Sister Resister

by Kelli Jae Baeli

  “That’s a pine cone,” Shrtz said. “It is the fruit of these pine trees.”

  “I am not certain, however, if it is edible.”

  “How do you know all this?” I asked her.

  “I have read all the myths.”

  “They’re not myths, are they, Shrtz?”

  She shook her head on a smile. I dropped the Merkel on the ground and took two of her tentacles and danced around with her, and she chortled, as she does, with her gelatinous skin bouncing at her throat. Soon, I collapsed on the ground, laughing, and swiping my arms about in the brown needles, the pine cone still gripped in my hand.

  She sank down beside me, and we gazed up through what she called branches. They were also called limbs—like her limbs, but with tiny green needles all over them.

  Beyond the branches, a vibrant sky in many shades of blue. White fluffy clouds hung in them, more pristine than anything I’d ever seen. I wanted to climb onto them and have a nap.

  I closed my eyes, letting the warmth of this sun sink into the skin of my face and arms. A soft cool breeze caressed my skin, tickled through my hair. Nothing had ever felt so glorious.

  After an extended time of quiet indulgence, I said, “Now what?”

  Shrtz pushed herself upright. “Now, we discover what our place is in the new world.”

  My stomach gurgled. “I’m so hungry.”

  “As am I. Fourteen days is my limit for fasting.”

  I turned to her, shocked. “What? You haven’t eaten in two weeks?”

  She shook her head.

  My hand found a tentacle, and I squeezed it. “But, Shrtz, I brought you food every day.”

  “I put it aside frequently, and completely the last fourteen days. And then returned it to the Galley when you were in your quarters.”

  I had miscounted. Or maybe I had misinterpreted the length of days. “Why, Shrtz?”

  Her appendage caressed my head. “I am able to survive without sustenance for longer periods of time than humans are. I wanted you to have enough to eat.”

  I stared at her, thinking that few had ever done something so self-sacrificial for me. “Shrtz...”

  “It will be fine.” She sat up. “Let us search for Dr. Weller’s facility. Perhaps there is some type of food there....though after two hundred years, I fail to see how it would remain edible.”

  “Oh, you’re just trying to cheer me up,” I cracked. Nothing was going to spoil this mood, not even the prospect of having no food available.

  She got to her feet and helped me stand, too. “It must be nearby, since the beacon brought us here.” She started walking, and all I could do was follow her, numbly feeling both pleased and tense. Although the planet of my ancestors, Earth was still and alien world to me.

  I kept the Merkel ready as I walked beside her. “If we can’t find the facility, what will we eat?”

  “I suppose we watch to see what the creatures here eat and we consume that.”

  “I’d rather eat a few pine cones and continue our search for the facility...”

  Several meters on, I saw the thick green covering on a patch of ground. “What is this?”

  “That’s grass.”

  “Can we eat it?”

  “Probably. But it’s not considered food for humans.”

  Through a gathering of those wonderful trees, she stopped suddenly and waved me to her, a tentacle pointing ahead of us on the ground. “Look,” she whispered. “A snake.”

  I looked, but saw nothing but more pine needles and green foliage.

  “There—”

  “Where?” I whispered.

  She said, “Remain completely still—”

  I stood there unmoving, and she crept soundlessly to the object of her attention—this snake, whatever that was—and then in a flash she’d snatched it from the ground. Hanging from her tentacle was something that looked an awful lot like a baby tentacle. It writhed as it dangled from her grip. “This is a snake.”

  “Let me see it—” I reached out my hand.

  “Oh no,” she flicked it away into the pine needles and it slithered into hiding again. “Many of them are venomous. If they bite you, it could be lethal.”

  “Then why did you pick it up?”

  “I was able to calm it with my pheromones.”

  I cocked my head at her. “So feralmoans are not just for carnal activities.”

  “No, they can affect all sorts of things, depending on which ones are released. I could smell the snake pheromones and I was able to match them.”

  “How did you know to even do that?”

  “I am not certain. It felt...instinctual.”

  We continued our trek, and a few meters on, we both stopped in our tracks, gawking at the colorful tree in front of us.

  All over its branches hung baubles in an array of colors. “What is it?”

  Shrtz advanced on the tree, reached up and plucked a bauble loose, held it in her hand. She sniffed it. Her eyes went wide and she turned to me. “Story Book! I have read of these. I believe they are apples.”

  “Apples? No, apples are little flat discs that—”

  “No, these are apples as they are naturally. Before they are dehydrated.”

  I shouldered the Merkel with the strap and stepped up to take it from her. Feeling the firmness of its red skin. I held it against my nose and inhaled. “It does smell like apples!” I opened my mouth to take a bite.

  “No!”

  “What?”

  “We...we do not know if it is safe to eat.”

  “Shrtz. We’re starving. We have to eat something.”

  She thought this over, and took the apple from me. “Then I will try it first. If it does not make me ill, you may have some.”

  “Why you? Why not me?”

  “Because my metabolism is stronger. I might be able to withstand it better.”

  I scratched something itchy on my cheek. “Okay...”

  She took a bite, slurping as juice ran down her chin, closed her eyes and chewed. She looked like she was about to have a climax.

  “Well?”

  She continued to make humming noises, took another bite, some of the pulp falling out of her mouth.

  My own mouth watered, my stomach gurgled.

  She swallowed the mouthful and sighed, standing there like she was waiting for an impact.

  After a moment that seemed to last longer than the Continuum, she said, “My instinct is that these are acceptable.”

  I charged toward her and the half-eaten apple, and she jerked it away, laughing, so I just let my momentum carry me on. I jumped up to grab another one, wrenched it from the tiny branch and sank my teeth into it. For a moment I couldn’t chew, because my taste buds were shocked by it. It tasted divine, even without chewing. I could feel the flavor melting onto my tongue. But soon I was chewing, and so was Shrtz as we devoured the apples in our grip.

  “I don’t think you are supposed to eat that part—” she said, as I crunched into the center.

  Inside the apple were seeds. And some harder stuff a little like cartilage I could not name.

  She stared up at the tree, now.

  “What?”

  “I find it odd that there are so many different... fruits on one tree.”

  “Why?”

  “Each tree bears a certain type of fruit, and another tree bears another. I find it quite odd that other fruits are on this apple tree.”

  “Maybe it’s a special tree.”

  “Indeed.”

  “What are those?” I pointed to the yellow fruits, rounder at the bottom and smaller at the top than the apple.

  “I’m not sure.”

  I used the Merkel to reach up and bat at it. The much taller Shrtz offered her assistance, and plucked it down for me. I bit into it. A different flavor, but just as delicious. “Oh, Shrtz, this is so good!”

  She joined me, having a yellow fruit of her own.

  Still another fruit was smaller and perfectly round and a dark p
urple color. The skin was bitter, but the flesh was juicy and sweet, full of moisture that ran down my chin.

  We spent quite a long time eating of the tree. Small, dark pulpy fruits. Apples of other colors. We also found small green a husks that we had to break open with a rock to get to the meaty core shaped like a teardrop. They were different than the fruit, and tasted almost like meat.

  Finally, our bellies full to bursting, we collapsed again on the needled ground, also covered with greenery that had fallen from the fruit tree.

  “That was delightful,” Shrtz sighed.

  “As soon as I can move, I want more.”

  “We have plenty, it seems.”

  Before I knew it, I was drifting into a satisfied slumber, fruit liquids drying on my face, the ground a soft mat beneath me.

  13

  A sharp scream brought me out of my slumber. Shrtz and I sat up. In the sky we saw another bird. A much bigger one. It shrieked again and disappeared into the clouds.

  “We should find the bunker.”

  “Agreed.”

  Back on our feet, we moved through even more trees, one type with a smooth skin, colored mostly white with black running through it. We came to a clearing with a great mound of earth rising up. We circled around it, and I thought about circling Uranus. Here I was again, circling something, but for no apparent reason. Before I could lament this recurring event in my life, I tripped and fell. I looked back at what had caught my foot. It was an metal bar, bent to a crescent shape, sticking up out of the ground.

  I crawled over and Shrtz helped me sweep the multicolored tree stuff and pine needles away from it. It was attached to more rusted metal. Some type of passageway, covered by a metal door, like those in the crawlspaces on the ship, where I imagined mechanics often shimmied in order to do repairs.

  Shrtz said, “We were guided to this location. Perhaps this is what we seek.”

  “Maybe it’s the underground bunker?”

  She shrugged.

  I swallowed, and pulled on the release lever, but rust had taken its toll. Shrtz used two tentacles to help me, and we got the lever unlocked with a grinding screech. I looked for a button to open the hatch, but saw none.

  “I believe we have to open it manually,” she said.

  She helped me tug on the handle and the hatch came open with another metallic shriek. We then pulled the door open.

  Dust danced in the rays of sunlight, clearing to show us stairs leading down below the ground.

  I looked at Shrtz and bobbed my eyebrows. “It’s dark down there...but I have headlamps.” I dug in my pack and opened the hardshell case, drew out the two disks, and handed her one. We both slapped them on our foreheads, and our body heat engaged them.

  I grabbed the Merkel and started down the steps. It was mustier in the tight corridor that fed off the stairs. We followed it for several meters before a scurrying creature halted us. As big as my fist, furry, with a long tail and beady eyes. It looked at us in fear for a moment and then darted away. “What was that?”

  The beam of her lamp swept side to side as she shook her head. “I do not know.”

  “Reminds me of a fleeker.” We continued down the cramped corridor until it opened into a cavernous room. Our headlamp beams swept around the space. As my eyes made sense of what was there, I almost dropped the Merkel.

  I said, “Books!”

  I ran toward it, stopping just before I noticed the clear glass separating me from the ancient bound paper. I places my hands on the glass. “What’s this?”

  After a moment of ceph-like contemplation, she said, “I imagine it is a sealed room, to preserve the books. Paper disintegrates over time.”

  I felt my eyebrows dance around. “Disintegrates?”

  “It is not as hardy as electronic devices.”

  “Oh.” I plastered myself against the glass, mumbling through distorted lips, “How do we get in there?”

  “I’m sure there is an opening mechanism somewhere.”

  The shelves were well over our heads, each about ten meters deep, and there were rows of them. Maybe fifty, to my count. “It’s like a...library...but of books.”

  She chuckled. “The word derives from books. A library was originally a large collection of books.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded.

  She whisked her light about the room, and it backtracked to a table that supported a metal box. Shrtz said, “Hold a moment...”

  “What’s that?”

  We moved toward it, our lights revealing a plaque on the box. The plaque read,

  Start here

  And smaller, below it,

  Milo Weller

  We exchanged fulsome glances.

  “This appears to corroborate our suspicions.” Shrtz pressed a button, and with a hiss like a leaky pipe, the lid popped loose.

  “Vacuum sealed,” she murmured.

  She opened it. Drawing out a stiff thin material, somewhat like plastic, but not as durable, she showed me that a message was scrawled on it. Shrtz dropped the message on the table.

  Congratulations! If you’re reading this, then you made it. Please read the books and materials I have enclosed here, first. It will tell you what you need to know to get started.

  Inside the box was a stack of books. I was more than happy to begin with these, and save the massive shelves for later.

  Shrtz handed me the top one, as she took the next. I looked at the front of mine.

  SURVIVING IN THE WILDERNESS

  “What’s a wilder-ness?”

  “Will-der-ness,” she corrected my pronunciation. “It is essentially a landscape inhabited only by naturally indigenous animals. Like the bears and deers and rabbits and snakes.”

  I nodded. Opening the book, I touched the thin white membrane. “This is the same stuff the note was on. What is this?”

  “It’s called paper. It’s made from trees.”

  I could not imagine how this paper could be made from the large plants I saw outside.

  On the first paper membrane, I saw a list of instructions in the front.

  How to build a fire

  How to make a shelter

  How to hunt wild game

  “What is wild game?”

  “Animals that live in the wilderness.”

  “Why would we hunt them?”

  “For food.”

  I stared at her.

  “Where do you think real meat originates, Story Book?”

  “Real meat?”

  She finally tore her eyes away from the book in her hands, titled, SAS Survival Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere and looked at me. “We have lived in a society that feeds us replicated, artificial food. This is what food really is.”

  It made a strange sort of sense, but I could not imagine killing and eating a living being.

  “If we are to survive here,” she counseled. “We must learn to sustain ourselves in the old ways.”

  I sat down at the table, staring at the book, at its drawings and images of slicing and preparing the flesh of large animals. “Maybe we could just eat the fruit.”

  “We can, and we should. But we will need protein. The best source for that is meat.”

  “Why do we need protein?”

  Shrtz set her book aside and pulled out another. Peterson Field Guides to Edible Wild Plants. “It helps our bodies create and repair cells. We need it to be healthy and strong.”

  I think Shrtz could see my hesitation and repulsion.

  “Perhaps we could start with something more simple. We could fish.”

  “You mean eat fish?”

  “I mean fish for fish and then eat it, correct.”

  “Sorry?”

  “When one fishes for fish, it is called fishing. The singular form of that is fish. We will fish.”

  “Okay, whatevs. I like the sound of that better. Does fish have protein?”

  “Yes.”

  There would be much to learn. But I was anxious to know
everything about this new world we now called home. There would be no one to tell us how to live and what we could and could not do. We had books to tell us how, and we had each other.

  I reluctantly left the book on the table and brought in more fruit, and when I returned, Shrtz had a small box on the table. “What’s in that?”

  “It is light.”

  Shrtz explained what she had read about making fire. I had done it many times while living with the clan. Often, it was the only way we survived. A fire for warmth, and for light. She had tools for making sparks and practiced with them on the floor as I read the wilderness book. Soon, she mounted torches on the wall. She set fire to a long stick with string sticking out of it, then she added more, until we had enough light to read by without the headlamps.

  I was still fascinated with wild game. I wanted to know what real meat tasted like. Even if I had to kill it.

  14

  Hours went by as Shrtz read books, and experimented with the skills we would need. I read most of the wilderness book, ate more fruit and finally fell asleep on one of the bunks.

  I woke sometime later, and my first thought was more food, my second, the books. Thankfully, Shrtz had already found the mechanism to unseal the library chamber.

  Munching an apple, I was drawn into the burgeoning collection of paper books. I stood in front of the first set of shelves, and ran my hand over them as I walked past. There were hundreds, no , of them. I first absorbed some of the titles. It seemed their contents covered a massive number of subjects, and many, I didn’t understand at all. What was ? What was ?

  Some of the books had bright markers, coded for importance. The yellow ones seemed to be the most important ones, for the tags plastered to the bindings had exclamation points drawn on them. One thing was certain. Professor Weller had provided all the information he thought we’d need to do everything on this primitive new Earth.

  But I wanted my narratives.

  I found the proper section, called fiction, and there were hordes of them. I opened several, and pressed my face in the pages, sniffing. I’d never smelled anything so enticing. Except maybe the apples or the other fruits.