HORTON

Horton is wonderful, light science fiction. I twisted a tale of “Horton Hears a Who” for my children’s bedtime stories. Each time the story was told, it was twisted a little more until this new story was born. Horton is a story of two vastly different worlds coming together in sympathy and synchronicity. Together, they are better, stronger and more beautiful than they are apart. Finding an excerpt for Horton is difficult, because there is a plot twist that spins your head around. I don’t want to give away the big moment!

When science determined that within 200 years, the planet would no longer support life, some significant changes promptly occurred.   First, every country on the planet set aside centuries of racism, war, hatred, violence, religion, and politics and came together in a single unifying task of preserving the species.   Money that had previously been spent on war, drugs, corporate greed, luxury cars and jewelry was pooled into scientific research that would advance our knowledge of space travel, agriculture, technology, and industry.   Miraculously, within a decade of the planets demise, eighteen thousand ships had been constructed to transport the entire living population of this dying planet into the furthest reaches of space.  As each living plant and creature was loaded, special care was made to keep mosquitos, ticks, wasps, venomous snakes, preachers, lawyers or politicians off the ships.  Finding a habitable planet anywhere in the Universe might take decades.  There was no reason to make this journey intolerable.  Each of these ships were cast to the Universe in its own desperate search for a habitable planet to occupy. 

As the Captain of the “Glorious Daylight,” Jonas Lightweather was determined that he would be the first to find a new world, therefore ensuring his name would live on forever.   Jonas Lightweather was raised from infancy to this position.   He had been trained since birth to command a great ship.  He had been told of his greatness all his life and he believed every word.   Jonas Lightweather was a man of great knowledge and a greater ego.   His crew was handpicked over the seventy years of his life and now, on the dawn of the end of the world, Jonas Lightweather would be the savior he knew himself to be. 

Eighteen-thousand ships were provisioned and loaded.   Final goodbyes were made.   Final tears shed and on the appointed day, they lifted off as one, each in a different direction in search of a new world.   A new home.  

Jonas Lightweather was indeed a great captain.   He carried his authority like a benevolent caregiver and kept order among the thousands of occupants of his ship.   Man, and beast alike lived in relative harmony.   The ship was shiny and new, and serviced the needs of all occupants in comfort and care.   It was a spectacular beginning to what was to be a long, long, long journey.   Jonas Lightweather would pass in his sleep at the age of 127 and would achieve his goal of becoming a legend; for a while.   The first three or four centuries after his death, there were songs sung of his intelligence and bravery.   Into the sixth century following his death, he was still mentioned in a history book or two.   In the seventh century, a fire in the records room erased all memory of Jonas Lightweather and within a few generations following, his name was gone forever.  

What was intended as a short journey into space to discover a new world became drifting in space for an eternity.As provisions were depleted, the animals were the first to be barbequed and baked into oblivion.Only sheer will saved the vegetation and converted most of the space within the ship to farms.In the wake of Jonas Lightweather, generations of disagreement, argument, and general underhanded politics had rendered the command of the Glorious Daylight from a ship of harmony, to monarchy which devolved into a patriarchy then to matriarchy and then there was no place to go but to dictatorship.In the second millennium after the exodus from their planet, the inhabitants of the Glorious Daylight were living in a squalid, fetid dirge of a vessel.The electronics and computers were a patchwork of semi-conscious artificial intelligence, the engines faltered centuries prior and the ship was now carried by its long-declining velocity in the vacuum of space.The shiny exterior was riddled with dents and dings from tons of space junk slamming against the hull, and the pristine interior had become a tattered and beat up old hag.Her batteries had little to no electrical energy left in them and could only be used for the most basic tasks on the ship.In short, the Glorious Daylight was a derelict ship on a path to nowhere.