Legend of Earth
Chapter 5: The Unexpected

The next morning they determined that the drone might not make it to Kllsh in the dead grove. Mygs pointed-out that it was more important to explore and catalogue the pod beneath the deadgrove than it was to get the x-ray of Kllsh, so the men put on their aquathermic shirts and leggings, and survival vests, and headed into the speckled darkness below.

The day yielded numerous varieties of fern, mushroom, vines and spore pods as well as moss, tree leaves and vines yielding berries that scanned as nutrient for humans. Some birds echoed in the close space, and the scampering of rodents and lizards were heard. A small pond had gathered in one end of the pod floor, and samples of the water and algae were gathered. Mygs witnessed a type of water snake, and they both saw a four-legged creature standing as tall as the men’s knees with a short speckled hide and a horn on its nose.

“That’s not a rhinoceros,” Mygs insisted. “It’s hairy and not big enough.”

“A dog? Mutated like the octosquirrel?” Suggested Amper. A blurry picture of it was captured. Command received the images and information on everything the men recorded as soon as they found it. Stalagmites and stalactites collected in spots where a vegetable gelatin of some sort had run off of the tree roots above and solidified as piles and spikes that met in columns. The mushrooms that grew on these columns were transparent, and bloomed small spicy-smelling flowers around their edges.

“This is more amazing than I ever expected,” Amper whispered.

“I couldn’t make any of this up, that’s for sure,” Mygs responded, gazing around him as though in a dream. “There may be a lot more to see, but it’s getting dark and cold under here. Once we’re top-side we can see about reaching the dead nemectis.”

“Kilsh.” Amper said too quickly. “She was called Kilsh, and she endured great heartache before dying. She’s not just ‘the dead nemectis.’ Should I call your Grandma ‘The dead wrinkly human’?”

Mygs stared hard at his friend, assessing him quietly for a moment.

“Wow, Amp.” He shook his head, realizing that they saw the nemectes in different lights. As a friend, and in an attempt to keep the peace, Mygs followed protocol for a desirable work environment: If it does not compromise the goals of the team, do what you need to for a placid work environment that is low in emotional turmoil. Mygs cleared his throat. “You know, I don’t communicate with them. So maybe I don’t see them with the depth you do. I apologize if I sounded unfeeling.”

“Naw – I’m sorry.” Amp waved away the moment. “I just… Shhah spoke of Kilsh with some reverence.” Amper shrugged and shook his head. “You couldn’t know that. We speak of them in the language of scientists, not like they’re friends. But I do feel that they are friends – to me, anyhow.”

“That makes sense,” Mygs nodded. “You can’t communicate with someone and not feel closer to them than those who don’t talk to them. I’ll keep that in mind and try to be sensitive to it.”

Amper nodded, glancing at Mygs to make the eye contact that meant the issue was over, and to show that he was okay. Mygs put a hand on Amper’s shoulder, he was okay too and would sincerely try to be more understanding.

“Besides,” Mygs twitched a half-smile. “My grandmother wasn’t wrinkly. She took Collagen treatments every month.”

“Well,” Amp shrugged, “Between that and turning tricks, I guess I’m not surprised.” Mygs tripped him on his way through the trees, and they both smiled.

Emerging at the top of the shadowy pod, Amper realized it was much earlier than he felt. Of course he knew this logically each time he’d looked at his watch while in the pod, but it’s another thing to see the proof in sunshine. He squinted in the sunlight that was actually shaded by cloud-cover.

“I’ll get the drone,” Mygs murmured after catching his breath from the steep hike up. “You put on the harness and gravity inhibitor.”

Amper got ready while Mygs set up the drone. The sun had lowered past the tops of the nearby trees behind them, and Amper put a flashlight in his vest just in case. He was going to venture about six meters into the deadgrove before deploying the drone, staying as close to the edge as he could in case the connection of dead roots and branches proved more unstable than they’d hoped.

Creeping out onto the network of white skeletal arms, the drone was in proximity mode, following him. He nestled into a cradle of root-work near a thick trunk, and found sight on Kilsh in the distance. “There you are,” he whispered as he touched the drone control sleeve snapped to his left arm. He spoke for the benefit of his partner at homebase, “I’m turning on record-mode and plotting a course for Kilsh due Sunrise by Warmward-sunrise.”

“Scientific terms, Amp.”

“East by Southeast.” Amper half-grinned.

“Check,” Mygs’ voice spoke to confirm that he’d heard. “Syncing broadcast.” Mygs would see the same thing the drone did.

Amper’s arm lit-up and the drone’s yellow light turned to blue. Following Amper’s directives, the drone bee-lined to Kilsh at a wandering pace. Shifting his gaze from the retreating drone to his control sleeve’s screen, Amper guided the hovering recorder and watched Kilsh’s image grow larger with diminishing distance. “Drone is on-task.”

“Check,” Mygs said.

With the drone only three feet away from the legendary nemectis’ trunk, Amper began the x-ray scan and set the drone on automatic orbit as pre-set for the protocol. He looked up and stared at the towering tree through white trunks and branches, and just as he became comfortable that everything was going fine, he saw Kilsh begin to emit what seemed like a mist. Amper rubbed his eyes and shook his head to be sure he hadn’t fallen asleep. He checked his control screen, and saw nothing out of the ordinary in the scanning process.

Looking up at Kilsh, he noted that the mist was actually a thin glow of gray emotion, which then began to turn orange, and finally blue. Misty leaves the shape of hearts grew from the edges.

“I don’t know you.” The voice appeared in Amper’s head the same way that Shhah’s did. As only a thought, but not his own. He responded without speaking.

“No you don’t. Kllsh, I was told you wouldn’t be alive.” Amper’s heart began beating harder. This famous, love-lorn nemectis wasn’t dead after all! And he could communicate with her while not asleep.

“You should know this,” Kilsh said in blue. She was about to inform him of something. “They will band together and kill you.” Amper knew she could tell that he was confused and frightened. “You’ll know, when the time comes. And now you’ll know to run the wrong way. Now you won’t wonder whether you’re right.”

Amper couldn’t understand what was happening. Had Kilsh gone crazy from so many years in the deadgrove?

“I am lucid. I have seen many unexplainable things in my dormancy. I saw you coming. I saw your ship and your device. I know about your friend who can’t communicate.” Amper was completely caught off-guard. She was a nemectis prophet! “I know that you have begun something that can’t be undone, and I know that they will try to kill you. I know you have to run.”

Amper nearly felt overcome. “And I know which way to run when that happens.”

“Yes, but also run now. NOW, Amper!”

The heart leaves of the blue-glowing tree-mist in the distance edged brown, and they seemed to flail as though in a wind. She was panicking! Amper watched her distant limbs begin shivering, and the ripple of trembling reached him through the network of roots. It wasn’t just Kilsh shaking, it was the whole deadgrove falling! The ancient nemectis’ mist suddenly burst into nothingness.

“Shit!” He rolled onto his hands and knees so that as he moved he would be less likely to fall through gaps to the pod below. The growing sound of cracking, dead wood caused his level of panic to escalate. He tried concentrating on his grip rather than the ever-closer precipice behind him. Mygs was yelling in his ear to start moving, saying he lost connection with the drone. “Are you okay!? Seismic is going crazy! Get moving!” Mygs called into Amper’s ear. “Your heart rate is nuts! Amper, get out!”

Concentrating only on the next place to put his hands and knees, Amper didn’t see the deadgrove breaking away behind him, and didn’t answer Mygs until he landed on the solid edge of the pod. “Made it,” he gasped so Mygs would know, and turned to see the tines of dead trees fall into a cloud of disturbed dirt and dust from the pod below. Kilsh was long gone, and he didn’t see any sign of the drone. “Drone is lost. So’s Kilsh.”

“You’re okay?” Mygs’ voice was real behind him. He had run to the edge after looking out and seeing the event for himself, and witnessing his friend reach safety.

“Yeah,” Amper panted. “Yeah, I’m good.”

“We got images,” Mygs pulled Amper’s hand to help him up. Still shaky, Amper stopped and leaned forward onto his trembling knees. He nodded, and Mygs helped him step forward to accompany him into homebase and see what was recorded. Collapsing onto benches built into the homebase cabin’s floor, they examined the x-ray taken by the drone. It was nearly complete, but one quarter of the nemectis was obscured as the drone lost connection and fell with her.

“There was definitely a heart,” Mygs pointed at the screen under the plasmalite tabletop. “but the… the webs, I guess, that are crisscrossing these… veins, suggests that she hasn’t had anything flowing through them. I wish we knew what the lungs were like – Amp? Amper, what is it?“ Mygs had glanced at Amper while speaking, and noticed that his companion’s gaze was on a shocking thought that seemed to hover right in front of him.

“I, uh,” Amper realized that his face was probably ashen with alarm as he turned to gaze in wonder at Mygs. He’d only just remembered that he and Kilsh had spoken. “We talked. She’s a – a prophet!” He felt as though his head had detached and was simply floating tenuously above his shoulders. “She spoke…” he turned his attention back to the hovering thought. “She said someone would band together and attack us. She said we had to run the wrong way.”

Mygs stared at him a moment, not sure how to take this information, but resorted to facts. “She was dead,” he pointed-out harshly. The surprises that his drifternaut partner had come up with on this trip were nothing short of unsettling. Mygs needed stable ground in order to function rationally, and he wasn’t replaceing any from his partner. “She couldn’t communicate if she had no flow, no beat. There were streaked signs of atrophy in the heart’s walls!” His voice elevated with emotion. “How could she have communicated? How could you be told anything!”

“Mygs,” Amper whispered, appearing out of his haze of traumatic memory. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone else on the planet. How would my own mind suggest someone else attacking?” He said it out of a sense of making reason from the madness, not so much in defense of Kilsh.

“We were in the pod underneath,” Mygs put a hand out in exasperated explanation. “Something in nature could have gotten into your system and caused chemical reactions. There are some chemicals that cause a sense of paranoia and jitters. You could be…”

“We’re back to that excuse again?” Amper asked wryly.

Mygs looked at Amper, sitting calmly and not the least bit agitated.

“Just because that wasn’t the case the first time doesn’t mean it can’t ever happen. We were just in a foreign environment filled with new mushrooms and plants. And animals. You could simply have an allergy that causes you to hallucinate…” Amper shook his head and stood. “Well, I’m just saying we can’t ever discount a natural cause. But frankly, I don’t think that’s the case here either.”

“Well,” Amper conceded his partner’s point with a sigh and a nod. “She didn’t give me a date, or a moment indicator like ‘full moon’ or ‘first frost.’ If I dream with Shhah tonight, I’ll ask her about it. Maybe there’s another legend that she hasn’t associated us with yet.”

“It’s always worth a try,” Mygs rose and wandered toward the kitchen area of the cabin. “For now, how ’bout a simple bag meal for lunch. We’ll process the data later, and you need to write down everything you can remember Kilsh saying.” He paused as he chose two packets from the cooler, and turned to Amper. “She was dead, Amp. How was she communicating?”

Amper shrugged, pulling on an extra sweater. “She sounded weak. Maybe she had a… like a reservoir of communication waiting for the right moment.”

“You mean - like their intelligence and memories pool-up somewhere inside their body, and they’re only truly dead when those are all used up?”

Amper shrugged again. “We really don’t know anything about the nemectes.” He put his hands in his pockets. “Anything is possible.”

The rest of the day was spent in data processing and communicating with Control. Amper wrote-up and reported the information he’d collected from Kilsh as well as his theory of “pools of communication.” Suggestions were traded for what caused a cavern that huge to exist beneath a collapsible layer upon which had grown a forest: A large building of Legend Earth that was covered by dirt, then collapsed under pressure? A natural phenomenon having to do with pressure beneath the Earth’s crust? On the Command ship, numerous scientists in different specialties examined the image of Kilsh’s x-ray, and although Amper was sometimes asked questions about the experience of communication – like telling whether one is male or female – no feedback on theories was sent back to them.

Amper and Mygs discussed their ideas about the nemectes lightly, that the “lungs” may now be leaves, and maybe the stuff being pumped by the heart is more like an intention to live than a tangible substance like sap. Amper felt that the nemectes lived a life of unseen forces and energies more than of physical presence. They felt words instead of having a larynx, so they could easily be holding pieces of life in reserve for important moments rather than using it in a linear way. These life forms were so different that any surreal idea was, indeed, possible.

“The weirder the idea, the more likely the nemectes do it,” Amper muttered behind his mug at the campfire.

“Have you wondered, yet, whether they experience the act of sex?” Mygs smiled, though his eyes were truly holding curiosity.

Amper stopped mid-sip and raised an eyebrow at Mygs. “Is that what keeps you up at night?”

“It’s just,” Mygs began, trying to not laugh. “It’s such a driving force for humans, and the nemectes are descendants of humans, so…”

“So they must experience something akin to it.”

Mygs shrugged, his brows raised, as he finished his evening tea. Amper gazed up at the nearest tree. “Apathetic,” Shhah had said. These trees were indifferent, simply of the soil, not made of human experience at all. He knew some people like that. If he were a nemectis, and could do nothing but stand there and send his thoughts and feelings outward or accept another’s energy, what would be the closest thing to the joy of physical contact?

Although he was a friend with Shhah, he wasn’t sure that was something he would ask her just yet. She might not even comprehend the question. Heading to bed, he fell into sleep quickly, exhausted from the emotional communication and the physical exertion. And of course he visited with Shhah.

“I was told she spoke without,” Shhah glowed orange and white.

Amper, feeling her meaning rather than hearing, knew she meant ‘without’ as a place that is opposite of ‘within’. “Yes, I wasn’t asleep when we communicated. How is that done?”

“We learn it as saplings. It’s less likely that others will hear us when we speak without because only those outside of us nearby can hear. When we’re speaking within, the whole community that is in that realm of communication can hear, no matter where they are in the land.”

“So Kllsh and I were able to communicate in wakefulness because we were near to each other.”

“Yes,” Shhah confirmed with a smoky ripple of white.

“But she was supposed to be dead,” Amper said.

Before Shhah could respond, a tendril of smoke and light stretched-out from the horizon of the community, glowing blue with white ripples.

“Shhah, may I contribute?” a notably young, male communication made itself known.

“Of course. Amper, this is Skkl. He lives near the podland and was the one to tell me she’d spoken to you. He heard what she said.”

“Amper, it is a great honor to speak with you.” Skkl’s glow turned mostly white edged with orange, then rippled blue as he began telling Amper about his experience with the day before. “I knew she had more to say. Since I was a sapling I could see that one or two of the leaves she had left sprouted green stems – an indication that she had a limited consciousness of communication witinh her. I tried many times, but of course if she was dead she wouldn’t waste a communication on something as unimportant as a young nemectis’ curiosity.”

“The leaves are indicators?” Amper saw his tendrils turn orange.

“Yes,” Skkl confirmed. “The more good leaves, the more a tree can communicate.”

“She said she’d seen many things in her dormancy.”

“She may have. None of us have experienced the gloaming and let anyone else know what it’s like. We can still only suppose things.”

Amper rippled with yellow, and felt the surprise and curiosity of orange from both Shhah and Skkl. “Gloaming is the end part of the day cycle,” Amper explained. The nemectes weren’t, of course, using words, but their intentions translated to Amper in terms of parts of the day.

Shhah turned her orange into blue, while Skkl’s orange edged with purple. He didn’t like a joyous response to his reference about the end of a life. “Gloaming has always been our indication for the end of life,” Shhah commented.

“We may be similar,” Amper rippled yellow with the joy of discussing differences between their worlds and replaceing similarities. “But the way you nemectes have evolved is exciting and enlightening for me. I apologize if I seem to not care that you’ve lost someone or that I’m not respecting your ways. It’s just that I’m always so happy to learn new things from you.”

Skkl’s smoky tendrils lightened to white and green as well as ripples of yellow. “It’s almost time to go, you will wake up soon,” he stated. “I want to touch on what Kllsh said to you. That you will be killed.”

Amper’s tendrils retreated and chilled edging brown, and then lime-colored as he saw Shhah’s tendril reach out to him in emerald green. She was trying to comfort him.

Skkl continued, fading into a dark blue of important information. “Kllsh didn’t know who she was talking about, but when she said it, I felt something about who ‘they’ are. They are in the direction of the asteroid that landed a few years ago. Past the asteroid, it is perilous.”

Amper noted that Shhah wasn’t surprised by what Skkl was saying. How the young nemectis could know this was a puzzle to Amper, but not to her. Her acceptance of Skkl’s words caused Amper to feel that he should heed them.

“But it wasn’t about the Crostus?” Amper asked.

“No,” Skkl confirmed. “The Crostus is from long ago and doesn’t exist any more.”

“Thank you, Skkl. Your information is invaluable. I will keep it in mind as we travel.” The darkness of the ‘within’ began to lighten. “Shhah, it is nice to see you once more. I hope to talk to you both again soon.”