scifi

We found this place on Family Day one hundred years ago. It was not planed that way, it was just a random thing. The way universe works sometimes I guess.  

The planet was a bit radio active, but that never bothered us. Our colony ships had collected their fair share of galactic radioactivity in the three thousand year that they had been in space searching for planets like this one, besides--we were not expecting perfection.

It has been 99 year and 11 months and some days since the first ship touched down. Almost a hundred years have past since nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine people and my great, great Granma were thawed out of suspended cryogenic-sleep and let loose to populate.

In ten days it will be the centennial festival of Lander’s Day, a hundred of this planet’s years have nearly past since ten thousand people stumbled out into the bright light and blue skies and begun to make this place into our home.   

Today, the original ten thousand pioneers are now as many as one hundred and thirty-five thousand people. One-hundred and Thirty-five thousand people occupy what is not quit the jungle our ancestors found but still definitively a frontier. Consequently of the ever-increasing population, this centennial Lander’s Day, will be our biggest celebration ever. Because of the odd time-fraction missing from each day, this coming Lander’s day will as it did four years ago, fall on the same day as the home world’s Family day.

That means this year will be a totally celebrated holiday. In ten days not only will family’s get to celebrate the love they have for each other, but all adventurous space fairing bachelors and bachelorettes without families yet, will also spill out into the streets in song and drink to celebrate Lander’s Day.

Both of my favorite days of the year will be rolled into one unbelievable event and I am so looking forward to it. Journal Entry/ 0099-11-19/ Lilex Nedif.

Count Down: Ten days until festivities…

Moments later in a forest somewhere: You know its illegal to hunt them without a tag? You want to be sent Labor-side or something?”

“It is only illegal if we get caught, or if you tell on me. You’re not going to tattle--are you?”

No! It’s just I though I seen your mother in the forest yesterday, I think she has been tagging the pregnant females. She’s going to know something is up.”

“Don’t you think I know that? I know she has, that is all she ever does anymore.” Traxdan formed a wicked smile and went on. “That is how we’ll track em’.” Traxdan did not seem worried that his mother would find out and his bravodo rubbed of on Lilex.

Traxdan held in his hand a ball attached by a dainty chain to a ring on his pointing finger, when he flipped the ring with his other hand the ball split like a sectioned-out orange, each section’s lens did its own color and part to project a virtual display that now appeared above his palm. 

“You see these?” he pointed to two red dots on one side of the half-hallo-globe. “Those are you and I. You see these? He was now pointing at a dozen blue dots across the half-hallo-globe, floating randomly on the other side of the half sphere floating above his hand. “These are our quarries.”

“Pregnant females?” aren’t you the noble hunter Traxdan--look at me, I poached a slow, defenseless and pregnant female, how proud I am?” At that, Lilex laughed loud enough to herself so that Traxdan could here then called Traxdan a fool under her breath just soft enough so the he could not.

She was not looking forward to this hunt, but she did want to be around Traxdan. He was the only boy her age that came this fare inland, everyone else she knew stayed by the shore’s city, were they building the new mega-ship.

Lilex aimed low with her comment and hit. Traxdan’s masculinity was her target.

“We’re not going to kill the cows--idiot!” Traxdan, only tried not to sound offended. “We’re only going to use their trackers to find the herd, to find young ferocious bucks. We’ll get one and we’ll eat as much of it as we can and then burry the rest. All my mom will see is the fat cows scatter, she is not going to know why or that we’ve even been out here--unless of course you open your big proboscis.”

The two of them unquestionable knew how to play each other’s bendle strings. Lilex hated being refer to as a tattletale and Traxdan was just coming into male-maturity, and anyone who said contrary would get a taste of his yet untested and out control, new-adult male hormones.

Lilex was scared of get caught but she liked the sound of fresh meat; she was tired of the rehydrated ship rations that they had been feeding the kids lately. Some fresh meat would be a nice change; they use to get bull meat all the time--not lately thought. “Ok. I’ll go but only if you promise not to kill any cows.”

“Of coarse not, besides my mom would see that from her tracker at camp.”

Lilex did not like the look that Traxdan gave her. She could tell that he was using semantics again to lie without lying outright, so she thought hard and added just as a safety. “No killing the cubs either.”

“All right--all right already.” Traxdan was only waiting for Lilex to agree, and with her stipulations, she sort of did. That was enough for Traxdan.

Traxdan did not even like bull meat that much anymore. He was only hoping to impress Lilex by showing her his hunting skills. He had seen a bull cleaned-out once, his dad had killed it and they cooked over an open fire last Family Day. When his dad got to cleaning its guts, towards then end when the bull’s waist spilled on the ground, the smell was awful and it left Traxdan with a unscrupulous overtone every time he smelt the meat that he used to love so much.

Lilex had never seen one cleaned and if she had she probably would not like it either. More so, if she had not started going to alien environmental adjustment class for her required science credits, she probable would think that the delicious meat she loved, was grown in the plastic man-pack packs that they sold them at the grocers. Even Traxdan thought that they grew in plastic packs until he started helping his mom study the alien life forms in the forests a year ago. 

Shelly, Traxdan’s mom, was the professor of alien environmental adjustment 1550, the advanced class; and she would be absolutely pissed off if she knew where her palm tracker was right then, and right then--she was looking for it because the camp tracker had just bonked-out.

“Has anyone seen my palm tracker?” Shelly’s highly distinguishable voice bellowed through the camp and resented of the canyon walls. It send shivers down the spines of those students reading and writing in their tents. “I know I left it in my field pack.” She thought, so she yelled again “Who has my tracker Gerch-Damnit!”

Fifteen innocent students where shattered by Shelly Lizdon’s commanding voice while fearful for whoever it was that had taken Miss Lizdon’s palm tracker. Meanwhile two guilty students were now out of earshot of her blood curtailing commands and in hot pursuit of young bull that they had singled out from the herd.

“You almost got him that time Traxdan!” Lilex yelled out trying not to let him hear her laughter. Traxdan looked like fool chasing what he called a ferocious buck.

“You can tell it is a ferocious buck because of its hair is shorter and because of how white the razor sharp teeth are” Traxdan had said. To Lilex it looked about half as big as the pregnant cows were. Traxdan had also said that the males are usually smaller, but Lilex was not sure that was true, luckily they were much faster than the cows.

Traxdan had chased it out into a field, it was the ferocious buck­, then Traxdan, followed by a fat cow, so fat it was almost waddling after the two. It was quite a sight and Lilex could not help but laugh. Traxdan who did not see the cow in pursuit, thought Lilex was laughing at his blundering attempts at catching the spritely little buck.

Each time Traxdan bared down on the buck it would change direction and Traxdan grab noting but dirt, and the little buck would emerge once again unscathed from the cloud of dust, darting off in seemingly effortless motion. The icing on the cake that had Lilex laughing so hard that the sides of her neck begun to ache, was that each time the dust from Traxdan’s many failures started to clear, the same cow came waddling on through in what seemed like delayed speed, barking and screeching in the most peculiar manner. It was a sound that Lilex had never heard, it sounded like no other animal on this planet that she had studied yet--she did not know what make of the whole fiasco, just that now she was rooting for the buck, she hoped it got away from the overshadowing Traxdan’s clumsy hunting.

“That’s enough man, let it go Traxdan!” The last run past by close enough for Lilex to see how much bigger Traxdan was than the buck, but more to the point, Lilex could see how much bigger the cow was than the buck. “She was not trying to mate with it, she was trying to save it--it was her cub” Lilex wished they weren’t out here breaking the law because she would love to be the first one to document this kind of behavior. “Cut-it-out Traxdan, it’s just a cub!”

Not much was know about the animals on this planet yet, but they had learned of a few things about the type Traxdan was hunting. The first thing was the reason most everyone knew about the beasts--they tasted like the little flightless birds that seemed to scavange off of the beast’s scraps. The second thing they learned about the beasts was the reason why the grocers stopped selling so much of it, and why you now needed a tag to lawfully hunt them--they had something to do with the propagation of the trees and the trees had something to do with the breathable air. So until we learned more about how these animals made the trees grow, strict harvesting laws were imposed on them.

Shelly Lizdon, the acting professor over the alien environmental adjustment burial, the very professor who was teaching 1550, advanced alien environmental adjustment, a class of 15, had already search all the tents and packs back at the research camp and now was retracing her steps from tagging cows the day before to see if maybe she had lost the palm tracker while tagging the feral cows.          

Miss Lizdon’s job was to find that out, how they made trees. She had, over the last ten years since the bands on harvesting its meat was emplaced, learned tons about the animals responsible for planting the trees but what she was about to learn this moment would not only destroy the study that she was almost ready to submit to the alien environment acclimation board or the A.E.A.V. but it would also annihilate the way all of us looked at this world.

This discovery would start with the whole class coming over the distant ridge and finding her missing palm tracker, which her son was now wearing.

“I mean it Traxdan, stop it” Lilex could not se the class on the ridge behind her but they could see both of them and hear her pleading with Traxdan. All Lilex saw was the little cub was tiring out and it stopped being funny about the time Traxdan’s claws ripped into the cubs arm and the cow in pursuit fell to her knees and begun secreting fluid from her eyes. Lilex did not remember these animals only had two eyes before then, for some reason she remembered them having four eye like she had.

The cub’s arm now flung around limp and it could not keep its balance like it had been able to earlier when it seemed to effortlessly dart and duck away from Traxdans attacks. But this time, with in three seconds form when Lilex last yelled or objections to Traxdan, he had the cub in a strait line up and pounced.

The same cloud of dust spewed from Traxdan’s impact for the soil, Lilex held her breath waiting for the little thing the break out of the dust one more time, but the dust settled and all that was seen was Traxdan’s head lifting up and falling down, he was pushing his proboscis over and over again into the flesh cub, it was done.

“TRAXDAN!” Lilex fell to her knees, Miss Lizdon’s famous shrill scream was loosed right behind her, Traxdan heard in too. “Had she watched to whole thing” Lilex wondered.