by G. L. Argain
Juvir had woken Andrew up; the human was told to follow him to the ship for departure. Andrew was indeed nervous, partly from the uncertainty of the trip itself, but mostly from the training awaiting him. His heart pounded as he walked through each hall. Perhaps the technical training would have been lighter and less scary for him, but he quickly reminded himself of the drawbacks of that choice. Stick to the plan, the Earthling supposed.
The human and the miweri walked into the cabin, where several robots operated in front of functional holographic screens. These robots weren’t like Lee—they were all clad in silvery metal and wires, having little metal plates for lips and eyebrows. Their concentration was utmost and unbreakable; not one of them looked up to acknowledge Andrew or Juvir.
The intel-being and the human made their way to the front, where two seats awaited them for the ride. As they took their seats and put on some safety harnesses—let’s be honest, they were seatbelts—Juvir said, “All ready to go?”
None of the robots responded.
“That means everything’s fine and we’re ready to go,” he said. “Okay, launch!”
This was a scary moment for Andrew. For him, if there was no answer, then something must have gone wrong in the connections and become unable to respond. Something could have easily gone wrong with the launch. Fortunately, however, Juvir was correct and the ship started moving fluently.
The ship was as tall as a one-story house, and just as wide, too. It hovered straight up at the speed of an average elevator for the first hundred feet, then it started to accelerate. Eventually, it was going hundreds of miles per hour upwards before it started to move forward as well. As the ship moved faster forward, it moved slower upward. For Andrew, it felt somewhat like being in a plane, but he couldn’t describe it further. The ship soon stopped rising at a height of ten thousand feet above sea level, but it continued accelerating gently forward beyond a thousand miles per hour. To the eye looking down, the buildings below moved past as a giant gray blur.
After a few hours, the gray blur changed into nothing but blue—the ocean. Something about the reflection from the sun off the water looked odd; the human couldn’t see whether there were waves or not, but he soon guessed that there weren’t. Perhaps this planet had no moon—if there was one, and it created waves like it did on Earth, how would these people have built their cities on top of the ocean?
Andrew took the opportunity to tell Juvir about the incident from last night, both the dream and the squirrel-alien.
“It’s just a dream. Nothing more than your psyche shouting out loud in order to relieve some tension. And that tension is mostly likely from this training you’re about to do, right?”
“Okay, but what about the guy who said it was connected to the Impossible Realm?”
“A crackpot. Not that he’s doing anything wrong, just that it’s too strange and unusual to believe. I have to respect his opinion, but it doesn’t mean that I agree with him. Although if he was an important officer of some sort, such as that with the AOIB, then there would be a problem.”
Finally, Juvir pointed out a huge mass of green and brown up ahead, which continued up above the clouds. It was the shield volcano Erlenkeymll, stretching for hundreds of miles both to the left and the right. In between breaks in the clouds, Andrew could see snow going up starting near the cloud line and up to the two-thirds mark of the mountain. Above that was nothing but dark gray ground. The human’s eyes filled with amazement as his mind filled with wonder.
The ship started to descend and slow down as it approached the island, then it came to nothing but a slow hover fifty feet above the surface once passing the coastline. Andrew could see a white laboratory to his right as the ship descended.
When the ship touched down and the engines stopped, Juvir got out of his seat and told Andrew to get up as well. When they walked out of the cabin, Andrew asked, “Why didn’t we just teleport to the lab?”
“No reason. Just giving you a view of this planet.”
Andrew nodded with a smile stretched to his left. “Didn’t think you’d do that just for me.”
As a platform tilted down and out from under the ship, the Earthling and the miweri walked down to be greeted by the scientists awaiting them.
“Hi, Andrew! How’ve you been?” said Shul.
“The hairy beast is back!” added Anzem.
“I’m not that hairy!” shouted Andrew.
Chapter 13
It felt like Earth.
There was the salty smell of the ocean, the long green grass, the trees, the bushes, and all of the land he could see that he could freely explore. In a way, this was better than Earth. No private property to worry about trespassing through, and no other people around to spoil it like in a national park. The plants and the animals that he could see were unfamiliar, but the atmosphere still called to him—
“Hey,” said Anzem, “you’ll need these to start off.”
Andrew turned around to face Anzem. The human and the scientists were out by the laboratory, seeing him off on his training. He saw two pills in the alien’s hand—both food pills—and shook his head while saying, “I don’t need these.”
“What do you mean?” said Shul. “They’re essential for your health.”
“I know that, I’m just saying that I can get food on my own. Besides, those things are just too strong for me.”
“You not going to find anything worth eating for at least ten miles up the mountain,” said Anzem. The scientists learned about Andrew’s units of measurement once they received Lee’s data. “These are more for keeping you from weakness of starvation for a set amount of time. Plus, if you do manage to save these for later, and you’re hunting prey or if you’re being hunted, then you can use these as back-up.”
“Okay…—wait, where do I put these? All I have is this black…spandex-like body suit with no pockets.”
Shul leaned forward to pinch the side of his suit. As he pulled on it, a pocket formed on the suit that ended up close to the size of a typical shirt pocket. As much as it boggled the human’s mind, he felt better by not asking how.
“So, just to clarify,” said Andrew, “if the volcano erupts by some chance, or if the Selentors find me here, you’ll teleport me off the island?”
“Indeed. Of course, there’s small lava flows to worry about, but you can just run away from those,” said Shul.
“And you’ve also got wildfires caused by the lava,” said Anzem.
“Oh, that’s right. Try not to get caught in any fires.”
Andrew sneered as if to convey without speaking, “That’s not helpful!” After a moment, however, he accepted it as a joke and said out loud, “Alright, looks like I’m off—hey wait, why do I have to walk ten miles up the mountain when I can just be teleported there?”
“But that wouldn’t be training, now would it? Just get your ass in gear already,” said Anzem.
“Fine, fine, I’m going.” Andrew left the scientists and started off jogging up the mountain for a good mile. By that point, he was out of sight among some bushes.
“You know, I’m glad we found him. He livened things up for once on this island,” said Anzem.
“He’s lucky, too,” said Shul. “He’s the only being I’ve ever known who gets to live both in the natural way and the modern way. Even the two of us living on this island can only really look at this place, not live in it.”
“Well, it’s what we get working for this job. No matter how cool a job may be, there’s always going to be something wrong with it. Like how I can’t own a single freaking vehicle at this place.”
“…Why’d you take this job, anyway?”
“You tell me.”
Andrew had walked for one hour, having gained four miles at this point, and he was already feeling hungry. He pulled out a pill from his pocket and swallowed it; it was more bearable now, but it was still strong enough to make him wince. The grass went up close to his knees and there were bushes everywhere, ranging fro
m small to gigantic. However, he hadn’t seen any trees, large animals, or rivers at this point. He figured that with all the snow higher up, the runoff should lead somewhere as rivers. Perhaps the water sank into the ground at some point and became aquifers or underground rivers. Either way, he decided not to go straight up. If there were going to be any animals or rivers, they would not be in the direct route up the mountain. He looked thirty degrees to his left and stuck with that direction for the next six miles.
As he approached the three-thousand-foot elevation mark, which was also near his ten-mile mark, he found himself in an alien rainforest. While it was a mixture of both, it felt less like a tropical rainforest than it did a forest from the Pacific Northwest Coast. There were trees and plants everywhere, the ground was muddy, and he could hear birds all around him. It wasn’t as hot as he expected a rainforest to be, however; one, because the sun was setting, and two, the higher elevation. Nevertheless, the humid air did nothing to satisfy the human’s thirst. He had already taken both of his pills, and he didn’t know what was edible for him. All he knew was that there should be a river or a puddle nearby—why else would the birds be here? It couldn’t have just been from the water in their food.
Or was it?
Andrew searched for fruit among the bushes and the trees. He spotted one tree with large, red fruit hanging near the top. They looked like grapefruit, only with red skin instead of beige. He tried climbing the tree and fell down after only five feet; he landed straight on his back. He tried a second time, succeeding now by climbing all the way up to twenty feet, where he pulled off a single fruit. He didn’t grasp it well enough and the fruit ended up falling to the ground. It crushed open into a juicy mess as it landed—it was too ripe, anyway. Soon several animals came racing out to get it. They were all brown, two-legged, large-eyed mammals with small ears and small hands—a lot like lemurs. Not focusing much of his attention on them, Andrew pulled hard on the side of his suit to form a large pocket. He successfully took another fruit, put it in his pocket, and carefully creeped down. He was careful not to fall from twenty feet, although he didn’t know that his body was durable enough from the genetic enhancements to withstand the impact. He made it halfway when suddenly one of the brown lemurs crawled up beside him. It grasped for the fruit in his pocket, and as Andrew tried to shove it off, he lost his grip and fell to the dirt. The alien lemurs darted away from the impact site.
The human was stunned momentarily after falling, but he quickly rolled himself over in an effort to keep the lemurs from taking his food. He brought himself up to his feet and screamed at the top of his lungs. This had effectively scared many of the lemurs off, as well as a lot of birds, but some had been scared stiff and didn’t move. A couple did not look scared at all—they started to make loud vocal noises in protest shortly after his scream. But the Earthling cared not for their arguments; he jammed his thumb into the fruit, peeled some of the skin off, and had his first bite. While very sour, it was not enough to keep the thirsty human from drinking its juices.
Andrew wasn’t told whether there were any specific foods that were humanly edible. The scientists told him that based on his digestive system, any animals that had no obvious, colorful markings on them designed to deter others were up for grabs, but plants were more specific. The only plants that they recommended he should eat were fruits, and that was if the fruit looked like it wasn’t poisonous, diseased, or tasted unusual. Yeah, that was really specific.
These rules had worked in his favor, though, as he never got sick from those red fruits. Yet he didn’t have much luck for comfort. As he was halfway through the fruit, he eye caught some insects crawling out from the second half. He wasn’t sure whether they were spiders or ants or whatever else, but almost by reflex he threw it onto the ground upon sight. The lemurs lurched towards the squashed fruit again, this time picking out the insects and eating them. Didn’t matter to the human if the insects were edible for him as well; bugs were not a part of his culturally-influenced diet.
The fruit hardly sufficed to quench Andrew’s thirst. He ran forward into an unknown direction for about half a mile while the lemurs stayed put, engrossed by their own plans. He tripped on a branch and fell forward into some deep mud. He lay there for a moment in humiliation, tired of all this shit in the rainforest. He sprang back up to realize that part of the mud was literally made of shit. Smelling terribly, he wiped away what he could from his face and spit repeatedly before hearing a sound in the background. It sounded like running water. He ran for it, tripping a couple more times before reaching the source of the sound. There was indeed a river, and he plunged straight into it, scaring off all the nearby fish.
The river was a hundred feet wide and ten feet deep at the center. The water was not entirely clean, considering that dirt and other things wash into it, but nothing much to keep him from washing the feces off his face and then drinking some water. It was cold, refreshing, and most of all, relaxing. It was a rough twenty minutes; it was a rough experience in general after the abduction. All that time sitting on Earth bored out of his mind, wishing his life was more eventful, and here he was wishing he’d experienced fewer events. At least he could no longer say he was empty inside.
Unfortunately, Andrew had to stay focused. Even though the river was moving a mere mile per hour, he swam to the riverbank to make sure he wouldn’t have to worry about drowning or being swept down the mountain. Besides, how could one tell if there were alien piranhas or something in the river further down? For Andrew, it was neither the time nor the place to take a risk and find out.
The lonely human was still hungry—half a red grapefruit didn’t satisfy much. He walked around the area, looking for berries and eating them if they appeared edible, though to little satisfaction. He started to accept the idea of finding some meat. It would be just plain cruel to eat one of those lemurs, and he highly doubted that lizards and bugs were a good idea, but what other choices did he have? Birds would be impossible to catch, and—
Suddenly an answer came from behind.
Only a few feet behind him, he heard a loud thud. Andrew turned around immediately, held his breath, and looked into the eyes of his prey. The animal had mistakenly thought that it would take the human by surprise and have him as its food, but the moment their eyes met, the animal became frightened. However, it was not as frightened as Andrew was bewildered. The animal was a squid…on land. It created the thud because it had fallen from the trees above. Its size was half of Andrew’s and it had curly tentacles like an octopus rather than the straight tentacles of a normal squid.
Why???
Regardless, this land squid looked like decent food. But Andrew decided to stare at it just a little longer to see who would make the first move. Finally, the human charged after the land squid, which bolted away in reflexive response. It could definitely walk on land with those tentacles, and it was surprisingly fast. Andrew sprinted just a little faster than the creature, but it swerved often and suddenly climbed up a tree, leaving him standing in wonder. The squid used its tentacles to swing between branches and trees like a primate, moving about forty feet above the ground. Andrew ran again as he saw the squid swing, their determination fueled by hunger and fear, respectively.
He followed the squid for about a mile, then he stopped dead in his tracks. He realized that a dozen other land squids, all staring from up in the trees, surrounded him. The moment that he tried to run away, all the squids brought themselves down to tackle him. Andrew had been knocked down to the dirt and kicked by dozens of terrestrial squids; this to him was like a cruel and unusual punishment straight from the future.
As the human lay with panic in his eyes, a huge roar echoed through the forest. The land squids turned to the noise and looked into the eyes of a large animal, appearing on four legs and walking at a steady pace. All of the squids scuttled away, leaving Andrew behind on the ground. He stood back up as soon as he could to meet the eyes of the Alpha Hupac.
The dominant anima
l on this part of the island is the hupac—typically less than two hundred pounds and about the size of a mountain lion. The animal looked like the hybrid of a leopard and a wolf, along with a few unique yet indescribable features. It was seven feet long, as heavy as Andrew, and it looked strong. Andrew was paralyzed with fear—he knew he couldn’t take on this animal right now, not without at least a little training. The hupac had looked off to the side as though something was coming from behind Andrew. He turned around quickly to see what is was, only to find that nothing was there and to be scratched by the hupac. It tore right through the suit—it could protect him from fire and electric shock, but not claws. The hupac held nothing back, slamming its claws onto Andrew’s body almost like a punching bag, yet he managed to roll himself onto his back. He pointed his index finger and tried to drive it into the animal’s eye, but it quickly moved its head away and placed its paw onto his arm. Before Andrew could do anything else, the hupac opened its jaws and bit hard at his neck. For the human, it was the combined feeling of being stabbed and being strangled to death. With blood running down his neck, he lost consciousness within seconds.
The hupac dragged the human to its den, a few hundred feet up the mountain.
Chapter 14
In any normal circumstance, Andrew would have died.
His windpipe wasn’t punctured, although the flesh wounds were very deep. What kept him alive was the regeneration gene…and the fact that the hupac began its meal at Andrew’s legs.
The animal’s lair was simply an open space of ground, hidden well by lush bushes and thick conifers. The canopy of the tree leaves shaded almost everything in the area, not including the few patches where the bushes were able to grow under direct sunlight.
Andrew regained consciousness on the damp ground in the morning, marveling at the idea that he was still alive. His neck was filled with pain, despite the fact it had almost fully healed. This neck pain, however, was overshadowed by the nerves in what remained of his legs, sending powerful signals constantly to the brain to tell him that something was obviously wrong. Both of his calves had been eaten off, leaving behind only bones and some flesh on his feet, all in a bloody mess connected by ligaments. Some of the muscles and flesh had already regenerated, but Andrew only had so much protein to give for repairing them.