Big Tom

Thomas “Big Tom” Wilson pulled strips of meat out of the smoker. The hard needles the trees dropped from time to time made an excellent smoke source, somewhat like applewood. The meat came from the small creatures he caught in traps around his garden.

He turned off the smoker’s burner coil and doused the still-smoldering needles in the tray above the coil. Satisfied that he wouldn’t waste any smoke fuel, he carried the strips of meat into the cabin he called home…or rather the emergency shelter he called a cabin he called home.

After a day spent smoking meat, the smoke smell had seeped into his clothes, his skin, his long hair, and his beard. He checked the shelter’s water level. It would do him for the moment, but he’d need to collect more water in the next couple days.

He stood in front of the mirror and cut his beard short with the one knife he had. He had tried to shave with the knife once…that was one time too many. Judging his beard to be somewhat even, he stripped and stepped into the tiny shower. A quick rinse, a thorough scrub, and another quick rinse and he was done.

Dressed in his second set of clothes, he put the smoky set in the decon/sanitizer. It was a quick way to clean them without using water. If there were spills, mud, blood, the yellow goo from the plants he called “snot-vines,” he’d wash that out with water first…usually…sometimes. The once white clothes were a dingy grey with a collection of stains of varying natural and unnatural colors.

He set up the camera facing the kitchenette and turned it on. “Hey, fans! Welcome back to Big Tom’s Cabin. Big Tom here on day 797. Today I’ll be making a bean soup with the snot-vine beans from my garden and the smoked meat of the snot-vine creepers.

“If you don’t like the common names I’ve given them, you’re free to call them anything you like. I’m still working on the phylogenetic tree of this planet, so giving anything a scientific name now is premature. They creep around the snot-vines with their soft-boned, thin-furred bodies and nip off the buds that will turn into the bean pods so…snot-vine creepers.

“Anyway, here’s the meat I smoked today, which will add that smoky flavor to the broth. Remember, stock is made from simmering bones in water, broth is made from simmering meat and/or vegetables in water.

“Because the critters’ soft bones turn to powder when trying to roast them and turn to gelatin when cooked in water, I’ll stick to making a broth. The broth will use the smoked meat and these flowers that taste like onion.”

After talking through the recipe and preparation techniques which were of no use outside the planet where Big Tom found himself, he set the pot to simmer and sat in front of the camera.

“While that’s cooking, it’s time for another Big Tom story, I guess. ’Course I think I ran out of stories to tell…except maybe to explain how I ended up here in the first place. I don’t mean the lander crash, or dragging the shelter to the nearest flat ground, or any of that.

“Someone out there somewhere is probably wondering why I would volunteer to survey a planet so far away that it was a one-way mission.

“From Earth’s point of view, it took me ninety-six years to get here. From my point of view, it took seven. This message won’t reach Earth for another seventy-four years. How long after that the colonists would’ve come, I don’t know. This planet is damn near perfect for it, except for one thing.”

Big Tom heaved a deep sigh. “I’ve always been the DIY type and lived off the grid more than on it after getting my doctorate. Whenever there was a study that needed a biologist in a remote jungle, mountain, or desert, I volunteered.

“When the Eden Project said they needed a biologist, you can bet the first name on the list was Big Tom. I didn’t think I’d have a chance, though. You know how many astrobiology doctorates were handed out while I was focused on microbiology? Too many.”

Big Tom laughed. “Yeah. Imagine my surprise when I was the only biologist that signed up. I’m out here doing the first cataloguing of alien biology, and it’s awesome! I mean it.

“I’ve found things that could be classified as Eukarya: plants, animals, and fungus. There are single-cell and single-cell colony species that could be classified as Bacteria or Archaea. I’ll have to add a new one, though.”

He moved a small clay pot in front of the camera, with what looked like tendrils of glass. As he placed a hand near one side or the other, the tendrils swayed and bent toward the hand.

“These little guys convert heat to energy. They use that energy to build these long-chain silicates they use as cell walls for their specialized cells with organelles and no nucleus. They pull silicates from the dirt, leaving behind a carbon-rich soil, while pulling carbon from the air. Various fungus and bacteria rely on these guys to take hold before they can invade and make the soil fit for plants. Whatever we thought about the limitations of RNA stability versus DNA can be put to rest. These guys, unlike all the other life on this planet, don’t have DNA, they use RNA. They replicate by fragmentation, the root system breaking apart when disturbed.”

He pushed the pot back out of frame. “So far, every sample of this type of life is a variation on these heat-converter glass grasses, of which I have identified sixteen species so far. Oddly, every organelle contains a copy of the RNA.”

Big Tom stretched and groaned. “I have a lifetime of work to do here, and a lifetime to do it. I’m healthy, I’m happy, and I couldn’t have asked for a better life. That’s right, fans. I am the happiest person in the world…or out of the world, I guess.”

The timer dinged and Big Tom rose to take the beans off the heat. “I’m going to let these cool down before I dig in, but I will have a little taste. It smells like heaven.”

He dipped a spoon of the broth out and blew on it to cool it before tasting it. “Oh my god…this is the best batch yet. The onion flowers made all the difference.”

“My life would be perfect, except for one thing.” He moved to the camera and picked it up. He carried the camera outside, past the garden, to the well-worn footpath that led to the crashed lander.

He pointed the camera at the path. Along the edges of the path were freshly picked flowers of the type he had used in the soup. Following the flowers, the camera focused on a snot-vine creeper, tied in a plant-based rope. Beyond that lay a basket filled with snot-vine beans.

He zoomed the camera in to a footprint. It was small, and similar to an opossum’s rear footprint with five well-defined toes and an opposable thumb. “These guys do this every twenty-four days. Considering they have six digits on their hands?…paws?…whatever, it kind of makes sense.

“That’s right. It’s now been long enough since the first, encrypted message to control that if they haven’t made it public, I will. There is sapient life here. Our little crash-landing got their attention, and now there are two factions in this area. One leaves these gifts every twenty-four days. I only see them briefly, though. He zoomed the camera to a small quadruped that reared up on its hind legs and spread its fingers. There were symmetrical designs on its face and body in the bright yellow of the snot-vines.

“That’s one of the little guys there.” He waved and called out. “I’m not a god, you know. You could just come say hi.”

The creature disappeared into the brush without a sound. “I think they’ve taken to worshipping me or something. They started doing this every twenty-four days since I buried Karina, the geologist. That was on day 509. The other group—ouch!”

He turned the camera in a circle as small figures rose in the tall grass on the other side of the path and flung rocks at him with slings. “Knock it off!” Big Tom took a deep breath and let out a loud roar that sent the creatures running.

“These little shits take every opportunity to throw rocks at me. They know it doesn’t do anything except piss me off, but they keep it up.

“You may be wondering how I know it’s two different groups. I’m not an anthropologist, or whatever the equivalent would be, but I’ve seen enough.

“The first group decorates the trail and the graves of Karina and Hassan. They bury their dead there, too, and leave grave goods with them.

“The other group throws their dead into a cave a little further on after stripping them of any tools or weapons.

“Both groups live in shelters built from grass and have equivalent technology. The only social difference I see are burial rites and personal decoration.

“Both groups are tribal in nature and seem to be led by the strongest. Of course, the strongest of them can, at most, give me a little boo-boo. The rock-throwing group seems to be doing it to show off their bravery or something.”

He walked to the lander, showing the graves of his two former crewmates. Their helmets sat atop their graves, and fresh flowers and beans had been sprinkled around them. He rotated the camera to show the small mounds of the creatures’ graves, marked with round stones, about the size of their head, similarly adorned.

“I fear that I’ve inadvertently introduced religion to the little guys. At first, I was worried that the aggressive group would just wipe them out, but they’ve never come to blows. In fact, I’ve seen members of one group move to the other with no friction whatsoever.”

Big Tom sat against the side of the lander and pointed the camera at himself. “So, you’re thinking that the one thing I don’t like is being alone, with Hassan dying in the crash and Karina dying almost a year ago. That’s sad, but not it.

“You might think that if I could hear their speech, I might be able to communicate with the little guys…let them know I’m not a god or a devil or whatever. Unfortunately, their speech is all in the ultrasonic range. I’m not even sure whether they can hear me, or just feel the vibrations of my voice. That’s still not it, though.

“It’s not even that they figured out pottery by watching me. They can be incredibly sneaky. I realized they’d copied what they saw me doing when I saw more of the clay dug out by the river, and a new fire pit there with a few broken shards.

“One of them made a little lop-sided pot and painted designs on it with the goo from the snot-vines and left it just outside the garden. By the way, they’d already figured out gardening by themselves, both groups. I copied their design.”

He brought the camera closer, so his face filled the frame. “No, the one thing that gets on my last nerve is what will happen in the future.

“Long after I’m gone, the lander and the cabin will still be around. They aren’t going to deteriorate much in the next thirty or forty-thousand years. That will be enough that someday, they’ll be watching their tiny little TVs…and some nut with wild fur will be going on about how ‘Ancient Aliens’ were responsible for every great thing they ever achieved, and I’m the asshole that gave that fire fuel.”

He laughed and moved the camera back before doing a slow pan of the graveyard once more, before turning it back toward himself and the lander. “Well, that’s enough of that for now. Those beans are cool enough to eat, so I’m off to do that. Thanks for watching. Big Tom signing off for the day.”