Odyssey Rising (14 page)

From: TheoS.Odyssey.space

TO: DrStarling.Ark.space

Sam Suzuki is dead. Long live his memory.

There have been no further sightings of the silver cloud of silverfly creatures, if they are even creatures. Never seen anything living fly so fast.

The other news of the day: Protocol 111 is now complete and we’ve had success. At a depth of fifty-six feet, we tapped into a subterranean supply of heavily contaminated water with toxic traces of methane and ammonia. We drilled in the shadows of the place we now call Mount New Acadia. It’s very near the Discovery Site. The liquid has been trickling steadily to the surface. So far a small, damp oasis has been created. Tests confirm no presence of the Yin-Yang Twins or any other microbes. Also there has been no carbon found in any of my samples, only the presence of ammonia, methane, oxygen, hydrogen, some traces of zinc and iron ore.

Knowing how quickly news and rumors spread back at the Ark, every bandit and pirate from O’Ryan’s Armada of rogue fools, cranks and crooks is going to want to come here and stake out a colony outpost.

While Protocol 111 was running, we explored the area. Ellie and I got as far as the northern crater (we’re calling her LUCY cause well…the crater is shaped like a diamond…you know like the Beatle’s crazy song you always played?) and then we hit the edge of the NOT SO GRAND CANYON. That’s where we found the silver cloud that flies like a jet.

Harry Wolf hasn’t eaten anything in two days. That is not good. Dogs always eat. We say he’s just nervous, but we know it’s the Madness.

Maybe life is like a black and white domino being pressed against another in a long line of checkered and connected pieces. Press one and soon they’ll all be falling down into another. Maybe that’s what we are, just interconnected dominoes that are falling and falling until we can fall no more. We only want to survive. I’ve given up trying to understand this place.

But maybe that’s the human’s race fatal flaw: we want to understand the things that can’t be understood. We want answers but there are too many questions.

Ravi spends hours just outside the Pod jumping and running over boulders and small sand dunes. Thinks he’s see his slake monster. Maybe if we do conquer the invisible menace inside us, perhaps this will be our New World.

Down here, I can’t help thinking about the origins of life. Are they just a miracle? Or did some super-natural being *AKA GOD just clap two big hands together and begin it all with some Big Bang. Or is this scientific mystery explainable. We’ll probably never know.

Is life just a miracle or is it an improbable accident? Or, perhaps, could life be an inevitable consequence of the rules and laws of physics and chemistry?

If God?? didn’t clap life into being then who or what did? All this black space. All the stars. The explosions of supernova energy. Makes you feel pretty small.

The mystery can be solved if you ask the right questions. Too bad the Yin-Yang Twins can’t speak.

Sam went mad before he died. He didn’t even know it.

Am I touched with the warm and clammy hand of the Madness too? Am I? Maybe. I don’t really know anymore. That’s what we’re calling it. The Madness. It unlocks some primal urge.

If life really has an intelligent design, then what purpose do these little buggers have for us? Yin and Yang. Male and female. Peace and war. Love and hate. Fight or flight. The Madness and the Sanity. Does anything really live down here or is just another dead planet?

To be honest, the way the rabbits bought the farm is starting to look like child’s play compared to how Sam died.

Stay positive, right? I’m trying. I’m really trying. But what are we doing here? Are we just waiting for some skeleton to jump out and yell boo? Or are we just waiting for the Madness to come?

You always said it took an ounce of courage to go to space, and a pound of madness to stay here. Just take me home. Okay? Take me home!

I’m worried about so many things. I’m worried about Ravi becoming just like Sam. I’m worried that I’m becoming you. I’m critical, complaining, noticing every little thing. How did that happen?

Fate. Destiny. Luck. None of the above.

Maybe there’s just our actions and our reactions. Too many people have gone searching for spiritual redemption in some interconnected divine plan.

We’re just trying to survive. Is that God’s plan? Just survive? I dunno. Probably never will.

Already I’ve puked three times in the past twenty-four hours. Feeling worse each hour. Now I have dry heaves. Nothing left. I will not die. Have blood in urine. What look like bruises seeping through the sides of my torso. Pain and aches I didn’t know I had. All because of the Yin-Yang Twins. We need a miracle. Do they exist anymore?

I guess I am frightened by the creeping and lasting awareness of how tenuous everything in life really was, how easily all that was good and right and safe could just slip away.

Down here, survival is everything. I have survived the mission up to now. I have to survive the next twenty-four hours.

Protocol 111 recorded that there are pockets of volcanic sulfur and methane gas and that the mountain is ready to blow. Might be a year. A century. Maybe a hundred. Who knows? Nobody knows anything.

When the weather cooperates, we’ll continue our search of the Discovery Site. The little twerp is loving every minute. Yeah, its true…Ravi is a land lover now.

And he’s gotten started on terra-forming this place. Desert plants. Such a little act can have a profound impact. It’s like the Butterfly Effect. He’s planted a bunch of seeds. Just call him little Ravi Appleseed.

I guess we have changed this planet forever. Has it already changed us? At least we have good shelter. Enough water. The food tablets are sufficient.

Carpe diem, right? Live each day as your last. Seize the day. Drink it in. Love fully. Laugh often. Live completely. Isn’t that what Mom used to say?

I hope and pray this message gets to you before we seize our last day.

For the record, no Host has been found. No virus. No cure. No additional Yin-Yang Twins, nor any kind of microorganisms living in the oasis of methane-ammonia-quasi water liquid. Not sure if we’ll find anything but death down here. But we’re going to try to find more life.

Now, my battery is running out. Going to have to plug it in and jump on the generator bike.

Respectfully your son,

Theo

ENTRY COMPLETE.

It was the dead of night, the witching hour and the outside light cast a beam onto the area when Theo was interrupted by a message received from within the Pod. It was a text message from Sam. His message was simple and clear
: imBLIND!!!!

Every hour since Sam Suzuki had been laid to rest in the worm infested golden soil, a new text message had arrived. Sam, in death, was like a ghost with a text message addiction.

Even in Sam’s madness, he had figured out how to send a new message on the hour, every hour. Since receiving the first one, Ravi had worked on a programmatic way to stop or block every ghost message they received.

Harry Wolf dozed by Theo’s feet until he rose to his four legs and started to yelp and squeal. The husky galloped to the Pod door and clawed at it.

“Quiet boy,” Theo said. “It’s just the wind.”

They all became startled when four loud and quick “pings” walloped the outer shell of the Pod.

While the Positives had been on the planet’s surface for only four days, they still found this sound unusual and alarming.

The sound coming from outside the Pod was like a metal golf club striking a golf-ball, and not at all like the sound of the wind they had already come to expect from this place.

After a brief pause of windblown silence, the staccato sounds returned.

PING-PING-PING-PING!

Each was louder than the next, as if whatever was causing the pings was getting stronger and braver. They were under attack. By what was still unknown. Perhaps, the camelback had returned to play paddy-cake. Perhaps the sounds were something else.

The three Positives quickly went to the viewing window where Ravi was already hitting the controls to widen the view. The lights flicked on and even with the beams of white light scanning left and right, they saw nothing unusual. At the widest aperture offered by the viewing window, they had a 270-degree view of the landscape and the oasis.

“Did you bring any golf balls?” Ravi asked.

“Of course not,” Theo snapped.

“Then what’s causing that sound?” Ravi asked.

“I doubt that’s just the wind,” Ellie said.

PING-PING-PING-PING!

The outside light shattered with a small explosion from the outside light. It sparkled to darkness around the Pod.

“What happened to the lights?”

“They got knocked out,” Ellie said.

“Something just hit it,” Ravi said.

“Like what?”

“Maybe it’s hail.”

“Highly doubtful given the planet’s atmosphere,” Ravi said.

“What about volcanic eruptions?”

“No. Not likely. We’d be feeling tremors and seeing ash.”

Theo rushed to the viewing window so that he had a full look at the grounds outside the Pod while Harry Wolf still barked and barked bloody murder as they saw a dark view of the outside.

Ravi was hunched over the video console, controlling the lone camera that was attached atop the center of the Pod’s outer shell. The view scanned from left to right and up and down. But with the outside light now disabled, he saw nothing unusual.

“I don’t see any hail or anything raining down upon us,” Ravi said.

They were looking from different points around the 270-degree view offered by the Pod’s viewing window and saw nothing resembling golf balls or hail or rain.

PING-PING-PING!

The sound echoed one more time against the outside of the Pod.

Theo rushed to the console panel and hit the protocol to open the front door of the Pod. He had the portable light and a gun in his hands.

“What are you going to do?”

“Going out,” Theo said.

“Oh bloody crap,” Ravi said. “Bloody-bloody crap. Are you sure this is smart?”

“No, I’m not sure of anything right now,” Theo answered.

“This is stupid. Very stupid.”

“Just bring the night camera,” Theo said.

“I know, I know,” Ravi said, shaking his head and picking up the night camera.

They all rushed outside, leaving the comfort of the Pod. A new sound overwhelmed their ears. The sound was a collection of high-pitched shrieks, almost like locusts. The sounds were coming from the sky. They were moving fast, swirling to and from the Pod and the liquid oasis. The silver cloud had returned.

At first, as Theo scanned the area with the portable light, he saw nothing.

But when he tilted the light up, he saw the source of the shrieks. It was, indeed, the silver cloud, almost a blur, a fast moving misshapen oval of shimmering silver in the darkness of the night.

When the light was not focused on them, the silver shimmer dimmed and they only saw the darkness of the night sky as the swarm dipped and swirled.

The pings were caused when the outer edge of the silver cloud flew into the Pod’s outer shell. They began near the oasis and circled the full circumference of the Pod every five or so seconds. The shimmer of silver was one big collection of illumination and the cloud was moving fast and in a fairly predictable pattern. They knew the silver shimmer was a collection of flying creatures. But they flew too quickly in the dark of the prairie night to be detailed more specifically.

“They’re definitely not the wind or hail or golf balls,” Ravi said.

“Much too small to be our skeletal hosts,” Ellie said. “Are they insects?”

“They might be just dust for all we know,” Ravi answered.

“Silverflies,” Theo said. It was the first term that shot out of his mouth.

But the name wasn’t all that accurate. They were only silver when the light shone on them. They did fly, but he couldn’t see any wings. They had thin, oval and translucent bodies that reflected a silver fluorescent glow. Without the light shining on them, they were just a mass of dark gray shadows flying in the sky as one distinct mass. Individually, they weren’t very large. The silverflies looked like they were about six inches in circumference, possibly even smaller.

Occasionally the outer edge of the circling silver shadow flew into the Pod, and when it did the flying shadows “pinged” the outside of the Pod. The sound was a collision of the silverflies hitting the outer metal shell.

“We need to capture one,” Theo said.

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Theo handed the portable light to Ravi. “Hold this and keep the light on them!” Theo yelled to Ravi. “Follow them!”

Without the light on them, the swarm was a mass of blackness in the shadows of the night, but when Ravi shone they reflected a silver shine.

Theo rushed back into the Pod and grabbed a four-foot long tent pole from the supply closet. He also took a canvas bag and some electrical duct tape and went back outside where the swarm of silverflies continued to circle.

Theo placed the canvas bag at the end of the tent pole and attached it with the duct tape. He had made a makeshift butterfly net.

To reach the silver swarm, Theo rushed up the ladder attached to the Pod and climbed atop the roof. From there, he waved the makeshift net over his head into the silver swarm. He went quickly, back and forth like a soldier patriotically waving a flag.

A small portion of the silverfly swarm became trapped in the makeshift net.

Theo snapped the canvas bag shut, holding it closed with his right hand.

There was definitely something trapped inside it. Whatever the silverflies truly were, they had the ability to throb like a heartbeat and they provided a pulsing light much like a neon sign above an old-fashioned diner.

The shrieks softened and then they were silent and the swarm was gone from the vicinity.

Ravi and Theo both had their night vision goggles on and watched as the silver swarm flew in the direction of Mount New Acadia.

Ravi kept the light on the swarm for hundreds of feet as they disappeared into the side of the mountain. The night vision goggles had an excellent technical feature that pinpointed the exact location of the opening. It was a compass calibrated to the planet’s magnetic poles.

In the blackness of the night, a shimmer of silver soared overhead. The shimmer had stopped circling the Pod. Whatever “it” was had traveled quickly away. The shriek had softened.

Theo returned from the outside, walking into the Pod a wind blown mess.

“Did you get one?” asked Ravi.

“Yeah, I think so,” Theo answered.

With his full attention on the canvas bag, Harry Wolf resumed barking bloody murder.

The canvas bag sighed and throbbed with a small indentation poking in and out like a heartbeat’s pulse. Perhaps that’s what the silverflies were, just a silver heartbeat from GidX7’s sky offering a potent dose of intrigue and possibly a pulsing glow of dangerous mystery.