ok, another one for the contest. *the picture is not mine* my contribution is the story for the girl inside it.

Observations – Infinity

I saw a picture once. It was of an object known once as a sunflower; the meld of two principles I have never known, sun and flower. Flowers, they say, were archetypes of the ephemerally beautiful, sometimes blooming for only a day, and never lasting longer than a season; while the sun, it was a symbol of the eternal. So the sunflower is somehow a paradox, capturing a hint of the infinite in the body of the irrevocably finite. We are like those sunflowers -- we, the lost children of the migration. Our duty is to perpetuate the relative infinity of mankind, though we ourselves are trapped in bodies that are regretfully finite.

Our people survived the end of our world, only to enter into a mummified existence on this earth of metal and chrome, lost in a shadow of seemingly endless wandering. All of those who first boarded the ship are gone, save one. The rest of us originated within exile. I am a child born of stainless steel. I took my first steps on iron planks. I have never known earth or sky or rain or any of the concepts people once held onto dearly as concrete, which have now become the abstract to all but the ancient once, who sits in the deepest recess of the hull, lost in the darkness of his regret. His skin, despite years aboard this ship, has a slight pink tinge to it, a washed out version of the full flushes in the photos of our archives. My skin is like ice shot through with milk, and it makes me feel as though I am a specter of their past.

I asked him once, “Why is your skin that color?”

I thought I could hear creaking as he moved his head up to look at me, and he said, “Because I, unlike you, once lived.”

“Do you think I will ever live?”

“If the sun does not blind you, mayhaps you will.”

I would be angry for his arrogance if I did not somehow sense it as truth. We live, yes, breath rattles in our chest. We eat, we breathe, we die, but it is still a half-life. We are constantly aware of our own existence as tools for the survival of the species, and humanity has always prided itself as being somehow above that. Here, encased in metal, it is impossible to understand why, and so I can only concluded that their existence contained some element lacking from our own that would allow them to think that. How I hope it was not simply a product of arrogance. Or else, why? Why continue this fruitless search? Why perpetuate a miserable existence for the sole purpose of perpetuating existence? There are those who like to trust in thoughts of the One, who will one day assure our deliverance, and who grants us a divine purpose, but I for one, have always needed more of an answer.

All I know is that I, just as everyone else, am driven. I am driven to keep this ship moving until we land upon the shores of the Promised Land. I am driven to perpetuate our species. So there must be a reason. There must be something to find.

Each empty day makes it harder to keep going, but I always think, “Perhaps, tomorrow, we will find something.”

Perhaps, this light on the star-dusted horizon will give birth to a planet that is able to let us breath pure air, not that recycled a dozen times over by the machines that pump our lungs. Perhaps it will spill rain upon our cheeks, lingering with happy tears. Perhaps the sun will shed natural warmth on our skin, warming us gradually out of the ice. I look forward to that day, and I yet I fear it at the same time for the potency of ancient one’s prophecy. If we ever land, if these bleak scanners ever stop blinking slowly in resignation, will we, those fated to birth on this ship, have to stay hidden within the shadows, allowing our children to step out onto the earth, daring only to watch them as we lurk in the comfort of our unnatural darkness. Will we never known sun, and sky, and flowers? I hold onto the hope that we will. That, somehow, we will adapt, however slowly, flooding our cold veins with vitality. If not, will it be enough for me to know that my species will have it, that they will continue, accepting my fate as a tool of transition?

Maybe. We will see. And until then, we will hope.