A Memory of Fading Red
An excerpt from the memoirs of ■■■■■, head of the hydroponics department
It has been a long time since I last visited Despina, but I still remember it like yesterday.
Back then, I was a poor student from a migrating space fleet. Like many others, I focused my study on botany, as botanists are always in demand in the fleet, and unlike engineers, you’re much less likely to be exposed to deadly radiation. Of course, it also means it’s a pretty competitive subject, and all of the easier research subjects had already been taken by others when I have to make my choice.
The fleet was visiting Despina at the time, so I decided to make its native plants the subject of my research. While I made that choice pretty much on the fly, before the fleet departed into interstellar space again, in hindsight it is a pretty decent subject. As Despina is tidally-locked to its volatile host star, its plants have to adapt to the permanent daylight and the occasion ecosystem-wrecking solar flares to survive and thrive. Some species of plants supposedly can even stay dormant for centuries before growing again. Needless to say, something like that would be very valuable for the fleet should the agricultural ships be decimated.
I was granted permission to leave the fleet and live on the planet until my study had completed, although they did not give me a lot of money, as I was expected to work and sustain myself just like everyone else. The traders did give me contact for someone who would take care of me until I got myself set up, though. As such, I was basically dropped in the spaceport like a meaty cargo, with only the contact and a translation device. That thing was awful.
My first host was someone named Ptalki. He was a pelim, the native "human" of the planet. From what I heard, they were once a human subspecies from a faraway planet, modified and sent to colonize the solar system they now call home. Picture a suntanned teenage boy, give him hairless dog legs, rodent ears and tail, and freckles. Now give him a cheeky grin. That’s Ptalki. At least on the outside. They tick differently on the inside.
The translation device I had could not pick up intricacies of… any language, really, so he came off as pretty blunt, but Despina cultures tend to be like that. He was definitely carefree and playful, and it took some time for me to get used to him being nosy and touchy. I don’t remember his job at the time, but he was also the coordinator of the local neighborhood watch. Neighborhood watches are basically everywhere on Despina, for reasons that’ll be obvious soon. Whatever his job was, it definitely gave him a lot of free time, as he was also my guide whenever I had to go to the nearby tundra for field studies.
We have had a lot of good memories together during my stay on Despina, but the most memorable one actually didn’t have much to do with plants… well, mostly. I’ll explain.
I remember when I woke up that shift to the reddish glare of the sun leaking through the shutters. Its light stung pretty bad. I don’t know if it was just because I was not used to living under a perpetual overcast twilight at the time, or it was a sign of things to come. Anyway, I was behind my schedule, so I quickly washed myself and had my meal with Ptalki. It was some grilled meat on a skewer he bought home after work. It was pretty gamey but I already got used to it. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.
I still remember the moment when it began. I was packing my backpack for my field studies to a nearby hill slope where ironwood grew. No, they’re a specific kind of trees endemic to Despina… but before I could finish packing, though, I heard that sound. It was loud, it was ear-piercing, and it lasted like forever. It was the first time I heard that, but it was meant to evoke some primal instinct common to all humans, or all humanoids in this case, I suppose, because Ptalki practically leaped out from his seat the moment it hit the apartment. Every blare’s spaced out by a voice too. It goes like… “eltas, elnei, elsei” and so on. Yeah, it worked pretty well even though I didn’t speak their language at the time. It’s almost like a time bomb you see in action flicks.
He did not have time to wait for my translation device. He just pushed my half-done backpack to me, before dragging my hand out of the room and down the stairs. It was the first time I saw him in a hurry, his serious face not having a shred of the usual giddy smile. I didn’t know what he was shouting, but I trusted him enough to go along. Then again, he was surprisingly strong even though I was more than a head taller than him, so he probably could push me by force anyway.
We rushed to the basement of the apartment, where the girl living downstairs was locking the gate. They exchanged some words in a hurry before we all went down the basement. Apparently everyone in our apartment was already there when we arrived, and Ptalki quickly counted all the heads before shutting the bulkhead. At least, I think he did, since the basement was pretty dark, so I couldn’t see a thing and only hear him counting. About time his voice and the alert stopped, I heard some loud clanking noises echoing through the vents. It’s pretty similar to the ones we heard when they reboot the air supply system back on the ships.
They can see people in the dark pretty well, but I guess Ptalki finally remembered they had a foreigner in the mix, so he turned on a flashlight for me. That was the first time I was in the basement, so I was pretty surprised to see rows of shelves with all kinds of stuff inside. It’s like a storage room with doors to several smaller side rooms. Canned foods, bottled drinks, medicine, weapons, clothes, and so on. There was also a wired telephone mounted on the wall since Ptalki’s other hand was holding the… handset? I think that’s how it’s called. He was talking to someone on the other end of the line – probably the head coordinator of the block.
It took a short while for the worst of the solar flare to die down, like a minute or two. They were checking each other’s condition when the voice in the alarm announced something. He the got to work and started giving orders. Some took care of the old and the young, some goes through the tunnel to the nearby metro station… yeah, that place was pretty fancy. Sucks if the escalator broke though. Later in my stay I would use the tunnels to avoid traffic. People don’t really mind that as long we kept them unclogged. The one from our apartment led to the main concourse, and every time I stepped into the light I could see the statue of an angel spreading her arms to the people coming through the main escalator. I think it’s supposed to be soothing, but maybe I never “get it”.
Where was I? Oh right, Ptalki didn’t let the fact that I was new there to get in the way of his orders. He and I were to go to the surface to inspect the surroundings. He led me to one of the side rooms where they had large locked, each with one of those silvery firefighter suits hanging inside. Well, all except one, as mine was still inside the package. It was the largest one and also the only one without a tail sleeve. The inside still smelled like old carpet though. With some help from him, I managed to put it on even though I’d never seen one until then. He then handed me a tiny revolver. “Just in case” he said. That peashooter was quiet, but it couldn’t even punch through these suits – he told me so later. I guess he didn’t want me to accidentally put a hole in him. Meanwhile he brought a shotgun that’s a bit oversized for him. I still think he’s compensating for something.
Anyway, we suited up and went up the stairs. It was hard to open the bulkhead with those thick gloves, and the inside got hot pretty fast. We checked every room in the apartment and found nothing unusual. I took a detour to my room when we were there. I was hurried along so I didn’t close the shutter, and I lost a few plant samples facing the sun. I also didn’t put my camera in my backpack so it’s dead too.
When I left my room I saw him carrying a shiny frying pan and several eggs with his tail. It soon made sense when he told me he wanted to show me something on the rooftop. I assumed it was part of the inspection route anyway since it was a good vantage point so I went along. We scaled the stairs to the top of the apartment and opened the door. We were in the shadow of the staircase – they all face away from the sun – so we didn’t get the blinding sunlight right in our eyes. Instead, I witnessed something otherworldly.
The sky was dosed a brilliant scarlet, with not a single cloud in sight. “Heaven burns red” as the natives call it. Cadences of lush green stretched across the sky as far as eyes can see, fading into pink and purple near the night side horizon. Beneath the strange sky, crimson specks danced in the air, ascending in the blazing air as the prairie around the city burned. I read about local plants using wildfire to propagate in the books, but it paled in comparison to experiencing it first-hand.
By the time I looked at Ptalki again, the familiar smug grin had returned to his face once again. He told me I can take off the helmet if I wanted, saying that the air wasn’t too hot for a smaller flare like this. He wasn’t wrong, but I still felt like I stuck my head in the oven when I did that. The air was hot and dry, but with an aroma that’s hard to describe. It smelled slightly charred with a touch of metal, but it was pleasant in its own way – as long as you don’t inhale any of the burning motes.
He took off his helmet too, and we took a seat near the edge to enjoy the moment. He laid down the frying pan on the sunbaked floor and cracked the eggs on the pan. It didn’t take long for us to enjoy some sunny-side up eggs. He did that mostly to impress clueless tourists like me, but they were pretty delicious, with a unique smoky taste I rarely taste elsewhere.
The air was still too hot for us to stay there for long, so we returned to the basement once we finished the eggs. It took another half-shift – an hour or two for us – for us to return to the surface for good. The wildfires were a problem but not for long, since we then got an entire local day-year of cold wave from the night side. I couldn’t even see the other end of the main street when the ice fog hit. Needless to say, my schedule was wrecked, but it’s just part of life. The rations could be better, but it was nice staying at home with Ptalki until the roads cleared. I also learned that pelims have lower body temperature than us.
As I said, their host star is pretty volatile, so I soon got used to hiding from solar flares. My study eventually brought me away from him and into the jungle, and I had survived worse flares since then. Still, my first time is still the most memorable, and it’s something I’ve grown to cherish even to this day, long after I’ve returned to the fleet.