Search Beyond: The Casting

Sannox boarded the visitation disc in the bay reluctantly. This is my fault, he thought. Herb is an alien being, and an endangered species. It was hugely irresponsible of me to send him down to the planet just because of his unique physiology. It is not worth endangering his life to search for minerals for the ship's reactor. A water world, I had thought. Herb can do just about anything in the water. Anything!

Suddenly, Sannox was aware of a violent motion, and the restraining effect of the cylinder holding him in the disc was gone. He fell, stumbled on what felt like a rocky surface, and looked up to recognize a squad of Terra's ruthless masked space troopers turning their rail rifles towards his face.

All the way out here? On this uncharted and forever unvisited planet? Sannox thought, so astonished that the terror of the confrontation escaped him entirely.

"Sir!" the leading masked soldier said, aware of Sannox's rank when he noted the white serial number on the left sleeve of the Captain's black fatigue jacket. "Are you one of us, or one of them?" the trooper inquired. His voice was filled with intense paranoia, and it was all Sannox had to read him while his face remained concealed behind the sinister eyes of the mask.

What does he mean? Sannox wondered, but the rail gun in his face was forcing him to improvise. "I'm with you, trooper!" he said potently, "I am Captain George Sannox of the space vehicle Traction. I require your assistance with this disc. Get the crew out, and check them for injuries."

"Yes sir!" the soldier acknowledged, and his team entered through the open portals of disc to recover Doctor Helen Grady and her supporting technician.

Neither Helen nor the technician had fallen out of their cylinders like Sannox, and they remained tightly within, as if unable to believe the disc had landed at all. They both looked deeply confused by all they could see around them. Helen suspiciously watched the armed men, careful not to give even the slightest vibes that might be interpreted as threatening.

"You fly officers shouldn't be in the combat zone," a soldier stated. "We've got to get you outta here. Follow our squad!"

With the sounds of rail fire filling the air in every direction, and the authentic glow of a red dwarf star in the sky as the disc party was escorted away, Sannox recognized the planet. At least, he recognized what the planet was supposed to be. Herb's home planet, he thought. It even has the scent of the chlorine gas, everything just as it was when we found him. Of course, this is impossible. We were in a young binary blue giant system, not a red dwarf system.

The only thing more impossible than government troops taking me alive is an encounter with Herb's planet 200 parsecs off from its true location. I'm dreaming, or something truly strange is happening. I would ask Helen to speculate, but then our captors might grow afraid of our knowledge.

After a long march across the scarred rock and through the mists of settling chlorine gas, the chemicals began to slightly inflame Sannox's lungs. He feared that the horror of suffocation was still possible, even with the gas mostly sunken and dissipated. He struggled to hide his discomfort at the gas, and continued to march with the soldiers as if unaffected.

A metallic box-like structure with communication aerials and tactical sensor dishes was entrenched in a depression of the rocky terrain. The soldiers led the three Traction crewmembers past two security checkpoints in the depression, and they were then guided through the heavily armored doors of the structure. All fleet personnel were familiar with these boxy structures, having sheltered in them during their own training exercises back on Earth.

Once inside the hardened modular military station, the three were received by a cruel-looking middle-aged man wearing the gold insignia and black fatigues of a ruthless officer of the Space Marines.

"I'm Colonel Maddock," he said, "and what you are, I have no idea, but I intend to find out."

The Colonel gestured to the marines beside him, who restrained the three sailors and placed them in seats obviously intended for interrogation purposes because automatic arms extended to lock the captives down.

"I'm Captain George Sannox of the Solar Authority starship Traction. Who are you, and why are you holding us?"

"I don't know what you are," Maddock insisted, "but you're not George Sannox. Sannox is nowhere near this planet. Doesn't even know this planet exists, because it is top secret."

"Scan us with your instruments," Helen suggested, "you'll find nothing out of the ordinary."

"The contaminators are clever. Whatever is going on, you are involved."

"Something is going on," Helen said sarcastically, "but not what you think."

"Doctor!" Sannox intervened. "Look, Colonel, we were led here from the Outer Pleiades Station. We were trying to apprehend a species traitor, Leto Wade," he lied.

"Wade?" Maddock wondered, "after I check the database, I'll be back with more questions for you."

With this, Maddock promptly exited through the door to the next cabin, leaving the three captives together in the company of the marine guards.

Sannox, seeing an opportunity to confer with Helen, began, "Doctor, I refuse to believe this. We are witnessing the impossible. We are not on Herb's planet. Could we be experiencing some form of hallucination?"

"We're fully conscious and capable of the same level of reasoning and expression as normal," Helen responded, calm and clinical, "so I would say that we are not in any altered state of consciousness. What we are experiencing is real."

"Speculate, Doctor. Herb is obviously the key here. You studied in him in great detail. Is it possible that he could somehow be creating this fiction we are experiencing?"

The Doctor began, "Herb seems to have the ability to alter his form at will. I can only speculate that the strange composition of proto-organic compounds in the oceans of this planet is giving him the ability to reshape his environment."

"But why would he create this environment? Surely, this is not the ideal place to express himself."

"Herb is a victim of trauma. If this is a reconstruction of Herb's experiences, he may be unable to help it. It would be the equivalent of a human flashback, a replay of his experience in the atrocity on his home world."

"And what would happen if that flashback were to end?" the Captain asked ominously.

"I would expect the environment to return to normal," Helen said, "with the rush of water on us, and without a disc or pressure suits for protection, we would be killed."

"Then we must not upset this recreation in any way, or it could collapse. We have to play along. Maybe we should find Herb, convince him to bring the recreation under control."

"We may have to risk breaking the recreation here, in order to get back to the disc," Helen said, "we must get back in the disc before Herb's seizure ends and the water returns to normal. Finding Herb might destabilize the recreation. He can survive in this environment. We must get to the disc to survive."

"No talking!" the nearest marine interceded, as the Colonel returned from his office to continue the interrogation.

"Nice try," the Colonel said, "he is not on file. Leto Wade does not exist."

"Let the Doctor go," Sannox began to bargain, "she can help you."

"How naïve do you think I am?"

"Then at least confiscate her diagnostic imager and scan us with it," the Captain said, "it will let you confirm we are humans, not contaminators."

Still deeply paranoid, but also seemingly perplexed, the intimidating Colonel extracted the slim diagnostic imaging pane from its case on Helen's belt. He looked through it, to view glowing visualizations of the confirmed human skeletons and internal organs of the captives, together with a stream of data confirming the authentic makeup of their bodies.

Maddock did not seem satisfied by this. He looked hostilely at Sannox, who instructed, "now scan yourself."

At first, Maddock hesitated, as if considering the possibility that the device might be sabotaged somehow. He tilted it, so that the side of his hand was visualized through the pane, and he was seemingly disgusted at what he saw. "Water!" he exploded, "alien parasites! Contaminators!" he screamed, and he struck Sannox with what felt much like a real fist rather than a glob of proto-organic compounds and water. It was a punishing blow to the head.

As Sannox's fuzziness subsided, he began to understand the need to find Herb. Simply attempting to reach the disc as suggested by Helen would prove impossible in this recreation, with entire recreated patrols of Earth infantry monitoring the whole battlefield. Herb's control over the environment was astonishing, and Sannox believed it was sufficiently likely that it might not really subside with the end of Herb's seizure as Helen guessed. Perhaps, he thought, contrary to Helen's suggestion, the best chance of survival lies in finding Herb and getting him to control his recreations, rather than struggling against his recreations and ultimately get killed by them.

"Herb!" Sannox shouted, believing his alien crewmember to be present throughout the whole environment, "why have you recreated this battlefield? Why? Why do you recreate your planet's genocide?"

"Humans!" the voice of Herb echoed and penetrated the chamber, like a single larger being backed by a chorus of smaller imitating entities. The voice had possessed the entire environment, and even Maddock and his marine aides were apparently speaking for Herb. "You humans will feel as I felt. You will see as I saw, the crimes of humanity against the krill home world."

"Stop!" Maddock stepped forward to shout, as if regaining his autonomy from Herb. "Stay away! Aliens! Disease! Dirt!" Like demons, he and his marines began beating and kicking the three captives relentlessly.

"No!" Sannox managed to plea, "not yet! I will give you the truth!"

Although reluctant, Maddock withdrew from the mistreatment of the captives, and the marines followed his gesture to suspend the beating for a moment.

"We surrender," Sannox said, attempting to sound as broken and helpless as Maddock wanted. "We will lead you to the contaminator survivors. They are hidden in a shadowed enclave of rock at this site. We can help you find their den."

To Sannox's surprise, this was sufficient to satisfy the Colonel, who gestured for the marines to forcibly relocate the prisoners outside the heavy blast doors of the modular command post. There, Maddock used military hand gestures to assemble a team of some ten marines, and pushed the three Traction sailors ahead as hostages.

"If your friends attack, you'll be the first to die," Maddock said, concealing his own soldiers behind the space sailors as human shields. Still aching from the earlier strike from Maddock, Sannox believed the recreated Colonel to be certainly capable of the deadly results he promised, even if his body and weapon were only Herb's electrochemical sculptures from the planet's proto-organic soup.

The chlorine gas had sunk considerably, and Sannox's lungs were no longer feeling the effects as he led the party across the rocky features of the planet. The dim and distant red dwarf sun was setting, and the Captain could feel the temperature plummeting quickly to very unfriendly levels.

As the armed men forced his two fellow sailors along, Sannox recognized the same rock feature enclosing shadow where he had first found Herb, so he led the party towards it. In order to approach, he led the Colonel and the marines down a steep depression in the terrain. A scraping sound echoed down from above, and rocks began to be thrown from the top of the depression down against the marines. These stones were thrown with the precision of the best slingshots, and hit each marine sufficiently to concuss or cripple him wherever he had stood.

Maddock drew his pulse pistol and aimed at Sannox, proclaiming, "I hope you regret this, alien." The Colonel began to squeeze the trigger, but another falling stone diverted both the energy pulse and the weapon to the ground. The distracted Colonel descended to retrieve the gun, but Sannox brutally seized his chance to kick Maddock's exposed face and abandon the dazed body.

Before the three sailors could confiscate the weapon replicas, the bodies of the ten marines and their Colonel dissolved into pools of water and slime.

"There," Helen observed, "these soldiers are only masses of ocean water and compounds. Look! It is being absorbed into the rest of the environment. Let's hope it doesn't become any more unstable. We need to find the disc where we first arrived here. It's only a few hundred meters away."

Defying Helen's advice, Sannox continued to the apparent shadow among the rocks, exactly as it had appeared when his party had discovered Herb on the devastated krill home planet. He approached the body, protruding just slightly from the shadow. Unclothed, partly obscured with some amount of his mimetic skin merged with the rock, Herb looked exactly as he had done when Traction's crew first recovered him.

"Don't disturb him," Helen advised, "we don't know what will happen. If this environment destabilizes, we may be killed instantly."

"Herb," Sannox said, gently, "we must return to the ship. We all feel deeply for what happened to your world at the hands of humanity, but we want to have another chance to restore your civilization. Please let us help you. Return to the disc with us, and we will continue to search for a new world for you. You cannot stay here."

"You cannot understand," the eerie chorus of Herb's alien voice sounded, "I can never go. I am alone. Isolated, forever parted from my culture. Let me stay."

"We would need safe passage to the disc," Sannox said.

"You shall have it."

Helen and her assistant turned to abandon the alien, but Sannox was not so quick to abandon a fellow traveler. "I am worried about you, Herb," he said, "this is not your natural habitat. We don't know how this environment may affect you in the long term."

"It is safe here," Herb responded.

Sannox approached the mimetic human body, lying, inanimate but for the movement of the mouth when Herb spoke. "I believe that," Sannox said, "but we do not want you to be alone. We do not want you to dwell on what happened to you. Your species will thrive if you find a more ideal world, and I am willing to listen and take any action that will help you find that world. Come back to the ship with us. There is nothing to explore in revisiting what happened to you. It saddens me to see you like this, and it compels me to help."

Herb, standing, quickly restored the appearance of his own black space-sailor fatigues on his body, and approached Sannox with a look of gratitude. "I am sorry, Captain Sannox," he said, his voice resuming its more carefully practiced human sound. "I was reckless, and I endangered you and your crew when you only wanted to help me. My anger is not meant for Traction. You have risked yourselves by coming down to find me, and this makes me reconsider the value of my survival."

"Nothing could be more important than your survival, Herb," Sannox said, "this ship has made extraordinary sacrifices to help you. Please don't turn your back on us now, before our ultimate reparations to your species have been paid. Please choose to stay with us on our journey."

Herb gazed around him, wistfully examining the red twilight and the black contours of the cliffs and hills against the horizon. Able to share in his fellow traveler's vision, George Sannox almost felt a true sense of brotherhood with Herb. He and his two other human sailors were privileged to share in this special vision from Herb's mind's eye, depicting the final sorrowful memory of the world upon which their fellow migrant originated.

Finally ending his days of mourning, Herb turned to Sannox in agreement. "Our journey," he nodded, and the four Traction sailors followed Herb's guidance on the rocky terrain until the spinning lights of the visitation disc were found. Taking less than two minutes, the disc enjoyed a gentle laser lift back through the waters and into the bay of its vast mother ship, carrying the unique krill entity back into his asylum once again.

THE END

Bio: Harry J. Bentham is a British futurist adviser at the scientific Lifeboat Foundation think tank and has written well-received stories, book reviews and essays on culture. His work can be found at many unique publications, including the radical newsletter Dissident Voice and the transhumanist publication h+ Magazine. He can be followed on Twitter @hjbentham.

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