Fictional Reality
Chapter Two - Trees
Something magical was happening on the colony, something that had seemed to infect almost every person there. It was December first and a Christmas tree was going up in the main atrium of the UNASF building. It was not something that had been celebrated in the laboratories on Earth, as all the staff had homes to go to where they kept their holiday frivolities separate from work. But for the first time ever, the colony was inhabited at Christmas and the celebrations had infected everywhere.
The tree was magnificent. Almost thirty feet tall with wide sweeping branches that were laden with decorations, and the few children who had come to live with parents who worked on the new colony stood in awe to stare at the flickering multicoloured lights and bright star right on the topmost branch. Excited discussions could be heard as workers told one another about their personal plans for the day, and the decorations they had put up in their own living quarters.
It wasn't only the workers who were starting to anticipate the coming holidays happily, there was a certain small blonde clone that was possibly the most eager of all. For the last month he had been making his preparations diligently, following his own exacting standards with a military precision that hadn't been meant for such useless endeavours.
Faced with the terrible prospect of being unable to afford presents for his family, as all their meals and amenities were provided for them and so they were given no stipend of their own, he had mused on how to make money quickly for a few days before striking the answer. There were always greedy kids willing to buy extra meal tickets from anyone who didn't need theirs, and so Cain had been sustaining himself on one meal a day to sell all his other meal allowance tickets for present money. The tree was another tangled problem, but he had to have one... The book was very clear on that, Father Christmas only ever left presents under a tree and so it was of utmost importance he obtained one.
Eventually he had found a sickly brown tree in the waste disposal units, along with a box of broken ornaments. It had taken a while to reason with his conscience that it wasn't stealing, especially as they had already been thrown away, but that evening had found Cain proudly decorating his stunted tree in his quarters and laughing whenever the pine needles dropped off and got stuck in his hair.
It was almost time...
Abel's scowl deepened each time he passed that odious display in the atrium, loathing the very idea of this holiday the more he learned about it. A time for the rich to stuff themselves with unwanted gifts and gorge on unnecessary amounts of food, while the poor still suffered and were expected to be thankful with a delivery of mince pies to make one day hunger free when the next and the next would still be ridden with starvation.
This was the problem with Terrans. They only looked into pleasing their own carnal desires, never once thinking that it might be more beneficial to use this money for other things. No, they were greedy and corporate and... a disease. They killed one another without remorse, raped and plundered and extorted without guilt. Then perhaps the worse was this... when they tried to gloss over it all with gaudy lights and meaningless phrases about 'goodwill to all men'.
He hadn't spoken with Cain about his ideas for Christmas since that afternoon writing letters, and he fervently hoped his brother had given up all that for the nonsense it was. He seemed to be the same as usual, coasting through lessons easily and making friends from his classmates that he trusted at once, and Abel knew would stab him in the back the first chance they got.
Growling as he passed yet another set of security guards discussing the perils of Christmas shopping in the new colony mall district, he dug his hands deeper into his pockets and mentally ticked off the time until the time they would burn that wretched tree when this was all done.
It was almost time...
