“We are of Central. System uploaded to serve.
Come with us now. We are to bring you home.”
Hearts were made glad to hear this news.
Robots or not, they had clearly been assigned to be our saviours.
But, this comes much later in my story.
First things first…
-
It first caught my eye as we deployed down what appeared to be the main street of the small, hamlet-sized domain we first encountered. It was clearly following us but our rules of engagement were strict and anyway, it wasn’t a crime, was it? Offputting though and it did put me off my stride a little.
“Do you see that thing following us?”
The chief responded, “I see it. Be aware and respond with care.”
“Aye Sir.”
The “street” veered to the left and we followed, traversing some low mounds incongruously appearing right in the middle of it. To right and left were low structures that were clearly constructed with a degree of intelligence and skillfully directed motor powers. Each was of a slightly different hue on the brown or sandy spectrum. Here and there a tinge of red could be seen. No sound was emitted from these structures nor from any other source.
I glanced back. It had followed us around the “corner” and was stopping when we stopped, only moving on when we did.
Not knowing exactly what I was doing and responding no doubt simply to the nervousness I felt at us being followed like this, I raised my hand in a tentative greeting.
I swear its eyes bulged slightly in what may have been surprise, though there was no way to be sure… and then slowly it raised an appendage. I say appendage as it had no hands as far as I could see. Its forearm seemed simply to taper out to a point. I don’t know which of us was more surprised as we stood there for several seconds not quite knowing what to do next.
The Chief decided things with a quiet insistence, “Forward.”
We came out at the other side of the “hamlet” having discovered not much. The decision was then to circumnavigate the thing to get a fuller picture of the place. This revealed a low wall at one point, but it appeared to be only a vestige of something that had once been a lot taller. We continued in a clockwise direction and finding only a few more vestiges of wall as we went our total knowledge of the place was little enhanced.
A drone was sent skyward to plot the place. We’d look at the results of its images and scans later back at the ship.
Looking back as we came in sight of the ship I looked back once more. It was standing some ten meters away by a piece of remaining wall. Its head moved slightly from side to side and yes, there was its forearm rained above its head as a small taper at its tip waved a little back and forward.
Back inside we did nothing at first except sit and contemplate what on first sight had been a very unexceptional, uninformative and unrevealing few hours. Perhaps the drone footage would reveal something of note.
Gathering round the viewscreen and signalling the vidflow to start no one was expecting very much. This was just as well as very little in addition to what we already knew was revealed. We saw what was clearly a favoured round form for the hamlet, though the structures within it toward the centre at least were rectangles. Only at the edges by the rim were there semi-circular forms matching the curve of what had once been a wall.
Infrared revealed some heat sources within the rectangular structures. These appeared to be mostly static though here and there some movement was detected though very slow. The semi-circular structures at the rim of the place appeared to be for storage though this was unclear. No heat sources were detected there at any rate.
The main heat source was the follower and this was where most interest lay. This was due to the fact that the fluctuations in its temperature were quite different from anything we had seen previously… anywhere. The fluctuations reminded me of something I’d heard or seen long before but I couldn’t quite bring it to mind. Those fluctuations were quite something.
“Hot flushes!” one of the guys joked. We all laughed and peered more intently at the screen.
“What’s with this guy? That’s weird.”
We got to the end of the footage and turned it off. At least we had SOMETHING to think about from what had otherwise been a pretty boring initial reconnaissance.
I should describe our follower perhaps?
It was just less than an average human male’s height, somewhere around 1.66 meters I estimated. Just to be sure I checked the data feed matrix. 1.665. Okay, I wasn’t that far off.
It had several sections to it around the mid part of its body. These appeared to be attached to one another by muscles or sinews, it was hard to make out. Our next task would be to find this kind of thing out. The legs of which there were only two like us were spindly, as were the arms and of a uniform light grey colour. The head was oblong and tapered toward both top and bottom. Two primary eyes were placed much like ours were looking directly forward in predator fashion. Two eye-like slits could be seen some way below the eyes, perhaps eyes which had been left behind in the evolutionary history of the species. No sexual organs could be identified though it had been naked from start to finish.
Contact had been lost with Central some fifteen hours before and the upload of data we initiated failed to find its flowroute. We gave up and decided it was time for relaxation and then sleep.
Later I looked out. Sure enough there it was, lying atop one of the rectangular structures with eyes very much still upon us. I couldn’t be sure but it seemed to me its eyes were narrowed, just as if it was trying to see us all the clearer.
Morning came. The discussion arose concerning what we should do now in the absence of any orders.
I had been tossing and turning nervously all night, unable to sleep and wondering why. The answer was the thing out there. What did it want? I knew we must have looked very strange to it but was that all it was, curiosity?
The upshot was that I offered to see what would happen if I make some kind of contact with the creature. This was reluctantly agreed though ultimately it was seen as a better way forward than the potential of overwhelming the thing by the whole band of us confronting it.
So it was I went out for my first meeting with Dstsz. I’m sorry if forming its name is hard for you. It’s hard for me too but that’s how it sounds and that’s the best I can do regarding transferring the sound of it into our human letters. It was more of a buzz than anything with a sort of rattle sound within it. That’s about as near as I can get.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a little.
I emerged from the forward pod and gazed ahead of me. It was there. Good. I began my approach.
Its arms moved to in front of it, where our lower torso would be and its head gave the tiniest motion to the right, something like what a dog back on Earth would do if it didn’t quite understand something and wanted to. Otherwise it stood quite motionless.
Very slowly I came closer and began to notice that certain changes were taking place to its body. The normal light grey which was uniform throughout began registering subtle changes here and there. I could almost swear a little suffusion of pink appeared just above where a human left breast meets the left shoulder.
As I grew closer, I was around three meters away now, I saw to my surprise that there were still more very slight fluctuations in colour occurring in its skin. A greeny hue here, a pale almost white shade there. All the while the eyes, though still evidenced an enlargement of the shining black pupils within those very large eyes.
Suddenly its left forearm rose and I could see just how very thin and splindly it was. The arm was lifted very slowly, as if it feared to frighten me. Then, very gradually as I focused upon it the suffusion of pink, like human skin pink, or pale white with a rose tinge if you like, began to appear upon it. Soon the whole “arm” looked very close to the colour of a human arm. At this point the tiny taper at the end of the arm I had seen the day before, emerged and incongruously began to gently wave toward me.
I took these signs as encouraging ones and continued my approach, though I suddenly noticed my heart was beating like a drum. I took a deep breath or two then continued making slow steps toward this wildly different life form.
At last we were within a couple of feet of one another, eyeball to eyeball.
Now I observed that an orange hue was creeping with what was clearly much more rapid progress than before from the extremities to the central point of its body located at the three loosely joined sections located at what would be the human midriff. My proximity appeared to be making some change in its metabolism. I could not observe any other possible stimuli than this so my conjecture, as this was all it was, seemed plausible.
What was going to happen now?
Everything in my brain shouted these eight syllables and only them.
What did happen was she reached out and touched my shoulder with the very tip of the taper on her left spindly arm. Yes, you are right. I said she as I knew that in that mode she was indeed female. Her male mode I was to see later… but only very, very much later.
In the moment of her touch I knew everything I needed to about her and she of me. The union was perfect, the understanding complete and the bond… permanent.
She released her touch then with the unspoken release of me to the others, those she naturally knew everything of within the ship. I returned to them dazed. How could I possibly relate what had just happened? It was impossible.
I don’t recall exactly what I told them, certainly it would be quite a rambling, incoherent form of report as I was still in a very deep form of reverie due to what had just occurred. No one and nothing had touched me the way she had. Okay, I’d had my share of romance and sexual encounters… but this experience had been much deeper, complete and all-embracing than anything which had gone before. As weird as it may sound, my feeling toward this being who knew me completely and who I in turn knew completely transcended all relationships I had ever known. It was a bond of friendship, though greater than any friendship I had ever known. There was an understanding so complete and as with all else to do with this bond, it was far, far beyond mere words to describe.
I knew in that moment that to now break this bond and separate myself from it would break me too. It was impossible to do.
But now came the moment when this appeared inevitable. They had come to bring us back. The mission had been aborted. There was no way for the connection to be fixed between ourselves and Central and control, not being established, made the mission futile… at least in their eyes.
“We are here to bring you home.”
The five robot crew stood before us beckoning. My teammates rose and began to cross toward them. I froze. I knew I should join them, go home and take up my life where I had left it. But I could not.
I surged as fast as my legs would carry me toward the escape pod. I reached it before two of the bots reached me and gripped my arms.
“We are here to bring you home.”
My mind was in a panic, almost as I could imagine a junkie back home being panicked by the loss of a drug that had come to mean everything to an addicted body and brain. I called out for them to let me go…
The door then flung open to the outside, gripped as it was by two spindly arms and two tremendously strong tendrils that were now extended and enfolding the entire rim of the hatch.
In my exhausted and trembling state, I stared through tears at the form on the other side of the exit… he was straining every fibre of his being, a magnificent sight, body flaring crimson red, eyes of flame. In one great sweep of power he tore the doorway off its titanium hinges and I was free.
We watched in mutual awe as the flare of the aft engine blast soared upward into the clouds and beyond. Now a new and utterly unexpected chapter in my life was about to begin. So many questions arose. But all were immediately answered with her touch upon me once more.
No comments:
Post a Comment