The Colonists

by Keith Fenwick

  “That makes no sense at all. Who are they then?” Morris didn’t know what to believe because the story was becoming increasingly muddled.

  “Well the guts of it is the real Skidians managed to upload themselves to a galactic version of the cloud. They now call themselves Transcendents and according to them, their physical bodies were destroyed in the upload process. For contingency purposes, they decided they required actual flesh and blood bodies to download into if the process failed, or they were endangered by dark forces in the universe they hadn’t encountered yet.” Trev glanced at Morris to see how he was holding up.

  “The nearest supply of bodies was ours,” Trev explained, “and they have been harvesting us off and on for centuries.”

  “You what? Are you serious?”

  “Well this isn’t the first time something has gone wrong with the food production systems up here,” Trev continued. “All the food is manufactured in enormous vats. It seems a virus was introduced to the process and some time ago it spread from one plant to the next. It shouldn’t have been a big deal really. Unfortunately, the AI maintaining the planet’s infrastructure developed a bug or a glitch or suffered a command loop of some kind. It overreacted by closing all the plants and disinfecting them to eradicate the virus. The result: the unfortunate death of hundreds of millions of people.. um.. Skidians.”

  “Bullshit! You can’t expect me to believe this.. this.. fairy tale! How gullible do you think I am? Anyhow, what’s this got to do with the Bruce guy you keep mentioning? Is he a scientist or food technologist?”

  “No, not bloody likely. He’s a farmer from New Zealand who was brought up here to establish an organic food supply.”

  “You expect me to believe this.. this bullshit?” Morris was getting angry now. Even the cover story was a load of bollocks. “You’re telling me all these fairy tales about aliens visiting Earth are true?”

  “Just think about it,” Trev countered. “Consider how organized religion developed back home, think about how the concept of the word of God and how He (or She) resides in heaven. Tie this in with myths, legends, and speculation about the influence of aliens and UFO visits driving human development. It’s not a great leap from believing in a god or gods as creators of everything around us, and then discovering these gods or heavenly beings were the original Skidians visiting the planet and hoovering up fresh bodies as a key part of their ultimate species continuity plan.

  Trev paused to see how Morris was going to respond to this line of reasoning.

  Morris was shaking his head and was muttering under his breath. Trev couldn’t quite hear what he was saying. He thought it sounded something like “What the fuck is going on here?” But one of Trev’s comments had intrigued him. Clearly Trev really believed he was on this planet called Skid.

  “Not so long ago the Skidians could just hoover people up willy-nilly to re-supply and nobody would really be any the wiser. We’re talking before rapid communications, when the population density on Earth was a lot lower than it is today, when a few tens of thousands of people could easily be gathered up and processed and nobody would be any the wiser. I don’t believe the Skidians have hoovered up any bodies for fifteen hundred years or so, but they do visit Earth fairly regularly.”

  Morris started tugging on the door handle to jump out and escape this madness, without success. He wasn’t the first victim Trev had picked up who had tried to leap out of the cab while they were still moving. Trev had checked that the doors were locked so Morris didn’t jump out while they were moving and injure himself.

  “You know what would happen if large numbers of people started disappearing without a trace,” he continued. “Absolute pandemonium. There’d be worldwide panic if they repeated this trick. It could go global in a very nasty fashion, with nations pointing the finger and accusing each other of genocide. So, we..” Trev still liked to think of himself as one of the key players in the MFY hierarchy. “So, we,” he repeated, “progressed the idea of resurrecting the MFY program and using it as a cover story for supplying tens of thousands of beating hearts to recolonise Skid.”

  “You can’t do that! It’s immoral. It’s just.. not right!” Morris was outraged.

  “What do you mean? You signed up to the program and agreed to be deployed anywhere in the known universe we saw fit to send you. It’s in the fine print of your contract. Did you read it?”

  “But I thought I was going to Mars or maybe the moon, not some barren planet I have never heard of.”

  “Oh, I reckon you’ll find Skid a much more agreeable place to live than a settlement on Mars, or a clunky old space station, wondering if you can fix the next thing that breaks down before it kills you.”

  Morris knew there might be some truth in that. However, he also knew Trev might be a stooge and he might still be on Earth, being filmed by the Martian Reality Show, with the viewing public having a good laugh at his expense.

  “Is this conversation being recorded for the show?”

  “Not on your life.”

  Morris relaxed a little. “I still don’t agree it’s the right thing to do. I demand that you send me home!” He thought he might have over-reacted so continued in a softer tone. “Look, is this a prank?” Morris scanned the interior of the truck for anything resembling a camera. The only reason he was still in control of himself, instead of trying to push Trev out of the cab and take the wheel, was because he still expected some celebrity he had never heard of would appear and thrust a microphone in his face.

  He knew it was a risk to sign up for a reality television show and find himself portrayed as gullible halfwit, but he’d not expected to be in a situation like this.

  “Fuck!” he muttered to himself.

  But, there was also a niggling realisation in the back of his mind something was terribly out of kilter here. Morris didn't for one moment believe he was on an alien planet called Skid. This was a leap too far. However, one thing was for sure, he was in way over his head and was being driven around by a halfwit. He wondered if Automedon was part of this situation. The terminal he had rolled through on a conveyor minutes before could have been built on an asteroid, or just as easily, built for a movie set.

  “Can you tell me if the asteroid orbiting Earth is involved in this charade?”

  “It's the staging point for the wormhole we are going to use to transport all your fellow MFYers from Woomera, along with a few other waifs and strays, up here. You passed through it on your way here,” Trev confirmed.

  “I'm still not convinced,” Morris grunted. “If all this is true, what the fuck are we going to do here?”

  “Not a hell of a lot really. There’s nothing much to entertain you out here. The settlement we’re headed for was originally built up around a farm and isn’t currently operational.” Trev had toyed with re-stocking the place with ivops, the local version of cattle. Like most things, he hadn’t got around to it yet and probably never would. “There are huge cities on this planet, which is where you'll likely end up eventually, full of the kind of advanced technology people back home can only dream about.”

  Morris doubted this. “This truck doesn’t seem very advanced to me.”

  Trev shrugged his shoulders. “Wait till you look under the hood. As for the rest of it, I can only tell you what I know. I know where we are, even if I can’t prove it. What could I tell you or show you to convince you?”

  Morris thought about it. The worst-case scenario was he had been injured in an accident or drugged and he was in a coma, experiencing drug-induced hallucinations. On second thoughts, the worst-case scenario would be he was really on a planet called Skid in the vanguard of a colonisation project.

  “I guess if I could meet ex-President Mitchell, it might go some way to convincing me,” he decided. He thought it was highly unlikely he would find the man, since Mitchell was long gone.

  “That’s one thing I can arrange,” Trev replied confidently as they crested the brow of a small hill. In the valley below, set
back from a river, on a rise, was a small community. A few buildings clustered around a large bungalow with a veranda running the full length of each side. One building looked like a large barn and one of the others looked like a set of motel units.

  “Welcome to my place.”

  Morris could see a few people going about their business. Beyond the house and the barn-like structure, he could see a largish garden which on closer inspection, it was overgrown with weeds. In the distance, he could see a large herd of cattle grazing their way across the vast grassland, like a pre-European herd of bison on the prairies of North America. At this distance there was something strange about them. Morris didn’t know much about livestock and agriculture in general, so he couldn’t put his finger on what made them different. Other than that, the settlement could have been a ranch anywhere in the world. Though, in his view, not the kind of place you would expect to find an ex-President of the United States. Especially a dead one.

  “Nice,” Morris said, to be polite. He had spent all his life in urban areas. Where he came from the countryside - or what he imagined was the countryside - meant run-down houses full of drug-addled rednecks, so he was a bit nervous.

  “Let's get you settled in a unit,” Trev said, coming to a stop outside the main house.

  “Where have you been?” an angry loud female voice demanded, from the shade of the veranda. It wasn’t immediately clear to Morris who the question was aimed at, until he sensed Trev flinching beside him. “If you don’t hurry up, the wedding rehearsal will be over before we get there. Who is that with you?” She added suspiciously.

  “It’s another one of the guys from Woomera,” Trev explained. “Look,” he said to Morris, “me and the missus have to get off to a wedding rehearsal soon, otherwise I would spend some time explaining the mission to you.”

  “Well, aren’t you going to introduce me?” the woman demanded. “And don’t call me your missus. I don’t like it.”

  “Sorry, love. Morris, this is my fiancée Sue.”

  “Is the rehearsal for your wedding?” Morris asked sympathetically.

  “Um, no. It’s a bit more complicated than that.” Trev still didn’t want to launch into an explanation how it was Sue’s ex-husband who was getting married. “Look, come and meet a couple of other guys who have ended up here over the last few days. I’ll also introduce you to Mitch. President Mitchell, I mean. He'll probably be with them.”

  Sue turned back into the house. “Your suit is on the bed. You have half an hour to make yourself half-way presentable,” she added. “And don’t forget to shave. It's only a rehearsal but you could try to make an effort.”

  “And you’ll be on time, of course.” Trev muttered under his breath. He wasn’t brave enough to say it out loud, but it would be unusual if she was ready to roll when he was.

  “President Mitchell is here?”

  “Of course, did you think I was pulling your leg?”

  “Well, I did rather.”

  “I am pretty sure he will be talking to the other newbies. I don’t want to piss in your pocket. The other guys seem pretty stunned right now and they are struggling to get used to the idea of being uploaded to Skid but you seem to be taking things in your stride. You might be able to help them. That’s a compliment, by the way.”

  “Help them with what?

  “Help them settle in, settle down.”

  ‘But I only just got here, and I have no idea what is going on.”

  “Yeah. But you seem like a sensible, well-adjusted kind of guy. The others are struggling a little bit.”

  Morris felt annoyed because he got the impression he was being dumped on, because Trev had something better to do with his time.

  “Those other guys must be in a pretty bad way if you think I’m handling the situation well.”

  They got out of the truck and Morris followed Trev towards the units clustered around a central hub, which turned out to be a communal area for the residents.

  Morris quickly recognised two kindred spirits because they were dressed in the MFY uniform. He was sure he had met both before. The MFYers were trying to ignore a third man, who was delivering a speech from behind a lectern.

  “That’s Pres...”

  “I told you he was here. Poor bastards completely lost the plot. He’s mostly harmless, and we try to keep him well medicated. Once the rest of the MFYers arrive, we’ll have to keep him out of sight, because his being here is too hard to explain, and there’s always the chance he’ll stir the more gullible newSkidians up with his inflammatory speeches.”

  The penny dropped for Morris. “Mitchell claimed to be in contact with aliens back when he was President! You mean this is the ultimate destination for all of us? Everything you’ve told me is true?”

  “Yep. Once you signed your contract, the MFY program reserved the right to deploy you anywhere you were required,” Trev reminded him. “Personally, I think you are much better off here than on the moon or Mars.”

  “Yeah, but...”

  Morris didn’t really know what to say.

  Eight

  Zarif Khan decided it might be an appropriate time to pray to God for salvation. He stared at the empty ocean, shading his eyes from the glare of the sun. He hadn’t attended to his prayers regularly for many years, and the still-superstitious part of him wondered whether this was God's way of punishing him for his lack of devotion.

  Like most of the other passengers, Zarif knew next to nothing about ships or the sea. He’d never been on any kind of water-borne vessel in his life until the last few hours. And he’d realised all too late that this one wasn’t in very good condition, and more passengers than it had ever been designed to carry were crammed aboard.

  They were all getting increasingly restless as they waited for the crew to provide an update on repairs they were making to the ship's engine. They rode motionless on the flat, calm sea, far from land, with no other ships in sight.

  The ship had listed to one side for the whole voyage and the crew had not told the passengers they should spread themselves around the deck to ensure it was evenly balanced. There weren't enough toilets for them all, and now none of them worked. Everyone was forced to complete their ablutions over the side, in full view of all the neighbouring passengers. This involved some intricate balancing on the gunwale and often resulted in urine, and sometimes faeces, blowing back aboard, adding to everyone’s misery. Adding insult to injury, there was no way to provide any privacy for family groups with young women and girls.

  Despite paying for it as part of their passage, there was no food, and the water had run out soon after the boat had left port. Zarif had had the foresight to bring along some bottled water and a little food he carefully hoarded, but it wouldn’t last him forever.

  Around him, children were getting restless and some had begun bawling now the sun had risen further in the sky and it got hotter. Women remonstrated with their husbands, brothers, and sons, demanding they did something about the increasingly uncomfortable and perilous situation. Most of them wanted to go home, but it was impossible. There was no going back. It looked like the one-way journey they had embarked on would lead to a watery grave.

  Zarif had been desperate to leave his impoverished homeland. It was continually riven by endless, mindless, sectarian violence for which there was no quick solution for once the old regime had been toppled in the Arab Spring revolts. Various groups battled for control of the country, escalating their response with each new atrocity inflicted on them. Each car bomb had to kill and maim more people than the last. Each massacre of defenceless women and children had to be bigger and bloodier than the previous one. Soon there would be nothing left to loot or destroy, and the country's oil wealth would be squandered, along with any hope of returning to something close to normality.

  He blamed the Americans, who had been keen to topple the old regime, but had not stayed around to install a workable replacement. Whatever their aims had been, they showed no sign of taking any respons
ibility for the bloody mess they had created.

  A once-wealthy country with decent health and education systems was now a jumble of warring fiefdoms. The term ‘failed state’ didn’t go anywhere near describing the situation accurately. Groups who could not agree how to worship the same god, let alone entertain people who worshipped a different one, squabbled over the country.

  Zarif considered himself to be one of the lucky ones, though this was a relative term. He possessed some useful skills and some money, not much, in offshore accounts he could access when needed. Fortuitously, he had also managed to get a decent education before the religious zealots shut down any form of higher, Western-styled learning. Ignorant of how learning and religion had coexisted in the past, these fanatics were oblivious to the influence of their ancestors on the advancement of science, and the institutions that they sought to banish.

  Even if the conflict came to a miraculous end, there was nothing left for him in the town he had lived all his life. His former girlfriend, a young woman from another well to do family, had become radicalised seemingly overnight and gone off to join a jihadi group. She had blown herself up outside a local market full of people shopping for their evening meal. Luckily the bomb had exploded prematurely, and she was the only one who died. Zarif liked to think she might have had second thoughts in her last moments, as she contemplated blowing people to bits that she had known all her life. However, if she'd tried to back out, the vest would probably have been remotely detonated by her handlers, who were intent on creating as much carnage as possible.

  He still didn’t understand why she had become radicalised in the first place. Something flipped a switch in her brain and led her to believe that becoming a suicide bomber would achieve something.

  Then his father’s small engineering business had been destroyed by an explosion in a garage alongside the workshop, while Zarif had been out running some errands. The bomb, possibly a car bomb being put together, destroyed the family business and the home behind the workshop, killing everyone in it. The blast devastated the small community of extended family members, who up until then had led a charmed life amidst the destruction of their society.