Outward Borne

by R. J. Weinkam

  If the ObLaDas were surprised by this reaction, they did not show it or change their plans. In the coming years, children would be selected, raised, and trained for the return. The People would begin to study Earth and learn what they could of that place so that they would be able to prepare the chosen ones for their future life. The children who were selected for return would be brought up together and trained, as far as possible, to cope with their new life on Earth, in North America more specifically, for the landing would occur there. All were taught English, and most had a second language from the larger countries of Europe or Asia. Of course, they learned of the different nations and their histories, about the planet’s geography, what Earth’s scientists knew and didn’t know. Facts were straightforward. Cultural adaptation would be more difficult to manage. Whatever the ObLaDas and the People knew about Earth’s society came to them from watching television shows and movies. They were the only sources of information, but ones that would provide out-of-date slang, confused values, somewhere between chivalry and high school snide, and a worldview composed of gangsters, drug addicts, and gunfighters. The community elders were afraid for the chosen. They found it hard to comprehend life on Earth with oceans, who could imagine so much water as you are drowning, snow, so beautiful as you froze to death, and a sun, so bright it blinded you to look at. They shook their heads and felt sorry for the young people who would have to endure such trials. And the Earth had such a large population. All of them will be strangers. All of them will want to know more than they should about the people who came from outer space. It would be so extremely different from anything that they had experienced during their life on the Outward Voyager. It was a justifiable concern.

  DePat was five years old when he was chosen to be among the forty or so people who would be returned. The exact number that would go was dependent on the outcome of the great debate. The humans insisted on, and the ObLaDas refused, the inclusion of dogs on the return journey. Were the dogs a secondary species that had no place on an important mission such as this, or were they indispensable companions that had a right to return to their home planet? As far as the People were concerned, dogs go or we don’t.

  DePat was a construct, something the ObLaDas made occasionally. He was a combination of genetic elements from four individuals, each of whom had a tall stature, blond hair, and above-norm intelligence. His birth mother, LeaLea, was a dreamy sort of girl who was immersed in her music and never became involved in his nurturing, so DePat was raised along with the other potential Earthlings as a group, even though their age range covered almost twenty years. They were brought up and educated in a sub-community, not isolated in any formal way, but always different because of their treatment and expectations.

  The ObLaDas saw DePat as a promising youngster, blond, skinny, quiet, but alert and a good observer. He did, in fact, prove to be a particularly bright young man who grew out of his shyness and became intrigued, more than most, by the prospect of living on Earth. At age fifteen, DePat was selected to participate in a seemingly minor project that the ObLaDas thought may be of some future interest. He was asked to collect and organize a record of the People’s time aboard the Outward Voyager. It was a minor task in the scheme of things, but it was not a small one. The Outward Voyager files held exhaustive records, too inclusive in fact, as they included massive amounts of trivia in which a few threads of interest were buried. DePat would need help to find his way through this maze and so he was paired with an ObLaDa, KeDom Sa, who was about the same level of maturity and was especially inquisitive for a Da. They would work together, the first direct contact between the species since UnaDar and Clovic during the Great Grack Attack.

  KeDom was a smallish Da, with bright eyes and a slow determined way about himself. His good nature and natural acceptance of the limitations of the human species made him a good partner for DePat. The two were given access to the historical record and some dedicated equipment to edit and store what they had found, ironically it stood on the very spot where UnaDar had once found the broken construction bot that played such an important role in defeating the Gracks. They could collect however much information they wanted, the two were told. A high capacity memory file would be made available. They would never be able to fill it.

  DePat was naturally interested in the abduction of the humans from their villages. That information was rather well organized; it had been examined by many generations of humans before him. There were records of the capture, recollections of life on Earth, stories, songs, and tribal legends. The lives of the first people after they were brought to the Outward were much less coherent. Gwynyth of Feldland wrote a detailed history that described some of it. He was rather amused to uncover the scandalous behavior of the Alric and the Red Girls, who apparently shared mutual favors for many years after coming on board. For a long time after that, there was little or nothing of note. During the first seven hundred years on the Outward, the People had been confined within the habitat; one year must have been like the last. Little of interest occurred during the centuries before the Gracks created some havoc.

  DePat came upon a reference to the Cathian abduction. It was only a fragment, but it was something new. The reference described their introduction into their habitat and included some preliminary records of their physiology, biochemical makeup, and diet, but then it ended. They were no longer on the Outward and, curiously, they were not mentioned as one of the alien species that the Das had studied. What happened to them? He pressed KeDom to look for this file. KeDom was reluctant to do so, because it was apparent that the Cathian data had been intentionally erased. There must have been some reason for doing so, but eventually he decided that whatever reason there had been for sequestering the information would hardly be relevant fifteen hundred years later. Together they tweezed out leads until that tragic story was uncovered.

  The ObLaDas prepared a memory storage device, one of their memory cubes, which DePat could bring to Earth, but that was only the beginning of rampant confusion. Apparently there was a good deal of ObLaDa debate about what he was to do with it, and those varied opinions resulted in a great many contradictory instructions. There was some general expectation that the knowledge would provide some benefit to the poor people of Earth, but the Das did not have a very clear idea about this might happen, and their understanding of how things worked on that place was rather vague. They assured DePat, however, that they had absolute confidence in him and that he would surely be able to figure it out. And while he must use the information wisely, they warned him to keep the cube within his possession at all times. Why all the secrecy? He did not know, but the cube would contain valuable information that the Earth did not have, and that that could lead to complications, competition, or conflict if it came into the wrong hands. That was not his immediate problem, however, for while they gave him a memory cube, they did give him a computer to access the stored data.

  The ObLaDas did not want any computer or other advanced technology to fall into the hands of the Earth People. They already had too many problems assimilating their own advances, or so the ObLaDas thought, even though the Earth technology, what they knew of it, was very limited. DePat could bring the memory cube because the Earth People would never be able to copy its molecular storage architecture. It would degrade within minutes of being opened and exposed to the atmosphere, but could the Earth People figure out how to download the data? After some discussion, the Das decided that they were not that smart. So they constructed a module that would convert the cube’s content into the binary format similar to that used by Earth’s digital computers. That should be good enough. Human engineers would need to build their own interface and processors, and write some software to retrieve the data. Surely they could manage that much. DePat would make it worth their while to do so.

  The final selection of those who would return was not made until shortly before launch. Even after life-long preparations, some refused to go. There were mixed feelings among the Outward’s hu
man population on whether the future Earthlings should be envied or pitied. Their opinions about the dogs ran much higher. There was a heated discussion, as there always was regarding dogs, for everyone had an opinion, and a well-informed opinion at that. Should the people who would go to Earth, or should they send only the most outstanding animals? The ObLaDas did not want any dogs to go, but that was out of the question, so they argued for small dogs.

  DePat and his closest friends, Eric Allomir and Magnar Remton, nineteen and twenty years old, spent many nights talking about Earth and the things they wanted to do there. Eric longed to travel, to get into one of their cars and drive for hours to all the great places he had learned about. It is what they did in America, open spaces, the great outdoors, of course, that was before the gasoline ran out. He always grew quiet after revealing his dreams. He had never been out of doors and it was a strain to imagine unenclosed spaces and distant horizons. DePat was more interested in people. He would watch movies showing great crowds and walkways jammed with people who did not know one another. He tried to imagine all the different lives they must have led, but it was difficult for him to envision a stranger, or anyone who he had not known all his life, or someone whose past was different from his own. Magnar was not a dreamer. He would listen and smile to himself. He did not care what adventure it was as long as he could go along.

  In the end, the ObLaDas selected thirty-seven humans and sixteen dogs to make the trip. They were chosen with respect to the whole, rather than any individual’s desires, in order to achieve an optimal mix of age, sex, and skills. The dogs were a compromise, with some people keeping their pets and others bringing outstanding animals from each key breed. DePat had his Muff and Magnar the Great Dog Huffer.

  The business of returning aliens to their home planet was new to the ObLaDas, and they were not sure how to do it. They were worried about the acceptance and acclimation that the Voyagers would receive on Earth, but more than that, they were worried about getting them there. The return trip to a planet would be more dangerous, more physically stressful, than any abduction. If they used the highest tolerated deceleration rate, which required the humans to be held unconscious in a pressure distribution tank, it would take about thirteen weeks to for the return assembly to reach the solar system and slow to Earth orbital speed. Transport would be stressful, hazardous, and debilitating in the extreme. They could minimize the transition between orbit and entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, in order to land and begin the robotized rehabilitation sequence as soon as possible. Even so, would any die? Probably. Certainly all the Voyagers, man and beast, would be severely weakened. They would require an extended recovery period, so that it would be many days before the Voyagers would be able to show themselves.

  How would Earth People react to the arrival of the Voyagers, which was how they were to be known? The ObLaDas has watched all the Science Fiction movies. It appeared to be universally assumed that all aliens would be hostile, that the military must be called out, and that shooting would begin soon after the spaceship opened its doors. Was this real? It made no sense to the Das, who could not conceive why any planet would want to harm another, especially if anyone gave half a thought to how expensive and difficult it was to achieve any level of physical contact. Some ObLaDas thought the movie attacks were not serious, because their Earth soldiers were only armed with little rifles that they must know were completely inadequate. Others were less sure, and were concerned that aliens were always portrayed as sneaky, hostile beings, not to be trusted, and might be attacked at some later date.

  With all their uncertainty and lack of confidence, the ObLaDas sought to manage the Voyagers’ arrival, and the Earth Peoples’ expectations, as thoroughly as possible. Earth would first be told of the Outward Voyager even while it was well beyond the limits of the solar system. They would describe the approach of a single small landing craft and the return of a few humans, Earth People like themselves. But all would be cancelled if there was any attempt to endanger or interfere with the entry vehicle, or any of the Outward’s orbiting assembles or satellites.

  Several decisions had been made about the return. The ObLaDas would conduct advanced communications of the planned events directly with the Earth’s population. The mission should be known to the world and understood as a peaceful return of humans to the planet from which their ancestors had come. Whatever reactions, questions, and fears arise must be addressed well before the landing occurred, and if they cannot be resolved, well, the People did not really want to return to Earth anyway. The United States was the most powerful and most threatening nation on Earth so it would be best to deal with them directly, so the landing would occur in an unpopulated mountainous region of central California in order to limit the crush of attention that would occur if it took place within a more populated area.

  Through all this, the soon-to-be Voyagers continued to receive intensive exposure to the Earth’s culture and current events. They watched hours of television, movies, and videos, and held discussions in which they tried, mostly without success, to make sense of it. During the last days, in the midst of their final preparations for departure, the Voyagers were told that their planned arrival had generated a very high level of interest among Earth’s population. It had certainly created an intense level of excitement on the Outward. No one was used to so many momentous events, then, at the very last moment, the Voyagers were given clothing similar to that worn on Earth rather than what they wore on the Outward. DePat had assumed they would all bring their most formal attire, but those colorful costumes would not be allowed. The People had adopted flamboyant personal hair and body colors, as well as wildly individual styles of clothing and ornamentation. This well established practice had reached an apex at the time of the Earth passage, but the Das feared that these superficial traits would be seen as alien and threatening rather than eccentric. They certainly thought it might, but there was no changing the Peoples’ attachment to their individual identities, and they began to quickly alter their Earth Clothes to their own taste. DePat wondered why the fashion censorship was considered necessary, and why the entry vehicle was armed.

  Chapter 21 Return

  The Voyagers’ arrival was one of the most thoroughly documented events of all time. Even so, the true facts have been buried beneath layers of speculation over the years of hearsay, analysis, lies, and a healthy portion of elaborate fiction. The level of interest and attention the landing received was phenomenal and, by most reckonings, well warranted. By now, however, the legend of the space travelers is so well entrenched that it is no longer subject to change. Nevertheless, there are some communications and events involving the Voyager’s arrival that have not been previously disclosed.

  Earth first learned of the Outward Voyager through a brief text message that appeared on the evening of 5 January 2065. It interrupted a local high school sports program, a lacrosse game, which was being fed into the San Francisco area. Very few people actually saw it live, but within minutes, the message had gone viral. It claimed that an alien spacecraft, the Outward Voyager, was approaching the solar system and that a landing craft holding a small number of humans would descend to the Earth’s surface and return them to their home planet.

  The ObLaDas had sent that first message several months before the arrival assembly was launched from the Outward Voyager. They continued to inform the planet of the mission’s progress and to monitor the Earth’s reaction to their pending arrival. The Das were prepared to call off the mission altogether if the planet turned hostile or became frightened, but there was not much chance of that.

  The initial reaction was as tremendous as it was mixed. Just think - people who were the descendants of those abducted centuries before – who were born in interstellar space – who knew aliens – who had dogs, no less. Naturally, some assumed that the message was a hoax, a new milestone in the long list of hacker accomplishments, but an investigation quickly showed that the signal had come from a location in deep space, almost to
the moon. The U.S. Government confirmed that there was a satellite in that location and, as far as they could tell, it had not come from Earth. It must be real, most eventually decided, even though the belief in extraterrestrial life was very low at that time. Earth had been searching for signals from space for almost one hundred years and had found nothing. Most people had given up on the idea, no matter how much they wanted it to be true. It took a while for the general population to accept the existence of aliens. Even so, many doubted that an abduction had ever occurred, there was no sign or record of that having happened, and it seemed fantastical that it would have occurred so long ago. Of course, some others had long claimed that alien abductions happened all the time and were willing to testify.

  The ObLaDas did have some reason for concern. There was an undercurrent of fear - the lander would not hold humans at all, it was a hoax designed to allow the aliens to invade Earth unopposed, the ship should never be allowed to land. Those panicky opinions were overwhelmed by some common sense, however. Few were willing to consider endangering any people that might be on board the lander, and besides, the aliens could have come in secret if they meant us harm. But, in fact, there was little that could be done to prevent it. For some reason, many others assumed that the People of the Outward Voyager would be deprived or stunted by their years in isolation, that they would need a great deal of care and assistance was certain. The ObLaDas’ message: “It is our hope that that you will welcome us, that we may live together in peace, and learn from one another, so that Earth may become a better place for all,” was meant to imply that this was not so, it attempted to communicate that the Voyagers had something to contribute, but it was largely ignored.

  As the weeks and months went by, the Earth’s interest in the space travelers continued to grow. Curiosity won out. Who are they? What would they be like? Speculation ran rampant. Opinion became almost entirely favorable, though not always accurate, and the peoples’ level of anxiety increased as the landing’s high degree of danger became known. Medical experts worried about the risk of travel and disease, and how the Voyagers would adapt to life here.