Eden, by wcmarkarian


  

In the beginning was the word ... let there be white.

  

Thwack.

Ava hit herself in the head again, but this time she slipped as a result. She had to stop her fall by bracing herself against the niter encrusted wall of the chamber. When she slammed against the hard stone, a slight plume of white dust shot into the air.

Ava shook her head at her annoying behavior. She took a deep breath to try to calm herself. It helped a little, but something about the dark cave surrounding her remained unnerving. All the scans their computer had taken of this alien cavern had come back negative for life. The cave was unquestionably empty. Yet the back of her neck tingled like a centipede was scurrying up her spine or like she was being watched. Despite what their technology had said, she didn't feel alone.

She was also uncomfortably warm. But every time she tried to wipe the sweat from her brow, her hand clanged against the glass faceplate of her spacesuit. She had hit herself in the head at least ten times now, and her clumsiness frustrated her. Ava had never been so awkward on any of her previous expeditions.

But all the other expeditions were government sanctioned, she thought. For the sake of science. Not for money. Not in the gray area between legal and illegal.

Ava shook her head, dismissing the thought. This trip was no different. Same skills, same tools, same goals. Find alien artifacts. Bring them home. Sell them. The only real difference was that private collectors paid a lot more than museums. A lot more. And she had debts to pay. So, she had made her peace with choosing money over museums. It was either that or admit she'd been wrong and beg her parents for help.

There was no way she would ever do that.

No, she thought, it wasn't a guilty conscience that had her agitated. It had to be her latest discovery that had set her on edge. The alien script she had found in this cave had thrilled but also annoyed her. And her mixed emotions were showing up in her unusual lack of basic coordination. And it was irritating her like a burr inside her spacesuit. Why couldn't she relax and adjust to her situation?

Ava squinted through the foggy glass of her helmet at the source of her excitement and vexation--the alien hieroglyphics on the wall next to her. Inches to the right of where her hand was braced against the wall. Unfortunately, even though she had discovered the strange lines of symbols thirty minutes ago, she had yet to translate them. Something about this chamber was disrupting the electronics of her suit, of all their equipment. Her inability to finish her work agitated her to the point of wanting to scream.

Instead, she pounded her gloved fist against the wall, which caused another cloud of white dust to puff off the stone. Once the dust cleared, the alien markings stared back at her, just a few feet from her head. She could almost hear the undecipherable symbols taunting her and laughing. Or was the laughter real? She shook her head, and the sounds faded back into her imagination.

She had tried ten times to scan the alien words that were etched into the rock. But the supposedly high-resolution photographs she had taken were grainy and distorted, which was very odd. She doubted the computer could even decode the blurred images.

Her faulty scans were her first clue that there was something strange about the chamber. How much could a simple camera be affected by whatever forces were in this place? Not that it mattered. Each attempt to transmit an image of the hieroglyphs back to their ship for deep analysis had failed part way through. She couldn't connect with her computer from here. For some reason, all her technology was malfunctioning.

As Ava pondered this, she absent-mindedly traced the engravings with her right forefinger. All she could do was wait until Manny returned. if on cue, her helmet's sound system crackled and shattered the silence that had engulfed her.

"Almost there, Ava," Manny's voice sizzled in her ear.

She had figured there was only one way to do this—old school. So Manny, her assistant, had run back the short distance to their ship. It was docked somewhere above her. Earlier that day, they'd found a flat area in the valley. It was just outside the entrance to this series of alien chambers that were chiseled into the mountainside of this barren planet. The landing zone was small, but her captain, Tavros, had maneuvered their bulky salvage ship with a cool confidence that made the landing look easy.

At least he's good for something, she thought.

Tavros and his crew were not scientists. They were treasure hunters, glorified space junk collectors. He had approached Ava with an offer, and, desperate, she had accepted. She had given him the coordinates to this restricted planet. In exchange, he had made her and Manny part of the salvage crew. She'd get a tenth of whatever they found.

When they had arrived, initial scans showed no evidence of life. Tavros threatened to leave her on the surface for wasting his time. But Ava knew better and persisted. Only planets with signs of alien intelligence were designated "restricted." She kept looking and was rewarded when subterranean scans had found this chamber. And thirty minutes ago, she had found the alien text. She had been vindicated. Tavros would have to trust her.

The sound of crunching footsteps grabbed Ava's attention. She turned from the wall and watched as Manny jogged toward her, kicking up little plumes of the powdery niter all the way down the path. His suit was covered with it. Hers had to be, too. The stuff was everywhere.

"Here you go," he said, his voice crackling with static as he handed her the simple materials--paper and graphite. "Better hurry."

"Why?" she answered.

"Tavros is coming with the rest of the crew. They're bringing charges. Gonna blast down the door if you don't figure that code out soon."

"What? Why? I just need more time."

"You know how he is. Time's money. Alien artifacts are money. He wants what's behind that door yesterday, not tomorrow."

"Ugh. Well, I still can't transmit this back to the ship. So, we'll definitely have to do it by hand."

Ava adjusted the paper and graphite in her gloved hands. There were three short lines of the script scratched into the otherwise smooth wall ahead of her. Too smooth. Apparently, the civilization that had once lived here had also manufactured this barrier. The scans she had taken earlier that day using the ship's deep terrain sensors had verified that there was, indeed, another chamber, a large chamber, beyond this seemingly doorless wall.

The writing on the wall had to be the key. Ava just had to decode it. It was what Tavros paid her to do, and she couldn't believe he wouldn't let her finish her job. Ava shook her helmeted head as she placed the paper over the engraved symbols and quickly took a rubbing.

"Okay, Manny. Let's get this back to the ship."

But it wasn't Manny that answered. A deeper, huskier voice, rasped in her ear. "You do that Ava. I figure you've got thirty more minutes, but then we're gonna do things my way," Tavros hissed.

Ava turned from the wall and looked up the tunnel she had traveled down to get here. At first, all she could see were bobbing lights fluorescing little white dust clouds. But soon the faces of Tavros and the rest of the crew came into view. Each carried blasting equipment.

"Why can't you be more patient?" Ava snapped at the salvage captain, not bothering to mask her indignation. "Blasting that wall might destroy everything!"

"I'm not worried," Tavros answered. "I've been salvaging space crap for years, Doctor. I doubt it will all be destroyed. They'll be enough left to make a profit. And that's the difference between science and salvage. Then again, you might be right. Blasting can get messy, and a cleaner way might prove more profitable. It's why I brought you along. But time is money. So, you've got half an hour until we bring this thing down. Best get moving."

Ava shook her head in disbelief, but Tavros intimidated her and left her speechless. As a scientist, she was trained to preserve as much of the discovery as she could. But Tavros and his crew were more worried about getting in and getting out with something, anything, before a security patrol stopped and asked questions. There would be no profit if the Feds confiscated their cargo. Tavros could even lose money if he had to pay fines. Or, worse, they could all be arrested. She knew Tavros was right, but it still felt wrong.

Dwelling on the problem, though, was just wasting more time. Ava pointed at Manny and then the tunnel. He nodded. They scurried up the path and returned to their ship. Precious moments later, they stepped through the ship's hatch.

Manny sat down, and Ava sealed the outer and inner hatches of the D-con room. She looked around her. White dust from the caves coated the floor and even floated inside of D-con. She couldn't believe how much had clung to them. There was no escaping their need for decontamination. Ava activated the system and even waited an extra minute for the room's filters to cleanse them.

Protocol said a minute was more than sufficient. But as they stripped out of their spacesuits and left the chamber, Ava swore white dust still floated in the air. And as she hung her suit on its hook, she saw what looked like white powder on the suit's inside liner, too.

Had the powder penetrated her suit somehow? she wondered.

She knew that was impossible. It had to be contaminated by the dust that they had brought into D-con. Or maybe this planet was getting to her, and it was just a sweat stain. Still, it troubled her that the dust had remained in D-con despite her extended use of the filtration system.

But these technology glitches would have to wait. Ten minutes had already elapsed. Ava sped down the corridor of the ship until she reached the small room Tavros had given her for research. Manny joined her seconds later. Despite shedding the insulated suit and being in the climate-controlled ship, Ava was sweating even worse than she had been in the cavern. It couldn't be from running to the ship from the chamber--it wasn't that far. She was most likely sweating because Tavros made her anxious. Or maybe she was getting sick.

But then she looked at Manny and noticed his brow was damp, too. She wondered if the ship's climate control was malfunctioning as their equipment had in the caves. That could also explain the problem in D-con. Something was definitely wrong. When they finished decoding the markings, she'd have Manny run diagnostics on the ship.

"Come on Manny," Ava said. "Let's process these as quickly as possible and hope for the best."

Manny fed the papers with the rubbings into the ship's scanner. Once the images were digitized, Ava enhanced them. Then she entered them into her universal translator.

"Cross your fingers," she said.

But as she said this, she felt strangely anxious. Her head began to throb, and she grew dizzy and disoriented. Suddenly, she was filled with an overwhelming urge to go home. All the way home. To Earth. Images of her elderly parents flashed before her eyes. For a moment, she was standing outside their cottage near Johannesburg. She was looking up at the African sun, and its heat washed over her skin. It felt so good to be home. To be with her parents again.

No, she wasn't home, she thought. She was in deep space, galaxies away, on a godforsaken rock they jokingly called Eden. She was part of a salvage crew, a black marketeer, and at the moment they were breaking countless galactic laws. She was no longer the good little girl that would make her parents proud.

Ava shook her head and squeezed her eyes tight. When she opened them, she was back on the spaceship, but the desire to go home only got more intense, more urgent. Her breathing and heart rate were undeniably accelerated. The back of her neck burned with pain, and her temples pulsed with pressure. Sweat oozed from her pores.

She needed to go home. They needed her to go home. She would feel much better at home. She stood up and left the research section of the ship. She headed to the cockpit. She sat in Tavros's pilot's chair. Entered the coordinates for home, which surprised her. How did she know them?

She caught movement to her right and glanced in that direction. To her surprise, Manny had followed her and was strapping into the copilot's seat. She had said nothing to him, but he seemed fully aware of the change in their mission.

She looked more closely at her assistant. His dark face looked impossibly ashen. Part of her whimpered at the sickly sight of him. But another part of her, the part in control, smiled at the white haze coating Manny's features.

Ava shrugged and returned to readying the ship for departure. She fired the engines, and as she looked at her hand, she noted how oddly pale it looked. Then, while the ship rose from the planet's surface, the comm system erupted. Her ears were filled with garbled, static-filled sounds. She heard Tavros and the others screaming at her ... in pain.

Far below her, a cloud of white dust burst out of the entrance to the chamber. It raced upward and enveloped the ship. For a moment she was flying blind, but then the cloud dissipated. Likewise, the voices of those she had left behind on the planet ceased. The comm went dead silent. And, even though the cloud had disappeared, everything was still foggy, as if she were in a dream.

She turned and looked again at Manny. He looked back at her, his face a powdery white, his eyes white, soulless orbs. Something, a thin, snakelike tendril, slid out of Manny's left ear and across his upper lip.

Ava felt her stomach flip and her throat recoil with a gag. But instead of reaching to help Manny, she turned forward and smiled--even though it felt like the sharp points of daggers were pressed against her eardrums. The excruciating pain stripped away her ego and pride as though they were little more than dead skin.

"Father," she whimpered.

"Mo.." she started to cry, but her mouth was as dry as chalk, and her throat was constricted. So her plea for help stuck to her tongue.

This can't be happening, she thought. I must be dreaming. Hallucinating.

A beeping alert brought her focus back. The computer screen flashed in front of her. She reached with her hand, which seemed oddly glazed with a powdery white fuzz, and tapped the screen to see the results of the translation:

The first of you

Shall carry the last of us

To our new home

What does that mean? Ava wondered.

She felt incredibly small as she thought this. As though she had been banished to a remote corner of her mind. A small point of light in a galaxy of stars. A small speck of dust in a sky filled with clouds.

Then, everything went white, like she was once again staring up at the sun.

Ava was going home.