by Kaz Morran
Her bio said she’d played a founding role in linking Arctic communities to each other and to the world.
“On Devon, I met Julie Payette.”
It took Taiyo a second to recall the name. “The astronaut?”
“And governor general of Canada.”
“Cool,” Taiyo said, acting more aloof than he felt. “I mean it must have been pretty cool to hang out with an astronaut, eh?”
Nel’s lip began to curl but flattened before it could morph into a grin. She pulled her phone from her pocket and sat up. Like a virtual amulet, a video popped up already cued. Julie Payette stood at a podium, flanked by Mounties.
We are all bound by the same space-time continuum, and we are all aboard the same planetary spaceship … went the speech.
“Julie told me every individual has the power to make progress, but they have to be inspired. She inspired me to ‘do the telecom thing.’”
“The astronaut thing, too?”
“The astronaut thing, too.” Then, letting out a chuckle, she told him, “My mom, though— She’s so cynical. She’s not so happy about me looking up to a bureaucrat. She uses the high-speed broadband I gave her to tell me, ‘The government already took its share of our children. Now you expect me to hand one over willingly?’” Her smile wavered, and she looked down at her tattooed hands. “But Julie is one of the good ones.” Nel nodded softly to herself.
“You want to inspire people,” said Taiyo. “Hard to find fault in that.”
“And do you?”
“Want to inspire people?”
She nodded.
Their eyes finally met. A grin broke across Taiyo's face. “Yeah,” he said. “I really do.”
“That, and zoom in on aliens?”
“And you read my bio.”
“Perhaps.”
The light from the dorm room went out. Everyone but Nel and Taiyo had gone to bed.
“It’s getting late,” said Taiyo.
“Yep,” she said.
“Big day tomorrow.”
The floorboards creaked. He thought Nel had finally decided to get up and go to bed, but she was only adjusting her legs.
“Sorry,” she said when their feet bumped.
He brought his gaze down from the sky and searched the clearing for any distinction, anything to betray where the bathroom should be. He’d forgotten how dark it could get outside.
“You have to pee?” she asked.
“I’m okay,” he lied. “You?”
“Before bed, I might.” She sipped her water bottle.
“I guess I should, too.”
“Want me to go with you, so you don’t get scared?”
“I’m all right, thanks.” He laughed. The offer seemed so out of place he’d answered without thinking. Dumbass. He should have said yes. Not because he was scared. It was just that if he’d said yes, well … It would’ve been good for team rapport.
“Do you want me to go with you?” he asked.
“No.”
They sat in the dark a little longer. The air was still moist, but a lot colder than when they’d first sat down. A breeze ruffled the forest behind the bungalow and wafted the mosquito coil smoke across the table.
Why didn’t she want to go to the bathroom alone? Sure, he saw how crossing the unlit clearing alone might intimidate some people, and no doubt the bathroom harbored its share of six-legged, eight-legged, and no-legged nightcrawlers, but astronauts were supposed to be rational. Could it be she wanted to get him alone, away from the bungalow?
“I don’t actually have to pee,” Nel said, interrupting Taiyo’s overactive mind. Her phone flashed on. It took several seconds for him to blink away the blinding light and notice how it highlighted Nel’s baby-cheeks. Head down and eyes on the screen, she bit a corner of her bottom lip. As if she knew he’d been watching, she dragged her gaze from the phone and up to Taiyo. “I can hold it until morning,” she said. The look was playful. She knew he had to pee.
She must have been bluffing.
“Wow,” he said and raised his palms in defeat. “That’s impressive.” The chair ground against the floor as he stood up. He stretched and yawned to appear casual, but had to move slowly to hide how bad the pressure in his bladder had gotten.
“You’re sure then?” he asked.
The screen of her phone went out, and again the darkness dominated. “Yep. I’m going inside for bed now.”
He heard her rise and move about the table, over to the mosquito coil. The cherry hovered for a second before she snuffed it out.
“Good night.”
He flicked on the flashlight after drawing it from its holster in his belt. The lights T3 had handed out were of the tactical variety, and though they had a heft and metallic texture that implied quality, Taiyo had been surprised at the mediocre specs. 750 lumens and a 150-meter beam distance wasn’t terrible, but he’d seen off-the-shelf ones with double that output. The battery, though rechargeable, only lasted twenty hours on low power, and a measly sixty minutes on high. The headlamp, of course, had even worse performance, and they hadn’t been issued a third source of light. Surely, these apparent shortcomings had been deliberate, Taiyo thought. After all, Project Daintree was a test.
He pointed the light—on low power—at the floorboards to keep from blinding Nel while she opened the screen door to go inside. Despite trying to place his steps on the nail heads rather than on the midsections of the floorboards to avoid making creaks, the old wooden stairs cried out as he descended. He stepped off the bottom stair. He heard the mud suction around his boot a second before he felt his foot sink.
He aimed the light back up the steps and whispered once more, “Good night.”
“Good night,” said Nel. He swung the light toward her voice and found her still at the doorway, one hand on the handle of the screen. “Watch out for snakes,” she added. “I heard their fangs are bigger than your pecker.” The screen groaned open and clicked shut behind her.
He shook off a smile and stepped forward through the muck, into the darkness of the clearing.
Squadrons of bugs flew at him from every angle, drawn mindlessly to the luminosity the flashlight. He flicked it to high power, only for a second to preserve the battery, and when the beam fell upon a ring of charred rocks and ash, he paused there at the fire pit to roll down his sleeves and pant legs, and he shut off the light to deter the onslaught of winged flesh-eaters.
Unguided by light, he ventured farther across the viscous terrain. Something with a wingspan much larger than a bug nicked his head. Instinctively, he ducked and covered, and then had a chuckle at his own expense. Just a bat. Maybe a flying fox—one of the more aptly named creatures in the long tradition of naming animals after other animals. Though as far as Taiyo knew, no species of fox had a meter-wide limb-span.
A recurring drip came into earshot. The spat … spat … spat … of water rolling off a roof into the mud. He turned the light back on to confirm he’d found the bathroom. His shoulders relaxed. He should have known how impeding the darkness really was. In fact, he did—though he'd rather not remember the events of 2011.
In daylight, the cinderblock bathrooms had reminded Taiyo of those shed-like props getting vaporized in old atomic blast-test videos. Now, in the pale radiance of the flashlight, the structure more closely resembled what it was: a place to shit.
One hand swatted away the bugs, and with the other he aimed the flashlight, tracing the moss- and mildew-lined concrete wall as he baby-stepped around the side through mud and puddles to find the entrance. It wasn’t a door, but an absence of cinderblocks overhung by a patchwork roof of corroded metal sheets.
He stopped in front of the opening marked men’s. When the sensor failed to trigger the light, he shifted left then right, tried waving at it and moved back and then forward. He got too close and walked into a web. Several webs, he thought as he sputtered and spit, and wiped the filaments from his neck and face. Once clean, he shone his light up at the underbelly of
the overhang. Up until that point in his life, he’d always found it odd, even comical, how some people were scared of certain creatures. Now, looking up at what surely must have been a misplaced crab—because spiders simply did not get that big—he could not deny the visceral reaction in his chest. Of course, he quickly tamed his horror and moved in for pictures. Christ. He could see it watching him as if guarding its territory, the men’s room.
“You win, buddy,” Taiyo told it. The sensor light didn’t work, anyway. “I’ll use the ladies’.”
The sensor mounted by the entrance to the ladies’ worked, which meant even more webs and web builders, though none the size of a crab. A hollow echo came back when he tapped the toe of his boot on the tile floor to give everyone a chance to scurry off to a dark corner safe from his footsteps. Inside, the ceiling-mounted sensor light sort of worked. After several hand waves, it made a weak effort to shine through the shrouds of webs and bundles of captured prey.
When he reached out to push open the door of the least derelict of three wooden stalls, something click-clacked across the tiles and ran into his throne of choice.
The light went out.
He backed up and waved until it came back on. Not wanting to take chances, he turned on his flashlight. Immediately, as if it had been in a parking orbit around his head, something far too massive to be an insect buzzed and bounced off his ear. He ducked too late and swatted at it with the flashlight, which he quickly shut back off.
Of course, it had occurred to him to just go pee outside, but a cramp reminded him he hadn’t had a proper bowel movement since leaving the northern hemisphere.
He took a second look at the other stalls and decided that whatever had crawled in under the door was comparatively less harmless.
As soon as the rusty screech of the spring-hinged door of the stall slammed shut behind him, the room went dark once again.
He had the flashlight on but wanted to set it somewhere as a lantern. The toilet paper dispenser wouldn’t hold it, and the butt end of the flashlight was rounded to accommodate a USB charger, and not designed to stand on end. The product engineers had failed to consider this situation. As had the engineer of his one-piece jumpsuit. So he took off his boots, tilted one against the wall and set the flashlight bulb-up inside the heel. Brighter than a candle, it would do. Then he unzipped, pulled out his legs and tied the pant portion of the jumpsuit around his waist, lifted the seat and checked for uninvited guests, and at last got down to business.
His boot fell over, and the flashlight hit the floor. The glowing light rolled out under the stall door, out of sight.
Taiyo sighed. “Not surprised,” he said aloud.
He reached forward, constricted by the pant legs around his body, and jabbed the door with his fingertips. He hadn’t locked it, but it pushed in from the outside, so it didn’t budge.
For now, the faint glow coming from the other side was all he needed. He’d open the door and waddle over to get the light when he was ready to wipe.
Flies, mosquitoes, moths, and every flying insect in the jungle buzzed or fluttered around his head, but at least he could shit in peace. Elbows on his knees, chin in his hands, he took his time. A kind of sleepy euphoria tingled through him. It was the first time since his hotel in Cairns he’d been alone. Not that he minded being in close quarters with others. He’d better not mind—not if he ever wanted to go to space. And not if he wanted to complete the mission. No doubt, T3 had lined up some seriously harsh activities to test the candidates worth.
What the hell was that?
A noise like sandpaper dragging over unfinished wood.
Taiyo sat up straight.
He heard it again. Something slinking across the floor. He put his hands on his knees, ready to— Ready to do what? No pants on and a dirty ass—what was he going to do?
Fuck.
Where the hell was the toilet paper? He reached out into the dark, feeling one wall and then another. His thumb hit a bug and sent it fluttering madly around his face and head.
The sound came again: a tail and belly slinking side to side, creeping closer. He stood and fumbled for his phone, fighting the dive bombing bug and scrambling to find the right pocket among the tangle of pant legs.
Something hissed at him from under the stall door. He stomped his stocking feet at the thing.
“Hey!” he yelled at it. Then quieter so not to wake the others across the clearing: “Piss off, scaly-ass heathen.”
The beam from the grounded flashlight spun. Light whirled in circles, shooting under the door two, three times. He saw his boot. The light stopped. Reaching, he fell forward, tripped over the underwear around his ankles, and put his shoulder through the door, and trapping his left hand in the splintered hole.
Hm. Sub-optimal.
He bent down with his free hand, feeling the tile for the boot until the tips of his finger touched … something.
The creature lashed his hand—more times in a second than a pulsar. “You little bastard!”
The light rolled. He saw the boot—and a tail sticking under the door. In one motion, Taiyo yanked his arm from the door, dropped to his knees, grabbed the boot, and smacked the heel down on the tail. The light bowled toward him, illuminating a big, fat monitor lizard as it dove headfirst under the door at him, hissing and lashed him in the legs.
On the floor in front of the toilet, tangled in the jumpsuit, he snatched the flashlight from under the lizard’s foot and raised it like a hammer. Poised to bash the little fucker’s skull in … he stopped.
Panting, his thigh bleeding, Taiyo pointed the light at the lizard’s ugly mug. “Last chance to run away, buddy,” he said.
It stuck out its tongue in defiance and rose up on its legs, ready to lash him. This time, Taiyo snagged the lizard by the neck. He pulled it into the mess of jumpsuit legs and flashlight, hugging it tightly to his body so it couldn’t flail. It fought with more fervor and strength than he’d expected, forcing him to squeeze tighter, not until it suffocated, but until it relented. Stayed in a crouch, he shimmied out the door, underwear around his ankles, and waddled with the monitor lizard outside into the night. With Taiyo’s bare ass on display to every mosquito in Australia, he underhand tossed the pesky reptile as far as he could.
“Godspeed little explorer,” he called as he heard the swish-swish of its tail and pitter-patter of its feet skittering off across the mudflat and into the bushes.
Taiyo waddled back past the ladies’ entrance and paused to aim a finger at the crab-spider in the web. “Don’t fuck with me, animal,” he told it.
The sensor light there came on, as did the ones both inside and outside the men’s. They stayed on, too, while he wiped his ass, got dressed, and washed his hands, and they didn’t shut off until almost halfway back to the bungalow, and by then the clouds had begun to part.
The Milky Way spanned the gap. A fine way to end the evening, but it was time to get some sleep. They were leaving at sunrise.
7
Ethan sat between Henry and Wumba on a bench at the fire pit, waiting, laughing, and poking embers with sticks while percussive electronica played as backdrop to Ethan’s thought-stream. He liked to think that the DJ of his mind never stopped spinning. He jiggled his knee and watched the smoke rise up over the clearing, up to the stars.
“Ya coming by the house after tea?” Henry asked Ethan.
“Nah … yeah. Got the new FIFA now, have ya?”
Wumba nodded and answered for Henry, “That’s why he’s asking.”
“Facken rights.”
The AsCans were making a party of their supper time up on the porch. After chattering about the day’s adventures like they’d already landed on some other Earth, the six of them came down to join the fire and greet their hosts.
Folks probably expected their jungle-dwelling guide to be dancing round in a loincloth and body paint, but they rarely specified outright what shade of aborigine they wanted, so nothing thrilled Wumba more than rocking up in Y
eezys and Calvin’s. He was up and intercepting the AsCans to introduce himself before they even got to the bottom of the steps.
Henry looked over at Ethan and scratched his beard, no doubt hoping it made up for what top hair had buggered off on him. Henry tended to look a bit more token, and today was no exception. He didn’t carry a spear or anything, but his style was indigenous in the sense of it being original. The old man had shown up to the camp wearing the same ratty Aloha shirt as yesterday. Henry didn’t care. Space travelers were just another kind of traveler to him. Although, admitted Ethan after watching Henry rise to shake the candidates’ hands, a shirt like that did suit Henry’s scraggly nest of hair.
Seeing the AsCans beaming back at that big old white smile of Henry’s, Wumba told them, “That there is the Cooktown Lighthouse, I call it. A landmark turned into a sanctuary for endangered beards and feral mustaches.”
Ethan shook his head but had to laugh. Real special those two, Henry and Wumba, were.
The pair got back to poking the embers with sticks while the AsCans jostled for seats around the fire. Nel and Taiyo came and sat on the next bench over, staying quiet while the chicken chatter of their crewmen went on around them.
Ronin banged his vocal drum the hardest. “… And after the thing in Papua with the cannibals, I started wondering how I’m going to cope when the singularity hits …”
The other candidates did a lot of polite smiling or face scrunching around Ronin, but Ronin never took much notice. He just kept on talking. Ethan had no idea what to put down in his assessment of the big fella, but it’d be hard to come up with something positive.
“… I mean, am I really as prepared as I think I am for transdimensional, non-temporal, post-entropic life in a tube-fed cryopod? Probably. But how can anyone be sure?”
“I don’t know, bro,” said the group’s commander. “It might just be Ray Kurzweil on an infinite loop saying, ‘I told you so, I told you so.’”
Henry was curled over looking like an old snake unable to shed, so Wumba reached out and gave his partner a good-sized smack on the knee. “Smile, old man,” Wumba told him. “You’re prettier that way.”
