(Shortlisted in the 2024 Sydney Hammond Short Story Competition)
It’s a grubby classroom with scratched tables, uncomfortable chairs, and an overflowing rubbish bin that no-one, not even the teacher, intends to empty. Signs of education lie abandoned. A forgotten ruler, a tired and misused geometry case beside which rests an eraser carved as exaggerated genitals. Run your hand along the underside of a desk, you’ll discover reused cakes of gum. A recycling program that promotes strong immune systems and a tolerance for bland flavours.
It's late at night and two students are frantically trying to finish their projects. Seated behind his telescope, Zagar lets out a heavy sigh, then speaks.
'I won't be receiving a good grade, will I?'
Chomping away loudly, Bcythas, his lifelong friend, indulges in a recent under-the-desk discovery. ‘If you don't follow the assignment, you can't expect to succeed.’
'What makes you think I didn't?'
‘From what you’ve said, your lack of progress is a blatant giveaway. Let’s take another look at what you’ve done.’
Zagar shifted to the side from the eyepiece of the gigantic telescope that jutted upward through an opening in the classroom roof, similar to a specific carved eraser.
‘How’s your project going?’ Zagar asked, as his friend played with the focus.
‘They’ve colonised a solar system. I might scrape in a B. If Xyothes is in a good mood tomorrow when he marks them.’
‘Tomorrow!’
‘Uh, huh.’ Bcythas stopped moving. ‘What’s all this stuff floating around your planet?’
‘That? Oh, they’re satellites. They’ve made quite a lot of them,’ Zagar said with a touch of pride as he dug determinedly inside his nose while his friend was distracted.
‘What the hell for?’ Bcythas snorted.
Zagar examined his nostril treasure. It looked inviting. Then thought better of it and flicked it onto his friend's back. He knew his life project wasn’t great, but he was proud of the things the creatures had made. Like popcorn. Popcorn sounded fun.
Bcythas scanned the planet's surface using the telescope. ‘Ugh, they’ve spread like a rash.’
‘That was one of the marking criteria—make sure they replicate.’
‘Looks like my crotch last summer,’ grinned Bcythas.
Zagar eyed the black glob on his friend’s back and considered his other nostril.
‘I’ve got it!’ Bcythas said finally.
‘Is it because I used a carbon? That wasn’t my fault you know; the life-base was chosen for each of us.’
‘Nah. Carbon’s an old favourite of Xyothes. He’s used it on lots of students. You get more choices with carbon than silicon, which is what I got lumped with. It’s not as flexible, but the benefit is mine are meaner.’
‘Mine are tough too! They’ve cleared out all the competition, and quite a lot of the other stuff that wasn’t.’
Bcythas sniffed. ‘Well, mine survived when for some inexplicable reason the closest star red dwarfed on me and vapourised my seed planet! Yours would have been soot. My aggressive little bastards had colonised planets by then, otherwise I’d be screwed and repeating the year.’ Bcythas scratched his scaly chin. ‘Hope I don’t get penalised for losing that seed planet.’
‘Tell me where I went wrong,’ whined Zagar.
‘Part Two mate. After your life gets a hold on the planet, ensure they don’t master diseases.’ Bcythas lifted both sets of eyes from the telescope and turned around. ‘What’s with all the crap in the water on your planet?’
Zagar absently kicked a table leg. ‘I’m afraid they’re not very tidy,’ then muttered on the limit of hearing, ‘Plus they’re still using organic energy.’
‘Organic energy!’ Bcythas laughed like a flushing toilet. ‘Let’s see… no interplanetary colonising, a weak lifeform using a basic fuel, and crazy population growth going on.’ Bcythas shook his nobbled head. ‘Best you can hope for is a C minus.’
Poor Zagar didn’t get Planetary Design any more than he understood Superlative Trans-dimensional Cogitation. School was a waste of time. All he wanted to do was hang out with his mates until it was over, then join the army and get paid to eat things.
‘Don’t look like that. What you’ve made could have been worse,’ Bcythas continued. ‘You saw Uqurrt was lumped with methane as his life-base. The best he can hope to achieve is an intelligent fart.’
The pair chuckled at the expense of the weird kid in the class.
‘Hey, did you hear about Pzthes?’
Zagar groaned. ‘Now what’s she done?’
‘Got her lifeforms to build a Dyson Sphere around the sun.’
Zagar wasn’t impressed. Pzthes was the top student in their year. ‘Good for her,’ he said without conviction. ‘My guys wouldn’t get to that stage even if I had a week’s extension.’
‘Er, that’s not all.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You won’t believe this… her life communicates with her.’
‘How? I didn’t think that’s possible?’
Bcythas came across another piece of gum and included it with the one he was already chewing. As he struggled to combine the textures, he slurped and asked, ‘Do you know what that means?’
Zagar shrugged.
‘Next time, it’ll be expected that our projects communicate with us. A bunch of dumb students hanging out in the Dark Domains!’
‘I’m not sure I’d like mine to know who made them. They might be disappointed.’ Concern spread across Zagar’s face. ‘What’ll become of my planet? Doesn’t a fail mean automatic destruction?’
An enormous gum bubble ballooned from Bcythus’s mouth. Zagar caught a whiff of sulphur when it burst. ‘Xyothes should have retired a millennium ago. I’m sure he taught my granddad,’ he mused.
‘But you reckon I’ll get a C Minus?’
‘I do.’
‘That’s not technically a failure?’
Dribble flew from Bcythas's head as he shook it. Zagar's gaze fell to the floor.
‘I’d like my creatures to have time to figure out their issues and stop being so bloody messy.’
Bcythas smiled with one half of his two hundred teeth. ‘C’mon mate. Don’t look like that. It’s only an assignment. It’s not like creating life will be useful when we leave school.’
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