Proxima Rising

by Brandon Q Morris

  “If you think so,” I reply. “But I don’t want to hear any complaints about the water being too cold. I will carry your luggage. But not you two,” I say somewhat jokingly.

  The forest starts to thin out, ending about 100 meters from the riverbank. The treeless area is covered with mushrooms. There is no shore visible—the water must start right beyond the mushrooms, or the last ones are already standing in the water.

  “I’ll go ahead,” I say, “just to see whether it is safe and to test the depth.”

  It’s good I can count on using four legs. This way I can stand safely and still check what is under the water with a free leg. I find the bottom is covered with sand and pebbles, and I do not detect any aquatic plants. The water temperature is about 14 degrees. Adam and Eve are going to complain, but in the end it’s what they wanted to do. I run a chemical and microbiological analysis without finding anything potentially harmful to humans. Although the water will taste slightly salty, it is potable.

  “You can get in,” I call them. Adam and Eve advance to my position, but the dense cover of mushrooms does not make it easy for them. I take their backpacks. Adam undresses down to his underwear and hands me his clothes. Eve blushes slightly and then takes off her outer clothes as well, but chooses to keep her T-shirt on.

  Adam does not wait long and marches straight ahead, until he feels water cover his feet for the first time. “This is going to be rough,” he says, shaking himself.

  “Should I carry you across?” I ask. The distance to the other shore is about 80 meters. The river seems to be shallow, no more than a meter and a half at the deepest spot, and it flows slowly.

  “Absolutely not,” Adam says. He squeals when Eve splashes him with water from behind. Both of them race forward, leave the mushrooms behind, and glide into the shallow water while uttering loud screams. I am curious whether the swimming exercises they learned and practiced while traveling through space has helped. Can you forget a skill like this? For the sake of safety, I follow them at a distance of a few meters. I watch as the two of them dog paddle through the water. On board Messenger, they neither had the time nor the space to develop an efficient swimming style, but this is working fine. They have to expend so much effort that they do not have a chance to feel cold anymore.

  Adam swims ahead, Eve follows him about one and a half meters behind and to the side. They keep watching each other and shout something only they can understand.

  Then events escalate.

  Adam suddenly is standing up in the water, which reaches to his belly button. He tries to call out but cannot manage to do so. He points at the spot where Eve was swimming, and now I understand what he means to say. Eve is gone. I stomp ahead to cross the few remaining meters and barely manage to come to a stop. Below me is a rectangular, black hole, and it looks as if something punched a hole into the river bottom here. A strong current pulls in river water at one end and spits it out at the other.

  Time is short. The human brain can only survive for three minutes without oxygen. The timer in my head is already starting a countdown. I let my entire body fall into the hole. During my descent I measure the depth: approximately eight meters. Where is Eve? I activate my searchlight and my ultrasound sensors. The walls of this chamber have an irregular shape. There, in the left corner. Could that be her body?

  Another 65 seconds. The current is strong, my four legs are impractical down here, my body is too heavy, and my hands ought to be three times larger to propel me faster while swimming. Is that her? I reach for the shadow, but it dissolves under my fingers. Go on. She must be there! Turn around, Marchenko, maybe she is stuck against a wall. Infrared. Look for her body heat! There she is!

  The timer has arrived at zero. I reach her at minus 20, and I grab her body. Trying to quickly move upward, minus 40, but I am like a block of iron with little buoyancy. My four legs are kicking as fast as they can. Minus 60, I should be up there soon, where there is light. And, much more critical, air. The timer in my head indicates minus 90.

  Eve had been without oxygen for at least four and a half minutes. It is impossible that she has survived this. I fold two of my legs to form a kind of table and place Eve on it. I feel for her pulse. Her heart is beating, but she is not breathing. Am I going completely insane now? This is impossible, but it is happening. Her pulse is slightly elevated, at 92, but her chest does not move up and down. Then she suddenly spits out a gush of water and inhales deeply, like a baby taking its first breath.

  Great! She is alive! But how can this be? I run an X-ray scan of her body and discover something. Two skin folds have opened below her ribs. I pull her T-shirt up a bit and examine these folds. Inside are gills. They were activated because she could no longer breathe normally, and this must be one of the basic modifications even I did not know of.

  But why didn’t I notice this earlier? I have known Adam and Eve since they were babies. I should have noticed the skin folds, even if they were always closed tight. There is only one possible answer: I have a filter integrated into my consciousness that will not allow me to see things I should not see.

  I am shocked, but I do not have time to reflect on this, because Adam is staring wide-eyed at Eve’s belly. “What does she have there?” His voice is almost squeaky. He is about to get hysterical. “Do I have that, too?”

  Eve opens her eyes, first looking at me, then at Adam. He bites his lips and manages to calm down a bit.

  “What am I doing here?” Eve asks.

  “Do you remember anything?” I ask her.

  “Something pulled me down. It happened so fast. And then everything went black. And then I woke up here,” she says, trying to sit up.

  “Wait a moment,” I say. “There seems to be something you need to know. I told you back on Messenger that you have been genetically optimized, but obviously not even I knew everything about it. You have gills here on your belly, and they saved your life.”

  Now I cannot hold Eve back. She sits up on one of my folded legs in order to look at her belly. The skin folds are already starting to dry, and the drier they get, the more they merge with the skin.

  “By tonight you probably won’t be able to see them anymore,” I say.

  “Do I have those also?” Adam tries to find the folds on his belly, but in vain.

  “I can search with X-rays, if you want me to,” I reply.

  “Please do,” he says, “I really need to know!”

  And indeed, I detect gills in him, too. Normally they must lie inside the subcutaneous layer, which has a more complicated structure.

  “And you really didn’t know anything about it?” asks Adam with a skeptical look.

  “Would I have dived so frantically to reach Eve if I had known it?” I answer. “I could have just waited until she swam back by herself.”

  Adam shakes his head but then decides to believe me. “Yeah, that sounds logical,” he says. “But why can you now see our gills?”

  “I suspect there was some kind of programmed mental block which is now gone.”

  “Because now they are known,” Eve adds.

  “Might we have other abilities we know nothing of?”

  “Possibly, Adam, but I am afraid we won’t find out until there is no other choice.”

  “Marchenko, I pity you,” Eve says. “They played around with our bodies, but they manipulated your mind. That must be a terrible feeling.”

  Eve is right, but I don’t have the time to deal with the issue. At least I keep telling myself that.

  “We have to finish crossing this river first,” I say. “I assume you don’t mind sitting on my shoulders, considering these circumstances?”

  Adam and Eve are nodding. They seem to have had enough of swimming for right now.

  February 5, 19

  The days drag on. After the river incident we talked for a long while, but the very next day our conversations began to diminish. To add to the boredom, we are discovering that the forest offers no real change. All the tree trunks are
the same, and the mushrooms are, too, except sometimes bigger or sometimes smaller. Once, Eve noticed a moving shadow and I investigated, finding the tracks of an approximately dog-sized, eight-legged animal, but we never actually caught sight of it.

  The constant twilight makes all of us feel tired—including me—even in the morning, so much so that we hardly cover more than 20 kilometers per day. It is also gradually becoming darker and colder, and while we do not see it, the sun must by now be considerably lower in the sky from our perspective. The fact we are getting closer to the sea is first indicated by the trees, which are decreasing in height as we travel. While the trees had been 200 meters tall at the start of our trek, they now measure about 150 meters, most likely in response to the decrease in solar radiation. The distance between them has also increased. Now and then, this allows a spot of sunlight or some rain to reach the ground, as there is also more precipitation here.

  The weather has been uncomfortably cold and wet since yesterday. These conditions have significantly decreased the joyous anticipation that Adam and Eve previously felt about seeing the ocean. While I never promised them a tropical beach, they obviously remember the photos of the Caribbean that I showed them on Messenger.

  Then there is the wind. It races effortlessly through the more widely separated trees and blows moisture into our faces. The ocean lies close to the exchange zone between the light side of the planet and its dark side. Storms and thunderstorms should be normal there, as the wind already indicates, and its gusty howling kept Adam and Eve from getting much sleep last night. The sound of the storms overpowers the sound of the sea, the first greeting I expected from the ocean.

  Our arrival at the beach is unspectacular. We reach the last row of trees. Beyond is a narrow strip of shore covered with mushrooms, and then the water. Considering there is a storm raging, the surface is amazingly calm, due to strong gravity preventing the formation of high waves. It is a strange contrast to see the ocean splashing gently against the shore, while ragged white clouds race across a dark gray background sky.

  Adam and Eve nevertheless run forward to the shore. I want to yell a warning but then hesitate, because I remember they are already acting cautiously on their own. Eve takes off her boots and steps into water reaching to her ankles.

  “Ice cold,” she says, but does not move away. “My feet tingle.”

  “That is the effect of the cold,” I say to her. Just to be on the safe side, I check whether an extraterrestrial worm is nibbling on her skin, but there is nothing.

  A plant is growing in the sea a few meters from us. It reminds me of the grass in the steppe. No animals can be seen, and I proceed to analyze the water, which is slightly salty, but not as much as the oceans on Earth. The drop I look at contains 50 different kinds of microorganisms that are genetically related to the mushrooms. On Proxima b the biological diversity seems to be considerably lower than on Earth. Might our home planet be especially favored? Or do the frequent flares here limit the options for life?

  Adam already seems to be fed up with it. I notice his disappointed expression. He walks back toward the forest and starts clearing a small patch of mushrooms. I follow him, since we need a place to rest. Ten minutes later Eve joins us, but no one is saying anything. We have now reached a point where some decisions must be made.

  I look at them both and ask, “Are you disappointed?”

  Adam nods.

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Eve says.

  “I am also disappointed,” I admit, “though I don’t really know what I expected.”

  “What about the signal?” Adam asks.

  “It led us here, in this direction,” I say.

  “Yes, but there is nothing here.”

  “We have to first search the area carefully, Adam.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Yes, I know. There is no one waiting for us here. Even if we did find something, it would be a relic from the past.

  “I have a suggestion,” I offer. “You two set up a camp for us here. I am going to look around with all of my instruments. There must be something I can find.”

  Eve nods, and Adam at least does not argue. I unpack the tent and the generator, but the rest will have to wait until later. Then I move toward the shore on my four legs.

  “Marchenko, it would be nice if you could walk around on two legs again,” Eve calls after me.

  I cover about half a kilometer. I am not planning an extended trip. I want to scan the surroundings with everything available to me. There must be traces of the aliens here. The ocean has typically offered various resources to most civilizations, at least easy transport.

  Initially, as nothing can be seen on the surface, I have to look underground. Close to the sea the soil is very wet, and neither radar nor X-ray offers clear images. I only see a black mass with swirls in it. Sound should be able to help me, because it propagates underground at different speeds depending on the material, and boundaries between materials reflect it differently. Like a doctor examining a pregnant woman, I use ultrasound on Proxima b. I place my pressure sensors on the ground—sound is basically nothing but pressure differences—and then firmly stomp with two legs. The sound waves enter the ground and are reflected back at some point. By repeating this method at various locations I get a three-dimensional image of the ground beneath me, which radar cannot penetrate.

  Each measurement requires less than two minutes, with the orientation of the pressure sensors taking up most of it. Then I move ahead a few meters and repeat the process. If Adam or Eve is watching they might be puzzled by my activity. I am walking in a circle, repeatedly stomping the ground with two legs. One might mistake this pattern for a magic ritual. My processors add data step by step, completing the puzzle. After taking ten measurements it is already clear to me I am on the trail of something important.

  I radio Adam and Eve, telling them it will take me a bit longer.

  “How much longer will it take you?” Eve asks.

  “Half a day,” I reply.

  “That means you found something, right?”

  “It could be, yes,” I reply.

  “But you are not sure?”

  “Yes.”

  That answer is actually not altogether true. I am completely sure there is something down there, but I just do not know enough about its dimensions. I want to be absolutely sure about what is waiting below our feet before causing Adam and Eve to develop unfounded hopes.

  One kilometer further south, I walk in another circle. Here there are fewer mushrooms and the ground is harder, but the result is similar to that of the first series of measurements. Then I walk another thousand meters southward and repeat the diagnosing process. This thing is large, really large, I observe. I have already spent three hours, but I have to know what it is.

  I walk another kilometer along the seashore and repeat my measurements. Now the picture is becoming complete, and I am quite satisfied. I walk back to Adam and Eve as fast as I can. I use the time to have the fabricators produce two-dimensional projections of my measurement images. I want to have something to show to both of them.

  “It’s about time,” Adam says to me in welcome. The words sound surprisingly friendly. He must realize I did not stay away so long without having a good reason.

  “And what do you have?” Eve asks.

  “This.” I put the pictures on the improvised table. There are six sheets, and Adam and Eve look at them one at a time.

  “What do you think?” I finally ask, ending a quarter hour of silence.

  “They look like aerial photographs of an airport,” Adam replies.

  “No,” Eve retorts, “take a closer look. What you consider runways are really rail tracks. The rails connect several octagonal platforms... there!” She points at one of the octagons.

  “It’s a spaceport!” Adam exclaims.

  This is also my assumption, but it is good to have someone else affirm it. I nod in confirmation.

  “Something else might
land on these platforms. Think of helicopters,” I say.

  “Then they wouldn’t be connected by rail,” Eve objects. “They must have transported something especially heavy. What could be heavier than a fueled rocket that is supposed to leave a planet that has one and a half times terrestrial gravity?”

  “Perhaps they had long ago advanced to antigravity and other exotic things?”

  “Then they wouldn’t need tracks, Marchenko.”

  “But wouldn’t it be odd if their technology resembled ours so much?” I ask. It is fun arguing with Eve.

  “Under identical conditions, similar problems often lead to similar solutions,” she replies. “You taught us what this is called in nature: coevolution.”

  Nice. Eve really paid attention during my lessons. Transport on smooth rails is associated with less rolling friction, so any civilization might discover this method at some time, unless it does not need to move heavy loads at all. The same applies to having a roof over your head. It protects against the weather, so any sentient creature living on the ground will eventually create house-like structures.

  “And what does this tell us?” Adam inquires, asking an important question.

  “This is no single picture,” I reply. “I surveyed the coast for five kilometers southward. These platforms, connected by tracks, are everywhere. Of course we might have found a large spaceport by chance, but we have to start considering the idea this civilization left the planet a while ago, because it knew the megaflare was coming.”

  “Then where did the signal come from... the message?” Adam asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s why we absolutely have to find its source.”

  “Yes, Adam, we must.”

  February 7, 19

  We started moving again yesterday, wandering southward along the coastline. Our main goal is to discover the true scope of the spacefaring activities. If there really was a mass exodus of the civilization, then the entire coast should be a single launch site. But the question is, how was all this coordinated? I did not tell Adam and Eve that it is my secret hope to discover something like a control center, where we might find out exactly what happened here, and most of all, where those beings went who long ago called Earth with their message.