REAP 23

by J J Perry

  “Wow!” Michael uttered.

  “Are you OK, Mom?” Yvette asked.

  “That was quick thinking, young lady,” she said. “And good aim, young man.”

  “I was so scared,” her daughter said.

  “How did you know to make a spear?” Savanna asked.

  “What’s a spear?” she answered.

  “We’re going to need to make some weapons if these predators come around like this,” Savanna said, relieved once again to be alive.

  18.3

  LANDING PLUS

  FIFTEEN YEARS

  Yvette worked the loom, slow and painstaking effort. It was fun, however, to see the different colors of yarn slowly create a pattern. It took so long to make a completed sheet. She liked to make bright things for Adam to wear, but for herself, she usually made plain tan garments with a thin red stripe and a thin blue stripe every now and then.

  Adam tanned hides, rubbing, rolling, and beating them soft. Some of the small animals had such soft fur that Yvette sewed several pieces together to make a comfortable rug for a bed. She loved to lay there naked and feel the softness all over her body. It was too warm on some nights, but it was still a pleasure that she savored.

  During the day, she wore a shirt or a dress. She had resisted this idea from her mother at first, but she was used to it by now. For some reason, mother thought that she and Adam should not see each other naked. They still did, almost every day. The house, as big as they had made it, was still pretty small. They had grown up naked. Now, both of them had changed, with hair and swellings where none had been before. But it was still the same two kids, just a bit grown up now.

  Today, she watched Adam leave with a couple of spears and a bag full of stones to bring home some game, hopefully a couple of birds for dinner. She went to the garden, while Savanna went to bathe in the pool they had made so many years ago she could hardly remember. Both of them carried staffs with one sharp end. Since meeting the first panther, they had encountered several other predators though none as frightening.

  It was a cloudy day, wet from rains that came often this time of year. She spent hours weeding, pruning, and, finally, harvesting a few items for dinner. Yvette approached home tired with a basket of vegetables. Her mother said she was now a fully developed woman who walked with grace and confidence. She just felt bored. Tending the garden was not interesting. She wanted something more. From a distance, she saw Savanna seated on the ground, leaning up against a bench, rubbing the center of her chest. Yvette hurried to her.

  As she neared, she saw blood on her mother’s arm and neck. She put the basket down.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “One of those smaller cats, a lynx or something, surprised me. I fought it off, but I got scratched up in the battle.” A couple of shards of skin dangled from her forearm. “I made it back here OK.”

  “Why, all of a sudden this past year, do we have so many of these mean animals?”

  “They come here for food, I imagine.”

  “Did it scratch your chest?”

  “No. It just hurts. A lot.” Savanna looked a different kind of color, her lips darker, her face lighter. A glaze seemed to cover her eyes.

  “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  “Maybe I’m just tired,” she gasped. “Where is Adam?”

  “He’ll be back. What can I do?”

  Savanna looked around as if searching for something. Her lips moved without speaking. Maybe she wanted to talk but didn’t know what to say. This happened a lot lately. “I need to tell you one more thing,” she finally said.

  “You know so much.”

  “Listen to me.” She reached for the one red fruit in the basket. “This has seeds inside.”

  “I know that.”

  “Those seeds make new trees.” She wiped her brow and her eyes. “You and Adam have seeds inside. Your seed is here,” she said as she reached under her shirt and softly touched her naked belly well below her navel. “You need to have children to complete my mission. Complete the mission. Complete the mission.” She repeated as she slumped, dazed.

  “OK, Mom. Stay with me, please. Don’t fall asleep.”

  This aroused her. “His seed needs to mix with yours inside you.” Savanna’s face contorted. “Like the bees do with plants. Like we do sometimes to make a new plant that’s a little bit like both the parents. Do you hear me?” she asked.

  “Yes, but how do we—? Seed? I don’t get it.”

  “He has a part that will fit inside you.”

  Yvette knit her brows and then screwed up her face. “That?”

  “Yes, sweetie.”

  “Does he know this?”

  “I haven’t told him.”

  Yvette cradled Savanna in her arms. She grew heavier and weaker. “I’m still not sure how this is supposed to work.”

  “You should wait until you’re eighteen or so. He will know how, once you tell him. He just needs that one bit of information.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “It might hurt a little at first, but it will also feel good, like when you touch yourself.”

  “How do you know I do that?”

  “After a while, you’ll have a baby, like I told you a few years ago.”

  Savanna clutched harder on her chest and grunted. “I think it’s my heart. It’s so heavy. I’m too young.” She panted, sweat on her face. Yvette felt her forehead, cold with approach of death.

  “Sometimes you are so confusing, Mom. But I owe you so much, for all you have taught me.”

  Savanna’s voice was faint. Her phrases came in weak bursts. “My time is long past. But here I am, a relic in a different age, a new world. I have done my duty. My part of the mission is over. It is for you to complete it here. I love you, Yvette. I love you two with all my life. I am tired. I need to sleep.” She tried to lift her hand to Yvette’s face, but it stalled before she touched. Yvette took the hand and brought it to her face and let it feel her tears. Savanna’s eyes closed in peaceful sleep. A minute later, she sighed her final breath. Yvette called to her, butfound no answer. She sat sobbing, unmoving for a long time.

  When Adam arrived, he wept with her. Three days later, they buried her with her seven mates but not with the one she truly loved. It didn’t matter, she had told them a year ago. It was part of the deal.

  18.0

  CONFIRMATION

  “This is not a stable orbit, Commander,” the navigator of Baul One called out.

  “Will it be stable for a month or so?”

  “We won’t crash into anything, if that is what you are asking.”

  “Then this will do.” The commander turned to the radio crew. “Still nothing?”

  “There is not a single transmission in the electromagnetic spectrum coming from this planet that is not natural.” Quan spoke in reply. “There is no evidence of intelligence on the planet based on what we have seen.”

  “Is this the right planet?” the commander asked.

  “It has ocean, atmosphere, and land, and is in the location predicted from the historical data,” Quan stated. “It is hard to say this is the wrong place. Perhaps the party could not establish life here.”

  Pressing a button and speaking, the commander asked, “Teloscopy, do we have much visual data?”

  “We have a preliminary look. There are a couple of areas suggestive of organization.”

  “Really?” The commander was confused by the conflicting information.

  “I’ll zoom on one and put the image to your screen.” In a couple of seconds, an image of the planet appeared on a huge screen in command. Everyone in the room turned to look. “Let me walk you through these images. Here is the planet with icy poles north and south and landmasses that occupy about 25 percent of the surface area. I’ll zoom on this area north of the equator.” As he spoke, he drew a small square
on the image, and it grew in size to occupy the screen. “Here is a large river flowing toward the north with a delta in this sea, right here.” He moved a pointer over the spot of interest. “South of the delta at these points here, here, and here, there may be crops. The color is highly homogenous and the structure organized. We can get higher-quality images with a little more time, but the sun will be setting over this region within an hour or two.”

  “Can we get a couple of diships launched immediately?” The commander was asking the adjutant mission specialist.

  “We can launch in two minutes if you want” was the answer. “Just give the word.”

  “Go ahead. Follow preset protocols and pay attention to the area we just saw.”

  The adjutant spoke into his mike. “Launch now. Coordinates available from Teloscopy. Transmit images when available.”

  Two hours later, shortly after sunset when the western sky was a gradient of dark blue to black, a middle-aged man dropped his hoe and gasped, “Look!”

  Above was a trio of bright lights moving in formation. The three objects made a sudden turn and rapidly disappeared behind a distant partially built pyramid. The family of six stared in fear and amazement.

  18.1

  “Nin, this is Porliche.”

  “So good to hear from you. What’s up?”

  “I got a call. REAP 23 made it. The planet is populated with us.”

  “Incredible. What is it like?”

  “The planet is much like here. However, the human civilization is very primitive. They retained no technology. It is agrarian. They have no electricity, nothing.”

  “Did they help them?”

  “I’m not sure. They argued about intervention, but there is no policy. They have a lot of pictures.”

  “It sounds like another conference.”

  “I know. I can’t wait. We’ll have so much fun. How is Parnet?”

  “We split. Bosan came back.”

  “And?”

  “I have never been happier. Neither has he. I think we might be helices.”

  “I’m happy for you.”

  “How is Bhat?”

  “He is struggling.”

  “And you?”

  “Nin, think of those astronauts who settled on planet Savanna. How they felt when they left and as they traveled. They were stuck with each other, four couples with no escape, no way to change their minds, heading into probable death, and if not death, then a terrifying unknown. What happened to their life waves? What went on with the relationships and all that Bosanian physics? Your relationships and mine seem so trivial in comparison.”

  “The four couples,” Nin mused. “Two or three of them were probably unhappy. I hope the happy couples survived and watched their children and grandchildren grow up. God forbid any of them lived and died alone. At this point, it doesn’t matter much to us. The importance of everything is a matter of scale. The little details are diluted by time and distance. A planet growing full of people from a handful of pilgrims is enormous.

  “Had it not been for the bookish girl from Yucatan, we never would have known the end of the story.”

  “Their story is just beginning, Nin. Or may the whole epic has no real beginning or end.”

  END

  APPENDIX ONE

  HISTORY OF THE

  ORIGINAL WORLD

  The planet from which the REAP mission left is about 4.5 billion years old. Initially, it was lifeless, dominated by oceans, active volcanoes, and atmosphere that would have been toxic to later life. Bacteria were living on the planet 3.5 billion years ago followed by single-celled organisms. Multicellular organisms began about one billion years before man. Around 550 million years ago, more complex aquatic animals emerged, and life began to thrive and develop more complexity. The earliest mammals lived about 210 million years before the present, though they did not proliferate much until dinosaurs died about sixty-five million years before the current era. Shortly thereafter, primates evolved. Man, Homo sapiens, did not appear until about fifty thousand years prior to liftoff. Civilization followed about forty thousand years later.

  Eight thousand years is inconceivable even by an old soul, whose span of eighty years seems to have taken, well, a lifetime. In geologic or astronomical context, it is brief, just 0.00018 percent of the age of the planet. The light from almost every star in the sky took longer than a lifetime to arrive in view.

  Over one hundred years before REAP, there was a man-made pandemic of two genetically engineered infectious agents, viral and bacterial, resulting in billions of deaths. The developed world was better able to manage the contagion, but poor countries were decimated.

  As a result, by the late twenty-third century, human population had declined from its peak of about nine billion to under two billion. The major world governments came together and adopted a number of joint goals to optimize peace, progress, and cooperation. They reset the calendar, against bitter opposition of Christians, to the year that the pandemic ended. This was the first time in the history of the world that all nations, with the initial exception of the Vatican, functioned on one calendar. Because of the vast devastation and the realization that humanity is fragile, a goal was adopted to explore other planets to which life on Earth could be transported and on which it could survive. Over the following seventy years, up to the launch of the REAP program, great social and political progress was made while working toward this singular goal. Most of the planet was at peace during the launch of the REAP missions between AP 76 and 89, after pandemic.

  By AP 400, an ice age was clearly established. Both polar ice caps had grown dramatically in size. By AP 2000, Switzerland and much of France were under ice. This included the bunker where the paired electrons were stored for all the REAP missions. A nuclear power plant was dedicated to this facility including the housing for those that staffed it. Eventually, these efforts were abandoned. The personnel died or moved to a more temperate climate. Before the area was abandoned, four ships had sent messages. Three of these, missions two, five, and six, indicated the target planets were incompatible with life. Mission one indicated their destination, a large moon, was possibly habitable. There were nine confirmed mission failures. No signals had been received from the remaining ten missions, most of which had not reached target. A high-technology, self-contained, extremely durable plant provided minimal though adequate power to the facility. It required infrequent and minor maintenance.

  Ice caps displaced people and erased many countries. Africa, having been virtually exterminated, became the new frontier where eventually the countries coalesced into three rich republics. Between AP 1000 and 2000, the population of the world fell by one billion from cold, sickness, and war.

  Several African-based theologies emerged, just as happened in America in the nineteenth century, in Europe between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries and throughout the course of civilization. One small branch became known as Reapers. They believed that Earth would be saved by one of the fourteen surviving missions. The faithful went on an icy pilgrimage to the Bunker every year for a few centuries and then every decade as the ice cap grew larger. Gradually, these visits became less frequent when the ice cap was so thick they could not reach the Bunker. At around AP 3000, the visits ceased, and knowledge of the location was lost in a flood of data overwriting history. Only a tiny band of Reapers kept the hope of finding a message from these intrepid astronauts now raised to holy (or mythical) status through their new scripture.

  The United New England States (UNES), part of the former United States and the financial center of the western hemisphere for centuries, lost influence as the cold intensified. This country threatened to go to war to annex Guatemala and Nicaragua. Conflict was averted when UNES purchased both countries and guaranteed all natives an income for life and for the next four generations. Over the next forty years, most residents of UNES relocated to Central Amer
ica. The burden of the purchase combined with expenses of relocation, building a city, and paying debts resulted in a total collapse of UNES.

  Sao Paulo, Brazil, became the cultural and business center of the Western Hemisphere. In the east, Mumbai, India, remained the largest financial capitol and center of commerce. The second-largest financial center was Preben, a city built along the Gold Coast of Africa specifically to become a center of commerce. It was a city of beauty, technology, art, and science. Law limited its population to eight million people.

  Areas that had been desserts were transformed into lush expanses of productive land. Northern Africa became the breadbasket of the world followed closely by Australia. In the Western Hemisphere, Mexican dessert was transformed into fields of grain as the Midwest became tundra.

  Repeating cycles of growth and decay of democracies and dictatorships were repeated over hundreds of times for thousands of years. Saharia, the largest country in Africa, was a stable government for over two thousand years until the great Menetian war in 4515. David Meinet was a gifted speaker, with an expressed philosophy that appealed to the poor and to the intelligent alike. With his sophistry and oratory manipulating the masses, war raged, and governments were toppled throughout Africa, the Mideast, and Asia. Genocidal campaigns were followed by nuclear detonations, making the planet toxic and colder.

  It took hundreds of years for the residual small feudal states to merge into larger and more-organized geopolitical units. This decreased the frequent small conflicts but replaced them with larger infrequent wars. Despite the instability and shifting centers of financial and political power, technological and scientific advances were never lost. Most people continued to enjoy conveniences, efficiencies, and comforts.

  Australia became a dominant economy, protected by its geographical separation from the Balkanized world. Following the success of Preben in Saharia, Australia built its own Golden City on the central north coast. It was called Borigine. It became an academic, intellectual, and artistic capital as well as a financial center. Its focus was on education with research, development, science, and technology on one hand, and art of all kinds on the other. Shortly after AP 6000, it started to try to replicate itself in other areas, notably the island of Ceylon and South America. It had the will, the military ability, and political savvy to “franchise” governance across the globe.