“The View from the Old Ship” • by Carol Scheina

Sai groaned at the patrol assignments. “We get the haunted ship.”

Her co-pilot, Mack, frowned. “You mean it’s got ghosts?”

“Naw, it’s got sensor problems. Some old data, something it scanned ages ago, keeps popping up. Covers all the viewports. So if you look at our planet, the continents’ll be all wrong. Techs call it a ghost view. Get it? Haunted?”

Mack rolled his eyes. “So we’ll fly blind?”

“We’ll use auto-pilot if it happens. Tech’s gonna try again to fix it after our patrol. That or junk this ancient thing.”

They were orbiting the planet when the ghost view started, showing an ocean where no ocean resided.

Sai gasped. “The water’s blue.”

“So?”

But Sai remembered the stories her grandmother had told, who’d heard them from her grandmother, who’d actually lived on the Old Planet. Stories about blue oceans, not like their red ones. About seven continents. So much had been lost over the decades, but Sai’s grandmother had kept the stories alive.

“That’s Earth.”

Mack peered at the blue water as it shifted to green landmass. “That’s what it looked like? Dang!”

“We’ve gotta tell tech not to fix this.”

Mack nodded.

This was a view worth keeping.

__________________________

 

Carol Scheina is a deaf speculative fiction author from the Northern Virginia region. Many of her stories were thought up while sitting in local traffic, resulting in tales that have appeared in Cossmass Infinities, Daily Science Fiction, Escape Pod, and other publications. You can find more of her work at carolscheina.wordpress.com.