Sapio Love

Writing prompt: A young princess falls for the castle's stable boy, but their love is forbidden by the social hierarchy that separates them. They must find a way to be together without betraying their duties. Will they dare to defy conventions and forge their destiny, or will fate separate them forever?

Genre: Sci-Fi/Romance

~ ~ ~

As the mansion loomed over the copper horizon, strikingly red stone gleamed in the suns' similarly coloured hue. Though borne of different mothers, twin shadows danced with each other in perfect harmony. The two aged suns, each in their own opposite corners of the sky, kept the land of Auroma in a perpetually dim morning.

Dozens of octagonal windows glinted, every one of them kept pristine clean by the palace cleaners. The metallic servants scurried around tirelessly, removing even the slightest hint of contamination with their sonic cleaning brushes.

Near the courtyard, a trio of towers stood watch, facing their weapons towards the sparse droplets of stars some few million light years away. They stood firm, sterner than the most grizzled soldier, more unyielding than the fiercest royal guard.

And yet they were still powerless against what was about to come.

Ariana hovered gracefully down the steps, ignoring the automated greetings of the gate guards. Her father had granted her one last wish to roam the castle grounds freely, and she was not about to squander that chance.

She could feel the plasma liquid surging through her now. Its flow rate was quicker than usual, and the mechanical gizmo in the middle of her chassis pumped harder in response to her rising emotions.

Her huge house looked over her shoulder as the princess descended to another floating asteroid. Unlike the castle, these miniature islands were not held together by artificial gravitational suspension. To many others, that was no surprise, for only the highest class of citizens in the Alpha Centauri empire was granted access to the best technology.

But to Ariana, it was a fact she utterly detested.

She looked at her glassy hands with mild disgust yet again as her hoverpads greeted the crimson soil of the terraformed asteroid. Humanity was the most beautiful when left pure, she had always believed, and not when fitted with so many cybernetic enhancements. It was a pity that most of her kind did not think that way, and only welcomed the implants as a further way to distinguish the high from the lower social class.

A herd of android horses came into view. Ariana broke into a wide smile; he had not retired for the evening.

"Greetings, Princess Ariana." The man before her placed one of his bendable limbs on the ground and kept his head low as though searching for something on the ground.

Ariana chuckled. The mannerisms of eld were odd but endearing all the same.

"Please, Sergius." She gestured for him to stand back up. "Are we strangers newly met? Must you insist on the formalities?"

Sergius chuckled as well, though he did so by exhaling small amounts of air instead of using a vocal cord speaker like she did.

"Ariana, the day is not yet over." The smile vanished from Sergius's face. "If we get caught like this again-"

"It's alright, my love. This is the first and last time I have been permitted to meet you."

Ariana placed her hand on Sergius' cheek. It felt soft and warm, like the rest of his body when they would snuggle under his roof where the light could not reach them. He would close his eyes for a long time and remain motionless as if dead, but still breathing. An ancient but inefficient technique that early humans used to recharge before neural charging stations were invented.

"That soon, huh?" Sergius said softly as water leaked out from the corner of his eyes. "How much time do we have?"

"The Xaelaens are no more than a lightyear away."

The Princess looked up to the sky. So little stars have been left in the wake of these galactic nomads' bloodlust. So many civilizations had risen to challenge them, only for them to be devoured whole. Being masters of biological manipulation, the Xaelaen empire granted their subjugated enemies a fate worse than death. In their eyes, all civilisations were lower lifeforms destined to serve them.

And serve them they did, for those unlucky enough to escape death were forcefully transmuted into household items or mere entertainment. Being rendered blind and mute, they and their descendants could only cry out in pain with tears that no longer existed in their bodies. Ariana only hoped that humanity would have the fortune to be wiped out completely before that could happen.

"As a Princess, I am destined to be a warrior," Ariana said. "I cannot shirk my duties. By midday tomorrow, I will be greeting them with the strongest weapons our empire offers, alongside my father and the rest of the Royal family."

"And I will remain on this island, tending to our Androhorses. That's what you were going to say, right?"

"Yes." Her reply came swift, yet hesitant.

Sergius shut his eyes painfully as he wrapped his arms around Ariana.

"I'm so sorry I wasn't good enough." His body trembled. "If only I had the qualifications to earn an implant, I would've asked for your hand in a heartbeat. But now, it's all too late. I'll always be a mere stable boy. I should have fought harder for us to be together, even if our love will always be forbidden."

"Oh, don't say that, Sergius. You're perfect in my eyes, even as an unenhanced human. I always have and always will love you as such."

"Must we be separated by our social class, even at the end of the world?" Sergius' voice was filled with bitterness. "There must be something I can do."

"There is nothing we can do." Ariana's voice was equally acrid, although it softened immediately. "There is nothing I need you to do, Sergius."

Sergius looked at her silently, his chest heaving up and down visibly as his hands balled into tight fists. With a swift motion, he sliced off a tuft of his braided hair without warning. He pressed it into Ariana's palm.

"Come what may," he said, embracing her tightly. "My yearning for you shall never falter. In this life, and all other lives."

Ariana contemplated doing the same for him but quickly realised that she no longer had any human hair of her own.

"Our kind has been so obsessed with separating ourselves that we've failed to look out for those who would sunder us forever," she said, leaning into her lover's fleshy chassis. "So just for this moment, let us be joined as one body. Let nothing stand between us any longer."

"As you wish, my beloved Princess Ariana."

~ ~ ~

The first contact was made exactly in the middle of the next day. The first order to fire was made no more than an hour later.

Being only a few million years old as a species, humanity stood no chance against the billion-year-old Xaelaen civilization. But Ariana's father had always been a stubborn man, and he refused to let his kingdom of the Auroma cluster go down without a fight.

So here she stood, wrapped in a protective cocoon of armour, waiting for her turn to be ejected into the midst of deep space. She squeezed her hand tightly, feeling the slight tickle of Sergius' hair pressing back against her palm-"

A blinding light seared her retinas.

The princess warrior never saw the faces of her combatants, nor did she even comprehend what had happened to her. Space warped before her eyes, and her olfactory senses flooded with sensations she could not even begin to fathom.

The machine parts of her body were the first to go, and then her human senses began to fail her. Her neurons fired erratically in distress as she tasted sound and heard light. At the end of it all, she was reduced to nothing more than a motionless heap, sustained only by the armour which still kept her brain alive.

And as a shadow loomed over her dying corpse, her eyes finally closed, the strands of her lover's hair slipping reluctantly from her grasp.

~ ~ ~

If there was anything humans shared in common with the Xaelaens, it was their vindictive pettiness. Every single colony in the Auroma cluster was destroyed, from the luxurious planet cities that most of the nobles enjoyed living in to the humblest asteroid that only housed a single human and a few cattle. Humanity was extinct after two million years of existence, but humans were not.

As punishment for their willful resistance, the Xaelaens had salvaged as many humans as possible to act as their resources. Scanning and categorising them by their genetic makeup, the superior civilisation 'mercifully' granted humans a place in their residence as mere commodities. Humans were no longer divided by social classes or royalty anymore. In an ironic twist of fate, humans were united into one class, which was the lowest life form of the Xaelaen empire.

And so they lived on in unfamiliar shells that served only as houses for their sentience, never to rise again.

~ ~ ~

Ariana trudged along the fields of what can only be described as 'white coloured grass', using the vacuums on her mouth to suck up moisture. She gurgled in satisfaction as the water moisturised the gears inside her body.

The sound of gates opening kicked her instincts as she rolled over to it hungrily, eager for the second meal of the day. She let out an electronic bleat of disappointment as more cattle was released into her pen instead. Her wheels clicked, bringing her back to the middle of the field to continue her grazing, but another bleating sound caught her attention.

She swivelled around in surprise, casting her antennas at the solitary sapio-sheep who had refused to join his companions. The sapio-sheep bowed its head, struggling to bend its forewheels. Ariana's antennae wagged furiously in recognition.

Though she had no eyes to see, nor did she have ears to hear, the sophisticated antennas fitted on the top of her head were more than capable of detecting intention. The two sapio-sheep rushed towards each other, nuzzling their tufts of human hair attached to their sides as they bleated continuously in both joy and excitement.

And after a lifetime of enduring petty discrimination, the lost lovers were finally free to be together for all eternity.

END

Author's Note

This story was largely inspired by 'All Tomorrows', a science fiction work written by C.M. Koseman.

I wrote this story to explore themes of discrimination, and what it means to belong to a group. Are we separated by physical characteristics? Social Class? Race? Species? Where do our differences stop? And how can we truly be united, if that is even possible?

I hope this story has given my readers food for thought without losing the value of entertainment.