Oli, A Very New Moon

by Carl Derham

  *

  On the fifth day out from Earth, Oli awoke after a good deep sleep where he dreamt about surfing a giant, never-ending wave. He scratched around on the floor, with his right arm that was already hanging off the bed, for the pile of clothes that he’d abandoned the night before. When he found no clothes, he looked over to the shelf next to the bed and there they were, neatly pressed and folded into a pile. His mother had given up trying to keep his room tidy, but he felt somehow that the drones would not surrender so hastily. He performed the morning ablutions followed by the now customary biscuit, and took a matrem. As he left his room, the walls of the corridor magically lit up following his path towards the control room, where he now felt as relaxed as he did in his own flat. He was sure this must be a sign that he was truly destined for the role, whatever that role might be. Or it could just be that this was the most comfortable and serene environment that any Human had ever experienced. On entering the room he saw, in the middle of the screen, a huge star occupying almost half of the area and blocking out all other light.

  “Good morning Oli,” said Robbie, with an unusual spring in his voice. “As you can see, we have entered the Annenian system and have slowed to sub-light speed. We will reach Annenia in thirty five minutes.”

  “Great, just time for brekkie,” said Oli, already sitting at the food unit.

  “I think I’ll try something different today. Give me a typical Annenian breakfast,” he said, speaking into the food unit, “after all, when in Annenia.”

  Oli was focusing on the inside of the machine with one eye on the screen, but soon gave up the view of the star when the breakfast arrived. There on the raised platform, was enough food to satiate a small army.

  “Did they tend to scoff quite a bit then” he asked, arching his back and blowing out his stomach.

  “Yes Oli, they did have more than a passing interest in food.”

  There was a large glass bowl containing some sort of mousse, a square container with red fluffy stuff, a glass the size of two pint glasses with a liquid that was blue on the bottom and pink on the top and, hold on a minute, there was a bowl of cornflakes with what appeared to be milk poured over them.

  “What are these?” he asked, pointing at the bowl and looking over his shoulder at no particular point in the room.

  “The Annenian would translate as flaky corn, so I suppose that you could call them cornflakes Oli. The Annenians were eating them for breakfast whilst your ancestors were clouting each other over the head with bones.”

  The whole breakfast was delicious, especially the red fluffy stuff. Oli ate everything except the Cornflakes. He’d never really liked the way that they became soggy if you didn’t eat them immediately. They passed the Annenian sun and were then on the final approach to Annenia, so Oli waddled over to the control seat, rubbing his over-extended midriff, with his eyes glued to the screen. Then out of the black, first as a dot and then growing rapidly, a blue and green planet appeared. It filled the screen like a balloon being inflated from an out-of-control compressed air canister. It looked as though they were going to fly straight through it if they didn’t slow down immediately. The ship was rushing towards it like a crash test car, being driven flat out at a brick wall. Oli’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the arms of the chair pushing himself firmly into the adequately cushioned backrest. In the time that it took to cry “Woaaaaa!” the planet occupied the entire screen. Suddenly, their advance was halted. One quarter of a billion kilometres per hour to dead stop in less than a second.

  “Robbie,” gasped Oli, “I don’t mean to be picky,” he said, prizing his finger nails from the freshly imprinted indentations in the chair, “but is it really necessary to approach a planet quite so FAST? I mean what if you couldn’t stop in time.”

  “It really is quite safe Oli. The generally accepted procedure for entering orbit is to approach at close to light speed, otherwise it would take hours to cover the last part of the journey. There was only one recorded instance when the ship's computer miscalculated the gravity drive cut-off point, and it was all over very quickly, for both the ship and the planet. But that was during the early days of ftl travel, I couldn’t possibly make such a dumb mistake.”

  “Good! Try to make sure that you don’t. There's a pal.” Oli sounded quite serious for once.

  “I’ll knock off twenty or thirty mil the next time we approach a planet Oli.”

  He was beginning to sound more like Oli. The more time he spent transferring data slowly, the more of Oli’s language he picked up. Theoretically it was not possible for information from the brain to travel back up the Neural Feed line, but Oli had noticed that Robbie was definitely sounding more human.

  Filling the screen now, was the beautiful jewel of Annenia. Oli hated himself for thinking it, but it was considerably more eye-catching than Earth. It comprised one central landmass covering twenty five percent of the globe. There were thousands of smaller islands, dotted throughout the sea. Both the poles were covered with ice just like Earth. Robbie explained that like Earth, Annenia was in the sweet spot orbiting its sun. It was just the right distance to be warmed by the star without being burnt to a crisp. Fifty percent of all stars, he explained, have at least one planet in the sweet spot. Oli couldn’t even begin to imagine how many Earth-like planets must exist out there. The landmass stretched around half the equator and encroached into half the northern and southern hemispheres. There were clouds, swirling storms and a dark mass that looked like a huge city on the top left corner of the land.

  “Is that where we’re going?” asked Oli, pointing at the dark area.

  “Yes Oli, that’s Ahrna, the capital city. We have to go to the main space port and locate the workshops, where hopefully, the demolition crews would have completely forgotten their responsibilities, long before completion, allowing us to acquire the necessary equipment.”

  They began to move again. In a few seconds Oli could only see the land mass and a bit of the ocean at the top left. They quickly entered the atmosphere and were soon engulfed by thick cloud. Then with a flash, the cloud was gone and in front of them occupying the entire screen was the most incredible site Oli, or any other Human for that matter, had ever laid eyes on. After thousands of years of neglect, the city of Ahrna had been swamped by the surrounding forest. Only the tallest buildings in the city were visible, protruding from the canopy. Ahrna was truly massive, with skyscrapers kissing the underside of the clouds. Everything seemed to be coloured black, silver or red. The most prominent feature occupying the centre of the city was a giant pyramid that must have been three kilometres high and as black as space. The light from the sun shone onto one surface and that seemed to shimmer and sparkle in a similar fashion to the matter transform bubble. Oli knew from his time on the Neural Feed that this was the main source of power for the entire planet; a giant solar reactor. In a way that Oli couldn’t even begin to understand, the pyramid reactor harnessed the energy from the sun, amplified it a thousand times by running it through the core of the planet and distributed the electrical power around Annenia. The reactor was built a thousand years before they even discovered Earth and the city spread around it. All the buildings within twenty kilometres of the pyramid were considerably smaller, so they would not interfere with the sunlight, but the further out you travelled the taller they became. This gave an overall bowl shape to the city, dissolving back into the forest around the edge. As they flew closer to the ground, the surrounding forest seemed to merge with the buildings and Oli noticed that the whole city was overgrown. Great boughs of trees emerged from the shattered sides of buildings and forced their way skyward. The spaces between buildings that must have once been streets had been transformed into dense jungle.

  They flew into the centre, towards the pyramid, skimming the treetops and weaving between the skyscrapers. Even these monolithic structures had not escaped the grip of the forest. The plants had used the buildings to climb higher and higher in search of valuable sunlight.
This gave the impression that the forest was reaching out with inquisitive green fingers, pulling the buildings down to its level.

  In the centre of the screen a series of diagrams appeared. There were numbers, Annenian characters, and a grid that was fixed to one spot in the city and as the ship turned, the grid would move to remain fixed on that spot and as the ship banked, the grid tilted in the opposite direction to remain level with the horizon.

  “What’s that for Robbie?” Oli asked, leaning forward but unable to decipher any of the symbols.

  “It’s a final approach guidance system Oli, generally used for manual landings.”

  “So you can be flown manually. Superb! When do I get to have a go?”

  “Later Oli,” snapped Robbie, with a hint of please don’t bother me now; I’m trying to land a spaceship in his voice. He was of course capable of landing the ship, playing five thousand games of chess, and reading War and Peace in every Earth language simultaneously but he hadn’t done it for twelve and a half thousand years, so he felt it may be prudent to err on the side of caution.

  Oli could now clearly see their destination. It was another pyramid, much smaller than the main one and with the top chopped off to leave a platform. The platform, even from this distance, looked bigger than a football pitch and there was a tower rising another hundred metres above it in the far left corner, similar to the bridge of an aircraft carrier. The ship had now slowed to a speed where Oli could see that the smaller buildings were completely overgrown with vegetation of all kinds and only the tallest buildings were protruding through the forest below. A small red grid appeared inside the first platform that was rolling with the roll of the ship and pulsing around a fixed point on the roof of the flat-topped pyramid. As they approached the spaceport, the ship slowed and Oli heard a clunk from underneath.

  “That’s the landing legs Oli,” Robbie anticipated.

  All that progress; star travel, cities the size of France and the landing gear on the ships, still goes clunk! Very poor, thought Oli.

  The ship hovered over the platform and touched down next to the tower, as delicately as a leaf landing on a pile of feathers. Oli could now see a layer of dust on the surface and creepers that had sprung up from below were entwined on the surface. From this close proximity, the city was definitely showing its age.

  “I’m going to send the micro-drones to locate the equipment. If you wish to accompany them, you may,” Robbie announced, already aware of Oli’s answer.

  “Oh I want, I definitely want,” said Oli, leaping from the chair and on his way to his room to find his freshly-cleaned shoes. He was going to be the first Human to set foot on another planet other than the moon, and he suddenly remembered the disposable camera in his jacket pocket. Oli was the only person that he knew that still used one of these cameras. Obviously, he owned a phone, he wasn’t living in the dark ages, but he just loved the excitement of collecting the photos from a developer, so he always carried a disposable camera with him on holiday. He was just trying to work out how he would take a picture of himself when he looked down and saw six lines of dust on the floor, moving, converging, on one single point near the door. They began to build into a pile, larger and larger. Then legs began to form and the beginnings of a body.

  “The micro-drones will form a humanoid shape,” said Robbie, sensing Oli’s confusion, “since the building was designed with Annenians in mind.”

  Oli watched as a child-sized figure with arms, legs and a head took shape. It had no eyes or mouth, and very strange hands with only two oversized fingers and an equally large thumb. The surface was metallic black, with a hammered effect that gave the impression of scales.

  “Will it be able to take a piccy?” asked Oli, holding the camera up towards the panel, shaking it lightly.

  “Certainly Oli. Give the camera to the drone and instruct it how to take a picture.”

  Oli held the camera out for the drone to receive. It took it in its right hand and looked at it with a blank expression, made even more blank due to the lack of features.

  “You point this at me,” shouted Oli, in the manner of an English person giving directions to a foreigner to find the Tower of London. “Then you press this here,” he said slowly and without realising, in an even louder voice.

  “Just speak normally Oli,” said Robbie. “When you communicate with the drone, you’re actually talking to me and I have a more than adequate understanding of your language.”

  “Oooh,” said Oli, with a wry smile on his face.

  The drone turned and walked down the corridor to the cargo hold at the rear of the ship and Oli followed.

  “Stay with the drone Oli,” said Robbie. “It knows where to go and I do not want to have to come looking for you.”

  Oli turned and saluted, then followed the drone into the cargo hold. As they entered, a door opened in the back wall. Half of it slid upwards and the other half slid down towards the landing pad. Then a walkway came out from the floor and made its way to the dusty ground below. Oli and the drone descended the gangway and as Oli put his left foot out to step off the ship, he thought, this is the piccy to take. So he told the drone to move a few metres away, turn and take the picture. Oli stood at the top of the ramp with his arms folded, looking very much like the great explorer. The drone performed as requested and photographic history was made. Oli thought, they’re gonna get a shock when I take this one into Snappysnaps to be developed.

  As they walked away from the ship, Oli turned and for the first time, saw the craft that had been his home for the last five days. It was a forty metre long streamlined grey dart, with no protrusions or windows. The front didn’t taper to a point, as he’d expected, it ended in a rounded stub. It looked like the front of a cargo plane rather than a fighter jet. The ship was much wider in the middle and it tapered in all directions to the rounded rear, where the base of the craft formed a concave shape. Oli moved to the front of the craft and realised that from that vantage point the profile took on a saucer shape. There were three legs, one at the front and two in the middle, each of which ended in three splayed fingers reaching out two metres in each direction. He stood back and looked at it for a while and was happy in the thought that his ship was a real beauty. He did however wonder if it came in black, because that would look awesome. Before the thought was fully formed in his head, the ship shimmered with two sweeps front to back, and changed colour to the darkest black Oli had ever seen.

  Still listening in then, thought Oli

  “Sorry,” said Robbie.

  The dust on the ground was like the finest soft sand on a beach. Oli and the drone disturbed it as they walked, leaving a fine wake behind them. Oli couldn’t resist kicking his feet through the dust, causing powdery explosions as he walked, until one of the explosions covered the drone from head to toe. The drone stopped in its tracks and without any movement from its body, the head rotated through one hundred and eighty degrees to face Oli.

  “Sorry,” said Oli, with his hand masking the clenched teeth.

  The drone continued its journey towards the tower at the end of the landing platform, where a door patiently awaited its first use for twelve thousand years. When they reached the door, the drone extended an arm to the entry panel on the side. There was no power, so nothing was going to work. The drone put one of its fat fingers against the panel and Oli baulked as the end of the finger dissolved into the panel. Within ten seconds, the door uttered a tired groan, creaked and slid open to reveal a lift. The drone was then rejoined by the end of its finger. They got in and the drone sent another finger into the panel to operate the motor. Robbie explained through the drone that the micro-drones were using their own power sources to operate the equipment. The lift began to move slowly, complaining all the way about this rude awakening as it descended into the building. Oli thought that it was a credit to the skill of the Annenians that it moved at all. The journey down into the building ended with a soft jolt and the doors opened onto a huge hall the size o
f ten football pitches. As far as the eye could see there were dismantled ships and workshops full of parts. When the Annenians had accepted their fate, they planned to leave nothing in working order, just in case some unfriendly life form found it and used the technology to cause trouble. But during the chaos that ensued, everyone forgot what they were doing had left much of the work incomplete.

  The drone headed down the central aisle. In the middle of the building they approached a hole in the floor, about one hundred metres across. Oli walked to the edge and tentatively leaned his head over to look down. The shaft went straight through the middle of the building and disappeared into the darkness below. There must have been hundreds of floors. He could just see into the first three levels, and they looked identical to the one on which he stood. They were massive hangars into which the ships descended from the roof. He began to feel a bit dizzy and so stepped back from the edge. After walking a little further, they took a left turn towards a single storey bunker-like building. The drone sent its finger in to open the door. A colossal round door, five metres across, rolled away to the left, disappearing into the wall, and inside there was another shiny round door about three metres in diameter. The drone walked up to the control panel on the wall and inserted a whole hand into the entry panel.

  Crikey, thought Oli, this must be one serious door to need a whole hand to open it. After about a minute, there was a deep thud and the door began to open outwards. As it swung out towards Oli, he could see that it was a metre thick, and when fully opened, revealed a room containing ten crystal globes just like the one in the engine room of the ship, each one sitting on a pedestal; lifeless, neither glowing nor throbbing.

  “Graviton Generators I take it,” Oli said to the faceless head, and to his surprise, it nodded.

  It walked to the first globe and picked it up. A hole opened on the front of the drone, and it slid the globe into the hole, which then closed. They retraced their footsteps back to the elevator and on passing the shaft, Oli had to have one more look at the impressive view from the edge. As he was teetering on the edge with his right arm flailing about behind as a counter balance, he noticed out of the corner of his eye, a flash of colour. He looked round suddenly, nearly throwing himself off balance. He was wobbling on the very edge of the shaft, desperately trying to find something to grab hold of when he felt the drone’s fat little hand around his wrist, pulling him clear.

  “Cheers matey,” he said, shaking the drone's other hand.

  Then again, he saw a flash of colour out of the corner of the other eye. His head spun to the left, then the right, then upwards, as more flashes of red and blue appeared and disappeared.

  “Oli, I would like you to return to the ship now!” Robbie’s voice appeared from the drone sounding quite serious.

  “Why, what’s up?” inquired Oli.

  “I’m not too sure. Just hurry back.”

  Oli and the drone set off towards the lift. Every now and then Oli would catch a flash of colour in the corner of his eye. But each time he spun round to look, there was nothing there. On entering the lift, the drone sent a finger into the control panel, the doors closed, and Oli felt the downward push as they moved off, creaking their way back to the surface. When the door opened, Oli couldn’t believe what he was looking at. The ship was exactly where he had left it but it was covered in tiny white blobs.

  I’ve seen this before, he thought.

  Then he realised it was like the time that he’d parked his scooter under a tree near his flat in Fulham, unaware that the tree was a favourite perch for thousands of starlings. As he approached the ship, he confirmed that it was definitely bird poo, and what a pong. He walked to the gangway and was just about to enter the ship, when he caught another flash of red and turned to see a couple of hundred red and green birds flying straight towards him. As they came closer he could see that they were parrots. They started circling overhead and Robbie’s voice emerged from the drone asking Oli to get into the ship. But Oli was way too curious to miss this. Five parrots emerged from the company and flew towards him. They landed in the dust, blowing up plumes with their wings and slowly trudged towards him. They were light enough to walk on top of the sandy dust but they did leave a rather unusual pattern in it with their claws. The birds were all coloured red and blue, except for one that was green. They stopped and looked up at Oli. Oli dropped down on his haunches and slowly extended a hand towards them. At first they all flinched in unison and took a step backwards, but then one of them came forward.

  “Are you a Haman?” one of the parrots said. The voice was like a parrot’s, but not so Punch and Judy; more sophisticated.

  Oli pulled his hand back.

  “Well, ah, yes, actually I am,” Oli stumbled the words out. “Are you a parrot?”

  “Yes, we are parrots and we would like to welcome you to our home.”

  The parrot that spoke was obviously in charge and the other four just nodded their approval.

  “Well, thank you very much. It’s very nice to meet you. My name is Oli.” Oli extended his arm again with his index finger pointing out meaning to shake hands, but the parrot climbed onto it.

  “My name is Pardy,” said the parrot, as Oli stood up and brought Pardy up to his eye level.

  “Would you like to see inside the ship and meet my friend Robbie?” said Oli, gesturing towards the gangway.

  “Can we come as well?” several little voices chirped. Oli looked to see the other four parrots jumping about excitedly.

  “Course you can,” said Oli offering both arms. Pardy side-stepped her way up Oli’s arm and onto his shoulder to make room, and soon Oli was walking up the gangway with five parrots perched around his head.

  Odd. Very odd, he thought.

  They entered the cargo bay where the drone was busy stowing the Graviton Generator in a space that had opened in the wall. It was immediately enclosed in a force field, the door closed and the drone dissolved into a pile and scattered to the four corners of the room.

  “That was the drone,” said Oli looking around to see where it had disappeared to. “It doesn’t say much.”

  Oli walked to the control room and when the door opened, he felt all the parrots jump a little on his shoulders. Glad it’s not just me then, he thought with a wry grin.

  “Robbie, I’d like you to meet some friends of mine.”

  He introduced Pardy, and the others said their names were also Pardy, except one who was called Purdy. Apparently it was a very popular name amongst the parrots.

  “Oli,” said Robbie, “I really don’t think it’s a good idea bringing an alien life form onto the ship, especially when they recently covered it with crap.”

  “I’m sorry if that wasn’t to your liking,” said Pardy, her head darting about searching for the source of the voice. “It’s our traditional greeting to visitors, not that we ever get any. Some of us have suggested that it may be time to change it but you know how difficult it is to overcome tradition.”

  “Might I suggest that you try a little harder.” Robbie’s voice had taken on a tone that Oli had never heard before. He’s really not happy about being used as a bird toilet, Oli thought, as he tried to stifle the snigger.

  “You’re only our second set of visitors to this planet,” said Pardy. “The first didn’t look very friendly and only seemed interested in the contents of the ancient city.”

  Pardy explained that the parrots lived in the forest surrounding the city and in many other forests around the continent. She invited them to visit the parrot capital before they left. Oli thought that this was a great idea and said they would follow Pardy and the others. He explained that they couldn’t stay for long because they had a planet to save.

  “How exciting!” squawked Pardy.

  Pardy, Pardy, Pardy and Purdy hopped off Oli’s arms and waddled down the hallway to the exit. Halfway along the corridor they turned and waved a wing at Pardy, who was still perched on Oli’s shoulder.

  “Come on
Pardy, we’ve got a long flight ahead of us,” chirped Pardy.

  “Ah…Can I ride in your ship please Oli? Please…Please?”

  “Of course you can Pardy,” said Oli turning to give a thumbs-up to the other parrots, who swivelled on their claws and continued to the cargo bay. Oli, with Pardy on his shoulder, walked to the edge of the gangway and waved as the parrots took to the sky in a flutter of colour. They re-joined the company and then headed off towards the forest, which lay about fifty kilometres south of Ahrna. The ship lifted off with the obligatory clunk of the legs. Back in the control room, Oli raised a hand for Pardy to climb onto and he gently lowered her onto a lever on the control panel, which made an excellent perch. Oli wanted to ask Robbie whether he thought that the parrots had evolved from the earth Parrot brought to Annenia 12 thousand years ago, but he didn’t want to drop any bombshells in front of Pardy relating to her creation. For all he knew, they could believe that some omnipotent parrot god had seeded the planet with creatures made in his own image. Stranger things happen elsewhere, after all. They watched in silence as the buildings of Ahrna slid below, slowly replaced by dense forest. After about five minutes, Oli couldn’t take it any longer.

  “So…Pardy,” Oli began, sensing Robbie shaking his non-existent head. “How long have you guys been here on Annenia? Do you have records of your history?”

  “Yes Oli,” said Pardy, unable to hide her excitement about the prospect of being the first one to talk to the Haman visitor. “We know that the first parrot was brought here from a place called Earth, and that the Annenians, who used to live in that great city, did some clever modifications to make it smart, and we know that the Annenians all died out soon after that.”

  Oli breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Do you have any facts that you could add, Robbie?” asked Oli. “Of course, I’m assuming that you don’t mind finding out about your beginnings, Pardy.”

  “Of course not,” squawked Pardy. “This is very exciting.”

  Oli smiled at the sight of Pardy dancing around the length of the lever, virtually boiling over with anticipation.

  Robbie explained about the parrot on the veanonberry tree and the demise of the Annenians. He then explained that in an attempt to solve the crisis and find a cure for the illness, the Annenians had cloned the female parrot with the green colouring, and improved its genetic code, so that the male parrot with the red and blue colouring that was subsequently produced might be able to help them. They had accelerated the growth of the bird so that it reached full adulthood in only one hour. Of course, even a genetically-enhanced parrot was not going to find a cure that had evaded the top scientists of Annenia, but it had only wasted a couple of hours and they were desperate.

  The parrot must have escaped from the laboratory and somehow joined with the non-intelligent parrot from Earth. From this meeting emerged the first hybrid parrots, and over the course of the past twelve and a half thousand Earth years, they had built this civilisation which was now occupying Annenia.

  Pardy looked stunned.

  “So a parrot killed the Annenians,” she said, sounding slightly concerned.

  “Not really,” offered Oli. “The Annenian who brought the alien life form back to Annenia without going through the proper quarantine procedure was responsible for the end of the Annenians.

  “Phew,” said Pardy, immediately losing the air of concern that had descended upon her. “That’s a relief.”

  It was a two hour flight at parrot speed to the city, so Oli took the opportunity to take a matrem. After all, if he was going to represent humanity in the first contact with an alien race, he would have to smarten himself up a bit. Pardy watched as the city of Ahrna disappeared from view. She’d seen it a thousand times, but never from the comfort of a ship.