James Gardner: Ascending

That happens more often than you might expect.

My Resting Place After I Died

When I woke after my eighty-story plunge, I felt most horrible indeed. Many things inside me hurt worse than they had ever hurt before… which is not saying much, because this was the first time I had been seriously injured, but pain is more dreadful when one is unaccustomed to physical suffering. If I took a deep breath, sharp aches erupted all across my ribs, as if a dozen axes were chopping at me. And behold, I did have an ax pressed against my flesh: a beautiful silver one I have always carried as both weapon and woodcutting tool. However, the ax was not attacking me in any way; it simply lay on my chest, as if someone had put it there after I fell.

To be honest, I was glad to have the ax with me — it provided a sense of protection. For a brief moment, I tried to cuddle the blade more snugly to me as if it were a pet or a toy… but the pain of moving my arms made my vision blur with tears. Every muscle felt bruised to a pulp; I wondered what bruised glass looked like, but knew if I lifted my head to see, the agony would be more than I could bear.

Therefore, I just lay where I was. It happened to be a hot pleasant place to lie, with an abundance of soothing light. I am such a one as absorbs many wavelengths outside the visible spectrum. Radio waves, X-rays, and gamma particles are like vitamins to me, while infrared and ultraviolet are basic food groups. (I also eat real food, as produced by the synthesizing machines found in every community of my world. But when I am not having Adventures, I can survive quite well on nothing hot sunshine, provided I get a little rain as well.)

Where I was lying, I felt a light spray of water from time to time. I opened my mouth and let the drops trickle down my throat. The water tasted slightly of minerals that were probably good for me.

The light and water and minerals indicated I was in a Home for Ancestors. There are many such Homes on my planet Melaquin, though I did not know this before I became a world traveler. These Homes are designed to contain persons with Tired Brains: persons who have lost interest in life and simply want to lie someplace warm. To keep them happy, every town has skyscraping towers where Ancestors can lie all day, getting plenty of light and squirts of enriched water. It is a boring way to spend the time, and I had promised myself I would never get so sad and lonely that I surrendered to languishing numbness… but when one is damaged from falling a long way, it is not so very cowardly to rest for a while in the bright quiet.

So that is what I did.

Clear-Cutting

Now and then, I told myself, "Oar, you must arise, you must find something to do." But there was nothing to do. The Home took care of my physical needs, and beyond that, I could think of no goals I wished to accomplish.

There was a time when my world was full of great people doing great deeds. We had a Thriving Culture, creating lovely music and art and literature — the teaching machines in my home village had taught me all about the splendid achievements of our past. I would gladly recite some of our excellent poetry for you, but it does not translate so very well into Earthling languages and anyway, I confess there are gaps in my grasp of human vocabulary: I have worked hard to memorize your best words, but I cannot be bothered to learn the second-rate ones (which is to say, the ones with no counterparts in my native tongue).

Besides, I have no real ambition to be a poet… or an artist or even musician. In my whole life, I have only embraced one useful occupation — using my ax to cut down trees, I did this because a human Explorer told me that deforestation was how cultured persons tended their planets: clearing land in preparation for constructing farms and roads and cities. I did not know how to construct things, but I was excellent at chopping down timber; so that is what I did.

It turns out I destroyed so much woodland, the results were noticeable from space… which became a source of much pride — once an Explorer informed me of my achievement.

That Explorer had been an opaque human named Festina Ramos. When I first met Festina, she was lost and frantic, marooned on my planet with no means of escape. I therefore embarked on my first great Adventure: to return Festina to her own people. I did not quite know how that Adventure had turned out, since I suffered my terrible fall before Festina went home; but my friend was not here now, so I assumed we had triumphed in all particulars. Through selfless heroism, I had helped Festina leave Melaquin… and I could congratulate myself on a Glowing Success.

But as I lay inside the Tower of Ancestors, drowsily reflecting on My Life So Far, I felt no thrill of achievement. Festina was gone, as if she had never been here at all — what did I have to show for my time with her? I had chopped down vast stands of trees, but to what end? No farms or roads would ever be built on the cleared land, for my people were almost extinct. To be sure, millions were still alive all around the globe; but they did nothing except breathe and soak up light. They had no goals or purpose… and what purpose could I find alone in a world of the dead?

Of course, there was always the chance a new group of Explorers would visit my planet. Earthling Explorers tended to be repugnantly opaque, not to mention uncouth and slow to understand the simplest things, but at least they could supply me with acclamatory feedback: "Oar, you cut down trees more prettily than anyone else in the universe!" (Except they would put this sentiment in their own words to achieve the effect of sincerity.) Then I would once more feel joy in changing the face of my planet, and would know that my life had Direction.

All I required was someone to assure me I was not wasting my existence on meaningless busy work.

I waited for someone like that to come along. And eventually, he did.

Being Roused By A Small Orange Alien

One day, I awoke to find an alien creature shouting into my face. "Are you Oar?" it yelled in the language of Explorers. "Come on, baby, wake up. Tell me if you’re Oar."

"I am not a baby," I answered. "I am forty-five years old."

"If you’re Oar, you’re older than that. You should be forty-nine by now. Are you Oar?"

"Who wants to know?"

The creature leaning over me was neither glass nor human. However, it was approximately human-shaped, with two arms, two legs, and a head. The head did not have normal ears; instead, there were two bulgy balls on top of the skull, like puffy mushrooms growing from the scalp. For clothes, the alien wore a white short-sleeved shirt, gray short-legged pants, and tan sandals, all of them stained with spills of unknown origin. The creature’s scaly flesh was not transparent like mine, nor anywhere on the pink-to-brown-to-black spectrum of Earthlings. Instead, the skin was a shade of orange that grew darker as I watched: from tangerine to pumpkin to an extremely burnt ocher.

This struck me as thoroughly foolish — an alien who can change color should endeavor to become clear and beautiful, not more opaque and unattractive. But the universe is full of beings with Different Views Of

Life. Often these views are stupid and wrong, but a wise-minded one (such as I) always practices tolerance in the company of irrational persons.

Conversing With A Little Man Whose Sole Amusing Quality Is That He Is Colored Orange

"The name’s Uclodda Unorr," said the darkening orange creature, "but everybody calls me Uclod. As in, ‘Get off my foot, Uclod!’ "

The alien grinned as if it had just told a joke. I decided this creature must be male; only a man could believe I might be charmed by such a feeble witticism. I also concluded he must be a young man — perhaps in his early twenties. An older person would not gaze at me quite so eagerly hoping for approval.