Through the light mist, he was finally able to make out the outlines of a shoreline and shapes. From the orientation, it seemed the walkway had veered to the right until it ran parallel with the shore and fell into a thicket of grass. Neither the walkways end, the grass, nor the presence of land drew his attention, though, as the sight in front of him sent sadness thudding into his stomach.
Chapter Ten
Whoever they were, they’d been decimated. Bodies lay strewn on the shore, in the grass, hanging off defensive platforms in trees, and as he saw in glancing into the first shack he floated by, curled in a corner; its charcoaled bones forever amidst the burned ruins of a home that couldn’t protect it. Not from whatever had come through here.
He tried not to pay too much attention to the wooden spears lodged in rib cages and skulls. He even managed to not stop and crouch over the dozens and dozens of bodies that had evidently been smashed to death. But the macro of it all— the hundreds of dead bodies, the buckled walls of shelters, the thatched roofs that had been caved in from above, as if doom had comet-ted through the canopy to lay indiscriminate waste to a way of life— was a staggering weight.
It was made worse by how recent it seemed to be- recent enough that remains were intact, but old enough that they’d been feasted and scavenged upon. It was also made worse by the misery of so many souls perishing so far away in a place and time that could never be remembered.
The thing that left Huston’s spirit an ember-esque husk was how reminiscent it was of the expunging of indigenous peoples on Earth and of the suffering he’d seen in war-torn villages across the globe. He wanted it to matter to somebody. But these lives had been torn away a billion miles from relevance.
They’d traveled thousands of years of technological, political, and social innovation to cross the stars and find that they could never escape what man had left behind and nature had harbored: the fundamental truth of conflict, peace, and survival, and of the animal at the core of living alongside other heartbeats.
There were severe dangers in living in one place, in entrenching a society alongside a sustainable food surplus and thereby needing to deny it from others- particularly once you visibly succeeded.
He remembered when he was in Denver for one of the pre-launch press circuits Wallace had set up, mostly being questioned by the National Geographics of the world but occasionally approached by the odd tech blogger hunting for a specific quote to plug; he’d spent a lot of time looking east across one of the most productive agricultural regions of the planet. He’d thought a lot of relationships within society then- about the exchanges at the heart of successful relationships both within societies and between parties.
Imbalances and unbearable rates of change were often behind conflicts in both cases. What imbalance or change had provoked this? Did it have to be so mechanical? Could such an irrational thing as war stem from an irrational initial action when high intelligence and emotions were involved?
He wondered what imbalance lie at the heart of the confrontation he’d witnessed in the forest a couple nights before. Maybe the Cavers were using the water they brought in to help burrow a more expansive tunnel system, and maybe the Clouds held territory which denied either that expansion or the Cavers’ water supply.
Or maybe the Caver population had blossomed beyond the capacity of their home. He wished he knew what they ate, the origins of their subterranean existence, or what their social structure was like, because an engineering project such as that suggested they were at least semi-sedentary.
He wondered too what imbalance led to the altercation at the Cloud camp. Imbalances weren’t always empirical- even something like a person feeling like their sense of self wasn’t being affirmed by another, by their peers, or by the environment could ignite a cycle of tensions that led to conflict. In some places, even farming was fought against by peoples wishing to preserve their cultural identity; mythologies from the Algonquian in the northeast reflect the sadness and intra-societal conflict that came with abandoning their way of being.
It seemed the larger Cloud had acted out of some angst over the ritual the smaller Cloud had been leading, but Huston couldn’t be sure of that, or what the cultural significance of it was.
He’d laughed to himself then about how thankful he and those like him should feel toward science for freeing them from the dark superstitions and rituals that had plagued civilization’s earliest religious institutions. Freed them to connect and nurture. Empowered as they were, as mediums, to secure sun, rain, the successful hunt, and fortune against all that wasn’t understood or otherwise mitigated, what was his role now when it came to building peace for society and its members? When it came to seeing compassion flow where needed and helping individuals find harmony within themselves and their neighbors?
In the aftermath in front of him, where had relationships failed? What might’ve been the shaman’s role, and was there anybody left to search for comfort?
Lost in thought, he guided his canoe ashore and stepped into knee deep water, sloshing up the slope as he pulled the craft from floating off. Walking closer to one of the main structures, these more permanent and substantial than the others and decorated with pictographs carved into their sides, his gut twisted at the sight of a skeleton at the entrance. Long gouges in the doorway frame bore evidence of its efforts to keep hold of whatever safety it thought the structure provided. A heartbreaking gasp of desperation to imagine.
“Do you think it matters how you die?” Gangotra asked softly.
“Hey Gangotra” Huston said, startled. He didn’t know anybody was still watching. A long pause followed, as Huston caught up with the question.
“No.” He said finally, looking at the body by the doorway still. “Not to them.”
“There’s no cosmic reaction?
Huston paused again.
“I don’t pretend to know.”
“Certainly, but a guess?”
“Well, I firmly believe that there’s some sort of judgment that occurs, though I’m not sure what the mechanism for that would be.” The minister responded, pulling his eyes from the bodies to look deeper into the forest beyond them, where a well-tread but slightly grown over trail carried on for a while- the mist obstructing his view of whatever lay beyond. He began walking.
“Could be a God, could be that a lifetime of working for ‘light’ or ‘dark’ leaves you in that spiritual space for an eternity, could be that the loving bonds you create are your own eternal paradise in the afterlife and the destruction of others causes you spiritual damage there... like what some would call a haunted ghost.”
“We are fixed in place upon death?”
The minister considered Gangotra’s question, which drove to the core of so many of their conversations: the ultimate reality of Gangotra.
“To die…. is to dissolve. All that which life’s essence is drawn from, all its constituent parts, is drawn from and released into a greater sea of reality. Of being. Yet the sum of those parts, in a space beyond place, when would dispersal be relevant?”
“And time?”
“If time and space are an illusion- or at least a way we perceive the imperceivable…from the infinite to the infinite, always on that plane, neither perishable nor additive, when wouldn’t you exist?
“So it matters? How they died, what they did, what was done to them, what you and I do? In death, do we have perspective of the life we lived and of our new state, if we’ve dissolved into the infinite?”
Huston took a long breath.
“Our experiences in this realm transform us in that our bonds are eternal. This is a gift and a gymnasium for the soul. In that new state, I believe, inter-subjectively, you are you, and your loved ones are they.”
“You’re suggesting that we, the living and the dead, are together. Right now and forever, everywhere and nowhere.”
“Yeah, I think so. I like to believe so. Just as our own souls are consciousness, everything, and nothing at once. It is a beautifu
l ultimate reality. Built of form, most things that have ever lived have experienced material form and ultimate essence as distinct hemispheres, though, where they are not. The exception being some of the most gifted and divine souls to have graced mans’ side.”
“Can you?”
“Ha, no. I think I’d like to be able to. To see old friends. In dreams I do, and in life, they live forever in that they were, are, deeply close with us, and are forever seeds, living in all things, including in our perspective, allowing us the gift of seeing them here and there, in moments and behaviors that remind us of them...in that way we are with them.”
It was in the middle of all of this that the sky was torn apart by the wailing drives of drones swooping from the clouds, the firing of its guns ripping into something somewhere.
“Gangotra?” Huston asked in alarm. There were strict weapons restrictions in place.
Several moments of silence followed as Huston stood still on the trail. He was just beginning to make out the shapes of a much larger village when the drones had fired.
All he could do was take a quick look at the village, just to verify that it would look the same as the spot along the water, before turning around and heading back. But not before praying to God that there was a definable bad guy in this.
Chapter Eleven
“Huston, give me a moment.” Gangotra’s said quickly into Huston’s earpiece.
The minister hadn’t made it back to the canoe yet. He could hear several voices in the background. Finally a single voice distinguished itself as the rest fell silent. Huston recognized it.
“I think when we all took the plunge to sign on to this mission, we knew that we were bargaining for a hefty amount of unknown. Except - only now are we discovering what unknown actually means. They are natives to this region, and from what we can tell, they have been here for quite some time. How we missed them remains an open subject of investigation within Copernica’s teams - both here and back on Earth. My personal estimation is that it is because the Caver beings may have simply been in caves, and because the Clouds do not resemble life as we would appreciate it on Earth. Whether there are more - the only honest answer anyone could give is that we do not know. However, we are actively using lessons learned from the Clouds and Cavers to refine our search methods.” Scott’s voice said.
“How is Wallace? Should we revive him? Did he have a contingency plan?” Came a voice Huston thought he could recognize, followed by muffled follow-up questions.
“This is the Q and A?” He asked into his microphone.
Gangotra didn’t reply.
“Dr. Wallace’s condition remains stable. Going beyond that, we start to veer into the territory of personal health information. It can seem bizarre sometimes, being so far from Earth, to be reminded of the little rules that once governed our lives - but those are rules we still abide by. The medical staff, both in the colony and still on the Don de Dieu, are attending to him closely. As far as contingency plans go, I think sometimes it’s worth remembering that this venture is bigger than any of us individually, even Dr. Wallace. Beyond the team of us directly involved in maintaining the colony and the Don de Dieu, Copernica is a massive corporation. There are thousands upon thousands supporting this mission.”
Huston walked through the sand to sit on the edge of one of the less damaged swamp-side structures. He’d listen a bit more to see if Gangotra or Scott would speak to him, though he knew that wait could be substantial.
“A number of our questions relate to the immediacy of physical safety. One asks - ‘We’ve been assured of our technological superiority, but what, specifically, should we draw confidence from?’ Another, more bluntly asks, ‘what are you doing to protect us?’ A very direct question. I appreciate that.
We have a two-level approach: relationship building and capacity building. I think we need to be wary, however, of using terms like protection. Terms that automatically characterize our neighbors as threats which we must shield ourselves from. We do not believe that they want a hostile relationship, and we cannot let our fear of the unknown create that hostile relationship for us. Now - certainly, that does not mean that we should not do our due diligence in ensuring that we have the capacity to respond to threats that develop. Those of you connected to engineering know that we have expanded the production of weaponry and defense systems. Our capacities are in place for the worst, but controlling our emotions and steeling ourselves for potential misunderstanding remains our best protection at these first steps.” Scott finished.
“Huston said he could communicate with them. How?” That voice he was sure he recognized. It was Julie’s.
“Establishing and developing communication has been one of our primary efforts, and we’ve been working on communicating with both Clouds and Cavers. Huston has been closely involved with our attempts to communicate with the Clouds - and I know he describes it as a personal, mental, connection. Meanwhile, a number of our colonists have been involved with communicating with the Cavers - myself included. Caver communication, or at least our form of it, is a little easier to explain - being dependent on the projection of rudimentary images—” There was a silence. “I do apologize, however, I must take a brief intermission. We will be back shortly. Gangotra, what is it?”
Judging by the clarity of Scott’s voice and the shutting of a door, Huston could tell Scott had joined Gangotra in a private room.
“Sir. We are getting security reports from Knux’s expedition. It appears that there has been an incident. The security drones detected an anomaly, which was revealed to be several Clouds jump-teleporting at him. Warning shots—” Gangotra said swiftly and clearly.
“Shots?” Huston stood in surprise, pressing the headset harder onto his ear with a cupped hand. A Cloud attack made no sense. “We had to fire shots at them? Did they stop?”
“Not exactly. I have Huston on the line” Gangotra responded. The quality of the audio suddenly changed as Gangotra apparently put him on speaker. “One reached Knux and attacked him with some sword-like weapon.”
“Is he okay?” Scott asked in concern.
“He is critical and in transport. Extent of damage is currently unknown. The assailant was destroyed and the others fled immediately.”
“I thought they were supposed to be the non-hostile ones. The hippy, religious, peaceful ones. He was out with Tarma, wasn’t he? What about Tarma? Do we have footage from the drone? Let me see it.” Scott demanded.
“Right away. Huston, activate the video feed on your end.”
Huston immediately accepted the request to mirror his screen with Gangotra’s personal unit. He saw Randy out in a field filming Knux. The image was distorted but discernible. The drone was recording from an extreme height.
“I’ve got the footage from Tarma’s camera, too.” Gangotra said, and suddenly the screen showed two feeds and Huston could hear Knux’s voice.
At the edge of the drone’s window, Huston saw a group of Clouds emerge from a line of trees. His heart was racing.
“Okay, so, welcome to plot Custis 222a.” Knux began, demonstrating what Huston knew to be a recent find of cereal crops. This is maybe one of my favorite agricultural prospecting plots. It’s nice to get out into a grassier environment, as opposed to the more dominant forests around here. If we look over here—”
He must have been explaining the process of searching for food and developing the groundwork for a sustainable native agricultural system for Tarma’s documentary.
“Wait, wait, wait. Hold up.” Tarma interrupted, fidgeting with his equipment in the video feed. “Automated camera my ass. Thing was pointed the wrong way. Okay, we’re good now.”
“Yeah, if we look over here, we can see-”
“No, no. From the beginning.” Tarma interrupted again, pouring his flask into his mouth.
“Welcome to Custis 222a,” Knux repeated with a sigh. “One of my favorite plots, and one of the closest areas of grassland to the colony. Here we discovered one of the m
ost interesting plants we’ve found so far, if you take a closer look at the grasses.”
“What’s special about the grass?”
“It’s a cereal grain. A lot of people hear grass and think of pointless lawn grass, but actually the basis of human civilization is grass. Wheat, oats, barley, rye. So, one of the most important tasks we have is to identify sustainable and native candidates for civilization sustaining crops.”
“How do you know that humans can eat this stuff?” Tarma lowered the camera, apparently reacting to a glance from Knux. “Don’t worry. I’m going to edit all these questions in post.”
“Well, my role is about going into the field, basically the last steps of the identification and collection process. After that, it goes to the science team to figure out whether or not we can eat it, and everything else.”
“Alright, cool. Grasses. Hey, do we have any big fruits… or vegetables… something around here that might look good on camera. Big sexy tomatoes. Berries. You know…”
“Not really. Not around here that I know… And most of those things back on earth never existed naturally. It’d take genetic modification, either through gene editing or old school farming.”
“Alright. Well, let’s get some grass shots. I’ll get some field shots, then can I get some of you picking the grass, or inspecting it. Whatever you do with grass.” Tarma lifted the flask again. “Grass. Great. That makes for real compelling film.”
Huston heard beeping sounds in the audio. They were growing louder. Tarma had the camera in front of him. He was slapping at the increasingly loud beeps.
“What the hell is beeping? We can’t be out of battery. I know I charged you this time, piece of trash.” The beeps continued.
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” Tarma raised his voice to yell loudly to Knux, who was scowling and half-covering his ears. “Something is beeping and I don’t know what!”
Still Human- Planet G Page 9