Artificial

The planet was fairly large, about the size of earth. It had it's share of canyons and hills, mountains and streams. There were forests stretching across valleys and acres of swampland. Stars glowed overhead, shifting in their eternal patterns. Yet, even as the simialarities were there, the differences were just as startling.

The planet was artificial.

No one knew who had built it, but it was a wonder of engineering. The planet had been designed down to it's very ecosystem.

The rivers glowed an effervescent blue, coursing like eery blood through the dark earth, supplying energy to plants and animals that sometimes glowed themselves. It poured down rock walls onto bowl-shaped, metal dishes, each disch producing it's own note in a melody that echoed of the rock walls into the eternally dark sky.

If one followed the river, one would end at a large whirlpool in the middle of the largest of the oceans, where the water twisted it's way through an artificial and biological purifier, coming out the other side from a fountain taller than the very mountains, it's many-layered, multi-colored, semi-translucent leafs spread to catch water and the light of the stars decades away.

Below the fountain, small towns littered the plains, the buildings made of the dark wood of the forests to the east, which leaves glowed a fluorescent green and fruit glowed orange. It was in these towns that nomadic people came to trade: the claws of spark-dogs, canine-like beasts whos claws conducted electricity; the hind legs of the cyborg-like rodents that roamed the high mountains, to be used for parts; and the hearts of the buffalo-like beasts of the western continent, which rather than pumping blood, would hold the charge produced by the food the beast ate.

Everything was in balance. Everything was accounted for.

Everything except humans.


So, I hope you enjoyed my small foray into the world of Artificial. This was flash fiction, so it is imperfect; however, I hop you enjoyed it nonetheless.


That said, if you did enjoy it, I have a few questions: What would human on the planet be like? What are the "people" I was referring to? And, assuming humans DO invade this beautiful place, what would happen? Leave your answer in comments.


If you would like to write your own next part to this, feel free to do so; post the link in comments, and link back here in your post :)