Oli, A Very New Moon

by Carl Derham

  *

  The date was 50,000 BC, Earth time, and the Annenian mineral exploration ship Finders Keepers had been dispatched to an L-class planet in the system of Bartiss. The planet had already been explored and had been used on several occasions for Global Parties. The Annenians were particularly fond of packing a few thousand people off to a remote planet for a few weeks of self-indulgence, music, dancing and all the trimmings of a full-on, off-world party. The whereabouts of the parties were always kept secret until the last minute, not because of any law breaking or restrictive regime, but just because it was more fun that way. The Annenians knew all about fun. They were the most advanced life form in the explored sector of the galaxy, had no fears of invasion, hunger or illness and lived to have a good time. They’d stopped reproducing when their life expectancy became so long that there was no longer any point in propagation.

  The giant transport ships that carried the partygoers to their destination would be in themselves venues for parties. Flying at many times the speed of light, they would sometimes travel for weeks to a planet with a suitable atmosphere, devoid of intelligent life, and party till they were bored. It was after one such party that had lasted for three weeks that the clean-up drone ship Skoupa was disposing of all the rubbish into the planet’s mantle. Whilst performing this fully automated task, it discovered a large deposit of Glurk, one of the most important elements in the construction of the Graviton Generators that provided the main propulsion for their ships. Finders Keepers was immediately sent to assess the level of the deposit. It was ascertained to be considerable, and so a mining expedition was planned.

  Annenians were not the biggest fans of manual labour; there was no need for it. They had everything they required. If there was building work to be carried out or holes to be dug, they had drones that were more than happy to oblige. They harboured no ambitions to conquer worlds, and they had reached a point in space travel that satisfied all their imaginable needs. So when it came to the extremely manual task of mining, they usually employed the assistance of locals. In this case, the most intelligent creatures on the planet were sea dwellers; slightly less than useless for mining Glurk. So they had to employ the primitive humanoid species that were still hunting with stone tools and clumping each other over the head with lumps of wood. They did however, require the workers to be able to take instruction and work out the simplest of conundrums for themselves, so they genetically enhanced the creatures.

  The scientist in charge of the operation, Dr Sha Haman, was so pleased with her work that she requested that the new creature be given a Class 2 status. This would mean that the Annenians would become responsible for the species’ growth and protection for its natural life, rather like a godparent. There had only ever been one other species with a Class 2 status and they had recently been wiped out when their star went Nova on them. So the Annenians had been searching for a new baby to adopt. The request was accepted, and the new species was named after Dr Haman.

  It took a hundred and fifty of the planets years to mine the Glurk, during which time the Hamans were cared for, fed, and taught a few basic skills. The Hamans worked hard and were rewarded for their work. They learnt how to build weapons from bone, how to construct basic dwellings, and they were given a very simplistic appreciation of art. So when the last cup full of Glurk was lifted from the planet’s core, the Annenians packed away all traces of their visit and left, safe in the knowledge that they’d given the creatures an excellent boost towards their new lives.

  They did pay regular visits to the planet to check up on the kids over the next 38,000 years, when they weren’t too busy having fun. They took great pleasure in making sure that the Hamans were developing well and not coming to any harm. The visiting Annenians would disguise themselves as Hamans and travel among the wandering tribes dropping hints about necessary skills, such as hunting, manufacturing of tools and clothes and of course, how to party. It never ceased to amaze the Annenians how much fun they could have with a piece of goatskin stretched over a hollowed-out log. They were very excited about the development of this new species. The Annenians had witnessed a strong desire to explore and expand in the Hamans’ psyche and over the millennia they watched them leave the confines of the large equatorial continent on which they had been found, to most habitable parts of the planet. The Hamans possessed a lust for discovery that had long since departed the Annenian psyche. They sent groups of scientists to record the Hamans’ attempts at crossing the continents. Occasionally they would lend a helping hand without revealing themselves or any of their technology. They instructed tribes in the construction of vessels that could carry them across the sea or guide them away from an impassable desert.

  It was on one of these visits that a young scientist called Shtelar found a wounded parrot flapping around in circles on the ground, quite obviously distressed. It was a beautiful, green female Eclectus Parrot. She had a broken wing and was surely going to die. Shtelar had never seen anything as beautiful as this bird and immediately fell in love with it, and although Annenian law expressly forbade it, she decided to take it back to Annenia with her. She fixed its wing, placed it in suspended animation and hid it in her portable research lab. Shtelar managed to smuggle the parrot through the spaceport on Annenia with ease.

  She lived in a little house on the edge of Lake Veanon, and the parrot quickly adapted to its new surroundings, perching on the veanonberry tree every night, eating the berries and relieving itself into the water below. During the investigations that were to follow, the Annenians surmised that it had taken two years for the parrot droppings to contaminate the entire lake. Lake Veanon was a feeder lake to several other lakes, which also became contaminated. All of the lakes ran into the vast ocean, which surrounded the single continent of Annia. All of the water on all of the space craft was taken from Annenia and reduced at the molecular level for transportation because Annenians refused to drink water from any other planet, so all the ships and hence all the colonies on faraway planets received the contaminated water. During the course of five years, every Annenian alive was unknowingly contaminated with the strange virus.

  The first manifestation of the disease presented itself as forgetfulness. Thousands of Annenians were forgetting simple things such as where they’d parked, or how to get home. The enquiry revealed the alien bacterium, which had mutated with an Annenian one found only in the fruit of the veanonberry tree. They traced it back to the lake and eventually the parrot. Shtelar was told that she had been very bad and if they had any form of punishment on Annenia, she would surely have received it, and then they all forgot why they were there.

  “That’s a pretty bird,” stated one of the investigators, “what’s it called?”

  “Well, it keeps saying ‘Pardy Polly,’ so I’ve called it Pardy,” replied Shtelar.

  By this time, some Annenians had completely lost their minds and required constant care. But because they had eradicated disease, there were more Annenians that needed help than there were drones to administer it. The disease progressed at different rates for different Annenians, and a few managed to stay unaffected for many years. But they couldn’t stay on Annenia; things were slowly falling apart as everyone forgot how to perform more important tasks. They were forgetting how to walk and just lying in the street until someone who had forgotten how to drive ran them over. An Annenian cruiser pilot forgot that stars are hot and flew his ship, carrying two thousand Annenians into one, because it looked pretty.

  Two hundred Annenians came to Earth in the fastest ship they could find, Cranus, to build a legacy by which they would be remembered and which would help their children grow. They built the pyramids twelve thousand years ago, to hide the little ship in which Oli was now sitting, learning their story. They also placed various clues as to the position of the treasure around the planet. One example of these clues being the Nazca lines in the Nazca Desert in Peru. These images can only be seen from the sky and they gave clear directions in the Annenian lang
uage to the pyramids and the treasure that lay beneath them. They understood from the study of other life forms that the advent of flight usually marked a turning point in the growth of a civilisation. This was the juncture where the beings would abandon their belief systems and begin the search for the true answers that only science and space travel could provide. The actual layout of the pyramids themselves and the orientation of the twelve sides, pointed quite obviously to Annenia’s star. They had carefully calculated the projected intellect of the species in relation to its technological ability to fly, but in the end, it was just a guess.

  The plan that had been formulated, involved the ship waiting in its sealed tomb until such time as the Hamans had proved themselves worthy of the gift of knowledge that it represented. Then the ship would find a suitable Haman and offer the Haman race all the knowledge stored within it, enabling them to evolve to the next level.

  Fortunately the Annenians finished the building before they forgot what they were doing. They became so forgetful that the Hamans, who they so lovingly called their children, refused to have anything to do with them, and they were cast out into the wilderness where they eventually forgot how to breathe.

  Through the ages, the ship had been silently waiting below the Giza Plateau for the moment when the Hamans, who had somehow managed to change their name to Humans, were ready to receive the information that it possessed. For the last century, it had been monitoring the radio waves. It had witnessed the Humans’ knowledge of science grow at an extraordinary rate in the last fifty years and had started its search for a Human friend at about the time of the first moon landing, all the time thinking that any day now the Humans would decipher the clues and discover its hiding place.

  The ship had placed a string of miniature satellites in orbit around the planet. With these satellites it had been able to spy on the Humans, and when they became technologically advanced it could plug in to every form of communication available. The satellites were only the size of a grain of sand and they utilised the Annenian nulspace frequency, so they would never be detected. During the years of advancement, it had watched every television show ever broadcast, listened to every radio station every minute of the day, heard every telephone conversation and read every e-mail, text and Tweet.

  Resembling one of the many gods that had graced the Human imagination throughout the millennia, it knew the name, address and personal habits of every person that had ever touched a piece of electronic equipment or filled in a form. It had seven billion potential applicants for the job of Human representative and for some reason best known to the ship, it had chosen Oli.

  “Haven’t you been a bit bored, buried here for twelve thousand years?” Oli asked, still looking around as he talked, searching for someone to address.

  The ship explained to him that twelve thousand Earth years was only three thousand two hundred and forty Annenian years, so it wasn’t really that long. The ship had spent the time philosophising, improving the ship’s gravity drive and playing truth or dare with itself.

  “So what now?” asked Oli. “Do you have a plan?”

  The ship explained that its original plan was to fly into orbit, announce its arrival to the whole of humanity and send Oli to meet with the world leaders to relay the story of the Annenians.

  “I’m afraid you’ve seriously misjudged the ability of your little children,” said Oli, leaning back in his seat. “Maybe a few will welcome you with open arms, but the ones with their fingers on all the launch buttons will react in a very different manner.”

  “I think we need a new plan.”

  Oli sat back in the chair, his fingers clasped together and his thumbs resting on his bottom lip.

  “Oh by the way, this is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me. Ta much.”

  “Well that was the original plan Oli,” the ship continued. “I was instructed to wait until the Human race had reached a level of understanding that would enable them to appreciate and not abuse the knowledge. I fear that as a whole, you have some way to go to reach that point. I just wanted to see your reaction to the plan. As it happens, I completely concur with your appraisal of the situation.”

  “Anyway,” it continued, as Oli pondered the meaning of its last sentence, “there has been a slight development Oli, which requires immediate action.”

  Oli lent forward in the chair, gesturing with one hand as if to say, come on then, give it to me.

  “A large asteroid is on a collision course with the planet. We must go to Annenia and collect the necessary equipment with which to deflect it.”

  “Garumph!” Oli said, slumping back in the chair. He’d been a big fan of comic books as a child, and had developed the unusual habit of voicing the expressive noises that his favourite characters would use. “Well this is all way over my head but I’m up for it if you are. When do we leave?” This whole situation was really testing his ability to go with the flow to the max.