Out of Sight (Progenitor Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  They reminded her of ocean mantas. Each had a long fluorescent tail in either orange or blue. The blue ones tended to be longer and narrower, and she noticed after a while that the ones with orange tails had a different shape to their ‘wings,’ broader and longer.

  “Males and females.” She swished her feet back and forth. “I wonder which is which?”

  ‹Out of range.›

  Eventually, Sima bored of lying still and got up to wander. The river of grass wound among the trees, though the density of the foliage kept her from venturing too deep from the open. Lime green runners crisscrossed the forest floor, brimming with red thorns. A sense of imagined fire flared in her feet at the mere sight of them, and she spent the next fifteen minutes walking while looking down, despite remaining in the grass. Even those cheap foam shoes would have been awesome to have.

  If I get hurt, I’m going to die. There’s no doctors here.

  Distant roaring filled her mind with images of a waterfall and tempted her away from the safety of open grass. Careful to watch where she placed her feet, she crept into the trees and startled a handful of cat-sized pastel blue furballs, which scampered away making porcine snorts and squeals. At the sudden eruption of activity, she cringed and froze until the rustling underbrush faded to silence.

  Leaves both slender and wide brushed over her skin as she advanced toward the echo of bubbling water. One of the broad ones left a painful slice on her arm, its edge like that of a knife. She yelped, cradling a wound no worse than a cat scratch and whimpering at the plant. She remained wary of those leaves, navigating around them while also trying not to step on anything bright red or pointed.

  Eventually, she found a creek with perfectly clear water burbling over rounded rocks in various bright colors. She stepped up to the edge, her feet sinking into cool, wet sand along the banks, and crouched to put the bracelet close to the surface. “Is this safe?”

  The laser light appeared for a few seconds and vanished. ‹Water. Variances in trace elements are within acceptable range for human consumption.›

  “Wow. What are the odds of finding a planet so close to Earth?”

  A massive number appeared.

  She sighed while fanning her face. “I wasn’t expecting an answer. It’s hot as hell here. I’m gonna swim a bit so you might wanna pop off.”

  ‹Nice try. This Omnicomputer is waterproof.›

  Sima grumbled and grabbed her bra. Swimming in her underwear felt weird, but doing so with nothing at all felt even weirder. Since sweat had already dampened the fabric—and oppressive humidity kept them damp—she left them on and waded to the center where the water came up to her ribs. Eager to escape the heat, she let herself sink into the weak current, drifting like a piece of scrap wood while enjoying the cold seeping over her scalp. She drank and paddled around for the better part of the next hour.

  Once shivering started, she swam to the edge, climbed out of the water, and sat in the grass to dry off.

  I’m the only person on this planet. She stared past fluttering cyan leaves at darkening indigo overhead. A pair of moons, one pink and one orange, dominated the sky to the right. If the scene were an illustration, the moons would be an inch apart. She tried to guess if the orange moon being a quarter the size meant it was farther away or smaller.

  So what am I going to do? Grow old alone and die? I’ll probably go insane. That’s what happens to people when they have no one to interact with. Sima closed her eyes, thinking back to the madness of living on the streets in the city. The toxic regions outside the walls were even deadlier than the demolition zones, though the Earth Government put on such a show of being all nice and shiny in the residential areas.

  I wish they’d have just shot me. She sniffled as tears fell down her cheeks. This is a cruel way to kill someone. New life and family my ass. I’m sixteen. Who adopts kids that old? They sent me up here to be someone’s wife. They probably don’t care the whole ship exploded. Fifteen minutes later, an intense wave of loneliness made marrying a total stranger seem like not too bad an option, provided he didn’t hit her. I wonder who Mom’s doing now. Does she even realize I’m no longer on the planet? “She doesn’t care. I’m not little and cute anymore.”

  Her bracelet chirped.

  “What?” She held her arm up over her face.

  ‹Your appearance does qualify as ‘cute’ to a large segment of the population.›

  This piece of metal is trying to make me feel better. She twirled it around her bony wrist. “Am I going to die?”

  ‹Yes… eventually.›

  She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

  The screen blanked and retyped. ‹Probability of thriving here is approximately 84%.›

  Sima let her arm flop at her side and traced her fingers around her stomach, wondering if it would be more painful to eat nothing but those fruits or let herself starve. Her mood dipped and swayed. I’m millions of miles away from any humans. Would I even want to survive? I’ll go mad like one of those men they found wandering the Northern Contamination Field.

  Tones like whalesong emanated from the sky as the sun weakened. More mantas glided overhead, some pairing off while others seemed in no hurry to be anywhere. Rippling flutters ran along the edges of their ray-wings from nose to tail. She listened to them call to each other, daydreaming about the home she ran away from and the mother who hadn’t even noticed.

  Suicide by not giving a crap is going to hurt like hell. She sat up, crossed her legs, and played with the grass by her ankles. Okay. I could fight for survival, but why?

  After a few minutes of staring at her still-soaked excuse for clothes, she got up and searched for leaves, grass, or vines suitable for making some manner of skirt. Violet broad leaves she found turned out to be sticky and unpleasant to touch, due to tiny pointed hairs like needles. Worse, the hairs pricked her skin, drawing blood. Narrower blue ones had sharp edges with serration, and splintered into fibers when she tried to blunt them. The broad ones that she cut herself on before were hard as wooden plates, useless for any form of clothing. While the grass felt gossamer soft, it proved too brittle to work with and fell apart when she tried to weave it.

  “What’s the point?” She grumbled at her exposed body, feeling like one of the girls from Magdalena’s sitting around in their underthings all day. At least the EGSF had given her plain ones nowhere near as skimpy or decorative, so they didn’t embarrass her quite as much. “I’ll wear these ’til they fall off. Not like there’s anyone else here to see me.”

  After an hour more of aimless wandering, the sun had gone down and taken the oppressive heat with it. The air remained warm enough not to pose a risk to health, but stuck in her damp underwear, she found the breeze chilly.

  It’s dark. Primitive humans took shelter at night.

  “Bracelet, can you find any shelter?”

  Sima clicked her tongue for four minutes and eighteen seconds of ‘please wait’ before a magenta triangle, a directional arrow, appeared on the holographic screen. Below it, the number 247.

  “Meters?”

  The bracelet emitted a happy sounding chirp.

  Two hundred and thirty meters later, she stumbled out of the underbrush into a circular clearing, unnatural in its perfection. At the far side, a trapezoidal stone doorway protruded from a dirt wall covered in vines. The opening widened toward the base, but had no sign of a door or way to close it.

  “Umm, whoa. That’s not a natural cave.” She shoved branches out of her way and jogged up to the entrance, awestruck. Beyond it, a corridor the same size and shape as the door afforded her a good deal of clearance overhead. “Civilization here? This can’t be human. We were supposed to be the first.”

  She wandered in, arms out to the sides, fingertips an inch or so shy of touching both walls. A short distance in from the door, the ground became a ramp, leading to a rounded chamber carved of pale grey rock. Thousands of grooves formed an intricate pattern of squared spirals and sections that resemb
led a printed circuit board. Every inch of the lines glowed with cobalt blue light. She ran her finger along one of the grooves, finding no heat, liquid, or apparent explanation for the luminosity.

  A whistle slid past her teeth. “Some kind of aliens definitely built this. Well… I guess I’m the alien here.”

  Electronic patter emanated from the bracelet. ‹Eight years of reconnaissance probes to this planet found no evidence of civilized life.›

  “Guess they went extinct. You think whatever made them die out will get me too?”

  ‹Insufficient data.›

  She lowered her arm and wandered around the edge. The chamber’s floor consisted of dirt, except for a seven-foot metal disc in the center covered with symbols that appeared laser-etched into the metal. She circled it once and settled down to sit on the ground, eyeing the platform with suspicion.

  “That looks like where the aliens would sacrifice me.” Despite having ‘slept’ for over two years, she yawned. “Wow, being the only human on a planet is tiring. Guess I overslept, huh?”

  Text pattered along on the display. ‹Stasis is not the same as sleep. All brain functions are suspended.›

  “So stasis makes people into politicians?”

  Sima curled up on her side, using one arm as a pillow, and promised herself she wouldn’t cry. Three minutes later, the thought of never seeing Earth again made her break it. She missed Cassie, despite the girl trying to talk her into whoring. She missed the Crash, despite the danger. She even missed Oema, and that little smile the girl flashed after pushing Draz’s dead body aside to loot his video game unit. But most of all, she missed familiar surroundings, no matter how unpleasant they’d been.

  I hate my mother; why do I want her?

  Stagnant air inside the cave dragged a reluctant Sima from sleep. A night spent on the ground left her already stasis-weary body aching and stiff. Never had she imagined she’d miss sleeping on moldy, thirty-year-old sofa at the end of an alley, garbage, vomit stains, and all, or her nest of shredded trash bags in a cistern underground.

  At least on Earth, she could beg for food.

  Sima shifted to sit cross-legged and wiped the crumbs from her eyes before dragging her hands over her head in a rough effort to comb her hair. “Ugh. I feel like crap.” She sucked in a breath through her nose and leaned back to stretch, frowning at her thigh as she attempted to massage some feeling back into her muscles. “I didn’t freeze well.”

  ‹Good morning. The current local time is 10:11 a.m.›

  She gasped, staring at the display above her arm. “Oh, no! I’m late for”—her voice fell to an unimpressed grumble—“roaming around alone and going crazy.” She sat like a yogi, tapping her fingers on her knees. “Might as well get started.”

  It only took two minutes for Sima to give up trying to think calm, centering thoughts. Outside, the sun filtered through the jungle canopy, tinting the world in vivid shades of sapphire and green. She raised an arm to reduce the glare; the heat made her feel overdressed.

  “Damn, I guess I’m starting to go native.”

  A gentle breeze caused her hair to tickle the small of her back, an inch or so above the waistband of her underpants. She absently scratched at the spot, enjoying the brief respite from the heat. After finding a secluded place in the woods to relieve herself, she wandered back to the river, shrugged off her undergarments, and went for a swim.

  The initial nervous thrill of skinny-dipping faded with the realization no one could catch her. Embarrassment lessened with each passing minute. A dip in this stream bothered her much less than having to shower in front of two cops. Between the relaxing warmth of the sun and the soft current, she lost herself in the wonder of an environment devoid of metal sidewalks and grime-smeared buildings.

  Sima soaked for a while, swam back and forth for a while more, and spent quite a few minutes diving to examine a spread of pearlescent lavender stones on the riverbed. Her third time under, she reached out to pick one of the plum-sized rocks up, but it sprouted legs and scurried away. Her shriek filled a bubble as she kicked up from the bottom, startled. As soon as her head broke the surface, she gasped for air, laughing while choking on water.

  An hour and fourteen minutes later according to the bracelet, she crawled out of the water and found a few of the fruits she recognized. Sima sat on the grass next to her still-dry clothes and ate while listening to the hiss of wind in the trees and the languid calls of sky-mantas, flying unseen beyond the thick canopy of blue leaves.

  I’m sitting naked on the bank of a river on an alien world. This has got to be some messed up dream. Maybe the EGSF is using me as a guinea pig for some kinda new drug. She shivered at the thought. I’m dead either way. Mirage… yeah right. I’m strapped to a table somewhere dreaming, with a wire plugged into my skull.

  She leaned forward, chin on her knees, long hair falling in a cascade around her feet. Dammit, Mom. Why’d you have to be like that? Why did I run away? Oh yeah… him. Her gaze fell, burdened by the fear she would wind up a crazed wild thing far removed from humanity. She stared into a shifting reflection upon the water’s surface, counting tree stalks.

  “Bracelet, how long does it take someone to go nuts from being alone?”

  ‹Insufficient data. Too many variables.›

  Sima sighed, folded her arms across her knees, and bowed her head. The doldrums passed after a few minutes and she looked up toward the sky again, mere flecks of light leaking between leaves. A nearby thump made her gasp and cover herself with her arms. She glared at the spot for a moment before realizing the noise had come from a fruit falling, not a person sneaking up on her.

  A long sigh slid out her nose. “There’s no one else here.”

  Thinking about the other kids she’d seen in the stasis pods before they left Earth made her curl up and cry. It’s not fair. They didn’t deserve to die. Had all the ‘good karma’ she’d banked on Earth, not breaking the law for four years, been the reason she lived? In her mind, some abstract catastrophe caused the Progenitor to explode near this planet or during reentry. Something horrible must’ve happened for the ship to section the stasis chamber up into individual escape modules and jettison them. Could any others have made it? Her stasis pod had been in the deepest corner, perhaps all the way at the back of the ship. If the front end exploded first, she would’ve had the best chance.

  Maybe there are other pods? Her hope didn’t last long. No… they would’ve landed near mine. I didn’t see any more. And something almost smashed mine. She shuddered at the thought of the huge metal flange speared into the floor near her pod. Had whatever struck her lifeboat hit it a few feet over, she never would’ve woken up.

  Perhaps karma hadn’t been kind to her after all. Better to have gone silently to oblivion without ever opening her eyes again. Being stranded alone on an unknown planet promised a far worse end.

  “Blah.” She lay back in the grass and let the air lift the water from her skin.

  She eventually stood and put her ‘clothes’ back on. Despite being the only human anywhere within a two-year-long flight, it still felt improper to traipse about naked. However, if she couldn’t find any usable plant material to make garments from, going full tribal would happen eventually whether she wanted it to or not. Her garments wouldn’t last forever. At least they’d been new when she got them, so she had time yet. Then again, she may very well die before they wore out.

  After a while of sitting there moping, curiosity pulled her into the woods. She wandered with no destination in mind, still astounded by being able to see and touch actual plant life. Loud creaking, like two giant slabs of rock scraping against each other came from somewhere off to the left.

  One of those strange birds strode along at a lazy pace, its head perched atop a long neck at the level of the treetops. It sniffed at fruit pods dangling from the branches far out of her reach. Unlike the ones near the ground, these had a dark blue color with round, fluorescent green ‘melons’ embedded in them. Rather than
pluck the fruits off the pod, the bird ate the entire thing whole, some twenty or so fruits in one go. She followed along, watching it eat pod after pod.

  She thought about a movie she’d seen years ago, back when her ‘bed’ consisted of a ratty couch at the back of a dead end alley. Given her age at the time—about thirteen—she probably shouldn’t have been allowed to watch it. Despite the graphic portrayal of the sort of thing that went on inside Magdalena’s happening quite a few times, it also featured a Star Soldier stranded in the woods of an unknown world. That woman had made temporary shelter from trees. Although, the trees on that ‘alien planet’ looked much more Earthlike than the forest around Sima here.

  Besides, the soldier also had a huge knife. Sima couldn’t exactly cut down thin trees or hack all the branches off with her bare hands. Searching around for already-fallen sticks didn’t get her anywhere, and a few exploratory tugs at branches close in diameter to her arms proved she had no chance whatsoever of breaking them.

  “Okay, I guess I’m not building a hut. Hey bracelet, do you have a laser?”

  ‹Yes.›

  “Can you cut down trees with it?” asked Sima, her eyebrows up.

  ‹No. It is only a scanning device. You have already seen it.›

  “Oh.” Grumbling, she turned in place, studying the jungle. A bug the size of a man’s fist sailed by, emitting a deep, droning buzz. “Eep!”

  Sima ran, despite the insect having no apparent interest in her, and didn’t stop until her legs threatened to dump her to the ground. She stumbled to a halt, looked around at the jungle, and took a seat on an enormous root as high off the ground as an ordinary chair. Gasping for breath, she held her head in both hands, staring down at the dirt between her feet.

  “What the heck was that thing?”

  ‹Out of range.›

  “Thanks,” she deadpanned. “That giant bug is going to stay out of range. What should I do?”

  ‹Locate a source of shelter. Second priority is to locate a source of water. Once you have located shelter and a ready supply of water, food should be the third priority. Technically, fire would normally be number three, but you are in no danger of hypothermia on this planet.›