Chapter 3-1 Novella titled 48/14

Morning sky strikes the old man as he peels his eyelids open as soft humming buzzes. His fuzzy vision finds shade under his forearm from the hot rays. Focus re-emerges seeing Drum sitting on a shambled bike, reading a giant sized book. He seemed to have found the seat cushion and placed it on the side of the fried motor. It’s shattered in pieces. The old man starts to get up and feels his head pounding in agony. He holds his head and moans. Drum gingerly walks over to him, holding his delicate ribcage, “Are you okay?” The old man replies, “Ya, I’ll be fine” with coughs of blood in trembly aches. The blood spews across his crusted palm. The old man thinks to himself, what the hell happened? He asks Drum, “Do you remember what happened last night?” Drum looks confused, “Last night? Do you mean three nights ago?” The old man’s been out cold for three days. He stammers on, “Well whatever that creature was, he sure did get us.” The old man agrees and submitting to utter defeat and lays back down. His tattered teeth peak from his lips, “Well, we are alive, and that’s the best news of all. Are you okay?” Drum lifts up his shirt; his chest to his belly is blasted with a bruise but his robotic ribs project unhindered. It’s the biggest bruise old man’s ever seen. “Well we’re gonna need to rest for a little while.” The old man looks at his bike and the things a mess. Drum and the bike collided, Drum won. The old man admits to himself, he’s one tough kid.
Drum sits back down on the seat cushion and opens his book again, the only book he owns. Its faded cover with a tattered title, The History of the Universe. When he reads the aged book he feels a connection to his human side, he knows he’s different but that doesn’t deter him from learning about his ancestors. He takes a seat on a pile of dust and opens up the index scanning all the way down, nothing sticks out to him, he flips through. He stops at an image he’s familiar with reading the title, Planet 187, it has a picture of the planet their on, it looks green with Saturn-like rings haloing above and below the planet where it is un-inhabitable. He begins reading the opening passage …when the hole wasn’t so black, when clouds floated aimlessly across the light green sky. Over-drilling exhausted resources leaving the surface dry, hardened and cracked. The planet had to choose its own destiny. It decided to destroy its cycle of life and death, sucking the clouds and nutrients deep into its core. The local inhabitants began calling it the devil’s work. The so called “devil’s work” developed a nutrient vault, creating traps and impossible obstacles for men to reach the planet’s life. Mankind grew weary of the newly found security system and abandoned the land. A one-time metropolis, heavily populated mining town became vacant overnight as harsher environment violently brewed across the landscape. Children died of starvation from a disastrous depression. The rich were able to flee as the poor began to rot. This planet became un-inhabitable for humans; the Universal Counsel of Mankind has banned planet 187 for human civilization.