Soon, the great ship was touching down in the crater, settling onto giant metal feet that gripped the stone beneath it. “Well,” I said to Nissi and Vol, “I guess we had better get down there.” Then, without waiting for either of them to catch on to what I was about to do, I gathered my wind spirits about myself and stepped out into space. As they always did, my spirits carried me smoothly the long way down to the crater floor and set me down gently. They were always so nice to me.
I walked around the side of the ship, looking for where I thought the main hatch would be. Sure enough, the side of the craft split in a whoosh of steam, and a long ramp extended to the ground. I arranged myself neatly and waited. Volistad and Nissikul touched down beside me, the first carried by the latter, both of them wearing identical exasperated looks on their faces. I raised a finger before either of them could scold me. “Shh.”
From the steam, people appeared. They stepped out onto the ramp uncertainly, n0t sure what to make of everything. They had expected one half-mad Former in a suit of power armor, not an entire village. What could I say? I had gotten lucky. I searched my brain for the right words. It had been a long time since I had spoken anything other than Erinye. Then I put the biggest smile I could on my face, nudged Volistad to remind him to quit scowling and called to Chalice’s newest children, “Welcome home!”
THE END
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Chapter One
Eladia
Leaving camp early was the first rule of every Chronicler, and I had just succeeded in breaking it. The loud buzzing of the vibrant life of Primordial Earth was both exciting and bothersome at the same time. Having just barely slept through the never-ending humming of the overgrown city forests, I was in a hurry.
“Come on Silver. Don’t stay behind. We still have some way to go before we arrive,” I said, covering long strides of ground while in a hurry. And by long, I mean long enough for an average build woman like me to walk fast around the unearthed roots. I turned my focused eyes to watch my apathetic Android.
“Yes, Eladia. I’m right behind you,” the metal woman uttered, her mechanical tunes giving off the same indifferent feeling.
I couldn’t help but shake my head. Of all the assistants, I had to get chosen by the one with the advanced artificial intelligence.
I, a Chronicler, and my partner Silver, the conveniently named robot, were chasing an important relic of the past. Chroniclers, like archeologists before us, were interested in cataloging and studying important historical events. Divided into many different majors, I was particularly interested in the extinct race of the Nusae and thus, I followed that particular way.
However, today, I would rather have stayed back home, on the new human planet, Yaerus, than ran around on the primeval place called Earth. Even though my job as a Chronicler always led me to all sorts of interesting and rough places, Primordial Earth was probably one of the worst, certainly at the top five of my least-preferable places to be. And the next time a mosquito bit me, I was sure it would rise even higher to the list.
I sighed and kept moving forward, checking around the decayed metal structures that humans used to build in the past. It must have been rough, building all those monstrosities. They were just plain ugly and impractical. Every destroyed building seemed like a gutted, gray giant, devoured by green and mossy plants. And yet, the beauty of it was unmatched.
I stared at my watch, unable to remember if I had adjusted the time to fit the local system. “Silver, could you please remind me of Sol’s and Earth’s day/night cycles?”
“For the third time since we landed, it’s 23,56 hours. And yes, you have already adjusted your watch even before we set up camp.”
“You know, I’m your boss. You should show some respect every now and then,” I said in a mocking, annoyed tone.
The android woman started cackling with short, electric sounds. “Well, if we finally find one Nusae artifact, I’ll make sure to reconsider.”
I was in the middle of climbing atop what it seemed like an old, religious place, an ancient church. On the top of a stone pillar, I stopped to catch my breath.
You shouldn’t have those snacks for breakfast Eladia.
The wind up here was fresh and less humid than down on the ground, in the center of the wet forest. It caressed my face and swept away some of my fatigue.
Earth was considered the Mother Planet of the human species, the third-ranked, Expanded Empire of the Known Galaxy. The stories still told for this place were numerous, but none did justice to the miracle called life. Everywhere my sight fell, a new color sprouted from the ground and all kinds of bugs and flying creatures dwelled the land.
Bugs? I hated bugs.
I turned and searched for my assistant, but Silver was still on the base of the leafy pillar.
“For god’s sake, can you please change and come up here Silver? I can’t find the trail all by myself.”
In what sounded like a monotonous cluck, the Android transformed into a small box equipped with thrusters, abandoning her feminine figure for the comfort of flying all the way to the top in a matter of seconds. I looked as she ascended with ease, holding myself back from having a long talk about responsibilities and professionalism. But still, I always forgot that Silver was bound by Asimov’s Laws of Robotics so that she would follow my every command even if she didn’t want to.
With both of us finally standing on the top of the shattered pillar, I took out my flask full of water and took a long and satisfying sip. By the time I lowered my head, and tightened my ponytail so that my hair didn’t get in the way, Silver had changed back to her usual form.
Some parts metal, other parts holographic, details that made her look like human, Silver seemed like a beautiful human, which was the complete opposite of me.
“Okay, this should be high enough. Can you please run a scan on a five-mile radius? We should get some kind of reading from up here, not like yesterday.” We had already searched all the adjacent areas around our camp, except this one. It was getting late, however, and this was the last place in our list. Tomorrow we would venture deeper into the woods and change our camping site.
This time, Silver seemed to lose some of her rebellious personality, and she lively followed my orders. A short string of beeps and laser lights traveled through the horizon. It would take some time for her to complete the analysis so I thought of recapping the information I already had about the Nusae relic.
Back on Yaerus, during one of my lengthy visits to the Institute, the place where all human knowledge and archives were stored, I had just found something fascinating. While going through a source about the pre-colonization era of the Primordial Earth, I stumbled onto a testimony of some kind, on a newspaper about an object of unknown origins.
The human that testified about the object had seen nothing like it in his whole life, said ‘it vibrated like a living thing and changed shapes in a matter of seconds.”
Nusae, the first of the Lost Species, were known for their cryptic technology, specifically what they currently knew as morphing. Silver, for example, used morphing technology to change into various and practical shapes that helped her achieve her goals easier. The schematics about this kind of technology were discovered back in the early days of Humanity’s Space Boom, making it one of the first complete and detailed info about the Nusae, until today
.
Yet, this source was one hundred years old. Bits and pieces were found around the galaxy during that time, but no one could link all the pieces to what it amounted as the Great Mystery. Nusae just vanished at the same time Orihans started to appear. And even though there was little to none Orihans around the known galaxy now, Nusae were close to legendise.
Well, not if I find this relic.
“Eh...there is something strange going on,” Silver suddenly said.
“What? What did you find?”
“I can pick up two weak energy signals, both of similar nature coming from different directions. One northwest of here, the other southeast.”
“Did you run a pattern scan? Any forms of alien DNA? Did the signal’s energy resonated with any of the last relics?” I asked the questions all at once, not sure if she understood what I said.
“I don’t want to disappoint you, but both of those signals seem entirely foreign to each other and to my database, yet somehow similar. Maybe from the same era of some sort? I don’t know. I’m not sure if any of them are of Nusae origin, but they’re surely not originated from Earth. The signal and the complexity of the pattern are out of this world. I haven’t seen anything like it.”
I tightened my ponytail again while falling into deep thoughts. I didn’t have enough time to investigate both of them today. What should I do? Which one was most important of them? As a scientist, I pledged to follow only the facts and nothing else. But, in a twisted joke that fate came up with that, my gut was the thing that made the decision.
“We’re going forward Silver, to the northwest point. We can check the other point tomorrow.” And just like that, I jumped my way to the ground.
Throughout the way towards the northwest point, I didn’t speak at all. My mind was in overdrive, running all the parameters and trying to come up with a logical explanation. Alien signals, possibly not of Nusae origins. Yet, two of them in just a short distance? Could it be a trap? No, Silver would have noticed. But what could be so sophisticated that the combined knowledge of the Known Galaxy Archives wouldn’t recognize?
With every step I took, the anticipation built in my chest. My dark eyes and sun-toned skin almost glistened under my excitement. Many of my colleagues had doubted me up until now, but this was the time to retaliate. I would be the one to find out everything about the Lost Species.
Or so I thought.
“We’re here,” Silver said.
“What the hell is this?” I stopped to gawp at the large, pyramid shaped construct in the middle of what must have been a building square. Black in color, with shining silver marks sparkling under the sun. “If this is a Nusae spaceship, then I’m a prehistoric ape,” I said, irritated as hell.
“Do you want me to run a scan?”
“Yes,” I replied while at the same time tried to hide my discontent.
In under a minute, Silver stretched her hand and cast a beam of intense, greenish light to the black pyramid. When the warning sound came, Silver and I watched each other in surprise.
“It...it…” Silver tried saying something, but she couldn’t.
“It doesn’t appear in the archives.”
I couldn’t hold back a cheer; I had just discovered O. Tech.
Chapter Two
Jay
“Cryogenic System Support deactivated. Welcome back, Prime Officer Jasih.”
The hot sensation of blood running through my veins was enough to wake me immediately. Pain, memories, desires, all came back with a violent throbbing in my head. Everything behind my eyes felt like melting, but one deep breath somehow dulled the sensation.
Cryogenic Preservation was a mean bitch. After I finally opened my eyes, my sight was still blurry, probably because of a long time of not using them. But what I saw in front of me couldn’t be mistaken. Was that...a human?
The primal being, previously thought extinct, was now standing in front of me showing its teeth in what it seemed like some kind of jovial form of communication. Humans should yet be very underdeveloped to be able to communicate with me. It was better to leave it alone.
The human before me kept talking, and talking, but I couldn’t listen to a thing it said. Pesky, insignificant fly. I couldn’t lose more of my time here.
I moved both my hands and legs, trying to regain control. As soon as I did, I decided to gently push it out of my way. If I used more strength, my big muscles would easily squash it. It was already enough it had interrupted my cryogenic sleep. Now I had to find a way out of this planet.
An array of small, handy screens was located on the other side of the room. While asleep, these screens were my lifeline, and my digital archives. They were supposed to pass the information straight into my mind, but they didn’t. I had no idea how long I was asleep, or what happened in the meantime.
Just by touching the human’s tender skin, it seemed to lose balance and almost fall on the ground. It yelled something in a vexed manner, but I really didn’t have time to spare for primal beings. I took two uncertain steps towards the wall before me, only to stop in my tracks after seeing the data on the screens.
The number 2.514 was flashing on both screens. And just then, for the first time, a cold, shaky feeling spread from my stomach to the rest of my body in a matter of seconds. My spaceship was programmed to stop keeping archives after one hundred years of continued sleep. So, that means, I was asleep for over one hundred years.
“...Earth...you...crashed…”
Amid my confusion, I recognized these three words, seemingly coming from a dialect of the far edges of the galaxy, a dialect that a human shouldn’t have known.
Things were getting weirder, and weirder.
“Who are you human? Where am I?”
The human seemed surprised that I could speak the same dialect as it did fluently. However, I was not sure why, or how, I knew how to do that. The words just rushed out of my mouth all of their own.
In what was a weak control of the language, the human said: “Eladia. Chronicler. You are on the Earth.”
Earth. The Earth. What was I doing on Earth? I decided to respond the same way I did before, only, this time, I tried to adjust the dialect a bit, to make it easier to communicate with it.
“I’m Jasih. I’m a Prime Officer of... I’m from--,” and nothing came out of my mouth. Not a word, not an image of home, nothing. Just...darkness.
“From? From where?” The human sounded surprised I managed to learn its language so quickly, but it sounded more confident than before.
However, I didn’t care to answer to it. Instead, I started walking around the spaceship, searching for a sign of purpose, anything to identify my origins. Passing by a piece of a mirror, I saw my sparkling gray skin and my black hair, and what was a set of purple eyes, and not a single piece of information came back to me.
My clothes were torn, and the last thing I could recall to my memory was me — ordering a trip to Earth—yes, I remembered now. I was heading for Earth after all—searching for something of importance. But nothing else came to mind.
“Jasich...Jacih...no. I can’t pronounce that. I’ll call you Jay, from the first letter of your name. Jay, would you mind if I let Silver run some tests on you?”
I, now called Jay for the convenience of the smooth-skinned human, tensed. “I’m not a specimen, human. I’m Jasih, the Prime Officer of…. Fuck!” I yelled and punched the wall next to me, sinking the metal to the place my fist hits.
The human seemed to get frightened by my violent ways, but it couldn’t possibly understand how I felt now. And yet, even though fear flooded its eyes, it didn’t even fret.
“I can help you if you let me. You seem to have amnesia. Silver, my assistant, can run some tests on you, and we can find out more about your condition. I promise I won’t harm you.”
Just for a moment, I laughed at its sayings. Then, I took a step towards it, trying to intimidate it. And yet, it just blinked. Nothing else. “What gives you the impression that you can hurt
me?”
The human didn’t answer. Now closer than before, I started examining its characteristics, trying to put it in a category of some sort. Humans, primal mammals that shared the same DNA code and were divided into males and females. That much seemed apparent. And then why in the seven prisons I couldn’t remember anything about my people and myself?
Its chest was bloated, but it seemed like a natural extension of its body. Its face had soft, symmetrical lines, nothing indicating that it was some kind of warrior. Its voice was high-pitched yet soothing. In the end, I just couldn’t place it, so I thought of just asking straight on.
Alien Romance Box Set: Alien Former: Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Books 1-5) Page 42