The Fila Epiphany

by J. J. Green

  She refused to believe it. Ethan was alive out there somewhere, and she would find him and bring him back to the settlement. She would bring him back home.

  The day passed and the kilometers were gradually eaten away. Cariad grew tired and sore from sitting in the flitter for so long, but she didn’t stop the machine. She felt she’d already delayed too long to respond to the loss of Ethan’s signal. She didn’t want to waste another moment.

  Darkness fell, and still Cariad went on. The flitter’s safety systems meant she didn’t fear crashing into anything. The shadowy landscape flowed steadily past. Cariad had little interest in it, even though she was the first human being to set eyes on the land. Ethan had taken a different route, traveling down the coast. She only wanted to reach her destination as quickly as possible.

  As the ground rose into foothills and then mountains, the air grew chill. Cariad put on the jacket she’d brought along. She’d eaten the last of her snacks hours ago and now only had water to calm her growling stomach. Hungry and cold, she finally fell asleep lying across the seats, hoping that the following day would bring the sight of her dear friend’s face.

  During the night, bitter cold awoke her. She sat up, shivering. Outside, the stars were brightly illuminating the snowy white slopes of the mountains’ peaks. The flitter was traversing a high pass. Cariad pulled all her remaining clothes out of her bag and put them on. She wrapped a jersey around her head to try to retain some body heat. Feeling a little warmer, she fell again into a restless sleep.

  When the sun rose, the flitter had crossed the mountain range and was traveling through the foothills on the other side. Cariad saw the beginnings of hundreds of streams that fed into the great river, which was a broad band of silver. In another few hours, she would be at the spot where Ethan’s flitter had stopped transmitting.

  She was headachey and faint with hunger, but eventually the feeling disappeared. Cariad drank water and tried to think positively. She imagined Ethan’s delight when he saw that she’d come to rescue him. She wondered what he would tell her on the way back to the settlement, and what things he’d seen and discovered on his travels.

  He would be alive. She was sure of it. He had to be.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ethan regarded the disgusting, sodden sludge that comprised his river-soaked packets of food. At least clean water wasn’t an immediate problem. The supply bag contained his small water tank that remained intact. Yet he’d grown so hungry he knew he would have to try to eat too.

  He dug a wet packet out from the mess. Its original contents had been dried algae, and the stuff seemed the least affected by the water. The algae was supposed to be rehydrated before you ate it anyway. Ethan dipped his fingers into the green goo and lifted some to his mouth.

  He didn’t much like algae when it was at its best, let alone when it had spent days soaking in dirty water. He swallowed the slimy stuff without chewing it, grimacing as it slipped—cold and glutinous—down his throat. At first he didn’t feel too bad, but although his stomach’s reaction wasn’t immediate, it was violent. He was in the middle of attempting to eat another mouthful when the first one he’d swallowed returned, erupting from his throat almost before he knew what was happening. Ethan crouched on all fours as he vomited up the algae. Even when no more remained in his stomach he continued to retch, bringing up sour bile.

  His vomit splashed into the thin layer of water on the floor and began to dissolve and spread out. Ethan edged away in disgust, crawling to the other side of the chamber.

  He guessed he had been confined at least a night and a day, though the lack of natural light made it difficult for him to perceive the passage of time. He was either too deep below the water surface for sunlight to penetrate, or the water was too murky. The threads that gyrated at the transparent wall were illuminated by the light from inside his cell.

  As the hours had passed, the creatures had observed him continually without respite—if observing him was what they were doing. It could be a coincidence that they happened to be outside the clear wall, but Ethan thought it unlikely.

  “What do you want from me?” he asked the whirling tentacles. They’d given him food, so they wanted to keep him alive, but for what? He stood up. His ankle hurt less now. He limped across to the clear wall. “What do you want?” He touched the surface, causing the threads to whirl faster. After the first response when he’d touched the wall, Ethan had done the same thing over and over again, but the threads hadn’t deviated from their reaction of moving faster.

  His feelings of revulsion and fear about the creatures had entirely gone. He’d gotten used to them and now only felt curious when he watched them.

  Ethan yawned and sat down, resting his forehead against the wall. All the time he’d been in the chamber he’d only managed to take short naps, sitting against a corner of his chamber. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep on the wet floor while the light constantly shined from above and while he was under constant observation. He also worried about the air in the chamber. The room was watertight and so it had to be airtight too. How long would the oxygen last? He had no idea. He didn’t think he was running out of air, but then he didn’t know how that would feel.

  Maybe that was another reason he was so tired. Maybe he’d used up most of the oxygen.

  Ethan slid his hand over the surface of the transparent wall and watched the tentacles as they constantly brushed it and moved away. An idea struck. Did the thread creatures communicate by moving their tentacles? Perhaps they were trying to speak to him.

  Ethan traced a figure with his fingers on the smooth surface. He couldn’t move as fast as the threads, but his movement might communicate something to them. He tried moving both hands, mimicking the whirl of the threads, though much more slowly. He watched them carefully.

  His motions had no effect he could discern.

  “Let me out,” he said to them, hopelessly. “Let me go. Why are you keeping me here?”

  Without any warning, the floor dropped, jarring Ethan as he dropped with it. The distance it fell wasn’t far. Maybe just a few centimeters. Between the bottom of the wall and the floor was a dark gap. Ethan was about to reach inside when water sprayed out so forcefully it pushed him away from the wall and across the floor. The vomit that lay in a wide pool was washed away.

  Then, as suddenly as it had dropped, the floor rose. The threads had washed the floor clean, but that was it. Ethan remained trapped.

  He forced his tired, hungry brain to concentrate. If the threads were intelligent, which he guessed they had to be, then they probably had some way to talk to each other. Unless he wanted to live out his remaining days or hours trapped in a disgusting pit beneath a river, Ethan had to try to learn how to communicate with them. The goal seemed impossible. On the other hand, he had no urgent appointments to keep.

  Ethan tried waving his hands around at the threads, without result. He then tried moving his body too but that had the same zero effect. He wondered what else he could try.

  As he racked his brains, Ethan thought back to the two events that had occurred since he entered the chamber: the moment the light in the ceiling had turned on, and when the wall had become transparent. Just prior to each event he had hit a wall. Ethan turned to look at the threads whirling outside his cell. As they moved, they were pressing their tentacles against the surface. Could it be that they communicated by moving water? He guessed they might sense currents and ripples on their skin. That seemed to make sense. Human ears picked up vibrations in the air, but the threads were aquatic animals. Water was like air to them.

  Ethan returned to the transparent wall, formed a fist, and struck it. As he did so, he felt the wall give way a little under his hand. The material felt different from the other walls, which were solid and unyielding. The clear wall felt springy. Ethan was so preoccupied by the different sensation that it took him a moment to notice the effect of his blow. The threads had gone. After hours or days of their ceaseless movement, they had dis
appeared. Only the murky river water was visible from his cell, sweeping past sediment and plant debris.

  Finally, he had a result. He’d done something to affect the creatures who had captured him. Though what it meant, he couldn’t tell. He touched the transparent wall again, pushing it and testing its flexibility. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed that before. Maybe he’d been too preoccupied with watching the creatures.

  But where had the threads gone? Had he frightened them away? The previous times he’d struck a wall, they’d given him light and revealed themselves. By the same logic, something positive should have occurred when he hit a wall for the third time. He had to try again.

  Ethan hit the wall and waited. Nothing. He tried once more. Still no result occurred. But as he moved to strike the wall once more, Ethan stepped back in fear. A gigantic thread creature thrust against the transparent surface. The thing was so massive it looked as though it could envelop and crush the entire chamber.

  Ethan swallowed. What had he done? Had he summoned this terrifying animal by hitting the wall? Had it been waiting all this time for its tasty snack to make a move? The creature was swirling slowly and sinuously, its long, thick threads pressed so firmly on the flat surface they were squashed and their intricate patterns distorted.

  Was the giant thread creature trying to talk to him? He placed a hand on the wall. At first, he couldn’t detect any movement, but when he closed his eyes and concentrated, he could feel the wall quivering. The creature was creating the effect, but if it was trying to communicate Ethan didn’t have any idea what the message was.

  He closed his eyes again and concentrated. He wanted to try to discover if there was any kind of pattern to the vibration. He remained in the same position for long minutes, straining with all the sensitivity he possessed to feel any nuances in the vibrations.

  Finally, he gave up. He walked away from the wall in frustration. Maybe he had figured out the threads’ method of communication, but the information was useless if he couldn’t perceive their meaning. He was a human being. Vision and hearing were his strongest senses, not touch. And he lived in air. He guessed that the threads possessed a sense that “heard” the movement of water, just as his ears picked up sound waves.

  The massive thread creature continued to press itself against the wall, as if intent on communicating with him.

  “It’s no good,” Ethan told it. “I can’t hear you.” He pointed to his ears then shrugged, which he knew was ridiculous. Of course the creature wouldn’t understand his gesture. It might not even be able to see, and yet… The threads had been able to discern that he could see, otherwise they wouldn’t have constructed a transparent wall or given him light. They also seemed to know he was intelligent. They’d been guiding his actions by rewarding him when he performed the “correct” action.

  He wondered if the times when the threads had tried to drag Cherry into the lake or himself into the river, they’d only been trying to bring a human into their watery domain? If that was the case, what their ultimate purpose might be, Ethan couldn’t divine. Although the threads might not be predatory, they were keeping him captive. If their intentions were harmless they had a strange way of showing it.

  Whatever reason the threads might have for their actions, Ethan had to get out. He couldn’t live on spoiled food and limited water, and the oxygen in the cell would run out at some point. His only hope lay in convincing the threads to let him go. He returned his attention to the wall and the huge thread creature.

  They would have to begin with the basics. Ethan couldn’t remember learning to speak but he thought that babies and toddlers started out by naming things. Would that work here? He thought back to his earliest days at kindy. He remembered doing a lot of counting and learning about numbers. The idea seemed promising.

  Ethan struck the wall once. He held up a finger and said, “One.” He didn’t think the creature could hear him—it just felt good to hear a human voice, even his own. He struck the wall twice, held up two fingers and said, “Two.” He repeated the procedure for three. Would the creature understand the pattern?

  He placed a hand gently on the wall, shut his eyes, and concentrated. Was it his imagination or did he feel the wall bow inward very slightly three times? He struck the wall three times again then touched it and waited. The sensation of the surface bending inward was so marginal, he wasn’t sure he could actually feel it at all.

  He wished the creature would give a stronger response, if that was what was happening. Then it occurred to Ethan that if the creatures communicated through vibrations in the water, they were probably much more sensitive to touch than humans were. Maybe his blows against the wall were like the loudest roar.

  He tried tapping the wall three times, then felt for a response. This time, he was positive the wall did move. The giant thread creature was repeating his message back to him, and it was matching the strength of his communications too. He was finally communicating with his captors.

  What should he do next? Ethan’s mind whirred like the tentacles of a thread creature, trying to think up a plan for building on his discovery. Repeating numbers back and forth with the threads was a gigantic leap ahead, but numbers wouldn’t allow him to demand that they set him free or tell them he needed fresh air and clean food and water.

  As he pondered the problem, watching the massive thread organism, Ethan became aware that his foot was aching. His boots had come off while he was being dragged through the river. He lifted the aching foot to look at its bare sole and saw a cut he hadn’t noticed before. The skin around it was puffy and wrinkled from long immersion in the water on the floor and the lips of the cut were swollen and inflamed. It seemed to be infected.

  If he’d been aboard the ship, he would have gone to the medical bay, but there in the chamber he had nothing to treat the cut. He wasn’t sure what happened to infections that went untreated but he guessed it wasn’t good.

  Looking at the slowly writhing thread creature outside his cell, Ethan realized that the need for him to learn how to communicate with ii might have become even more urgent.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As the hours and then minutes counted down to the flitter’s arrival at its destination, Cariad’s positive thinking was slowly transforming. What if Ethan wasn’t to be found? Where and how long would she look? Or what if he was injured and dying or trapped somewhere and she couldn’t rescue him?

  Hope and trepidation fought within her as the final minutes passed and the massive river drew nearer. She was was flying above a forest of umbrella-shaped plants with high roots. Cariad spotted the dark gray sand of the river’s shore. She peered at it. She couldn’t see a flitter or Ethan, but perhaps she wasn’t close enough.

  The dark gray strip grew wider but no matter how intently Cariad looked, the boxy shape of a flitter didn’t come into view. But then, why would it, she reasoned. The vehicle’s signal had disappeared. For that to happen she guessed the flitter had to have been severely damaged. She shouldn’t expect to see it.

  Perhaps it had crashed into the water. If it had, Ethan might have made it out in time and swum to the shore—except that none of the Gens could swim.

  She’d arrived. The river’s shoreline spread out underneath her. Cariad landed her flitter and stepped out onto the bare, smooth sand. It didn’t show any signs of disturbance.

  ***

  Cariad searched and called Ethan’s name, walking along the river bank in both directions. Hours passed and she grew light-headed with hunger and fatigue. She couldn’t see or hear the slightest sign of him. She even went as deep as she dared go into the vegetation. But the only footprints she saw were her own. Nothing seemed to exist to indicate that Ethan or his flitter had been at the place. Cariad had even double checked on her interface that she had the right spot, but there couldn’t be any doubt about it.

  She paused in her search at last and leaned on her vehicle, gazing absently at her footprints in the sand. The evidence of her meanderings deep
ly saddened her. If she had left so much clear evidence of her presence, Ethan should have done the same. But everywhere she’d been the silt had been smooth. Not even the local wildlife had disturbed it.

  As the time had passed, Cariad’s emotions had progressed from deep disappointment to anxiety to fear and despair. What had happened to her friend? She couldn’t figure it out. Flitters had enough stored energy to last for months of continual use. Ethan shouldn’t have found himself suddenly without power as he flew over the river. According to what Strongquist had said, it seemed unlikely that Ethan’s flitter had broken down. Like the Nova Fortuna’s shuttles, they were Earth-manufactured. The flitters hadn’t been put together from kits by the settlement mechanics. They would have been thoroughly tested before being loaded onto the ship. And none of the other flitters had shown any faults.

  A darker thought occurred to Cariad. Had Ethan decided to end it all and deliberately flown the flitter into the river? No. Even if he’d given up on life, the flitter’s safety mechanism would have kicked in and prevented it. She couldn’t believe that Ethan would do such a thing anyway.

  Cariad climbed into her vehicle and started it up. She would be able to cover more ground by flying than on foot. If Ethan had left the site where his flitter had gone down he could be kilometers away. She lowered the window so she could call his name as she went along.

  More hours passed while Cariad flew long distances up and down the river bank and deep into the vegetated areas. She even flew right over the river to search the bank on the other side. Finally, as the sun began to set, Cariad returned to the original site where Ethan’s flitter signal had been lost. The place was exactly as she had left it.