6.5 Stowaway

  Tocarris Kardusi gazed out the window wall of the observation room in the PVC base spaceship. Outside it, she could see a magnificent view of a sun rising over a big, blue planet. Its early rays covered the glistening oceans. On the other side of the planet was green land left in darkness. Patches of lights could be seen coming from these continents, representing human cities.

  Tocarris sipped her cup of coffee, watching the planet Earth maintain its daily routine, oblivious of the plans she had in store for it and the massive transformation that would soon ensue.

  Over the past nearly six months that she had been lowly orbiting the planet in the visibly and electromagnetically actively camouflaged ship, she had researched the species of animals and plants inhabiting it, particularly human beings. She’d thought very hard about how she was going to eliminate the species and was quite proud of the hard work she put in.

  Her initial solution was to create a deadly bacterium that would infect every human. Biology had become very strong under UnIF, so creating micro life forms to your genetic specifications and desired functions was possible. But then the problem came of people who lived in isolation and didn’t contact other humans. Another problem was that if it instantly killed people, then they wouldn’t have time to infect others. This problem could partly be solved by making the bacteria stay dormant for some period of time, not allowing the host to show symptoms while spreading it, and then becoming active. But then other bothersome problems came up like the possibility of humans discovering a cure to the disease in the process because it took so long to spread or, again, keeping away from others.

  To solve the first problem, she could make a virus instead of a bacterium, as viruses couldn’t be killed. This would have to be strong enough for vaccines to be ineffective. For the second problem, she could suddenly spread it throughout the world and have the virus survive on animals as well. Then, it was only a matter of time.

  This solution was crude, however: It would take a lot of time to eradicate humans as the virus would remain dormant for some time and she didn’t want to keep PVC waiting; creating a time-based trigger was difficult; it was no fun watching humans instantly turn into putrid corpses. A crude method wasn’t the way to go for her, a Kardusi who was aspiring to gain fame and repute from this first job she’d be entrusted with. She had to be more creative.

  It was then that the final solution to the human problem came to her. The solution was to instantly and simultaneously make all animals start killing humans. She thought it would be ironic and artistic to do so. Considering all the harm humans had done to nature for hundreds of years, watching animals take revenge would be satisfying to watch. Further, it would leave behind no corpses to wait for decomposition of. And when the job was done, the animals would be reverted from their violent tendencies. Of course, there were some possibilities she had to prepare for. If she were to convert every animal into a man-eating monster, then nature would collapse. The food web was intricate and intertwined. Some animals like decomposers and insects were essential to maintain the planet while the others were running rampant. To solve this, she had to specify the probability of transforming an animal into a monster based on its species, which took a while to implement, considering she had to understand the role, importance, and connection of every species in the planet’s ecology.

  Tocarris took another sip of her coffee. It was a marvelous beverage that her subordinates had brought back for her from when they were scouting and bringing samples from Earth periodically. It helped her through many all-nighters when she was on the verge of something in her research developing a virus.

  And now, the first masterpiece of her career was nearly complete. She was just waiting on a shipment of Castignome to complete the project. She could then release it upon the planet below and show the spectacle to PVC.

  There was a knock on the door. A man appeared. His name was Loi, and he assisted Tocarris with all sorts of things, such as collecting resources from Earth, spying on humans, and being a lab assistant. He could even act as a bodyguard in case Tocarris wanted to visit Earth and interact with humans. The last thing wouldn’t happen, but it was convenient to have such an all-around employee working under her.

  “Can you feel it, Loi?” Tocarris said. “Nature is screaming. In just a few weeks, I will give it the tool it needs to exact its revenge.”

  Loi stood fixed without comment. When Tocarris gave the signal, he spoke. “The delivery from Sartoog has arrived, Dr. Kardusi,” he informed her.

  Tocarris put down her coffee and clapped her hands together in excitement. “Excellent!” She smiled.

* * *

  Cadonif grunted and clutched his throbbing head. As he came back out of his coma into reality, his blurred vision cleared and he could make out the voice of the speaker system’s robot announcer as it declared that the spaceship had reached its destination and was now docking. Cadonif slowly got up. Old bloodstains on the floor told him that he’d apparently hit his head and fell unconscious after bleeding with a severe, near-fatal concussion. Fortunately, due to his regeneration powers, his subconscious was able to carefully fix his head over the past two months in spite of the nausea that going at such ridiculous speeds entailed.

  Cadonif’s stomach growled. Regeneration took a lot of energy, not to mention that he hadn’t eaten in two months. He was starving, skinny, and weak.

  He went to the window. First, he had to see where he was. Outside was the vast expanse of outer space. One thing stuck out glaringly: a giant, blue planet, radiating light. Cadonif rubbed his eyes and looked again. It was still there. Like most Sartoogians, he’d never left his home planet before. Nor had he ever heard of such a beautiful planet. He had to make sure it wasn’t an illusion, but it was clearly there, hovering about haphazardly in the middle of the pitch-black, rotating slowly and gaudily displaying its bright colors: blue, green, brown, and white. He was dazed and wouldn’t have accepted his situation if it wasn’t so unreal that he was sure he couldn’t dream it up.

  After coming to accept this, he noticed the next object: there was a gigantic, shadowy ship, about half a mile in length, moving towards the one he was in. At first, he panicked, anticipating a collision, but when he heard a soft thud and the speaker system say ‘Docking complete’ instead, he realized his ship had been the one approaching it and he was in no immediate danger of being in an explosion.

  Then, he once again went into panic: He wasn’t supposed to be aboard the spaceship. He would appear as a stowaway. His actual intention of burglary from it was not any better. He could not afford to let himself be found by the crew of the larger ship!

  He swiftly rolled onto the floor and hid in the most obscure place he could find: behind a crate in a dark corner. He watched the bay door he’d entered through, wondering how it would dock and open in space. He heard a hissing sound behind him and found himself illuminated as if under a spotlight. He turned to see that the door that the spaceship had docked with was right beside him, and it had just opened.

  He stumbled back. “Aah!”

  Thankfully, no one was present on the other side. There was just a well-lit hallway whose light had been shone on him. Cadonif sighed and decided it would be best to hide inside the bigger spaceship. He hadn’t much chance nor space in the smaller one to hide and not be found.

  He cautiously crept down the white-themed hallway. There wasn’t much decoration because it was a base station and not for normal travel. After a few yards, he found himself at a junction. Then, he heard voices of people talking coming from one branch. They were headed to retrieve the goods from the small cargo spacecraft.

  Once again, Cadonif panicked. He went into another hallway and thought of opening a door, but didn’t want to risk being seen in case anyone was inside. And there was no convenient janitor’s room to hide in. He tried to think of other options. He then noticed a large air vent by his foot. He peeked through to see that it was large enough inside to fit him.

  With no energy, a headache, anxiety about being found, and a lack of understanding about his situation, pure adrenaline allowed him to squat and attempt to open the air vent. It was locked in place by four screws. His quivering, sweaty fingers tried their best to grasp the screws and turn them. The rust and slipperiness of the metal screws made it harder to do. Every second, the voices getting louder reminded him that he was done for if he couldn’t do the job in time. Beads of sweat grew on his face and his breath became heavy as he concentrated only on the task, using whatever force was necessary to grip the screws at the expense of his poor fingers.

  Eventually, he got the vent cover open and tried to quickly but quietly put his body into the vent legs-first, disregarding the dust and wincing as the metal beneath him groaned by the sudden application of his weight. As he did so, he saw the owners of the voices enter the corner of his view at the junction in front of the cargo ship. He instinctively grabbed the vent cover and placed it in front of him to cover up his location. Perhaps he was too fast, however, as a clank sounded from the metal cover hitting the metal duct.

  A woman in a lab coat who seemed to be the authority there turned sharply in his direction. She stared for what seemed like an hour, before turning away and continuing what she was saying to her subordinates. They entered the cargo ship which was out of Cadonif’s view.

  He heard her complain about Sartoogians not handling and restraining the goods properly over the sound of his rapidly beating heart, which he began worrying whether he was the only one hearing. He remembered removing the fasteners on the crate of Castignome. He never put it back on. The crate must have fallen over during the rough journey. The woman then demanded her workers transport the goods carefully to her laboratory.

  Only after all of the people had left did Cadonif breathe out in relief. He decided to remain in the air duct because it was safe.

  He curled up and contemplated on his current situation.

  He was dozens of light-years from his home, illegally aboard a spaceship belonging to Paradise Vacation Corporation, and starving. He had no idea about how to get back home, and even if he could, he wasn’t sure he wanted to witness what had become of his family.

  Without any money and with his sister, Sagtillette, as a hostage, the orphanage had no options. He’d let them down, and now, he didn’t want to imagine what the loan sharks had done to them.

  Possibly even worse was Geenud’s fate. He’d been caught trying to steal at a Federation facility. The punishment would be harsh. He felt very bad for all of them. Cadonif should have felt lucky that he didn’t end up with any of these fates, but even his was too uncertain to feel grateful for. If he was caught, he could be seen as anything from a hitchhiker to a corporate spy, and his nationality wouldn’t help in any way either.

  His whole life, he’d had to suppress his dreams because of the environment he’d grown up in. There was no hope that any of them would come true. He could only have hoped to survive with his family. But now, even that couldn’t stay true, as he was separated from them and they were all going through the worst times in their lives. Everything had changed so quickly into something unimaginably terrible. How cruel fate was.

  As Cadonif wept and pondered about the terrible nature of the situation, he tried to take solace in the fact that if Geenud had been here with him, they would have been caught immediately. He let out a small chuckle amongst the tears.

* * *

  Hidden in a metal duct hidden inside a giant spaceship orbiting a wet, blue planet scheduled for major renovations, a stowaway Sartoogian quietly and despairingly sulked as a species slowly but steadily approached its doom.