Altair's Adventure

Altair wandered down the brightly lit aisle, sniffing the mingling woodiness, mustiness and oddly vanilla scents wafting from the bookshelves. His long blue arms swinging happily as he meandered along the timeworn remnants of old-style physical forms of fantastical stories and factual information. All his friends, who were few, and everyone he knew never used these primitive physical books at all, some did not even know these relics even existed. Everyone for decades has used their techeloids for reading, entertainment, and communication. Who needed the bulky, heavy mess of physical forms of stories and information when it was easily accessible in data forms gushing across the galaxy into tiny lightweight techeloids? Altair still enjoyed browsing these ancient documents, running smooth slender fingers across the scrawled words of ancient peoples passed, smelling the age and excitement of the bindings of the stories. He found old treasures not yet made available on the techeloids data web, archaic stories and ideas, hopes and dreams of centuries past people. Altar wandered onward, wiping wayward midnight blue feather-like filaments from his face and tucking them back to their proper place behind his ear. He glanced at a shelf packed with books titled “The Moons of Jupiter,” “Pluto’s Ice People,” “Flora and Fauna of Europa,” “Earth: Wasteland or Hidden Life?” Altair laughed loudly. Life on Earth? What mad man wrote that nonsense?

“Shhh! This is a library young man!” a wrinkled octo-lady tottered towards Altair, two writhing tentacles wavering in the air.

“Sorry.” Altair glanced at the lady, his face blushing purple.

“Oh, never you mind, now! Old habit. You are the only one in here anyway; no one visits often anymore. Everyone is too busy with their new-fangled techno-malarkies to bother with books. Peoplings today! No respect for the ways of the old!”

“New-fangled? Ha! Those techeloids have been around for centuries.” Altair smiled.

“So have I! I remember when those confounded gadgets first came out! Madness, I say!” the librarian shook her conical head. “Well, you, little one, you I have seen in here before! Quite often actually. At least some young people still appreciate the finesse of the old ways.”

“I do! This is all so fascinating! All the stories and ideas. And this!” he pointed to the shelf. “Did someone really think there could be life on Earth? That little insignificant moldy rock in the interior of a small, insignificant solar system! My! What strange thoughts people had in those days!”  Altair laughed.

“Oh, I don’t know, little one. Could be true. You yourself called it a ‘moldy rock;’ is not mold a lifeform? Could not mold and other trivial lifeforms survive on Earth?” she waved a magenta tentacle, “Who knows? I once read that someone claimed to view Earth through a Bubble telescope and on different occasions saw something shoot from the Earth to its moon. Now it could be that a gas explosion or natural phenomenon that happened on Earth appeared to be something fired at its moon, or it could be something that a lifeform purposely fired at the moon.” She shrugged.

“Really? That’s fascinating! But why would anyone shoot at their own moon?”

“Well, maybe they were at war with the moon people there for resources, or maybe it was a ship filled with Earth travelers heading to their moon. Or just a gas explosion. Who knows? But I wouldn’t dismiss the idea of life on that little rock so quickly; anything is possible.”

“Wow! I guess you’re right. Do you have that book here? The one about the sightings of the moon shootings? Or any more books about life on Earth?” Altair gleamed.

“Why of course, little one! Let me show you.”

Soon Altair had a towering stack of books on a table in the far corner of the library. “This is amazing! So many ideas from different people on the possibilities of life on Earth. I never even imagined there could be life on that tiny rock. Extraordinary!” Altair opened the first book he had found on the shelf with shimmering green letters on the front, “Earth: Wasteland or Hidden Life?” his eager smile widening. “Guess I better get started, I have much reading to do!”

“Oh yes indeed! So much on an interesting controversial topic! I’m guessing you will be checking those out?”

“Uh, I’m going to try to check them out now, well what I can before the library closes. I’ll read what I can.”

“Oh, little one! I mean are you checking them out of the library! Taking them with you to read at home!”

“Oh, uh, what? I can take the books home?”

“Oh my! Yes, little one! That’s what a library is for, finding books to borrow to bring home and read and return when you are finished. What do they teach these young peoplings today?” The librarian shook her head. “Come to think of it, I have seen you in here, but you never check out any books. Didn’t you know you could do that?”

“No! Of course not or I would have taken many with me! How does this work? Do I just take them or trade something for them?” Altair’s eyes beamed with joy.

“Here, little one.” She slid a techeloid towards him. “Fill out your name and address and I’ll get you your own library card. When you find books that you want to borrow, simply come up here to my desk, show me the books and your card and I will check out the books and you take them home. A due date for the borrowed books with be stamped on this slip. Bring them back by that date and you can check out more books. Simple!”

“Wow! This is incredible! Thank you! I cannot wait to read these!” Altair was practically bouncing with anticipation and exhilaration.

“You’re welcome. Enjoy!”

Altair spent endless hours toiling through book after book. Theories on how life could survive on Earth, how Earth’s climate could potentially support some primitive forms of life, sightings of phenomenon on and around Earth that could point to activities of lifeforms. One bizarre book written by someone claiming to have witnessed various lights twinkling across the planet everyday for years before they all suddenly went out forever. “…the whole planet seemed to glow from millions of pinpoints of light scattered across the land,” the writer said, but before scientists could verify his claims, the lights stopped shinning. The writer theorized a mass dying or horrid disaster put an end to the lifeforms producing those lights. Another book pointed out that Earth contained abundant water that could easily support life and that the land of the planet had small, shrinking splotches of green across it that could possibly be mold growing on the rocky planet or perhaps even more derived forms of vegetation. Altair was enthralled at the possibilities of life on the desolate little planet called Earth.

Ice cold sweetened stellaflos tea splashed out of Altair’s mug and onto his pale blue hand as the ship bounced in the turbulence. He gripped the mug tighter, clinching it in his nervous fist. All those years ago, reading about the possibilities of life on the unexplored planet Earth, and now, here he is about to be apart of the first exploration party of the rocky little planet. Altair spent much of his young life researching all available information and conspiracy theories about Earth and during his university years he campaigned for more research on the insignificant, faraway planet. All his hard work landed him a place on this ship, voyaging to the unknown Earth in search for life. Altair shivered with excitement. Soon I will answer the question, wasteland or hidden life? Soon, we will know the truth. His hand trembled with eagerness, sloshing more tea from the mug.

Altair watched as they descended to land on Earth. The vast blueness of the oceans growing larger and richer blue, jutting rocks forming on the lands. The ship circled the planet, searching for the spot they had planned to land on, the one with the most green coloration left and the most promising for signs of life. Altair held his breathe as the small green patch came into view, focusing on the spot and trying not to pass out. Slowly the ship made its way to the green spot and began to land. The ship jerked and shook as it tore threw the atmosphere of the planet and smoothed out as it eased down toward land. Altair watched as the green formed shapes and soon became leaves jutting from sparse trees. He gasped! Life! The ship came down in a clearing, green tufts of grass pillowing the ship’s landing. “Oxygen level reading: 15.8%. Oxygen masks must be worn while exploring.” The captain called.

Altair stared out the viewing window at the leaves of the few deciduous trees swaying gently in the air, the green gleaming happily at the newcomers. A couple of skimpy-looking conifer trees stood off in the distance, some of their pointed dark green needles fluttering softly to the patchy ground.  Tears welled up in Altair’s purple eyes. Life! Not a great amount of oxygen so probably not an abundance of life. But there is LIFE! There is life on Earth! Altair wept.

After many years of exploration and research, intergalactic scientists found sparse life scattered across the planet Earth, mostly in the forms of shrubbery, some trees, fungi, and a few small invertebrates. They found evidence of life that once existed in abundance, even signs of an intelligent lifeform that had once built massive cities and vast empires across the planet; paved pathways and magnificent buildings, some sort of motorized wheeled vessels used for transportation, and even (to Altair’s excitement) a form of paper bound books filled with scribblings in many foreign tongues. Other fantastic vertebrate lifeforms had once filled the planet. The oceans still contained cephalopods and few fishes and shrimps. But there were vast fossil beds of beautiful extinct corals that used to be teeming with an array of colorful fish and delicate invertebrates. They found massive fossils of a mammal that lived in the oceans that would have weighed approximately 330,00 pounds and reached a length of 30 meters! The planet once was filled with astounding lifeforms in a variety of forms and was now reduced to a few sparse spots of life. Further research by studying air bubbles trapped in amber, and more reliably isotopes in ice core samples found in a tiny, iced area in the far northern reaches of the Earth, showed the atmosphere had changed drastically throughout Earth’s history. The scientists theorized that the lifeforms that had built the cities began to systematically poison the population with carbon dioxide, fueling the poisoning by building specialized factories for producing the deadly (to oxygen breathers) gas. Perhaps they did not know that the deadly gas would spread to the entire planet, maybe they thought they were only poisoning their enemies. Or perhaps they did not even realize they were producing the gas and poisoning themselves. How ever the carbon dioxide was produced, the end result was the desolation of nearly all life on the planet.

Altair wrote numerous books and articles (available, of course, on techeloids and by his own funding and request, in primitive physical form) on his adventures on the planet Earth and about the lifeforms he found there. He organized fund raisers for additional Earth-life research and gave lectures around the galaxy on the discoveries. Altair never forgot the day at the library when he was just a young peopling, laughing at the title “Earth: Wasteland or Hidden Life?” the book that would change his life forever.