Author: sjan

prompt: Make a character’s obsession or addiction an important element of your story.

available at Reedsy

The sun had set, and the planet dominated the sky, the swirls of color it was painted with brightly illuminated. The shadow of the moon would transit the planet’s face in a while. The telescope and camera were set up to capture it when it showed.

There wasn’t much else for a Royal Expeditionary Frontier Police officer like T-937/K, “Tik” to his peers, to do this far into the neutral zone. He knew what he wanted to do, but the chance of doing it here was as close to nil as to make no difference.

He checked the time on his eye implant, setting it to hover at the edge of his vision. After double-checking that the telescope and camera were properly set to capture the transit shadow, he focused on the time remaining until he needed to start the tracking.

“Hey, Tik, how many of those transit videos do you have now?”

“Morning, Kel. If this one is good, it’ll be four good ones and half a dozen that aren’t worth mentioning.” K-371/L was a fellow officer of equal rank, but she had seniority, being a year older than he was.

“Well, better focusing on something you can see and record than—,” she cut herself off. “I mean, it’s good that you have something else to think about.”

“Rather than proving they exist?” he asked. “I swear it was them, when my parents … its image is seared in my brain.”

Kel lay on the ground near him. “You remember a lot of stuff from before you were taken in to the police crèche. Do you remember your name?”

“I don’t,” he said, “but I’m sure I had one that wasn’t T-937/K or Tik. But most of what I remember is flashes, vague images, and … that day. Why don’t you have any memories before that?”

“I was taken in at birth.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were a legacy.”

“I’m not,” she said, “or at least I’ve been told I’m not.”

Tik held silent as the final moments ticked down and he started the telescope and camera, tracking the moon’s shadow beginning just below the horizon. “I thought the only newborns allowed were—”

“The children of officers, yeah,” she cut him off. “I don’t think any of us really know where we came from. They tell us what we need to hear in the crèche to mold us into proper officers.”

“I remember where I came from,” he said, rubbing the scar that ran down his face from temple to jaw, “even if it is just in flashes. I especially remember what happened the day my parents were killed, when the monsters were there.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I believe you.” She rubbed his shoulder. “You won’t ever be able to prove it, but I believe you believe you saw what you say you saw.”

Tik snorted a short laugh. “Thanks for the rousing endorsement.”

Kel pointed at the sky. “We’re a long way from the main shipping lanes, but do you think they might show up here?”

“I doubt it, but I’ll have a better chance of catching them if I’m looking at the sky when they do.” Tik groaned. “The transit videos are getting boring, and the great storm hasn’t changed since we got here.”

“Hey, amateur astronomer, is that a tiny moon, or an asteroid?” Kel asked.

Tik looked toward the area of the sky where she had pointed. It was too small to be any of the known moons or moonlets of the planet above them, and it reflected the light of the sun in a way an asteroid likely wouldn’t.

He removed the aiming scope from the telescope and pointed it at the object. “It’s a ship,” he said, “but not one of ours.”

Kel snatched the scope away and looked for herself. “That’s a weird ship. Maybe one of the colony freighters?”

“No,” Tik said in a near-whisper, “I think it’s them.”

“Your obsession needs to take a break.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Tik snatched the aiming scope back, reattached it to the telescope and pointed at the ship, following it manually.

Kel fell silent as she watched the telescope focus on the ship in the camera’s display. The writing on the ship was unlike any from anywhere in the Empire and Commonwealth. Not even among the civilizations outside the E&C, most of whom had at worst strained relations and at best trade partner status.

Tik’s hands shook, and he was glad the telescope was heavy and self-stabilizing. “The rectangle mark on the front of the ship, I remember that.”

“Is it changing direction?” Kel asked.

“It is.” He kept tracking the ship, even when it was only visible by a few lights as it passed through the shadow of the moon. “It’s coming toward us.”

“That’s pretty obvious,” she said, “since we’re looking more at the front than the side.”

Tik tracked the ship with the telescope as it passed overhead until it passed below the horizon. He opened the small terminal of the telescope and began typing furiously.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to get an estimate of its expected orbit.”

“To get more video of it?”

“No, I’ve got to warn command.”

“Tik, what if it’s just—” Kel trailed off.

The terminal spit out a tape with markings that could be read by a tracking console, like the one on the telescope … or in a trans-orbital shuttle. He grabbed the tape and ran for the barracks.

It was only after pounding at the watch commander’s door that he realized he’d left the telescope behind. It couldn’t be helped, this was more important.

“Come in, T-937/K. What’s got you by the tail?”

He laid the tape on the commander’s desk. “Alien vessel, currently orbiting this moon. I think it’s—” he stopped himself.

“You think the monsters have come back for you?” the commander asked with more than a hint of derision in her voice.

“Commander, it doesn’t matter what I think,” he said, “there’s an alien vessel out there with markings that don’t match anything known.”

The commander fed the tape into a reader on her desk and waited while the image on her wall changed. “Let’s just see what we have. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

The image came up and the watch commander stood in stunned silence for a moment. “Full scramble, intercept, detain and ascertain threat.”

“Yes, sir!” Tik ran out of the office while the console sent out the command to all on-duty units to intercept the unknown ship.

Tik jumped into the first open boarding shuttle he found and was surprised to see Kel already there. “I left the telescope,” he said.

“I brought it as far as the launch field when the alarm went out. It’s sitting in hangar seven.”

“Thanks.” Tik shrugged into one of the body armors hanging in the shuttle and checked that the comms and camera were working. He then grabbed a rifle from the rack, made sure it was charged, and the safety was on.

“Who knows?” Kel asked. “We might prove that one of the cryptoxeonlogy creatures are real.”

Tik sneered. “Is that what you think? They’re like the Aldeveran asteroid monster or something?”

She didn’t get a chance to respond, as the intercom crackled to life. “Approaching alien vessel. No sign of weapons, and they’ve extended a docking port. Environmentals on, weapons safe.”

Tik fastened the breather around his neck and checked again that his weapon was on safe. He lined up first to step out once they had docked.

The warning lights came on, flashing amber, as the inner door to the docking ring airlock opened. An enclosed walkway stood in front of them, open into a large bay in the alien ship.

As soon as the outer airlock door opened, Tik stepped through to the walkway and made his way into the alien ship, his weapon at low ready.

He stepped into the bay and saw them, freezing him in panic. It was the same one he had nightmares about, but it seemed even bigger in real life.

It spoke with a heavy accent. “Hello. We are researchers. We have been analyzing your signals for a long time now, and when we saw you so close to our home, we stopped for a look.” It turned toward Tik and dropped to its knees. It reached a gentle hand out and caressed the scar down his face. “It’s you. You made it. I’m sorry I got there too late for the others.”

Tik didn’t know how to respond. He’d spent every waking moment trying to find evidence of the monsters that killed his parents and took their ship, and every sleeping moment in nightmares of finding them, and now … now it was here, touching his face, and he felt no fear.

“I thought you killed them,” he said, “but I’m not scared of you.”

“I didn’t. The pirates left everyone for dead when we showed up. You were in bad shape, but one of your own people in a uniform like yours came and took you away.” Tears rolled down the monster’s face as it embraced Tik as if he were its own child.

Tik released his hold on his weapon, letting it hang by the sling as he returned the embrace. The monster … alien … was twice his size but held him gently. Tik felt lighter, as if the weight of the past had been lifted from his shoulders.

He was brought out of it by Kel stepping on his tail. “Ouch! What’s that for?”

“You found your cryptids,” she said, “but I thought you were going to hunt them to extinction?”

“I—I’ve been remembering it wrong. The monsters didn’t kill my parents and take the ship, they saved me.”

“I wish I could’ve done more,” the monster said.

“I can’t just keep calling you monster,” Tik said, “what are you? What do you call yourself?”

“My name is Alfibeth, and I’m a human. It’s a pleasure to finally have a proper meeting,” she said.

prompt: Dream up a secret library. Write a story about an adventurer who discovers it. What’s in the library? Why was it kept secret?

available at Reedsy

After nearly thirty years of research, field work, digging, and sometimes living off the land, Ana had finally found what her family had sought since her great-grandfather. The door was so well hidden that she hadn’t realized it was there until she attempted to break a bit of the surface rock off with her geologist’s hammer. The hollow behind the door resonated with the sound of the hammer on stone.

She tapped along the door to find the edges. With the chisel end of her hammer, she chipped away the encrustations that had built up along the edges.  After hours of hammering, chiseling, and digging at the base, the outline of the door was visible. Made of the same rock as the surrounding gneiss, it had gone unnoticed for untold millennia.

Ana pushed the door from the sides, the middle, the top, the bottom, looking for the smallest movement. The door didn’t budge. She sat, leaning against the door on the flat bit of ground she’d dug out. She ate some of the year-old jerky she had in her pack while the sun set.

It was a clear, moonless night, and Ana focused her attention on the whirl of the Milky Way overhead. The sight wasn’t enough to keep her mind off the stubborn door behind her and the aching of her joints from sitting on the rocky ground.

She stood and turned to take a last look at the door for the day. Even in the faint light of the stars, she thought she could make out the edges. At one corner, a flash caught her eye. She moved her head back and forth, trying to find the position that had, she thought, reflected light.

Not finding it, she pulled out her flashlight and shone it on the corner of the door where the flash was. She expected to see a reflection but saw none. She turned out the light, and there it was, except it was two flashes this time.

There was no doubt it was coming from inside, shining out a pinhole in the door seam at the upper left corner. “Monkey see, monkey do?” she asked herself. She pointed the flashlight at the corner and flashed it twice. When nothing happened, she flashed it again.

The response was five flashes. “Oh, fibbi-whatever,” she muttered. “Three and five is eight.” She flashed the light eight times. There was no immediate response. She began to worry that she’d been wrong in her counting or in what pattern they were looking for.

A loud hiss sounded as the whole door slid out away from the wall. Bright light shone around the edges of the door that continued to slide out, far thicker than she’d expected. Where she’d stopped digging in front of it, the door bulldozed its own path.

It stopped with a little less than a meter clearance between the back of the door and front of the rock wall. Beyond lay a downward-sloping walkway. It was shaped like an oval with a flattened floor. A voice echoed from within, “Enter, Anastasia.”

She didn’t know how they knew who she was, but she wasn’t going to turn back after having come so far. She stepped around the door, held by a single, flat piece of metal that disappeared into a groove in the ceiling. The metal that held the massive slab of stone looked far too flimsy for purpose, but pushing against the edges of the open door did nothing to sway the door or distort the metal support.

With a deep breath, Ana threw her pack over her shoulder and stepped into the hallway. As she continued down the hall, more would illuminate ahead of her while behind her, the lights shut off. Where the light came from was a mystery to her, but she was more interested in what lay ahead at that point.

She felt a slight, sudden increase in air pressure in the tunnel, followed by the echoing sound of the door as it closed. She pushed down the edges of panic that wanted to take hold. “I’m on my way,” she said to the tunnel.

The deeper she went, the more the temperature seemed to settle at close to fifteen or sixteen degrees Celsius. Her lips felt dry in the still air, and she applied lip balm while she continued apace ever deeper. Somewhere far underground, the tunnel curved back on itself and kept descending. After two more switchbacks, and what felt like hours of walking, she found herself in a chamber.

It was monumental in scale. The walls curved to meet at least twenty meters overhead. As the lights in the chamber came up, the far side looked a hundred or more meters away, while the doorway she was in was situated about twenty meters from the walls on either side. Covering the bottom two-thirds of the walls were row upon row of plastic-like boxes with lights blinking inside them.

In the center of the chamber was a dais with a holographic glyph floating in the air above it. Standing next to the dais was the owner of the voice she’d heard on entering. The shape was semi-translucent, the lights from the boxes behind it seeming to light it from within.  “Welcome,” it said, although it had no mouth with which to speak. Its form shifted and changed, from an amorphous blob to an array of wings and eyes, then through creatures both real and mythical, until it finally settled into the shape of a large woman with wings.

“Who are you?” Ana asked.

“I am the keeper,” it said. “You are Anastasia, the seeker, yes?”

“I’m Anastasia Kell, but I go by Ana.” Ana moved closer to the center of the chamber and the shape-shifting entity at its center. “What is your name?”

“I am the keeper. I have no name.”

“Fine, I’ll call you Odette, then. You look like an Odette.”

The keeper flapped its wings twice, then shrunk its body by adding a long tail. “That is acceptable, seeker Anastasia.”

“Please, just call me Ana.”

“Of course, Ana. Please, come to the dais for your reward. Your dedication has won through.” The keeper moved away from the dais and extended an arm toward Ana. The arm kept extending, reaching Ana’s hand twenty meters away from the keeper.

Ana was surprised that the hand felt warm and dry. She’d expected some sort of slimy, cold thing, but it wasn’t. She let herself be led to the dais. “What are you?”

“I am the keeper.”

“Are you a biological creature or a construct of some sort? Some sort of soft-body robot, maybe.”

“I am a biological construct, designed to keep a record of all intelligent life on this world. I have been keeping these records for 72,363,412 years.”

“Since what…the dinosaurs?”

“Yes. The first were theropods. Traveling in hunter groups, they had a limited language. If they had been more adaptable, they might have not been already dying out by the time of the asteroid.” The keeper changed its shape to a theropod that Ana didn’t recognize. It was about the same height as her, with three-toed feet, three-fingered hand on medium-length arms, and a slightly domed head.

“That’s what they looked like?” she asked.

“Yes.” The keeper shifted into the shape of a porpoise. “There were and are the cetaceans, of course. They have language and culture but are not in a position to leave their cradle.”

“Is that what you’ve been waiting for? An intelligence capable of space travel?”

“Yes. My creators have placed other keepers like me on millions of worlds.” The keeper changed into a sphere. “This is where I am keeper.”

“So now, humans, I guess, are what you’ve been looking for.”

The keeper changed into a primate that resembled a chimpanzee and then morphed through several hominin species shapes, pausing on Neanderthal before finishing up with modern human. “I’ve watched entire civilizations come and go without so much as a scratch to mark them in the geologic record, and yet your kind has made an indelible mark on the planet. Whether that is for better or worse remains to be seen.”

“My guess would be worse, but I’m a pessimist.”

“So you say, but you never stopped searching for the library at the heart of the world.”

“True.” Ana took a deep breath and put a hand on the dais. The holographic glyph hovering above it disappeared, and an eight-limbed creature appeared in its place.

The creature spoke in English, even though its squishy mouthparts made movements that were often in total contradiction to the sounds it made. “Welcome, seeker Anastasia. Updating. Welcome, Ana. What would you like to learn today?”

“What are my limits here? This place was hard enough to find, what kind of things won’t you tell me?”

“The records will answer any questions you have that can be answered. Nonsensical and paradoxical queries will be ignored. The library is hidden to ensure that only those ready to take the next steps beyond their cradle can find it. As such, all our knowledge is yours for the asking.”

“So, I blinked a light in a simple sequence. How does that mean we’re ready to take the next steps – whatever those are?”

“You are the fourth generation of your family that has searched for the library, correct?” the holograph asked.

“I am.”

“And you have spent the majority of your adult life in the same search, have you not?”

“I have,” she said, “but how does that–”

“Multi-generational planning and execution, combined with drive and determination, and the knowledge of basic mathematical concepts. This is enough to start with.”

“Are you just another aspect of Odette?”

“No, I am the avatar of Krshnlgik-mlOgnk, the current head of remote planetary studies on our home world of MFkst.” The pronunciation of the non-translated names sounded more like someone choking in a bowl of oatmeal than a language.

“Is faster-than-light communication possible?”

“It is. I am currently speaking with you from a distance of thirty-one thousand light years.”

“How?”

A series of formulae appeared in the space above the dais. “You may use your phone to photograph these, since memorization might be difficult.”

Ana did. “And faster-than-light travel?”

The formulae were replaced with more, some of which looked similar to the first. She photographed those as well.

“Do you have any other questions?”

“How can you claim to keep track of everything happening all over the world?”

“The keeper, or Odette as you call it, has a connection through quintillions of microscopic wormholes to points all over the planet.”

“So, would you have the contents of the Library of Alexandria as they were just before it burned?”

“We do.” Thousands upon thousands of titles scrolled by, many in languages Ana couldn’t even guess at, but with an English translation next to them.

“That might be something for another day,” she said. “Are there others out there in the galaxy or just your people?”

“There are many others,” the avatar said, as images of dozens of strange body plans showed. “We are a small part of a wider galactic community.

“You seem to be pondering something,” the keeper said. “Do not be afraid to ask your question.”

“How do we get off this rock and join the galactic community?”

The keeper morphed into the shape of a cozy chair and said, “Get comfortable.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Because,” the avatar answered, “this is going to take a long time to explain.”

prompt: Write a story about a character driving and getting lost.

available at Reedsy

Arn pushed the truck as fast as he felt was safe, and then some. The terrain was uneven, bouncing the truck like a paper boat in a storm. He swerved around unfamiliar trees with their pinkish trunks, the low brush scraping the sides of the truck with a sound like nails on a chalkboard.

He could’ve been back already if the road hadn’t been bombed to hell. The interlocking, grey canopy above hid the sky and any hope of navigation. He looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the gyro bed and attached seat in the back. A wounded pilot on the bed, the medic doing everything she could to keep her alive.

From his vantage point, the bed bounced and swung wildly, while from their perspective, the bed maintained little more than a gentle sway while the truck around them jerked around in response to the terrain. He couldn’t spare more than a glance, though, as speeding through the forest required his attention. He avoided notice of the body bag strapped on the floor beneath the bed.

“Luz, any luck on the radio?” he asked the medic.

“Negative. I’ve gotta find this bleeder,” she said, “we’re running low on synth blood.”

“External?” Arn asked.

“Internal. If you think we can sit still for a few minutes, I need to open her up and find it.”

“You got it.” He slowed to a stop, realizing for the first time that his hands were cramped around the wheel, his heart pounding and his breath ragged.

While Luz did field surgery on the pilot, Arn tried to raise anyone on the radio, but was met with only static and silence. He switched the radio to transmit a locator-only signal on the emergency channel.

“Hey, Arn, I need a hand.”

He slid out of the driver’s seat and stepped into the back of the ambulance. He grabbed gloves from the dispenser on the wall and pulled them on. “Where do you need me?”

“Hold these clamps. Don’t let go, but don’t squeeze too hard.”

“I know how to hold an artery,” he said.

“Look at your hands, they’re like claws right now.”

He flexed his fingers a few times. “Shit, you’re right. I’ll be careful.” He took control of the clamps, surprised that it hurt to hold his hands in the right position. The clamps were situated one on each side of a nick on the right common iliac artery.

Luz dug through the bin beside her and pulled out a tool. “Hold very still.” She used the tool to apply a screen around the artery where it was nicked, then filled the screen with a paste that sealed it closed.

She took back control of the clamps and released them with slow, deliberate movements, letting the artery settle back into its normal position. Luz let out a sigh. “Can you start up the suction so we can—”

She was interrupted by the sound of trees crashing down. Arn didn’t respond to Luz but dove back into the driver’s seat as fast as he could, strapping himself in even as he began to build up speed again.

“Sorry, Luz. Drain and staples for now?”

“Yeah, just get us away from the crawlers.”

The crawlers, alien behemoths of segmented, armored vehicles standing three meters high on twelve pairs of legs, could move almost as fast as Arn could drive the truck through the forest. Unlike the ambulance, though, the trees were no obstacle as the crawlers pushed them over like grass in front of them.

“We should’ve been back over the line to friendlies by now,” Luz said.

“I know. I think I’m going the right way, but with no sky, there’s no way to tell.” Arn grunted as he bounced the truck through a particularly rough patch. “Why are they wasting crawlers to chase an ambulance anyway?”

“Hey, Arn, I don’t know if you heard, but there’s no Geneva Convention on this planet.”

“I figured that out right away when they started shooting at us.” He sped up more, his body slammed against the restraints over and over, looking for anything to point him in a direction.

“Tell me again why we rushed across lines to rescue a downed pilot and gunner, rather than waiting for infantry?” she asked.

“We were closest, barely ten klicks, and MI wasn’t going to get there for at least an hour. They would’ve been crawler meat by then.”

“It would be safer if the ambulances were armored,” she said.

The crawlers never slowed, but he’d left them behind some when he saw a bright spot in the forest ahead. “There’s a clearing ahead. I’ll slow down and get my bearings.”

“I hope we’re close,” Luz said. “At least she’s stable for now.”

As he neared the clearing, he saw a crater surrounded by trees downed fanning out away from it. “Bomb crater. I’ll have to get out to see anything.”

“Don’t take too long.”

“No shit.” Arn jumped out of the truck, one of the razor-sharp bushes cutting his calf as he did. He ignored it and stepped into the edge of the bombed out clearing and looked to the sky. Based on the time of day and the position of the planet’s sun, he’d been running a line parallel to the front.

Arn climbed back into the truck and turned it right ninety degrees as he started driving again. “If I can maintain this direction we should hit the front soon.” 

The sound of the crawlers grew closer, coming from their right. “Hold on, Luz, they’re taking the short-cut. I’ve gotta go faster.”

No sooner had he said it than he pushed down the accelerator and shot through the trees at dangerous speeds. The gyro bed made thunking noises as it hit its upper and lower stops. It wasn’t the smoothest of rides for their patient, but it would have to do.

“We should be getting close enough,” he yelled over the din of the banging truck, “try the radio again.”

He whipped the truck around a tree and started to slide. Before he could regain control, the rear of the truck hit a tree, bouncing them back into a mostly controlled direction. Arn knew he was driving too fast for the conditions, but it was that or be pulled apart by the crawlers.

The forest opened up into a road crossing in front of him with a steep grade. “Hang on!” he yelled as he gripped the wheel tight and kept the accelerator floored. The truck jumped the road. For a brief second, he was weightless, he saw two crawlers approaching on the road, then they slammed into the ditch on the other side.

The truck made a lot of noises it wasn’t supposed to, but he kept it floored as it limped into the trees before stopping with a grinding groan. In the silence, he could hear radio traffic, and the sound of tracks outside.

Arn took stock of the situation. Two tanks rumbled past him, firing rounds toward the area where he’d seen the crawlers. The ambulance was totaled. He’d hit so hard that the steering wheel was bent toward the dash on one side. A puddle of blood surrounded his left foot from where the bush had slashed him.

“How’s the patient?” he asked.

“Still stable. Evac is on the way.”

“How about you?” he asked.

“I’m fine. Banged my head a couple times, but nothing serious. You?”

“I might need some stitches. One of those bushes got me. Nothing serious, though.”

Luz stuck her head into the cab and looked Arn, and the floorboards, then back at Arn. She keyed the radio again, “Make that one for retrieval and two for evac.”

“I’m fine,” Arn said. He tried to wave her away but realized there was a sharp pain in his arm when he did. He looked down to see the extra bend in his right arm where he’d broken it. “Oh, maybe not.”

prompt: Write a story titled ‘Paradise Lost’.

available at Reedsy

Jade leaned back against the tree that sat surrounded by a few meters of grass with a sign that said, “Dedicated to the memory of Howard Mack.” Beyond the grass lay leveled land-vehicle parking and travel lanes, a shuttle landing port, and the sprawl of commerce they serviced.

The lone tree she leaned against used to be one of hundreds. An accidental orchard of sorts, propagated by the squirrels that escaped the bounds of their “escape-proof” enclosure at the research center.

Years upon years were spent on research to perfect a sustainable, balanced ecosystem, only to have the squirrels make it all moot. Escaping with a handful of newly received English walnuts, the squirrels had done more to shape this area of Eden in a decade than humans did in the preceding sixty years.

“Hey, Jade. Taking lunch?”

Jade turned to see who was speaking to her. Zed, her coworker at the deli. Like Jade, Zed’s skin was a pale brown with a reddish undertone, and they both had straight, dark-brown hair. However, Jade’s eyes were a deep brown while Zed’s were a piercing green.

“Yeah. Have a seat.”

Zed looked at the ground next to Jade. “I, uh, don’t wanna sit on a grave.”

Jade laughed. “No problem, then. I didn’t invite you to sit on my lap.”

Zed sat next to her. “You’re okay with sitting on a grave?”

“I should be,” she said, “since I dug it with my own hands.”

Zed narrowed their eyes. “You’re telling me you buried your own ancestor?”

“No. I buried my dog here when I was nine.”

“But the gravesite that the builders built around….”

“Was where I buried my dog Howard.” Jade chuckled. “It’s not my mother’s fault that the builders didn’t bother to ask what was in the grave she marked on their map.”

“I always thought that Howard Mack was one of your relatives. Maybe a grandparent or something.” Zed chuckled. “That’s weird.”

“What?”

“When I thought it was a person buried here, it creeped me out. Now that I know it was your dog, it just…makes me sad.”

“It was almost twenty years ago.” Jade sighed. “You know what makes me sad, Zed?”

“What?”

Jade swept her arm in a broad gesture at the monument to commerce around them. “All of this. I used to spend my autumns here picking walnuts. For as long as I can remember.”

“But the land belonged—”

“To the village,” Jade finished. “We all picked here, mostly for our own use, but a few people started selling their share to other villages.”

Zed raised a finger. “Wait, I remember as a kid getting ‘Lake Village Walnuts’ in a net bag.”

 “That’s the ones.”

“You think they’ll change the name?” Zed asked.

“Of what?”

“Lake Village. I mean, it’s already got the population to be classed as a city.”

Jade shook her head. “Nah. It’s too good of a draw. People think they’re moving to someplace quaint and special, when it’s really just another exurb with no urban connection.”

“I just moved here a couple years ago, but it’s already gotten bigger since then. I can’t imagine how much change you’ve seen being born here.” Zed shook their head. “What happened?”

“Some corporation slithered into the garden, offered the council a shiny apple, and it’s all gone to hell from there.”

“Oh my god, Jade read a poem?”

“Shut up. You’re the one with the English Lit degree.” She nudged them. “I thought I’d put it in a framework you’d understand.”

“Lot of good my degree does here,” Zed said. “I wanted to be a teacher, but there’s not enough openings.”

“Maybe you should try to incorporate your degree into your day-to-day, see if helps any.”

Zed laughed. “Wouldst thou prefer mayonnaise or mustard, milord?”

“Yeah, class up the joint a bit.”

Zed pulled a blade of grass and began to roll it in their fingers. “Did you really read Milton, though? Or just the Cliff’s Notes?”

“Nah, I read it. A few times.” Jade sighed. “It’s bullshit, you know.”

“Well, yeah. It’s a retelling of a religious myth.”

“The myth is bullshit, though.”

Zed flicked the rolled blade of grass out to the middle of the tiny lawn. “That’s the thing about myths…they’re all fake.”

“It’s an excuse to make women second-class citizens,” Jade said. “The snake would’ve had a better chance of tempting Adam first, by telling him it would make him rich and irresistible to Eve.”

“Oooh, taking a stab at masculinity. Bold move.”

“Taking a stab at the patriarchy.”

“We’re past that now,” Zed said.

“Really? What’s your proof?”

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem to be big deal now. Hell, even the President of Earth is a woman.”

“Not good enough. I’ll state my points.” Jade turned to face Zed. “First, men still outnumber women in positions of corporate and political power. Second, for as long as women were on the village council, they turned down every offer to develop.

“Third, it was an all-male council that decided to sell off the village land to a developer, despite a vote to the contrary just a few months before. They claimed it was because the village needed to ‘grow up’ or something.

“Fourth, every one of those men from the council, despite being voted out for their actions, are now wealthy, and several of them now hold important positions in the corporations that settled in here.”

Zed put an arm around Jade’s shoulders. “That’s why you’re my favorite friend. You’re not afraid to paint yourself into a corner.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s assume that the snake tempted Adam first. Why would Eve follow? According to Milton, Adam followed because he couldn’t bear to be separated from Eve.”

“If anything, Adam probably made a bunch of promises about how he’d change and let her take the lead sometimes. I don’t know.” Jade snorted and exclaimed in a goofy voice, “I can change, Eve, I swear!”

Zed laughed. “You know what? It doesn’t matter which one bit the apple first.”

“Why?”

“Because it was just meant to enforce the cultural stereotypes. If the culture had been matriarchal, Adam would’ve been created from one of Eve’s ribs, and would’ve been the one tricked by the serpent.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I think what it comes down to is simple, human greed. It’s like me…no gender required.”

“Goof.” Jade leaned her head on Zed’s shoulder. “I miss the orchard.”

prompt: Write a story in the form of diary entries, written by an explorer as they make their way through what they thought was an untouched location.

available at Reedsy

12 Garn

I arrived in orbit around the heavy world. I’m not the first to discover it, of course. Others have placed orbital observers (OOs) around it, but if anyone has sent landers, they haven’t shared what they found. That’s why we decided it’s better to send a person down there.

Because of all the OOs, it took a while to calculate a safe orbit from which I can descend to explore and return to at the end of each day. There’s no way I could survive down there for more than a few days, despite my high-gee training.

Tomorrow, I test out that training, and this new grav lifter. It’s got an impulser stronger than even most heavy freight lifters, with a body light enough to be a racer and strong enough to be a ramming vessel.

We know there’s life down there, but what it’s like, no one’s sure. The exobiologists think they know what life will look like down there. Low plants, broad, squat animals — all small and probably exoskeletal — if there are any, with the possibility of large animals in the oceans. Honestly, I think they’re just assuming life like home with but with twice the gravity.

One thing they probably have right is that the chance for intelligent life to evolve under such extreme conditions is near-enough to non-existent. It isn’t likely to happen for this world any time before the death of their star.

The planet itself is beautiful from orbit. The blue oceans and the play of clouds reminds me of home, but the cloud formations are different, more violent.

13 Garn

One complete rotation of the planet below is equivalent to about two-thirds of a day. I figured it would be a good measure of time while I’m there. I decided to stay for one rotation then return to orbit to sleep and recover. The idea was to cover a lot of ground and gather a great deal of data and samples, while maintaining my health.

I didn’t make it through half a rotation. Just how wrong the exobiologists were was apparent before I even touched down. The “short, ground-hugging plants” were there, of course, but there were also massive, tall plants spreading their light-gathering parts high in the sky.

I took some samples of the low plants, and a dead, fallen part from one of the tall plants. There was no way I could reach it to get to the live parts.

The animals…. I don’t know where to start. Yes, the small, exoskeletal animals were everywhere, and some of them fly! The flying ones bite, and some of the others do as well. I don’t know what sort of venoms they possess, but the suit hit me with a broad-spectrum antivenin the second I got the first bite. It still hurt like fire. How could something so small hurt so bad?

Those annoying little things weren’t the only animals, though. There were tall creatures with four limbs, and a head on a long neck, able to eat the live parts of the tall plants. Knowing how hard my hearts were working even in my exosuit to keep blood to my brain, I thought it must have a chain of hearts to push blood that far against this gravity.

There were animals flying, running, walking, slithering, you name it. All of them were far larger than what I was told to expect outside of the oceans.

The thing that made me quit early for the day was the largest animal I’ve ever seen. Nothing at home even comes close to its bulk. The long-necked animal was taller but looked fragile. Not this.

It had huge flaps on the sides of its head, a thick body, four stout legs, and a tentacle on its face it used to bring things to its mouth. On either side of the tentacle, large, curved horns extended, promising quick death.

I thought that with its size it would be slow and lumbering. When the largest one waved its head-flaps and charged for me I thought I was about to die. They are not slow, and I learned that fear is a good motivator to run even under double gravity.

14 Garn

I stayed on the ship, in orbit, and rested. The few samples I collected have been analyzed and recorded, and the samples themselves disposed. The collection containers have been sterilized and I’ve been through decontamination twice.

Tomorrow, I’ll be landing far away from the giant monster animals. I’ve picked a spot that seems to have more of the tall plants. They probably don’t squeeze themselves in there. Maybe there will be more of the tall animals. They were rather amazing.

The spot I’d initially chosen for tomorrow is being hit with a massive storm. The best guess the ship’s sensors and computer can come up with is winds strong enough to blow the ship about like a mote of dust. The wind force is more than three times higher than any ever recorded at home.

15 Garn

Writing this from the surface of the planet. When I make it back to the ship, I’ll have to head home. I’d hoped for more time, but I fell, and in the heavy gravity injured myself. My leg is broken, I’m sure of it. It’s not a compound fracture at least.

When I stop and rest, like now, the world around me is filled with hoots and howls and whistles and cries. The noise is everywhere and nowhere at once. It’s as if every creature has something it wants to tell every other creature.

I’ve managed to gather a few specimens. One of them was a large, segmented, exoskeletal animal with a pair of legs at each segment. It was kind of cute until it bit me and my suit responded with antivenin again. If I thought the bite of the other creature hurt, this was on a whole different level. It still burns all the way up my arm even though my suit says I’m safe from that.

It was while I was reeling from the pain of that bite that I tripped over the base anchor of one of the tall plants. I heard it as I landed with the lower part of my leg across another one of the base anchors of the plant. It was a clear snap, followed by my howl of pain.

The rest of the creatures fell silent then and stayed that way until I got myself calm and quiet. I had a momentary fear that something was creeping up on me and I was going to become some animal’s dinner until the noises resumed as they had been.

The sheer diversity of life in this extreme gravity well is bound to have an effect on what we think we know about biology. I’ve seen plants with brightly colored organs that small flying animals drink from with long protrusions from their face. There’s one above my head right now as I lay here trying to rest.

The flying animal has a soft covering of some sort, and its wings are vibrating so fast it can hover in place while it drinks. I wish I could get a sample from it.

16 Garn

Yesterday, I had almost made it to the ship when I saw them. They were similar to the other animals, but I knew right away they were intelligent. They wore what could only be described as clothing and carried tools. Not simple sticks, either.

They communicated to others that were nowhere to be seen with small, hand-held devices. One of them made noises at me. I guessed it was trying to talk. It kept its voice soft and pointed at my leg and held up a container it carried.

I was too frightened by their predatory eyes and size to do much. They were bigger than me, bipedal, and social animals. If they wanted to disembowel me and eat me then and there, they’d have a better chance than even the giant creature I’d see the first day.

I froze in place while the creature set the container down next to me and examined my leg. It was gentle as it prodded along it with its bare fingers with no claws. When it touched near the break though, I couldn’t keep silent. It made a hissing noise and then went back to its soft voice.

It opened the container and I saw a myriad of tools I couldn’t begin to comprehend, but it pulled something out, measured it against my lower leg, then pulled out a roll of some sort of cloth. It continued with its soft voice. I couldn’t tell what it was trying to say, but it sounded like it was trying to be soothing.

The creature used the thing it had pulled out as a splint on my leg and wrapped it with the cloth. The cloth was elastic and stuck to itself. When it had finished the splint and closed up the container, it gestured as if to pick me up. The gravity had so worn me out by that point that I couldn’t fight back.

I expected to be carried back to the creature’s lair, but it carried me to my ship. It helped me into my seat and then the creatures began to chatter at each other. The tone was clear, and it seemed the one that had helped me and carried me to the ship disagreed with the other two.

I told the creature I needed to get back to orbit and go home, that the gravity was too much for me. I did my best to use gestures to make my meaning clear. The other two creatures left, and the one that had helped me sat on the floor of the ship and refused to move.

With no other choice, I ascended back into orbit. The relief from the steep gravity well was welcome and I passed out in the presence of the creature that I thought still might eat me. What would intelligent life on this planet be like? When everything else is lethal or harmful, right down to the gravity and the weather, they must be terrible monsters.

That’s what I thought yesterday, anyway. When I awoke, the creature was checking my leg. It had carried my samples on board and figured out how the sample containers fit into the analyzer and had fed them in.

I stripped out of my exosuit, and the creature removed the splint while I removed the legs of the suit. It then re-splinted my leg after checking it. It held up a small round of compressed powder and did some miming. I think it might be a medicine of some sort.

I took the compressed round and fed it into the analyzer. It was a potent analgesic that would bind to certain protein coupled receptors to cause hyperpolarization. This, in turn, would block pain signals on that path. It seems they have a similar nervous structure to our own. When the analyzer told me it was safe, I took it. There was no way I was going to anger the creature.

The pain relief was far beyond what I would’ve expected. Before I became too tired to stay awake any longer, the creature and I mimed back and forth for a while. Its name is Anee and I told it my name. I figured out their head movement behaviors for yes and no.

When I tried to tell Anee that I was going to return it to the planet it moved its head in the “no” gesture, sat on the floor, and crossed its arms. The ship’s sensors are telling me that if I don’t head home within the next day for medical treatment I will be in dire straits.

I’ve set the controls to take me home, and I’m trying to stay awake to see how the creature reacts. Perhaps I can learn

17 Garn

I passed out while writing yesterday’s journal. I woke when the analgesic wore off, and I realized the pain was far worse than I had thought. Anee seems to be worried about me and is showing me the pictures it took on its communication device.

It took several moving and still images of the OOs in orbit around the planet. It was chattering about a large one in particular when I saw it. The markings on the OOs were the same kind of markings as those on the communication device. Those weren’t other stars keeping their secrets from us after all. The creatures had managed to climb out of their hellish gravity well.

The creature also seemed enthralled by the moving image it took out the window in warp space. I see it all the time, so no big deal, but this creature had just gone faster and probably farther than any other of its species.

The creature has been trying to copy our language, and has managed to say a few words already, though its accent is exceedingly thick. It managed to say “food” when it was hungry and even seemed to enjoy the meal ration.

The automed numbed my leg, set it, and filled the area with pain killers and bone growth agents. Throughout the entire procedure, Anee held one of my hands in its own. They were warm and rough, though the touch was gentle.

Someone from the science division sent me a message that they planned to dissect Anee. I told them that if they tried, I’d kill them. I think, however, that they’d have a difficult time even containing Anee. This is the same creature that splinted my leg, then carried me in twice normal gravity to my ship.

I’m closing this out for now, as I, my ship, and Anee are in quarantine. Because of Anee, of course. I no longer feel threatened by it. It does a thing with its voice where the tones and rhythm make a pleasing sound, even though I don’t understand the words at all, and it has been spending most of the time looking after me as though I was a child or invalid…not that I mind.

Anee saw me recording my diary and made the noise Hooman while pointing at itself. I’m not sure if that is its full name, or maybe the name of its people or its species. It seemed important to Anee, so I’ve added it here, so I don’t forget.