Legend of Earth

He filled Mygs in about the aranealis and they both noted stinging welts in the shape of splatter-marks on each other’s faces and necks, but that was all. As long as they ate meat, they would be fine. Don’t disturb the nests. Mygs was relieved to have a clue about the frightening creatures. After packing up and beginning their trek again, the friends traded favorite horror stories about spiders. They both admitted that the stories would have been more horrible if the spiders could fly.

They crossed the ridge of forest, and reached the bottom of a hill to find the river that was indicated on their map. They could see across it, but it was pretty swift. There wasn’t a whole lot of space to walk along it between trees, though that was possible. They contemplated and then decided to inflate the raft. They didn’t want to use it because Command indicated that there may be rapids along the way, and the possibility of puncturing the raft and losing the equipment, or toppling into the water, wasn’t desirable. But they didn’t want to take forever to get to the asteroid, too. They wanted to have the drone and minions scan it, and then get out of there before it got dangerous.

The raft was inflated after the hover homebase and backpacks were secured into it on the edge of the river. The men, ready to take their places to push and pull the vessel into the water, exchanged glances of worry. They were about to let the river take-over, no matter what they saw ahead, because guiding the craft was nearly impossible. Mygs had examined the map and knew that the nearest waterfall, a huge one further downstream, wasn’t for a little over 30 kilometers. His dermiscreen would alert them in plenty of time before they needed to disembark and start hiking again. Still, what unforeseen dangers could there be? River monsters? Rocks beneath the water? Birds that used to be alligators?

The raft, Legendbound 2, slid into the water and the now-Terranauts jumped in and held on. The river was calm in their area for the moment, so as it glided slowly downstream, Mygs tapped his dermiscreen to start recording in his iriscope. The expanse of water stood six meters on either side of the raft, varying upon the river’s path. There were rocks, trees, reeds, vines, things the men had only ever read about or seen diluted variations of in the parks of Persevere.

The raft caught some speed, and the men balanced themselves as the vessel dipped down to follow the water over a slight water surge. Mygs scanned the rockier riversides after making sure of the now-steady flow of the water. Amper had picked up one of the sturdy oars in order to feel he had some control, although the raft’s auto-dodge feature seemed to be working fine and no interference was needed. The trees seemed so thick, Mygs couldn’t see how animals would be able to get through to the water. But sure enough, his scope caught the movement of a deer-like animal that was closer to the size of the legendary horse animal. It looked up, startled, and watched the raft as two smaller deer-like creatures ventured out, resembling the first, smaller woodland creature they’d seen, but without antlers.

Whether she could have done anything or not, Mygs didn’t know, but he motioned for Amper to look as one of the babies stepped into the river and suddenly fell straight in with a huge splash. It floundered and flowed with the river, flailing and causing a low-pitched mewing noise of alarm. The mother bleated back, and although it was evident that she wanted to, she didn’t try to follow. The lighter beast had stopped kicking by the time it reached the slower-moving raft. Amper only saw some fur and one or two hooves float by, and Mygs recorded the whole ordeal.

A creature hadn’t pulled it in. It had stepped in at the wrong place and fallen, and had no chance because of the undercurrent. Again the men looked at each other. It was a lesson they were able to learn by watching rather than doing. They would remember that the river was not friendly.

Mygs kept his iriscope going for the whole trip, knowing that Command would be getting his images instantly at the ship. By the time they landed the boat, perhaps the analysts up there would have something useful to tell them about their surroundings. The raft spun slightly, but automatically righted its facing so that Mygs and Amper wouldn’t have to change their position to see where they were going. Slowly, the trees disappeared and more rock edged the water, and the adventurers had to initiate their aquathermics to remain warm in the 30-degrees-lower shade of cliffs between ten and fifteen meters high.

The river area became quieter, but any noise that did happen echoed to sound as though it was everywhere at once. Once or twice some dirt or a stone from the top of the forested cliff fell to the water with a sandy whisper or a splash, and Amper and Mygs watched to see what was falling each time. At one point Amper pointed to the water level where an underwater cave was being fashioned by the river’s current. Mygs looked up from the cave, watching the river ahead, and his sight was caught by what looked like a tunnel-shaped mass of rope-thick spider webs spanning across the top of the cliffs ahead.

“Oh God, Amper, – how big of a spider do you think...“ He pointed toward the collection of sturdy web-strings, but once the raft flowed closer he saw that none of it was just strung across haphazardly. Closing distance from the anomaly, both men realized that it wasn’t a random, massive weave of sticky thread. It had been constructed in the form of a hanging walkway. It was a rope bridge.

“Mygs, is that?..” Amper gazed in wonder and slowly stood with Mygs.

Mygs became speechless. The raft approached the bridge’s crossing point, and the men could see a series of thick branches tied together deliberately and tightly for a footpath, with the frays of knots blowing in a breeze from sagging rope handrails and connective rope supports for the planking.

They watched the bridge pass overhead, and kept their eyes on it as they retreated down the meandering, shadowy river. The air seemed to become thicker, and sounds took-on new meaning. Even though they hadn’t seen any living thing but the horse-deer on this trip, there now grew a sense of “something more” existing on Earth. More than the nemectes, more than herds of hunting arachs, and more that might have to do with Kllsh’s warning.

As soon as they exited the canyon, the Terranauts pulled their raft to the beach, but didn’t unload it. As Mygs had anticipated, they heard from Command about how they should proceed after seeing the bridge. A thermal and movement proximity sensor would be set up for 250 meters around their position, with a silent light-sensor alarm. Command wanted to know what was out there, but wanted the Terranauts to discover it and observe without frightening it – or them.

“We can stun whatever it is with our proj-rods,” Amper reasoned, “and observe it when it wakes.”

“We have to know what we’re dealing with before we can decide what to do,” Mygs shrugged, his shoulders tense with anticipation of the unknown. “Remember the Earth stories about monkeys?”

Amper looked at Mygs, brow furrowed. “Yeah. There were so many kinds, and ancient Earth scientists speculated that humans evolved from them.” Amper snuffed, laughing lightly.

“They didn’t travel alone,” Mygs continued seriously. “There’s no reason to believe that that bridge was constructed by a single intelligent creature. Intelligence travels in packs.” He peered covertly around the horizon of their landing spot as he un-bound the sack that had the stronger concentration capture-darts.

Amper saw what he was doing. “Mygs, we have proj-rods.”

“They’re too loud and draw attention. We don’t want more trouble than we find.”

“We haven’t found anyth-“

“We found signs of intelligence, Amper!” Mygs spat impatiently before Amper could finish. He fit the darts into the weapons vest he just donned. “That’s the same as finding signs of danger.”

Amper drew back as he watched his partner, and truly began to worry. “You’re going crazy.”

“I’m being cautious. In light of new and unexpected information,” Mygs snapped back at him. “Now we aren’t just looking for dumb animals that spit acid or smart trees that can’t move.” His eyes looked big and wild as he gripped the crossbow needed for the darts. “Now the parameters of our expectations have completely disappeared!” He gestured wildly with his words. “We don’t just have to avoid deadly river currents and stay away from serrated-tusked beasts. Now we have to wonder whether someone is setting a trap or about to use a weapon on us!”

“Mygs, all we’ve seen is a bridge!” Amper stood to face Mygs equally. “There’s no evidence that suggests there’s anything out to get us. You have to steady yourself, Mygs.” Mygs wouldn’t look him in the eye. He kept looking for the horizon. “You’re cracking, Mygs. We have to stop here, and you’ll recuperate in homebase.”

Mygs did look at Amper then. “I DON’T NEED TO RECUPERATE!” Mygs stood chest-to-chest with Amper, trying to impose his sense of importance physically. “While I’m ‘recuperating,’ we’ll be watched and then possibly ambushed by some evolved intelligent monkey, or bear, or snake! Any manner of creature could…”

Mygs stopped suddenly, his eyes closing lazily. The rest of the breath he was using for yelling simply exhaled as he collapsed. Amper shook his head incredulously and let out a nervous breath of his own. He looked down at the suddenly docile figure with a dart sticking out of the ribcage.

“You’re right,” he muttered to Mygs’ resting form. “The darts are pretty handy.”

By the time Mygs woke up on the empty, landed raft, Amper had initiated homebase. He changed its exterior to camouflage by the line of trees just past the bank, and he had a fishing rod, standing downstream of Mygs, flinging the line out and slowly teasing it in. Mygs lifted himself slowly, then groaned at his headache and nearly collapsed again.

“I slept you, you’ll be groggy,” Amper cautioned. “Sit still.” He flicked the line out into the water again. Mygs complied. “You were experiencing Situational Hyper Response, so I sedated you.” Mygs nodded absentmindedly, trying to remember what he had said or done. Amper continued casually, “Then I realized we’re being watched – the proximity alarm was blinking. I decided to find something to do out here so that I could keep alert and so I could make sure you wouldn’t be… explored… if they were brave enough.”

Mygs’ eye grew wide momentarily, but he caught himself. Of course he had to look as though nothing was amiss. “Where did you see the watcher?”

“I mostly feel them,” Amper looked up to watch the tip of the pole as he whipped it out. “But I’ve seen movement and even a print in the dirt by the trees. It’s a webbed print.”

“More than one,” Mygs stated to confirm. He sat up and took a breath to handle the throbbing in his head. “What does proximity say?”

“I saw two thermal indications. You should be able to bring it online.” Amper glanced at Mygs and nodded his chin toward the dermiscreen arm. Mygs sat with his arms wrapped around his bent knees, and casually brought up the screen touchpad. With one or two taps, and his thumbprint password, he was able to see the sweep of the sensor. To the men’s right, just on the bank in the trees, were two orange dots. One that had been inland was approaching the one closest to the bank. It looked like the first one might have been scoping-out the homebase and was now reporting to its partner.

Then, to Mygs’ surprise, they both moved to the river and disappeared.

“They’re in the river!” Mygs looked up past Amper at the river moving downstream.

“They have a boat?”

“They disappeared. They’re IN the river. They went under, their indication isn’t there any more.”

“They live there?” Amper also looked downstream, and then quickly retracted his fishing line. “Mutated fish?” He looked over at Mygs, brows raised.

Mygs shrugged before glancing at his dermiscreen one more time. “Nothing would surprise me now,” he muttered. With nothing indicating, he shut it off. Amper packed up the fishing gear and Mygs stumbled to stand. They packaged the raft, Amper checked the exterior of homebase for tampering, and the Terranauts hid themselves in the security of their camp. They adjusted the barrier alarm to “bright” and “air,” which made the alarm-base blast cold air so that sight and touch would both be silently alerted, and they would be sure to awaken in the night if something was approaching. After alerting Command of the situation, and a quick meal of crackers and hummus, they went to bed. A half-hour later they each had to take a sleep aid to get to sleep despite their active minds.

Soon thoughts of unexpected intelligence faded and sleep took each man to prepare him for the next day. Of course, Amper dreamt a meeting. Only it wasn’t with Shahh.

“You aren’t nemectes. You’re the one they call Ampersand?” The opaque tendril of orange, gray and white reached out to Amper from the horizon of smoky emotion-entities of nemectes. Amper sensed that it was a male entity.

“I am Amper. You are – The Dawning?” he felt the words flowing from the foreign arm of mist. “You are elderly, a very old and wise nemectis.”

“Many have said so. You aren’t surprised to communicate with me. You are familiar with this form of communication. I sense that you are human, and so we are able to connect although you are not nemectis. Yet you are not amazed? Do you communicate like this where you come from?”

“We speak out loud, making noise, where I come from. I have already spoken with nemectes since coming here. I was duly amazed at first, but it makes sense that I would meet others, so I’m not surprised to hear you.” Amper’s misty whorls were blue and green, tinted around the edges with white. “Your name is different from the other names I’ve heard.”

“It is a title, which I acquired after teaching the other nemectes how to communicate and form intelligence and community.”

“You taught them – from the beginning?”

“We have been growing for eons, evolving with some distinctively human qualities, but only in the past few hundred years have we been communicating and learning.”

“How did you learn to do this if no one taught you?”

“It was like my title: a dawning. It settled upon me. A revelation. You and your friend are the first thing I’ve encountered in many, many years, which I cannot reason about or explain to those who are wondering.”

“You notice that you cannot communicate with my friend.”

“Yes. He is stellasensus, not real. And we can’t figure out why you’re associated with him.”

“Wait – not real?” Amper’s tendril suddenly bled brown and purple. “Mygs is my best friend, as real as they come. A part of his physical makeup comes from an asteroid – a part of a planet that was flying through space. But he is part human.”

“His asteroid make-up is strong, and blocks his human connection. He is the same as the stellasen here, and so cannot be trusted.”

Amper wanted to explode with frustration, but focused on what The Dawning was telling him, trying to reason. “There are others here who are also made up of a space rock, and they cannot be trusted?” The darkness of the talking room began to diminish, and he knew there wasn’t much time.

“The asteroid that struck years ago has matter that infiltrated the animals around it, settling in newborns and quickly fostering intelligence that has been evolving but isn’t quite complete. They all need to be stopped before the legends of human treatment of trees turns into reality once again.”

The light of morning began permeating their communication.

“Dawning, please believe that my friend is not like the stellasen! If anything he may be able to… maybe to connect somehow with them so we can communicate. He and I may be the communication links you need in order to resolve this problem-“

He saw The Dawning turn from brown, to gray, to the white of understanding, but then sat up in bed suddenly as he woke.

Amper panted in the darkness, then approached the plasmalite table and began recording as much as he could remember of the conversation. Twice, he went to bed and returned to the tabletop with new memory of the talk, and finally feeling he had it all recorded, Amper took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on memories of home in order to lure him to sleep.

The next morning Amper started his day with coffee, and the startling arrival of a half-naked bird that fell out of the sky. Black-splotched and with a noble stance, its wings flapped, featherless, and it cried-out at Amper with a scolding “caw!” as the last of its wings’ feathers fluttered to the ground. The Terranaut watched with interest, recognizing it as the unit of measurement that the nemectes used. It strutted, seemingly indignant while trying to ignore its naked wings. Amper quietly laughed into his mug as he sipped. The morning continued as Mygs woke and had breakfast, and the adventurers began getting ready for the coming day.

Mygs shrugged his backpack on after homebase was done folding-up. “Those are the Latin words for ‘Star’ and ‘Sense,’ or ‘feeling,’” he said to Amper, who had just repeated the term stellasensus in his explanation of the dream. Mygs was trying to remember the conversation he’d read that morning. “The animals have been developing an unfinished intelligence because of the asteroid we’re about to visit?”

“That bridge looked pretty finished,” Amper muttered. They pushed the raft and homebase toward the river and shoved it in, watching as it was slowly carried into the current and found momentum in the middle of the wide ribbon of water. They hoped they would see it further-on, when they met the river again.

“You know,” Mygs speculated as they began following a path away from the water, “Trees- I mean, nemectes can’t know everything. They don’t move around, and maybe they don’t grow so much near the water, I don’t know. They may not know about the heat signature creatures I saw that live in the water. They may not know a lot of things because they are stationary and don’t explore.”

“But they communicate with each other.” Amper pointed-out.

“About everything, or only about what others ask?” Mygs shrugged and gestured as he reasoned. “The nemectes on one side of Earth may think all octosquirrels eat nuts because that’s what they see, while on the other side they think they eat berries because maybe octosquirrels do that there. Neither would think to ask about something that looks natural, but there may be significant differences in the Earth’s atmosphere or weather that make the differences that no one notices. Whether anyone asks about it or not, the differences are there.”

Amper shrugged. “That’s why our being a communication link between the… stellasensus and nemectes would be so important.”

Mygs glanced back at Amper’s shortened reference to the new beings. “We’ll see if The Dawning will trust me, first. You could tell him what I’m saying, but he’d have to trust us both in order to take us seriously.”

“So the question is, how do we make the father of all nemectes trust a stellasen?”

Mygs looked back at his partner. “We’ll just watch for the right moment, I guess.”

The terranauts had been ordered by Command to not continue on the river, considering the strange creatures that live there, and the evidence of engineering that proves they’re intelligent enough to be devious and defensive against what they fear. The raft was sealed-off and likely to be mysterious enough for natives to avoid. Since the heat signatures had so-far only been seen near the river, Mygs and Amper strode inland for an hour before turning toward their destination, picking their way through trees. They didn’t want to stray too far from their originally-planned route, so took an arching detour that would merge with the river again where it became more turbulent and where the map said there would be a waterfall.

Both men looked forward to seeing a natural waterfall, and image probes showed that it was a good-sized one. The “waterflows” on Persevere were only twenty feet high or less, and were constructed to be low walls or doorway frames, sometimes encased in glass or running over lights as displays. There was no natural flow of water there, it was all created in part due to the biocurrent and cosmo-biology that offered ways to “birth” water by the generating of water flow in certain conditions. It was all very controlled and methodical. Scientifically manipulated, not natural and free like the river and certainly not like a river careening off of a cliff! This would be nothing like Persevere, and neither adventurer was able to imagine what they would find. They only hoped that the homebase, with its durably manufactured shell, would survive the fall and churning water of the continuing river below. The Earth fanatics that were dubbed scientists for this trip were with Command, and postulated that the homebase would follow the churning current and possibly end up on the edge of the river within a half-mile of the fall’s base.

The trees in the forest through which they traversed now appeared to be apathetic. Amper set his hand on trees as he dodged around them, and they felt empty. He shook his head at himself and must have laughed because Mygs looked back at him.

“Trees telling you jokes?”

Amper shook his head, smiling. “I’m just – high on being able to connect to nemectes, maybe.” Mygs raised an eyebrow at him. “I guess I somehow think I can tell just by touching a tree whether it’s apathetic or nemectis.”

“You can tell by the leaves,” Mygs pointed-out logically. Amper stepped over branches and ducked limbs to catch-up to him.

“I know, but I mean if I were blindfolded. I’m just nuts, is all. Maybe I do have neoterra dementia now, we’ve been here long enough for that to settle-in.”

“And you’ve experienced a lot of communication, trauma, bacteria could have affected your system somehow…” Mygs reasoned it out for him. “But considering what I’ve seen and watched you accomplish while getting to know the nemectes, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had an honest, cognitive connection with them.”

“There’s no telling,” Amper murmured, looking up at the nearest tree as they passed. It felt empty, but Amper caught a sense of unbridled and spastic awareness surrounding it, in fact bouncing through the spaces between trees. Surrounding them. “It’s really getting more poignant, though,” he said absently as he stopped and peered around them. The tree he touched felt emptier by comparison with this busy attention encompassing everything. Amper then felt unmistakably as though he were being watched. “I don’t think I’m imagining…” he lost his thought in the search for what he was feeling, turning his head as the sensation of an oncoming sinus cold suddenly filled his head. “Mygs, it IS something…” The pressure made him dizzy.

“Amper – what’s going on?” Mygs looked around as well, following the general gaze of his friend who wasn’t searching as much as it seemed he was sensing. Then Amper closed his eyes.

“Mygs, bear with me.” He stood blind, and then slowly began stepping in a direction further inland than their curving path was taking them. His arms out in front of him, he slowly took each step, adjusting to the feeling he received from the awareness that ricocheted off of the apathetic trees. In only a few meters, he led them to the top of an embankment, below which stood a large-canopied nemectis in a valley that had a stream trickling through.

Mygs stopped him before he stepped off of the edge, and Amper opened his eyes, taking a deep breath as though a gusty breeze suddenly hit him. He could feel the jagged alertness of the creature, like an explosion that goes all ways at once, but it was an explosion of paying-attention. No focus, just noticing everything in all directions and being lost in it.

“There it is,” Mygs whispered, staring at the odd-shaped leaves. They flashed as they danced, appearing to be like small umbrellas or wide bells that were colored half dark green and half light. “You felt it? There’s no way you could have seen it.”

“I suppose what I’m sensing is this nemectis, but it…” Amper looked at it and shrugged when he couldn’t find better words to describe it: “It isn’t well. It’s – I don’t know, maybe it’s… crazy?”

“Why, what do you feel?”

“I suppose… it’s akin to our ADHD. But in a creature that cannot move around physically, so its attention goes… spastic. Ultra-uncontrolled. And it’s so intense that I can feel it around the trees.”

“Is it saying anything? Are there any words, like with Kilsh?”

Amper shook his head, gazing warily at the tree below them. “No. If it’s trying to communicate, I don’t think I would be able to interpret it.”

The men looked at the tree, not seeing anything but its canopy from their vantage point. Silently, they gauged the situation, realized there was nothing to do to help and nothing that would hurt them, and finally turned back to their path. Amper sighed while his pace quickened. He wanted to get away from the area of that nemectis. He would ask Shhah about it when he saw her next.