They Told Me Earth Was Ready
We developed the perfect formula. It worked on Titan, hidden from prying eyes beneath the layers of ice. It excelled on old Mars, before they evacuated to New Mars. On New Mars, it made the planet even more spectacular. With our help, Andromeda’s Five Prime Planetary Cooperative achieved levels of success beyond a Milky Way dweller’s imagination.
They told me earth was ready — that it had reached that delicate pinnacle between ancient wisdom and collective modern knowledge. The point at which we know a global civilization is poised to receive our magic and make the most of it. The most valuable lesson I’ve learned within my seven months here is — if any creature is capable of exposing and exploiting the weaknesses in a system, or of failing where all others have succeeded, the earthbound human can.
Salem | Implementation Report: Earth Year 2021
With long, clawed fingers planted deep in the island’s loose soil, Salem began her first spell the way she always did — deep inhale of the local air, focus on the network of the planet’s root systems, and send out her first instructions: Multiply in bounty and size; accelerate, replicate, repeat. The magic coursed through her and she sent it out in surges — her blood carrying it forth into the ground. Then she glanced to the side at a nearby pineapple, her lips pulling upward as the spiny fruit expanded to double, then triple its original size. The plant beneath it grew thicker, its long, pointy leaves lengthening. Green pigment intensified as it drew more energy from the sun and strength from the water table, then processed them with greater efficiency. Roots passed the message through the earth to surrounding roots, which spread it to the coral and seaweed on the ocean floor, shared it with the towering trees, and whispered it on into the large garden which grew nearby.
Releasing her long-held breath, Salem withdrew her fingers, shook off the sandy earth, and made her way to the garden. The small island’s inhabitants still slept, leaving her to bask in the gentle night stirs of nature, savoring the solitude.
A greenish-yellow gourd lay glistening in the early morning dew, its fruit several times the size it had been minutes before. She slid a long, clawed finger into its stem with tender care and it drank from her in deep draws. When she withdrew at last, the fruit had grown to ten times its new size, and with a smile she closed all five of her eyes, stroking its rind. Shimmers rose and surrounded the gourd, still attached to its mother. Its bottom end opened to her as a lover to her lips. She moved through the sticky insides until she reached the warm center and bade the end close behind her. Then, reclined against a giant membrane, she allowed her spent body the rest it craved.
Tucked into the gourd’s embrace, Salem returned to consciousness to the dull crashes of surf on the shore and faint wisps of conversation drifting in through the gourd’s tough shell. She pierced a tiny hole to the outside with her longest claw and sent a flood of energy through the air, delighting in its crackle as it met the sound waves the garden workers made. They rippled back to her in words she understood.
“…news says it came from here, from us,” said a melodious voice that tremored with excitement.
“No way,” a deeper voice said, punctuated by pants from exertion as they plunged a hoe into the earth.
“See for yourself.” Rustles of cloth preceded a soft tap on a hard surface.
“Leading horticulturists and biologists are confounded by this global phenomenon, but Dr. Chaufi of the American Horticulture Organization believes she has discovered its source. With a team of experts, she is currently on a ship headed to the remote island of Cairtpan to conduct experiments that she hopes will shed light on this incredible mystery. Tune in at 11 for an exclusive phone interview with Dr. Chaufi.”
“Told ya,” the higher voice said, fading along with their footsteps. “Bet they’ll stay at my place. Best do a bit of upkeep. Oh, and butcher that old hen that’s been terrorizing the others…”
Salem blinked, then drew a taste of the gourd from its innards. Closing her eyes, she sent a probe through her being, gauging potency. She had not yet returned to full strength — the people had interrupted her traditional rest time between spells. She considered the implications of the news and then relaxed back into her rest with a sigh. Twenty-four assignments within the last century without a major incident. Her eyes closed again, and she slept.
Fresh and covered in sticky seeds, Salem emerged from the gourd and sealed the end, then the disguising spell around it. Inky blackness, broken only by faint dapples of moonlight, surrounded her. She sighed and melted into it as an old friend’s embrace, and danced to the rocky shore.
At a low point, her clawed toes found the warm waves. They greeted her with eager laps, and she offered them more. She fed a message to one drop, and then another, until all the drops passed the information to their friends and it spread through the great blue at hyper speed. Her middle eye closed, and with it she saw the exodus of all the ocean’s waste — trash, plastics, oils, even fresh shipwrecks — onto land. She felt the ocean tell the rivers, who told the streams, who whispered to the water tables, who shouted it to the ponds, and they followed suit. The drops shed their tiny impurities too, anything man had placed in them that didn’t belong, and soon their voices echoed back clearer.
Reveling in their newfound purity, Salem set her leathery feet in the crags and coral, wading into the deep to immerse herself in their gratitude and warmth. The water gave an insistent tug, then another, soaking up her magic as fast as she could spill it to send her message further, faster. Shoving off the growing sensations of loss and emptiness, she sank deeper. Fish snouts nudged her sides while sand tickled her toes.
A horn shattered the night air and her commune with the sea. She waded back to shore, claws finding purchase in the sand and volcanic rock. Hearts hammered a staccato beat. She quickened her steps when the horn sounded again, closer. Only a smidgen of magic lingered in her spent body, but she squeezed it out into a spell. Three eyes disappeared, her claws shortened, her body shrank, and her nakedness hid behind two thin swatches of cloth. She made it to her gourd, then cursed herself for closing it. No magic remained to open it again.
Rest, her body screamed, but she could not obey. Instead she stumbled forward, off-balance on two alien appendages, seeking refuge. In the distance she heard the groan of rope on pulley, the chugs of idling engines, and the scrape of boat against dock. Desperation pressed breath from her cavernous lungs. The local air turned stagnant in her throat. Magic had kept her strong before, but the greedy ocean and earth’s curious inhabitants had taken it all.
Cut open the gourd and hide, her weakness said. It will die, but you will live. She considered this option for a long, motionless moment. Then she tried to recall where to breathe on this planet if her magic failed. She always had ignored that part of Geigol’s assignment briefings. She had never needed them in all her eons — perhaps she had begun aging at last. The ocean beckoned her back and she wondered, Is it there?
“This way, Dr. Chaufi. We’re so honored to have you here,” the melodic voice she’d heard before said.
With seconds to decide, she chose the sea and waded back in with much more difficulty. Her soft human feet bled when the razor edges of rock and coral cut them. Without claws to hold her steady, she wobbled, stumbled, and plopped with a jolt onto her backside. Sweat beaded on her skin as she wished the disguising spell had altered her insides as well.
She sent up a prayer to her home star-the name of which she’d long forgotten-and plunged her face into the gentle waves. The first pull of seawater into her lungs terrified her. The first exhale felt better than mating after a Titan feast. Soon her attention turned from the immediate threats to her survival to the conversation taking place just meters away, and she realized with alarm how noisy she’d been. A quick peek above the waves told her they had not heard her, and she eased down further in the water, gritting her teeth when the coral dug into her back and legs.
“So you honestly expect me to believe that no one here has seen or done anything out of the ordinary,” said a new voice. “When all of my instruments tell me this is the precise point of origin for what they’re calling the Instant Global Growth. I would expect someone would want to be recognized for solving world hunger overnight.”
Another voice broke in with, “You realize if we leave here without a solid answer, your little island will turn into a media circus, right? Within a week you’ll have every hippie tree-hugger and cultist you can fit on this island right alongside them, too. Hell, they’ll probably march on in tours. If I were you, I’d tell her what she wants to know.”
The melodic voice grew tight. “I’ve no idea how this happened. It was like this when I got out of bed and came outside to do some morning weeding four days ago. I’ll tell anyone who asks the same.”
Voices unheard by the rest echoed through Salem’s mind. “Remain disguised or hidden at all costs. Keep our people and our purpose secret from the universe,” said her father.
“The survival and ways of our race depend on it,” added her mentor.
Her other father said, “The strong among us will never undo us. The cowards will. Be the strong.”
Salem anchored herself in the seabed and waited for them to leave. Soon the doctor did, muttering about tests, a bath, and a bed. The others marched behind her, all but the owner of the melodious voice. She lingered, stroking the plants in the garden and speaking to the trees. When the last echoing footsteps of the others faded, she approached Salem’s spot in the shallows.
“It must be you,” the woman said. Salem peeked up at her slender form, illuminated by a light stick in her hand. Her bronze face curved up in kind lines; her hand stretched out in Salem’s direction. Salem lifted her head up further but held her place with firm resolve. “No worries, I won’t tell them. They should just be glad you gave us such a gift. But if you want a better spot to spend the night, I have a place.”
She felt the energy from the interpretive spell fading. Soon not a word any of them said would make sense. Anything she said would sound like nonsense in their ears, too.
“I cannot now,” she said, and the woman nodded, the lines over her eyes drawing together. “But show me where it is and I will go there when I am able.”
“See that ridge over there?”
Salem drew up out of the water to get a better look.
“Just beyond is my old house. I put guests up in it now and then. It isn’t locked, so go right in.” The woman’s lips parted, revealing rows of stained teeth behind a pleasant curve.
Salem returned the nod, then sank back into the water, drawing another deep breath as the woman walked away in the direction of the others. She would rather stay here, curled up in the sea’s embrace, until enough of her magic returned to open the gourd. The sun would soon reveal her though, to the doctor and the others. She closed her eyes and felt her skin pull bits of energy from the creatures around her. Her blood soaked them up and carried them to her hearts, where they churned them about and sent them out in a buzzing trickle of magical force. When enough of it coursed through her being to breathe open air again, she rose and dripped a path to the volcanic shore. Over the rise and through bay doors, across wood planks and onto a plush cream rug, she padded on bleeding feet. She caught the edge of the rug, rolled it up into a cocoon, and slept in brief bursts until dawn.
The sun warmed the room with long fingers when Salem rose from the rug and crept to the door. Just outside, a deep voice boomed nonsense. She withdrew and cast a frantic glance around her, then bounded through the house into a tiny, dark room just as footsteps thudded behind her and the nonsense grew louder. Energy crackled out from her being, and the jabber became words.
“See? Whoever it was bled a path all the way from the shore into Betsy’s guest house. Our people wouldn’t do that. Lord help em when she sees what they did to her rug.”
“So where do you think they went from here? You told me you’ve searched the island.”
“Who says they’re gone?” Heavy thuds approached and Salem pressed against the back wall of her hiding place, aching for invisibility. The disguising spell like the one that had concealed the gourd took more magic than she’d regained. Light flooded the room across the hall, sending traitorous beams around the heavy curtain that hung between herself and the intruders. Each rustle and thud grew hope in Salem’s core. Perhaps they’d give up soon and leave. Then a beefy hand reached into her space and pulled the cloth aside.
“There you are.” The deep voice’s owner lifted the lines above his eyes into fuzzy arches. His thin upper lip lifted to expose crooked, yellow teeth with black gaps between them. Thick brown hair covered his hand, which shot out and gripped her arm. “How’d you get here, lady? No one just comes here. Who are you, and what’d ya do to our plants?”
He hefted her to her feet and jerked her from the room into the hall, spinning her to face the group of people who stood in the room where she’d slept. They eyed her with open stares. One of them stepped forward, ran her hand over a shock of short black hair, and narrowed her eyes into thin slits.
“I’m Doctor Chaufi. Who are you?”
“S-salem,” she said.
The woman exchanged a glance with the others. “Like the witch trials town? Interesting.” Her eyes widened and she tilted her head to the side.
“I thought it would be…fitting,” Salem swept her gaze around the room.
“So let me clarify, Salem. Are you claiming responsibility for the two global events that have dramatically altered all of our ecological and hydropological systems in a matter of days?”
Unseen by the humans, Salem’s fifth eye closed. She saw herself tell the ocean’s ejected pollutants, the smog gnawing holes in the ozone, the garbage from landfills, and the toxic runoff from industrial plants, to gather into orbs of waste. Then they compacted until, at minuscule size, she told them to rejoin earth as harmless grains of sand. The edges of the vision caught fire, and in a blinding instant, it vanished.
She saw herself perform the final spell then — the one that always brought her the most joy. The one that would set the inhabitants of the fresh, clean planet on a path to preserving it. She drove it through the heart of their communications networks and whispered it into the wind, which carried it from one molecule to the next until it spread across the earth. It stripped down the invisible barriers that made one human believe themselves separate from the others. It shook the humans awake from their egoist reveries. It cleared the understanding of the exploited and shed light on the exploiters. It drove the flawed beings to forgive the imperfections of their fellows. This vision, too, ignited, burned, and disappeared.
Salem opened her fifth eye and shook the man’s hand from her arm. Scarlet crept over his ruddy skin and he reached to take it back. She scooted away. “You should let me leave,” she warned, taking a step toward the front door.
“Look here, lady,” he said. “No one messes around on our island without our permission. I’m the mayor, and I say you’ll tell this doctor what you’ve done and how you did it. Then you’re coming with me to tell our townsfolk the same.”
Sparks shot from her fingers and her claws lengthened. Another spark flew from her face and her three other eyes popped back into view. The man’s lips parted; his hand dropped to his side. The doctor stumbled backward with bulging eyes. More sparks erupted from all over Salem’s body and her skin hardened again into its usual leathery grey. Two legs divided into four; Five short toes stretched into six clawed digits on each foot. The cloth swatches disappeared, revealing her full figure. She rose a meter higher and their necks craned to keep her face in sight.
A hollow disk opened at the top of her spine. A small, black beacon shot out, through the roof and the clouds. With a stab of her narrowest claw Salem pierced a capsule in her right nostril. Reserved for the most dire situations, she’d never had to use one before. The cold energy spilled down her throat and flooded her veins, then exploded outward in a spell sent across a host of atoms, each replicating and passing it along.
Her transport appeared just as the first body fell. Through the hatch she watched a spirit rise, hover, and seek a new shell. She sent a final message as her ship vanished. “Choose better this time.”
