Nemesis!

Nemesis, the Goddess of Divine Retribution.

He thought again of the story he had once heard when he was young - a legend, a myth, a tale of a worldwide Deluge that wiped out a sinful degenerate humanity, leaving one family with which to start anew.

No flood, this time. Just Nemesis.

The degeneration of humanity had returned and the Nemesis that would be visited upon it was an appropriate judgement. It would not be a Deluge. Nothing as simple as a Deluge.

Even for the remnant who might escape- Where would they go?

Why was it he felt no sorrow? Humanity could not continue as it was. It was dying slowly through its own misdeeds. If it exchanged a slow excruciating death for a much faster one, was that a cause for sorrow?

Here, actually circling Nemesis, a planet. Circling the planet, a satellite. Circling the satellite, Rotor.

That ancient Deluge carried a few to safety in an Ark. He had only the vaguest idea of what the Ark was, but Rotor was its equivalent. It carried a sampling of humanity who would remain safe and from which a new and far better world would be built.

But for the old world - there would be only Nemesis!

He thought of it again. A red dwarf star, moving on its inexorable path. Itself and its worlds were safe. Not so Earth.

Nemesis was on its way, Earth!

Wreaking its Divine Retribution!

1. Marlene

 

1

Marlene had last seen the Solar System when she was a little over one year old. She didn't remember it, of course.

She had read a great deal about it, but none of the reading had ever made her feel that it could ever have been part of her, nor she a part of it.

In all her fifteen years of life, she remembered only Rotor. She had always thought of it as a large world. It was eight kilometers across, after all. Every once in a while since she was ten - once a month when she could manage it - she had walked around it for the exercise, and sometimes had taken the low-gravity paths so she could skim a little. That was always fun. Skim or walk, Rotor went on and on, with its buildings, its parks, its farms, and mostly its people.