Friday Fictioneers – Solar Storm

Every week, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (thank you, Rochelle!) hosts a flash fiction challenge, to write a complete story, based on a photoprompt, with a beginning, middle and end, in 100 words or less. Post it on your blog, and include the Photoprompt and Inlinkz on your page. Link your story URL. Then the fun starts as you read other peoples’ stories and comment on them!

PHOTO PROMPT © DALE ROGERSON

Solar Storm

Demetrios could have wept at the sight of Miseon, shaking with fatigue after her second six-hour spacewalk in twenty-four hours. Sixty was too old for such brutal labour, but everyone on Space Station L1 was working double shifts. Extra protection against radiation was essential.

All pregnant women had been flown to the Lunar Base; the rest of the colonists would have to endure the biggest solar storm ever.

Demetrios held Miseon gently.

“We’ve done all we can,” he murmured.

Miseon pushed him. “Go in the command area. It’s safer. It’s your duty!”

“No. My place is with you,” he said.

InLinkz – click here to join the fun!

43 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers – Solar Storm”

    • Thank you for commenting, Neil. Miseon had recently come off shift, and she and Demetrios were inside the space station. I agree that drifting off into space wouldn’t be a good ending; the loneliness would be terrible.

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  5. Penny,
    Intriguing story. I wonder if Demetrios was responsible for the double shift policy, perhaps the source of the friction between them. In any event, age didn’t give Miseon any special privileges, and perhaps it should have, But I think she was determined to do what she could even to the point of risking her life. And he was determined to stay with her. Good on him!
    pax,
    dora

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    • Thank you for your thoughtful comment, Dora; it’s one I shall mull over carefully. As regards the double-shift policy, the colony on the space station were facing an existential crisis. Unless they increased radiation protection they were all going to die.

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    • Thank you for such an encouraging comment, Tannille. It struck me as I wrote it that there was a novel in the material; the only trouble is, somebody’s probably already written it!
      Human nature is very much the same – it’s set in the near(ish) future.

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  8. Whoa, sounds like they are having too much fun in the SpAce Station L!, since all the pregnant women were sent to the Lunar Base. a six hour walk in space-doing work-in the space suit must have been exhausting.

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    • Dear Rochelle
      I had great fun trying to imply as much as possible about their society in my 100 words. It’s a multi-ethnic culture with gender equality, and with a disciplined, hard-working and courageous approach to life.
      Thank you for being so diligent in organising Friday Fictioneers – it’s a great challenge!
      Shalom
      Penny

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    • Thank you for commenting, Jade. In my personal back-story for this piece of fiction, there are two strands of authority; a military (which takes priority in a crisis) and a civil administration, which is basically an elected mayor and deputy mayor. Demetrios is the deputy mayor. He’s entitled to be in the more heavily shielded command area, but not obliged to be there.

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