Legend of Earth
Chapter 2: Arborsapient

“Have you had any dreams since landing?” Amper asked Mygs the next morning.

“No,” Mygs shook his head. “Listen, the clouds are gathering, and the radar says they’ll be pretty dark by mid-day. We may get rain, so have your aquathermic on.

“Is there going to be thunder?” Amper smiled, knowing now that it was a real thing.

Mygs looked at him with a thoughtful pause. “You seem sure this time.”

Amper smiled and looked at his friend. Then he made a decision.

“Mygs, I know that protocol says I should wait for three instances, but I think this is important enough to mention now, unofficially.”

He told Mygs about the dreams. He could have referred to his notes that were taken after each one, but Amper remembered everything about each instance and didn’t have to. He explained the best he could that there was no speaking, just feeling and sensing accompanied by colors and smoky light beams. He said the word “nemectis” was used as a self-reference by the one who contacted him.

“You haven’t eaten anything from the forest?” Mygs asked. Amper shook his head. “Have you had any allergy-associated reactions to anything, or pressure dimentia?”

“No, Mygs,” Amper shook his head. “I’ve thought of all of that, taken the tests and measurements. I will forward the documents and files to you after a third time, so you can see how I made sure this wasn’t some effect of spores or chemicals or atmosphere.” Amper waited for Mygs to meet his eyes again. “This is communication, Mygs. Someone is here, and she says we’re the same as her.”

Mygs stared at Amper in incredulity. “Human?”

Amper shrugged. “Somehow. Maybe some evolution of human, not Homo Sapien, but… sapient somehow.”

“In the trees,” Mygs looked away and around him at the forest. “Human in the trees?” He looked up into the branches. “Like living in tree houses? Living underground among the roots?”

Amper shook his head. He wasn’t sure about the theory in his head, and was afraid Mygs would believe him delusional if he said it. But it was a possibility, however far-fetched anyone would see it. In the pause it took for Amper to wrestle with his reasoning, Mygs noticed that something was troubling him.

“Amp. What is it,” Mygs coaxed.

Amper glanced up but mostly focused absentmindedly on his fingernails. “I don’t know, Mygs,” he said. And there was no avoiding the persistence of what he felt from his talk with Shhah. “It feels like – maybe the feelings and thoughts are coming from the trees. Arborsapient.”

Mygs’s demeanor became nettled. “How are you coming up with this? This is crazy!” He stood and paced, his brow furrowed in frustration. “You’re suggesting that humans somehow turned into trees here?”

Amper stood too, shrugging. “I know! It sounds amazing to me too, but the communication I’ve been getting is something other than words. It’s understanding. Some sort of emotional telepathy, transfer of knowledge without words. I only know what I feel after I wake up, and anything new that I feel is something that Shhah relayed to me. She told me that thunder happens.”

Mygs stood still, staring at the ground. He closed his eyes and squeezed them with his fingers, shaking his head. “It’s too much.”

“Right.” Amper paced as well. “She could tell it was too much for me, too, and that’s why she left last night.” Then Amper stopped and looked at his friend. “Mygs, you haven’t had any dreams?”

Mygs shook his head, meeting Amper’s eyes. Amper tried to tell whether the look was disappointment or disbelief. Did his long-time friend think he was just sick because of the effects of a legendary planet with a strange environment? Or did he believe Amper and take him seriously? Then Mygs’ look softened, collecting himself. Their training mandated that each drifternaut needs to consider: “Anything said in what you think is a state of dementia could, on a foreign planet, actually be genuine truth. Universal possibilities are countless and sometimes unthinkable, so all should be considered.” Mygs was suspending his disbelief, and took the time to soak-in what Amper was telling him.

“So, we don’t know whether you’re experiencing dementia.” Mygs gathered his sense of reason, glancing at Amper. “Uh – so, lets do this: Here’s a line.” He drew a line in the dirt, and had Amper walk it. He asked the date, the time, in which direction they were traveling, what his mother’s name was, in which direction did Persevere rotate, and to explain the theory of Biocurrent as well as the five rules of generated polysteel mechanics. He noted that Amper communicated clearly, answered everything correctly, and had control of his balance and sense of direction as well as time and space relevance.

“I officially determine,” Mygs said with a wary look, “that you do not appear to be experiencing pressure dementia.”

“That doesn’t rule-out allergic reactions or mind-altering spores and air currents. Mygs, we can’t rule out every possible thing, there are too many possibilities on a strange planet.”

“So, we prove the communication theory then.” He and Amper had seated themselves again, and rested elbows on knees as they sat across from each other on a fallen log and a folding stool. “If we can prove one thing instead of ruling-out many, it saves time and effort.”

“What do you propose?” Amper was already convinced and felt he wasn’t objective enough to know what would be convincing. “What would make you, the cynic, feel satisfied that this is true communication from another life form?”

“What is it that made you sure?” Mygs shrugged, and gestured to Amper. It was such a strange situation that he didn’t know how to start proving it. “What happened that made you realize it’s not just a dream?”

Amper thought back. “Well, the fact that she said ‘nemectis,’ which is a word that I am not familiar with. And … when I said I heard her, and she specified that what we were doing wasn’t like the scampering of a squirrel or rumble of thunder. It was surprising for me to be told that, but when I thought about it, I hadn’t actually heard any sound of a voice. It was a fact told to me from someone else, not an observation from within me. That’s how I knew.”

“I don’t know, Amp,” Mygs’ brow furrowed dubiously. “Anything posed in a dream can come from the dreamer’s subconscious. I guess for me to be convinced … she would have to tell you something about this forest, or other fact about the Earth that I myself can then research and replace to be true out here. Something you couldn’t possibly know ahead of time, that couldn’t come from your subconscious.”

Amper thought a moment. If he was right and these dreams were really communications, he should be able to have a conversation with Shhah that night. He could ask her to tell him something specific that they would replace when they continued on their way in circumference. They wouldn’t be able to stray from their route, for their own safety’s sake, so she would have to specify something on their path. If she was real, she should be able to do this. If it were just a dream, deduction from his own subconscious, she would only give him speculation or a vague answer.

“I can try that,” Amper stated.

They packed-up late that morning, and hiked at a quicker pace to make up for it all day. They didn’t dwell on as many plants and rocks as they did the day before, and were quiet as they walked. The talk of the morning took some time to sink-in, and the decision to prove genuine otherworld communication kept a heightened tension hanging over them all day.

That night, after initiating and stabilizing homebase and eating a dry meal, Amper concentrated on what he would say to Shhah. Mygs had said he wanted to be in the room in case Amper was going to talk in his sleep, or if some sort of apparition appears when she talks. They both eventually decided to not deviate from the usual scenario of each of them in bed sleeping. Amper had been sleeping alone, it should be the same circumstances that night to make sure Shhah would communicate again. Unfortunately, Amper couldn’t sleep. He was excited to replace out what she would tell him. He didn’t have a doubt that she was real, didn’t wonder whether he’d get what he needed to prove it to Mygs. But he was excited to replace out what specific thing she’d tell him about the forest that they couldn’t see on the radar images. After finally taking a sleeping aid, his thoughts quieted and he slipped into the darkness.

“Amper, you keep moving.” Shhah’s orange-laced gray tendril of smoke light reached out to him. She was confused and curious. In the horizon hovered the flickering, curling tendrils of what Amper supposed were the distant presence of other trees. nemectes.

“Yes, we’re mapping the area.” The light emitting from his presence was blue. He would always replace this color-coded emotional conveyance fascinating.

Shhah’s light turned white in understanding, then infused with orange. “That would suggest that more humans might come to see the area.”

“That’s likely,” Amper said, but quickly dismissed the digression from the conversation he wanted to have. “Shhah, I have some questions. Could you answer them?”

“I can try.”

“First of all, I have a companion who hasn’t had dreams of communication. I’ve told him about you and that it feels like you are an entity that comes from a tree here on Earth. He doesn’t quite believe me, and suspects that everything I’m telling him is from my own head. He says that if you can convey to me some information that I couldn’t have possibly found out by looking at information from our ship’s probe, he would be convinced. Is there anything like that, that you can tell me before I wake up?”

Shhah paused, her light turning gray with flickers of blue and orange. Slowly, the five-pointed smoky light-leaves began turning white, edged with blue.

“Can your probes determine what the insides of the trees are like?”

“They could,” Amper stated, “But we didn’t run those scans. We assumed the trees were just normal oaks, elms, birches.”

“Do the scan. There is a tree you will replace if you continue on your path. He is old and wise. Hold on…” Shhah retreated to the horizon of lights. She returned presently with another smoky tendril following her, the smoke of it much more opaque than Shhah’s or Amper’s. It was glowing with a veritable rainbow of gray, orange, blue and brown. Amper felt wisdom and understanding from this nemectis, and an unmistakable sense of quiet masculinity. Shapes of crescent-moons flowed around him the way Shhah’s five-pointed leaves flowed around her.

“Amper, this is Mrrl.” Again, Amper didn’t really hear more than a sense of a sound like ‘shhah.’ He extended his tendril slightly toward Mrrl, emoting comfort and curiosity. Mrrl’s colors turned more green and orange, but the edges remained brown with some fear.

“Is your tree near to where I am?” he asked the old nemectis.

“I’m on the edge of a grove that experienced a fire years ago,” the calm sense of a voice explained. “All of the trees there are younger. My tree has had some burn damage, but I am whole. I’ve been babysitting for seven years.”

“Mrrl,” Shhah scolded, one of her leaves closest to his tendril edging with the red of annoyance. Amper hadn’t seen that one yet, and noted that his tendril of presence edged with yellow. He hadn’t seen the yellow of humor yet, either.

Shhah’s attention focused on Amper again. “Don’t let him fool you. Those new trees aren’t nemectes, they’re Earth’s original apathetic trees. Mrrl, would it be okay if Amper scanned your tree to see the inside?”

“See the inside?” his tendril turned brown – nearly golden with fear.

“It won’t hurt, or change you in any way.” Amper emoted green and blue. “I would just be putting the scanner near you, and it’ll make invisible beams go through and around you that can see what’s inside. You won’t even know it’s happening.”

Mrrl’s colors mostly stayed brown, but edged with green.

“And,” Shhah said, “You can be known as the first nemectis to prove to humans that we exist.”

Mrrl’s tendril slowly turned green and then orange, and within moments was mostly white with understanding – but always edged with brown.

“Okay,” Mrrl conceded. “I’ll allow it.”

“Thank you,” Amper extended empathy and understanding.

“So that takes care of one question. But it’s almost time to go. What’s one more question, Amper?”

Mrrl retreated to the horizon, and Amper noted that the rest of the distant beams of light rippled from orange and brown to white as Mrrl told them what was going on.

“I told you my friend hasn’t had dreams of communication.” He felt the darkness start to lighten as the dream began to end. “Why haven’t you communicated with him?”

“We can only communicate with those like us – like you. Human,” Shhah stated as she retreated. “Amper, he’s not human. You didn’t know?...” She disappeared as Amper woke up, her colors orange and blue, gray and purple. He sensed that his presence was silver-gray, edged with brown fear, orange confusion and white understanding while he opened his eyes.

Amper lied there, his eyes wide open. Had she really said Mygs wasn’t human? That can’t be right. It was so ridiculous to him, he didn’t even try to accept it. She was simply mistaken. Maybe Mygs had a… neurological anomaly in his brain that doctors hadn’t seen in the pre-flight physical because it’s detectible only by the telepathy of nemectes.

Immediately, Amper took his log-book and began recording the encounter with fresh memory. He did include the information about Mygs not appearing human to the nemectis Shhah, as well as his theory of why. Then he stopped and thought again. Was there anything he’d experienced about Mygs that would indicate that he was other than human? No, that can’t be right. After a lifetime of friendship Amper would have found out.

Dressed and cleaned, Amper met Mygs outside of the tent and relayed the plan Shhah had suggested. They were to scan a certain old tree on the edge of a newly growing glen that had experienced a fire years ago, and they will likely replace something unusual.

“I remember seeing signs of new growth on the surface-scan, and it was just up ahead like you say.” He glanced warily at Amper, and they both knew this was something that Amper could have already known and integrated into a dream. What they replace in the old tree at the glen was the deciding factor on whether the nemectis Shhah was real.

“So then we just replace the tree and scan it to see the inside. Apparently there’s something unique about it.”

They packed-up and began following their course again. Amper quietly watched Mygs, remembering what he could about their past. There was no reason to think he was anything other than human. But then why would she say it?

“Mygs,” Amper started warily. “Did your last neural scan come back normal?”

Mygs looked back at Amper, brows raised in surprise. “Are you implying something?” He smiled and shook his head. “It was normal.”

Amper nodded, also smiling. “I’m only asking because you haven’t had the dreams of communication with the nemectes. So, I thought that maybe your brain was missing something or had something extra that made the dream-communications incapable.”

“Huh.” Mygs nodded understanding. “Maybe you can ask them next time. What was this last nemectis called? Merle?”

“Close enough. We aren’t capable of saying it the way it’s meant.”

The drifternauts strode through the trees, and Amper looked at each trunk and canopy of leaves anew. Shhah had referred to the new trees of the burned glen as apathetic, original trees of Earth. This implied that some of the trees were the regular, practical, natural type that simply photosynthesize and produce oxygen, while other trees were nemectes that emote like humans and communicate through dreams and color. And so maybe they have something inside them that isn’t like the un-feeling, natural “apathetic” trees that Earth had always known.

Halfway through the day, they stopped to eat and rest. They’d just made their way down a rocky ravine that required a lot of concentration and maneuvering, and Mygs managed to twist his ankle. When they stopped, he applied a healing wrap and strode over to a tree to relieve himself, leaning on it to favor his ankle.

Ba-THUMP

Mygs straightened, freezing in alarm at the strange sensation that he felt in the tree.

Amper looked up. He wasn’t sure he’d heard the muffled thump until he saw Mygs standing stock-still and staring at the tree. “What’s wrong?”

Mygs didn’t answer right away.

“Mygs, did –“

“The tree thumped,” Mygs muttered, trying to not sound shaken as he stepped back.

Amper was immediately relieved! Now he wasn’t the only one who’d felt it, and his fear that he was just imagining things dissipated with Mygs’ words. His sensible, no-nonsense companion just confirmed that the thump in the tree was real!

“Like a squirrel was moving around inside?”

“No,” Mygs admitted. “It was a singular event. And I swear I felt –“ Mygs turned, and put his hand on the tree again, looking at the trunk. “It was like the insides of the tree moved. Not like a creature was scratching the inside, but like… like when you feel your muscle move under your skin. It was just for a second.” He looked at Amper, and his eyes held both wonder and concern.

“It’s okay, Mygs,” Amper said, responding to his friend’s reaction.

“Are we both breathing spores that give us hallucinations? It’s not dementia.”

“Mygs. It’s a sign of the nemectes.” He realized it was easier for him to grasp since he had been communicating with them. Mygs had been dubious all this time, and a sudden leap into Amper’s growing reality made him unsteady. “Just let it soak in, Mygs. We’re trained to let ourselves believe in anything a new world throws at us, without fear of losing our minds. We’re looking-out for each other and would know if someone was sick. But I haven’t noticed you acting unusual, and you tested me for dementia, we seem to be fine.”

He watched Mygs as the injured walker shakily sat on a fallen log, and steadied his excited voice. “We just have to let ourselves believe that the nemectes exist, and these abnormalities in the trees are signs of them. Look, this one has odd leaves like the one I heard thump, not like the regular leaves of normal trees – another sign of their being… something else. The communications, the thumps, all of the odd things we’re experiencing coincide and can be reasoned-out as signs of new life on Earth. If anything didn’t add-up, it would be a sign of sickness. But it all goes together just fine, so we’re okay.”

Mygs was nodding and taking deep breaths as he gazed warily at the very square-frame leaves. “Okay, you’re right,” he said. He looked at his friend and attempted a smile. “Boy, this is nothing like the psych-enviro simulator.”

“It’s different when it’s not just a scenario, huh?” Amper smiled a real smile. He was thrilled by the prospect that there was intelligent life still on Earth, and maybe he felt a little special that he was the first to communicate with them.

“Remember the Canniborts from S31? I almost couldn’t handle them!” Mygs’ smile widened genuinely.

“Right!” Amper pointed and nodded, laughing. “Remember the auto-interpreter? Where’s your nogdus?” They both laughed, remembering their training for encountering new cultures and strange realities on potential other worlds. They ate and laughed, dispelling Mygs’ discomfort with the reality of the tree-thump.