!” she retorts, calling a capsule on her holo.

“Glen Ryan doesn’t count! It’s all urbanised…”

We argue goodnaturedly, laughing until the capsule arrives to take us home.