She carried her favorite pacifier at her side. All the way through the tour, she kept the buckle undone and was ready to use it at a moment’s notice. Professor Blythewood insisted that the food crisis on Hermes-11 had resulted in the death of all large animals, but she knew better than to ever feel safe on an alien world.
The princess’s camera crew stayed behind after she left and they continued to document the tour. As much as the visit was for the VIPs, the real purpose was to have the right people there as the planet was introduced to humanity. The people back on Earth would be alternatively wowed and horrified as they learned about the first true alien civilization they had ever found. A book would be available the day after the broadcast, including the professor’s essays and a translation of one of the native texts.
It was a big event, but it made Sally sick to the stomach.
At one point, as they paused in front of what had once been a courtyard and the professor used one of the metal corpse-piles to explain the details of the aliens’ bodies, Sally actually said, “This isn’t what we were looking for. This is not a civilization.”
The professor argued. “They had language. They were industrialized. They had a culture.”
“But they were just angry. They didn’t have any joy.”
Werner Gilliam quipped, “They had joy in others’ pain.”
Professor Blythewood pointed at the weapon on Sally’s hip. “We are violent too. Violence was the fire which led us to create Gilliam engines and explore the Universe. The people of Hermes-11 were sick. Maybe they were all insane, but we have more in common with them than you may be comfortable admitting.”
“Professor, when we first met you asked me about religion. I’ve been all over the universe. I’ve seen miracles. But the surest sign I’ve ever seen of God is that these bastards were all dead before we got here.”
8
PRESENT DAY
Allambree showed Charlie that if they rubbed the sand against their skin it would cleanse and function as an antibiotic. There were fruits growing from some of the larger roots, purple and juicy little beads which tasted a bit like black raspberry ice cream. The two men filled their pockets.
The lake was filled with clean and delicious drinking water. It tasted like it came from a cool mountain spring.
“We’ve got to remember this spot,” Charlie commented.
“The whole ship’s like this. It’s designed for our pleasure.”
It felt very strange to Charlie to hear Allambree call it a ship. It was one of course, but they were standing amid the sand and the reeds of a lake. It couldn’t have felt farther away from technology than that.
“Do you think it’s there yet?” Charlie changed the subject.
“The robot? It was fast, but it’ll take a mite more than that.”
“They won’t be ready. Even Wu and Avi, they were warriors, but they’re not ready to defend themselves. Do you think it could destroy the Genesis Chamber?”
“No… No, I doubt it. It would have to be indestructible, don’t you think?”
“Indestructible, huh. Don’t you think if the people who made us had that kind of technology they would have used it on our ships too? That would have been useful. How long do you think it would take us to walk back?”
“At least a day or two.” Allambree sighed.
“They may all be dead by then.”
“- and dead again.”
They began walking. Just a few minutes into their journey they found the sand castles: actual small buildings made of sand. Some were big enough to stoop and walk inside. Some were no bigger than the castles children carve on the beach.
Charlie stuck his head inside. “Looks solid enough. Where do you think they come from?”
“Most likely one of the animals makes them. It doesn’t look like anything lives inside. They probably designed some crabs or worms that just instinctively make the shelters in case we ever need them.”
“They’re for us? Really, everything the species on this planet do is for us?”
“That’s what they said. Everything has been created with us at the center. There’s nothing in the ship’s ecosystem which exists just for its own sake. There are no mutations or evolution. It’s all precise.”
They walked uphill for a short distance. The sand was replaced with a lawn.
“Who cuts the grass?” Charlie immediately asked.
“Maybe a sheep? Or maybe this grass only grows to the height we like.”
“Do we have sheep?”
“Not sure. I hope so. Sheep are nice. I love fresh lamb with mint sauce. I guess the people who created us would have known that I fancied lamb and planned for it.” Allambree hopped up onto a large grey rock and took a look around as he spoke. He shielded his eyes from the glare of Primus-3’s fiery moon.
He pointed in a direction a little to their left, hopped down, and they began walking that way.
Birds were singing. It was beautiful.
“You recognize the tune?” Allambree asked.
“It sounds… is that Mozart?”
“’The Magic Flute.’ They have been genetically designed so that that tune is a part of their instinct.”
“Tremendous.” Charlie was deeply impressed.
They walked on through what looked like an ancient forest. There were many shades of green, some deep and dark, others bright and cheerful. The roots of the trees intertwined with rocks. Moss grew over the barks and larger stones. There were paths, set here and there with little round stones. The dirt looked combed and cleaned of any fallen limbs or leaves. The trees themselves grew lush and in vast intricate patterns. Charlie wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was an intentional work or art, or simply what forests normally do. He hadn’t gotten to spend a lot of time in nature during his life.
The sound of Mozart was growing more and more distant. He heard a new song being sung by a pair of nearby birds. He was sure he recognized it, but couldn’t quite put his finger on it…
“Ah,” he said at last. “These birds play Pink Floyd.”
“’Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun.’” Allambree named the tune.
They came upon a pool, which was surrounded by beautifully sculpted green chairs. The water was yellow. Charlie knelt down and smelled it. “Apple juice?”
He tried a sip. It was the best apple juice he had ever tasted. “This is all like Willy Wonka.”
“Willy who?” Allambree asked.
“Oh, come on. Seriously? You can’t mean to tell me that you advanced post-humans don’t know Gene Wilder?”
“You know what this reminds me of?” Allambree asked.
“Eden?” Charlie guessed.
“No, well maybe a little. There was a world before the world. A world before you and I were born. I don’t just mean in the Genesis Chamber, I mean before we were ever born anywhere. There was a place we all lived in happiness and harmony and had everything we wanted.”
“Is that Dreamtime?”
“My ancestors called it that. Other cultures have different names for it. More than that, I think we all know there used to be a place like that. That’s why life is hard, because some part of us always remembers the other place. We know how things used to be before we came into the world, before things became hard and solid, they were fluid and limitless. Everything you imagined was there the moment you dreamed it.”
“Why would we leave that?” Charlie asked.
“To live our lives.”
Night was coming on. Allambree had a single flashlight, but its light seemed to get quickly swallowed up by the forest. Charlie was worried that they were going to be left completely in the dark, but as the light disappeared many of the objects around them began to glow. Flowers, leaves, stones all began to dimly glow red, orange, blue, purple. None of the lights were particularly bright, but they gave off enough light for them to find their way along the path.
“We need to stop for a few hours and rest,” Allambree said.
&nbs
p; “Do we have time?” Charlie argued.
“That’s not the question. It’s too far for us to do in one go. We’ll make better time if we take a break.”
They picked a small clearing in the forest. There were twigs gathered in a neat pile. Allambree looked around for a moment and found two small rocks. He hit them together and they immediately made a spark. “It’s all for our pleasure.”
“Do you think there are little chipmunks out there whose only purpose in life is to gather kindling for us?” Charlie asked as he carried an armload of twigs into the center of the clearing.
“Nature’s angels, mate.”
“Or science,” Charlie countered.
Once the fire was going, Allambree sat down in a thick and comfy patch of black moss. He reached into his jacket and took out a small brown sack. He retrieved what looked like mushrooms.
“Is that what I think it is?” Charlie asked.
“You don’t get high?”
Charlie shook his head. “Life’s crazy enough.”
“I could never have wrapped my mind around it all without opening my consciousness. You try translating alien words into English. It’s not French. The concepts are different. They saw time as a circle, and so the tenses are all weird. They used conjugation to change the pronunciation of every word depending on how important they wanted them to be. I had to figure out metaphors which related to extinct animals and weather patterns we’d never encountered before.”
“How did drugs help you with that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it just opened up my intuition. That’s the safe explanation.”
“But it’s not what you believe.”
“Nah, it’s not what I believe.” Allambree placed one of the mushrooms under his tongue, leaned back and closed his eyes.
A moment later, Allambree said, “It lets me talk to the Gods, the spirits, the living beings who are deeper than we are.”
“Deeper?”
“More real. Further in. The world isn’t only three dimensional. There are at least eleven dimensions.”
“Height, width, length… time… Mr. Mxyzptlk…what else?”
“I don’t know, Charlie. Most of the time my brain only works in two or three dimensions. But there are beings deep under the water, long slithering agro buggers. We can only see a little part. We can only understand one side. They’re deeper. That’s the best way I know how to put it. However you do it, drugs, music, sex, the point of life is to find a way to get down lower and find a better angle to see reality from. There are deep ones down there.”
“But when you get down there, don’t lose your way back? You trade one angle for another.”
“Strewth. You do understand. You sure you don’t trip? Imagine what you could do with some ‘shrooms and that third eye.”
“I just travel the cosmos.”
They both laughed.
“Do you ever get really lonely?” Allambree asked. “I don’t just mean lonely. But sometimes I feel like I’m the only mind in the universe, just floating through the cold void, the emotionless colors of the nebulae.”
“I get lonely sometimes,” Charlie admitted.
“I feel, well sometimes I feel like most people aren’t really alive. They’re just illusions. I feel empty when I talk to them. There’s just a few people who feel like they’re really there. Know what I mean?”
“Hmm.”
“Umbra was real. Am I making any sense at all?” Allambree’s voice sounded pained.
“You make perfect sense. And you will find her again. She won’t have the memories. She won’t know you at first, but she will be the same woman.”
“So you believe in nature over nurture? You believe we’re all born who we’re going to be?”
“To an extent, Allambree. Maybe life is about trying to become our real selves. I was never a president. I was never a leader. It’s crazy to think I’m a captain – I mean ruler of a planet! When people talk about President Daemon, it’s like they’re talking about who I could be if I just never made a mistake again, if I got everything right forever. I don’t see how that could ever happen.”
“You were a hero. You were a good and important man.”
“I’ve never been anyone important before.”
9
Allambree danced around for a while. He spent a long time starring into the fire, and then he abruptly curled up and fell asleep. The giant snored loudly, but Charlie wasn’t going to wake him up and disturb whatever communion the archeologist might be having with the denizens of the 11th dimension.
He heard an animal in the bushes. It made a squeaking noise, a little like a bird or a kitten. Charlie sat near the fire, quietly watching the bushes and hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever might be hiding in the undergrowth. He found himself thinking about a kitten which Amber had used to have, a pretty silver and gold colored girl named Zarathustra.
A voice spoke quietly from behind Charlie. “He sounds like the Earth rumbling.”
The captain spun around, ready to defend himself. He saw a face some distance away, well inside the green.
“Hello, Charlie. I was hoping we would get a chance to talk.”
The face was male. The skin was pale, almost albino. Horrible scars ran down the whole visage, but they were at their worst over the right side where the scars looked like frozen pink water pouring over his nose and cheek. The stranger’s voice was deep. He spoke with an American accent.
“Who are you?” Charlie asked.
“Call me Solon.”
“Is that your name?”
“It’s… what you will call me. Charlie, you’ve caught a raw deal. You didn’t ask for this. You deserved to have your life and then a well-deserved rest. You didn’t ask to come back in a distorted reflection and fight monsters and psychopaths on the other side of the universe.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I was here long before you. I watched the signal come. I saw the circles come together. I watched the chemistry and geometry. I preceded your geometry.”
“What planet are you from?” the captain asked.
“I’m not from any planet at all. Maybe I’m one of the beings Al was talking about, one of the deep ones.”
“Al? You mean Allambree?”
“Charlie, it’s dangerous for me to talk to you. Your crew can’t know about me. But you need to know what I know. I’m something like a prophet. I can tell you your future, if you’ll let me.”
“We don’t get TV out here,” Charlie quipped. “You might as well entertain me.”
The face faded into the shadows. A breeze blew through the trees and Charlie could see fabric billowing between the green and brown. The stranger emerged from behind a grove of trees and Charlie saw a being who was far from human now, if he ever had been.
Solon’s face floated just above Charlie’s face. He wore a long and loose black cloak. As the wind moved through it, it was clear that he had no body: no legs, and no torso. There was a small mechanical device below the head and some primitive-looking robotic arms on the sides. They didn’t even have fingers, just flat pincers.
Up close, his face looked very human, but Charlie had never seen a living being whose face had been so badly wounded. The skin had melted, maybe from radiation or heat. One of the eyes looked dead. The other was blood-shot. Only one ear remained. On the other side, Solon had an ear-hole.
“Charlie Daemon, this is your future. You will make a crew out of the individuals on your world. And they will hate you for it. But you will begin, at last, to fulfill your mission. You will travel to many worlds, meet foreign civilizations. You will be a galactic Marco Polo. The aliens will greet you as a God, and as a Devil. They will hunt you, either way. And in return, you will elevate them. You will improve every species you encounter.”
A small animal came walking out of the bushes. Its face was long like a fox’s. Its lengthy fur was thick and red, like a big fluffy cat. On its back the animal wore a strange orange pair o
f what looked like wings. Charlie couldn’t think of any other way to describe the beast but a “sphinx.” The sphinx walked over to Solon and curled up in a ball right underneath him, obscured by his cloak. Neither of the men commented on it, although Charlie eyed the animal suspiciously.
“Your crew will discover, again, that you are all infertile. But you will fall in love and want to have children. The doctor and the mother of monsters will have to find a solution. When that happens, a new race will inhabit the universe. They will be terrible angels, furious and blessed.
“You will fill these cities. You will populate Mount Olympus and send your army of god-children out to make a burning heaven of the universe. And all through it all, the loneliness will get worse and worse. Amber, yes, I know about Amber. Amber will become bigger and bigger in your imagination. Long after you remember who she really was, the idea of this woman will haunt you until your only desire is to rip all of physics and logic apart in order to bring her back.”
“Bring her back? How could that be possible?” Charlie’s voice cracked.
“No good way,” Solon said darkly. “All of your worst instincts will pull you towards her. If you were a better man, you could have been happy with Mew Tse, or Umbra Farrah, or Gloryannana Mellifluous, or Nayara, or any of them. When they designed you, they wanted any of you to be able to fall in love with any other. But you’re wrong. You’re a crystal which formed with a crack in it. You won’t accept happiness while her specter haunts you.”
“You don’t know me as well as you think you do. But you’ve revealed yourself. You’re not an alien. You’re one of my crew members. You’re a dead crew member who has somehow been resuscitated. Who are you? David? Wu?”
“I’m not dead, Charlie. I’ve been alive a very long time. But I guess I was human once, and I grew to know you very well. When they create the crew members, it’s the memories which they use to control who you might be. You’re born – Boom! - in an instant with a brain crammed full of a lifetime of memories telling you who to be. It takes a long time to eclipse that. I’ve had a long time Charlie. I just wanted to talk to you one last time and warn you.”
The Secrets of the Universe (Farther Than We Dreamed Book 1) Page 25
