Second Chance
“Norton. This is James. You’ve got to get out here. You’re not going to believe this. I’m at the dig site. Call me back.”
James slipped the phone back into his pocket and knelt down to examine the skull. It looked almost like an ape’s, but…not quite. An ancestor of an ape? Or an ancestor of a human? Beside him, Ashley was sifting through the dirt near where he had found the skull, pulling up the remnants of what looked like a shin. In the dirt next to her, a few tiny bones that could be fingers poked up from the earth. It had to be some sort of hominid.
“We’ll have to get the DNA tested right away,” said Ashley, her face alight with excitement. “I wonder what species it is.”
“Norton might know before we’ve tested. That’s why I called him. You know the professor; he can tell a Neanderthal from a homo erectus without blinking an eye.”
At that moment, James’ cell phone began to ring. “That’ll be Norton,” he said, pressing it to his ear.
“James?” said Norton’s voice. “I’m on my way to the site. What exactly have you found?”
“Bones,” James replied. “A skeleton of…an ape? A hominid? I need you to take a look.”
“Well…an ape would make sense.” There was silence on Norton’s end of the line. “That area is known to have had a high ape population. But never hominids, James. They never migrated this way. All right, I’ll see you in a few minutes. Almost there.”
“See you, Norton.”
James turned back to Ashley. Her soft brown hair hung in a ponytail over a dusty green t-shirt. He noticed that she had begun to scrape away at the dirt surrounding a ribcage.
“Norton says it has to be an ape,” he said at last. “Early ancestors of humans never migrated this way.”
“But what about the tools we found earlier?” she asked.
“They were barely below the surface,” he replied. “Probably from a more recent civilization.”
“But, James,” said Ashley, insistently, “apes don’t hunt. Look at this.”
James knelt down to see another set of bones, still mostly buried. It was an animal carcass of some kind: some prehistoric version of a wild boar? And when he examined it more closely, he saw that there were definite marks of skilled hunting and butchering.
“It was below the body,” Ashley continued, “but there could be more bodies. Maybe it’s—“
“James! Ashley!”
“Norton!” said Ashley with relief. “I’m so glad you’re here. Neither of us can make any sense of this. Come see.”
They showed him what they had found. Norton frowned through his thick glasses, bushy eyebrows knitted in deep thought. Finally, he said, “Well, a simple DNA test can sort out the species question. We can figure the rest out later. For now, let’s dig up everything we can.”
“A mass grave?” wondered Ashley aloud, as she, James and Norton surveyed their finds. A month had passed since she and James had unearthed the first skull, and they were still no closer to even a whisper of understanding as to its origin.
“With multiple species? Highly unlikely,” said Norton gruffly. “Unless it’s all the same species, only one even more diverse than the human one. But that’s also highly unlikely,” he added. “I am surprised, though; hominids have never been found anywhere near here.”
James remained silent. He surveyed the month’s finds with a troubled gaze, as though somewhere in his subconscious he knew something was wrong but couldn’t grasp what. His eyes passed over the twenty-plus skeletons, the broken tools, the charred remains of crude fires, and the handful of unidentified objects, before, at last, he commented, “And we aren’t even finished. Look, there’s a leg poking up right down there.” As Norton and Ashley peered into the deepening hole, he suddenly exclaimed, “Of course!”
The other two turned back to him with puzzled looks. “Of course what?” asked Norton, in a slightly annoyed tone.
“I knew that something about this find didn’t seem quite normal, but nothing we dug up was really out of the ordinary, so I put the thought out of my mind. But look: the older bodies, the ones we found deeper down, are more…human-like than the more recent ones. See, it’s as though they were dug up and put back in backwards.”
His companions were silent for a moment, Norton asking himself why he hadn’t noticed that, and Ashley chewing her lip thoughtfully as her eyes flickered over the ancient bones. James watched them, a self-congratulatory expression mingling with the confusion on his face.
“But that’s not true,” said Ashley, striding over to the skeletons. “Look,” she said, pointing to an almost perfectly human skeleton, “this one’s more advanced than any of them, and we found it in the middle.”
“So they’re all out of order,” said Norton, heavily. “Coupled with the fact that people never came here, I’d say that this is likely the work of early explorers in the area. They dig for buried treasure somewhere near here, hoping for richly outfitted tombs, and they take everything they don’t want and bury it somewhere out of the way. Now, I don’t know about you two, but the sun’s gone down and I’d like to get back to the tents for some rest. We’ll take all the skeletons for DNA testing tomorrow.”
James watched as Norton and Ashley carefully lifted the last artefacts into the truck. “I’ll see you later,” he said, when Ashley beckoned for him to come. “I want to take one last look at the site.”
“Okay,” she called back as she got into the truck beside Norton. “We’ll leave the Jeep for you.” Then the engine started, and they drove away into the darkening dusk.
Something about the site told James that he was missing something important. He wasn’t sure he was ready to believe that a few treasure-hungry explorers with too much time on their hands could explain away the entire pit. Approaching the ancient grave, he lowered himself into the widening hole. He reached into his back pocket and took out the tiny flashlight he always carried with him in case his archaeological work took him into caves or tombs. He would keep digging until he figured out what was behind the strange assortment of bones.
He decided to start with the leg bone, a shin, that was sticking out of the ground, and set to work carefully removing it from its place of rest. Picking up a brush and shovel that he had left in the pit earlier, his practiced hands slowly uncovered the yellowed, brittle limb remnant. After what seemed like an eternity, he managed to gently pull it free.
It hit the ground with a clatter. James stood frozen, the bone forgotten, as he stared at what its release had uncovered.
A book? What could a book be doing down here, amid a bunch of primitive hominids without the brain capacity to put pen to paper? Then James remembered the leg fragment he’d found. Picking it up, he turned it over in his hand. This was no half-primate, prehistoric object. This was something straight off a science class skeleton. This was modern human. Not that that made any sense; judging by the layers of dirt on the thing, it had to be millions of years old.
James returned his attention to the book. It wasn’t really a book, just a bunch of loose papers shoved under a deteriorating spine. Of course, if it was as old as its depth suggested (putting aside the fact that there was no written language then) it couldn’t possibly still be legible. He gingerly lifted it from the dirt, hearing the crackle beneath his fingertips of pages long unexposed to the outside air.
Holding his flashlight to the plain brown cover, James bent down to inspect the ancient manuscript. The front was completely unadorned. The only indication of what lay inside was one small, printed word: Records. James was staggered. Not only were the words written in English, they were clearly made by some sort of mechanical or electronic device. This has to be prank, he thought. This was too unlikely. Someone must have planted the book and the artefacts.
“Okay, joke’s up!” he called into the empty air. “You can come get your book now!”
No one came, of course, so James decided he might as well read whatever the prankster had come up with. Sitting down against the side of the pit, he opened “Records” to the first page.
Log Entry No. 1- Day 12, Block 7, Revolution 4902
Fifth illegal starship left Port 25 at 15:22. Passengers: 57. Captain: Myself, Eighty-Fourth of the Kantorkin. Broke free of home solar system three days after take off. Supplies: enough for fifty to live four years. Destination: unspecified.
Many of the pages, James noticed, had dissipated over time. The next entry was dated ten days later.
Log entry No. 6- Day 22, Block 7, Revolution 4902
Two fleet members lost at last asteroid belt, due to faulty navigational systems. Four of six illegal ships remain. Voyage faster than expected. Should hit edge of Evular Galaxy within the year.
Log Entry No. 9- Day 1, Block 8, Revolution 4902
Leak in six oxygen tanks today. Three stowaways discovered and ceased. Morale low. Twenty-four hour watch set up to locate liveable planets.
James stared at the thick stack of papers, confused. What did this all mean? Flipping through the remaining pages, he found a seemingly endless stream of entries, filled with supply counts, “considered destinations,” detailed accounts of repairs done to the “starship,” dated from “Revolution 4902” to “Revolution 4905” He went back and skimmed through them, stopping at a few.
Log Entry No. 33- Day 16, Block 9, Revolution 4902
Passengers beginning to inquire about destination. Still no life-supporting planets in sight. Lost contact with ship number one. Remaining three ships agreed to stay within tier one communication range.
Log Entry No. 105- Day 25, Block 13, Revolution 4902
Edge of galaxy in sight. Nothing else to report.
James continued reading, not skimming any longer, constantly wondering who (or what) had written these entries. Reason told him it had to be a prank, albeit an elaborate one, but his curiosity had been piqued. After half an hour, he was nearing the end of the starship’s voyage.
Log Entry No. 801- Day 13, Block 9, Revolution 4905
Liveable planet sighted at last. Food supplies almost finished. Seven out of 120 oxygen tanks remaining. Last ship we have contact with only a few days behind. Landing area selection process underway.
Log Entry No. 802- Day 21, Block 9, Revolution 4905
Spent last eight days attempting to land ship without crashing. Unsuccessful. Fortunately, all but two survived the landing. Have sent explorers to survey area.
Log Entry No. 803- Day 24, Block 9. Revolution 4905
A few shelters built from plant materials near the landing site. Surrounding region is plentiful with strange fruits, nuts, and game. No other intelligent life sighted.
The hand holding the pages trembled as James’ mind struggled to catch up with his eyes. If this journal were to be believed, aliens had come to Earth long before there were intelligent hominids to meet them. But if that were true, why were all the skeletons so clearly from Earth’s history, and why was something from another planet writing in English before English existed? No. It simply did not add up.
The rest of the captain’s log entries detailed newfound food sources and other discoveries made about the “New Planet.” James skipped over them, arriving at a page with different handwriting.
Day 13, Block 9, Revolution 4905
I suppose I should start with my name. I am the Seventy-Fifth of the Lorts, female, and I have existed for fifteen revolutions. The captain said that if anyone kept a journal on our voyage he could add it to the records. He wants to make sure that even if we are caught and forced to upload, or cease on some strange planet, we will be remembered. Very romantic, but I doubt anyone on an uploaded planet would ever bother reading pen and paper records, and no one on a strange planet will be able to read our language.
But enough of that. We will be landing in a few days and I want to state why we are here before I begin describing our new home.
Three years ago, six ships left Home Planet. We were unauthorized, and therefore this voyage is illegal; the first unlawful starship voyage ever. We left to escape the Government’s One Hundred Twenty-Seventh Decree, also known as the Eternity Act. Our scientists had finally finished perfecting technology that would give us electronic immortality, and the First Governor announced that everyone had to upload onto the World Box. My parents tell me that they did not want to be part of a society that reduced the planet to a single computer. They say that they did not want to exist forever in a “fake world.” I came with them, but only because I was too young not to. I’m still not sure I shouldn’t have stayed.
Day 22, Block 9, Revolution 4905
We finally arrived at our New Planet yesterday. It was a bit of a rough landing, but nearly everyone made it through. I spent all day wandering about, taking in the curious landscape and trying to accustom myself to the uncomfortable atmosphere. The air here gives you the strangest cold sensation, like the freezingcase at home but all around you. I feel the need to put on more clothing, which is silly because clothing is only for status and there’s no reason to show more status here.
Luckily, one of our group was once a Naturalist, and knows how to light up the thickest, hardest plant stems to cook food. We don’t have many batteries left, so we’ll have to figure out how to cook without the heatingcase. We managed to kill a few of the animals here, and added fresh meat to our nutrient simulations from the freezingcase. Everyone, it seems, is optimistic about life on New Planet.
Day 23, Block 9, Revolution 4905
Forget what I said about optimism. Someone ceased last night; ceased, just like that. I’ve never heard of anyone ceasing before hitting Maximum unless they’re in a rare accident. Two-Hundred-Ninth of the Elsek, who is a scientist, determined that it must have been something in the meat. Everyone is scared. Do our bodies not simply expel what doesn’t belong? How could anything in the natural environment cause our systems to fail in this way? What if we, too, cease before Maximum?
Only when James’ flashlight flickered out a few pages later did he realize just how late it was. He decided, reluctantly, that he needed to catch a few hours’ sleep, but on the verge of what he thought must be the greatest breakthrough since fire, if, in fact, it wasn’t a practical joke, James was hesitant to stop reading.
I need new batteries, he thought. At least, I’ll go get some more batteries. So he climbed into the dusty black Jeep and headed back to the campsite to find Norton and Ashley.
Both were asleep, having gone to bed just after sunset to prepare for an early start the next day. Not wanting to wake them, James retrieved the batteries from the supply tent and headed for his own smaller one, where he resolved to get some rest. However, after a few minutes of tossing and turning, head spinning from perpetual contemplations about what on earth it all meant, he gave up, popped the new batteries into the flashlight, and picked up the delicate manuscript once more.
Day 18, Block 2, Revolution 4906
We only finished building a group of shelters five blocks ago, and already they are falling into disrepair. Sure, they are nothing like the complexes we had at home, but they are better than nothing. Many have stopped caring about them, preferring to sleep out in the open. Sometimes I find myself wondering why we need shelters. What is happening to us? The captain has stopped keeping a log, and I am the only other one who ever bothered to write. People have started disagreeing, too, often. I mean, we disagreed back home, sometimes; we wouldn’t be here if we never did—but no one ever hurt someone else because of it. Now people are injured all the time over disagreements. Is our society falling apart?
Day 20, Block 2, Revolution 4906
Our population has grown to sixty-one since the beginning of our voyage. Two of the new babies were born here, on New Planet…
“James? James?” Ashley’s voice cut through the fogginess of the archaeologist’s troubled dreams. “What is this book you were reading?”
James sat up. Norton stood in the entrance to the tent, and Ashley crouched beside the sleeping back, holding the manuscript. “Sorry we woke you so late. I’ve spent the last two and a half hours reading this. What is it?”
“An artefact,” James said groggily, “from the site.” He sat up. “I’m going to make some coffee before we head out.”
“Way ahead of you,” smiled Ashley, handing him a steaming cup. “I thought you might want this. You must have been back late. Now tell me: this is an artefact? I thought it was…I don’t know, a science fiction story or something. Are you saying this is real? James, do you have any idea what that would mean?
“That a bunch of aliens that just happened to speak English crash-landed on Earth long before the human race evolved and left behind a convenient set of records telling us everything that happened?” Norton’s gruff voice broke off Ashley’s livid excitement. “Impossible. It’s a prank.”
“Norton, you read this too!” Ashley explained, clearly frustrated. James guessed that they had already had this discussion multiple times while he was still asleep. “Look at this paper. This isn’t some kid soaking pages in tea or sticking them in the toaster to brown them. This—this is ancient. You rub it a couple of times and it disintegrates. Half these log entries are faded beyond recognition. And look at the grain itself! I’ve never seen paper like this before. As if the trees that it came from aren’t from here. Norton, this is the real thing!”
“Now, listen. I found a few especially good entries from that Lorts girl. James, how far did you read?”
“Um…sometime in Block 2?…Revolution 4906.”
“Okay. Read these and tell me what you think.”
“While you two waste your time with that, I’m going to go get those DNA tests done on the skeletons.”
James and Ashley ignored him. Rifling through the pages, she showed James an entry she had selected.
Day 15, Block 14, Revolution 4906
It’s scary how many things there are here to make one ill. Back home—though home by now is but a faded memory—almost nothing in the environment could harm you. The only poisons were created by people to kill vermin. We are slowly discovering antidotes, but many are afraid to eat the plants in the forest, and they get ill as much from not eating as from eating the wrong thing.
“And this one, “ said Ashley, rapidly turning pages.
Day 7, Block 3, Revolution 4907
Many have mastered the use of fire, how to make it and keep it going, but it seems like people are using them to cook less and less. Some even eat their meat raw, like the beasts of the forest everyone has become frightened of. I cannot stand raw meat myself, but hardly anyone seems to notice the difference.
“Here’s the last one.” Ashley handed James a different looking page. The handwriting was different, and as for the paper itself…
“It’s newer, “ said James. “Though not a lot newer, considering how old this thing is.” Without waiting to see if Ashley would reply, he began to read. The date, if there had ever been one, as well as the first few sentences, had faded away, so there was no way of knowing how much newer.
When the government learned of my existence outside the Box, a few…representatives had their minds uploaded into robots to hunt me down. Luckily, by then I had already finished constructing the seventh illegal starship. It had only been maybe eight hundred seventy-five revolutions since the other six left, so I knew I could track them through space. I did, but this is not what I expected to find.
My tracking was accurate down to the very location of their landing. I found the colony, but, somehow, all of the original runaways are dead. How is this possible? All of them could not have hit Maximum already! And this generation…they are different. Very different. Their heads are too small for their bodies, and they are covered but for their faces in some kind of fur. When I try to speak to them, they do not understand what I am saying. By looking at the debris scattered about the area, they once made fires and used tools brought from Home Planet, but I have not seen one of them use a tool or make a fire since I arrived five days ago, and the air here feels unsettlingly like a freezingcase.
But most unnerving of all, when I began exploring the forested area near their settlement (though I hesitate to call it that) I came across a group of animals with fur and what looked like opposable thumbs. I could scarcely tell the difference between them and the runaways. Almost as if the people from Home Planet are growing to be like these beasts. But what could cause them to fall in such a way?
James put down the ancient piece of paper, feeling Ashley’s intense gaze on him as theories and conclusions danced among the muddied thoughts inside his head. “Well?” said Ashley.
Finally, James spoke. “I think we need to get to the dig site,” he said slowly, “and look for that spaceship.”
“Well,” commented James, “that proves it.”
Ashley was standing beside him, and together they surveyed the massive craft. The interior had mostly rotted away, but the controls seemed intact. Ashley stepped inside, and James followed.
The main room consisted of rows upon rows of ledges, which must have been where the fifty-seven passengers slept. Stepping into a side room, they were met with floor-to-ceiling shelves, a few of which still had the remnants of what must once have been colourful food packaging. A third, mostly collapsed room revealed stacks of empty oxygen tanks.
It had taken twenty days to unearth the whole thing, along with a much smaller ship, clearly meant for only one person: illegal starship number seven.
“I can’t believe this has never been found before!” exclaimed Ashley. “This changes everything!”
James found himself being pulled into Ashley’s giddy excitement. “Aliens—hominid aliens—have visited Earth,” he said. “But their bodies didn’t fit in with the climate or the environment. They needed to – to – de-volve, I suppose, shed their advanced ways, in order to survive.”
“And they did it quickly,” replied Ashley. “Eight hundred and seventy-five years, and they’re almost the same as apes!”
“I’m going to call Norton,” said James. “He has to hear about this. And maybe he’s finally got those DNA tests done.” He pulled out his cell phone and hurriedly dialled a number before putting it to his ear.
“Norton? Norton, Ashley was right. We’ve unearthed two spaceships since you’ve been gone.”
Norton was silent for a moment. Then James heard his voice softly on the other end of the line.
“James, I was just about to call you. The DNA test results came back. Those skeletons: they’re human.”
Now it was James’ turn to be silent. After a few moments, he thanked Norton, who told him he would be at the site soon, and hung up. Turning back to Ashley, who was still eagerly inspecting the starship, he said: “We were wrong.” She turned to face him, frowning. “Someone must have planted this ship recently, probably someone with a lot of money and scientific research at their disposal to make it look real. There were no aliens. Norton got the test results back.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Well?”
“Human.”
Ashley frowned and sat down at the edge of the pit. James joined her.
“So that means…” she began.
“We’ve been playing right into someone’s hands.”
“No!” Ashley’s sudden rise in volume surprised James, and he turned to her, surprised. “No,” she repeated, placing her hands on the pit’s edge with such force that her knuckles began to turn white. “Think about it, James. This doesn’t change anything, except that now we know what happened after they de-evolved.”
James pondered this for a moment, unsure of what she was getting at. Then something occurred to him, barely a spark of a thought in the back of his mind. “Are-are you suggesting that we evolved from those aliens? That we’re-that we’re not native too this planet?”
“Home Planet,” Ashley said softly, her eyes resting on an indiscernible point in the distance. “It makes sense. We were perfectly evolved there. Think about those journals. Their bodies were perfectly suited to the climate. Nothing in the natural environment could make them ill. ‘Maximum’ age must have been hundreds, maybe thousands of years. James, they figured out how to upload themselves onto computers!”
“And then a few came here,” said James, deep in thought, “to start over. Their – our bodies weren’t made for this planet. They had to become like a native species similar to them – apes – in order to survive.”
“So they evolved backwards!” exclaimed Ashley. “They had to de-evolve before they could evolve again.
“And they wrote in English because…well, I suppose our languages are a memory of their languages. And maybe – maybe, humans never split from chimpanzees. Maybe we were always slightly different. And now that we’ve advanced again, we’ve thrown off Earth’s balance; we simply weren’t designed to be here. Everyone knows humanity is the greatest invasive species. The question is, where did it invade from?”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the calls of the birds coming from the trees.
“So this is like our second chance, isn’t it?” James commented.
Ashley absentmindedly fingered an old wrapper someone had left beside the pit. Somewhere in the distance, faint beeping and the hum of an engine announced the presence of a bulldozer at the forest’s edge.
“Yeah,” she said. “We’re kind of blowing it, aren’t we?