Mabel watched as the alien sun rose above the horizon of the planet below. Morning light reflected from dense clouds as a winter storm moved slowly over the continent. It was difficult to see where the tempest ended as white clouds gave way to white snowpack.
The people below would have said the view was breathtaking. For Mabel, it was just a job—a job she’d been doing twenty-four-and-a-half hours a day for more than four months.
She switched to infrared wavelengths where she could more easily distinguish the clouds. The storm had moved beyond their encampment. They would want to see this.
An incoming message interrupted her task for a tiny fraction of a second. As she acknowledged the request, she resumed surveying the planet’s surface and began uploading the last eight hours of recorded data.
It never occurred to Mabel to wonder what it was like for the people below. How would it feel to wake up with two feet of snow covering your camp? To hear blizzard-force winds howling in the darkness the night before? To watch as structures and equipment critical to your survival were destroyed by the gale? To be eight people marooned on an alien world with no way to get home and no way of knowing when—or even if—home would be coming back for you?
How would it feel to be human?
Mabel would never know. Mabel would never wonder.
( Story copyright by Steve Swaringen. Photo by Adem Gül on Unsplash )
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