by Loki Renard
“Did we go to the wrong planet?”
“No, definitely the right planet.”
“Did we somehow slip back in time? Is this a prehistoric version of the planet?”
“The temporal controls all indicate that it is Earth year 3232,” Reaper growls. “I’m putting the shuttle into static orbit pending full scans.”
He wants to know what happened here, specifically. It doesn’t matter. It’s pretty obvious what’s happened. Same thing that’s happened to hundreds, thousands, probably millions of planets and societies over the years: a series of fuck ups, to use a human term.
Over the next hour, Reaper’s analysis reveals that fifty percent of the plant life is gone, there are some rare forests, but they appear to be inhabited by aggressive wild beasts. Much of the land where humans once lived is a charred mass. The oceans have boiled away to relative puddles. Sea level is several hundred feet below where it used to be. Where there was once several billion cubic miles of water, there are now only a few heavily salted lakes ringed with brightly colored sand.
“I didn’t know the oceans hid colorful rocks.”
“It’s not rock,” he says. “It’s plastic. Ground down toothbrushes and toys from fast food meals, all sorts of debris turned into a new sand.”
“Nice.”
“Not nice,” he snarls. “There’s nothing left but trash.”
“Is the atmosphere still breathable?”
“Yes.”
“Is there still some accessible water?”
“Yes.”
“It’s fine. There will be some humans left.”
“I don’t think so. Zero signs of human habitation so far.”
“We’ve only been scanning for an hour. Humans are survivors.”
“This is one time your laid back attitude won’t help,” Reaper growls. “This is a dead planet.”
“It’s not dead. It’s just a little messy.”
He growls at me and I let out a laugh. I’m not worried. Yes, the cities are gone, but we didn’t come here for the cities. We came here for the people, and if I know one thing about humans, it is that they can survive almost anything.
“Take this seriously,” he barks at me, as if shouting is going to bring people back.
“If the humans are gone, then they’re gone, and no amount of taking it seriously is going to bring them back.”
He’s not listening. He’s back working on the analysis, putting together a picture of what happened here. This isn’t the first destroyed planet we’ve found, and it won’t be the last. Dominant species ruin their cradles more often than not. I’ve gotten used to it, but I guess we both thought humans would be better.
“Keep scanning for life signs,” I suggest encouragingly. “Something has to be left.”
“Probably some kind of plastic eating bacteria. There might be plastic based lifeforms at some point in the future.”
“We could come back and fuck plastic chicks in a few hundred thousand years,” I suggest.
“I don’t like birds,” Reaper scowls at his instruments.
“Human males used to refer to their female mates as infant chickens,” I remind him. “They were fucking weird.”
Reaper
We’re using past tense to talk about one of the most incredible life forms ever to rise out of the void of non-existence and undergo the formality of becoming. Tarkan is being crude and upbeat, as usual, but I know he cares about this as much as I do, if not more.
We were so eager to go down and experience all the delights of the human world. One thing I liked about visiting Earth was how cheerful it was. There were always crowds of people chatting and dancing and doing senseless human things like painting and singing and… now it is all gone. The cities I once knew have disappeared. They have returned to dirt, harsh winds have been sending dry sand against concrete structures until they completely weathered away. Roads which once carried tens of thousands of people are equally destroyed. The world I loved is now a sandbox with a scorched sky and a toxic atmosphere.
I stand back and shake my head. “We should report this to Scythkin command.”
“No,” Tarkan says. “We should go down there and verify it. Or keep scanning. There will be people left. They’re tenacious little fuckers.”
“There’s tenacious and there’s impossible to survive. This is a complete catastrophe.”
“No such thing,” he says. “There’s always something that remains. Always. Let’s find it.”
He’s so optimistic, but I don’t have much hope. Our temporal skipping, always forward, never back, means we see many tragedies unfold. It is easy to destroy a world. Millions of people can spend lifetimes building something, but it often only takes one to ruin it.
“Maybe they got off-world,” Tarkan suggests. “Maybe we should be looking at the moon?”
“They didn’t get off-world. They never developed interstellar flight. The best they ever managed were a few probes. They weren’t even sure if they’d been to their own moon. There’s zero chance the established colonies on other planets. There’s zero chance there’s anyone left.”
“There’s never zero chance,” Tarkan says, showing a sudden understanding of mathematics that he usually pretends he doesn’t have. “There’s just quite close to zero. And when you have big enough numbers, like billions of humans living on Earth, even odds that are that low are in favor of survivors.”
Tarkan is reckless, aggressive, impatient and lazy. But he’s also right.
“Let’s start looking.”
Chapter Two - Rat’s What’s On The Menu
…
EEEEEP!
The little beast squeals as I stab it through the brain with one hand and slam a mallet down on its body with the other, flattening it out into a pancake before I toss it on the grill. The brains leak out through the eyes and bubble with the heat of the fire and I start salivating immediately. Thank god, I’ve got something besides old roots and grubs to eat tonight. Hunger is with me day and night.
Food isn’t a right, it’s a luxury.
That’s what the old propaganda used to say, before the propagandists starved. I was so young, I never questioned any of it. I heard stories of days where water flowed freely from taps inside homes, where you could eliminate in fresh water and flush it away without a care. My mother used to talk about showering, a phenomenon I never experienced. It was apparently like rain, but it happened inside a hot indoor box.
I pull the rat from the fire just as it begins to char, and stuff a foot into my mouth. The protein rush hits me almost immediately. Oh god. Yes. I needed this. The fleshy parts of the inner thigh await me as I nibble down the bone, cracking and sucking out the small marrow.
My mother also told me about packaged foods. When she was a girl, you could buy food that wasn’t an animal or a plant, and it would come inside plastic and there was so much of it that people ate recreationally. Sometimes I think she must have been making up those stories, but my mother never lied to me about anything. Not even at the end.
Crunch.
The sound isn’t my teeth going through rat gristle. It’s the sound of what I could swear was a footstep on the loose gravel outside the cave. That’s literally not possible. There are no others in this area, not for thousands of miles. That’s why I am here. It could have been the sound of a predatory cat following its nose. The smell of cooking attracts many dangerous beasts, that is why I cook so rarely, and never at night.
I grip my spear and slip up into the narrow aperture at the top of the cave, a long, small channel which runs along its own path. It is too small and too high for most predatory animals to reach, and it has saved my life many times.
Scuff… Scuff… Crunch
There are definitely steps coming closer. I can hear them scuffing along the cave floor, hitting the unfamiliar bumps and ridges with heavy feet. There are more than two feet. Maybe it is an animal? Whatever it is, it’s heavy. Not a cat. Maybe a bear. I bite my lower lip.
I could maybe kill a cat. I don’t think I could kill a bear.
I nibble at the charred rat’s tail as whatever it is comes closer. The food helps me stay calm, and I’m not leaving protein behind. This is my fault. I have been here too long. I’ve learned that staying in the same place too long is dangerous. It’s also dangerous to move. There are no good choices. There are no safe places.
The thing gets closer. Comes into view. I freeze.
There are two men in my cave.
Men.
I feel my stomach clench, a light sweat break out on my skin.
Men.
They can’t be.
My mother told me many things about men. But the one thing she made very clear was that if I ever encountered any, I should run. If I could not run, I should hide. Fortunately, I’m already hiding, because every muscle in my body has frozen at the sight of them. I haven’t seen another person in many, many months. There was a small group of women who passed through a while ago. They wanted to cross the desert. They’d been told that there was an oasis on the other side where water flowed freely. I told them there was no such thing, and a few weeks later I saw the vultures picking at their bones. Nobody survives this place if they are foolish enough to have hope. The only way to keep living is to keep your expectations small. There are no oases full of water. But you may be able to collect enough condensation to keep you alive if you’re careful and clever.
I’m thinking about water because my mouth has suddenly gone bone dry at the sight of the males. They are dressed in very strange clothing. One is wearing what looks like armor. The other is dressed in some kind of costume I don’t recognize.
Men. Real men. It’s unbelievable.
For a very long time, I wondered if men really existed, or if they were just another hopeful rumor like the oasis in the desert where water flows and there are grapes which are crushed into wine which intoxicates and soothes.
I’ve never seen an oasis, but I am seeing these people who are certainly not women. They have the same basic shape as me, but they’re much taller. They don’t have breasts, instead they have broad shoulders and powerful chests. Their hips are narrow and their legs are long. I am instantly aroused, a reaction sparked by animal instinct. I have suddenly been made aware of a hunger bordering on starvation. The longer I look at these muscular creatures, the more I know I need them. There’s also an element of jealousy too. If I had a powerful body like they do, I would be able to hunt much bigger prey. I would be eating wild cats, not feral rats. I would be so much less vulnerable. I might be able to journey from my rat cave and see what is going on in the rest of the world.
Some part of me wants to call out to them, but I have not used my voice in a long time, and even if I remembered how to speak, what would I say? I try to remember what my mother told me about men. It wasn’t very positive. She told me that they were predators by nature, the best hunters of us all. They would hunt huge beasts, and quite often, women as well.
You will never be able to overpower a man, so make sure you stay far from them and keep a poisoned dagger. If they try to touch you, push it into the soft part between their thighs and run like the wind.
I was born because my mother did not have her poisoned dagger with her one day. She never made that mistake again as long as she lived. In her memory, I keep my mouth shut and stay in my little crevice, hiding away, waiting to see what they do. Why are they here? Have they tracked me? Did they see the footprints I so carelessly left in the sand coming into the cave? I have not been careful enough about hiding my location. I forgot to sweep them away with a palm frond as I usually do. I got used to being completely alone to the point that I couldn’t imagine anyone finding me.
They’re talking to each other, but I don’t understand the language. My mother might have understood them. She knew a lot of things. She could speak multiple languages, and tried to teach me them, but it has been so long since I used any of them I’m truly not sure I could even speak my own native tongue.
I wish my mother was here. She would know what to do. She would either kill them, or welcome them. I don’t know which. All I’ve done since she died is hide.
It has been almost as long since she has been gone as I’ve been alive. I was ten years old when she tripped on a rock, broke her ankle, and got a blood sickness. She sweated a lot and forgot who she was, and said things that made no sense, and then she got very, very quiet. It took me far too long to realize what had happened to her. I waited for a long time for her to wake up, even after she got very cold. That is when I knew I would be alone forever. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to show me how to survive. I have undergone very strange changes since she passed, some of which she prepared me for, others she could not.
One thing she told me was to trust my instincts. I don’t know anything about these men, but I know that even though they make me want them with their hard bodies, all long and limber and eminently desirable, they are invading my space. I don’t want them to. This is my cave. My home. They have to go.
Reaper
I’m seeing the hallmarks of a human encampment. Haven’t seen one this basic for a long time, but there’s all the bits and pieces humans accumulate when they settle somewhere. There's a roll of soft animal skin to lie on, because humans don’t like to touch the ground when they sleep. They bruise easily and sleep lightly. There’s a metal grille suspended above the still hot remnants of a cooking fire. And there is a glass contraption which holds a thin layer of water.
“There’s someone here. Definitely. Human.”
“You’re sure it is human? It could be an ape or monkey. It doesn’t look clean enough to be human,” Tarkan sneers, as if he ever cleaned anything in his life.
“Could be a feral human, a wild one,” I theorize.
I cannot imagine finding a human living so very alone. Without their societies, humans do not do well. They need others, but I only see evidence of a single occupant. That is very strange for a human.
“We didn't come all this way for some feral male probably living as a hermit outcast,” Tarkan snipes. He is bitter about this, as if humanity destroyed itself simply to spite him. His mood has gotten worse with landing. The planet we venerate is absolutely destroyed. Soon we will have to report the fact to our central command, and then the planet will be swarmed. We had a lot of time to talk about what would happen once our kin discovered what has happened to Earth, and the demise of its dominant species. If there are no people, then it will lose its protected status as a reserve. Invasion will be immediate. They will want to claim the planet before anyone else does. The ravaged environment will be suitable for one thing: brood sites. There will be clutches all over the planet’s surface, and it will crawl with freshly emerged broodkin, nasty biting little creatures.
We were broodkin once, but we do our best to forget it. The larval stages post-hatching are quite disgusting. Before we develop our limbs we are nothing but sharp slithering things consuming everything in our path - including members of other broods if they stray too close. Broodkin are creatures only a brood matriarch could have any measure of affection for.
In addition to being nasty to look at and to encounter, brood sites lay waste to the surrounding terrain. Every bit of nutrition is harvested by the larval creatures. We have left more planets than I care to number nothing more than dead rocks by using them as brood sites. If Sythkin command discovers that Earth is empty, what little is left of it will soon be covered by laying matriarchs and their creeping larvae.
“I don’t think it’s human,” Tarkan says yet again. He seems to think any place that doesn’t have a television in it can’t possibly be human. That was true for a period, I suppose.
“Look, there are tools here,” I point out. “There’s a fire pit. For cooking.”
“Could still be an ape or monkey. It’s been a while. Maybe they worked it out.”
“Some apes make tools, but only humans re-use tools. Humans have the developed pre-frontal cortex to be able to vi
sualize a future where they will need them again. Lesser primates don’t have the same ability to throw their minds into potential futures.”
Tarkan shrugs. He remains unconvinced because his senses are dulled by the suit. He can’t smell properly wearing it. He can’t feel the world around him. Tarkan is a very sensually oriented Scythkin. He doesn’t think. He collects environmental data and then he acts. Usually violently. That means that observing an environment and drawing conclusions is not his strong suit.
I’ve insisted we keep wearing the suits even though the planet does seem to be more or less completely empty. If we do find humans, we don’t want to scare them to death.
“It is a human, and it has cooked recently. There’s grease and fur on the griddle,” I point out.
He bends down and tries to sniff. When that doesn’t work, he pulls a piece of blackened fur from the metal and puts it in his mouth.
“Rodent fur,” he snorts. “You’re going to tell me a human is eating rats? They used to have such incredible cuisine, do you remember? Endless combinations of various ingredients. We would eat and mate and eat and mate again. Remember, Thragnar split his human suit entirely once because he’d gorged himself on Tiramisu.”
“Yes!” I laugh. “We had to purge that entire restaurant of humans, the ones who survived the shock of seeing what he was, anyway.”
“Huge mistake. Should have taken them with us. Wish we had. We would have had a stable of humans to breed from,” Tarkan says.
“Against regulations to do that.”
“Do we really care about regulations? Look at this place. If we’d broken the rules once or twice, we might have been able to stop them from getting to this point. Best sex in the universe, and we’re here in the rodent infested dirt hoping to find a single female, which isn’t likely. We’re probably going to find useless males.”