The Need For Consciousness

Chapter 1. THE PLANET OF RAIN AND FLORA

"DAMN RAIN!" HOWLED CHARLIE THOMPSON, as he trampled and squelched a path cautiously through an open stretch of alien land covered in what looked to him like blue lettuce plants. He cut quite a forlorn figure in his grey space-security-agency uniform as he toiled beneath the cruel rain. And the rain fell. And it fell. As if it always had. With its green vegetative tinge.

Just occasionally, he would give a wide berth to some strange looking tiny trees that resisted the rain with their rubbery lime-green trunks and branches and wriggling yellow leaves, trees that emitted a weird jingling noise combined with a wavering high-pitched hum. It was as if they were internally electric. Charlie didn't like the look or sound of them. They grew no taller than his waist and would have made him feel like a giant had it not been for the truly gigantic purple-leafed trees he could see over his right shoulder in the distance. They punctured the grumbling grey-green clouds that hung heavily from the sky.

"Damn this infernal rain!" cried Charlie, blinking his eyes up to the green-tinted sky. "Cats and dogs have nothing on you, Baby." He bowed his exposed soaking head and kicked out at one of the ubiquitous balls of blue lettuce.

It was a rain like none he had ever experienced on Earth. One minute it thudded against him like exploding grapes, the next it slashed into him like shards of green-tinted glass. Somehow, it had wormed its way down to his feet through the inside of his grey "waterproof" uniform. It was relentless. Yet about six hours ago, when he had left his upturned spacecraft, it had been bone dry. The rain came without warning about five hours ago, and it hadn't stopped since.

Of course, he felt lucky to have survived the crash without injury. In fact, nothing seemed to be broken even though the craft came to rest upside down after a number of extravagant somersaults. It was just as if everything had become inoperable. Obviously, his craft was well constructed, but how it survived such a chaotic tumble from 40,000 feet was beyond his comprehension. Charlie had thought his attempts to control the descent were futile, but thankfully, they appeared to have some effect. However, any repairs he had attempted failed miserably. But his miraculous escape would all be for nothing if he couldn't find the colony building because unless he did, he would be dead before tomorrow's scarlet dawn—if exposure didn't get him first, then, by the Devil, the plants would!

It's true the planet had no indigenous animal life, but Charlie had heard much of the man-killing plants; they make Earth's Venus-flytrap killing plant a joke by comparison. To make matters worse, some of them have evolved to such a degree that they are capable of movement along the ground, and can travel great distances. Of the killer plants, these ambulatory ones are invariably the most dangerous (astro-biologists, and scientists in general, have put this forward as a theory as to why no animals evolved successfully on the planet).

Charlie had studied the planet's plant life, and he knew that a marauding nocturnal man-killer could easily sneak up on him, under the cloak of a black moonless night, and inject him with a paralysing-venom; consequently, he would end his days providing a nameless plant with a welcome change of nutrients. In short, there would be absolutely no chance of surviving a night on this world without adequate protection and weaponry.

He had neither.

He had to find the colony—and soon!

Charlie knew the vegetation on the planet was poisonous, containing a heavy brew of toxic poisons. Moreover, the water (including the damn rain) if drank persistently, or in large enough quantities, was poisonous too. To be on the safe side, he could only allow small amounts of rain to find its way into his mouth. As he marched ever onwards pelted and covered by the rain, he began to appreciate what it must be like for those lost souls cast adrift on a lifeboat in the middle of a vast ocean, surrounded by water that they were unable to drink.

If only his craft's Barrington Quark Adjuster had not been rendered inoperable by the crash: just send in a code with his remote, and, plink—roast potatoes, steamed lettuce, and roast turkey with cornbread dressing, all covered with running giblet gravy; not to mention a steaming cup of coffee. Boy, was he feeling hungry and thirsty right now!

Just about the only positive feature of the planet, as far as Charlie was concerned, was that the atmosphere was perfectly harmless despite the small micro-organisms and pollens that permeated it (many of them contained only negligible amounts of poisons, and the genetic code was too dissimilar to cause problems to any living thing from Earth—such as Charlie).

How the spacecraft could have malfunctioned was a mystery to him, but no greater a mystery than what had happened at the colony? And that was his reason for being sent here in the first place. It was his job to find out exactly what had happened and put matters under control.

Charlie knew he was close to the colony because he saw it on the monitors just before the craft started to spin wildly out of control. "Definitely something from the colony caused my craft to crash ... sure of it," he muttered, the rain drumming feverish melodies without apology upon his unprotected head. "There's no such thing as accidents these days—it was all sabotage. No doubt about it. Son of a bitch. I was cloaked too. How did someone in the colony screen my arrival? There's only one person who could have detected my arrival ... and we all know who that is!"

Splashing and sloshing, he pushed on in the direction he hoped to find the colony. He could only go by the position of the huge reddish Sun that loomed like a huge balloon over his left shoulder. Either the colony was dead ahead of him, or it lay directly behind him in which case he was trekking further away from it. He didn't have any technological equipment to help him—nothing worked after the crash, nothing. He would find the colony if it were ahead of him because it lay at the foot of a valley, which the natural contours of the land would inexorably lead him to.

"Damn the colony, and damn this rain!" A blue ball of lettuce flew off the end of his boot high into the air, flapping and spinning in the downpour. It crashed to the ground with a splash, and lay inert, as if it had never been disturbed in the first place. He made to kick at it again but thought he heard a tiny pleading squeal, like that of a baby. So he swept his boot harmlessly over the top of it. He gave a quick glance back to the ball of blue lettuce, and he winked at it casting a wry smile before soldiering on. He thought he must surely have imagined the squeal.

Trudging on, Charlie's mind wandered now and again as he tired, such was his growing hunger and thirst and the mesmerising effect of the constant rain. He thought of his wife, Katrina, and the time he had first met her at Moscow's Innovative Security Systems conference (ISS 4343) ...

All this happened five years ago. She was presenting her paper on Anton-Slip Messaging (a method of sending messages through sub-atomic particles using matter properties recently discovered in the field of Anton-Slip Physics, messages undetectable to existing devices that interrogated messaging sources). As Chief of Security for the United States Army Signals Centre, Fort Gordon, Georgia, his main duty was to provide security for Subgeet Walbottle—leading weaponry scientist for the United States. Walbottle had presented a paper on behalf of their research group outlining a new theory postulating that a quarkonian laser beam could be sent on a predefined path (which meant it could pass around objects, be they living or not). Three years down the line and Charlie had married Katrina and they had settled down in Augusta, Georgia, where she worked as a Signals Lecturer at Augusta State University.

His thoughts moved on to the moment their baby girl Tamara was born. She was one year and six months old, now, and so vulnerable. He loved them both.

"Kat! Tammy! Thinking of ya!" he shouted, up to the green tinged sky, the raindrops stinging his eyes. And the rain did him a favour by disguising his tears.

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I hope you enjoyed this Chapter. I welcome any votes, comments or constructive criticisms (style, spelling, grammar and punctuation errors).

T. J. P. CAMPBELL.