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They seemed surprised to see me there. I had only just woken up. Come, I said to them. It’s safe here.
They looked haggard. Especially the woman. They told me they thought they were alone on this planet. That they had crashed. It’s a busy shipping lane, I told them. I crashed myself a while ago. I pointed to the wreckage in the distance.
They told me something was out there. They thought it was hunting them. They left their ship to look for food and when they came back, they found things all over it. Shadows. When they ran, the shadows gave chase. Around them all the dirt and trees exploded. Like they were firing old-fashioned projectile weapons. I told them all about the shadows. They stay in the forest I said. They don’t like the clearings. It seems strange to us, but the more you stay out in the open, the safer you are. Then I told them about the beacon I was building. I told them how lucky they were to find me. A few more weeks and they’d have missed me. If we can get a few batteries from their ship, we could speed everything up and send a distress signal in a few days. I showed the man the transmitter. He told me to show his wife. He said she was their engineer. She studied it for a long time.
I talked to the man while she looked at it. He was a soldier of some sort. He wanted to keep moving. Head for higher ground and into the tree line. He wanted me to put out my campfire. I told him that things don’t work that way. Out in the open is the place to be. Anywhere dark and hidden, they will come for you. They are simple creatures with simple needs. They like to hunt, but they stay away from anything they fear, and they fear the dark.
I showed him one of the projectile weapons I had. I told him that one of them had dropped it as it made its way back to the treeline when I shone a torch at it. “It’s a bow and arrow” he said. He sounded very surprised. “I’ve never heard that phrase”, I said. He told me it was an old weapon that humans have used for a long time. Long before they made spaceships or even chemically propelled projectile weapons. He said he couldn’t believe that this is what they fired at him. I explained about the tip of the arrow, how it carries a small amount of unstable chemicals in a wax sphere. He said the things they fired at him moved much faster than an arrow. I told him it was probably the adrenaline of the chase. He said he had been fired at before with a projectile weapon.
To change the subject, I took the bow back, and told him how amazing it was that humans had come so far. I really believe that. It’s amazing that humans have gone from bows and arrows to spaceships and computers in the space of a few thousand years. Did you know, I said to him, that humans went from the first powered flight, which lasted just 12 seconds, to a moonrocket in the span of a single, human lifetime? I think humans are amazing. He looked at me strangely.
Why do I do it? I know that when I talk about something I’m excited about that people look at me like that. What do I hope for? I hope that they will agree with me. That they will reciprocate and share in my excitement. I have so many things I’m excited about, like the rate of human progress. I like old books about space travel from before humans could actually travel in space. I don’t know much about music, but I’ve always thought that if I ever met someone who liked it, and they talked about it excitedly, I wouldn’t look at them like that. I would be happy that they wanted to share something with me that they’re excited about. I know I’ll never make friends. I know that’s too much to ask. But they could stop looking at me like that when I’m just talking about something I’m excited about.
The woman came back. She told him she couldn’t make heads or tails of the transmitter, but she thought it was a fascinating design. She said that every time she thought she’d found some way in, the thing threw her for a loop and led her in circles. She compared it to a puzzle or an addictive game. She said she could hardly pull herself away. She asked how I’d come up with it. I told her I thought of it. I said I didn’t know much about engineering, so I had to come up with the ideas myself. She smiled at me strangely.
They argued for a bit. The man still wanted to keep moving. To try to reach higher ground. Everything I had told him wouldn’t work. They moved away from me, but I could still hear them. I have very good hearing. I could probably hear them if they moved all the way to the end of the clearing. I just sat there, staring into the fire as they argued.
He said I gave him the creeps. She said I was our best chance to get off the planet. She didn’t say whether I gave her the creeps too. I hoped I didn’t give her the creeps. I thought that maybe I could talk to her about the things I am excited about and find out what she’s excited about. If I don’t give her the creeps then maybe that would be possible. She said the transmitter was strange and that she wanted to look at it more closely. She said that she needed to sleep and that they had been up for more than 30 hours. If she could just get one night of sleep and look at the transmitter again, maybe she could figure it out and maybe she could figure out if their ship had any useful parts.
He wasn’t happy but they agreed to stay. He said that they would keep watch. One of them would sleep and the other would stay awake. Three hours or so at a time. He wouldn’t trust me to take a watch. No offence, he said to me. None taken, I said back.
He took the first watch. He said I could sleep if I wanted to, but I said I wasn’t very sleepy. I had only just woken up when they met me. And I had slept a long time. After three hours he didn’t wake his wife up like they’d agreed. Even after four hours, he still sat there. I told him it was time to wake her, but he said to let her sleep. Men are often like that, I find. But maybe in this case he was hoping that I would go to sleep first. One of the few things he said was that I looked very healthy for somebody who had been living in a clearing on a strange planet for months. Thank you, I told him.
Eventually, his wife woke up and made him go to sleep. She said it was two hours until daylight, and he should sleep for at least an hour or so. She talked to me a bit. She asked what I did. I told her I was a mathematician. That I was on my way to a conference to give a talk when I crashed. Most people don’t ask more after I say I work in mathematics, but she did. I don’t think she understood anything I told her about mathematics. To be fair, it’s not something I’m excited about. I probably didn’t do my best to be very convincing. She asked if I had children. That made me laugh. I don’t laugh often. It caught me by surprise. She smiled. Not a lot of people think about children on the trade routes, she said. Those that do, take the big, safe, yearly ferries.
She and her husband couldn’t afford that. But they wanted to start a family. They were on their way to a colony that offers free healthcare to boost the population. That way, she could get fertility treatment. That seemed like a nice arrangement to me. Everybody gets something out of it.
The shadows came at dusk. She spotted them first and kicked her husband, to wake him up. He was on his feet in a flash. I was very impressed by that. It always takes me a long time to wake up properly. I told them we should stay where we are, but they didn’t listen. He gave me one strange look that I didn’t understand and then they ran away.
The shadows used smoke charges and projectile weapons to drive them north. It worked. There was a thick tree line and a high hill to the north, so it must have looked like a good option to them.
They made it about halfway. All the small explosions from the projectile weapons stopped and I heard the loud pop that means it’s all over.
The woman fell. Her knees just sort of buckled and she fell forward with her eyes open. The man probably knew he shouldn’t have gone back for her, but then again, what else was he going to do? They jumped him. That’s what they do, they kill one quickly to lure the other back, and then they eat that one. That’s what it’s about for them. They want to feed. It’s their biology. They’re not primitive, not like I said. Not at all, they’re very advanced. They built me after all, but they still have some basic urges to satisfy. That’s why they hunt and feed. Humans are the same, I think, pretty advanced, but occasionally they do primitive things just because their biology requires them to.
I watched them feed for a while. Then I looked up. Above me was the most remarkable sky. To the west, it was overcast, and getting very dark already, but for a thin, bright red sliver on the horizon. To the east, there was a sudden break in the clouds. At the edge, where the clouds broke, they looked remarkably solid. Like the edges of a cliff.
Beyond the clouds, the sky showed a vivid blue-to-yellow gradient, almost as bright as daylight, streaked with red cumulus. High above the cloud cover, these thin wisps were still picking up the fiery red light of the sunset. Behind them, the stars were just beginning to come out.
I feel very thankful when I see something so beautiful. As the screaming stopped, the sun finally went down and the shadows retreated. It would soon be time to go to sleep again. I thought it was a nice day. I really liked the woman. Even though I didn’t make friends with her, I think she treated me like a friend. It was really just a matter of time. If we had had longer, I’m sure I would have made friends with her.
And the man, even though he looked at me very unpleasantly, I thought he was probably not all that bad. I thought back to her question, and it made me laugh again. Children!
One day I would like to meet a child.