Untitled Sci-Fi Thing, part 1 (Patreon)

The forests of Galapagos IV stretched from pole to pole. Stretching over half a mile into the sky at its lowest, the trees were often hundreds of feet thick and grew together in strange, swirling ways that looked more like modern art than tangled foliage.

Standing on a branch wider than a football field and longer than a suspension bridge, looking down at the green abyss below, was Daniel Hyun.

Daniel was a biochemist and, more pressingly at the moment, a chronic acrophobe. Gal IV would not have been his first choice for a field study, or his thirtieth, but he was here nonetheless.

He took another sample of moss from an offshoot merely as thick as a redwood. The vegetation here was slightly bluer than on earth, and the mosses he’d collected ranged from mint green to almost indigo, perhaps a sign of toxicity, or high concentrations of copper compounds in its cells. He focused on the colors and what they might mean in order to not think about how high up he was.

“Dan!” the pilot, Stefan, called from further down the branch, “We should head back to base. They say it’s gonna rain, and hard. We don’t want to be out here when it starts.”

Daniel looked up from his lichen. “Right,” he said quickly, picking up his backpack. “I’ve gotten some of everything here.”

Stefan was a wiry man, almost gaunt. He wore overalls every day no matter how hot or humid it got (and Gal IV was always hot and humid) and a faded baseball cap. He was gruff, and a bit short with Daniel, but he seemed to be like that with everyone, so Daniel didn’t take it personally.

“Susan’s all charged up,” Stefan said, patting the side of his chopper. ‘Susan’ was actually more of a small dirigible, capable of lifting a few people and supplies in Gal IV’s exceptionally thick atmosphere.

Daniel followed the pilot onboard, and Stefan lifted off. Daniel really wished the bottom of the gondola wasn’t clear, but he kept that thought to himself.

“How are you liking it here, Dan?” Stefan asked, which was unusually conversational of him.

“It’s fine,” Daniel said. “Plenty to sample, the outpost is comfortable enough. I can’t imagine how hard it was to set it up from nothing.”

Stefan shrugged. “I’m not the building things guy. I’m the moving things guy. Always been busy. Now I’m just moving people now, too.”

Daniel wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Well, thank you. I’m sure everyone appreciates it.”

Stefan gave him an unreadable look and said nothing for the rest of the trip.

Back at base camp, everyone was busy moving things inside. While most of the equipment was waterproof, the heavy rains of Gal IV were liable to wash things away, and nothing would survive the subsequent fall no matter how tough.

Jason, who was both a meteorologist and head of security, and Rhonda, the botanist, were bickering over something when Daniel got back to the entrance.

“There’s no way in hell these lines were natural,” said Rhonda, brandishing a thick slice of bark.

“Even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean anything on its own. Prolly just something with claws marking its territory or giving them a sharpening,” said Jason, with obvious exasperation.

Daniel wondered how long they had been at it and weighed the value in butting in versus leaving them to it. “What’s going on?” He asked after a moment.

Both of them turned to him, but Rhonda got the first word in. “It’s obvious that some living made these gouges in this tablet. Look at the precision in them, though: I don’t think they’re random. Some of them appear to show up more than once. At the risk of jumping the gun, I think it might be language.”

Jason scoffed. “We’ve been here six months and haven’t seen any sign of anything more intelligent than a monkey. If there was intelligent life, surely we would have seen something of it by now besides some scratches in the bark.”

The two of them looked expectantly at Daniel, clearly urging him to agree with the one who was obviously right.

“I don’t know,” Daniel said. “I’m not an anthropologist. But if we haven’t seen anything intelligent, maybe it’s because they don’t want to be seen.”

Rhonda smiled. “An excellent point.”

“Where did you find this?” Daniel asked. “Maybe there’s more information there.”

“Too far away to make it there and back before rainfall,” Jason said sharply, betraying just a hint of self-satisfaction. “This is all we have for now.”

There was a crack of thunder in the distance.

“We can worry about aliens later,” Jason said, his desire to argue washed away by urgency. “We’ve got to get everything inside before the storm.”

Daniel lugged another plastic box of electronics into storage, the last one he was in charge of. He was happy to be done, and exhausted from the heat and humidity. He wanted to go lay down and wait out the storm in his quarters, but Rhonda poked him in the back with what felt like a dry-erase marker.

“We’re taking a closer look at the tablet, and need you in the lab.”

Daniel didn’t whine, but it was close. “I’m not an anthropologist. I’m here to look at bacteria and moss. Speaking of, I have some lichen samples I’d really like to-”

“You’re a biologist, which is more qualified than most people here. Can you at least be an extra pair of eyes?” Rhonda asked. She was making that face she used to get what she wanted. Daniel was turned away, but he knew she was making it.

“Fine, okay.” Daniel said. “But don’t expect a miracle.”

Rafael, the actual zoologist, was transcribing the tablet onto a dry-erase board. 

“Nobody here is a linguist, but I have colleagues I can reach out to,” Rafael said to the room at large. “The connection will be slow, maybe a week there and back.”

“So it is writing?” Daniel asked.

“We’re working under that assumption for the time being,” Rafael said, still facing the board. “If we’re wrong, nothing is lost except some time. If it is writing, ignoring it would be a worst case scenario for everyone here.”

It was beginning to rain outside, a mild torrent that would soon rival a monsoon. The base camp was set into the stump of a merely enormous vertical branch, which tended to sway slightly during heavy weather. This was good, as it meant it wasn’t going to snap, but still not fun to experience.

“If we’re assuming it’s language, but nobody here can translate it, what are we supposed to do?” Daniel asked. “It’s not like we can send something back in reply.”

Rhonda looked at the transcription on the wall. “If we copy it, that’s a reply. Even if we don’t understand the language, we can show an understanding of the concept of language.”

“And if it says ‘let’s fight to the death’?” Asked Daniel.

“Then they all die.” Rhonda said with a faux-nonchalant shrug. “We have plasma rifles, I’d be shocked if they have metallurgy. Hardly a fair fight.”

A copy of the tablet was set up on a projector, which was pointed against the vast trunk of the tree. Daniel estimated that the final projection was maybe forty feet tall.

By this time, the rain was seriously coming down. Rhonda insisted on leaving the hologram active, even as just about everything else was crammed inside.

Most everyone was sitting inside the large recreation room, watching a retro sci-fi flick. Despite the archaic medium and the fact that they were literally working on an alien planet, the most popular entertainment had been hokey, quaint films like E.T. and Prometheus. Only Jason was absent, keeping an eye on the readings his swarm of drones sent relating to the storm.

“Yellow alert,” Jason said over the intercom, pausing the movie. “We’ve got unusual activity. Be prepared for emergency measures.”

Jason didn’t elaborate what activity was unusual, or where, or what measures would need to be taken. Instead, he fired up the base’s automated defense system.

“What’s going on?” Rhonda asked Jason over her own comms system. If Jason said something, he said it only to her.

Daniel thought he could hear her say “fuck you too,” under her breath before she spoke up. “Jason thinks we’ve got neighbors, and they’re not friendly.”

“His evidence?” Rafael asked, to which Rhonda shrugged.

There was the sound of something exploding further down the base, near the largest hangar, followed by what sounded like gunfire.

Most of the scientists stationed at this base were not at all prepared for a fight. Legally, if a planet had anything intelligent enough to be “fighting” instead of “hunting,” they would have to observe from much further away.

There was the overwhelming sound of lots of metal tearing , and the base’s main power supply was cut off. The bright lights were replaced with the red emergency ones, and everyone began to panic. Daniel booked it for his room, and he saw Rhonda and Stefan duck into a supply closet.

Daniel locked his bedroom door shut, shoved a chair against it like he’d seen in movies, and started scanning the feeds from the remaining security cameras on his tablet. Dark shapes moved through the halls of the base, taller than a human should’ve been.

Two paused, and Daniel thought they turned to each other. Then, they split up. Based on the position of the camera, he knew one would be searching the hall he was hiding in.

Heavy footsteps echoed down the hall, stopping in front of Daniel’s door. He heard the alien attempt to shove the door open. When that failed, a spear was jabbed through the plastic frame, stabbing repeatedly to bust through. The door was not designed as a barricade, and was hollow.

A yellow eye peered through the impromptu peephole, meeting Daniel’s. He made no sound. A hand followed, attempting to reach through to the doorknob. Adrenaline surging through him, Daniel shoved up against the door, using his and the chair’s weight to wedge it shut as the alien twisted the knob.

With no weapon on hand and no better ideas, Daniel simply slapped the alien’s hand as hard as he could manage, which caused it to reel back and out of sight. The creature grumbled, and then let out a long, low whistle.

From the other side of his room, the one that faced outside, the window caved in. The tentacle of a jellyfish-like creature grabbed Daniel and flung him out into the open air, where he fell.