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Chapter 1:- Breakfast with God
Papagee was ready to take-off when a medical technician joined him at the cockpit of his aircraft.
“Just lean back and relax,” said the Reconstruction Technician, as he attached a small disc to the area above Papagee’s left ear and started recording his memory chip information.
“Skip the lecture. Just scan my body for reconstruction, so I can get started on this mission,” said Papagee, anxious to get started before his courage drained at the 'take off' point of a dangerous journey.
The RT laughed indignantly and replied, “Body scans? We don’t do that anymore. We can reconstruct human bodies by simply extracting the current body formulas from their chip information. You will need a new chip, the one you have is difficult to read.”
The RT recorded the chip information as they chatted. “Okay, I’m finished. You’re good to go, but I suggest…”
Papagee interrupted the technician. “Thanks, I’ll check with you when I get back from the mission.”
Papagee strapped in, got his clearance from the control tower, hovered his craft above the launch pad, and took off toward the wasteland.
As he flew over empty skyscrapers in the danger zone, Papagee felt the first blush of fear. What if I don’t make it back? What if my memory chip is lost or destroyed? What if that reconstruction technician did a lousy job of recording my memory chip?
ISBN: 1- 4196-4824-1 Publisher: BookSurge, LLC North Charleston, South Carolina (Amazon.com & Lulu.com) "God's Ancestors” being revised to “Ancestors of God”: by Wayne Thornton Copyright (July 4, 2006): No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any manner, without written permission from the author. (United States Copyright Act) Table of Contents
Prologue
He was seven years old and his name was God. He was born on a satellite that circled the third planet from the sun.
Sprawled-out on the living room floor he looked at pictures of his ancestors in a photo album while his mother, Gamma, was fixing breakfast.
While God was eating breakfast, his father had a quick cup of coffee, kissed Gamma goodbye, and went to work at the science department of AEC, the Atomic Energy Commission.
Gamma watched her son eating his morning meal. He was doing it in a business-like manner. He will be a good worker someday, she felt. He will be a scientist like his father.
She daydreamed and recalled the history of events that lead to the birth of her son. The legend began with a short story about her husband as a young boy working with his father on a small farm.
***
“Adamah bara… We came from the soil. We are its children,” said Papagee’s father, who spent his life tilling the land and tending the crops. His eyes sparkled brightly against the background of a leathery dark face that had been weathered by the hot sun. Gray hair was the harbinger of his death, but it protected him from being overheated when he worked long hours in the field.
Papagee’s mother died early in his life. He couldn’t remember her except for a picture in a scrapbook. She was a small woman with short blonde hair and freckles on her face. In the picture, she was standing next to his father; a tall muscular young man with bright eyes and a pleasant smile. Papagee lived with his father on a small farm and learned the ways of the land.
“Find the mold marks and turn the leaves toward the sun,” his father taught him as they labored in the heat of the day. Soy beans needed the hot sun to fight off mold that was apt to form before the crop was ready to harvest.
“Love the soil ... and it will love you back,” they chanted as they weeded the plants and cultivated the land.
“Why is it important, Papagee?” his father said. They hugged each other and then continued working in the hot sun. It was an expression they shared. Papagee was being taught to ask questions before making decisions in his life.
“College is the way to go,” his father told him about a thousand times when he was young and being home schooled by a computer disc.
The college professors taught Papagee that life forms had chemotropically evolved: The soil and its trace elements were the building blocks of life.
Papagee recalled the words of an ancient song, "Adamah adam adamah,” which meant ‘from the soil we came and to the soil we will return.’
As the years passed, his father grew old and returned to the soil. He died before technology enabled the people on the planet to extend their lives.
Air Force Captain Papagee Albright now lived on an island that had good soil, but the dusty dry dirt on the rest of the planet was contaminated; it could not be safely touched or held in your hand.
Chapter 1 - The Invisible Enemy
Papagee was ready to take-off when a medical technician joined him at the cockpit of his aircraft.
“Just lean back and relax,” said the Reconstruction Technician, as he attached a small disc to the area above Papagee’s left ear and started recording his memory chip information.
“It’s been 3 years since you’ve had your chip recorded and registered. If your chip had been damaged … “
“Skip the lecture. Just scan my body for reconstruction, so I can get started on this mission,” said Papagee, anxious to get started before his courage drained at the 'take off' point of a dangerous journey.
The RT laughed indignantly and replied, “Body scans? We don’t do that anymore. We can reconstruct human bodies by simply extracting the current body formulas from their chip information. You will need a new chip, the one you have is difficult to read.”
The RT recorded the chip information as they chatted. “Okay, I’m finished. You’re good to go, but I suggest…”
Papagee interrupted the technician. “Thanks, I’ll check with you when I get back from the mission.”
Papagee strapped in, got his clearance from the control tower, hovered his craft above the launch pad, and took off toward the wasteland.
As he flew over empty skyscrapers in the danger zone, Papagee felt the first blush of fear. What if I don’t make it back? What if my memory chip is lost or destroyed? What if that reconstruction technician did a lousy job of recording my memory chip?
“Nervous in the service,” he said as he thought about the tradition of warriors using that cliché and laughing when in danger.
The expression was as old as combat itself. It was the same reverse psychology used to come out of shock. He knew the ropes of surviving on a battlefield: Tell yourself that you are in shock, and you will come out of it. Tell yourself that you are nervous, and you will stop being as nervous.
It seemed he had replaced his fears with a little humor and the pride that comes with being a soldier.
He settled down and plotted a course toward a test area. But he couldn’t get his mind off the landscape; skeletons of houses and buildings, no vegetation, just dirt and pavement with no signs of life.
Papagee reached for his speaker phone and called the AEC. “This is not what we expected. I can’t see anything down there, not one sign of activity.”
There was static, and then he heard a screeching noise that said, “Continue the mission.”
“Continue the mission?” he said. “I reached a recorded message. There is no one listening to me. I am alone and no one cares.”
The expression was as old as combat itself. It was the same reverse psychology used to come out of shock. He knew the ropes of surviving on a battlefield: Tell yourself that you are in shock, and you will come out of it. Tell yourself that you are nervous, and you will stop being as nervous.
It seemed he had replaced his fears with a little humor and the pride that comes with being a soldier.
He settled down and plotted a course toward a test area. But he couldn’t get his mind off the landscape; skeletons of houses and buildings, no vegetation, just dirt and pavement with no signs of life.
Papagee reached for his speaker phone and called the AEC. “This is not what we expected. I can’t see anything down there, not one sign of activity.”
There was static, and then he heard a screeching noise that said, “Continue the mission.”
“Continue the mission?” he said. “I reached a recorded message. There is no one listening to me. I am alone and no one cares.”
He had been away from combat for several years, and his heart had grown soft. Fear overtook him and he voiced his innermost feelings. "I was crazy to volunteer for this job. I'm not an ace pilot anymore. I'm a desk jockey. I let my overloaded ego and big mouth brag my way to the front line. Plus, I didn't do this out of love for my fellow man. I did it out of hatred of the enemy. Now, I'm going to get my ass burned by something that is invisible. ... I'm scared to death and none of my training.... ”
“Papagee, this is Crow at AEC Command Center. Sorry about that recording. We are with you all the way on this.
“Papagee, this is Crow at AEC Command Center. Sorry about that recording. We are with you all the way on this.
The voice of his commanding officer calmed him for a while. The situation was still tenuous, but Papagee was a good man, and he would hold on to his sanity for the sake of the team, if he could just stiffen his backbone before he landed in the war zone.
“What you are seeing down there is what it looks like on a cloudy morning. When the sun comes out, you will see signs of the enemy: vegetation popping-up and then being destroyed.”
“Copy that.”
“What you are seeing down there is what it looks like on a cloudy morning. When the sun comes out, you will see signs of the enemy: vegetation popping-up and then being destroyed.”
“Copy that.”
Neutron bombs, Papagee thought to himself.
The mad scientists who destroyed most of the planet had used experimental neutron bombs: above-surface radiation blasts that killed all existing life forms -- and left the buildings intact to facilitate the survival of a deadly organism.
The scientists built the bombs with a fiendish twist. They added capsules of a genetically engineered microorganism set to release after the initial blasts; life forms that got their energy from the radiation of the weapons and then mutated to live off of the Sun’s radiation. They were chemotropic hybrids of heavy metals, not just biological. They generated a type of radiation to kill competing life forms. They were a cancer; destroyers of living cells.
Papagee doubted if the wasteland would ever be safe enough to repopulate. But every hundred years the scientists tested the status of the wasteland; testing the survival of an enemy that lived in the houses and buildings of their ancient ancestors.
He took a deep breath, and pretended to be nonchalant, "Oh well, at least if I survive this mission, I will be the planet hero for the next hundred years."
Conserve your fuel and fly deep into the danger zone. As deep as you can go, he was told.
“But don’t be a hero by going too far,” said Crow; which meant, make us proud of you, but come back alive.
"Come back alive," he said to himelf and then recalled how he had talked himself into this assignment.
***
“It’s an invisible enemy,” Papagee said as he looked out the hall window and saw empty warehouses and manufacturing plants on the other side of the river.
The buildings looked harmless, but allowed nothing to live there. No stray pet picked through the ruble and searched for food. No pink-eyed rat crouched in the shadow and used its sharp teeth to carve-out a meal. No snake slithered across the brown dirt in search of prey. Not even a blade of grass could grow and survive in the desolated area.
His friend, ‘Spider Joe’ Jacobs, said, “Invisible to the naked eye, but when I went across the waters to take soil samples, I saw it through a microscope. It’s a lot of tiny red specks that blister your skin. I figured it was chemical, but those who know more about it say, ‘biological.’”
As Spider Joe was walking away, he turned and said, “Those red specks can give you radiation poisoning too, when they crowd together.”
A doomsday war had turned Planet Heaven into a global cemetery of ghost towns; grave markers that sent the message, "No visitors allowed."
Five percent of the people had survived the war. They lived on a large island created by a seismic split in the planet’s crust. They were surrounded by cold waters; a boundary that protected them from the encroachment of killer microbes.
The wasteland and its dangers had been ignored for a while. People on the island still fell in love, had children and their children fell in love. Life had continued within the confines of the protected island.
Then came reality. There was no more room for the new children born on the island.
“The wasteland must be reclaimed,” demanded the people.
“The wasteland might be reclaimed,” said the scientists, who were looking for a volunteer to go deep to its midsection and run the tests.
Papagee started to study the faces and history of the empty buildings that seemed to stare back at him from across the cold river, or at least their state of repair. It would be useless information, he concluded. It’s the land that counts, not what sits on it.
“You have never bought a house in your life!” he screamed through the glass window at the end of the hallway, sending his voice toward the people on the street below.
“Read your deeds. They measure the land, and convey it to you. Your houses are never mentioned in the legal papers. You own the land, but not your houses.”
They didn’t hear him. He didn’t care if they heard him. It was true whether
they heard him or not. “Land contracts,” he said to the window. “It’s the land that
is important.”
A coworker, Major John “Chatterbox” McCoy, joined Papagee at the hall window facing the tarmac. “Are you going to do it? It would make you a hero. I’m not going to volunteer … too dangerous for my cup of tea. Someone said you were thinking about it.”
Papagee glanced at the windows in the hallway and said, “I might do it to get an office with a window, Chatterbox. How sweet would that be?”
“That’s the most ridiculous reason I’ve ever heard of for risking your life,” Chatterbox said, and then he walked back to his cubicle at the end of the long hallway.
Papagee smirked at his stated motive because it was not the ultimate reason. He planned to jump into the fray of combat with an invisible enemy because he hated the enemy. He hated the enemy that had destroyed most of the world.
“If you don’t hate the enemy, you can’t kill him,” his drill instructor had taught him and other jet pilots many years earlier.
“If you love your enemy, he will destroy you at death’s door,” his flight leader had told him when he was a junior officer. It was before the big war. His flight was in a scrimmage against some religious rebels who had stolen and learned to fly a squadron of M-3 Saber Jets. It was during one of those sorties that Papagee had hesitated to launch missiles and took a major hit because the enemy struck first. The scars on his arms bore witness to his ejection through a damaged canopy when his engine exploded. He could feel the pressure of his ejection seat when he instinctively put his arms over his head to protect himself.
The wasteland was a potential death trap, but Papagee was pumped-up. His courage peaked when he screamed into the glass window at the end of the hallway. Athletes and soldiers know how to increase their adrenaline flow; few others know how or when to do it.
Trammel Crow saw Papagee at the hallway window staring at the transportation capsule on the launch pad.
“Do you see your future?"
Papagee, in deference to his boss, stifled his feelings. “Not really. I mean, not really, sir. I see a chance to help.”
“Will you do it?”
Papagee nodded, and they headed for the launch pad.
The swagger in their walk showed they were proud of their new partnership. Crow was an older-looking dark-skinned man with black hair, a huge strong body, and a pleasant smile. Papagee was a slim, young-looking, handsome man with short dark hair willing to take a chance for fame.
Crow was the ideal father image, strong but gentle. He was the case- hardened veteran now willing to train new troops. Papagee was the athlete who had grown accustomed to sacrificing his body for the sake of the team.
“I was listening to your speech in the hall,” Crow said and then smiled.
“I knew you were,” said Papagee, and they both laughed. They were veterans; they understood the importance of adrenaline when facing an enemy.
The mad scientists who destroyed most of the planet had used experimental neutron bombs: above-surface radiation blasts that killed all existing life forms -- and left the buildings intact to facilitate the survival of a deadly organism.
The scientists built the bombs with a fiendish twist. They added capsules of a genetically engineered microorganism set to release after the initial blasts; life forms that got their energy from the radiation of the weapons and then mutated to live off of the Sun’s radiation. They were chemotropic hybrids of heavy metals, not just biological. They generated a type of radiation to kill competing life forms. They were a cancer; destroyers of living cells.
Papagee doubted if the wasteland would ever be safe enough to repopulate. But every hundred years the scientists tested the status of the wasteland; testing the survival of an enemy that lived in the houses and buildings of their ancient ancestors.
He took a deep breath, and pretended to be nonchalant, "Oh well, at least if I survive this mission, I will be the planet hero for the next hundred years."
Conserve your fuel and fly deep into the danger zone. As deep as you can go, he was told.
“But don’t be a hero by going too far,” said Crow; which meant, make us proud of you, but come back alive.
"Come back alive," he said to himelf and then recalled how he had talked himself into this assignment.
***
“It’s an invisible enemy,” Papagee said as he looked out the hall window and saw empty warehouses and manufacturing plants on the other side of the river.
The buildings looked harmless, but allowed nothing to live there. No stray pet picked through the ruble and searched for food. No pink-eyed rat crouched in the shadow and used its sharp teeth to carve-out a meal. No snake slithered across the brown dirt in search of prey. Not even a blade of grass could grow and survive in the desolated area.
His friend, ‘Spider Joe’ Jacobs, said, “Invisible to the naked eye, but when I went across the waters to take soil samples, I saw it through a microscope. It’s a lot of tiny red specks that blister your skin. I figured it was chemical, but those who know more about it say, ‘biological.’”
As Spider Joe was walking away, he turned and said, “Those red specks can give you radiation poisoning too, when they crowd together.”
A doomsday war had turned Planet Heaven into a global cemetery of ghost towns; grave markers that sent the message, "No visitors allowed."
Five percent of the people had survived the war. They lived on a large island created by a seismic split in the planet’s crust. They were surrounded by cold waters; a boundary that protected them from the encroachment of killer microbes.
The wasteland and its dangers had been ignored for a while. People on the island still fell in love, had children and their children fell in love. Life had continued within the confines of the protected island.
Then came reality. There was no more room for the new children born on the island.
“The wasteland must be reclaimed,” demanded the people.
“The wasteland might be reclaimed,” said the scientists, who were looking for a volunteer to go deep to its midsection and run the tests.
Papagee started to study the faces and history of the empty buildings that seemed to stare back at him from across the cold river, or at least their state of repair. It would be useless information, he concluded. It’s the land that counts, not what sits on it.
“You have never bought a house in your life!” he screamed through the glass window at the end of the hallway, sending his voice toward the people on the street below.
“Read your deeds. They measure the land, and convey it to you. Your houses are never mentioned in the legal papers. You own the land, but not your houses.”
They didn’t hear him. He didn’t care if they heard him. It was true whether
they heard him or not. “Land contracts,” he said to the window. “It’s the land that
is important.”
A coworker, Major John “Chatterbox” McCoy, joined Papagee at the hall window facing the tarmac. “Are you going to do it? It would make you a hero. I’m not going to volunteer … too dangerous for my cup of tea. Someone said you were thinking about it.”
Papagee glanced at the windows in the hallway and said, “I might do it to get an office with a window, Chatterbox. How sweet would that be?”
“That’s the most ridiculous reason I’ve ever heard of for risking your life,” Chatterbox said, and then he walked back to his cubicle at the end of the long hallway.
Papagee smirked at his stated motive because it was not the ultimate reason. He planned to jump into the fray of combat with an invisible enemy because he hated the enemy. He hated the enemy that had destroyed most of the world.
“If you don’t hate the enemy, you can’t kill him,” his drill instructor had taught him and other jet pilots many years earlier.
“If you love your enemy, he will destroy you at death’s door,” his flight leader had told him when he was a junior officer. It was before the big war. His flight was in a scrimmage against some religious rebels who had stolen and learned to fly a squadron of M-3 Saber Jets. It was during one of those sorties that Papagee had hesitated to launch missiles and took a major hit because the enemy struck first. The scars on his arms bore witness to his ejection through a damaged canopy when his engine exploded. He could feel the pressure of his ejection seat when he instinctively put his arms over his head to protect himself.
The wasteland was a potential death trap, but Papagee was pumped-up. His courage peaked when he screamed into the glass window at the end of the hallway. Athletes and soldiers know how to increase their adrenaline flow; few others know how or when to do it.
Trammel Crow saw Papagee at the hallway window staring at the transportation capsule on the launch pad.
“Do you see your future?"
Papagee, in deference to his boss, stifled his feelings. “Not really. I mean, not really, sir. I see a chance to help.”
“Will you do it?”
Papagee nodded, and they headed for the launch pad.
The swagger in their walk showed they were proud of their new partnership. Crow was an older-looking dark-skinned man with black hair, a huge strong body, and a pleasant smile. Papagee was a slim, young-looking, handsome man with short dark hair willing to take a chance for fame.
Crow was the ideal father image, strong but gentle. He was the case- hardened veteran now willing to train new troops. Papagee was the athlete who had grown accustomed to sacrificing his body for the sake of the team.
“I was listening to your speech in the hall,” Crow said and then smiled.
“I knew you were,” said Papagee, and they both laughed. They were veterans; they understood the importance of adrenaline when facing an enemy.
A reporter on the steps of the Capitol building announced, “Today, Papagee Albright, an athlete, fighter pilot, and now a scientist at AEC, the Atomic Energy Commission, will risk his life for the sake of the planet, for the sake of knowledge; for the sake of us knowing where we stand.”
The lead anchorman back at the news room cut in. “Finally, after many postponements, we will know if the ancient war zone of our planet is inhabitable.”
The media had declared him a hero of the planet; not for what he had done, but because he was the only person who volunteered for the mission.
***
Ideally, Papagee would fly half way around the world to get to the core of the problem.
He had time to think about his last tour of duty in combat many years earlier, before he cross-trained into the science department of AEC. Most soldiers never got the chance to cross-train into a desk job; a few hours a day in the lab, but mainly a desk job. He smiled as he thought why AEC drafted him. To play first base for their intramural baseball team and to hit the ball into the bleachers, he recalled.
Papagee spoke to the dashboard of his aircraft, as if he was telling a story to a friend sitting across from him. “My last combat mission was nothing compared to what one of my ancient ancestors had to face in a jungle war.”
Papa recalled the memoirs of his late great uncle who had died before the people of the planet had memory chip technology.
"Today is the last day of the rest of your life." That was the sign at each of the three entrances to the jungles; snake infested sweaty swamps under the double canopy trees; places where their King Cobras were the least danger to us.
“The Kraits, the three varieties of Kraits, were our biggest worry among the animal kingdom. There was no anti-venom for those long thick gray snakes. Then, of course, there were the black pajama boys; the Cong irregulars. They were the ones who could live in a tunnel for months just to get the advantage one time and ambush an unsuspecting patrol of our ground troops. To kill us or maim us, it didn't seem to matter to them. Just so they could get our guns and steal our supplies.
“They also did it so they could steal my Captain bars and sell them on the black market, or so they could get our thin gold plates wrapped in small canvas cloths with phonetic instructions that read, "Take this soldier safely back to his people, and we will give you another gold plate the same size as this one." ... They never returned us, not once; they just robbed us, dead or alive."
The sound of a radar blip distracted Papagee from chatting with his invisible friend in the capsule. He was getting closer to ground zero. “One hour to target,” said the audio alert.
He recalled his orders: (1) Keep your air speed the same as the rotation of the planet so as to arrive when the Sun is out and you can see enemy activity. (2) Find a hot spot and hover to acclimate the skin temperature. (3) Extend your landing gear legs and then land as gently as possible. (4) Don’t think about the unmentionables.
The two unmentionables he was not to think about: (1) No one had ever gone there and returned alive, and (2) anything he learned from the mission was classified Top Secret Code Word – AEC eyes only.
Papagee searched for something pleasant to think about for the next hour
while he waited for his aircraft to reach the target area. He recalled a familiar song sung after the big war. Someday, someday, we will return, and if not us, then our children, or their children, or their children.
He smiled and thought he could relax for a few minutes.
“Screech.” … “Continue the mission.”… “Screech.”
Papagee flinched.
It was the obnoxious recorded message; one of the preambles to communications during combat.
“Hello Papa, this is Crow again. The boys at the lab want me to tell you what to expect when you get closer to the hot spots: small lizard looking bugs with reflective shells.
“They will come out to soak up radiation from the sun. They are like termite queens; they are what produce the microbes that kill all living cells.
“When you land, stay away from those bastards. They won’t sting you, but their children will. Also, try not to disturb them. ‘Cause if you do, we are afraid they will mutate and grow wings. We are not going to war with them. We are just waiting for them to die out on their own.
“Oh, and Papagee, do your tests quickly and get your ass out of there, ‘bi lao!’”
He smiled at Crow’s military term for ‘haul ass and leave.’
“Copy that. Why didn’t they send a robot to do this job?”
Crow and Papagee both laughed. Those words were the punch line of a familiar joke at AEC. The humor seemed to relax him for a few minutes.
The capsule, overloaded with scientific equipment, began crackling as he guided it toward a hot spot. It landed suddenly and a rock punctured a hole in the shell near the air supply compartment. Papagee started choking on the dust and pollutants entering his small enclosure.
Dusty foul air blew in through the hole. Papagee held his breath as dark particles flew into his face. He tried to block the flow of air with his hand, but the hole was too ragged to cover up. His eyes burned, and he was blinded.
He clenched his eyelids to block more specks of soil from entering his eyes. It increased his pain because the lids of his eyes were now pressing against dirt particles that lay on the corneas of his eyes.
He was without sight in what seemed to him a dark cave. Fear overwhelmed him. He was a coward and he knew it, and even worse, he didn’t care.
The lead anchorman back at the news room cut in. “Finally, after many postponements, we will know if the ancient war zone of our planet is inhabitable.”
The media had declared him a hero of the planet; not for what he had done, but because he was the only person who volunteered for the mission.
***
Ideally, Papagee would fly half way around the world to get to the core of the problem.
He had time to think about his last tour of duty in combat many years earlier, before he cross-trained into the science department of AEC. Most soldiers never got the chance to cross-train into a desk job; a few hours a day in the lab, but mainly a desk job. He smiled as he thought why AEC drafted him. To play first base for their intramural baseball team and to hit the ball into the bleachers, he recalled.
Papagee spoke to the dashboard of his aircraft, as if he was telling a story to a friend sitting across from him. “My last combat mission was nothing compared to what one of my ancient ancestors had to face in a jungle war.”
Papa recalled the memoirs of his late great uncle who had died before the people of the planet had memory chip technology.
"Today is the last day of the rest of your life." That was the sign at each of the three entrances to the jungles; snake infested sweaty swamps under the double canopy trees; places where their King Cobras were the least danger to us.
“The Kraits, the three varieties of Kraits, were our biggest worry among the animal kingdom. There was no anti-venom for those long thick gray snakes. Then, of course, there were the black pajama boys; the Cong irregulars. They were the ones who could live in a tunnel for months just to get the advantage one time and ambush an unsuspecting patrol of our ground troops. To kill us or maim us, it didn't seem to matter to them. Just so they could get our guns and steal our supplies.
“They also did it so they could steal my Captain bars and sell them on the black market, or so they could get our thin gold plates wrapped in small canvas cloths with phonetic instructions that read, "Take this soldier safely back to his people, and we will give you another gold plate the same size as this one." ... They never returned us, not once; they just robbed us, dead or alive."
The sound of a radar blip distracted Papagee from chatting with his invisible friend in the capsule. He was getting closer to ground zero. “One hour to target,” said the audio alert.
He recalled his orders: (1) Keep your air speed the same as the rotation of the planet so as to arrive when the Sun is out and you can see enemy activity. (2) Find a hot spot and hover to acclimate the skin temperature. (3) Extend your landing gear legs and then land as gently as possible. (4) Don’t think about the unmentionables.
The two unmentionables he was not to think about: (1) No one had ever gone there and returned alive, and (2) anything he learned from the mission was classified Top Secret Code Word – AEC eyes only.
Papagee searched for something pleasant to think about for the next hour
while he waited for his aircraft to reach the target area. He recalled a familiar song sung after the big war. Someday, someday, we will return, and if not us, then our children, or their children, or their children.
He smiled and thought he could relax for a few minutes.
“Screech.” … “Continue the mission.”… “Screech.”
Papagee flinched.
It was the obnoxious recorded message; one of the preambles to communications during combat.
“Hello Papa, this is Crow again. The boys at the lab want me to tell you what to expect when you get closer to the hot spots: small lizard looking bugs with reflective shells.
“They will come out to soak up radiation from the sun. They are like termite queens; they are what produce the microbes that kill all living cells.
“When you land, stay away from those bastards. They won’t sting you, but their children will. Also, try not to disturb them. ‘Cause if you do, we are afraid they will mutate and grow wings. We are not going to war with them. We are just waiting for them to die out on their own.
“Oh, and Papagee, do your tests quickly and get your ass out of there, ‘bi lao!’”
He smiled at Crow’s military term for ‘haul ass and leave.’
“Copy that. Why didn’t they send a robot to do this job?”
Crow and Papagee both laughed. Those words were the punch line of a familiar joke at AEC. The humor seemed to relax him for a few minutes.
The capsule, overloaded with scientific equipment, began crackling as he guided it toward a hot spot. It landed suddenly and a rock punctured a hole in the shell near the air supply compartment. Papagee started choking on the dust and pollutants entering his small enclosure.
Dusty foul air blew in through the hole. Papagee held his breath as dark particles flew into his face. He tried to block the flow of air with his hand, but the hole was too ragged to cover up. His eyes burned, and he was blinded.
He clenched his eyelids to block more specks of soil from entering his eyes. It increased his pain because the lids of his eyes were now pressing against dirt particles that lay on the corneas of his eyes.
He was without sight in what seemed to him a dark cave. Fear overwhelmed him. He was a coward and he knew it, and even worse, he didn’t care.
Feeling around in the dark, he groveled and found his controls to fly the craft out of the area and run from the enemy. His mind flashed and he started making-up an excuse for his cowardice, to tell the people back home.
Nothing is worse than death, he told himself as he thought about getting away from the danger.
“No dice,” he mumbled in frustration. He was blind and wouldn’t be able to see where he was flying. He couldn’t fly on instruments because he couldn’t read the dials on the dashboard?
Autopilot, he thought to himself. Which button is the autopilot?
He lightly felt the dials and buttons on the dashboard. Four dials and three ignition buttons, he counted to himself. The manual start, the auto pilot, and the ejection button he recalled.
He clenched his eyes even tighter when he thought about accidentally being ejected out of his capsule because he chose the wrong button. Quick death, he thought to himself.
At that low level and with an ancient skyscraper nearby--if the aircraft was even slightly off balance, his ejection seat would be slammed against the hard steel of the building.
He started to joke about it, but didn’t. It was too late for humor to reduce the tension that was mounting.
A thick warm liquid started coming out of his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. With his eyes still closed, he reached up and felt of his face.
He panicked and screamed, “My eyes are bleeding!”
Autopilot, he thought to himself. Which button is the autopilot?
He lightly felt the dials and buttons on the dashboard. Four dials and three ignition buttons, he counted to himself. The manual start, the auto pilot, and the ejection button he recalled.
He clenched his eyes even tighter when he thought about accidentally being ejected out of his capsule because he chose the wrong button. Quick death, he thought to himself.
At that low level and with an ancient skyscraper nearby--if the aircraft was even slightly off balance, his ejection seat would be slammed against the hard steel of the building.
He started to joke about it, but didn’t. It was too late for humor to reduce the tension that was mounting.
A thick warm liquid started coming out of his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. With his eyes still closed, he reached up and felt of his face.
He panicked and screamed, “My eyes are bleeding!”
