A Revised History of Earth
Sherla was lying on her belly on her bed, one of the two tiny singles in the tiny cabin she shared with one of the research girls that just came on board. “Mattie,” she said without looking up from her nail polish, “you can keep talking if you want but I don’t really care about any of that.”
“But the tests are conclusive,” the other woman replied, waving her tablet in the air. “I’ve got it all right here.”
“Don’t care,” Sherla repeated. She applied another strip of opaque black polish to a blank nail and watched as it slowly expanded to cover her nail perfectly. The backs of her hands were criss-crossed with faint scars, leftovers from much worse damage the regen machines back at the base had almost finished repairing, before she got called up to the ship. Still, they were good hands, she thought.
Mattie wasn’t giving up though. “You don’t care that the ruins we found on Planet X are actually older than any known civilization on Earth?” she asked.
“Nope.”
Mattie sat down on the edge of her own bed with a heavy sigh. “I mean… that’s a big deal to me.”
Sherla turned her head to look Mattie in the eyes. “I care that you care, honey,” in between blowing on her nails to set the polish. “But I think we just see this two different ways.”
Mattie shook her head, barely ruffling her close-cropped curls. “How’s that?” she asked.
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