anonymous
The radio scanner beeped as the small planet came into view. Kadie looked up from her phone screen and looked at the radar. It showed the little speck of blue that was the planet they would be researching for the next few months. ISEU (Intergalactic Space Exploration Union) had found the pathetically small ball of rocks a few weeks ago. They didn’t see it as anything important so, of course, they gave the mission to Kadie.
Next to her, the cruiser pilot (James, Jerold, Jack?) switched gears and the space cruiser shifted out of light speed. A rough jerk hit the spacecraft, Kadie had still not gotten used to it. The pilot, however, didn’t seem to care and effortlessly switched on the landing gears.
“You’d think that after millennia of space technology being available, they’d have found a more comfortable way to switch out of light speed,” A voice muttered behind her. Kadie looked over her shoulder, at the youthful face of her assistant staring at her. He was nineteen, on the mission as a student. She was pretty sure his name was Rowan… or was it Robin?
“Well, I don’t pretend to know anything about space tech so… who knows. Maybe it’s not possible. Maybe we already risk being torn into a million pieces every time we switch gears.” Kadie said, twisting her head back to her phone where she was scrolling through her mission assignment.
“They really don’t care about this planet do they?” She said, half to herself.
“What makes you think that?” She resisted, sighing when she once again heard Rowan’s voice behind her, why couldn’t he just shut up? Every mutter, every event, every noise, he had to comment on. Barely ten minutes had passed on the flight without her hearing his voice.
“Well, this mission assignment. Usually, they’re detailed and involve a lot of sciency-mumbo-jumbo but this one… It looks like a school science project. Is there water? Has it been inhabited? They’re not even checking to see whether it could be a colony,” Kadie complained (Rowan would say that she whined).
She had a nagging sense that Rowan was about to open his mouth to speak just as the cruiser made contact with Planet X124’s surface. She almost tumbled off her chair but was able to regain her balance by inelegantly shoving her hands forward. Her glasses had slid off her nose and, seeing as she was now near blind, she clumsily fumbled across the floor. There was a tap on her hand and she felt her glasses being dropped into her palm. She put them on and was faced with the ever so annoying Rowan smiling at her.
“Let’s go, our scanners have confirmed breathable oxygen. It’s safe to leave the ship,” he said. Using her palms to push herself off the floor, Kadie stood up. She grabbed her black bomber jacket from the back of her chair and shrugged it on. She reached into her backpack and strapped her gun to her thigh. She scanned herself, checking whether she’d missed anything. When she was happy with her gear, she walked toward the door,
“Shouldn’t you tie your hair back? Or put on contacts?” She was really starting to hate that voice. However, TwittyMcTwitFace had a point, she took a hair tie from her wrist and tied her long raven hair into a messy bun on the top of her head.
“Thank you for mentioning my hair,” she said, through gritted teeth, “but I am not taking off my glasses.” She stated, trying to keep some of her pride. She realized then that she should probably make sure that her ‘assistant’ (more like eternal annoyance) was prepared, and looked back at him. Gun, knives, flashlight. She nodded at him, he nodded back. She reached out for the door latch.
This was her favourite part of a mission, seeing a new place. No intelligent beings had ever set foot there, it was uncharted territory, and she was in charge of putting it on the map.
When the door opened, the first thing that hit her was the fact that it didn’t look like an uninhabited planet. There were buildings. Most of them were cracked and covered in dust, giving the entire area an orange hue. Some of the building’s roofs had caved in but, aside from that, it looked fit for living. Except for the fact that it was absolutely and completely abandoned. Kadie took a breath, the atmosphere seemed healthy, a slight chemical smell in the air but nothing bad. She began walking. She could hear Rowan’s heavier footsteps trailing behind her own, taking in the situation.
“HQ didn’t tell us that this place was habited?” He said softly, the question evident in his words.
“They didn’t care enough to find out. Besides, I don’t think it’s populated. It looks completely abandoned, with no signs of recent life. Look at the size of this place, the size of the buildings, there would’ve been hundreds of thousands of people living here… yet it’s empty,” she said, looking around more trying to look for signs or recognizable writing. She came across a red hexagon-shaped sign, with white unrecognizable markings on it. They were big and blocky, she took a picture of them with her research camera. She kept walking, all the trees had orange leaves, it had rained recently and the sky was grey. She’d never experienced this weather before. Back home, the leaves were green and it was always sunny. It rained once a month, on the second Tuesday, when the government turned the sprinklers on.
She walked toward a building that seemed to be mostly intact and scanned it with her phone,
“Rowan…this building dates back to 12,000 years ago,” She said, scanning again to check.
“That’s insane. Our buildings looked like this just a few centuries ago. We didn’t even exist as a species 12,000 years ago. And, my name is actually Robin.”
“There were no species then, or so we thought. Do you know what that means Rowan?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “It means that we might’ve just discovered the first-ever intelligent species. It’s even crazier to think that they probably existed for more than 12,000 years because they had to develop all of the technologies needed to build these houses and skyscrapers. I’d put it closer to 20,000.”
She walked toward the door of the building and closed her eyes to shield them from the cloud of dust that attacked her from the hallway. She began moving inward, she heard the click of Rowan’s flashlight behind her. It was somehow comforting to know that he was still there. There were some familiar things, a dining room with a table and chairs, a couch, something that looked vaguely like a TV. Then there were the things that she’d only ever seen in history museums: a kettle, coffee machine, stove, and a frying pan. In the corner of the room with the couch, she saw another table, smaller than the dining table and covered in things. There were small wooden sticks that were filled with, as her scanner identified, lead, and something that looked like a laptop. It was about half an inch thick and on the top was a logo that looked like an apple.
“Rowan, could you put this is in your bag? I’d like to research it a bit.” She asked, without looking at him.
“My name is Robin.” he corrected behind her, putting the silver device into his bag.
“Sorry Rowan.” Katie kept looking around the house, ignoring the huff that sounded behind her, at one point running her fingers across the wall, brushing away a centimeter-thick layer of dust.
“There haven’t been people here for a long time,” she said. She looked back at Rowan and saw him drawing smiley faces on the wall.
“Seriously?” He looked over at her and smiled.
“Just adding a bit of light to dark places,” he said, continuing his drawing, scattering smiley faces over the cracked walls.
“That’s not exactly important, is it?”
“Neither is this entire mission,” he threw her words back at her. Katie raised an eyebrow even though Rowan (she decided to stick with Rowan) couldn’t see it.
“I think this mission got a lot more important as soon as we stepped out. People used to live here. They seem to have had exactly the same history as us, except they never progressed past this. So… what happened?”
Elements Magazine 