Pale Blue Sky

There was naught a tree speckling the horizon. White, cracked salt flats spread before me, crumbling beneath the weight of the pale blue sky. Nary a wisp of rain cloud floated either, for the pale blue sky’s weight had vanquished them like a fog to the salt flats, whose greedy cracks licked up whatever water they carried, ignorant that they soaked the last drops of the earth.

Other life had desiccated, or in some cases burned, in the extreme heat. Early on, the salt flats had been the mineral-rich bed of a lake, so mineral-rich that the sand, pebbles, and rocks covered every color of the rainbow and beyond, and the lake so clear, one swimming truly seemed to be floating over a glistening rainbow, pulsating with each sparkling ripple.

Now, the sun’s hot rays had bleached the rainbow, and the heavy atmosphere had crushed the jagged edges and rounded contours of every rock and pebble. Only a cracked white dust, stretching in every direction, remained.

When the lake still played rainbow tricks on our eyes, it had been surrounded by lush green trees with gnarled branches of wizened bark, whose conical red fruit were cherished by children and cooks for pies, and whose branches blossomed into weeping, sweeping crowns of delicate yellow and purple flowers each spring and early summer.

Now, the atmosphere had grown so hot so fast that the trees erupted into violent flame, raging flickering whips of fire red and cone-like as the fruit they once bore, dancing upon the drying, bleaching lake’s edge. They left a black soot where they last stood, but soon, the heat turned even the black soot white, becoming one with the parched, parchment plains.

Yet, in the extreme heat and pressure, some of the rainbow lake’s formerly-living, swimming inhabitants, and a select few of the trees and their formerly-breathing, flying tenants, had turned into diamonds, their refracting rainbows a siren call in the dry ocean of white.

I was here for the last of the diamonds. The atmosphere would soon collapse entirely, crushing what had yet kept its form into dust, and what lived into diamond. Then, the scientists told us, a vacuum would take its place, sucking the dust and diamonds into the far reaches of space.

Most of the treasure hunters had already scoured the white salt flats of rainbow lake and made off with their loot, enriching themselves in their atmosphere-resistant terrariums here before escaping with their coins to a new, habitable planet.

Yet, some very fine diamonds remained, likely the remains of tiny, scuttling creatures with thick exoskeletons that had tried to make the salt flats their homes before they, too, were burned and crushed.

I, with my lottery ticket granting me passage only on the final flight, whose ascent had been delayed due to dust and debris clouding its flight path, fumbled with the x-pano glasses that darkened the cracked, bleached earth and made sparkling diamonds easier to spot. The glasses had been a lucky find on the edge of an abandoned terrarium, its recent inhabitants eager to rid themselves of any extra weight before their flight, and any reminder of their deadly, dying home planet.

I scanned the ground before me, a submarine radar desperate for any form of former life. As my eyes crept up closer to the horizon, a violent surge of dust kicked up to the east. A terra-v—a small terrarium vehicle, as there was no other means of traversing the planet—was coming closer.

I slipped off my glasses and held them to the breast of my terra-flex suit, wondering who else had realized that the salt flats were still scattered with small riches. I thought I saw two figures in the terra-v, but the hot sun and bright dust made it difficult to decipher any silhouettes. Only one exited the vehicle, taking long, striding steps towards me.

As the dust settled, I made out hooded hazel eyes that glinted blue in the sunlight, and light brown hair that glistened gold in the rays. It was Dr. Lilliput, a former professor I presumed to have already found a home elsewhere. Surely, his luck could not have been as bad as mine.

“Clara! Clara, is that you?” boomed the voice in my terra-suit, my chest recoiling in anticipatory dread. Dr. Lilliput, when the world had not quite slipped into sheer chaos, had been a new arrival in our quaint lakeside town, here to study the rainbow lake’s minerals. His charm disarmed any townsfolk weary of encroachment on our resources and livelihood, and his increasing interest in my own studies made me grow fond of his sharply delicate features, his lean physique, and his rich, throaty voice.

When I became curious about his life outside of the town, he offered little explanation, often turning the conversation back around to my progress on some mineral analyses. When some fishermen wondered why, in some patches of the lake, the rainbow had become but a few colors, Dr. Lilliput skipped town, never to be seen again.

Though I felt a cavernous, dull ache swell within my chest for some days after, really, there was naught I could do…after all, we had only exchanged words, and there had been no promise or even discussion of a deeper relationship between us, only lingering glances, drawn-out conversations, and an extreme eagerness to meet each day.

Now, that ache transformed into dread, and I could offer but a perfunctory “hello”.

“Clara! It’s been too long! Still studying the minerals here? Not that there’s much left of them, hah!” he joked.

“Haha…yeah, it’s all white crystalline dust now.”

“Well, not just dust! You must know about the diamonds, too!”

“Yeah…there are some diamonds here…they’re pretty small, though—”

“Oh, no diamond is too small for me! Here, why don’t you show me around?”

“Well actually, Dr. Lilliput, the diamonds are everywhere…I don’t think I need to show you around.”

“Oh, just for old time’s sake! You know, I’ve missed you quite a bit.”

“Wasn’t there someone else in your vehicle? Who was that?”

“What? There’s no one here but me…and you, of course! Oh, what happened to your studies, given…everything?”

“Uh…well, I’ve just stayed here documenting all these changes…I’m on the last flight out, so I suppose it’s as thorough of a manuscript as I could possibly write…I’m sure I can publish on another planet…”

“Yes, it’s quite a hot topic these days! Haha.”

I didn’t laugh.

“Well, what are those glasses you have there?”

I hesitated to answer, but even if he took the glasses, I’d likely find fewer, but enough diamonds with my bare eyes.

“Oh, just something I found in the trash. Just keeping it around, don’t know how much it’s worth.”

“Oh, but Clara, I think those might be worth quite a lot!”

“Sorry?”

“Yes, those are x-pano glasses, correct?”

“I—I’m not sure. I just found them…”

“Put them on!”

I pursed my lips and put on the glasses.

“Now, those diamonds scattered around us should be clear as day! You know, that’s a rare find, the lens material was actually developed in my lab, from the minerals in your lakebed!”

I took the glasses off, a self-burrowing pit replacing my stomach.

“I had no idea, Dr. Lilliput. I guess the lake is trying to help us to the very end.”

“Hmmm…yes, I suppose so. Would you mind if I borrowed your pair? I…wanted to check something”.

Finally, he was going to steal the glasses, but he couldn’t take all of the diamonds. Or my thesis. Right?

“Oh, Clara, yes, I see it now. Clear as day! Those aren’t diamonds.”

“What?”

“Yes, they aren’t diamonds. Only moissanite.”

“I…I don’t think they are. Moissanite has silicon in addition to carbon, diamonds are pure carbon…there was no silicon in this lakebed.”

“Clever girl, aren’t you.”

“What?”

“I…never mind. Well, how much to get rid of you?”

“What?”

“I said…well, if you can’t hear what I’m saying, I might as well show you instead.”

Dr. Lilliput brandished a serrated scimitar, whose metal reflected the pale blue sky, and shimmered in the heat. It was nearly invisible.

“Your terra-suit…also developed in my lab, by the way…is impermeable to most things, but at the end of the day, any fiber can be sliced by a sharp-enough knife.”

I was terrified and completely confused. What was the use in killing me, when he should have been wildly rich, profiting off of the demise of our planet?

“You know, Clara, I really liked you. As recompense, I’ll happily give you posthumous co-authorship on the manuscript…it’s your thesis, after all.”

“You’re going to kill me over my thesis?!”

“No. I’m going to turn you into the Kohinoor.”

With that, he took the blade, a rapid shimmer in against the pale blue sky, and swung it down. Panicked, I jumped out of the way, its teeth missing my terra-suit by mere centimeters.

“There’s enough diamonds here for both of us! You go your way, I’ll go mine!”

“Oh, so you can scamper off and publish an expose about me?”

“Jesus Christ, do you think of anyone aside from yourself?!”

He lunged at me again, and this time, the shimmering, invisible blade missed me by mere millimeters. Soon, I truly would become, regrettably, his Kohinoor.

But before he could swing at me again, a ball of flame appeared on the horizon, flickering and cone-like, red as ripe fruit.

Dr. Liliput gasped, as did I, for the salt flats seemed to have incinerated and crystallized all forms of life. The tree must have been relatively large to have produced a flame visible even from here, and Dr. Lilliput sensed this, turning back towards his vehicle, anticipating a diamond larger than what I could offer. His grip on the shimmering scimitar was still iron-fast.

However, he would likely be back for me, and here, there was nowhere I could truly run or hide. Though if I could not outrun him, I could likely outsmart him.

“Dr. Lilliput, I think that’s a mirage. I don’t think that tree, or that blaze, is real.”

“Nonsense, that blaze is as real as day. A mirage is a real image produced from light refracting through less-dense, hot air, and more-dense, cold air—I don’t see how a red blaze could be produced by these white salt flats and this pale blue sky.”

He started to turn around.

“You know, I expected better—”

Before he could finish his sentence, I grabbed some of the crystalline dust and threw it onto his helmet and terra-flex suit.

“Ugh! What is the meaning of this?! You can pierce neither this helmet nor this suit with dust—”

But as he tried to wipe away the dust, refusing to loosen the grip on the blade reflecting the pale blue sky, it tore at his suit, and nearly immediately the hot and heavy atmosphere rushed in.

He, too, became a fiery blaze, and in a matter of seconds, was reduced to what was likely a 50-carat gemstone. As I circled around it, I realized it refracted too much light—not only did Dr. Lilliput, or any other person really, not have enough carbon to recreate the Kohinoor, but he’d had some silicon on him, possibly from the x-pano glasses, and in front of me was a giant hunk of moissanite instead.

The vehicle seemed to have disappeared after Dr. Lilliput tore his own suit, so no one was here to collect him. Though worth merely a tenth of what he could have been without that silicon, the Lilliputian moissanite could still cover the costs of publishing my thesis—and a case report of the first human being condensed, by the pale blue sky, into moissanite. I pocketed the gemstone, and started to make my way over to rainbow lake’s final gift. Indeed, the pale blue sky, and white crystal remains of rainbow lake, colluded to help me to the very end.