Still Human- Planet G

by Jerry Underhill

  Planet G

  Jerry Underhill

  To my brother, sister, and parents, for thinking more of me than I ever have.

  To my wife, my deepest peace.

  To Moose, for being the greatest dog and friend.

  To Huston Smith, for gifts that transcend words of thanks.

  To the Dave Matthews Band, for good, good times,

  And to Matt, Charlie, John, and Shawn. I love you guys.

  Thanks to @TheFilmButler for the cover design

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Absently, Huston reached to stretch the cold out of his joints. Waves of water droplets fell from the shroud of forest outside, but the worst of it was over.

  The storm had finally calmed. It was time to leave the cramped cave. Hoisting his pack and situating its weight across his shoulders, he stepped toward the opening.

  The echoes from his footsteps died as they were drowned by gusts and the smush of his boots’ path. He stopped to listen to the hopeful chirps of creatures testing the emerging warmth of sunlight. The sounds of insects, bird cries, and unseen rustlers filled his ears.

  Of average height and build, with unkempt brown hair and the etches of a well-tread smile, he was unimposing even on his own planet. He meant nothing to this place.

  It was several moments before he began moving again.

  He’d spent a lot of time that morning sitting in the direction of the sunrise. Nothing was as consistently unsettling about being on another planet than the reminder that it was not the same Sun as his own, nor the Sun of the history of his species: the source of creation and energy so many had looked to for so long. As it had every day, looking toward it reawakened his eyes to the alien of it all. In a funny way, it mirrored Hinduism’s polytheism: multiple gods, multiple suns, multiple divine sources of creation, authority, and energy in the universe, but the same power in essence.

  They’d arrived to the planet after a few years of cryosleep and set up a colony which had since been constructed, stabilized, and properly established under its formal title: Port Wallace.

  But Huston had wanted to get out and experience it on intimate terms. He’d followed a river for a few days, thinking it a good way to not get lost. Climbing a ridge and finding a spot he wanted to stay for a while, he’d set up camp within the last shards of cover before the tree line gave way. Descending to explore the forest below, a quick-moving storm had forced him to find cover.

  He’d only need to work his way west through the pass whenever it was he decided to return, which he knew would probably be in time to deliver his next sermon. The minister had enjoyed trying to make his way without the use of his map. Unlike on Earth, planet G, formally designated as planet g159, lacked the broader and well-worn corridors forged by humans over thousands of years. There were game trails and courses etched by running water, though, and the region offered distinct landmarks.

  Port Wallace was nestled in at the base of the mountain chain in front of him. It was strategically situated, with the coastal range offering some protection from the worst of the weather, the wide valley plains granting them fertile farmland, and the thick of a steeply sloping forest at their back.

  Huston had spent the first few weeks on planet G watching resources flow in and out of its manufacturing centering like some catastrophic tide. The vehicles and machinery belching from the swiftly constructed facilities of the colony were critical to its short and long term goals, but he was hoping to help limit their impact on the alien world’s primordial, unadulterated wilderness— what Lewis and Clark must've seen as they and their team wandered the open west— or even that he'd be a part of preserving some of it from becoming rarified artifacts found only in the hearts and minds of Port Wallace's first residents.

  And the documentary footage, of course, recorded by the prestigious, brazenly eccentric filmmaker hired for the purpose.

  There were also major decisions to make about the lifeforms. Which species to domesticate, herd, or eat? Coming in blind, which of the domesticated species on Earth would be eaten? Teams of scientists were responsible for influencing the decisions, ultimately, but he hoped he could have some whisper of a voice, if only in the day-to-day of how those species were treated by the colonists themselves.

  Scrambling across the crackle of pebbles born of eons of untold geological activity, his gaze was torn from the bald ahead to catch his balance. The sliding of his boot fanned light dust into the air. It was a moment remnant of so many hikes he’d been on before- a surreal representation of the familiar mystery of the planet.

  Stopping to wipe the sweat from his brow, he breathed aloud, if only to hear himself alongside the wilderness.

  The sweeping expanse of the world was breathtaking. His hike had carried him through fields of grass, valleys crashing with the gentle violence of watersheds, spectacular vistas, and the comforting company of forests striped with rays of breaching sunlight.

  There was so much wild here. It was difficult to grasp that there was nothing but primal, untainted landscape; there were no towns on the other side of anything.

  It was a mystical sensation, and a refreshing reminder of the nature of man’s existence within a grand kaleidoscope of natural phenomena. That man was a mere bit player in that balance was an understanding that he felt could be robbed by the benefits of society and technological innovation. He’d always wondered whether Earth could become a mix of dense urban centers and relented wilderness zones, and how that balance would impact people.

  When he’d played video games as a kid, he'd always wander his character into some wilderness and do whatever version of sitting down was offered him by the controller. He'd done the same living in New England, the same everywhere he'd ever lived, so he wasn't surprised that he'd seized every half-valid reason to justify leaving the colony to come out here.

  Setting off, another hour was enough to carry him to the comforting orange of his wind-slapped tent. Huston dropped an assorted collection of fungi, moss, and dried grasses into the center of the morning’s charcoals. The smell of smoke that clung to the scene was barely mollified by the day.

  They’d landed on G at the tail edge of the region’s winter season with the hope that it’d secure enough time to develop the site’s assets. It wouldn’t do to have to run off to space or to a new round of hibernation because of a food shortage. Scott DuPont, Chief Planetary Officer and man-in-charge since Wallace’s health failure coming out of cryosleep, had teams taking care of that.

  Shedding his beige wool button up and undershirt, Huston hung them over a low-hanging branch to dry before half-zipping his synthetic down jacket back up and turning to test the day’s materials. He knew he’d be able to strike the grass and moss into flame, but was curious to sample a broad variety of tinder. Pulling his blade and flint, coaxing the fire to life with stiffening fingers and delicately piling loose kindling atop the heat, Huston laid back to embrace the cold for a long moment, his mind drifting as he watched the smoke float from birth to where it loosened as it climbed to be whisked by the wind. His softening brain grasped for indiscernible figures in the cloud of smoke.

 
; He reached stifled fingers upward, barely stretching beyond the visibility of his breath rising in the frosty air, and motioned to cup the early evening’s platter of stars. His thoughts drifted to the wonders of the world’s casings: bodies, grass, words within a sentence. Things couldn’t be understood without some framing and an environmental context that separated their field and defined it as distinct. But as he rested some meaningless distance from the stars above him, it’d seldom seemed more a necessary illusion. A gift. A universe of mad science at play.

  He dropped his hand and lay still, blinks growing slower and less deliberate amidst the soft creak of wood and the trickling brush of wind through bare branches above.

  A sudden pop from the hearth startled his eyes open. Picking his head up from his pack, he glanced over to see a pulsing heart of orange; the fire had eaten through the generous structure of wood it'd been built. He closed his eyes again. Somehow he'd fallen asleep. Rolling onto his side, Huston hoisted himself onto an elbow and lazily pulled some twigs from his pant leg to toss them onto the coal bed. Night had fallen and had brought with it the severe caress of frozen metal.

  Staggering to a knee, intending to chase the refuge of his tent, his move toward the zipper was frozen by what he saw in his periphery.

  Turning to face the shape, the minister’s eyes widened in alarm as he found himself surrounded by pearly beings. He wished he had a better term for their appearance; they weren't exactly luminescent or transparent, but the boundary between their matter and the matter around them was less distinct than he was used to. Then what anybody from Earth could be used to. They had an essence to themselves that he could see and sense but it was an altogether different sense.

  He tried to quickly catalog the spectrum of creatures he'd seen or been made aware of, but the vividness of their white against the backdrop of the dark depths of night cut into his mind.

  Not willing to risk movement for fear that he'd seem hostile, he relaxed his shoulders and slowly lowered his blade to the ground. Logically, he knew he wasn't going to be able to fight them off and he doubted he'd find safety in the trees even if he could make it to one. If they intended to kill or eat him, he wasn't going to unnecessarily cause any pain to any of them. Internally, however, he was touched by a buoying sense that their intentions were peaceful. He also somehow knew that he was to get up and follow them. The recognition didn’t come as a voice, but as a hazy suggested image of what could be.

  The majority of the group assembled several steps away as if ready to leave, save for one who stood behind him as he hesitantly gathered some supplies into his ruck and sloppily packed his tent. Occasionally he glanced at the being to gauge the nature of his patience and companionship, wondering all the while why and how he was taking the time to do so. Within a few minutes, Huston shrugged his pack into place and raised his eyes to read the group. Again he felt a sense of communication: that he was to follow. This time he received it as a formless image of gentle wind, so moved to walk in their wake.

  He thought he should be afraid, but he wasn’t. Not at all. He knew it to be one of his biggest flaws: being suspicious of nothing.

  He didn't know where they were taking him. It didn’t really matter. He knew he was safe. Somehow. Perhaps from the way his mind seemed intensely drawn to the burrows first, then small nests in trees, followed by thorns around the buds of a waking bush, and finally his own rib cage, almost as if guided there by some external influence. He didn’t want to think of the outside force as a mind or minds, but it seemed undeniable.

  They walked for a while, which afforded Huston plenty of time to get a mental grip on the moment. Though it was a primeval world, there was an appreciable normalcy— an alien normal — to its landscapes and food webs.

  The alien beings who found him weren’t caricatures of something imagined, but were like nothing they’d seen or prepared for. Bipedal, they stood taller than most men, with bright white recesses where humans had eyes. It was hard to not center the moment on the visual experience of being near them- particularly given the quick and easy accessibility of sight, its relationship with an underlying sense of vibration in being near them, and how intriguing it was to even try to mentally describe them.

  This wasn't an alien species that'd arrived on Earth's periphery with some advanced tech bent on annihilation, subjugation, or edification. What he was experiencing was a sentient species in their own environment; a species possibly intelligent enough to be making their own decisions about how they should interact with the other species of their world.

  Looking around as he followed them for hours, he still couldn’t believe how Earth-like the world could be while being so distinctly not Earth. It was similar to the sensation when seeing film or pictures of the plant life in Asia, and being struck by how different it looked, yet how pronounced the parallels were- fundamental, foundational similarities in its biology.

  Certainly, he didn't think anything was related to life at home- unless the idea that meteors and asteroids carrying the origins of life crashed into Earth and other planetary bodies long long ago was truth. In which case, at the deepest smallest levels, organisms of the universe were potentially related. Obviously, even if that were so, they'd evolved on separate trajectories as they’d been conditioned by the environment and adapted to survive.

  Even with the alien beings, their appearance was recognizable and their experiences seemingly relatable. But he couldn't know with confidence what their experiences were like. He wasn't sure they intended to keep him alive, but he hoped they would gift him enough time to start.

  A dozen or so miles east of Port Wallace, they descended into a valley on the leeward half of the chain- swiftly losing elevation, the lower terrain burgeoning with the bright green of freshly grown plants. The sky was subtly lit with the faintness of dawn. Huston couldn’t help but smile at the sea of spring bursting not from the ground so much as from branches and trunks thirty feet into the canopy. He needed to bring Kit back here; she cherished flowers.

  At first glance he thought they were young branches, but the sight of yellows, purples, and blues peeked from beneath infant buds here and there, such that he became mesmerized in looking up at what would be, and had to be softly tugged— sensed as an image of rain drops trickling down a rock face— by the being nearest him. A being he was beginning to believe had been assigned to him.

  They passed under a canopy and into a small clearing; the ring of trees surrounding it were littered with makeshift hammocks and small planks. One of the Cloud beings broke from the group and walked toward a small cave not unlike the one Huston had spent the morning in, beckoning him to follow with a subtle transmission that felt like the pull of an eddy on the slightest of twigs. He followed the being as it led him into what was a deeper cavern than he originally thought, and into what was clearly to be his room: a pool sized chamber off the main passage.

  He sat cross legged. Several moments passed; the time filled with little but dreary-eyed, uncomfortable napping, until an ache caused the minister to hurriedly stretch his legs from under him. The austerity of the cave floor rang through his hips. He leaned his head back against the craggly rock wall of the cave and crossed his arms against the chill that’d nestled into the lower confines of his chamber.

  Huston reached his hand back over his shoulder to rest his hand on the wall. It was cold. It was also drier than the sounds and smells of the cave would suggest. Running his hand down the wall and along the floor, Huston crouched to a knee. Resting his head down on his thigh, with folded arms as pillows, he bowed quietly for a few moments. Deep in thought. Having no thoughts whatsoever.

  He peered deeper into his chamber. There was no opening for water, air, nor man, just the echoes of his subtlest of movements churning sound and vibration into unbound haunted spirals. Smiling, Huston understood again why caves had historically been considered holy places. He was excited anew. Fleshing his palms against the surface beneath him, the minister dissolved his sense into the
floor, into the walls, and into the core of himself. Minutes passed until he opened his eyes and slowly stretched out on the ground, resting his head on his pack and lifting the notebook.

  Day 17- early morning hours

  I have made first contact with a sentient alien species. What’s better- it was they who approached me, peacefully, and brought me back to this seemingly temporary encampment. I have only guesses as to how our sensors didn’t indicate their presence, but the timetable imposed on us from the start challenged how thorough we could be.

  The minister paused again- staring absently at the rock face opposite him. The purpose of his writing seemed silly now, but he knew enough of history to understand its potential value; he also knew that he needed to do something to help center himself, or to help offer a little context.

  We approached their village/encampment and they escorted me to this cave. I poked my head out a few minutes ago; there's one of them out in the larger cave just beyond the smaller chamber I’m in. He, she, it is just sort of there. They don't seem to be cave dwellers; this isn’t set up to be a shelter, community area, or temple of any kind. It could be a granary. I saw an assortment of containers fashioned from local fibrous materials outside of the entrance. I get the definitive sense that I’m not a prisoner, though I’ve been here for a couple of hours by myself. I have a sense that they’re communicating their peaceful intentions to me, but not from any audio/visual cues- it's just a powerful feeling.

  Day 18- evening (probably)