Originally appeared in Alien Dimensions Issue #8
An ocean of verdant greenery ebbed with the swell of its own breathing. A garden, unsullied and teeming with life.
Two faces looked up from the floor of the amphitheater of abundance. Clearly visitors, and not inherent to the nature around them, they were two pale corks bobbing in the ocean.
Caro whispered, “Look! Up in that tree.”
The shape, a lighter shade of gold than the backdrop of high canopy and barely visible, moved gracefully along a branch.
“Chamofleck… only a juvenile though” said Edgell with mild disappointment.
The exo-biologist had hoped to get images of a buck, with the riotous palette of its full head-crest. Even so, the leathered climber in the trees wasn’t the species they were seeking on this expedition.
Caro turned her attention back to the undergrowth. The behavioral scientist flicked a strand of damp dark brown hair from her eyes, grateful she’d had it cut shorter before coming out in to the close confines of the forest. She noticed an area of disturbed ground in the near distance, divots of upturned earth shaded by overhanging fronds. She pointed it out to her colleague just as another creature wandered into view. They watched as it picked its way serenely across the cleared area with complete indifference to its surroundings. The scientists looked at each other. If one of their evo-morphs was here then it was likely their quarry wouldn’t be far away.
“The evo is staying around” said Caro quietly, “…means it’s probably doing its work.”
“Can you tell if it’s one that’s already mapped?” asked Edgell.
“Not with any certainty, but the fact that it hasn’t left yet points strongly to that conclusion.”
The little animal’s bushy tail whipped about expressively as it browsed the foliage. An omnivore, it was specially designed for survivability while still retaining its most important quality – cuteness. Everything liked it, even life-forms that tried to eat it. On other planets predators had soon found they couldn’t follow through with their initial urge to investigate with intent to devour. They would instead be overwhelmed by instinctive reactions similar to those they felt for members of their own species. Most often they would try to play with it, and unless of a solitary nature, adopt it into their family group.
Several minutes passed before a burly and compact beast entered the clearing and went up and sniffed the intruder in its territory. The beloboar, a herbivore that didn’t tolerate strangers, looked as though it would drive the evo away. Then the big baby eyes and passive demeanor of the visitor completely disarmed the muscle-bound local and the two milled about together looking for food.
“Bingo!” Caro chimed, flushed with satisfaction.
Edgell just smiled laconically, letting Caro enjoy the moment without reminding her that the initial bond was the easy part. The evo’s work wouldn’t be complete until it had “shaped” the native animal’s behavior.
He released a drone-fly he’d just tagged to the beloboar and then checked its progress on his hand-held.
“Alright, let’s get going… a few more today will give us a good start on the baseline sampling.”
They broke cover and skirted around the open ground they just been observing. Caro sniffed the air. It had a quality like no other she’d experienced, with the freshness of a mountain top mixed with the perfume of spring flowers. She breathed deeply, joyfully, and wondered how she could have endured an existence anywhere else before coming here.
She looked down and noted the fresh divots where the tusked beloboar and its new friend had rummaged for tubers. Let’s see if we can get you to choose something else from the menu, she thought …your little evo is going to inspire you to prefer some of the alternatives.
#
On their return to the colony a week later, Madrigal IV’s twin moon’s crept above the horizon like the glowing eyes of a great owl, staring down at its prey hurrying to the refuge of its burrow.
As their grav-ute sped above an irrigation channel separating large acreages of potatoes, squash and carrots, Caro saw again the tell-tale signs of upturned earth and broken foliage they’d seen all week. It was this crop damage that her project was trying to address. By genetically programing the evo’s to be an influence on the beloboar’s behavior they hoped the voracious appetite of the natives for the colony’s crops would be diverted back toward the fruits of the forest.
Edgell parked the vehicle outside the astro-biology wing of the Planetary Science building, “I’m going to check that the data from the drones is being uploaded to the server” he said with an enthusiasm which belied both the hour and that he was returning from a tiring field trip.
Caro nodded, “I’ll give Brownie an update – see you at dinner.”
Project Leader Evelyn Brown’s office looked as though it were a zoological exhibit after an unsupervised school tour had been through. Rocks and fauna samples lay around in a disorganized fashion, and stacks of paper covered the remaining surfaces. She was just removing her lab coat and letting her long black hair down as Caro entered.
“Ah, there you are…” the senior scientist commented.
She looked distracted as she gathered her things into a small carry-all, “Come on, you can fill me in on your adventures on the way to the dining hall. I’m starving!”
They crossed the gray earth compound in the failing light and sat down to a meal of creamed corn and spiced beans.
“Hmm, still another month until Bacon Day” said Caro.
Since the colony’s inception five months ago no meat had been produced from the stock of embryos brought from the home planet. Although the artificial wombs had been in full production since a few days after arrival, the first pigs were still a few weeks away from maturity.
“…and I’ve had enough of the reconstituted stuff – do you think the maize tastes better here?” Brownie asked, holding a forkful of the golden porridge up to the light.
“Sure, has a fragrant quality like honey – must be the soil.”
Edgell joined them soon after, “Drone-flies have been doing their job. Data’s been streaming in fine.”
He looked concerned as he continued, “…but it looks as though some of the earlier tags haven’t held.”
Caro wiped around her mouth with a napkin, tensely waiting for him to explain.
“How so?” Brownie blurted after it became clear the botanist wasn’t going to offer more information voluntarily.
“The evos have left the normal radius of their original habitat – way beyond foraging activity or even the traversing of other territories for the beloboar’s breeding activity.”
“It’s not the season for that anyway” added Caro.
“No” agreed Edgell, “…and there’s something else.”
Again, the two females waited for the slightly inhibited scientist to answer their questioning glances. He chose instead to have another mouthful of beans.
“Yes!” Brownie urged impatiently.
He almost choked in a hurried effort to respond, “Well…they don’t appear to be acting as programmed. If their initial imprint is severed then they should try to find another host.”
“Then what are they doing?” Brownie asked holding her fork intently.
“Coming here.”
#
“This is Deishor. He’s been exhibiting an extreme form of flight envy for the past week.”
Melton, the Chief Medical Officer, slid the observation panel across, closing off Brownie’s view of the shuttle pilot sitting at his window staring longingly out at the blue sky.
“So, you’ve had to keep him confined?” asked the science head.
“After he was grounded ejecting out of his shuttle and trying to jump out of his safety capsule, the next day he was stopped before he could launch one of the lifeboats from the mother-ship.”
“What was he going to do with that?”
“Sedating him brought him out of his psychotic state. It appears he’d been intending to improve his aerial survey methods by performing a manual reconnaissance – without his parachute.”
“And this is not the only case” the gently mannered doctor advised as he led her to another door along the passage.
Again, the panel slid aside to reveal a single occupant. This time the sparse furnishings were obscured by a room full of dense foliage.
“Horticulturalist. Found him miles out from the perimeter setting up his own personal nature retreat.”
Brownie looked at Melton questioningly, “What do you think is causing this? How many cases are there?”
“Dozens. These are the most severe. We’re checking psychological profiles to see if there’s a pattern.”
“Frankly…” he said gravely, the levity of his medico’s self-defense mechanism slipping away, “…we don’t have the resources to deal with this if it continues to escalate.”
Brownie left, taking a walk to get some space and think. This is too much of a coincidence not to be something to do with the evos, she thought. It’s only been a couple of days since they started turning up… but they can’t imprint on humans – the neuro-programming protocols prevent it. She caught a glimpse of one meandering out of a corn field, the look of a lost infant on its face. But now there are so many of them here that Caro and Edgell don’t know what to do with them.
She pictured the two of them in their lab surrounded by the urchin-like creatures and had to suppress a laugh. Then, as she walked on, the image of the two working together took on a more solemn note as it reminded her of what she’d given up to be here on this strange world. Back on Earth she’d worked closely alongside Jarron on the Barossa project. Two years laying the foundations so that another convoy of colonists could integrate seamlessly with their new environment. He, like Caro, had been a behavioral specialist working with the evo-morphs. When the opportunity for her promotion came with a relocation clause to Madrigal IV – the decision to part had been a painful one. Looking back, I guess our relationship just wasn’t strong enough to outweigh the career choice.
Brownie could rationalize it away, but it still hurt.
She went to Edgell’s lab and found the pair hovering over a specimen. The comatose evo was surrounded by a ring of nanodes blinking in a circle around its little head.
“Is that one of the beloboar assignments?” she asked.
“Correct” answered Edgell, frowning with concentration as he watched a flow of data running down a holo-screen at eye level.
“According to the stress test results from the simulator – there’s no reason for the imprints to fail.”
“No logical reason…” added Caro.
Brownie thought for a moment, even though her background wasn’t in evolutionary biology she knew that stress was the key. It was the common thread across all of the complex life the human race had encountered in the galaxy. Stress drives change, and this was how the evos worked. Once imprinted, the assignee found themselves compelled to adapt their behavior around that of the new influence in their life. The same principal applied whether the target was alone or already mated. A pair would simply transpose the behavior they would normally exhibit toward their offspring, onto the child-like being that had come into their lives. Whether it was the stress of providing for a new dependent, or for a new friend, a change in behavior always resulted.
Now there was an exception. Perhaps there was a problem with way the native life-forms on Madrigal IV dealt with new stressors.
Brownie looked searchingly at the only two people in the colony qualified to find an answer, and pleaded “Well, what’s next?”
The two experts looked at each other with empty expressions. Clearly, they had exhausted all technical means at their disposal. Something was needed to spark their imaginations.
Brownie brushed aside the heavy silence with a high-spirited suggestion, “Alright, let’s head for the bar.”
One of the benefits of overproduction from the highly successful corn crop was a surplus redirected to the colony’s only brewery. The gloom that had presided over the trio evaporated after the first pitcher of maize beer.
“Aphrodisiacs”
“It’s not a sexual relationship” Edgell murmured.
“Not at first…” Caro responded mischievously, “but we are talking about evolution.”
“Azright!” Brownie added, offering a toast, “Love will conquer all!”
Edgell reluctantly raised his glass, “Yes – love…or else beer.”
“Yes!” Caro announced, her face lighting up and illuminating the lowly lit huddle around the table. Some of the jump-suited patrons from the surrounding tables looked up to see what the excitement was all about. Caro lowered her head back down at first, then realized she didn’t care who was listening.
“Let’s get them together by luring them to strategically placed kegs in the forest…”
“…with some kind of Pavlovian self-serve apparatus” added Brownie with a serious expression.
They joked and laughed about the evos for a while longer, until the constraining bounds of their problem had been completely loosened.
Then they started to exchange ideas on a less frivolous level.
“Perhaps there’s a compound in the evo’s new diet – one we haven’t come across before” said Caro.
Edgell huffed, “We’ve been using them to influence the ecosystems of new planets for centuries. Hundreds of planets across the galaxy, many of them more hostile and inhospitable to humans than this one – and they’ve never failed before.”
“But don’t you feel there’s something that sets this place apart from the others?” she asked, “…all this beauty? Perfect climate, no predators… we almost didn’t need to bring in the evos at all.”
“True” said Brownie thoughtfully.
“I struggled to find a precedent when I was setting up the environmental variables for their programming. There are always plenty of predator-prey interactions which have to be considered for the profiling. Here, there were none.”
“None?” Brownie sounded more than surprised. The significance of Caro’s admission sent a tingle through her scalp. Years ago, her specialty had been geology before her promotion to an administrative career but even from her high-level overview she would have taken note of any previously encountered planets whose ecology hosted absolutely no predators.
The initial survey which approved Madrigal IV for colonization would have identified every species of fauna and flora in meticulous detail, however the myriad possible interactions between them all could not be quantified in the timeframe before the first mother-ship was on its way. Competition for resources, and pressure to claim them first, was one thing that hadn’t changed in the millennia since tall ships under sail did the colonizing.
Animals with tusks and claws such as the beloboar would simply be classed as ‘potentially dangerous’, until a time when direct observation of their behavior could prove otherwise.
Brownie pried for more detail, “So… you’re saying there are no species here that aren’t herbivores?”
“Strangely, that isn’t the case” Caro advised, “scavenging is widespread – but this place seems to be missing the mindset of ‘kill or be killed’. And when they do scavenge they apparently don’t make the connection between the live animal and the dead one.”
She saw that Brownie was concentrating hard on what she was hearing, so she let it sink in for a moment before continuing.
“That’s not unheard of on other worlds. Many predators may kill rivals but still not eat them unless they are starving. The association between life and death would be at an instinctive level – not cognitive.”
“I see… so you’re saying that it’s possible for the link between killing for food or survival, and death, to be missing.”
“Correct. Perhaps it’s the abundance of food provided here year-round, by the various tree and understory species – as though all life has evolved here with a mentality of simply picking out a meal whenever they choose.”
Then she wondered out loud, “No competition for food – so no animosity toward their own or other species.”
Brownie couldn’t help but think this all had something to do with what was going on with the evos and at the infirmary. She felt overloaded by all of the information and was now needing to sleep on it.
More cases appeared over the following days. One of them, a security officer who’d been missing for a week, was found inside an underground bunker he’d secretly constructed beneath a warehouse. A store person had been injured after stumbling across a booby-trap connected to the entrance of the bunker. There were no evos at the scene but his family advised that he had kept one he’d recently found one on his nightly round.
The medical resources designed for meeting the needs of several hundred colonists, expected to be limited to farming accidents or the containment of some local virus, had become swamped with the victims of the psychological malaise.
Brownie continued her investigation with Caro’s help. They were focusing their efforts on the effect that the unassigned and returning evos were having on the human population. As they toured the perimeter of the agricultural hinterland, rounding up new arrivals for Edgell to study, Caro cradled one of the cuddly stragglers in her arms.
“I think this one’s taken to me – perhaps I’ll keep it.”
She crooned over the peach-furred bundle, stroking its small pointed ears so that the big eyes closed and it started to purr.
“Aww…. I want one” Brownie moaned.
Caro resisted an urge to engage in a childish exchange of baby talk. It wasn’t easy – and the effort to suppress it caused her to break into uncontrollable giggles.
From behind the controls of the grav-ute Brownie was about to utter something designed to snap Caro out of it, when she suddenly spotted on evo below them and hovered to a halt.
She stepped out and walked back to the edge of the woods where she’d seen it. Caro regained her self-control and quickly joined her.
“Oh, what a lovely shade of green!”
“It’s a rare one… developed for those tree dragons that we want to keep quiet in the nighttime” said Brownie.
She brushed its fur with her hand and then held the ball of bright lime fluff up to eye level, “I’m going to call you Tumbleweed.”
They resumed their patrol, finding several more strays before the day was out. Caro took over driving for the return leg, giving Brownie a chance to relax with her new pet in her lap.
“At least we’ll have no problem finding them homes if we can’t re-integrate them” she said as Tumbleweed gave her a look of irresistible helplessness.
“Are you kidding?” Caro laughed, as she glanced over her shoulder at the little faces staring back at her from the cargo area, “I can’t believe we never thought of programming them for human company.”
“Well, they didn’t seem so cute before” Brownie pointed out, “you know… they go straight from the incubators to their assignment.”
“But there have been failures before, reported on other planets. If they don’t get re-imprinted they usually get destroyed.”
“Yes… I can’t believe I used to think that was acceptable.”
Tumbleweed purred loudly in approval.
#
The lights of the colony, only produced a barely visible halo beneath the majestic blaze of the Milky Way.
The bunch of evos in Brownie’s arms chirped and piped as she followed Caro into the Planetary Science wing.
“That’s strange…” she said as she noticed a pool of darkness through the glass panels of the lab ahead, “Edgell wouldn’t usually have turned in this early.”
As they reached the threshold a dim glow emanated from the center of the room. A subdued glimmer as though there were a light underneath a blanket.
“Edgell?” Brownie called out as she tipped her armful of fur-balls into a pen just inside the doorway.
The glow immediately extinguished. Caro turned on the lights and gasped. The middle of the lab was a maze of upturned furniture draped in linen, curtains or any other covering that could be improvised into a kind of room-sized cubby house.
“Edgell!” Brownie shouted impatiently, trying to penetrate the shrouds.
Finally, a flap lifted in the far corner, and a pair of eyes peeped over the edge. Edgell’s expression held a childish quality, almost an innocence, protesting that he had done no wrong.
Brownie scrutinized him like a schoolmistress, “What are you doing?”
The scientist stammered, “I… I… didn’t want the control group to get contaminated.”
Caro moved forward at his meek response, opening up some of the construction. She lifted chairs and then righted a table tipped on its side. Once in the center, she reached out and uncovered a holding pen full of evos.
“Control group? So, these are the baseline… then what changes have you made to the treatment group?”
Some of the childishness drained from his face, “Well… I tried repeatedly to reprogram them against their original assignments. Changing the environmental variables each time… but there are so many – it’s like trying to second-guess nature itself.”
He looked tired, even though he still didn’t fully resemble the introvert they were used to seeing huddled over a workstation. The boyishness seemed to take years off his appearance.
But in the presence of the returning adults, playtime for the child was now over.
“And…” Caro prompted.
Edgell seemed frustrated – uncomfortable, as though having to explain himself was a tedious chore, “They have to imprint – it’s their purpose.”
“So, what have they imprinted on?” she asked him, but knew the answer before it came.
Edgell slowly rose from his corner. The evo in his hands cheeped noisily at the two females, annoyed with them for spoiling the game they’d all been playing.
“Oh great…” sighed Brownie, “So now you’re a father.”
“No wait… that proves it!” Caro blurted, scolding herself for being so blind. “This is what’s been causing the erratic incidents – they’ve been latching on to us!”
“But that’s impossible” Brownie countered, “There’s never been a recorded instance of a human-evo imprint. What about the neuro-programming protocols?”
Caro picked up one of the control group, and smoothing its fur, scowled at Edgell for letting it become so disheveled.
“Remember we’re dealing with evolution” she said firmly, “…and we don’t know everything about the ecology here – the differences I’ve been sensing – it’s like being in a place I should always have been in. I’ve never felt more alive.”
Brownie sighed, “Yes I guess I’ve been feeling that way too… perhaps there is more to all of this than just the evos.”
“That’s right!” Edgell called out from his corner, “…my experiments with those in the treatment group, they should have worked – I reprogrammed this one against a speckled glider but it didn’t even take – nothing.”
“Are you saying they’ve lost the ability to imprint altogether?” asked Brownie.
“No, that’s just it… you were right when you said there was more to this mystery than the evos.”
He held up the one nestled in his hands, “This one’s imprinted on me – but it appears they can’t connect to any of the indigenous life-forms.”
“Hmmm,” Caro pondered aloud, “so perhaps the evos themselves have… evolved?”
“It would seem to be so” Edgell confirmed. He had regained most of his composure and began to skirt around the perimeter of the room.
“That would explain how the protocols could have been circumvented – they have either been rendered ineffective, or deleted. I shall run tests to determine which.”
Brownie cautioned him, “You’d better check in at the infirmary first, and isolate that one before you go.”
She turned to Caro as Edgell left, wondering about his transformation from the extreme introvert they’d found upon their return, back to a semblance of his normal self.
“Perhaps our presence here has reduced the evo’s influence… we may have returned just in time – before the effects became as severe as they have with those at the infirmary.”
“I agree – and I expect we haven’t been exposed to them for long enough…” Caro added.
“We should inform the Administration,” said Brownie, “they can distribute a warning and coordinate the situation.”
She looked down at Tumbleweed, whose eyes shined back at her from another dimension. A place to which she now understood she must go.
“You take care of that and then assist Edgell… I have something else I need to do.”
∞
At first light a stream of brown dust followed a speeding grav-ute away from the town, toward the green immensity beyond.
Tumbleweed let out a concerned peep.
Brownie took her focus from the fast approaching forest to reassure the sleepy ball of fur in her lap, “Aww, we’re just going for a widdle twip.”
She gave herself a mental slap in the face once she realized that the urge to baby-talk had returned.
“Ok… not good – I’ve suppressed my maternal instincts for years so don’t think you can turn that over in a hurry.”
The evo blinked up at her innocently.
“Good try…” regardless, she felt herself winning the battle for her wits, “I just want to find out what it is you don’t like about our new home.”
She pulled on the control grips and they rose easily up above tree-level. The whitish disk of Madrigal blazed its greeting over the canopy below. Feeling privileged to behold such a scene, Brownie became an intrinsic part of the world below. It was as though her own molecules were being swept along by the sea of sunshine now lighting up the landscape below.
With no clear destination in mind, she let go of the controls and closed her eyes. The image of the forest blurring past beneath her fueled a free-falling rush. She became aware of the planet below as a whole. A living, breathing, waking entity. More than a concept she would have normally categorized into the ‘life – habitat – biology’ section of her scientific mind, she was actually experiencing the profusion of life below.
And then the distant seas, the shifting tectonic plates, the molten core – and finally the source of her awareness – the purring ball in her lap – Tumbleweed.
A link between her material, logical self – and that which could be. That which should always be. A pristine, natural perfection servicing only itself, to which she was merely a witness.
The evo-morph’s initial purpose, the role of influencing the life-forms of this ecology, could not be fulfilled. A role written for it by humans – but this was paradise.
Nothing could be improved here by any external influence. It was the humans who would have to change – evolve, to fit in here.
Brownie opened her eyes, the craft detecting its sole occupant as being semi-conscious, had landed in a small clearing.
Back at the lab Edgell turned from the nano-scope to Caro flushed with excitement, “The restraining protocols aren’t there, so there’s nothing to stop the evos from linking to us.”
“But why? How did this happen?” Caro asked.
“I can’t say for certain, but I suspect it’s related to the inherent process of evolution. Adaptation yes… but what is that really? Is it merely some physical process – or is it something higher?”
Caro smiled at the bio-scientist, “Now you’re starting to think like me. Corporeal changes sourced from behavior – but motivated by thought, intentions – determination. If there’s no destination for those intentions then the evolutionary process changes direction. The evos must have come up against something they couldn’t improve.”
Edgell frowned with concentration. This kind of speculation was not his forte, “Then since their sole purpose is to initiate change, they naturally had to find another focus for that purpose – us.”
He looked around as if he were looking for something, “Where’s Brownie?”
Caro responded as though she were snapping out of a trance, “Oh, she’s uh… oh no! She’s gone out into the forest – with her evo.”
“We’ll have to find her” he said urgently, “who knows what changes she may have to go through.”
#
The grass was as smooth and low as a freshly cut lawn. Brownie sat down and tipped Tumbleweed out of her hands to walk around. The evo just sat down and looked at her.
“Don’t you want to have a look around?”
A slow blink was the response.
Brownie lay back on the turf and stared up through a wide gap between the trees. Beautiful today, perfect tomorrow.
But she didn’t feel at home. She was still an alien to the surrounding garden of wonder.
Tumbleweed hopped up and sat on her chest. The evo’s eyes met hers with an intense stare. Emotions began to stir – a conflict within her needed to be resolved.
The perfection and harmony about her demanded that she be at peace, but she felt unworthy of such a state.
Searching her feelings, she tried to find the source of the conflict. She’d led a good life, never intentionally hurting anyone. What was there that was preventing her passage into this earthly heaven?
As she lay prone, eyes closed, warm air stirred the canopy into motion and she thought she heard the garden whisper to her. Images flowed through her mind of the circumstances that led to her being here. Scenes in her apartment when she informed Jarron of her decision to take this job. Arguments, tantrums and tears. Then the lonely departure from the spaceport. It had been a tortuous episode, denying her lover, and instead furthering her career.
Was that it? Betraying her love – betraying herself and her own heart?
The garden whispered again. She became aware of her feelings, an ache in her chest – of tears flowing down her cheeks. She realized now the magnitude of what she’d done. Love. The highest point of evolution, the highest state of mind that we can reach. Perfect harmony. To love someone as much as they love you. Little else in this life was as worthwhile. She took Tumbleweed in her arms and rose to leave. Looking around, the garden no longer seemed strange and remote. The warmth of belonging followed her as she got behind the wheel and left for the colony she could now call her home.