[Fiction] The boy in the glass dome

post by Kaj_Sotala · 2023-03-03T07:50:03.578Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

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A boy is sitting inside a glass dome. It would just barely have enough space for him to stand.

It’s night, and he’s watching the stars. He has been doing that for a long time.

There’s a small tube attached to the bottom of the dome. A miniature cargo train runs through that tube, bringing with it small bubbles of nutrients and oxygen. When the train reaches the dome, the bubbles float up in the air and pop, keeping the boy alive.

The tube is much too small for the boy to even get his hand inside, let alone leave that way.

There’s a civilization that’s keeping him in the dome as insurance. If something bad were to happen to the civilization, he at least would stay alive.

The boy looks up at the stars and imagines what it would be like:

Something would fall from the sky. A swarm of meteorites, maybe, or nuclear warheads from another planet. They would strike everything on this planet, utterly devastating all life and leave a dead world behind.

But his dome would keep him safe.

And then he would stand on his feet and grow, breaking the dome from the inside. He would grow from a boy to a man, into a giant with an angel’s wings and a flaming sword. He would walk among the devastated landscape, his enormous feet crushing rubble beneath them.

He would wonder about flying to space, to get his revenge on the people who attacked his world. But by this point, they would be gone. He wouldn’t be able to find them anymore, not in the entire vastness of space.

But then… he would notice something moving under the rubble.

He would lean down to dig it up, and see green life growing from underneath the rubble. Survivors who had hidden for long enough for the invaders to think they were all dead.

The boy – now a man – would help the survivors come out. And vast green vines would make their way from under the rubble, wrap themselves around him and anchor him on the ground, use him as a stalk for growing all the way into space.

They would grow all the way to the planet of the attackers. The vine would wrap itself around that enemy planet, borrowing the boy-man’s strength to squeeze it apart like one might crush an orange in one’s hand.

At first the orange would spill its wet sticky mass on the hand, only to then dry up and turn into dust, blown away by a stellar wind.

The boy in the dome blinks. He realizes that waiting for all of this to happen is not the only option. There is also another way.

He already has the strength to grow into a giant angel. All he needs to do is to stand up and let it happen.

And if he were to do that, and his planet were to be attacked – he could use his sword to deflect the attack. Hit each of the falling meteorites or nuclear warheads like one hits a ball with a bat, send them back into the planet of the attackers. Let it be blown up right away, rather than letting the boy’s planets be destroyed first.

The boy nods. That seems better.

He stands up, and lets himself grow into an angel right away, shattering the dome above him.

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