For One Nen Read online

  No one answered the giant.

  After a long silence a faint light flicked on.

  “That’s my Dhobin,” Trina said to Bug. “Always prepared.” She gave him a long kiss in the gleam of the single light.

  “Woohoo, Buggy. Gettin’ some,” Benai teased.

  Without stopping their kiss, Bug flicked off the light once more.

  “Hey,” Benai protested.

  A bigger overhead light came on and everyone saw Benai had a deep furrowed brow and a shoulder shoved tightly into a corner.

  “Look at the big man scared of the dark,” Trina teased.

  “Stop, Trina,” Teltel said sharply.

  “But he’s,” Trina began but Bug patted her hand that he was holding. She understood that her assumption was true. This tall, handsome, Neph was afraid of the dark.

  “I just didn’t think Neph were afraid of anything,” Trina mumbled as she sat down.

  Merari sat beside her, playing nervously with her long straight hair. The others followed suit and slid their bodies to the elevator floor.

  “Look where we are,” Bug said. He was usually quiet but when he spoke he always had something important to say.

  “We’re in a stupid, sparse, elevator,” Benai spat.

  “Yes. We’re in a stopped elevator, on a broken ship, trying to outrun a particle wave from a nova. That’s a whole lot of scary to choose from,” Bug then smiled. “So everybody take your pick. Plenty of fears to go around.”

  “Kind of amazing any of us still burn with two suns any more, isn’t it?” Trina said.

  “You said it,” Merari chimed in as she pushed her body against the wall for support. “Might as well get comfortable. Who knows how long we’ll be stuck in here?”

  Teltel gave a growl and banged his hand against the wall of the elevator.

  “Easy big guy,” Benai said as his own calm grew. “Just sit awhile.”

  Merari gave a look to Benai that turned into a smirk.

  “He just gets a little cranky when he misses morning meal,” Benai gave a smirk and added. “Or noon meal or evening meal or in-between meal.”

  Merari reached into her bag and pulled out a long bar in a silver package.

  Holding it out to Teltel she said, “I hear you know stories.”

  “How’d you know?” Teltel grumbled.

  Merari pulled back her hand and began to open the package.

  “Come on, now,” Teltel protested.

  Trina offered him some of her food stash.

  “Thanks anyway Trina but I don’t care for that energy food that the Nen carry.”

  “I’ve never tried it myself but it must be dreadful if this big guy doesn’t like it. I thought he would eat anything,” Benai said.

  Merari pretended to take a bite of her food when Teltel gasped. “Alright, alright,” he said.

  He reached into a pocket of his light weight pants and pulled out two books.

  He held one out and said, “I got this first one from Deni.”

  “From the gardens?” Bug asked.

  “Yes,” Teltel answered

  “She’s my cousin,” Bug answered as he pushed his hair from his face.

  “She has a big crate of books that no one on the Egress has seen until us. I picked up this one but I can’t read it,” he handed the coverless book to Merari and she handed him the bar of food.

  Merari carefully looked through its pages. “It looks familiar. But I can’t read it either.”

  “It’s Denizen,” Trina said, looking at it.

  “You can read it?” Teltel asked excitedly with a mouthful of food.

  “Sure,” Trina said. She took the book into her hands carefully and read.

  “The top page here says…

  ‘My previous writings are names and dates but since my cousins and I have found the tunnels leading underground, our lives have gotten strange and complicated. We’ve only found a few people who will tell us anything about those that lived underground. It seems most everyone is suspicious because we are curious and new, but there even seems to be something more. From here on I write the story of my cousins and I who were aboard the Starship ‘Eden’ from Earth for 95,000 years. Now here we are on Reen. I don’t think any of us will live long enough to worry about the next nova but many of us are getting friendly with the locals. I worry that our childrens’ children will need to leave this planet or go underground before the next nova. The ship isn’t scheduled to leave for long after we’re gone. We will try to learn all we can so our childrens’ children will survive. This is our story, my cousins and I. Lena, Shane, Vincent, Stella, Scout, Irene, and I, Chris’.”

  Trina took the book as she nestled into Bug’s embrace. He kissed her blonde cropped hair and waited for the story.

  31 BE

  On the surface of REEN

  Shortly after the arrival of the EDEN (the first colonizing starship from Earth)

  “There’s some light down there, Irene,” Scout said. “And this,” Scout was talking ninety miles a minute since he had surfaced from the tunnel he and Irene had found while on a walk in the high hills. “What? Why are you laughing at me, cuz?” Scout asked.

  “You were the same way when we were little and played in the woods behind your house. Don’t you remember? You would show me everything you picked up. Don't you remember that? Even that turtle.”

  “Herbert,” Scout answered. “I kept him for three years. I couldn’t remember you very well when everyone left but the turtle reminded me of when I had been happy.” There was a silence for only a second when Scout’s reminiscent far away gaze turned into a gasp. “But what on Earth are we replaying the ‘old times’ for when I’ve found something?”

  Irene was still not taking him too seriously when she reminded him, “What onEarth?”

  “I know, I know,” Scout said. “We’ve come all this way. You’d think I could remember we’re not on Earth anymore. But just look at this.”

  Irene took the stone in her hand and rubbed it a few times with her thumb. “It’s just an old stone. I don’t see the big deal.”

  “Ahhuh,” Scout said, in his usual closed-mouth unhappy growl.

  “The suns wash it out up here. You’ve got to come in here with me,” he said.

  “But I don’t want to actually go in the tunnel. I just had fun finding it with you,” Irene protested.

  Scout urged, “Just a few steps into the mouth of the tunnel and then it curves down a little. That is all. It is nice and dark there. You need to see it in the dark,” Scout explained.

  Irene tried to reason with him. “But if I’ll be in the dark how will I be able to see it?”

  Scout took her firmly by the arm and marched her into the tunnel opening. “Do you see it now?”

  Irene held onto his arm like a child and fussed, “I don’t see anything. But I think this planet must have fireflies because I think one just flew in with us – Oh! Wait. I can almost see something else.”

  Scout began to laugh. Irene began clapping him on the arm, “Scout! Scout! You’re holding the firefly.”

  Still laughing Scout said, “Here you hold it.” He placed the stone firmly in her hand.

  “The stone!” Irene cried in surprise. “It’s the stone you had all along. But why couldn’t I see it in the light of the suns?” she asked.

  “Maybe it sort of turns itself off when it’s in the light of the suns.” Scout theorized.

  “Oh! Scout! It just keeps getting brighter. I can almost see all around the tunnel now. I think it’s getting brighter the longer we’re in here. Oh! The others have got to see this.” She held it up and moved it about slowly while being awestruck by the vast carvings on the walls. “We’ve got to get Chris in here,” Irene said. She ran her finger over the wall where there were grooves and pictures.

  Chris had made great progress in communication with many of the native people of the city. However, he found it curious that when he asked about the other people on the planet, he could never
get a straight answer. This made him all the more determined to learn of the people outside of the city.

  Chris was communications first officer on the Eden, which meant his job on Reen was to learn the language so he could communicate more easily with officials there.

  He was the oldest of these cousins that joined almost 50,000 others who had left Earth on the Eden.

  Fifty years before they had left Earth on the Eden, SETI had received a transmission from the Reen system remarkably less than 24 hours after a massive gamma burst was detected from the binary star at the heart of the system. It was a recurrent nova, a white dwarf with a mass close to the helium fusion limit, orbiting a red giant closely enough for the dwarf to pull massive amounts of matter from its companion, which periodically pushed it over the helium fusion limit and it exploded in a violent nova before settling down for around 100,000 years.

  The Eden’s mission planners had decided to alter the ship’s course to visit the Reen system, which was about 500 light years from Earth. After a couple of generations they would continue on their way to the final destination, the Z.O.E. star system, which was another 250 light years beyond.

  The youngest of the cousins to join the group was Lena. She was her mother’s only daughter, and it grieved her mother to lose her to such a permanent separation. Even the other cousins questioned her joining the colony because she was still very young; just nineteen. Yet she was head strong and driven and also a bit angry. After speaking to Chris, she had convinced him to find a place for her on the Eden. Even though she was young she was to prove her worth on such an extraordinary adventure.

  When Lena was a child, she had worked at her aunt’s greenhouse, although she didn’t consider it work. It was more like play time with her older brother Shane and cousins, Darcy and Stella. As they grew older though, Shane got tired of playing in the greenhouse with his girl cousins. He tried hard to fit in with his older boy cousins. He looked up to them because they were rough-and-tumble kind of boys and they were a little older.

  Shane began following Chris around like a puppy. Chris was very gracious to his little cousin, always showing him his current creative project. Chris liked to work on tiny robots. He even programmed his favorite with a voice response mechanism. Chris let Shane play backyard football when the other cousins came together.

  Scout always protested by saying, “He's still too little. He should go play somewhere else.” Scout really was only concerned for Shane's safety but Shane would get so angry with him. However, Scout always regretted that he never got the chance to explain to Shane his concern. Vincent stayed neutral while Chris tried to make peace.

  They were all still young when the cousins' parents chose to part ways. None of the couples divorced, but all the cousins felt like children of divorce because their families had been severed.

  The cousins never saw each other again until Shane recognized Vincent at university. They walked to the local pub, and over a friendly round of beers, they filled in the gaps between when they all lived in a tiny little town, until that very day. They wondered about their other cousins. Vincent talked about his little sister, Darcy. Shane told of how Lena, secretly kept a picture of Darcy in her diary.

  Vincent didn’t ask how he came to know this. He just said, “I wonder if all of us miss each other as much as those two? They used to be inseparable. Do you know that right after we moved away, Darcy named her favorite doll, 'Lena'? Even when she grew out of dolls, her 'Lena' doll was one that moved from sitting on her bed, to a shelf in her room where she placed her most prized possessions.” There was silence for a time until Vincent ordered pie.

  “And I think another round for the both of us,” he said to the waitress.

  “Make mine a scotch on the rocks,” Shane said.

  “Make mine a double, Miss,” Vincent instructed as he held one hand up politely.

  When their order came the quiet men threw back their scotch together and clanked their glasses on the table as Shane suggested, “Why can’t we get them in touch?”

  Vincent asked with his eyes bright “For that matter, why can’t we get us all together?”

  Shane snarled with a turned up lip, “Folks too?”

  “That would take more peacemaking than I personally embody,” Vincent said with a laugh.

  “Why do they have to know at all?” Shane quipped as he pushed a dark blonde curl away from his glasses. They laughed with unrestrained enthusiasm.

  When their exuberance calmed and they were drinking another round of dark beers with a tall head of foam, Vincent said, “I want it said that I’m very sorry.”

  Shane was confused for a moment. “Why are you sorry?”

  “For not choosing you,” Vincent explained. “You and the others.” Vincent’s eyes had begun to dilate a bit and each movement he made was slightly more exaggerated than they were before his first drink that evening.

  “Oh!” Shane said with understanding.

  Vincent continued. “When our parents, well, when we didn’t see each other anymore, I missed you all so much. When I was about twelve, I almost ran away. Did you know that?” he began to slur his words.

  “Coffee,” Shane said to the passing waitress.

  “It’s true,” Vincent said. “I almost ran off to find all of you. I never told Darcy because I knew she would do anything I did. That wouldn’t have been fair to her. She needed to do her own choosing.”

  “We all chose in our own way. We chose our parents. You never need to apologize for that,” Shane said.

  “Thanks for that, man.” Vincent said. Then added, “I just wanted it said.”

  The waitress brought an entire pot of strong coffee for the men. They drank in silence for a few moments.

  “But what about us?” Vincent asked, his voice brimming with agitation. “All the birthdays, and Christmases and Easters without each other just really sucked. It was like I was going through life forgetting now and again that half of me was missing, but then I’d turn around suddenly to share some simple pleasure and find you and the others weren’t there anymore. I would go in my room and cry and wonder why I couldn’t get you all out of my head. Why I couldn’t get over this ache,” Vincent explained with a fist to his chest.

  “All I saw of my parents was this sort of satisfaction in their severed family,” Vincent added softly. “I finally just tried to make myself believe you had all been my childhood imaginary friends. When kids would see their grandparents at holidays I would just say, ‘I don’t have grandparents’. It just seemed easier than explaining.”

  “We all chose, you know. Grannie too,” Shane said.

  “Yeah,” Vincent added, “It got interesting at our house after her will was read.”

  “I’ll bet. That was just nothing but some crazy shit,” Shane added.

  “Yeah! I’m not leaving anything to anybody,” Vincent said. “If I can’t take it with me when I go then it’s not worth having.” Vincent went on, “But when we all got older we should have made it right.”

  “We will,” Shane said with almost a shrewd look on his face.

  “Yes we will,” Vincent agreed.

  “You call Scout and Stella and I’ll find Chris and Irene.” Shane organized.

  Vincent interjected, “Oh! I found out that Chris is a translator for the Interstellar Trade Sector, or at least he was a couple of years ago. I could try to reach him at his office.”

  Shane confessed, “I always looked up to him a little because he was the oldest of the cousins, and a lot, because he was so brilliant.”

  Vincent finished his drink and put the glass firmly on the table and said, “Let's get to work.”

  The cousins hurried…

  297 AE

  Aboard the EGRESS

  Trina laid the book down and gave a sigh.

  “Don’t stop,” Benai said from the corner of the elevator.

  “But that’s all,” Trina said.

  “That can’t be all,” Bug said as he took the book.
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  “I read to the end,” Trina said.

  “But it stopped in the middle of a sentence.” Bug thumbed through the book and handed it back to Trina. “Don’t know what I’m looking for. I can’t read a word of it.”

  “There must be more,” Merari insisted.

  “In the crate,” Teltel said.

  “What crate?” Trina asked.

  “Tala put a big crate of books in the fallow field. That’s where these two came from.”

  “The fallow field?” Bug laughed. “Don’t let my grandfather know about that. He thinks books are dusty.”

  “Aiden is your grandfather?” Teltel asked.

  He shook his head, which threw his thin braid to his back. “Yes. How do you know my grandfather?” asked Bug.

  “He’s the one that helped Tala put them there. He sometimes is working in the gardens when Tala reads to us.”

  “My grandfather?” Bug said with surprise. “Now I’m as curious as those people from Earth were, those cousins.”

  “How long have we been in here?” Merari asked with a deep sigh.

  Benai pulled his transmitter from his pocket and said, “Over an hour already.”

  “You have a transmitter and you haven’t called for help?” Teltel said, a little miffed at his friend.

  “Wow! You carry one to class?” Merari said. “You know they’re not allowed?”

  “Well, you never know when you might need to…call…for help,” he said as he realized he hadn’t thought of calling for help until that moment.

  He hit three buttons and a female voice answered.

  “Yes, Tanik, this is Benai. We’re stuck in the elevator. Any idea on how long it’ll be before this piece of sparse will get fixed?”

  Trina giggled and whispered to Bug, “He called the teacher.”

  Bug said softly, “He doesn’t have parents to call.”

  Trina fell silent.

  “I figured you were all trapped somewhere. I hope you’re okay,” Tanik said.

  “Yeah we’re okay, just hungry. When will we be out of this sparsing sleep pod they call an elevator?”