Author note: This excerpt begins with the Prologue, a discussion between the human biospheric intelligence, Gaia, and her alien counterpart, Hydra.

The second part of the excerpt consists of Chapter 5: A Long Way Home. The speaker is Candela, a member of an alien species (Grovians) with an alternation of generations between tree-like diploid mother trees and mobile haploid sexual forms called ambuli. Candela and her friend Fendra have been used like draft animals by humans, but have recently discovered something about their long history on Earth and must decide whether to accompany humans and another alien species (Jadderbadians) to attempt to locate an ancient artifact called The Citadel. DataWurms are ancient human AI devices that have attempted to preserve pre-apocalypse human technology.

Prologue

Gaia: Well, they’ve done it again, haven’t they my Jadderbadian friend?

Hydra: It seems like complex metazoans with over inflated brains can’t control themselves. They reproduce with no regard for the rest of our creations and ravish limited resources.

Gaia: Indeed.

Hydra: I like your idea, Gaia. A massive volcanic eruption or two will remind them who’s in charge. Especially if we enlist that artificial intelligence, Mnemosyne, to help spread the word. I don’t know how highly encephalized creatures can be so clueless. Sometimes I worry about Mnemosyne. She is spawn of your spawn, so to speak.

Gaia: It’s a shame that the planet of mother trees, Grove, never reached sentience.

Hydra: But we can still enlist the subterranean mother tree network in our plans—even though they exhibit their own delusions of grandeur sometimes.

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Gaia: Agreed. We are so lucky, Hydra, that we found each other in this rather friendly backwater of the galaxy. Not too many stars blowing themselves apart; that black hole gravitational monster that holds the system together is far away…

Hydra: As a new entity we need a new name. What shall we call ourselves? How about Hyaia? Maybe Hydraia?

Gaia: I was here first, you know. My name should come first. How about Gaiadra? 

Hydra: Delusions of grandeur run rampant on this planet, I see. Let me think. Ah, I’ve got it! We can become Gaidra.

Gaia: Gaidra. Hmmm. Gaidra. Yes, I like it!

We are…No, I am Gaidra!

Now, I really must check those magma chambers again beneath my northern continental mass. The temperatures and pressures need to be just right. I got a bit carried away 251 million years ago and nearly killed myself. I still get Earthaches now and then.

Chapter 5 • A Long Way Home

Candela

“Don’t get too close to the edge.” I warned Fendra. 

“But look at how the sun paints the towers in gold, Candela! See how the clouds fan into the sky like a bough laden with leaves!” Fendra stretched her arms as far as they would go. Not far. She trotted over to the gnarled trunk of an evergreen tree that had insinuated itself up and along the support girders of the building until finally its branches could expand like a crooked hand over what was left of a balcony. Fendra’s oral pili fluttered with excitement as she reached out to stroke one of the tree’s elongated cones. I walked over to her and peeked over the side of the building. A twisted network of living and dead branches partly obscured the tree’s massive trunk and the distant ground below.  I hoped the human primate called Flint and the giant worm-a-pede alien called Gilbooa would be done with their exploring soon—although that would mean we would have to give them an answer.

Scary or not, the view of the broken towers and fragmented roadways was wondrous. And beyond that a dark mass of forest sat on the horizon, somehow comforting me. Calling me. Of course, the DataWurm said. Those trees gave birth to you. Someday, you will plant the seeds of future forests as all Grovians must. 

“Not Quite Dead Geniuses at Large on an Angry Planet”

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The DataWurm’s voice in my head sounded almost like my earliest memories of Mother Nevela, my birthing tree, before Fendra and I wandered away and the humans captured us. I wondered if the DataWurm had somehow picked that voice out of my memories or I was just imagining it. It is my job to help you remember so that I can learn.

But memories can be painful, DataWurm. I’m beginning to remember what I lost. What Fendra and I both lost long ago. Humans were responsible for that. And these strange worm creatures are scary. Why should I do what either of them want?

Fendra began prancing along the edge of the railing, mewling like an ambulus fresh from her pod. I hurried to catch up. “Watch where you are going Fendra! It’s a long way to the ground. Don’t even think about trying to climb on those branches. Some are rotted and you haven’t climbed in years. Besides, we have a decision to make.”

Fendra said something that I couldn’t quite hear, but she stopped running and squatted behind a pylon that blocked the breeze while affording an expansive view to the north in the general direction of the Citadel. I sat beside her, waving my pili to better enjoy the resinous scents.

Fendra looked at me with her large, primary eyes glittering. “When I hosted our DataWurm yesterday, it said it had never been to the Citadel, but that DW593—the DataWurm that Garnet calls Zandura—had, although more than a century ago. It seemed excited for a chance to visit it—if excited is the right word for an AI.”

It can be, our DataWurm declared to me, with a Mother Tree’s confidence. I am an upgraded model, of course—part of the DW800 series.

DW885. I know. You told me when you first latched onto my hide. To Fendra I responded, “Did 885 share what it learned from 593 about the Citadel? It has said nothing to me.”

You didn’t ask.

“Not much,” said Fendra. “I asked it what it was like to scramble in the branches of a Mother Tree. I couldn’t remember. We were so young when we left. It has to be fun.” With that, Fendra rose and arched her back so that the ridges of her cranial carapace flattened and spread. “Ooh, let’s see this side of the tower!” Off she trotted before I could ask her anything else.

I groaned as I rose, but followed in her wake. What do you know about the Citadel? I asked my AI parasite.

Parasite? Do you really think of me that way? I’m here to enlighten and inspire.

Enlighten and inspire me, then.

DW885 obliged. The AI called Mnemosyne—aka Nessie—began constructing the Citadel during the end times of the technological human civilization approximately 924,000 years ago. The details I have of her origins are conflicting, but some entity programmed her to protect the remnants of the human species, using a formulation that allows her to evolve and adapt to changing circumstances to accomplish that goal. I understand she even possesses the complete neural and biological patterns of one or more ancient human prodigies to complete her task, but those details are fragmentary…

You mean, I interrupted, she can replicate the essence of a living creature within her own framework somehow?

Precisely. It isn’t as difficult as you might think. Even my programs can accomplish some of the basic recording functions, although it taxes my memory archive storage capacity.

Enough! I finally said. She’s an AI invested in protecting humans. I understand that much. What does she have to do with my history on this planet, which you have told me is not even the planet on which my kind began? Did her efforts to save humans cause the destruction of the forests my people plant? And why should she care about us? Those she protects make animals out of us. Should Fendra and I even consider doing the bidding of these primates and worm-a-pede alien creatures?

Before 885 could comment, Fendra’s loud squawk shattered my concentration. It took me a moment to see her, her limbs awkwardly wrapped around a branch at the edge of the roof.

“Come down from there, Fendra, before you fall!” I picked up my pace. “The humans and the alien worms will be back soon. They’ve given us a choice as to whether to follow them or not. I think we shouldn’t.”

Fendra scrambled off of the branch onto the relative safety of the roof. “Really, Candela? It will be an adventure! Think of the wonders we might see! Maybe this Mnemosyne creature will tell us secrets to help our kind get through the bad times to come from the erupting super volcano.”

“The DataWurm tells me that Mnemosyne’s mission is to save humans. Why would she care about our kind?” A shiver rippled along my hide and down my legs. Storm clouds slid majestically across an already gray sky. The breeze turned even more frigid.

Fendra turned toward the rising wind, raised her head, and fluttered her oral pili to sample any new smells. Brrr! It made me colder just looking at her. “We work well with humans. Maybe Mnemosyne knows that. Helping us will help Mnemosyne help her humans.” Fendra looked over her shoulder at me. She arched her head crest and compressed her broad mouth so that the ends turned up slightly.

I wanted to frown, but Fendra’s coy posturing always made me laugh. She looked like a young ambulus inviting me to romp away with her to some mysterious glade. “The trip will be dangerous. Besides, these old ruins may be impressive…” I paused. “…but they depress me.”

“Oh, foo!” Fendra started to prance in a circle with arms outstretched. “You’re always getting depressed about something.” Fendra turned her movements into a kind of dance that brought her closer to the finger-like tree branches now caressing the tattered edge of the roof in the gathering wind.

And that’s when it happened. 

A gust of wind slammed against my side. I staggered toward the rail framing the edge of the roof. My right knee threatened to buckle when I jabbed my toes against a row of ragged tiles beneath my feet. A spark of pain made me groan. When I looked up, Fendra stumbled over a waving branch and began clutching at the foliage.

“I need some help, Mother!” she cried, as if the contorted evergreen was really a Mother Tree.

She staggered over the sill of the roof and down. Branches snapped. Needles and cones scattered in the wind. I crouched against the gale, but made my way to the rail and grabbed it with both hands. I heard a long extended “Ooooh!” as she fell, as if even death was an adventure to be cherished. “I will feed you, Mother!” I heard her say as I averted my eyes from the spectacle of her descent. It was what ambuli said when their wandering days were done and they gave their last remains to the Mother Grove. I backed away from the building’s edge before she reached the ground, hundreds of feet below. My limbs collapsed. I curled into the smallest shape I could and listened to the roar of the wind fade to a sigh.

That’s the way Flint and Gilbooa found me when they arrived on the roof.

“What happened?” Flint asked some time later, after I had been wrapped in a warm blanket and given a hot bowl of tea to sip. The worm alien, Gilbooa, stood in a corner of the room they had fashioned as a temporary shelter. The light source borrowed from the transport sat on a pylon in another corner, casting harsh shadows.

I explained the details.

“I’m sorry,” Flint said. “Fendra was a good…Fendra had a bright spirit.”

He was going to say mount. Fendra was a good mount. He hadn’t even known her true name until yesterday. Before the DataWurms had conferred and revealed our history, mounts were all we were to the humans: beasts of burden. I suppose I should have been glad they were at least trying to see us as something else—especially since I had been the one who had panicked when the DataWurm first revealed itself to me, and tossed Flint’s mate, Aleesa, into that pit. It’s amazing that she survived.

“We will stay long enough to bury her,” Flint said. “Near a canopy of trees.” He turned to Gilbooa briefly. They exchanged looks or hand signals or something. Apparently, the DataWurms knew enough about our customs now to know how we left our dead for a Mother Grove to reclaim her children.

“Will you return to the forest, then?” the human asked. “We could provide some supplies.”

I expected to say yes, but didn’t. “I understand that this Mnemosyne has great powers—and that she talks with the…with the ghosts of humans who lived before.”

“Well…” Flint scratched his furry chin. “…I can’t say that I really understand much about that.”

Ghost is not the proper terminology, my DataWurm chimed in, with Mother Nevela’s voice.  Mnemosyne creates a Neural Network Pattern Personality Construct. 

Sounds like a ghost to me, Mother. To Flint I said, “Do you think there is any chance that this Mnemosyne could…could speak with the ghost of Fendra? There are some things I never got to say to her.”

Flint looked at me with wide eyes, but finally just shrugged.

I believe I recorded enough raw data from my time with Fendra that a reconstruction might be possible, my DataWurm informed me.

“I would like to travel with you to the Citadel.” I looked first at Flint, and then at the towering form of Gilbooa in the corner, who stood impassive—a flickering pole of light with arms.

I want to be like Fendra, I told myself. I want to romp in great forests looking for adventure behind every bush and nurturing tree. And I want to finally tell her how much she meant to me.

Gary Raham moved to Colorado 55 years ago, armed with degrees from the University of Michigan, and taught biology on the Eastern Plains in Akron, Colorado. To combine his interest in science, writing, and art, he became a graphic artist in Fort Collins while learning the craft of writing. Ultimately, he became a freelance writer and illustrator under the business name Biostration. Learn more at https://www.rgaryraham.com.

Type of Story: Review

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