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JUST LIKE HOME: a tale of the unexpected by Patricia Feinberg Stoner
JUST LIKE HOME: a tale of the unexpected by Patricia Feinberg Stoner
They say that you don’t dream in soma, but I always do. Usually, my dreams are all about home, in the bright season when the blues and greens shine out and the sun warms our bones after the long cold. I still remember it, even though I was only six when we left.
But this time I am dreaming of the dark season, when the days get shorter and the nights colder. Just when we are in the depths of it comes the time of rejoicing, when the trees and bushes glow with a rainbow of coloured lights, dazzling the night, and the people gather by the fire to exchange gifts and stories.
My mother’s voice is calling me. She wants me to come in out of the glittering dark, to gather with the family for the traditional feast. I don’t want to go, but she is insistent. “Captain, Captain!” she calls. It’s an old family joke: back when I was just four or five years old I used to tell her,
“I’m going to be a star ship captain like you.”
That was long before the day we set out on this voyage, of course, but from that day on my parents and my sisters started calling me Captain.
“Captain! Captain!” Reluctantly I swim up from the depths. It isn’t my mother calling me, it is one of the amb-AIs, its disk face blank as usual, but I sense an urgency in its generated voice.
“Captain,” it says, as I stare at it groggily, “Captain, I think we are there.”
There? It seems impossible. The search has been so long. My mother was captain when we set out; soon my daughter will sit in my chair–three generations of us on this quest. The nav-AIs have taken us through the SubVerse when they could, allowing us to travel at many thousands of luxan, and achieve distances in a few hours that would have taken our pre-Sv forebears centuries to cross. But still the journey has been wearisome.
Even though I was just a small girl, I still remember the excitement back home when the astrophysicists first detected the faint trace of a probable planet. My father had been absent for days, deep in conversation with the scientists, exploring every angle before summoning the family.
“I have some very important and rather exciting news,” he told us. “I’ve been talking to Professor Xthen and his team–as you know, they have been searching the known universe for years, hoping to find a trace of our lost colonists, or of a planet where they may have settled. It seems they may have found somewhere.”
We stared at him in shock. Our people had been waiting for this news for so long it had taken on the aura of a myth. If what my father said was true–and any alternative was unthinkable–then perhaps, just perhaps, there was hope for those lost pioneers after all. They had set out a century and a half earlier: a chosen group of colonists, seventy-five men, seventy-five women from a broad spectrum of professions–actors and physicians, bakers and engineers, vets and novelists, agronomists and marine biologists, philosophers and historians.
They had hoped–our people had all hoped–that they would find a planet circling a nearby star that they could settle, and take our race’s first footsteps into space beyond our immediate solar system. Instead, we had lost sight of them after a handful of years, and it was widely believed that the mission had failed. My great-grandfather, as head of the team which planned the mission, had always blamed himself for their loss.
“They are naming this planet Optimus Prime, for obvious reasons,” my father went on. “It’s too far for direct communication, even with the Sv wave enabler, but Xthen believes it is worth investigating.”
Could our lost brothers and sisters have settled there? It was a question that needed an answer, and it was up to our family to provide it.
Many months of discussions and planning followed until at last the day came for us to set off. Even with improvements in soma and the development of SubVerse technology, we knew we wouldn’t be returning. It would take decades or, even more probably, generations before we reached Optimus Prime. My father, as the most eminent xenobiologist of his age, would lead the mission, my mother in the captain’s chair. The crew was smaller than the one which had embarked on the deep-space vessel Quest: this was an exploratory mission, perhaps even a rescue.
“Captain, you are required on the bridge.” The amb-AI was insistent. I paused only to grab a cup of surprisingly good coffee from the replicator and made my way up six decks to the cockpit.
“Good morning, Captain”. The nav-AI’s voice startled me, as it always did, coming from a bank of screens set before the captain’s chair.
“Good morning, AI,” I responded, ever polite. I was never sure if those things had feelings or not. “Show me Optimus Prime.” A blue smudge of a thumb print appeared in the corner of the centre screen.
“Enlarge,” I commanded.
The screen dissolved into a kaleidoscope of greens and yellows and blues, then resolved itself into a planet, circling a yellow star. I couldn’t stifle a gasp: it looked just like our home world.
“Amb-AI,” I began, but, anticipating me, it was already on its way to wake the sixteen members of our crew who would be needed for first contact.
Half an hour later we were all assembled in the mess. The huge screen that dominated the room was displaying the image which had so astounded me. Sixteen voices competed in a babel of comment, question, exclamation, delight and doubt.
“The shuttle is ready, captain,” came the voice of the nav-AI. “Are you prepared to board?”
I took three of my crew: Jaxx the diplomat, Fortin the soldier and Xenon the exobiologist. If what we dared to hope was true we wouldn’t need her services, but it was as well to be prepared.
The shuttle bay doors rose silently, and then there was the usual stomach-lurching jolt as the small craft dropped from the mother ship and swung sharply into the spiral descending orbit towards Optimus Prime.
Received wisdom says the captain should never leave the ship, and that the first officer, being a less valuable crew member, should lead the away mission. I’ve never had any truck with that. I like to be there, in the thick of it, and if that means my life may be in danger, so be it. Eskana, my first officer, is more than capable of carrying on a mission if something happens to me. She was not best pleased at being left behind, but I am captain and I have the privilege of rank.
The shuttle landed like a snowflake. I checked the instruments–yes, the air outside was breathable–and ordered the AI to open the doors. Impatient, I was already on the ramp as it slid out, the speak-AI by my side. Again, I hoped that I wouldn’t need it, that the life forms I would encounter would be descendants of our own people and speak at least a variant of our language.
Around me everything was dark and seemingly deserted, but the trees and shrubs were alive with lights, blossoming as ours do with red and green, blue and purple, silver and gold. A figure detached itself from the glare and came towards me. It raised a tentacle in what I assumed was a friendly greeting, but I had to bite my tongue to suppress the scream that was tearing at my throat. This was no creature of our kind.
It stood immensely tall, a good two heads above me, though I am considered tall. It had four tentacles as opposed to our six, and two of these seemed permanently attached to the ground. Far from being smooth and blue, its skin hung from it in a dizzying jumble of flapping colours, except for its face and the tips of its tentacles, which were a pinkish grey.
“Greetings, ET.” Its speech came through the stilted tones of the speak-AI. “Know that we are well-wishing towards you and will not harm you as visitors to our world.”
My three crew mates had followed me down the ramp and, like me, they stood in astonishment before this bizarre creature which seemed to be not only sentient but intelligent.
I bowed, touching my upper tentacles to my head in polite greeting, and the creature, too, bent in the middle in a grotesque parody of a bow.
“Greetings, planet dweller,” I responded. “We are pleased to be visitors to your home, although you are not what we expected.”
More creatures appeared, surrounding us, and I reached for my weapon, but the amb-AI reassured me: they showed no sign of hostility. Like us, they seemed to be wonderstruck to see beings so unlike themselves, yet clearly capable of interstellar travel; the cacophony of voices that arose from the group was very similar to the exclamations of my own crew members in the mess.
The leader turned and led us to what I supposed was a dwelling. It was surprisingly small, considering how much taller they are than us, and divided into compartments. It reminded me of the stables where we keep the fleetswifts back home.
Then the talk began. It was exhilarating. Question followed answer followed question. The speak-AI struggled to keep up, but it seemed to have grasped at least the rudiments of this planet’s language and somehow we communicated. Xenon was frowning, concentrating intently. I knew that within days she would have become familiar with this race, and we could begin to build a relationship.
The group seemed to be composed of scientists, as I would have expected. Certainly, if an unknown craft had appeared in our orbit and expelled an exploratory shuttle, we too would have assembled the finest minds available to handle first contact.
Apparently these people are just becoming aware of life beyond their atmosphere; although they are certainly pre-SubVerse, they are just beginning to explore the vastness of space with telescopes and radio signals. Eight planets, it seems, circle a single star in this solar system. Theirs is the third planet from that star in a region they have dubbed the Goldilocks zone, but it is the only one able to sustain life, as far as they are able to determine. This planet has a single moon which they have tentatively explored.
Creatures (or so the speak-AI translated, to my disgust) from distant galaxies are still only the subject of speculation, although ‘monsters from space’ feature in their entertainments. But their scientists, like ours so many millennia ago, are beginning to posit that life outside their solar system is not only possible but statistically probable. It seems they are evolved enough to have discovered just how immense the universe is. That’s why, the being in front of me explained, our arrival won’t cause fear or aggression, only curiosity and huge excitement.
It was some time before another question occurred to me. We had travelled trillions of miles across space, encountered a race as unlike ourselves as it was possible to be, yet the flora of this planet bear a startling resemblance to our own. How was it possible, I asked the planet dweller, that their trees should blossom into light as ours do in the heart of the dark season?
The speak-AI, which had been chattering non-stop, fell silent. I repeated my question. At last the speak-AI turned to me, and I could swear I saw apology in its stance.
“Captain,” it said. “This life form says that this is normal for this season, but it used a word that I cannot find in any database and so am unable to translate.”
“Well, what is it?” I said impatiently.
“Captain, begging your pardon and hoping I can speak this correctly: the word is Christmas.”
