Humans are the Best Medicine (Ch. 1)

Well, it's been a long time coming, but I eventually got around to thinking of ways to expand upon one of my more successful short stories that I posted here. I got some ideas, and now I think I'm ready to make it into a full length book. Please let me know what you think of the story as we go along, and I hope that you will all enjoy this remake.

If you want to read five chapters ahead on two different stories that I'm writing, please visit my Patreon. Any support given would be greatly appreciated. Happy reading!

Original concept, warning, some spoilers for future chapters

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From the moment we first discovered space flight humans have looked at the night sky and wondered if there was life out there in the endless black. This idea spread quickly through the minds of people from all walks of life, spawning books, movies and games all featuring the idea of visitors from beyond our little rock. Even now, eyes looked up at the sky in the hopes of catching a glimpse of life in the great beyond. 

It was February twelfth, two-thousand-fifty-nine; the McDonald observatory in Texas was currently hosting a pair of late-night observers who were scanning the local night sky, recording data from the planets and celestial bodies in our solar system. They both enjoyed their work, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t developed their own issues with it during all the time spent staring up into the stars. 

Two astronomers were sitting at their stations, advanced computer systems displaying mathematical and computational information for the viewer regarding the telescope. The soft clatter of keystrokes was one of the only sounds for a moment as work was done, but as a moment of downtime came to pass, they both relaxed and allowed conversation to begin. 

Nathan Bridger was a Caucasian man in his early thirties, thirty-two, to be precise. He had light brown hair, chestnut eyes, and a bit of stubble on his slender face. His physique wasn’t all that impressive, being close to the titular form of a nerd as the man subsisted almost entirely on coffee and various forms of granola bars. He was currently sipping on a cup of the stimulant while making subtle changes to the telescope’s zoom and focus. There were dark circles under his eyes as he stared at the image recorded on the screen in front of him, a heavy sigh escaping as he did so. 

“You know, I’m still waiting to see like a giant eyeball or something against the backdrop of space that will blink at me when I view it.” 

It was his partner’s turn to sigh as she shook her head. “Even in the vastness of space that’s still a pipedream.”  

Maria Flores was a Hispanic American of lighter complexion and slightly younger than her coworker at twenty-eight years old. She had long black hair, dark blue eyes, and an athletic build as she took more care of her body than Nathan did. She was also more skeptical of alien life than he was as well. 

“Honestly, how do you even believe it’s possible to travel the vast distances of space? There would have to be a way to break every rule of physics as we know it.” 

“As we know it,” Nathan emphasized. “Who knows what other civilizations might have discovered that we haven’t yet? Perhaps they have access to materials that just didn’t form in our corner of the universe? We still barely understand what dark matter is, after all.” 

“I still think it’s unlikely.” 

“Party pooper.” 

“Very mature,” she said with a roll of her eyes. 

“Hey, I'm just keeping things fun.” 

“By killing my braincells with your conspiracy theories?” 

“It’s a hypothesis, not a conspiracy! A conspiracy would be saying that there are aliens in Area Fifty-One. What I’m saying is that there is a chance that aliens exist and can travel between stars.” 

“Somehow, you saying that makes me believe it less.” 

“Oh come on, why do you gotta be like that?” 

“Probably because you’re the same guy who tells every new person we meet that you work at McDonalds.” 

“Hey, that’s funny and you can’t deny it,” he said with an authoritative point of his finger. 

“It was funny the first time, not the twentieth time.” 

“You just don’t understand my genius sense of humor.” 

“Riiiiiight. Don’t you have more coffee to drink and space eyeballs to look for?” 

Nathan shook his head as he turned back to his screen, taking another sip of his coffee, but not because she told him to. “How’d I ever get stuck with such a sour puss? What kind of astronomer doesn’t believe in aliens?” 

“One that prefers concrete evidence to be presented before accepting something as true,” she shot back at him from her station. 

Nathan blew a raspberry at her before allowing the conversation to die down a little. Documenting the night sky through a combination of their telescope and the occasional access to space telescopes was an exercise in patience. The large machinery involved in telescopic viewing took time to execute commands, and the conditions in the atmosphere could obscure images as well until they cleared. There were some nights where they couldn’t get a clear image to save their lives, but thankfully the conditions tonight were decent enough to capture above average pictures. 

“How’s Mars looking?” Maria asked from her station. 

“A little red in the face. Someone must have embarrassed him.” The only answer he got to the joke was a sigh which he chuckled to before giving a, slightly, more serious answer. “Still red, still dusty, no new orbiting celestial bodies.” 

“How did you even get this job?” 

“My official report will be more serious, but there’s only so many times you can look at Mars through a telescope before it becomes routine.” 

“I thought you were all about the wonders of the infinite.” 

“Yeah, the infinite, not gravitationally bound. I’ve been seeing these planets since the second grade. There’s not much wonder left in them, especially since I missed my chance to be the first person to set foot on Mars by a decade.” 

“You gonna whine or are you going to work to make something happen? Nobody gets their name in the history books without putting in the effort.” 

“I’m working, I’m working, jeez. You act like I'm not currently directing a billion-dollar telescope with immaculate precision.” His voice took on a haughty and pompous flair at the end. 

“What I see is a man-child playing with something that is not a toy.” 

“Ahh, your words sting me! The betrayal! The pain!” 

“Cut the melodrama already, I hate that genre anyway.” 

“So, you’re all for regular drama? Kind of vanilla in my opinion.” 

“Did I ask your opinion? Just move on to Saturn. We should have a good view of it from our current position.” 

“Yes Ma’am,” he said with an exaggerated salute and spin of his chair. 

Work continued apace as the telescope was directed onto its next target. They waited patiently for the telescope to adjust position, filling out their reports on the nights activities while they did so. Finally, it was in position, and the first images were starting to come through as the computer system did its best to sharpen them up. 

“I will admit that the ring is consistently a lovely sight,” Nathan commented. “Titan’s looking good, so is Dione, very picturesque tonight. Haven’t had any major collisions with any of the moons in quite some time. Everything looks pretty nor-” 

He cut himself off, squinting at the screen. Maria noticed the sudden silence and glanced his way; her brow quirked in confusion as she saw him leaning forward, practically sticking his nose against the computer screen. 

“What are you looking at? Did you find something interesting? Moon collisions?” 

“I... I don’t know.” 

Now her attention was fully focused on her coworker. “That’s oddly vague and devoid of humor for you. How serious is it?” 

“Again, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m looking at here and I need a second pair of eyes before I start considering that I’m going crazy.” 

Maria stood from her seat and made a short journey to his side of the room. She leaned in over his shoulder, and he pointed at a spot on the screen. “There, near the upper atmosphere of the planet.” 

She followed his finger and her eyes widened a little before she became his mimic and got closer to the screen. There was a strange, blurry lump there, and it looked like it had several strands coming off it and reaching down into the cloudy atmosphere of the planet. 

“Do you have any idea what it is? For the life of me I can’t figure it out,” Nathan asked. 

She didn’t know either, but saying that wasn’t helpful, so she just started spit-balling ideas. “Maybe a comet got caught in the gravity of the planet and is being ripped apart?” 

Nathan shook his head. “No, the vapor trails would be much brighter, and this thing isn’t being pulled into the clouds despite being so damn close. Gravity should have yanked it well out of sight by this point.” 

Maria let out a frustrated sigh as she stood up straight again, crossing her arms over her chest. “Well, the damn thing is being obscured by all the dust. Maybe it’s a simple distortion that’s creating an optical illusion?” 

His face scrunched up as he mulled the idea around in his head and still found it to be unlikely. “I don’t know about that. Do we still have permission to use any of the orbiters around the planet? Getting a better picture could help us figure it out.” 

“Good idea. I think we do still have access to the Intrepid orbiter from last month’s observations of the Enceladus geysers. I’ll put in a request to connect us to the orbiter.” 

She moved with a bit of urgency that wasn’t common in her profession, but something in her gut told her that this was important. Practically falling into her seat, she quickly typed up a request for access to the orbiter, labeling it as priority in the hopes of an expedient connection. While the reason was vague, an anomalous object viewed through the telescope; she could hope that requests from other sites were at a minimum. 

The time they spent waiting for a reply to their request was far more painful than any other moment of downtime they had experienced prior to this. There was an almost need that was beginning to form inside them, like a primal part of their mind being tantalized by the mystery of this object. A few minutes later, they received access codes for the orbiter and immediately began to establish the connection. That didn’t end the waiting, though, as Saturn was currently seventy-two light minutes away, so any requests and commands to the orbiter’s telescope would take that long to be fulfilled.  

Nathan anxiously drank more coffee, which probably wasn’t helping him in anyway as he paced the floor. Maria tapped her nails on the desk in various patterns, sometimes songs, sometimes nonsense; anything to pass the time. And pass it did, but slowly, so agonizingly slowly for the pair before the request to move the orbiter telescope reached the target. The two of them eagerly watched through the delayed feed as the return information eventually came back to them. As the first images reached them, both reacted in the same way, with wide eyes and gaping mouths. 

The room became deathly silent as the two of them failed to even breathe. Nathan nervously gulped as he managed to find his voice, as quiet as it was. 

“Maria, you’d tell me if you slipped something trippy in my coffee, right?” 

She didn’t reply with her usual exasperation this time. Instead, her response came out more deadpan as her focus was completely on what she was seeing. “Why are you trying to joke right now?” 

“Stress response,” he said simply. “But seriously, you are seeing the same thing I am right now, yes?” 

“I... I think so, yes. But frankly, I don’t know how to define it.” 

The anomaly in question was beyond anything they had ever seen and defied their understanding of life. A large, chitinous shell covered most of its core body. It looked almost like a rock itself if not for the small spots glowing a pale blue around the underside of its shell. Ten long tentacles sprouted from the front and back, five on each end as the ones in front were extended toward the planet while the ones in back were hanging below its body. The most defining feature, if you could limit it to just one, was the sheer size of the creature. Even from the distance they were viewing at, it was massive, easily a few miles in diameter, and that wasn’t even counting the length of the tentacles which were just as long as the main body if not longer. 

They were struck dumb by the sight of it, trying to come to terms with how large it was, and with the fact that it was alive in the vacuum of space. It was skimming the top of the atmosphere with its tentacles, doing something that they could not even fathom at this point. After several long moments, Nathan snapped out of it just long enough to realize that they needed to take action. 

“Holy shit, w-we need to copy the recordings, like backups upon backups!” He fumbled around at the computer for a moment, making a few errors in haste as he scrambled to document everything that they were seeing. “Fuck! Wha- we- who do we report this to! We need to show this to the damn president!” 

“One doesn’t just get a meeting with the president!” 

“Well how the fuck do we do it then!? This is literally the most important damn discovery in the history of our planet! How does that not warrant a meeting with the president!?” 

“Stop yelling!” The room went quiet for a second with Nathan’s mouth open as the words he was going to shout got stuck in his throat. Maria took a breath before continuing. “Okay, we have something big, and the best way to get it where it needs to go is to send it up the chain of command. it will reach NASA first, most likely, and from there it will quickly end up on the president’s desk.” 

“That just doesn’t feel... quick enough, I guess.” 

“I know what you mean, but this is the probably the fastest way to get it done.” 

Nathan sighed and nodded. “Okay... okay, so, let’s send it then. Up the chain, multiple messages, all labeled important, enough times that it annoys whoever is in charge of the system and gets them to look at it faster.” 

“Yes, that sounds like a plan. I’m sure they’ll forgive the infraction once they see what we found.” 

“If we are even a blip in their thoughts after they see these images, there is something seriously wrong with them.” 

Sending an email with a video attachment seemed so mundane considering the situation. Everything was surreal, and they could only watch the titan as it continued to interact with the atmosphere of Saturn, millions of miles away. There was a lingering feeling of anxiousness as they observed it as well. Knowing that this was all happening over an hour ago made every second important, and they scarcely blinked as they watched it to make sure it remained where it was. 

It took approximately half an hour before their work phone rang, causing both of them to jump from the surprise before quickly snatching it up and putting it on speaker. The voice of their supervisor and head of the facility shouted out from the device, his voice irate and frustrated. 

“What the hell kind of AI bullshit did you just spam my inbox with!? Every single one was labeled priority goddamnit! I don’t know what kind of poorly thought-out prank this is supposed to be, but you two are in so much fucking trouble right now it’s not even funny!” 

“Sir, please, you have to listen!” Nathan began with urgency in his voice that was clear to all. “What we sent you isn’t a joke, it isn’t AI, and it’s happening now. We have a video feed from the Intrepid orbiter we can share with you to prove it as well.” 

The other side of the call was silent for a few seconds before their supervisor responded. “I don’t know whether I want you to be telling the truth or not but... just send the connection to my computer.” 

Nathan was quick to set up an official stream of information so that everything was documented in the logs beyond a shadow of a doubt. The moment the connection was established, and their supervisor was able to see the stream from the Intrepid, everything changed. 

“My god, what the hell is that thing?” 

The supervisor sounded stunned, but the urgency was pressed by Maria, who did her best to keep everything moving. “Sir, I know it’s shocking, but we have to pass this information up the chain and into the hands of someone who can do something about it.” 

That seemed to do the trick. “Yes... yes, you’re right. I’ll get in contact with NASA; I’ll wake them up if I have to. This is way too valuable to leave on the backburner. You two keep an eye on it and inform me if it so much as twitches away from the planet. You’re going to be working overtime, just a warning, so don’t expect to be going home anytime soon.” 

They were both aware of, and accepting, the fact that this was going to quickly turn into an all hands on deck situation. “Of course. Honestly, if you tried to send us home, we might have defied that order.” 

“Wouldn’t exactly blame you, but enough about this. Things are going to get busy around here, so get whatever you need up and running. I don’t care about the cost of it, so let’s move!” 

With that, the call was terminated and the two of them were left to watch the creature until reinforcements arrived. The reality of the whole situation seemed to be finally sinking in for them. 

Nathan let out a slow breath. “Holy shit. This is really happening.” 

Maria made a slight nod, nearly imperceptible. “Yeah. It seems you’re getting your wish, but I think a monkey paw just curled somewhere.” 

He huffed and shook his head in disbelief. “Well, one thing is for certain, it’s about to get very interesting around here.” 

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