by Richard Sosa
Rik clicked the laptop off and considered the ashen face of Iris. She secretly clicked off her remote connection. Rik reached over to close her jaw. The message indicators on her home communication unit lit up along with her mobile communication unit which started to vibrate with incoming calls. Other communication devices in drawers and closets began to sing with message alerts. Rik noticed Iris’ big wristwatch that had red dots that circled the dial face indicating something urgent.
“I always feel dirty after seeing those images,” Rik said in a quiet voice. He rubbed his hands and wiped them on his pants as if they were covered with blood. The sounds of Iris’ technology receiving calls and information made him nervous. His breathing quickened and the images had put him back on planet Da-earra. He whispered. “Iris, my life is shit. I am a coward. Maybe when there were more of us and our technology more relevant, we might have had a chance, but I am just one person—”
“Shut up.” Iris put up a hand stopping him from talking, engrossed in the copied images that streamed on her IARI devise.
Rik quietly mumbles to himself. “I can't change events. I can only watch from the sidelines and run like a coward at the right time. I want to die.” He looked over at Iris, she was transfixed by the images and for the first time, he watched her profile. Rik’s next thought, something’s wrong. When Iris seemed ready for more information he said. “Wait,” then more urgently and louder, “how the hell did my stuff get on your IARI? You copied it. You copied them. I told you to keep this between us. Don’t you dare share this, it’s too dangerous. That information is for the Lares.”
Iris frowned. “The what? Lares?”
“We're Lares.”
“What? Werelares?”
“No, just Lares, soldiers. The people who are dying trying to fight and save planets from being harrowed. Those of us who survive go to the next gig. It’s all we can do.”
“Gig? Was that how you lost your mom?”
Silence. Rik looked up at the ceiling and then down at his hands. “You got that right, babe,” he said softly.
Rik laced his fingers behind his head and closed his eyes tightly desperate to sleep and for a short time not to have to see in his mind the image of his fallen mother dying on the street. The guilt that she died and was vaporized while he was still alive ate away at his sanity. “I don’t give a shit anymore. Do what you want. I can’t care anymore. I just want to die.”
Iris played the images on her device over again while concentrating and frowning. The Orbs harrowed and suddenly a fission bomb lite up the monitor. She winched again from the bright white explosion on the screen. “Wow, RamJec from military logistics believes the weapons are a fission nuclear type with radiation and they appear to not affect the Orbs attack capability. What did you do to neutralize those nukes?”
Rik sat up. “RamJec, who? Wait, are others seeing this? This is not supposed to be shared. You promised. It will cause mass panic and a run on toilet paper and food in the stores. Everyone will panic and cause traffic jams and people will text useless alerts on their communication systems. Looting will begin and people will start killing each other. Why are you sharing this?”
Iris looked at him sternly. “Calm down Mister Rik spaceman. There’s no panic. Of course, this is shared. The common net is the most efficient way to share data and information. It’s what makes this world safe and connected,” Iris sat back, “I am still recording so if you’re going to cry or throw a tantrum about this please warn me so I can add a comment about your reaction for the viewer’s information file. Is toilet paper a weapon? Is this our future with this level of destruction? What others are saying is the extinction of this planet. Are you here to warn us, to help us somehow or to neutralize our weapons, as you did with the fission weapons in Da-earra so you can run again? I think others want to know that part the most.”
Rik frowned. “I am confused and shocked why are you people are so calm? Your demeanor? You’re not frightened? Why are you putting this on me? I am going to leave with my brother, he’s all I have. Just let me leave.”
Iris ignored him and said without looking up from her device, “at first we were frightened of course but now more curious especially because you keep evading.” The front door chimed. They both looked to the door. Iris put up a finger and stopped him from talking, “be quiet, let me handle this,” she stood and walked quickly to the door. She peered at the monitor and cracked the door open. In hushed tones, she spoke to someone on the other side.
“Do you have it?”
A young man with a dark hooded jacket and tattoos on his face and arms was on the porch.
“What do you mean, it's all you could get?”
Iris cracked the door wider and lowered her voice saying, “Advance? Get the hell out of here. Did anyone follow you?”
“I don’t give a damn about that. That’s your problem,” Iris’ voice raised.
“What part of the deal?” There were mumbled words and then silence. Suddenly Iris spoke louder, “or else what? Bugger off before I shoot you.”
The man on the other side loudly. “I am not playing around, this is serious.”
Iris responded louder. “Yeah go play with yourself. Don’t threaten me.”
She closed the door more forcefully than she wanted. Rik looked up. “What’s serious? Shoot someone? Who are you going to shoot? What’s going on?”
She walked back palming a small cube and placed it in her pocket. She stood for a moment and started kung-fu-like motions. “I was talking to a complete fool. This guy thought he could sell information already available to everyone.” She continued her kung-fu routine.
Rik stared at her. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I thought everything was under control. Now I know you're not safe here, at least until the next sweep. I should have been more cautious. I didn’t understand that your actions were exhibiting concern for your safety, not ours. I messed up,” Iris said as she continued her chopping and blocking motions.
Rik watched and admired her body in motion. He said, “would you please stop, you’re damn distracting. I have to say from my observations so far this is a very small planet compared to other harrowed. Our data helps the technology locate to the next harrow location but a lot of navigational data lags, so I can’t complete the calculations yet for this location on the harrowing route.”
“Tell me about Harrow. Why does it occur?” Iris asked.
Rik pondered for a moment. “Gods, I’ve never talked about this to anyone on the planet while in the staging phase. This planet like all the others was seeded and over time the seeds grow maybe a thousand Tricycles about two hundred thousand solar years or whatever you use to measure annual time. At some point you’re ripe. And then the harrowing occurs. Most of the large mammals die and all the primates. There’s something different here, I can’t put my finger on yet. Listen, I am here now so it’s time. Once my data catches up, I’ll be able to prepare to leave.”
She puts her hands on her hips attentive. “Years? Tri what? Seeded? Primates? I think I am getting better at understanding from you and what you’re trying to say, then you open your damn mouth again. I am glad the lexicon routine on my device is working and now you also appear to be speaking more freely. Just for your information, there’s no technology for time travel in our world and some will mark your comments as a ‘crazy’ Jerperper. You might even be locked up.”
Rik bit his lower lip. “Yeah, that happens more than you think. I don’t want to be confined. I should have kept my mouth shut. I’ll lose my brother. If you believe I am in peril of that happening, please let me know, so I can run and hide. Please.”
“You thought it would not be safe for you personally here, now I get it.”
“Took you long enough but now you’re tracking. On multiple occasions, my fellow Lares soldiers were taken away and held, killed, tortured and we couldn’t rescue them, so they died when the harrow occurred. We lost lots of our field teams. I thought you al
l would mark me as one of these ‘Jer-chili-peppers’ and confine me or kill me.”
Iris sat down in the chair. “Jerperper. We wouldn’t do that. We have the Langberg Protocol that has solved mental health matters without having to resort to confinement.”
“Don't worry I am not an ax murder. You don’t have to lock me up. I am a nice person. The distractors who don’t believe this will come out of the woodwork, but they are partially correct, as a planet you'll never evolve to a point to have time travel technology because you’ll never have a chance to evolve beyond a set point. Your weapons can't defeat them, and I am here for my brother, period. The Spipeculas time travel so they can harrow efficiently in all the planets in a set route that are very far apart and have done this for, according to our researchers, tens of thousands of years.”
Iris frowns. “Years?”
“It’s the term for the time on Da-earra or the time marker when the planet moves around its sun in an annual cycle, Granspers, Latreudes or Annos, they all mean about the same.”
Iris’ expression changed as the word made sense. “Got it, we use Tarwins which is a measured cycle of time around a set triangulated Alpha class sun just outside our solar system. It uses a simple calculation to accommodate for the movement of our suns. Ax? Spipeculas? What are those?”
“That sounds like a calculation you shouldn’t be able to do from this planet and that’s not a simple calculation. The Spipeculas are the invaders on the recordings in those round ships killing off the dumb ass-backward planets.”
Iris Frowned at Rik. “Why can’t these ‘dumb ass-backward planets’ fight back?”
“Their programmed and bred to fear everything. They fight with each other and that prevents their societal evolution and survival. They grow to be bigots and fear others or exploit each other. The same programming will have them harm anyone who will attempt to help them, especially it is before the harrow and especially if they are different looking. The planets attack both our forces and the Orbs and efforts to reach out with envoys resulted in open hostility, arrest, and murder. It happens all the time.”
“What is ‘out of the woodwork’ mean?”
“People who actively choose to not examine the facts will increase in numbers and their message will help everyone to adopt a position of inaction, indifference or active resistance to any warning. They use misinformation and information becomes a weapon. Thanks to you, from this point onward I am in great danger.”
“We have a very good military,” Iris said.
“Haven’t you been keeping up with the conversation? All the harrowed planets have military might, that’s an attribute of having a humanoid fight or flight attribute hardcoded in their DNA. Mark my words, this the people on this planet will do everything to destroy each other, sidetrack your survival and prepare yourselves to be easily harrowed. You’re pre-programmed to fear the differences in each other and that will win out even when you’re mutually threatened by the same danger. It’s classic and I haven’t figured out how this destructive trait can be neutralized. I don’t know how division can even function in a species, its counter to survival.”
Iris asks. “Ax?”
“Forget about the ‘ax’. Look, once they start harrowing there's no escape. They feed through pores on their ships. The pores don't penetrate deep into the ship, but we know it’s their Brokkil heel. We just haven’t been able to capitalize on it. A lead scientist in this area was captured on one of these backward planets and because his skin was dark with an orange tinge he was murdered while the soon to be harrow planet’s doctors injected him with radiation isotopes. Another researcher was developing a probe to disrupt Orb feeding technology using the pore’s ability to draw in materials from the ground but before he could finish, he was captured by humanoids and waterboarded until he died. They destroyed all his research before we could secure it. Claiming it was the ‘work of the devil’, whatever that means.”
Iris read her IARI and laughed out loud.
Rik was surprised by her reaction. “Damn you. Not a laughing matter. Captain Sarme was my best friend and I read the reports that his internal organs rotted, he died slowly and Gammey-jel had children. Yeah, really, very funny. God, these damn planets are all brutal, this one is no exception.” Rik looked down and shifted in his seat wondering if he sounded too harsh.
Iris rubbed her face as if to wipe away the smile already gone and said. “Sorry. I forgot, you’ve been in that horror and I am insensitive. We’re even, you’re a jerk now it’s my turn to be one.”
“I am not keeping score.”
Rik referred to her IARI, “What’s that?”
“This?” she pointed to a program running, “it’s this app the tech people have and continue to develop. They are using your voice on the net and then translate your words. Ax murder, a ‘Reaker Slanband’ or when the tech repair guy comes to your home to fix a broken Tri-jarulator and turns out to be a murderer. Then she uses a tool ill-equipped for the purpose to kill you. Sorry when I read it, I wasn’t paying attention to you. I wasn’t laughing at what you were saying. We have stupid stories like that. What’s a Brokkil?”
Rik spoke with his voice trailing off tired. “A Brokkil heel is a weakness in battle.”
“Hey Rik, we can stop talking. I am so sorry. I feel terrible about being so insensitive.”
Rik ignored her. “There was this story from hundreds of planets about a warrior or a king protected someway usually by dipping in water for some reason. In this case, the person as a child was dipped in water except for the heel where he was held by whoever dipped him, I guess. His heel was unprotected and became his weakness,” Rik continued, “On Sartar Six where Barrow the Great was given a shield that covers his entire body except the very top of his head. An arrow from above killed him.”
Iris tapped her wrist. “An EpSat-vo wrist from the Chronicles of King EpSat-vo. He swims in the Sarg-vo river and became invincible to arrows except he didn’t want to get his new sword wet and his enemy killed him by slicing his right-hand wrist.” Iris gestures with her hand up in the air.
“Yes, you get it. There is the same mythology in all the other planets because all of you share the same DNA as seeds.”
“How many of ‘us’ are there? I guess we're all not very creative.”
“No, just the same brain patterns and the same brain connectors and linear storytelling. It’s all the same story format, the same preset programming. Sometimes you have the same words for things. In some common instances two extremely distant planets light years apart will speak nearly the same base language. Nothing new under the sun or suns in your case.”
“Are there many, seeds?”
“Yes, thousands maybe millions.”
Iris frowned and entered data in her IARI.
Rik asks, “I am curious, do you like epic poetry?”
She scrunched her face. “It's a pain in the ass.”
“That reaction is universal. When...” Rik trailed off in thought.
“When?” Iris tried to keep the conversation going by doing a gesturing motion for Rik to keep talking.
He asked. “Do you have anything to eat?” He looked around hopeful.
Iris continued, “So…when…” She made a stronger motion with her hands for Rik to continue.
Rik returned to the conversation. “So…when they come here all life will cease but begin again as shit droppings. The next crop grows into the same type of humanoids but less evolved and with even less drive for potential. Many humans are insulted because they think they’re special and placed on the planet by a deity or some entity with a plan and they believe that they have a ‘God-given’ charge to be the planet’s overlord. They usually do a great job of mucking up their environment.”
“That was a common belief held by many in the past,” Iris said as she re-directed, “I am understanding now, you believe we are like those worlds.”
“The Spipeculas,” Rik said, “are your creators. You’re a food and ene
rgy source for them, nothing more. A seed attribute is an unfounded belief that you are special, a creation of divine providence. This helps the seeds negate their responsibility to others and their planet as they use religion and myth to foster intolerance and bigotry. The more toxic the humans make their environment the more the Spipeculas like it, it must be like adding spices to food. Religion makes humans unaccountable to others because it serves as the tool to divide and you don’t have to have accountability to this current world because the next life is ‘better’ nor to the people who don’t believe as you do. The Lares long term data shows that the ‘children’ after each harrow are more ignorant and dangerous in each ‘generation’ and any technology they develop is mostly weapons or war-related secondary technologies. Fission weapons will destroy the planet’s life at the time of the harrow but not the food. The nuclear bombs are probably good for the Spipeculas. I think the fission weapons are very tasty for to them, they seem to be excited to have those things dropped on them. Do you have anything to eat?”
Rik looked at the floor and noticed bits of wire and connectors and wonders if he should say more. He raised his head. Iris was staring at him.
“That’s a mouth full. I bet you’re popular at a cocktail party. Look, tone it down, you’re going to get beaten up on the playground. On this planet religion and science complement each other, science is a human process and religion calls to our humanity.” Rik frowned. She smiled, “Actually, we won’t be insulted by what you’re saying because once we confirm your conclusions it will answer a lot of other questions. I am not afraid because you have light weapon technology.”
“What technology are you talking about?” Rik shifted in his seat uncomfortably,
“all I want to do is kill them, but I can’t if I die.”
“You feel like you’re in danger, being here with me? Why?”
