When the Dragon Incinerated the Rocket: A Lamentation For Science Fiction

I was but a pup when I found the Rocket. It was a tall, glittering structure that looked so futuristic! At first I merely touched it with my hands, only to go back to it years later as a passenger of the craft.

It was a blast! The view from the Rocket as it flew was tremendous! Dinosaurs of the past to post-Humans of the future…

I’ve taken several rides on that Rocket, but from time to time I’d try a ride on the Dragon that resided on a plot of estate adjacent to where the Rocket rested—when it wasn’t flying.

It was fun to jump onto the back of the Dragon and ride it, as she flapped her immense wings and belched out fire. But I’m more of a Rocket man than I am of reptile avian.

After several years of riding on the Rocket I began to notice a few infrastructural stresses on the ship. A few bolts missing here, a hairline fracture there…but I just ignored them.

This went on a few more years until I finally realized that the Rocket’s integrity was falling apart! I’d see some of the pilots of the Rocket try to patch some of the damage, but there was no question about it: our Rocket was slowly degrading.

The more I looked around me, the more I saw some of the co-pilots of the Rocket either share more of their time with the Dragon, or they’d leave the Rocket all together and hop a ride with the beast.

Mind you, this happened so gradually that I didn’t notice this. At first. By this time in my life, I had now become a co-pilot as well! I was still learning how to use the instruments to help steer the ship, so I was in the back of the cockpit.

“Look,” cried a couple of the main pilots of the Rocket, “that Dragon is taking more of our passengers and co-pilots!”

“What of it,” responded a few of the co-pilots and passengers one day, when the Rocket was at rest and the Dragon was in her lair.

“We don’t care very much for Science these days, haven’t you noticed? Our tastes are more for the Fantastic, more for the Spiritual and ancient Rituals…Science scares us sometimes, at that!”

“Why,” some of us in the Rocket begged.

“Because Science and its Rocket do not make us feel secured in our old ways! The Rocket merely follows set rules of Science. And that’s dandy and all, if you want to bore yourself with the complexities of natural laws, but the Dragon makes us feel safe; makes us feel like miracles are true.”

Some of us in the Rocket protested this response, but, in the end, what could those of us in the Rocket do? For it is the Others’ choice to choose the vehicle of their wish—just as the Rocket is our choice.

Many of us continued to ride and pilot the Rocket. But as the years slowly crept by, many of the passengers and pilots of the Rocket saw that sometimes the Dragon would spit fire at the Rocket, causing minimal damage to it. The Dragon continued to do this to our Rocket every time that we went on an adventure. Over time, it was harder and harder for our Rocket to launch from the Earth.

Now that I am slowly learning more about piloting the Rocket with older and wiser pilots, I worry about the future of the Rocket. Passengers and pilots will always be around. But what I fear is that years from now the Rocket will be so crippled as to not be able to fly any longer, or the Dragon will breathe upon it one last flaming sigh…