Scorched Earth, Alien Wonders

“Been working so hard, I’m punching my card, Eight hours for what, Oh, tell me what I got, I’ve got this feeling, That times are holding me down, I’ll hit the ceiling

Or else I’ll tear up this town.”

Lyrics from the music of Kenny Loggins’ song “Footloose” were blaring from the lab’s loud speaker the next morning, which was a suggestion from music-lover, Cassie, to help energize our pint-sized friends since it was from their favorite movie.

The first rays of morning light began to filter across the desolate landscape where hundreds of town-folk were lined up along a pre-drawn mark.

“Okay, Team Suburbia...ready, set...go!” I yelled into a hand-held loud speaker. It was an amazing sight.

Hundreds of prairie dogs began digging, and the excavated dirt was flying up in the air behind them. It was curious how the soil from a decaying planet was compacted like cement in some areas, where other parts had dirt that was loose and shifty. Thankfully, this dirt was a bit of both, because cement doesn’t fly very well.

Buster, Sally and their now full-grown children were at the very end of the line close to where my team and I, along with Daisy, were watching under borrowed shade umbrellas to supervise the project.

The Wilder’s went back to the lab with Torie, who had chosen to shift to a human form that day so they could work out the final details for launching their attempt to extract water from 200-miles down.

Holy wonders...is that really gonna be possible?

“I don’t see any pups hanging around. You did say they could be here, right, Daisy?” I asked the mayor.

“There won’t be new pups until spring, because we only breed once a year, although our ancestors were always accused of having babies constantly, like rabbits,” she replied.

“Once a year? Geez, where’s the fun in that?” laughed Davis.

“Tell me about it,” shouted Buster, who was close enough to hear our conversation.

Sally’s quick retort outdid him, though.

“But that doesn’t stop us from practicing!” she said, with a sly giggle and we all had a good chuckle, before they directed their attention back to digging.

“People had all kinds of wrong ideas about us back then,” Daisy continued. “One of the biggest whoppers often told by ranchers was how their cattle would break legs stepping into prairie dog holes. It not only presumed that slow-grazing cows were blind and stupid, but clumsy, too. It probably happened a few times during stampedes long ago, but the folklore made it sound like a daily occurrence.”

“That reminds me,” I said, suddenly remembering a disturbing thing I read about prairie dogs in the scant bit of research I did. “Do prairie dogs really have the ability to kill humans with the bubonic plague?”

“No, silly!” bristled Daisy. “It was the fleas that infected both people and prairie dogs with the disease, but over 90 percent of bitten prairie dogs died, while very few people passed away of the plague in modern medical times. Still, it didn’t stop prairie dogs from getting the bad rap.”

On that depressing note, we turned our attention back to the ditch. Team Suburbia’s prairie dogs had disappeared and all we could see was dirt flying up to land in a heap at the edge. We had worked out the details for the project and went over it again with the town-folk first thing that morning.

The PD workers understood perfectly how to accomplish what was needed. They would dig in teams like layers on a three-dimensional chess board, where some would descend deeper, while others would hold back and excavate displaced dirt up the line. Then, when the dirt-pile got too high on one border, they would reverse the process to start heaping dirt up on the other side. The plan was to eventually have a huge, deep trench with a lowered opening on one narrow end, clear of obstruction for the water to flow out.

“How long do they think it will take?” asked Doc, who was prepared to handle any medical emergency that might arise.

“Less than two days,” I replied. “There will be fresh workers rotating every three hours in this stifling heat.”

We no longer had a deadline to meet for our transport home, but every day that went by on a planet in the death spiral was precarious at best.

“I feel like we should be helping, instead of just sitting here watching them work,” said Brown fanning herself with a clump of dead twigs. The others agreed.

“Hey, I offered our help, but they implied with a smile that we should basically stay the hell out of their way and not slow them down.”

“I can respect that,” said Davis, “because dragging our limp bodies up the wall of that ditch after we passed out from heatstroke would probably be a time consuming, pain in the ass.”

A few hours later, Moore and I, shuffled over to see how things were going at the lab, and as always, I welcomed the rush of cool air as we walked in the door. It was a small, pleasurable, thing, but I’d take it.

Wilder had returned to the settlement, so it was just Jones, Sara, Cassie, and Torie inside. He was standing there in a rare human form, as they worked at the main computer screen that covered half of one wall.

“Don’t tell me...let me guess,” I said, looking at the elderly, gray-haired disheveled gentleman. “Albert Einstein, right?”

“What gave me away?” asked Torie, who generally preferred to take the form of less complicated creatures without intricate speech ability. But in this instance he had to interact with his female science team, and felt it would be less distracting for them than being in his own form.

“How did you know? Was it the mop of gray hair or the look of intelligence and wisdom etched on my face?”

“Ah, I don’t know for sure, but could the size of your ego have given it away?” I teased the old guy.

“How is the plan going?” asked Moore, as he plopped down near the breeze of the air cooling unit.

“Very well, we think,” offered Sara. “So much is going to depend on Torie and Jonesy.”

Cassie started explaining how they intended to bath Torie’s bot-nytes with a list of chemicals that she started naming off, while explaining what each one was for, when I interrupted her.

“Da,da,da, un-uh,” I said wagging my finger in a halting motion. “Remember, young genius, not everyone is dazzled by brilliance when they don’t have a bloody clue what the heck you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, where’s that cocky Sheldon Cooper when you need him,” asked Moore again, sarcastically.

Cassie smiled patiently at us then gave Torie a sympathetic look.

“I got this,” said Jones, as the others turned their attention away from us simpletons and back to the equations on the board.

“Think of thousands of tiny bot-nytes coated with a chemical accelerant kinda like match-heads,” she explained.

“Okay,” Moore and I shook our heads in agreement.

“Now think of all those teeny-tiny, match-heads working their way through the Earth’s crust linked in a chain down as far as Tori can stretch it...are you with me?”

“Yeah,” we shook our heads in agreement like two trained parrots.

“Now consider the introduction of a slight electrical pulse—which is where my tail comes in (she held up her tail)—to that chain of specialty coated match-heads that will spark a communication with surrounding soil-bonded compounds...right? Then each compound in turn passes along the signal extended by the electrical pulse to reach the edge of the place where deep-water composites are entombed in long-buried ancient reservoirs.”

“Uh-huh,” we nodded in agreement, as we purposely let our heads roll back and our eyes glaze over.

“Can you boys guess what the signal will say?” she asked playfully.

“Nope,” we shook our heads from side-to-side.

“It will be a simple encoded message that says ‘release H20’ and if it works the way we hope...the compounds will coalesce...and there will be a chain reaction that should release water by hundreds of thousands of gallons over a fairly short time.”

Moore and I, cocked our heads to the right, and looked at our brilliant teacher.

“If it works, the water should reach the deep trench within a day and spill out the lower end to start cascading over the land’s surface.”

“It sounds so simple,” said Moore, with an eye roll. “Why didn’t the scientists do this before? Oh yeah, I remember...because they didn’t have any equipment big enough to drill down deep into the planet’s core and reach the water...so where did you get the brilliant idea to go smaller?”

“From you, Moore,” said Jones, with a laugh, remembering the day Moore told the story of Davis being attacked by thousands of sand hiebbies.

“I guess that makes you another Einstein, ’eh Moore?” I teased my friend, while I gazed at Jones, appreciating her humor and lack of condescension.

As Moore and I headed back to the shade umbrella to check on the digging project and give the rest of the team a chance to return to the lab and cool off for a while, he asked me a question I wasn’t prepared to answer.

“So, top dog, what’s up with you and Jones?”

Crap, was I that obvious?

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, c’mon. I’ve known you for a long time and I’ve seen how you look at her... which is surprising since she is a tall, hairy, burley, rather unfortunate looking monkey.”

“Yeah, you see...normally that would make me feel rather emasculated, but you have to remember that she is a female Rosenian in disguise. A funny, sweet and incredibly smart Rosenian female and I like the fact that we have gotten to understand each other in disguise without benefit of knowing personal appearances.”

“Yeah, but she is still a big, tall, really ugly, monkey,” Moore repeated with the emphasis on ugly.

“That’s the thing, because I don’t see her that way. And I like my reputation as a shallow, superficial, cad. So, if you tell anyone what I just said, I will contact your ex-wife if we ever get home and tell her you want her back again,” I said with a laugh.

“Oh, no...uh, man...that would require some serious consequences if you did that,” he laughed. “So, how does Jones feel about you?”

“Hard to say, because I’m just a rank-and-file captain in the Special Forces, which usually attracts a different level of intelligence, but I think she likes me...even if I am in a short, fluffy, toothy, four-footed prairie dog package with sexy, facial hair.”

“By the way, do you think we will ever really get back home?” asked Moore, switching to a serious tone. “At this point, I think I might even be glad to see my ex-wife again.”

“Sure I do. We will get home...somehow...I promise.”

As the word “promise” came out of my mouth I almost bit my tongue, because damn, I hated to make promises I might not be able to keep.