The Earthling

The light shining in my eyes is blinding as I slowly emerge from my regeneration session. Lifting my torso delicately from the pod, I fumble confusedly for my exoskeleton. Then I put on my anti-glare glasses and notice a strange object on the floor, right next to the door. It is small, red, and rectangular in shape.

I cross the room and pick it up. It is a book! I remember books from the early days of my apprenticeship. I remember learning to read and write. I even remember some of the stories I read about blues and greens and things that grew, and wind and rain and snow. I loved all those fantasies.

‘’My dear AD4500,’’ I read on the first page. ‘’You have been chosen. Your apprenticeship has come to an end and now it is time for you to leave the station and make your journey towards Earth. This is the best possible outcome. Now go forth and write your story.”

I turn the pages, searching for more words but they are all blank. A message pops up on my pod screen: Muster at the flight deck at 17:00.

To keep off the panic that rises within me I do my press-ups and my squats, I lift weights in my gravity chamber and run on the treadmill. Inside my bodynet my skin is wet and I’m panting. I go to the hydration station, insert the tube in my catheter and press the ‘full’ button before proceeding to my personal hygiene station. Hoisting myself out of my exoskeleton, I slip into the tube that douses me with a little water and a moisturizing substance. At the nourishment station I choose Fortification as my intravenous sustenance and pick up a jaw-strengthening mastication bar.

I wish I had someone to talk to. All the other days I can remember since I left the Delivery and Youthunit that we call DAY, my Master has visited to teach me Communication and Language. There was a module on ancient reading and writing, even though those skills are not required in our society. When I told Master that communicating made me feel connected, he replied that we are all connected, that we form one body in CRYST (Corporal Replication Youth Supply Technology).

I roll out my cybermat and perform my salutations to Mercury. Then I fold my exoskeleton into the motus position and empty my brain by imagining a colour called white that feels like emptiness. But try as I might, I cannot fight off this tightening in my chest, this dull pain like a longing for something undefinable that I have never known.

Beeeeeep!!!! My vibrating earbuds announce a call, and my pod screen screams “AD4500 to Muster Station now!”

As I open my pod door, I come face to face with another numan. I read their matriculation, MD4500, behind their transparent full-face mask and know instantly that they are part of the medical squad. I am prepared for what will happen next but still feel surprised by the prick of the needle in my neck. I lose consciousness before the vial is empty. My next memory is of slowly opening my eyes to the soft blue light that is seeping through the porthole of my individual space pod.

As I remove my seat belt and attempt to stand up, I am weighed down by an invisible force so much stronger than I have ever experienced in a gravity chamber. I haul my carcass to the door and tap my identity: AD4500 followed by the password I have memorized: Earthling2@#!

The door opens and a scream escapes from my mouth as my lungs fill with air. Despite all the drills I have practiced, I never imagined how overwhelming it would be to use my natural functions. It is terrifying. It is miraculous. It is like being delivered again but in a totally different way.

Before me lies a sea of gently swaying strands of green that feel bouncy under my boots. I gaze at the blue above me dotted with white balls of fluff. I search in vain for the glint of a dome high up above but all I see is the bright orb of the sun that appears much bigger here.

I am warm and heavy inside my transfer suit and so I slowly remove it. The wind is ruffling my hair and tickling my hands while my bodynet shivers. I walk, hesitantly at first, fall often, but gain confidence with each step. I am searching my RAM for the words to describe what I am experiencing but they refuse to come because everything is so unprecedented. A large ball is forming in my throat, forcing drops out of my eyes and rasping sounds out of my mouth. My heart feels heavy and yet light at the same time. Perhaps it is because I have caught a glimpse of the sea.

I remember the word sea because water was such a rare commodity on Red Planet. I couldn’t grasp the fact that it had been plentiful on Earth before the Great Drought. Suddenly I understand that the books I’ve read hold secrets that are not make-believe because before me glistens the bay, the birch trees, the rocks and the grass of my favourite story. I sit, mesmerized and uncredulous and find myself giving thanks to some higher being I don’t know but who seems to know me.

A red hue wraps itself around the surface of the sea as the sun descends all too soon. This is so different from the blue glow I witnessed the time Master and I went out in a buggy to spend a day outside on Red Planet. It took two hours to don our suits and breathing equipment. It was necessary for my apprenticeship to witness our dome from the outside and to understand how our nutrition was processed. The laboratory was clean and efficient.

I can hardly believe that our forebears grew a variety of living, sentient beings called animals in large hangars where they suffered for a short duration, polluted the soil and then were emptied of their blood and transformed into all manner of combinations that took a long time to cook, eat, and digest. They called it food back then and the humans inserted it into their mouths. Just like all the animals they exploited, they too expelled a lot of waste, thereby creating even more pollution.

We don’t do that on Red Planet. We don’t do anything like our forebears did more than 2,000 Mars years ago (4,000 earth years). They were still homo sapiens when Nelo transported them to the new world. Their superior intelligence and innate understanding of science and technology enabled them to develop rapidly into numans. This is all documented in the Book of which I have been uploaded with only one chapter. I also have the same core knowledge as all numans:

Most of Earth’s surface had become too hot to sustain human life. The Blue Planet already belonged to Nelo and his flourishing technology empire when a group of humans known as environmental activists rebelled and destroyed all the data centres. Nelo had anticipated all these occurrences and was ready to take the Chosen Few and a database to a new life on the Red Planet. It was called Mars back then.

Nelo created a new, augmented race. At first, he used the ancestral process which was sordid and complicated. To illustrate this, Master once showed me a horrific video involving many orifices and a lot of gelatinous liquid. He told me that old humans used to find this type of video content just as arousing as Numans do algorithm challenges. Thank Nelo for progress!

I was conceived in the same way as all the others in my cohort, but I do not know how. What I do know is that I am the fourth from my batch of 676 and therefore my letters are AD. I was delivered in the year 4500. This was tattooed onto my forehead the minute after I was removed from my incubator. I do not remember that, of course. They always sedate us before any painful intervention. 

Each numan has a unique matriculation. The Masters, also known as the A Cohort, receive the letters AA, BA, CA etc. They leave their incubators first and receive instruction from the Supreme Governor before the ABs, BBs, CBs, etc. first see the neon light of DAY.

Our current Supreme Governor, ΑΩ5 is a direct and augmented descendent of our great founder, Nelo. ΑΩ5 is getting close to 500 years old now. Multi-technology therapy (which we call the buzz) becomes less effective in the third percentile of our lifetime. The governor’s successor, ΑΩ6 is currently downloading ΑΩ5’s protected knowledge base and learning how to continue governing Red Planet.

Our society has retained the ancient alphabet as well as the numerical system, which is also the basis of our digital society. We download knowledge from the central database and communicate via screens. We have conquered viruses by eliminating physical contact.

The Supreme Governor is the guardian of the twenty-seven books that constitute the GOSPEL (Guide to the Original Scientific Principles of Elevated Life). It is his hallowed duty to impart the knowledge of one of the twenty-six books to each member of the A Cohort who then choose the apprentices whom they will in turn instruct. Only the Supreme Governor knows the content of the twenty-seventh book.

It comforts me to scribble all this in the notebook as Master instructed me to. This is the only thing I know how to do. Despite all my intensive training and preparation, I never believed I would be chosen for the Mission. And now I realise that I have no idea what my mission is.

My head is throbbing from all these thoughts. On Red Planet, the constant brain stimulation or pacification I received meant that thoughts were never an issue. When I wasn’t receiving instruction from Master, my pod screen always proposed a multitude of activities to keep me active or calm until it was time to plug myself in for Regeneration.

My brain is so full of emptiness here that it feels ready to explode. There is nothing to do except contemplate trees and flowers. I suppose that’s OK if you’re a Gardener (they are the Es), but what is there to do here for a Communicator, except write? The hydration and nutrition tubes in my pod are empty, and I will surely start to decompose soon.

As I push my way through the trees, I see something glistening in the meadow ahead. It looks like a mini version of the nutrition laboratory I once visited, but through its glass walls I can see all sorts of greens and oranges and reds such as I have only ever seen on my pod screen. I feel my body shake as I push the door open. My heart is pounding, and my hands are clammy. In all my numan existence, I have never experienced so much emotion.

Long ago, Master read me a passage from a very ancient book that described a garden which, he said, symbolised the human condition. Master explained that old humans believed they were born bad and had to atone for this for the duration of their short and miserable existence. I could never truly grasp this concept because we numans know we are perfect.

My eyes are drawn to a small tree bearing fruit so shiny and red that my mouth waters. As I reach for the fruit, I notice a creature sitting with its back to me. It appears to be meditating. Long dark hair runs down the length of its torso which ends in two delightful curves. As I try to retreat, I stumble and fall, knocking some fruit off the tree.

The magnificent creature jumps up, startled, and turns around. It looks like what I imagine a Numan might look like without a bodynet and yet not exactly how I would imagine my netless self. But of course, no numan would ever remove their bodynet. The creature raises its hand to its splendid forehead and there I read: EV4500.

‘’You’ve come!’’ the creature cries and I understand their language. They tell me they were sent here from the Red Planet an earth-year ago with instructions to build and maintain a Nutrition source and to wait for the chosen one. Their glasshouse produces mycelium, potatoes, and many types of fruit and vegetables. They apply all the techniques their Master taught them on the Red Planet. They call it the Garden of EDEN (Everything Delicious Everyone Needs). They say I can call them Ev and can they call me Ad because we’re clearly from the same generation.

‘’Ev, I’m turning to compost. Please show me to the hydration and nutrition tubes,’’ I beg.

Ev laughs and hands me what I recognize as a cup. It is full of water.

‘’There are no nutrition tubes here, Ad, you must use the ancient method,’’ they say as they hold the cup to my lips.

After much coughing and spluttering the water goes down my throat and my stomach feels squishy.

‘’Why don’t you remove your bodynet?’’ Ev says. ‘You’ll feel much more comfortable without it.’’ My cheeks burn red as I comply. Ev gestures to come and sit down beside them. They tell me they have explored this island and found no sign of any life nor vestiges of data centres and nuclear fission plants. The only evidence of past life they have witnessed is collapsed planks painted red, which, they believe, were once dwellings. By their estimation, this small island was home to a small population that depended on the mainland for sustenance. Incidentally, they think the island is roughly the same size as our Dome on Red Planet.

’’Now it’s time to eat,’’ Ev says, handing me a delicious red fruit, which I at first refuse. ’’Eat or decompose. It’s your choice,’’ they giggle. Again, I comply. My mouth enjoys the sweet sensations of the fruit but my stomach bloats angrily.

’’It was difficult for me at first too,’’ Ev tells me. ’’But within a few days your natural digestive system will work perfectly. Trust me, I learnt about old nutrition methods and have tested them on myself.’’ I try hard not to think about intestines; it is altogether far too gross.

Ev takes me to a soft bed of leaves in the corner of the greenhouse and tells me to lie down. ’’Falling asleep takes effort at first. It is far more difficult than plugging into Regeneration,’’ they warn as they lie down beside me, arm against arm, thigh against thigh.

’’What does all this mean? Why do you think we’re here on earth?’’ I ask Ev, trying to fight off the tightening feeling in my groin, the racing of my heart and the exquisite pain I feel, like a longing for something undefinable that I have never known.