The Rookie is learning quickly how to deal with the trail of destruction and ruin, caused by those most wasteful of all DNA-based beings, those legendary and horrible Humyns. They have left their mark everywhere…
The Rookie knew the stories. They were common knowledge where he was from. Yet, he took the job anyway. Times were tough. He would be among the first wave to set down on the exoplanet and for this, he would be given hazard pay. Tales of what the Humyns had become were as varied as the tellers. From the photo ganglion of seasoned veterans, the stories were more believable and no less unsettling. Eons ago, a number in time so large as to be inconceivable to any in the middle stage of life, Humyn business owners had established mining colonies on nearby exoplanets. Workers had emptied the interior of ore until the dark rock was little more than a husk.
Once the job was complete, rather than pay the fuel cost to return the workers and their families home, they had cast the exoplanets out of their artificial orbits, concealing the crime and marooning thousands of fellow Humyns on an interstellar drift. The Rookie tried and failed to conceive of a species capable of doing this to their own kind. He had been in the mid-larval phase for nearly one-hundred-fifty unified years, and even with all that schooling, the best he had managed in ancient Humyn Economics courses was a high D. There was simply no logic he could divine from the separation of a species into subsets based on accumulation of shiny ore.
On his planet, gold was abundant. Creatures who hoarded it would be viewed with concern, even compassion, because obviously, they were crazy. Food and knowledge were the only true forms of currency The Rookie had ever known. Sex too, of course. But for that, one needed a large totem, and he was still eleven hundred unified years shy of sexual maturity. In the meantime, The Rookie had an Impenwell’s worth of school debt to pay off which he could either satisfy on the heels of his flippers in the Headmaster’s officer after hours, or out here in the inky blackness, playing ambassador to the Humyns’ embarrassing past.
Of the two options, The Rookie preferred the latter only by a little.
#
Humyns had shed their debris into space and in the meantime, evolved into a civilized, sentient species capable of collective consciousness. They even held regret over the mistakes of their shared history. A true sign of enlightenment. They had abandoned mating in favor of parthenogenesis, the preferred method of reproduction in higher lifeforms. On the intergalactic council, Humyns were well respected, which was why species in neighboring star clusters agreed to intercept these rogue planets as a gesture of goodwill. Ancient man had seeded the sky with abandoned mining colonies in their lust for precious ore, and the end results varied.
Reports returned from some rocks where all that remained of man’s presence there were fossilized algae factories. The occasional bone was discovered. But nothing living. Elsewhere, on exoplanets that had not received a fatal pummeling from gamma rays, plant life had exploded and evolved. One of man’s greatest contributions to the collective good came from an exoplanet named Rosco. Within a hundred years of their exile, the miners had broken into factions and killed each other over resources in typical primitive Humyn fashion. In the absence of their meddling, and over millions of years, the farmed algae evolved into wild jungles, rich with exotic alkaloids.
One such species, the Din-Howler fern, provides precognition when ground into a paste and smeared liberally over the synovial hernia. Many fatal conflicts are avoided, thanks to this little cornflower blue plant which many keep potted in their homes near an east facing window. Other results have not been quite so positive. On another unnamed exoplanet, referred to only as “That One”, or “That World”, an entire team of brave ambassadors were lost to a race of carnivorous puddles.
Liquid in the vacuum of space and powered by a radically advanced photosynthesis, the de-evolved muck maintains primitive jealousies, including territorialism. The team of ambassadors never stood a chance. Unable to set flipper on the unnamed world, the best the experts are able to postulate is that the carbon-based, homogenized goo shares a common ancestor with the organic warehouses the miners once employed to build an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Able to form sublimely and attack without provocation, the puddle people are the stuff of a child’s nightmare.
They appear as a black mist covering most of the southern hemisphere of “That World”. In ten million years, “That World” will enter the interior of the galaxy. On its current trajectory, it runs a serious risk of passing dangerously close to the supermassive black hole at its center, and should it slip over the eternal midnight falls of the event horizon and be chewed up by the king cosmic trash compactor, no one on this side of the spectacle will view it with anything remotely approaching sadness.
#
The Rookie thought about this and other stories like it as the vessel prepared for final approach. The red blister below concealed countless untold horrors, he was sure. An atmosphere comprised primarily of hydrogen, with pockets of ocean and inland bodies of water as big as oceans on the world where he had lived up until recently, it is assumed at some point in the exoplanet’s history, it passed within the influence of a star that melted the subcutaneous ice. An event that followed after separated the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. Somewhere in the red haze separating two visible ice caps, a factory continued to keep the surface a balmy 72 degrees.
“We set down in ten minutes!” The Lieutenant barked, over the swelling noise of atmospheric turbulence buffeting the ship’s underbelly.
How is it possible? The Rookie wondered.
“Don’t worry,” The Lieutenant said, noticing The Rookie’s anxiety, “This rock’s dead!”
What he referred to is the absence of electromagnetism found on most Humyn space debris. Pillaged of a metal core by ancient miners, the resultant shell is incapable of resisting radiation. What is more, low gravity prevents thick atmospheres. And yet, evidence to the contrary lay just beneath them, The Rookie knew.
He gave The Lieutenant a furtive nod, eager to be done with this exchange. If he’s trying to make me feel better, it isn’t working, he thought. And if the plan is to placate the new guy with obviously untrue statements because he thinks I’m a moron, all he manages to achieve is turn my fear into anger. Which, The Rookie considered in a moment of clarity, might have been the Lt’s plan all along.
#
“Ten Seconds!”
The upper stage lifeform bellowed through his photo ganglion as a series of frantic bioluminescent bursts. The Rookie braced for impact. Several of his internal sphincters were pinched so tight he wondered how he would ever convince them to proceed with normal bodily eliminations again. If there is life here, The Rookie thought, my first experience with it will be prostrate, purging key elements into the soil. Ten. Nine. Eight. The floor of the vessel bucked wildly, throwing The Rookie against the bonds of his harness. Seven. Six. I should have blown the Professor, he thought, as a sudden destabilization in atmospheric pressure opened the hatch on one of his sphincters.
One which was blessedly free of foul-smelling contents. His stink bladder was kept in check behind a three-chambered diaphragm. But even it threatened to toss its proverbial cookies as The Lieutenant hollered in blinding strobes, “Five! Four! Three!” What sort of Humyns call this world home? It was a question he might have been bothered to ask had he not instead been more concerned with keeping his innards on the inside where they belonged. “Two! One!” And then, blackness.
#
When The Lieutenant was still a mid-level being, he had set sail on an updraft and there, germinated in the clouds of his home world into something truly magnificent. He had a proud mane of tentacles and a tail with a crescent barb. When he balanced on his hind legs, The Lieutenant cut an imposing figure, which was partially the reason he excelled at civil service. Unlike the pukes he was charged with leading, this was not The Lieutenant’s first rodeo. He had served as civil police on eight different worlds. His domestic union was on the rocks and his zygotes hated him for all the moving around they had to put up with, but he had achieved a station of power in record time.
Three Humyn life cycles was all it required. On the cold world of Eliris2b, sometimes referred to as “2 be or Not 2 be”, he had been assaulted by a race of stone age primates who had developed a second set of arms seemingly for the soul purpose of throwing more feces. The Lieutenant believed he had seen the worst of what the seeded universe had to offer. He, like so many of his kind, despised the Humyn presence. Had witnessed little good in it. And did what he was ordered, ultimately for the same reason as the pukes he was in charge of.
Times were tough, and those with a job were loath to flash their synovial hernias too loudly within the vicinity of those with the markings to remove them from their place. The Lieutenant didn’t like his zygotes, but was still advanced enough to realize they were his responsibility to care for until the time came he was no longer viable and could then be absorbed by them; turned into useful fuel for the impending mitosis. Still, he kept the man-monkeys in mind as the interior pressure slowly equalized and the hatch disengaged.
#
Of the discovered exoplanets, only one had been home to an advanced subspecies of Humynoid. On it, the natives were slight. No more than fifty-two unified pounds; their bones fluted, skin hanging loose and semitransparent. The light from The Lieutenant’s ship had pierced them like arrows. They screamed, and many collapsed. In the dark, once pacified, their language came intermittently in bursts, in the form of stylized clicks, which The Lieutenant found maddening since his native speak was didactic light form.
“Shut up!” He pulsed into their midst.
The piercing bioluminescence had the desired effect. But it also killed one of the chirping abominations. He had been occupied with formal reports for weeks thereafter. There had even been talk of a demotion. Since then, The Lieutenant kept his synovial hernia squarely in check.
#
Outside, the exoplanet was eerily still. On his home world, The Rookie was used to hearing a clatter of biodiversity in the soil and in the air so rich as to be like static. He had been warned of this eventuality in the briefing.
“Small worlds are home to simple organisms. Don’t expect much in the way of colorful pollen spreaders or large herbivores.”
He had come expecting to find a ghost world and was not, on first observation, disappointed by what he gleamed through tendrils of rust colored fog. Tall, spiny stalks – what Humyns had once called trees – riddled the land in orderly rows, as if placed there deliberately. In a distant past and far away on the island of Madagascar, there once existed a tree called the Baobab which bore some resemblance. But The Rookie had no way of knowing this. He stared up at the nearest specimen until his throat stalk craned back as far as it would go. Basic training had taught him how to subdue enemy forces by less than lethal means. But the Humyn history courses had left something to be desired. Particularly, biology.
“Legs,” The Lieutenant said. “They look like Humyn legs that haven’t seen a razor in a while.” The Lieutenant’s synovial hernia flickered with mirth at his own witticism. He knew more about what they had the potential to face than anyone else here. In this sector of space, The Lieutenant was the unequivocal authority on all things Humyn. Know your enemy, he had joked during an infrequent rest bit. He was here on a mission of peace, but was ready to kill at a moment’s notice. He had seen the outcome of hesitation and had no desire to be absorbed by the soil of this strange world, rather than in a soft bed by his zygotes.
At any cost, he would be returning home. This promise The Lieutenant made to himself at the onset of every mission. Up ahead, the abundance of “cankle” trees forked into roads. Preliminary surveillance had eluded to the possibility of religious sites. Massive stones erected in circles at strategic points around the globe. They would have been viewable from space had it not been for the crimson haze. Seismic imagery had confirmed their existence, but not hinted at their function. Humyns were a treasure trove of strange customs. The Lieutenant knew of tribes in Papua New Guinea who feasted on the brains of their enemies.
Ritualistic sacrifice was not an unheard of practice in primitive man. As it was, they had landed within slithering distance of one of these manmade structures. Fourth dimensional beings in high command had assured The Lieutenant’s superiors that if a Humyn remnant existed, this would be the most likely place to find them. Of confidence in creatures who experience cause and effect simultaneously, The Lieutenant had little. If their intel was so reliable, how had the events on “That World” taken place? Unless the wanton sacrifice of peacekeepers served some higher function which had yet to reveal itself.
The Lieutenant seriously doubted it. He had been around long enough and seen enough to reject super beings on general principal. He would do his duty, and see it through to the best of his ability, but it didn’t mean he had to like it. Diplomacy had not been what he signed up for, he liked reminding himself when situations grew perilous. And yet, in the vast expanse of his career, spanning over three phoenix phases, and hundreds of internal rings, it seemed all high command wanted was a gentle solution.
“These creatures are dangerous,” he had said once during a debriefing, when his direct superior, a high being shaped like a large piece of broccoli, had asked him to speak plainly. “They are not like the Humyns you know. They’ve had millions of unified years, alone in space, learning to adapt to environments that would make even the bravest shiver. It isn’t fair what was done to them. But such is life.”
Later that evening, they had gone out for a drink together, both having served together on similar peace-keeping missions. The large stalk of broccoli pursed its synovial hernia and sighed a shade of infrared nearly invisible.
“You and I both know it’s bullshit, Bob. But what are we supposed to do? Humyns own fifty-one percent of the dreamscape. If they want to make reparations for the Industrial Revolution, who are we to stand in their way?”
“We don’t have to stand in their way!” The Lieutenant seethed, “Let them deal with their own white guilt!”
The broccoli’s pigment softened to a placating shade of blue The Lieutenant immediately resented.
“You know as well as I do that isn’t an option. These exoplanets are too far away now for them to do anything constructive about it directly. The job falls on us. We didn’t ask for it. But there it is. In terms you’ll appreciate, we didn’t ask for the ball to land in our backyard. But now that it’s here, it’s our job as a responsible species to do the right thing with it.”
“I’d prefer to throw it back,” The Lieutenant flickered into his drink.
This rebuttal served only to amuse the broccoli who broke out in a sudden pox of traditional Scottish plaid of the clan MacGregor.
“Fuck you, Bill,” The Lieutenant replied, but by then, his synovial hernia was puckered into an unwilling smile.
Both creatures laughed a long series of diaphragm undulating hee-haws. Others at the bar spared them awkward sidelong glances until they too flittered with mirth.
#
A sample of the bark revealed Humyn DNA. The Lieutenant shook his head in disgust, his long, ropy tentacles swaying listlessly.
“Fuck you, Bill,” he repeated in a shade of light too low to conceptualize, thinking of that long ago memory.
“What do we do now, Lieutenant?” The Rookie asked.
“Continue collecting samples,” The Lieutenant instructed. “You,” he said, pointing with the barbed end of his helix tail at another in his group, “Clip those toenails.”
The frightened, overgrown phytoplankton nodded, then hurriedly set about its task.
At the base of every mutated Baobab Tree, at the root cluster, were toenails as wide across as a landing platform and thick as double gauge steel. They grew in bunches, like bananas, and curled inwards, like eagle talons. The ones that were ingrown were angry and inflamed, or healed over with scar tissue, depending on age. There were factories, The Lieutenant reminded himself. Factories which had been used originally to replicate oxygen-producing algae that could be outfitted for other tasks once the exiles came to terms with the fact there would be no rescue. A miniature ecosystem populated by scientists, criminals, students working off debt, a smorgasbord of specialists; each the company had deemed expendable.
They could terraform. But there would be no way back home. Even if they built a ship. By the time it was complete, the distance would be too great. And with most of the rocks’ precious ore removed, their future was bleak at best. And yet, some had survived. On other worlds, he had found evidence of a Humyn presence for thousands of years after the exile. Culture, traditions, conflict, reparations, until finally, the Humyns went extinct. Fossil records indicated it was most often a sudden event. Calcified mummies sandwiched between sediment layers attested that the end had come all at once.
Radiation exposure was the most common culprit. Disease was also common. Millions of years adrift in the vastness of space, it was not at all uncommon for The Lieutenant to find zero traces of Humyn DNA on a world. Here, there was an abundance in the trees with hairy legs and gnarly roots in dire need of a pedicure. Humyn life persisted, and for that, The Lieutenant managed a grudging respect. Once the final specimen was preserved and stored, The Lieutenant flashed a series of commands. His group appeared more than happy to press on.
“This place is spooky,” The Rookie commented.
The Lieutenant craned his neck back and barked a loud spotlight beam high into the canopy. The hanging fruit on the lowest branches was just barely visible. Through the pinkish fog, several Humyn heads dangled from branches by their hair. The Lieutenant had never met a Humyn, but he had seen images.
“You don’t know the half of it,” The Lieutenant said calmly, as one of the heads, disturbed by the beam, opened its eyes and began blinking rapidly.
#
“It’s fruit?” The Rookie asked. “How is that possible?”
In his lap, he held the head of a middle-aged man with jaundiced skin and male pattern baldness. What hair remained was black and seal-slick with grease. The Lieutenant looked at the head with grim consternation. He wasn’t sure if the tree’s fruit registered what it stared fixedly at, but the effect was unsettling.
“Crack it open,” The Rookie suggested, “See if there’s any seeds in there.”
“No,” The Lieutenant replied.
He didn’t need to see the fruit’s contents spilled out over the eerily spongy soil to know these were the means of reproduction for the Baobab trees.
Somewhere in the tree’s history, there had been a melding of genetic material with Humyn survivors. These disturbing, dismembered heads, hanging in bunches high in the canopy, were an expression of a long ago mutation. Perhaps, a Humyn legacy.
“Collect a few more,” he said, gruffly. “The rest of you, establish a perimeter.”
In the time it had taken to harvest the first head, a standard unified hour, The Lieutenant had come to a decision about this planet .It was cursed. It had no soul or it had sold it in a back alley deal for what amounted to dingle berries at the current exchange rate.
Before his synovial hernia, the head fruit blinked rapidly as its cheeks sallowed. Eyes glazed as its pigment went from yellow to gray to shit-colored brown. Where The Rookie had touched it, bruises welled up as if it had been struck. Fruit, The Lieutenant thought. Fruit that bruised like bananas smooshed at the bottom of a ship’s hull as soon as it is removed from a nutrient source. A couple more, for research purposes, couldn’t hurt. Though he feared by time his crew got the specimens on ice, they would be reduced to an organic slurry that smelled like garbage water.
What the hell, he thought. Probably the only sign of Humyns we’re likely to find left on this rock. As soon as he thought this, the flickering death agonies, like a howling pulsar in a quiet suburban galaxy, pierced the red mist, a stone’s throw away due east. It illuminated the area between the legs like a fucking supernova and grew so bright, The Lieutenant had to shield his synovial hernia. Then it faded down to nothing. He knew what it was right away and did not hesitate, even as the rest of his team wobbled dazedly. The scream was always brightest just before death.
#
They found a puddle of silica gel and a few semitransparent slivers. Tendrils from the lower lifeform known as Smitty.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” The Rookie said upon seeing the mess left behind by the eastern perimeter guard.
Although The Lieutenant agreed with the sentiment, he couldn’t show it. They had a job to do, and if he showed signs of this being anything other than business as usual, it would be a miracle if they got off this rock alive.
“Steven,” he said, narrowing his synovial hernia at the trembling leaf near the puddle where Smitty had gone supernova.
“Get those heads back to the ship. Prepare for departure. The rest of you,” he added, “Follow me.”
Steven, whose celestial form varied according to who was looking at him, hopped to obey. He currently appeared as a blood-speckled sneeze guard above a withered salad bar with the brace of fruit-heads hovering in tandem nearby. Alone, Steven could pilot the ship. Worst case scenario, should they all die here, the freeze-dried heads and the filthy sneeze guard’s account would give high command some vague indication of what had happened. The death benefits paid to his zygotes would assure at least one of them could afford to go to college.
The other two would have enough left over to apprentice in the mountains and eat watery soup and freeze their hindquarters off every night. But it would be good for them. And who knew? One or both might choose a life of civil service. More than he could hope for with their present, lackadaisical outlook on existence.
#
“Get behind the one with the ingrown toenail!” The Lieutenant hollered brightly.
He watched as The Rookie dove into a snarled root cluster, fluid lapping over the rim of his head. The fluid hissed and steamed where it landed. The Lieutenant winced inwardly. Already, the fluid bath where the dreaming fetus slept was a quarter low. Another hit like the one it had just received might shatter the clear confines of The Rookie’s head, rendering the dreamer helpless. A dry fetus, incapable of achieving delta waves, was of no use to him.
“Stay down!” The Lieutenant hollered.
Again, a barrage of Humyn heads zipped by. The ones that collided with the soil bounced and rolled. Ones that hit the hairy legged “cankle” trees burst open upon impact. Black seeds and watery pink pulp went flying in all directions in the low gravity. High in the canopy, natives babbled incoherently. The Lieutenant had heard of this phenomenon on other worlds. Creatures who talked with their skin by manipulating light. More advanced species could even bend it, saying nothing, appearing mute.
Thankfully, the natives appeared to be in the larval phase of their evolution. Flickering in and out of existence like gossamer curtains in a breeze. They ranted, hooted, and hollered indignation. Still, even cavemen were notoriously vile creatures with their stunted brainpans and propensity for rape and hair pulling. The Lieutenant recalled what had been done to Smitty. His barbed tail salivated for vengeance.
“What do we do, boss!” The Rookie hollered over the din of chromatophores.
To his credit, The Rookie hadn’t suggested running. Maybe there was a future for him in this outfit after all, The Lieutenant considered, morosely. Shrapnel from an exploding head caught The Lieutenant in the sphincter. He spit convulsively, wondering if he had just been exposed to some ultra-powerful neurotoxin. Diplomacy, having gone out the window, was replaced by a wild urge to tie the many limbed creatures in a knot and roast their sorry carcasses in a stew with herbs and spices. Fuck it, he thought, slipping out from behind an obscene web of varicose veins.
Half a dozen heads with rapidly blinking eyes flew in his direction. He dodged the fruit easily, ducking, parrying, and when the last head ricocheted off a nearby Baobab tree and erupted hot viscera pulp all over his good BDU’s, The Lieutenant lashed out with a bark of white radiant heat so intense it singed the hairs off every tree in a nearby radius. The wraiths shrieked, their feeble limbs shriveling inwards till each resembled Bill when he’d had too much to drink. A steaming head of cauliflower.
One by one, their ability to metabolize light overloaded, they fell out of the trees. The Lieutenant had had some misgivings about shouting on a planet with a hydrogen atmosphere, but seeing the results, he felt good about his decision.
“Get these dumb bastards loaded on the boat,” he said to The Rookie.
#
Aboard the Zip Drive, Steven became an independent variable expressed by y = f(x).
“Pull yourself together, damn it!” The Lieutenant said.
He was in no mood for whimsy. In the hull, knocked out by the heat of The Lieutenant’s rage, were twenty-three live specimens. The most any had ever managed to capture alive. If they survived the trip to port, it would mean a new assignment, somewhere easy, with nice weather. It would mean a promotion and maybe even a little time off to spend with his zygotes.
He didn’t relish the thought of time spent with the zygotes, but it sure beat the bum’s rush he’d been getting lately from high command. But first, he had to know what it was exactly he had. It took a database of ancient earth biology approximately 0.13 unified nanoseconds to cross compare features of the natives with known specimens. It settled on an extinct creature known as an octopus. Except, this exoplanet variety thrived in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and had hands of the knobby, white knuckled variety common in Humyns.
Everything was intact. Even the suction cups and beaks. With little need for bones and traditional muscle in the low gravity, the ancient survivors had mixed their genes with that of the cephalopod. It had worked so well, the resultant hybrid had thrived, relatively unchanged, for millennia, in what had to be the harshest environment imaginable.
“They’re gonna shit themselves and catch fire when they see what we’ve brought,” The Rookie said.
This time, The Lieutenant allowed his pert sphincter the slightest grin. On the dashboard, a hula girl swayed listlessly as they broke through the upper strata of the red atmosphere and leveled out in the comfort of sheer inky eternity. On deck, The Rookie’s fetal polyp dreamed contentedly while the rest of him played fourth dimensional chess with Steven. They had earned the R and R, The Lieutenant reflected. It had been a hell of a day.
End
