The Cliffs of Utpala

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Kyra scanned across the horizon. It was a huge world. It was a huge world and so little of it was truly habitable for Humanity. And all of that little bit was oppressively small for one just out of teenagerhood.

Humanity's place on Utpala was tenuous at best. The atmosphere was generally too thick and would cause carbon dioxide poisoning if a person descended the cliffs to the shoreline unprotected. However, up in the mountains, on the high plateaus, the atmosphere was breathable. And that's where humanity had settled.

The problem at the high altitudes, the area where people could survive was really limited: you could breathe, but most of the land was ice and bare rock. The Great Plain of Kailash was nestled high and safe, but was little more than a threadbare covering of loess over a basalt eruption that had taken place millions of years ago. It was a mere veneer of dirt left by the grinding of great glaciers.

To make matters worse, the basalt rested upon a great upheaval of limestone thousands of meters high. And those grand, up-thrust cliffs were crumbling underneath the basalt...and vast chunks of basalt would overhang the crumbling foundation beneath. And seemingly without warning, crack and break off and fall the thousands of meters below.

Like all things on Utpala, there was a gift, but it came with a sharp needle buried within. The warm air from the seas and atmosphere below would blow up and onto the plain. For a good hundred meters from the cliff, even in winter, the land would stay warm...but it meant living close to the crumbling cliffs. Crops could be grown in the open, but they could equally be lost, lost when the basalt which their field was on gave way and fell down, down into the warm and damned depths of Utpala's seas.

Or lost when the cold winds blew too strong from the glacial interior and froze the plants to death.

Life was precarious at best for the native flora and fauna, at least that which attempted to live at this altitude. Most did not though. And that made it possible for Earth life to have some attempt at colonizing the planet. That is why Kyra’s family came to Utpala.

Most native Utpalan flora and fauna lived down in the depths of the atmosphere where it was hot and moist and deadly. The atmosphere had too much carbon dioxide down in the depths and it made it hot. And poisonous for humans and most Terran life to attempt to live below the cliffs.

So Humanity had come to Utpala and lived, after a fashion, you might say. The colonists heralded from India. This was one of India’s worlds. One of the ones out past the close-in first and second-generation worlds the nations of earth had colonized. Utpala was not the most desirable world, but none were even nearly as nice as Earth. Well, Caerus was close, but that was a sole exception. And it had the squigglies. They were…less than palatable to think about.

Utpala only had three thousand colonists. There were three towns and an assortment of villages. Had the world been maps that mattered for who controlled what territory, the accurate maps would show the colonists never really controlled much past 30 kilometers from the great edge of the cliffs.

Each town had a linked chain of towns along the edge and, perhaps, one further from the warm edge and into the icy cold.

Kyra was sad.

She wanted a bigger life. She knew there were a myriad of worlds out there. She knew India was a great and wondrous place: home to two billion people. That was almost a million times more than the entirety of her world. Whole neighborhoods were more people than the entirety of Utpala. There were single buildings where people lived with more people than Utpala. And her village was not one of the main towns.

The most exciting thing she could hope for her, for her life, would be to become a hunter of the giant, genetically engineered Jamnapari goats the government had turned loose. They had turned loose a handful of tigers to keep them in check ten years later, after the population of mega goats had exploded from a few hundred to tens of thousands. However, while momentarily exciting and the thrill of death was real, it was not something that would make a lasting mark. And, frankly was really provisional. Who hunted for food in the 22nd century?! Especially as a citizen of one of the most advanced nations from Earth!

She ought to be glad life on Utpala was biochemically mostly compatible with Terran life. She ought to be glad she had foods she could eat that were not lab grown or worry about a random allergy killing her faster than she could react or the pathological ecology of Escheria. But she kept thinking of her life and its curtailed existence.

She was a young adult and she lived on the edge of human space and while the cost of interstellar travel was less than half a century before, it was still too much to go as a tourist.

She looked down at the steamy heat and forbidden ocean below. She felt the precariousness of the cliff she was standing at. And she felt the warm currents washed up and on her. The moisture condensed on her. Her breathing quickened a bit from the change in atmosphere. She smiled. Even the untouchable world below was of more interest. All wild and largely unknown. There were specialists, but most came from Earth and were not colonists. There was little chance for colonists to become familiar with the life down below.

There were no specialists on Utpala now. A funding fight in Parliament, she understood.

She was saddened by that. That would be a source of excitement. A true exploration. But…she and hers were focused on surviving, on expanding, on making Humanity a true home here.

To be sure, the hunters were trained to collect life from the mountains and how to note its place, significance and catalog it. But they were field techs only on the side. Their primary job was to collect meat from the herds of mega goats first and foremost.

She breathed deep for a moment. She turned and walked towards the icy innards of her village. It wasn’t truly icy, but that’s how she saw it. She walked in and with every step the temperature fell. Every moment, it grew colder. It took her twenty minutes to go the two kilometers from the edge of the cliff to the heart of the town, and, sadly, in her mind, it would take her a mere ten minutes to pass through the village.

She wandered through to the other side. She was becoming cold now. It was not the cold of winter, nor of the glacier, but it was cold; a humid, damp cold a mere five kilometers from the edge of the cliff. The sort that made someone cold in their bones even though the temperature ought not been more than merely slightly chilly. It was the humidity from the updrafts from the world below. They brought so much water in the air, it made life here possible…but it also began condensing out the further one went.

At eight kilometers, she passed a hunter and his robo sled. He could ride it or walk. The he and the sled were on one of the excellent roads the bots built. It was Arjun. It was a good ten years older and a friend. She waved back but didn’t stop. She wanted her time alone. He understood. He often felt the same way. It’s why he became a hunter.

At twelve kilometers, her family began beeping her. They were trying to reach her to tell her to come home. They hated her ‘walkabouts.’ She had work to do. They all did, but once in a while, she needed to get away. She needed time to make peace with herself.

At sixteen kilometers, she knew she would have to turn back soon. It was only noon, but she did not want to be here when the sun set. It got rather cold. There was a frost every night here, even in summer. In winter, it never broke above freezing. Eve so, she kept on. It was spring though…

She reached the edge of the snowdrifts at 34 kilometers. It had taken a long time to get here walking. She stared at the nearly blinding snow. Only plants that broke through this early were the engineered ones from earth and a handful of locals. Not many. Not many at all. She could see a forest in the distance, but it was too far for today: she’d walked and it was already only a couple hours from sun down. She had a long trip back. She wanted to see that forest. She’d only been there a few times.

She breathed in the cold. She looked at what was out there. She wished there was more. She wished she more options in life. Perhaps there would be something. But, for now, she would make the best of what she had.

She sighed and turned away. She started her long walk back and her breath swirled around her head like the smoke of a frustrated dragon.