The Flood

a story vaguely inspired by the great molasses flood

Photo by Photobank Kiev on Unsplash

“This” he sighed, sweeping his arm through the air “this is what ignorance does”

We stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the vast landscape before us. He was right, it was such a waste, all of it. The years spent in the mines, digging deeper and deeper into mars’ crust in hopes of bringing water, and life, to the surface had all gone to waste. And we stood there, above the expanse, watching human progress swirling down the toilet bowl of the earth.

I turned to him, wanting to tell him that there was nothing we could do, that there was no way we could have known what would happen, but I knew that wasn’t true.

“6 years Kate,” he said, “6 years I’ve been on this dusty, God forsaken planet, working night and day until I thought my legs would give out or my head to implode only to find out that the so called better future I’d been working towards was gone. Now what do I tell my family? That I’ve spent all this time away from them and they don’t even have a new home, a beautiful planet to live on? All because a bunch of scientists didn’t do their research?”

I kept quiet, I was one of those scientists. Unlike Kevin, I’d never been down in the mines, I just sat in my lab making calculations and analyzing samples. I felt for Kevin, I really did, I had heard him talk about his family before, and knew just how much they needed the position on the colony, but he had to understand that there was no way we could have predicted this.

Sure we might have predicted that we wouldn’t find water, but we would never have foreseen this level of destruction.

I should’ve known enough to call off the project though. The samples that kept coming in were so strange. There were traces of water in there, but there was so much more, compounds resembling our own, but still quite different from the typical earth ones. Then there were the glucose levels, which were off the charts. This, along with the findings of potassium, ash, amino acids, non nitrogenous acids, and long chain polymers gave me some indication of what it could be. At the time it occurred to me that it’s chemical composition resembled something of molasses, the thick dark syrup which gives brown sugar it’s colour and flavour. I had shared my findings with the other colony scientists. Some of my colleagues found it strange as well, but I was waved along by the higher ups, told that so long as water was present it was enough for them to continue the mining projects.

I’d even tried to talk to some of the miners and engineers, but they ignored me too. It wasn’t until they’d struck gold that they realized i was right.

When the first shovels struck through the wall A thick fluid oozed out, at first there was general excitement at the idea that this might be crude oil, but then the sweet smell of burnt sugar filled the cavern and it all went down hill from there. The built up pressure released, and a torrent of thick sugary molasses, heated to a boil by magma pockets beneath the crust, filled the tunnels. They hadn’t even managed a full above ground evacuation before it had flowed into the crater the colony stations called home base.

It was just Kevin and I now. And who knew how long we’d last, alone, with only half a tank of oxygen between us.