The Arkhaven Project.
Officially, the Arkhaven Project is recognised as the endeavours by the world governments of Earth in the year 3122 to investigate suitable interstellar environments for population, trade and resource gathering. It has been compared by academics to the exploration of earth in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by European economic powers wishing to extend their influence with the aid of better navigation and seafaring vessels.
It was in early 3120 that exploratory research into the deeper parts of the world's oceans was made possible by the identification of an element in meteor fragments that could withstand far greater pressures than any other known element native to earth, Serpentium. So-called because of its discovery in a large crater in central Australia and local indigenous myths surrounding the rainbow serpent who was allegedly responsible for carving the multicoloured walls of the crater from the nearby desert. Not only did this fantastic new element resist pressure it was found to reflect pressure. A curious property indeed.
When it came to naming the element, it helped that in crystal form Serpentium refracts light when viewed by the human eye, making its own rainbow. In any case, small vessels powered by smaller engines that operated more efficiently thanks to this new discovery transported intrepid research scientists into dark places that men had never been able to explore previously. One of those was the Mariana trench in the Pacific Ocean.
It had of course previously been explored by autonomous drone vehicles, but with human eyes and intellects responding to visual stimuli, inquiring minds scoured every anomalous detail and made a disquieting discovery. At over eleven thousand metres deep, they found a hatch. A small round hatch with a pad of unknown technological purpose adjacent to it; presumably to open the hatch. It was built into a smooth arced surface that had been claimed by movements of the tectonics plates over millennia.
In late 3121, the hatch was breached and the technology that now allows the intergalactic commerce that we all enjoy, was discovered. We've all heard the story of the massive alien craft and seen scientific drawings of it. The technology discovered within the vessel exists in almost every simple part of our everyday lives.
In 3122, the first autonomous exploration drones built with that alien technology were dispatched to the corners of the galaxy with a mission parameter to locate habitable environments in which to search for new resources and perhaps, just perhaps, to find life among the vast starry depths of space. Any year six student will be able to name the thirty-two Arkhaven outreach centres on the sixteen different planets, moons and asteroid belts upon which intelligent life has been found. By year eight or ten they should be able to tell you about the countless resource deposits that enable us to keep our 'very past its use by date', earth from falling into a barren replica of Mars.
The science, the history and the facts are all very well documented and available at the merest inclination to engage our chip implants and conduct a search. What is not so well documented are the stories of the people who have made great differences in our interaction with and enjoyment of the many alien life-forms we have since encountered.
Certainly, there exist texts; anthropology texts, biological, sociological, technological and every other 'ology' you could list but the simple accounts of human experience are fading from our history with the passing of those persons. These were normal people encountering fantastic opportunities to experience the diversity of our new intergalactic community, who leave legacies which we all enjoy.
The Arkhaven Project Books are a simple anthology of their stories. A catalogue of the human experience of inhuman circumstance. They may contain technical errors, historical errors, all sorts of minor discrepancies. These books do not seek to be scientifically correct, only to convey the stories of the people I have been lucky enough to interview over my advanced years.
I hope you enjoy them and come away with a little more understanding about our ancestors and the fragile times in which they did some very great things for us.
Bronson Nelli.
Amateur anthropologist, Lover, Dreamer, Author.
~*~
Book One. AERIE.
A tale of Ambassador Todd Parker; Human envoy to the Arcadian nation at Arkhaven Twelve, source of the rare reactor element, Scantium and home to outrageous beauty, steeped in a culture of simplicity. As told to me over several weeks at his lovely estate on Arcadia, wherein his aesthetically inimitable wife plied us with much flower essence and fed us like kings.
It begins on earth in the year 3468.
~~~~*~~~~
"You're hairy." Her long eyelash feathers told me she was female. Her little dark blue eyes looked nervously up at me.
I smiled. "You're kind of feathery."
She giggled, but it sounded more like a happy chirp.
"Thank you."
I shrugged. "Some kids are mean."
"Your hand is bleeding."
It was. I was starting to calm down and the pain was starting to surface through the red mist.
"Is it very hurt?" She asked; her dark eyes still frightened beneath her little feathered eyebrows.
"No, little birdy girl." I flexed my fingers. Nothing felt broken. Just some split skin.
"Thank you."
"Stop thanking me. They were being mean." They were too. When I arrived, the new girl was backed into a corner near the school cafeteria and several girls, and two boys were taunting her about her tail and snatching at her clothes.
She was a tiny thing. Not the first Avian I had seen, but definitely the prettiest. She had dark hair and deep blue eyes. Tourism brought a lot of them here. The beaches were teeming with them. Study attracted them too. There was a moment when her eyes held mine for far too long and then she rubbed her head on my chest.
"Thank you." She chirped. It was a strangely intimate gesture that made me forget how angry I had just been.
"Come on. That was the bell." Her fingers laced into mine and we walked to assembly. I hadn't really paid attention until now, but she had three fingers and a thumb, and they each terminated in talons that could have torn those kids to bits.
"My name is Eris."
"I'm Todd." I tell her. "If you have any more trouble with mean kids, you come and find me okay?"
"Thank you."
"Bye Eris."
"Bye Todd." She looked like she was going to tear up again.
"Mr Franks! My office now, boy." Principal Justins called in his deep booming voice.
"I'm sorry Todd."
"Shh, little birdy."
And that was how I earned suspension. Three days at home playing computer games and snacking instead of doing dumb schoolwork. When my parents and I exited the principal's office, they drove me straight to McDuckles and made sure that I knew that I'd done the right thing but sometimes it carries consequences.
All I worried about was whether those twerps were going to hassle Eris again while I wasn't at school. I've never had a sibling. I didn't know where this protective streak had come from. All I knew is that the moment her six-year-old eyes looked in my nine-year-old ones and she rubbed her head on my chest, I... I felt this thing. An overwhelming responsibility for her. A connection.
She's smiling at me now across the counter in the garage I work in. She's come to pick up her scooter. The batteries needed a deep discharge and one had to be replaced. It needed some recalibration of its gyros as well. Her almost black hair is done in pigtails like she wore to the Heavy Water metal festival last weekend. She wanted to show me all the merchandising she'd designed for the promotors. It was part of her final year tech and design assessment.
We've been hanging out again a lot since I split with April. It's like when I was still at school again. We see each other every other day and hang out most weekends.
"Are you still coming over tonight, Toddy?" I never tire of her chirpy voice.
"Your Dad wants help with his bus, so yeah. Your Mum will want me to stay for tea, I imagine."
"Haha. She has a crush on you." The reverse is probably truer. Mrs Vogel is absolutely stunning. She is just a little taller than Eris and has such a beautiful face. Her hair is the same dark black as Erry's and at home, now that they're comfortable with me, the Vogel's don't wear pants. They have no external sex organs, and their privates are covered with feathers, so it's redundant. Mr Vogel and I have a joke about that. Why don't avian wear pants? Because they're pointless. Boom tish...
Erry's cheeky comment embarrasses me a little and I know I blush. Mrs Vogel has the most beautiful tail. The rest of her is black feathers that shine with blue and green tints, but her tail is fiery red like my hair. Red and gold with two tall lyre shaped feathers that curl and glint like moonlight on water. Sometimes when Mr Vogel is being cheeky to her, they tint a little pinkly. I imagine it's like humans blushing.
Mick, the boss laughs and says, "Hurry up lady killer, you're still on the clock."
"So, how much do I owe you, Toddy?"
"On the house, pretty birdy." Mick yells from beneath the car he's working on. "Todd can put an extra hour in to cover the new battery and you can work out some way to thank him for his time."
It's Erry's turn to blush now. "Thanks Mr Barnes. See you this afternoon, Todd."
After work, I don't bother going home. If I'm going to help Eris's father with his bus, then I'll just get dirty again. I keep a change of clothes at work in case of major spills. I learned that one when I emptied an entire gearbox on my overalls once. So, I grab the clean clothes, put them in my backpack and do up my helmet.
My bike is new. Well, new for me. It's one of those long-range adventure bikes. It weighs only a hundred and twenty kilos and makes two hundred Nm of torque. It's speed limited as everything is now to two-hundred kilometres an hour. Mr Barnes helped me bypass the rider assist functions and it's exhilarating to ride. The reactor is good for more than a human lifetime and most of the cost of the bike was the up-front disposal cost for the fission rods. It's fast too, so I carefully watch my speed on the way over to the Vogel's.
Mr Vogel is sitting in his garage when I pull up and signals me over. The bonnet is up on the old motorhome bus that he loves and there is a spare seat beside him.
"Sit Todd. First, we talk. Then we put the hood down. There is nothing wrong with it."
"Ok Mr Vogel." I must look a little quizzical.
