The Pragmatist of Colony 24

by Juleigh Howard-Hobson

No, I’m not ready to evacuate.
Not yet, anyway. I find that I need
to grab one last thing, then another. Great
disasters strike with terrifying speed—
which is not what’s happening here. I hate
the false urgency, the anxious fervor
to ‘escape’. We will file to the shuttle,
wait our turn, get in, leave for wherever

it is they are sending us to now. Earth
perhaps? Probably not, we aren’t worth

that much fuel or interstellar trouble.

But it will be somewhere with oxygen
and carbon and water. Somewhere like this
but not so badly thrown together. When
this place was optimized, the main point was
to get us away from where we were then.
It’s not the planet’s fault that it hasn’t
been able to sustain the terrains that
were built on it because its crust wasn’t

settled. We never suspected that of
course. Until the mountains shifted enough

to wobble. I hope we go somewhere flat.

Juleigh Howard-Hobson lives besides the edge of the world, where secrets are whispered in the winds and words fling from the sky. Her writing has been nominated for The Best of the Net, the Pushcart, the Elgin, and the Rhysling Awards. Her work can be found in Dreams & Nightmares, Eye to the Telescope, Polu Texni, Star*Line, Haunted Dollhouse, 34 Orchard, Audient Void, Midnight Echo, Siren’s Call, Noir Nation, Shadow of Pendle (Dark Sheep Books), They Walk Among Us (Utah Horror Writer’s Association) and many other venues. Her latest collection is Curses, Black Spells and Hexes (Alien Buddha Press).