Chapter 1: A New World

Fanar Monier pulled himself out from under a rover where he had just replaced an ultra capacitor bank. He examined the removed item as he stood next to the vehicle. The case had a long tear in the metal where a rock had torn through, while being driven over rough terrain. The short caused by the damage sent an electrical surge through the rover’s electronics. Thankfully, the only casualty was an uplink that had been charging.
“I wish they would be more careful,” Fanar said to himself.
He never expected to be the principle technician after coming to Niton; yet here he was, nearly eighteen years old and the one handling most of the technical issues in the colony. Being stranded on a planet, away from Earth, was different than he expected. Even his father, a man who used to accuse him of merely tinkering, now looked to him for help.
Fanar looked around the spacious bay of the maintenance building for some insight on how he might fix the module. With the colony’s recent isolation from Earth, the task would be difficult. He grabbed the burned-out uplink off the seat of the rover and placed it, along with the damaged capacitor module, onto a shelf.
“Fanar.”
He turned and immediately recognized Kelly Spies, the college intern. Her red hair and freckled, pale, skin made her stand out. She was the only one on the planet with natural red hair. In her gloved hands, she carried a thick-trunked bush.
Fanar thrust his hands into his pant pockets. Feeling self-conscious about that, he pulled them out again. Trying to sound casual, Fanar said, “Hi, Kelly. What’s that?”
“This?” She placed it on the floor. The top came to her waist. “I’m not sure. That’s what I want to find out. You can imagine my surprise when it got dropped off at our lab. We deal with insects, not plants, but then it was pointed out to me that this is not a plant. See?”
Kelly bent over the specimen and slid her thumbs up on two areas of the trunk. Orange orbs, about a centimeter in diameter, became visible. “Eyes. Or something close to it. And look at this. She shifted the stiff, branch-like, limbs on the lower portion of the trunk to the side and pointed. “An orifice. It’s the only one I found, so it can’t be a mouth. At least I don’t think it is.”
Fanar stared at the creature. What appeared to be a woody bush was clearly not made of wood. He and his friends had traveled a significant distance outside of Landing the past couple of months, but he never saw anything like it. “Wow. Why bring it here?”
“We believe it’s dead and I don’t have a good place to store it. Mind if I put it into one of the storage rooms until I have time to give it a more thorough exam?”
“I have just the room. It’s next to the cooling condenser so we can make it extra cold.”
Kelly’s green eyes sparkled. “Perfect.”
After Fanar and Kelly stowed the bush-like creature, Fanar watched her walk toward the front door. She smiled at him before leaving. He awkwardly waved and retreated to the large bay at the back of the building. Just then, another rover inched into the bay. The rovers were amphibious vehicles that could comfortably seat six adults and had an attached trailer with its own powered pair of wheels. A few months earlier, the colony brought six rovers to the new planet.
At first Fanar thought the rover had been damaged. The slow entrance brought to mind possible problems with the main battery bank, or maybe the inverter. As he considered other possibilities, Rhona King jumped out of the cabin. She pushed her shoulder-length curly hair away from her light-brown face.
“Fanar! Can you believe it? They let me drive!” At the age of sixteen, Rhona was a bundle of endless energy.
Fanar glimpsed a woman standing outside the bay door and guessed the ‘drive’ was about ten meters and was being carefully watched.
Rhona saw his shifted gaze and sighed. “Okay, it wasn’t very far, but I drove! How many people can say that?”
Fanar couldn’t help but laugh. The rovers had steering wheels, an accommodation made for use on the extraterrestrial planet. On Earth, all vehicles were autonomous. “You did great. Probably even better than Oswin did his first time.” Oswin had been Fanar’s best friend for as long has he could remember.
Rhona’s eyes went wide. “Really? I find that hard to believe. He’s so meticulous.”
“Honest! He got it moving and forgot to stop it. The vehicle had to stop on its own to keep from running into a wall.”
Her eyes gleamed as Fanar told the story.
“Actually, don’t tell him I told you. It would hurt his feelings.”
While Rhona agreed to not embarrass Oswin, the gleam in her eye never left. She took two steps toward the large bay door and turned. “You coming?”
“Where?”
“To see the puppies! Tess is taking them to the clinic and Oswin said he’d meet us there.”
Fanar hesitated.
“C’mon!” Without looking back she strode to the exit.
Puppies. Another item on the list that made life different than he expected. A couple of the colonists had gotten permission to bring their ‘babies’ to Niton. It was quickly discovered the female was pregnant and gave birth soon after arriving on Niton.
Fanar followed Rhona onto the curved road toward the clinic. “Wait up, Rhona. I can’t walk that fast.” He slowed his breathing to ease the pain in his chest. Once inside he stopped. Next to Contessa, Rhona’s older sister, five black and white Cavalier King Charles Spaniels were tumbling over each other. Seeing Rhona and Fanar enter, the puppies bounded toward them.
Rhona picked one up and held it out to Fanar, her face beaming in delight. “Aren’t they the cutest things? Here take it.” Without waiting for an answer, she pushed the puppy into Fanar’s chest and let go.
He barely had a chance to get his hands in place to keep the puppy from dropping to the floor. Holding the puppy away as it squirmed to lick his face, Fanar said to the puppy, “Yes, you’re cute, but you can’t lick my face.” Aloud he asked,“Why’d you bring the puppies here?”
“Susan’s the closest thing we have to a vet,” Contessa replied.
“Where is Susan?” Rhona asked.
“I think she’s at the Oracle, reading up on dog care.”
At the mention of the Oracle, Fanar inwardly groaned. He was supposed to be looking into why the recent log entries were corrupt. He glanced down at the thick bracelet on his wrist. Without the linknet available to connect uplinks to sources of information like they did on Earth, nor the ability to sync log entries with the Oracle, the uplink was practically useless except to tell time and use some built-in apps. Few people wore them while at Landing, yet Fanar devotedly wore his.
The puppy in Fanar’s arms nibbled on his fingers so he put her down. “How old are they?”
Contessa gently turned a puppy away from nibbling her hand as she answered, “They just finished weaning them so about seven weeks?”
“Aren’t you the most adorable thing?” Rhona said through pursed lips at the face of the puppy she held.
Fanar had to admit she was right. As he watched them play, his uplink chirped.
Rhona put the puppy down she carried and rushed over. “I know that sound!”
Fanar stared at his uplink as the connection symbol pulsed on the surface. Rhona pressed against his arm and soon Contessa was watching over his other shoulder. After two seconds of pulsing, the symbol stayed lit.
“Try it! Try it!” Rhona exclaimed as she bounced up and down against Fanar.
His own heart beating quickly, he tapped the uplink and a display appeared across the the back of his hand. He tapped some of the virtual buttons and was able to see thumbnails of the first images recorded of Niton. He selected one and it expanded over his hand to the size of a couple decimeters across to show a large birds-eye view of Landing, the name used by the colonists for the town where they resided.
“Try one of my log entries, Fanar,” Contessa said.
He hesitated. While the log entries were meant to be read by historians and others studying the colonists’ journey, it still felt like a personal invasion. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Pull one of them up.”
He dismissed the image and tapped about until he found her log entries. “You attached images to your entries?”
“Of course,” she said smugly.
He adjusted the display for all to see:
Log entry for Contessa. I think I’m getting used to the longer days. We’ll have a couple days of darkness while we’re awake. When we wake up the next day, it will be bright out and the natural day will be half over. Then we can enjoy about two days of time where daylight almost matches our wakefulness. After that, we go to sleep while it’s still light out before the cycle starts again.
A few days ago, Oswin and Fanar invited Rhona and me to go exploring. We’re going tomorrow when our day coincides with the natural daylight. Rhona’s very excited and willing to give Fanar a second chance. Personally, I forgave him long ago. Rhona seems to think she’s going to discover everything about the new planet herself. I’m curious but not sure if I should leave Mama. She needs me. (System mark: Day 23)
Attached to the log entry were images of the King’s house on Niton taken across several consecutive days at the same time. Each had a varying degree of light or dark sky coinciding with the natural daylight hours of the planet.
“No wonder you’re such a good teacher, Tess,” Rhona said. “Wish I thought of that.”
“Wait. How do we have a linknet connection?” Contessa asked.
“The Oracle has a small base unit that covers Landing. Whatever was suppressing the radio waves used for the linknet must have gone away,” Fanar said with a big grin on his face. “There are link towers in the large bay of the maintenance building, though I never understood why we bothered to bring them.” His eyes brightened as he continued, “We can set these up and have a proper linknet for Landing and the surrounding area!”
“Does this mean our log entries will work again?” Rhona asked.
“No. We’ll be able to access existing information, but the Oracle isn’t recording new data. I’m not sure why yet.”
Contessa ran toward the door. “I’m getting my uplink.”
“Oh! Wait for me!” Rhona exclaimed.
“What about the puppies?” Fanar asked. He looked at the group of puppies, wishing he could be someplace else.
“Just watch them. We’ll be right back,” Contessa shouted over her shoulder as she disappeared out the door.
“Just watch them?” Fanar echoed.
He stared at the connection status of his uplink. If he could get the linknet functional, then maybe, just maybe, there would be less hostility toward him from those that blamed him for their isolation from Earth. If I can get the linknet working… I bet Kelly would like that. He didn’t have much time with the puppies because a couple of minutes later the clinic door opened. He expected to see Rhona or Contessa, but instead he saw Susan and Oswin waking with Oswin’s mother, Dr. Candice Carter.
“Oswin. Finally come to take care of —” Fanar stopped.
Oswin’s brows were furled together. He glanced quickly at his mom then back to Fanar. “My mom blacked out.”
“I still think you’re overreacting,” his mom said to him.
“You’ve come this far, Dr. Carter. Let’s run those tests to be sure,” Susan Reid said. A nurse practitioner, Susan was propelled into a position of great demand after the death of the only on-site medical doctor.
“I’m just overly tired. I’ll get some sleep and everything will be fine.”
Oswin stopped as his mother and Susan continued to one of the examining rooms. After the door closed, he told Fanar, “Dad says she doesn’t remember what happened to her. Almost two hours of time, gone.”
“How? What happened?” Fanar asked. He looked at the closed door. After a second he added,“Where’s your dad?”
Oswin rubbed his thumb and first two fingers down the blond whiskers of his goatee, smoothing it into place. A recent nervous habit. “He got pulled away by your dad for something. I came and got Susan.” He stared at the closed door for several seconds before dropping his hand and continuing, “Dad said he found her staring blankly near one of the traps.”
“What was inside the trap?”
“Huh? Oh nothing. Mom said she doesn’t remember anything about it.”
The puppy Fanar was given earlier came and rested next to his feet. The others snuggled together and went to sleep.
“Speaking of sleep, you seemed restless last night,” Oswin said. “You still taking those sleeping pills Dr. Williams gave you?”
Fanar watched the sleeping puppy next to his feet and nodded. “I was having the strangest dream. You remember that tower of blinking lights I told you about?”
“Yeah.”
“In my dream, I’m watching it. I’m glad it’s working again because it wasn’t working before. Then I look around and it’s two of those native Nitonians. The leader and elder. And they’re discussing who may have taken the key crystal and why it was returned.”
“The key crystal?”
Fanar shrugged.