‘Centaur Asteroid’ by A.C. Brokenshire

That’s us, Gemini. Identical twins born of a common mother and different fathers. My name is Castor, immortal son of Zeus. Pollux my twin, is the son of King Tyndareus of Sparta. We were like peas in a pod, loving brothers, seldom seen apart. That was until Pollux began to fail.

He was an equestrian and his horsemanship skills had been legendary, leading his steeds to tap and dance with precision to the music. However, at one evening’s performance the treading of hooves was at the will of his horse. The seemingly unbreakable spiritual line of communication between the artists was no longer and Pollux purely became a passenger. His horse became the centre of attention, whilst he clung on, without focus, as if in La-la land. He was thrown off like a rag doll, mercilessly tossed to the ground. My father Zeus laughed a belly chortle at his misfortune, ridiculing the star. His teasing of Pollux gradually became worse until it became outright bullying and utter humiliation. From that point on I knew we could no longer live together as a twelfth of the constellation.

Should I interfere and rescue him from purgatory?

I hatched a plan. As he slept in the crib next to me I cut his D.N.A. helical loop. My wonderscope worked like a biological knife through butter, editing his genes. I used the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeating technique, or CRISPR for short, if you like acronyms. Perfectly guided by the R.N.A. sequence they stuck fast to the D.N.A. strand, slicing through. His eyes fluttered as if in dream sleep, so I continued with the procedure to remove the old nucleotides and replace them with new genetic material to turn him into an asteroid. I had to save my loved one. To free him.

I knew it would work slowly, and it did. As he drifted away I watched him, screwing my eyelids tight until he disappeared from view. Unwittingly, he travelled further and further, until he was many light years away. He had gone and was now orbiting the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune.

Zeus will have me punished for turning Pollux into a centaur asteroid, but I’m prepared for the worst.

On a clear night, if your eyesight follows along the Ishino line towards Jupiter, you may see a comet trail. That my friends is my excommunicated twin, now a gatekeeper for the Earth’s seasons. A rider on the storm. Long may he continue.