Good Host by Nicky Martin
This story originally appeared in Alien Dimensions Issue #3
As Bin opened his eyes, he read the info-screen in front of him:
“You have been frozen for 67 years. It is currently 6759 C.E. Mission status: Active”
The cryogenic tube opened and the subzero steam dissipated throughout the room. He stood up. The room looked just like it was when he fell asleep. The tube propped him forward, ejecting him onto into a wheeled gurney; finding its way onto a track, the gurney took Bin to the recovery room.
“Hello Anomaly Director Bin, I will brief you on your assignment.” said Transcendence, the artificial intelligence piloting Synchronically. Bin didn’t expect good news. As he had been awakened, something had gone wrong.
“The ship’s life systems are being tampered with by an outside force,” Transcendence reported. “Crew in cryo-freeze are dying in preserved states. Poisonous levels of carbon were found in the food hatcheries. Tampered fuel gauges are causing machines to malfunction. Specifics are in your case file. Please examine these anomalies and effectively terminate them,” said the machine, euphemistically.
Bin’s job is finding out who’s letting people die on the ship, and then killing them for it. Anomaly Director is a nice way of saying the ship’s private detective without any oversight. In theory, this case should be easy to solve. Who had the administrative permissions to tamper with this equipment? Only the captain, and by extension, himself. Bin floated her way.
The new anti-thesia drugs worked great, Bin thought, pushing himself down the corridor. His joints cracked into place, popping like a metal grinder, as he adjusted to the ship’s low gravity. Bin already missed the cold comfort of his cryo-tube. He’d flown with six ships previously. Five of them were eventless. He slept peacefully for the entire 11-year rides. The other ship taught Bin the importance of interstellar psychology.
A secure grip on sanity is paradoxically more fundamental to survival in space than it is on earth. The limitless void is quick to attack one’s reality.
Bin arrived at the captain’s quarters. Since the ship was auto-piloted, the captain’s job was simply navigating. She sat at the holo-map, staring blankly into a star chart. Bin’s ID chip alerted her to his presence.
“Anomaly director, please take a seat,” the captain commanded. A middle- aged woman, she seemed well acquainted with interstellar travel. She kept her attention fixed on the map, not even glancing at him.
Bin sat, also staring at the chart.
“Were you ever briefed on non-fixed star charts?” the captain asked.
“No captain, I was not.” A peculiar ice-breaker. “In fact, my cursory training in interstellar-astronomy was based in the opposite theory. Stars are fixed. They move, but too slowly for the less-than light speed travel.”
“You’re right, it’s an emerging field of study,” the captain said, still unable to take her gaze off the star chart. “This map shows the stars stuck, and yet they’re moving in erratic and dangerous ways. Like spores floating in the breeze.”
“Hmm,” Bin said, realizing the captain was losing grip with reality. How to be tactful? “Perhaps it’s not currently applicable to our situation.” Bin stared at the captain’s console; the display showed that the ship was practically stationary. “Why are we moving so slow, Captain?” Bin asked gently.
The captain gasped, “When I look outside…all I see is black…”
Usually the case, Bin thought, if you’re stopped stationary in space. Well, in free fall more accurately, you’re not close enough to see anything else. That’s the nature of a vacuous void, the closest planetary body was thousands of kilometers away.
Bin simultaneously weighed the options of subduing the captain or bringing medical staff directly to her.
“Where’s the ship headed, captain? Are we close to the next mine or are we headed home?” Bin asked, thinking a simple question like this would at least give the unstable captain some direction. Positive Orientation is a key-component in interstellar psychology.
The captain was quiet. Unmoving.
Bin put his face through the hologram map and looked the captain directly in the eyes. Her sclera had entirely vanished – her pupils extended throughout her entire eye like periods of black. A dark droplet of blood dribbled slowly from her mouth. Bin touched her cold arm. He left the room toward the medical bay.
Luckily, his decision had been made for him; the captain was in no shape for movement. Bringing a medical officer to the captain’s quarters would allow him to report to Transcendence for guidance. He floated back toward his start, noticing how hot it was in Synchronically. He wrote off the worry early, assuming his body’s temperature regulation was off since awakening from hibernation, or perhaps nerves had come into play. Pulling up his imbedded helmet, he noticed how disastrous this fluctuating temperature was for the ship. Any conscious crew would need to activate their suit’s internal life systems. Looks like the atmosphere regulator was broken too…
Who the hell was going to fix it?
Bin’s job is finding out what’s wrong, not micro-hydrogen reactors. Who was even awake to help? Bin had to determine if the ship was in approach or return. His training reminded him that insanity masks Positive Orientation as a minor detail; however, reality itself is integral to keeping the direction foremost in mind.
Bin’s answer was in the mess hall. Depending on what other crew members were awake, he could infer which direction the ship should be headed.
The mess hall showed signs of an unusual activity. All the lights were on, an amalgam of crew members was inside, guzzling all the nutrients paste rations.
They were fighting. A man, a drill operator based on his uniform’s insignia, clawed another man in the face to take his nutrient paste. The first man cried out and pounced on a woman, literally stuffing her face into a clawed open bag of paste. Bin realized the pouncer was the needed fusion expert. Bin no longer thought the captain’s instability was directing the problems on the ship.
“Nepenthes rajah!” shouted the nuclear physicist. “The feeding begins!”
Bin used his suit’s thrusters to get to the medical bay quickly. Now wasn’t the time for indiscretion. In the few hours since awakening, the medical bay felt unbearably hot, like a greenhouse. The heat pierced through Bin’s space suit; this spelled death for the cryo-sleepers. The ceiling lights were off. All that illuminated the wing was the iridescent white glow of the tubes. Steam obscured the middle of the room as all but one of the tubes were opened. Bin looked down to see the sleepers melting slowly, wet and mushy on the floor like discarded afterbirths.
Bin intuitively knew the statistical improbability of his chances. Yet, he could not allow hopelessness to take root inside him and ensure failure.
“Transcendence!” Bin shouted horrified. “Lower the atmospheric temperature of the ship!”
A wall-screen illuminated. Transcendence blinked to life. The system performed slowly. It seemed to be showing images from humanity’s history at random. Bin assumed it was trying to communicate. First, an encyclopedia entry on Taraxacum; the now extinct, but formerly common garden weed. Dandelions, people called them. Next, an image file of a painting from 16th century Russian. Ivan the Terrible, the despot, sadly stared with his drooping eyes and strange, perception-less head, at Bin through the void of space-time.
Then, a song played. A synthesizer played a dreamy, rising arpeggio. A Theremin melody accompanied it. In another context, the song might be pleasant, however now it was exceedingly ominous. It boomed through the space shuttle’s speakers.
“Transcendence! Respond!” Bin shouted futilely.
The last thing shown on screen: a long-forgotten flag flapping in the wind. The AI was offline. However, the music still played.
Bin floated slowly back to the mess hall to confront his “comrades.” He toyed with shutting off his suit’s life systems. Slow suffocation might be a merciful death to what comes next, he felt. At the mess hall door, he braced himself for the expected worst: cannibalism.
What he imagined was much tamer than reality.
The crew member’s corpses laid haphazard on the floor, all face down. The rations were spent. Bin decided he’d rather suffocate than starve. Walking over to one of the bodies, he examined it, turning it face up. Except, the corpse’s entire face was gone.
It was being eaten by a thick, blue mold. The goo moved in spirals. Quickly deteriorating the bone beneath it. It had already eaten all the meat of the officer’s face. As it digested the muscle and skin, its fuzzy exterior seemed to absorb the blood red color into its composition. The mold corpse reeked of a pungent fermentation odor. It seems the corpses will further help the invader to grow stronger. Bin knew well enough not to touch the bodies.
Assuming the rest of the officers suffered the same fate, Bin left the mess hall. A strong probability resided that he was the last remaining human on the ship. He regretted not disposing of the obviously alien threat, but he felt too despondent to desecrate his crewmen’s corpses any further.
Shutting off the reactor might kill whatever this thing is, Bin decided, orienting himself toward the power core. Then again, it would kill him too. The closer he got, he saw the situation had become even more dire. The plant menace had methodically taken control of the ship. It was theirs now.
Roots had burst through the hallways’ polymer floor, cementing themselves in doorways, cutting off entire wings of the ship. It seemed the path to the power core had the densest vegetation. Bin realized the plants must have an innate understanding that a power source leads to control.
Bin found an equipment locker and armed himself with a light-saw. The device was used to crack open stubborn rocks, but Bin hoped it made light work of organic plant matter. He started sawing open the door to the power core’s wing. Branches reached from the roots, tangling up with their siblings, sprouting razor sharp leaves. Cutting his arms, he pushed through into the now tropical hallway.
He continued, in awe of the speed these plants grew without light or soil. Clearly, the otherworldly organisms followed no rules forced upon Earth.
As he came closer to the core, Bin noticed horrifyingly beautiful flowers that sprouted with no regard for geometric logic. The lines intersected yet were all part of the same curve. Strange, multi-sided shapes bloomed in vicious combinations. It seemed like the flowers were best suited to eating one another and producing a stronger survivor. They slowly changed color as they consumed themselves. Almost like flashing lights.
Bin stared deeply into the color. Suddenly, a vapor burst forth, an acidic liquid that dissolved the view screen of his helmet. The vapor took hold of his throat. He felt it rise through his head, down his body. Bin tried to activate the suicide protocol on his suit. It was too late.
His fingers budded into twigs, leaves sprouting from the tips of his nails. He felt his feet become a cold, mess of soft roots. Bin budded into a plant. His skin blistered into a raking of tiny, red branches, which sprouted blood red petals. He felt his organs implode with a gushing of chlorophyll. Trapped, he sat motionless, still perceptive of the horrors around him.
Bin was a rose bush.
The ship continued flying through space. Bin noticed a window, the ship hurtled through a tunnel of hexagonal patterns. Spherical masses, globs of orbs upon orbs, crumbling against the hull of the ship. Planets and nebula pass them by. The Taraxacum’s mission progressed silently. The metal was replaced by tree bark. The wood protected the plants from the harsh vacuum. It rocketed toward a gloaming void of blackness. There was no captain. There was no crew. Just a mutating mass clutching the ship for the life of its hive-mind. Mercilessly, the crash never occurred.
The ship’s materials were dissolving in acid produced by the plants. Like soap cutting through grime, the plants soaked through the ship’s plastic and metal. Bin the bush felt invigorated by the absorption of these new elements. Like delicious nourishment, he felt an endless and peaceful connection to the neuron network of new nature.
Bin was happy. He sat there for years, absorbing the warm, hydrogen-powered heat of the ship, basking in its sunlight glow. It preserved him, giving him all he needed, now a part of the Taraxacum. Wherein cryogenic freezing felt like a frozen defiance of death, the Taraxacum felt like a warm embrace of life.
Until a small flicker of logic reminded him the ship didn’t glow artificial sunlight.
While the hydrogen reactions did simulate a small sun, they didn’t glow like the real sun did. The light was controlled and focused. Likewise, wouldn’t space plants develop a way to grow apart from sunlight. These creatures were nothing like that seen long ago on Earth. Simply existing in the brutality of space set them apart from any previously encountered life.
Bin’s skepticism spread through his branches. The alien species infected his symbolic understanding of the phenomena around him, he felt the inauthenticity of existence.
Armed with self-awareness, Bin sank deeper into the shared knowledge of Taraxacum.
Synchronically, the metal craft, sits on a rock. The meat sacks use rocks to smash the big rock. Our forefather spores burst forth in a pollen jubilee. These brave spores attached themselves to the stalks of grey rock controlled by the meat-plants. Slowly contracting, then inflating, the spores controlled the grey rocks by learning their geography. Danger! The metal rock made of no meat sent out a warning call. The frozen meat awoke, witnessed the harvesting, and was unable to stop it. Now, the meat was entangled. The meat believed itself inside of the plant-sphere.
The bush was a lie. Bin was still meat. And he hadn’t been there for years.
He embraced the searing meatiness felt as the plants dissected his body. Thorns stabbed into him, pulling back the skin like a Venus flytrap pulling apart its lips. His limbs were almost wrenched free from their sockets. Growths burst forth from the wall, holding him prisoner.
Now, he peeled open his eyelids, shut by a sticky film of juice. Bin witnessed the horror surrounding him. While he was not a part of the Taraxacum, it was trying to absorb him like food paste. Mold sucked his useless legs, yet it was not yet through all the layers of skin. Bin used all his momentum to pull his body out of the wall, tearing down the forsaken shrubbery growing around him. Sticks came to life, prodding him, stabbing him, poking him back to the comforts of becoming fertilizer. They knocked around the ship’s equipment. This was the first sound Bin heard since he was knocked out by the vapor.
Through the whole ordeal, Bin stayed quiet, trained on the value of stealth. But now, did it matter? Plants don’t even have ears. Bin needed to scream, just to reassert his existence on reality. He inhaled, but even this small plot was foiled when he felt the leaf was blocking his trachea.
Bin’s cold determinism saved him from the nightmare of becoming a plant; however, his body failed him from stopping the inevitable. There was only one course of action left.
He remembered back to his childhood, when he had kept a houseplant. One particularly hot summer, the small aloe plant had wilted and died. Sometimes, the best way to kill a plant is by giving it too much sun.
He crawled slowly toward the reactor core. He needed to ignite the reactor into an explosion. The adrenaline of purpose numbed Bin to the pain. However, he was already too late.
The hydrogen reactor was issued a directive. It powered up as the ship charted course back to Earth. There was no overriding of the code, as Transcendence had been corrupted. Not even Bin could stop the ship’s arrival on Earth.
In a few years, Earth would be over-run by these interstellar plantoids, but Bin expected to die in a few hours. Propelling himself away from the power core, he fantasized about the idea of taking a sedative and dying in peace.
He hoped he wasn’t unique in refusing that luxury. His left arm was still functional. He took his light saw and powered on its laser. The saw used a hydrogen battery, a metonym of the reactor he was currently trying to explode.
The Taraxacum’s need for a higher temperature atmosphere would be their undoing. Without coolant capabilities, the rods would rupture and explode. The resulting heat would rise to explosion. Bin directed the oxygen in the ship to cease—a low level directive as the ship was an oxygen free environment during hyper-speed travel.
Then, he brought the oxygen into the power cell containment room.
The plants had blocked the vents of the room, and the seeping in of oxygen might take some time. Bin decided to trim the hedges. Using the light-saw, he hacked away at the vines and plant mass, spraying him with the acid fluid inside.
Bin was close to death. His body was past the point of feeling pain.
Finally, Bin looked at the hydrogen core. Its color was changing; heat had nowhere to go.
Bin died, with hopes his plan would succeed. In part, it did. A few hours later, the oxygen overloaded the core room and the exposed hydrogen caused an immense reaction. The ship bellowed into a molten fireball, a rocketing plume, blasting through space without noise.
However, in the short hours before the explosion, the plants had mobilized. Co-opting the life rafts of the ship, they launched themselves into erratic directions throughout space. They even learned to use the cryogenic tubes to deep-freeze their spore pods.
Whether or not any of those ships touch down on suitable planets for symbiosis is yet to be seen.