Forgotten Toys
The trouble with unattended toddlers
Liam was so proud of his Mum. The first female pilot of the Planetary Survey who, thanks to complex domestic arrangements, was permitted to take her son along for the ride.
But this constant array of new worlds could get a bit boring. Nowadays she tended to park him somewhere safe and stomp off to do her analysis and measurements while he amused himself.
This new place was cute though, like a microcosm of their home planet, with miniature hills and tiny vegetation. Even little insect-like quadrupeds and bipeds running around. Liam spent his first hour or so just striding round the countryside, pretending to be a giant.
He kicked his toe against one of the hillsides and saw how the skimpy vegetation peeled back to reveal soft white rock beneath. Captured by a sudden idea he picked up and studied a little quadruped (unfortunately he may have squeezed too hard — it didn’t move again after he put it down).
Using a fingernail he scratched off the grass and earth from the hill’s surface and was most pleased with the picture he was able to draw.
He couldn’t wait to show his Mum. He certainly didn’t expect a telling off.
“Liam, honey. We have to leave these places just as we found them. You can’t go ripping up the landscape. Look, I picked up these rock samples while I was away. Can you sit down over there and play with some of the chippings”
“I’m too old to play with building blocks, Mum. Can we go now?”
“Nearly finished, honey. Wait for me here. I’ll be back in half an hour”
Despite his protestations, Liam took the chips and started to build a tower. He soon realised that they were too uneven to build anything very high and instead started to arrange them in concentric circles. He was just getting absorbed in his task when his Mum came bounding back into view.
“Sorry Liam, there’s been a mistake. We were told there weren’t any developed species on this world, but I just came across a city. It’s full of those little bipeds. We have to get out of here right away”.
Liam was bundled back onto the transport and they were blasting off within minutes.
“But Mum, I left my building blocks behind”.
Many thanks for reading!
More re-imagined history below.
And a belated attribution. I took the headline from the following story by Grin Spickett, glimpsed on ManyStories, as a writing prompt, with the above result.
