Shock the Monkey, page 13
“Look closer,” said Miss Luella.
Noah brought his hand closer to his eyes and noticed that there were little grooves in the bug’s back. Familiar-looking grooves. It took a moment for him to realize what it reminded him of. The bug looked like a tiny little brain.
Then suddenly it crawled up his wrist, bit him, and burrowed under his skin.
“Aaaaah!” screamed Noah.
“Oh, don’t be a baby,” said Miss Luella. “It only hurts for a little bit.”
Ixodita Cerebri—better known as brain ticks—are the most plentiful insects in the known universe, and an integral part of the galactic educational system. A well-educated brain tick can hold entire courses of higher learning from literature to theoretical physics in their miniature brains—but, by far, their greatest use is in communication. Because, throughout the better part of the Milky Way galaxy, language is not learned; it is spread by parasitic infection.
After all, who would want to spend endless hours in a classroom, repeating bland phrases like “Este es el sombrero de Guillermo” or “Detta Ikea-bord saknar en skruv” when one could let a language-trained brain tick burrow into their nervous system and give them an entire language in just a few seconds?
While there are countless languages in our galaxy alone—from the blood-spatter speech of Arcturus to the trillion-taste vocabulary of Draconian tongue-snakes—there are four that are widely spoken, having been spread along the spiral arms of the galaxy by uncontrolled brain tick infestations.
The four great Galactic languages are: First Spiralese, Second Spiralese, Third Spiralese, and French. There are those on Earth who will argue that French, like many European languages, evolved from Latin. This is entirely untrue. It arrived in a meteorite.
Having a brain tick bite you and burrow under your skin is not the most pleasant sensation in the world. It reminded Noah of that first shot of anesthetic at the dentist’s office; the idea being much more painful than the actual pain. He could feel the moment it plugged into his nervous system like a shock shooting through his arm and out to the rest of his body.
“Just wiggle your toes and count to five,” Miss Luella said. “It’ll pass.”
So Noah did, and by the time he got to five, the pain on his forearm and that weird electrical misfire faded away, although he could still see a little lump under his skin where the thing now nested.
“Why did you do that?” Noah asked.
“You had to be schooled,” Miss Luella said. “How do you feel?”
“⊕ςΦ↓δψ§!” said Noah.
“Excellent! You’re speaking First Spiralese now!”
“I am?”
“Yes! And with perfect diction—which is hard to accomplish with only one mouth.”
She grabbed a few items from the bathroom’s medicine chest, then turned to the door.
Now that they had landed, the lock on the door had disengaged, allowing Miss Luella to turn the knob. There was a hiss of escaping air, and Noah flinched, suppressing a sudden urge to quill-up like a porcupine.
It’s just the pressure equalizing, he said to himself, feeling the need to tell his startled DNA that quills were entirely inappropriate and unnecessary at the moment.
The door swung open, and the little bathroom/escape pod filled with sweet-smelling humidity as if they had just arrived in Hawaii, but when they stepped out, it was clear no travel agent had ever booked a vacation here. Or at least no human travel agent. The lush foliage looked like something one might see in a Dr. Seuss book: towering, leggy flowers with oversized petals, shrubs that grew perfectly round, tall grass that undulated in the wind even though there was no wind, and a tree that dangled with fruit that seemed to be made of blown glass. “Whoa…” was all that Noah could say.
He took a step toward the tree but stopped short as he saw a creature peering down on him from the limbs. Actually, several of them. They looked like a cross between a squirrel and a monkey, with large, anime eyes, and multicolored fur. They seemed both inquisitive and meek. But before he could approach the little creatures, a sonic boom rang out from high above, and they were scared away. Noah looked up to see a ball of fire streak across the sky. A few moments of silence, and the sound of the impact reached them—a hefty BOOM!
“Oh dear,” said Miss Luella. “Brace!”
She grabbed onto the doorframe, and Noah did the same, just as the shock wave hit. The ground shook like an earthquake, and a sudden blast of wind tore several oversized petals from the tall flowers. Then the shock wave passed, and all was quiet again.
But the shock wave lingered in Noah’s gut, resonating as he realized…
“Your house!”
“Possibly…” said Miss Luella, which was not the answer Noah wanted to hear. Because if it was the house, it meant his friends had just been incinerated.
“Sahara and Ogden!”
“Perhaps they got out,” suggested Miss Luella.
“Was there another escape pod?”
“No…” Then, seeing Noah’s distress, Miss Luella took an optimistic turn. “But on the other hand, we were ejected in mid-flight, which means the house could be millions of miles away. And Mittens wouldn’t have ejected us just to burn up himself entering the atmosphere.”
“So it’s not them?”
“All I’m saying is that we can’t be sure either way.”
Noah held on to that tiny spark of hope, wishing he had more.
“We need to find out!” insisted Noah. “We need to know!”
Then Miss Luella looked off toward the strange forest. “It looks like we may have some help.”
Noah followed her gaze to a creature. Not a small squirrely thing, but a creature almost their size.
The sight of it made Noah’s neck expand like a frilled lizard, which made the creature back off. Noah felt more embarrassed than anything—because it didn’t look threatening at all. He reached up and pushed his expanded neck back into place, but it was unwieldy, like trying to close an umbrella.
The creature was humanoid, with two legs—but it had three arms: the two usual ones and a third growing out of its back ending with a six-fingered hand plopped palm-down on its head like it had no better place to be. Its body was covered in silver fur that caught the light and shimmered.
“Was it you who made the ground shake?” it asked in a voice that was almost musical. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“No, we didn’t make the ground shake,” said Noah, “but we need to find out what did.”
“And,” added Miss Luella, “we’re here by accident; we don’t mean to trespass. We were ejected from our ship in mid-flight, and this was the closest habitable planet.”
“That must have been awful—but at least you landed safely.” Then the creature reached its third hand forward, placing it gently on top of Noah’s head—which must have been a form of greeting—so Noah did it back. It was the right response.
The creature—who Noah was finally beginning to see as a person, and not a creature—called its species “Triastral,” and was not from here but from a different world entirely.
“I’m Jadoon, or Jad for short. I don’t have a ship, so I guess you’re stuck here.”
But Noah knew where there was a will there was a way—and he had the will of every creature he had left behind on Earth.
If it was up to Noah, they’d have headed straight to whatever had fallen from the sky—but they had no idea what dangers they’d face. They needed a guide, which meant they needed to win Jad’s trust.
Jad led them through a crazy alien Eden, filled with a mind-boggling array of strange plants and critters.
“Is the whole planet like this?” Noah asked.
Jad shrugged, which was weird with three shoulders. “Different parts look different. This part looks a lot like my home world.”
Finally, they reached Jad’s home, a structure that appeared to be carved out of a giant piece of glass-fruit. Noah thought they’d be meeting Jad’s family, but it was only Jad.
“Are there many others? I mean of your kind?” Noah asked.
“Oh, tons and tons, back on Triastra, where I’m from,” Jad told them. “But here, it’s just me, except when my parents bother to visit.”
While Miss Luella busied herself with Jad’s garden—which was even more unusual than the huge vegetables she grew back home—Jad took Noah inside to show off a home that was clean and organized, although Noah couldn’t tell what most things inside were.
Getting to know an entirely new sentient species was exciting for both Noah and Jad. Jad found it strange that humans were “missing an arm,” and wondered how they shielded their heads from the sun without a third hand. Until that moment, Noah had never even considered how helpful a third hand might be. Pity he didn’t have any of Jad’s DNA, or he might have been able to grow one.
It was hard to tell Jad’s age. Time, as measured by Earth’s rotation and revolution, didn’t mean much on a different planet. But Jad seemed the equivalent of a teenager. Noah also wasn’t sure if Jad was male or female, and trying to find out proved to be awkward.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question,” Jad said, when Noah finally asked.
“I mean, biologically,” said Noah, feeling his words starting to stumble. “Or non-biologically, because there’s that, too.”
“I still don’t follow.”
Noah grimaced, realizing this conversation was going off the rails. “Okay, let’s try this another way. Tell me about your mom and dad. Or your moms, or your dads, or whatever it’s like where you’re from.”
Still, Jad just said, “I’m really confused.”
“Your parents! Tell me about your parents.”
Understanding finally bloomed in Jad’s eyes. “Oh—you mean my endo, my ecto, and my exo.”
That caught Noah by surprise. “Wait. You have three parents?”
“Well, duh, of course!”
Now Noah’s brain was starting to hurt. “Sooo… how does that work?”
Jad gave a big old smirk. “Seriously? You need me to tell you about the birds and the bees and the turtles?”
“Turtles? No, there aren’t any turtles in that equation!” blurted Noah. “It’s just a birds-and-bees situation. Or birds-and-birds. Or bees-and-bees. But no matter what, there are no turtles!”
Jad squinted just a bit. “Are you telling me your species is non-trinary? How does that work?”
“I’d rather not get into it!”
And then, mercifully, Miss Luella came in with flower cuttings that she put into a vase that also somehow seemed to be alive. “You live in paradise, Jadoon!” she said. “An absolute paradise.”
Jad glanced back at Noah and shifted all three shoulders—not in a shrug but in the universal body language of awkwardness. “Should we continue this conversation later?” Jad asked.
“Absolutely not,” said Noah.
“Agreed,” said Jad.
And it was filed away in a place that neither of them would dare go again.
“You poor thing, it must be hard to be on your own,” Miss Luella said as she arranged the flowers.
“I’m used to it,” Jad said.
You adapted, thought Noah. In a way, he and Jad weren’t all that different.
“So… your parents come and go?” Noah asked, hoping there was a ship, or some sort of teleportation going on.
Jad sighed. “Mostly they go. They’ve only visited once since they brought me here.”
“Hmm… curious,” said Miss Luella, considering Jad more closely than before. “And why did they bring you here?”
Jad became a bit uncomfortable. “Well, because my parents all thought it was a good idea.”
“What about friends?” Noah asked. “Do they visit?”
The question pained Jad even more. “I have lots back home… but they don’t come here. They’ve probably forgotten me by now.” Jad turned to look wistfully out the glass face of the bulbous home. “My parents said there’d be neighbors. I keep waiting for them to move in.”
Noah’s mention of friends reminded him of his own, and the fact that he still didn’t know their fate. Small talk with a friendly alien was all well and good, but there were far more pressing things.
“Jad… could you help guide us to… to whatever it was that crashed?”
Jad seemed taken aback by the question. “Why would you want to do that? It’s probably just a burning mess.”
Noah swallowed hard, trying not to think about that. “It… it might have been the rest of our ship, and… and our crewmates. We need to know.…”
“There’s a barrier at the edge of my property. You won’t be able to get past it.”
“We have to try.…”
Jad reluctantly nodded. “Okay, I’ll take you there. And once you realize trying to get out is pointless, we can come back and have lunch! And after that we’ll go find a big-enough crystal fruit for you to live in. Best day ever!”
Noah opened his mouth to tell Jad that, no, they weren’t about to stay here, but Miss Luella gently touched Noah’s arm.
“That sounds like a fine idea, Jadoon,” she said.
Noah figured she was being kind and wanted to let Jad down easy. But on the other hand, maybe she meant it. Because without a ship, they could be stuck here for a long, long time.
While the property was expansive, Jad’s home was near its eastern edge. Jad took them to the fence, if only to show them it would be too difficult to climb.
“As you can see, there’s an impenetrable security perimeter,” Jad said. “Now that that’s settled, let’s go back and have lunch!”
“It’s just a fence!” said Noah. “Not a problem.”
Through the fence, Noah could see that the foliage on the other side, while still tropical, was different. No more leggy flowers and grass that waved like tentacles. Instead there were ferns and palms and roses and gardenias. He became acutely aware of how familiar the flowers smelled. And weren’t those mangoes growing on that tree? “It’s like… Earth,” Noah said.
“What’s Earth?” Jad asked.
“My home world.”
“Yes,” said Miss Luella. “It’s just like Earth on the other side of the fence.…” She pursed her lips as if she had more to say but wasn’t saying it. “Maybe we need to rethink this.…”
“What’s to rethink?” Then Noah dug deep down, knowing exactly what the moment needed. A fence was nothing. All it took was a little bit of spider monkey.
In a moment he felt the familiar tingling in his fingers and toes. He felt limber, he felt agile. Suddenly, the top of the fence that seemed so daunting a second ago wasn’t even an obstacle. This was going to a piece of cake!
“Noah! Wait!” yelled Jad as Noah leaped—
And felt the ten thousand volts of the electrified fence shoot through him.
15
The World of Last Life
FOR NOAH, ELECTROCUTION WAS DIFFERENT THAN IT WOULD have been for any other human being—because every single creature wrapped within his genetic soup responded in its own powerful and particular way. In an instant he lived every path of evolution along every single evolutionary tree. Biology’s trial and error, eons of success and failure, were encapsulated in that moment. The survival cry of every earthly species was played out across the high voltage conductivity of Noah’s body and soul.
He could have died—should have died—because living flesh was not designed to withstand a jolt so severe. But millions of years of survival was not about to throw in the towel now. In that moment something extraordinary happened; because, for an instant, Noah wasn’t a conglomeration of different animals battling for the right to express themselves. He was, for the first time, all of them all at once.
He never exactly lost consciousness. It was more like he jumped to the other side of consciousness. Like passing through a black hole, only to discover that somehow you still existed.
“Noah! Noah, can you hear me?” He could hear Miss Luella’s voice, but it seemed distant. “Noah, are you all right?” She sounded closer this time. Bit by bit he returned to the here-and-now. He was lying on his back in the strange wavy grass. He knew without looking that his hair was part crowned crane spikes, part urchin spines, and part jellyfish stingers. Each time he blinked, his eyes saw different colors and different levels of depth and clarity. Miss Luella knelt over him.
“Stay back,” Noah said. “I could hurt you!” He could sense every part of him from stem to stern was venomous. So he took a deep breath, then another, willing the surge of animal defensiveness to pass. Reasserting his humanity. In a moment he came back to himself, but somehow felt more than himself.
He sat up and saw that Jad had backed away in shock. “You’re… you’re—”
“I’m fine,” Noah said, but when he tried to stand up, his legs felt like they had no bones, and he fell back down, right into Jad’s arms.
Then Jad smiled. Purple tears formed in those slightly oversized eyes.
“You’re… like me…,” Jad said. “You’re just like me.…”
Noah couldn’t help but to look at the world from an earthling’s point of view. It never occurred to him that there might be other Nascent Organic Aggregate Hybrids out there. Other N.O.A.H.s. Now it made perfect sense. The Fauxlites were all about terraforming—so obviously their efforts wouldn’t be limited to Earth. His parents’ mission was just one of many missions. Could one of those missions have been Jad’s home world?
In fact, it was. Jadoon was a Juvenile Aggregate Dynamically Optimized Organic Nexus. In other words, a Triastral N.O.A.H.
Still weak from the massive electric jolt he had taken, Noah found it hard to put thoughts together, but things were slowly dawning on him. Meanwhile, Jad, full of excited joy, couldn’t stop talking and waving all three arms.
