by Sam Coulson
Stars of Charon
A novel by Sam Coulson
Cover Art by Erik Castellanos
Thanks to my wife Allison for everything, and Carley, my oldest friend, for always being there, and always pushing me.
With a Special Thanks to: Ben “Loid” Burns, Hillary Wilkerson, and Claire Beganz Bone for helping me develop and edit my tale.
Chapter 1.
Every organic inch of me was frozen solid, melted into to vapor, and flash-forged into something new a million times a second. The chemical fires roared around me in the dark as the final war raged out under the light of the sun. The air was charged with lightning and thick with the scent of sulfur. I was everywhere and nowhere. The winds of the apocalypse blew across the blue-green forests. They devoured the tide-less oceans and the freshly plowed fields. My family, my friends, the trees, and the beasts were all ground into dust by the torrent.
As the wind continued to blow, the dust was lifted and remade.
I was left with sensation only. Without thought there was no time. Only agony, and the agony was infinite. It took my body from me. It held my memories up as if written on a glass, and shattered every moment of my life into fragments that rained down around me. It was the end of a world, and I alone lived through the fires of the apocalypse.
And then, after time unknown, the apocalypse ended.
Somehow, I remained.
When I awoke there was no light.
All I perceived was the directionless dark.
Slowly, my mind returned.
I could think.
Feel.
Reason.
I knew which way was up.
I knew that I was lying on large, smooth stone.
Cold. Yes. It was cold.
I wiggled my fingers and toes. Moved my arms and legs. My body was responsive and lithe. Though I fit into it perfectly, there was foreignness to the movements. My legs bent as they should. I stretched and flexed and felt my muscles respond readily and automatically. They were like the varied components of a mill, or the perfectly aligned mechanics of a clock. My body did what it should, but I couldn’t understand quite how.
I sat up and pulled my legs under me. I felt the elasticity of skin stretching over my knees. It was an odd sensation, one that I knew I had never felt before. But still, I could recall nothing else.
I sat in the dark trying to gather the few slivers of my memories that were still whole enough to grasp. Words were the first thing to come to me. I used my tongue to try to give shape to the sounds in my mind, but the sounds were wrong. The deep vibration of consonants that echoed in my mind were slurred and ugly as my tongue tripped over the forms.
I do not know how long I sat there in the darkness making silly noises and marveling at how my muscles moved. I do not believe I slept. Although my body felt new and untried, it knew its business. I could stand, walk, and balance on one foot. My mind recalled the world around me. I knew I was deep in a complex of caverns.
My throat was dry and the soft skin on my lips was cracked and parched. The taste in the back of my mouth was bitter and acidic. I was thirsty. Very thirsty. I heard the trickle of water in the distance, and crawled slowly in the dark to find the outlet. I tasted the water. Somehow I knew from the taste that it was clean and safe to drink. Time passed, and as it did, I knew that the wrenching pain in my stomach was hunger. I’m not sure if I should call it intuition or instinct, but I knew that if I followed the stream to its source it would take me out of the caves to the surface where I could find something to eat.
So I climbed. Climbing out of the cave was easier than I had expected. As I continued followed the sound of water, a dim and distant light began to illuminate my path. I found my body was agile. My arms were strong. The strength felt like it was part of a dream or an old man’s long-forgotten memory. When I encountered a steep slab of stone, I found that the tips of my fingers and toes could easily find a hold. My arms were able to swiftly pull me up. My fingernails and toenails were black with mud. It felt good.
As I leapt from stone to stone, I felt an incredible freedom. It was as if someone had loosed bindings from my feet and hands. I knew a word for what I was feeling: it was youth. I knew I had felt this way before, but the memory was old, so, so very old.
Chapter 2.
The memories come unexpectedly, like the bite of a small piece of glass that gets stuck in the sole of your foot. When I try to ignore them it only delays the inevitable. Their intensity grows like smoke, smothering my mind. Sooner or later I must stop and face the shades.
Sometimes they are images: a blue-tinged sunset in a soft gray sky, or the stars sliding across the night. Other times a tune will fill my head. I try to whistle or hum the tunes, but my tongue and mouth cannot mimic the sounds. Other times I hear voices that are alien to my ears and mind. I see faces that are, pale, grotesque and frightening. But when I look closer, the faces fade into shapelessness. Like shadows cast across an uneven stone.
The memories are more than just images and sounds. They are full of muddled and chaotic feelings. A joyful song inexplicably brings me to weep. The image of a desolate plain of green-crystal sand leaves me longing for something lost that I can never find or even remember. The dark faces with dim purple eyes, and thick calloused skin make my blood rush and my face flush red with physical desire.
There is an echo of something else deep inside me.
I clearly remember my first step from the cave into the light of dawn. The mountains in the distance were familiar. I knew the jutted points of each of the seven peaks. Their shapes made me feel safe. I saw the sea to the west, calm and still on a moonless world. The lines were familiar and comforting. Familiar, but somehow out of place. There was a thick grove of deep green trees where I expected to see light blue grasslands. The vast river delta in the distance leading to the sea was eerily empty and vacant. The birds in the sky make foreign calls.
I blinked, and, for a moment, other images bled through. For a fleeting moment I saw a village. It had low-profile buildings, half buried in the turf. The walls and roofs were made of beautifully polished greyish-blue wood. Above the buildings were banners in the air, shadows of figures walking, and lumbering creatures in the field. My heart leapt. I took a step forward, but the ghosts left as quickly as they came. All that was left was an empty field with shallow waves of deep green grasses.
I looked behind me. The opening to the cave I had come through was a narrow natural cleft, hidden in the shadows of large stone on the slope. As I stood on the verge of the cleft and looked out, the world around me was a paradox: familiar yet foreign. It was as if I were returning to somewhere I had once lived, but someone else had moved in, gotten a new table, and turned the bed against the other wall. The vague familiarity of the place felt ancient and unsettling.
I did not like the sensation.
I took a few steps into the light and looked down at my reflection in a pool of water. My eyes were almond shaped, and skin was tan with a pinkish hue. My eyes were cloudy green like the frothy sea, and a wild growth of short sandy-blonde hair sat untamed upon my head. The face I saw was unfamiliar. Though I couldn’t conjure an image of myself in my mind, I knew that the face looking up at me from the still water was not my own.
My stomach growled, reminding me of my hunger. I shaded my eyes and started to look around. I was standing on a hill. Below me at its base was a dense stand of trees with a broad river running through it. I could see a flock of birds flying from limb to limb. At the edge of the forest there were few bushes with what looked like berries. I set off hungrily toward them.
I was halfway down the slope when
I heard something roaring over the western horizon.
Though moments ago I had been driven by clenching hunger, the deep and otherworldly rumble made me forget. My sensations felt distant and small. Fear and awe weighed down my feet. The sound came from behind the little hill where I stood, heading toward where the delta met the sea. It started as a low growl in the distance and grew into a roar like thunder. Unlike the stone of the cave, the sound of water, and the shape of the mountains, which had a veiled aura of familiarity, the thunder and fire in the sky was like nothing I had ever seen or heard before.
I stood with my wide eyes transfixed on the shape as the minutes passed. The sky grew louder and brighter as the mass of silver and thunder slid across the sky, leaving a wind-swept path of smoke in its wake. It was low enough that I felt the searing flames. My naked body flushed red from the heat as I scurried to the nearest rock to shield myself from the worst of the heat.
The birds were nowhere to be seen.
As the behemoth passed I could see that at its head was a shining cylinder sliding on its side with a tail of fire and a path of smoke. The whole thing slowed. Smoke was everywhere, and fire spewed from it like geysers in all directions as it slowly descended on a flat stretch of grassland at the heart of the lowland delta. The fires grew as the thing lowered. The grasses beneath it were incinerated and the soil turned to ash. Finally, after a slow, smoking, lumbering decent, it came to rest in the middle of the lowland field.
The fires went out and the smoke cleared. It had landed further down the grade. It was huge and angular. I could see that it wasn’t all silver. There were paintings and symbols along the sides, and a series of onyx-black panels around the sharp point that seemed to be the front of it. It was not a meteor or stone. The shapes, the lines, were too clean and purposeful to be natural. Something in my memory named it. A ship. I recalled a small sailing vessel floating on an ocean, driving forward under the power of the wind and sun. But this was a ship of the sky, not of the sea.
The grasses were still smoldering when the ship’s smooth silver sides began to split apart and open. Great lumbering machines, black and silver, groaned and began to spill out of the fire-ship in every direction like insects from a nest. Among the huge metallic shapes, I saw people. Most wore dark blue, and I could see the color of their faces and their hands: shades of tan and olive. I looked down at my own hands and legs. Whoever they were, they were something like me. But I wondered: if they are like me then why did they look so strange and so unlike the faces and images in my mind?
Forgetting my hunger, I hid and watched. The morning hours passed, and the fire-ship continued to empty. Eventually, the largest of the machines began to return, leaving huge crates and people behind. The people drew back beyond the ring of blackened grasses.
It was midday when the fires began again. The fire-ship disappeared behind smoke and flame until it began to rise swiftly into the air. After a few deafening moments, it was gone, leaving a streak of smoke drifting off into the sky. The smoke faded, and a tribe of people and piles of equipment was left behind. I crouched lower in my hiding place, afraid, and watched them late into the night.
I awoke the next morning voices. One was high pitched, the other low. I tried to listen to the words, but the sounds rose and fell without meaning. Their voices were soft and nasal like my own.
I lay without moving under the bush where I had fallen asleep the night before. They were somewhere behind me. Maybe I was lucky and hadn’t been discovered. I cautiously opened my eyes to see if I was in danger, and if escape was possible.
I slowly turned my head to see the two shapes speaking with animated gestures and angry intensity. The one with the low voice had slick black hair, and was the taller of the two by a hand span. His face was red, and he held some sort of weapon in his left hand. The other had a slight build and long brown hair, and small, quick, shifting feet. Though her hands were empty, the larger of the two seemed to back away from her as they argued.
The exchange was intense. They didn’t seem to notice me. I quietly began to move backwards, as silently as I could, not taking my eyes off of them. Crawling face-up on all-fours on my heels and hands, I slowly crept toward the deeper forest.
I’d made it about seven meters when my hand landed on something cold and metallic. I turned to see the shining tip of a steel-toed boot.
“Eh-hem,” a voice above me was dry and rumbling.
I looked up to see another person. A man. Tall. Greying. Muscular. He had an air of authority.
The two who had been arguing were immediately silenced as they looked over and saw me, huddled at the other’s feet, naked. The newcomer spoke toward me, his tone was questioning, his stance aggressive. Further off, the slight one laughed. The sound was harsh and mocking.
Again, the voice of authority spoke. After three short words, the other two fell silent. I looked back up at him as he reached down to his belt, drew out a smooth object, and pointed it at me. I saw a flash of light followed by darkness.
I awoke in a firm bed with stiff, starched, sheets. I was surrounded by motion and voices. Soothing, quiet voices. I tried to sit up but the movement was cut short with a static crackle as I struck something I could not see. I opened my eyes but saw nothing but open air in front of me but a stark white ceiling. Again, I tried to lift my arm slowly, ten centimeters, twelve, fourteen, sixteen-the air crackled again and an unseen force pushed my hand back down.
“Now, now,” the voice was reassuring. I looked to see another face wreathed with long brown hair and soft, caring eyes. Her smile put me at ease.
She continued to talk. Her speech was slow and kind. As she gestured toward things, I was able to discern the meanings of some of her words: bed, hospital, blankets, drinks, and force field. Her name was Kella.
She reached through a segment of the force field and pushed a small device against my arm. There was a small click and I felt a pinch of pressure on my arm.
“Sleep,” she said.
And I slept.
Chapter 3.
I was a child, small, hobbling, fresh on my feet. The shadows that watched me were protective. Most of the interesting objects in the room were frustratingly high and out of my reach. I smelled something sweet wafting on the air and instinctively followed the scent. There was a fire crackling in the far end of the room with a large pot slung over it. Steam was rising from the pot.
My mind was filled with singular intent as I began to walk toward it. My childish steps were small and clumsy as I toddled. Closer. Closer. My mouth was watering as I got near the source of the sweet scent. I was mere paces away when I was swiftly lifted into the air by a firm and protective arm. I made a sound in frustration as I was hauled back to the far side of the room. The faceless shadow that had grabbed me set me back down, handed me a wood-carved bird, and patted me gently on the head before turning away.
I woke up confused. I strained to sort out my dreams from my memories. I was still lying in the bed. I recalled my hunger on the day I left the cave, and watching the ship come. After it left the people and machines behind, I had hid in the forest and had found some berries on a bush. Starving, I ate them by the handful, and then, later that night, came the pain. It was like a stone in my stomach, leaving me in agony throughout the night until, eventually, I’d slept.
I recalled voices of the three people in the forest. And then the face of the woman called Kella. Whoever they were, the people from the sky were taking care of me. This was a place for healing.
Though my body had felt so strong and young, now I felt weak. I listened as other healers spoke. The healers wore white coats, and the patients, like me, wore thin blue gowns. As the days passed, they often came and stood over me as I hovered between waking and sleeping. I listened. As I listened, the words connected to meanings in my mind, and I began to see the patterns in the language.
They said that my stomach wasn’t functioning. Though my organs were in order. My liver was fine. My pancreas was healthy
. Scans showed my gallbladder was normal. Whatever a gallbladder was. The problem was that my organs were just sitting there. They weren’t storing, creating, and transporting the insulin and bile and cocktail of chemicals that my body needed to break down foods and function. The healers kept me alive with injections. Whether the medication kept me drowsy, or if my condition denied me energy, I wasn’t sure. But I could do little but lie there and exist in the moments between waking and sleeping. So I watched. I listened. And I thought.
As they tried treatment after treatment, I found that I wasn’t a prisoner, not quite. After a time, they extended the force field around my bed so that I could prop myself up and sit. Though the healers were kind, but I could sense they were all being cautious around me. I never spoke, and was so weak I could barely move. I don’t know if I could have spoken even if I was brave enough to try. I wasn’t being guarded. But I was closely observed. I determined that I wasn’t a prisoner. I was a mystery.
One morning I awoke to see a sea of faces surrounding my bed.
“Approximately 16 years old, human male,” one of the healers announced with a brisk staccato tone. He was a small man with a bald head that the others called Chen. “Genetic tests say he’s 100 percent Earthborn genome. So he’s no hybrid. Generally healthy, strong muscle tone, steady heartbeat and blood pressure. The primary issue is that the patient’s bile-producing organs, stomach, and digestive system are non-functioning.”
“Did you say ‘non-functioning’?” It was the gravel-voiced older man who had found me on the edge of the forest.
“Um, well, yes sir,” Chen responded, flustered. “You may recall that when you found him he’d been eating raspberries. At first we thought it was food poisoning or an allergy, maybe something wrong with the terraforming. But the berries are fine. We tested them. I even ate a few myself. Tart, but not bad. I conducted a full allergy panel, but it came back negative. The issue is that when he ate and swallowed them they just sat there in his stomach. It was a bit of a mess. The berries began to rot, and there was an infection. We had to pump his stomach to clean it out then flush him with antibiotics. But we still haven’t managed to address the root cause. We are trying a variety of treatments to stimulate proper organ activity and jump-start his system. Until then, we’re injecting nutrients directly in his bloodstream to sustain him.”
