Long Story #6: Xenophobia (Part 1)

Long Story #6: Xenophobia (Content Tags: Messy and wet diapers, science fiction, space horror) Space is a vast abyss, a great big stage of nothingness; in that nothingness, somethings live their piddling little lives, experiencing the cosmos and all its murky secrets. Humans, for all that they want to be the most important beings, are just hairless apes that figured out how to make explosions, and with that knowledge, they were able to leave their backwater dirtball. The first steps on the moon might have been in the twentieth century, but great leaps had happened since then. Nearly two hundred years later, space travel had become more commonplace, though it still wasn't all it could be. Faster than light travel was still a pipe dream, and hyper-gates could only cut down the time-based drudgery by so much. Traveling the stars was a lot of time doing absolutely nothing, with careful resource management to consider, and with high costs to tally. Exploration was still key, but it was impossible unless it could pay for itself. Corporations paid top dollar for discovering new planets with worthwhile resources to strip, or for even just bringing back things that were difficult to find on Earth or in the milky way. In this way, the wonderful voyages of what would have been science fiction in the past, had become commercialized like the 'voyages' of the earlier centuries on their own planet. New lands weren't discovered for the sake of curiosity or adventure, but to further fuel the engine of capitalism that had made these treks possible in the first place. So maybe that drained some of the magic away from it, but for some, the allure of discovery itself was enough a prize. Talum was one such kid that felt this way. He couldn't care less about keeping things profitable, so long as he got to see the wonders left unseen in the vastness of the galaxy. He'd come aboard a couple of years ago, an orphan of long-forgotten circumstance, and he'd never looked back on a humdrum life of normalcy and mediocrity. Even before he'd lost his home aboard a fueling station, raided by space pirates, he'd dreamed of growing up to become a cosmic cartographer. That dream had become a reality much sooner than he could have hoped, when his distress beacon was answered by a passing ship. His special skills were geared toward the technical, since he'd been an assistant to the top mechanical engineer at the fueling station, so after some badgering, he'd been allowed to join the crew that found him. Talum's excitement was infectious and he quickly found himself accepted by his new 'team'. Ever since, he'd been the bright eyed and bushy tailed recruit that symbolized an unwavering optimism. Every new planet had him gawking and chattering about the possibilities, and even the most barren of the bunch was reason to celebrate. One thing that'd taken some getting used to was the special spacesuit he'd been outfitted with. The fueling station he'd grown up on was situated in place, and it was relatively self-sustaining at that. He rarely had to consider resources, conservation of space, or even a lack of an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Aboard a cartographer ship though, that was a different beast entirely. Everything had to be calculated and metered out, stasis pods were frequently used for long bouts of travel, and luxuries could be rare. One such luxury, specifically for the young mechanic, was the use of an 'updated' spacesuit. Most modern spacesuits had shifted toward heavy utilization of nanotechnology and were specially designed to run their processes indefinitely. These suits also cost a small fortune, and to tailor one to a child, that was another small fortune on top of it. So Talum got something more archaic. It was still effective, and it still protected him from all manner of hazards that one met in this line of work, but it didn't have some of the newer functions. One that chafed the boy, sometimes literally, was that the suit didn't have a nanobot-assisted 'reclamation and recycling' unit. What did that mean? Well, everyone else, if the need arose in some of the longer trips down to these planets, could simply void in their suit and have it instantly be converted to a power source. Talum didn't have that, he had to pretty much deal with wearing a special diaper under his suit. Gordon, the captain, had tried to call them 'astronaut pants' or 'space pants', but Talum hadn't at all been convinced. It was a literal diaper, maybe one that was engineered for long bouts of usage in space, but it was a diaper nonetheless. It was such a long gone accoutrement of space travel, that none of the other crew members had ever had to deal with something so analog. Less intensive space travel had cheaper suits with similar toileting functions to what his crew wore, but for the hazards of a cartographer, the most standard modern suit was still way out of Talum's price range. So he was stuck with the demeaning garment, and his suit's A.I had a lovely little feature of broadcasting whenever he'd made use of the 'astronaut pants'. Maybe it'd made sense initially, since this suit was designed for a little kid in mind, but it was sometimes hard to look like a 'peer' to the grownups, when his suit was literally announcing that he'd just soiled himself. That's what he was currently saving up for now, a new suit. He got a meager cut out of every mission, minus his 'room and boarding', since the ship's operation and her expenses were split among the crew, but at the rate he was going, he'd be stuck in his ratty old spacesuit for years to come! Then they'd found 'Planet X', at least that's what Roland, the communications manager, liked to call it. The planet wasn't yet on any star maps, and it looked ripe for the pickings. Gordon set up a survey party, which of course Talum begged to be apart of. So they took a smaller ship down onto the planet's surface, just a small team to figure out what type of resources the planet had to offer. Captain Gordon, Alyssa the combat specialist, Marquez the astrobiologist, Gina the prospector, and Talum the obnoxiously excitable. It'd been a long time since they discovered a new planet that had an atmosphere conducive to life. Aliens weren't really common, and the few specimens that'd been found across the galaxy were extremely simple in nature. Nothing had been found that was anything as cognitively advanced or as 'evolved' as what was on earth. It was mostly alien plants, microbial cells, and the occasional sea bear. It was a disappointing aspect of being a cartographer, but it kept Talum hoping to see something more advanced, like the comic books or movies that he'd grown up with. At least for now, he thought he wanted to find new life out here, something that would truly be 'alien'. "Alright team, everybody in position? We're about to board the shuttle." The captain bellowed, clicking a button on his wrist that formed a helmet of personalized atmosphere around his head. The other crew-members did the same, though for Talum, his helmet got popped on top of his head by Gina. She chuckled and made sure it connected to the suit right, "Aye, think we're all ready, Gordo. What about you 'Talcum', got yer nappies?" The suit spoke for him, a voice coming from his wristband that said: "Waste containment unit is properly fastened and integrated, current capacity usage at one percent!" This earned a few more laughs from the others, and a condescending pat on the rear by Gina. "Got a lil' too ess-ited with the mission, did yuh? Save some room fer' 'till we land!" Talum had gotten suited up earlier and then immediately realized he'd had to pee, so being alone at the time, he'd just taken care of it in the suit. He hadn't expected that the smartass with a thick accent would be giving him trouble over it! The boy blushed and muttered something unintelligible, following the rest of the crew toward the shuttle bay. Within ten minutes, they were making landfall on the surface below, and all they could see were dollar signs. The planet was uncharacteristically *lush*. Dense jungles splayed out in all directions with vibrant colors unseen on the terrestrial plants they were familiar with. It spoke to the chance that they were about to become very wealthy with selling off the coordinates. Double-checking the atmospheric composition, they also learned that the air was breathable, which was another rarity in their line of work. Even other planets with botanic species didn't typically have a proper ratio to allow going without a helmet. Just because they could breath, didn't mean they were going to go bare. There was still a million other factors to consider, and with everything being a big question mark at the moment, it was safe to keep themselves as contained as possible. Alyssa slung a gauss rifle over her shoulder and hurried Talum out of the way, since he'd planted himself at the ship's exit, so that he could gawk at the beautiful scene. "Heads up, brat. Let's actually get down there before you start acting like a tourist." The boy laughed a little and jumped down from the top of the off-boarding ramp, the thrusters on the back of his suit giving him a controlled descent to the ground. "But look at this place! I've never seen anything like it before!" Marquez followed Alyssa down the ramp, "You're right, Talum. This is completely unprecedented! This planet could very well have specimens worthy of study! Maybe even fauna on par with what we have on earth--" "Let's not get the ankle biter soakin' his trousers, egghead." Gina interrupted, "Plants don't mean beasties...But they do mean oil." The crew assembled at the bottom, and the captain remotely closed the hatch of the shuttle. "Alright, team. We'll start by going north, three clicks, and then we can see what we have here. I'll lead, Alyssa take up the rear; we don't know for sure that others haven't already found this place, or..." The man gave a wry smile, "...If aliens are a possible threat. Don't want anything getting the drop on us and slurping out our brains, right?" He mostly directed at Talum to humor the boy's sense of adventure. Darkness fell upon them once they entered the dense brush of the jungle, and the crew switched to a night-vision setting with the displays on their helmets. Everything was quiet, except for their marching of footsteps. As they made a path, Marquez was snipping small bits off of different looking plants and putting them into a specialized container, while Gina held an instrument that almost looked like a metal dowsing rod. "There's somethin' a lil' further in; maybe a cavern? Looks big, but these buggerin' trees are in tuh' way." The machine in her hands suddenly let out a jarring beep, which was almost immediately followed by a more embarrassing beep from Talum's suit, indicating usage of the 'facilities'. Luckily for the boy, his urinary indiscretion was hardly on anybody's mind, instead they were focusing on Gina. "...No...'Oly shit, guys. This thing's pickin' up a structure!" She gasped, aiming the end of the device toward a part of the forest and causing it to beep again. "That can't be right. Maybe the calibration is off and it just got confused about the cavern." Alyssa chimed in. "Either way, we should at least go check it out. Might be nothing, or maybe we just found a sign of complex life?" Their captain said, his optimism more similar to Talum in that moment, though for purely monetary reasons. The group trudged another couple of miles inward and finally stopped in front of massive maw of a cave. Gordon contacted the ship briefly to give a rundown of what they'd done so far, and then began to lead his crew further into the dark caverns. "It still says that its pickin' up a structure. Further in, maybe a kilo or two." Talum was noticeably confused, since this sort of thing had never happened on any of their other excursions. "What does that mean?" Marquez was the one to reply to the curious little boy, "In the context of our work, a 'structure' means that there is a sign of manipulated nature, of a rearrangement. Whether that's an ant hill or a skyscraper, it is supposed to be an indication of life." "That machine that Gina is using isn't just good for looking for mineral deposits, it has a sophisticated programming that can scan for miles in all directions and tell us what the topography of the planet is like. Its able to zero out the botanical organisms, so long as they consist of some similar aspects to what we know about plants; these samples I've taken so far point to that, so they aren't doing anything to mess with the machine's reading." Talum listened closely, trying to follow exactly what the scientist was attempting to explain. "So there might be like, a wasp nest or an alien house, or something?" The man chuckled, "Well, a house would be very impressive. I expect that if there is a structure though, it'll likely be more in line with a nest. That'd be the discovery of a lifetime! Finding an alien life-form complex enough to build a hive, that'd be far past anything that mankind has ever found out here." Gina smirked, "It'd also mean a huge payday! Maybe enuff' to get 'Talcum' a new suit, eh? No more piddlin' or makin' in yur' nappies like a lil' babe." ((Too large for one post! Continued in the next))