Vestige
Chapter 17

It had only been a few months ago that Councilor-Tyra Housenn Sohill had welcomed her second great-grandchild. And, now, she had just seen her third one upon the visit of her youngest adult child, Charl and his wife, Luciasia—daughter of Cairo an Preun and Luciana Salomenes. It was one of their children’s new-born whom the Councilor had over at her modest stone and mortared home out in the distant plateaus from those ruins that once was a grand human colony some fifty years prior…

It was in those days of the sliver of the homo sapiens species on the planet of cMaj that the human population had finally started to really grow! Though there were only just over fifty humans in the re-established Settlements since the Move—thirty years ago. With each passing generation that number was compounded. It would only be a few more years before the humans finally reached the milestone of triple-digits.

Charmain, her common husband a few years after the bombing of that immense Colony during the Synthetics’ Rebellion, had died a few years ago. Mostly due to a large amount of physical stress on his heart and body, from what the Colonists could tell. The Tribe had also lost the oldest of all the humans on cMaj, Cairo an Preun. It was more expected, given his advanced age at the time, especially considering all the cross-plains traveling the Tribe had gone through throughout the years. During the years after the Rebellion and at the beginning of the Move of re-settling the Clans, the Colonists’ personal-flying machines were still functioning. There were six—one for each of the six original Colonists. But as the Clans’ population grew, then came the re-settlement, Cairo and Charmain had let others within those clans fly the skimmers while they walked…a very considerate gesture, but one, the Colonists’ suspect, contributed to both men’s eventual expiration…

Half of the six artificial friends of the humans, the computerables—the portables—had all but reached their technological limits a few years ago as well. Councilor Housenn Sohill’s portable was still going and two others. And the only synthetic being among the whole Tribe, synth laborer Number Four, was, also, still functioning. With that said, the three small, portable mechanicles and the synth were showing their many decades-old age with their scuffed-up surface, cracked transparent housings, rust, and lots of lights that no longer flickered on.

Tyra had gifted her portable to her eldest child when she was around the Age of Participation. That is to say, when a child reached the age of ten, she or he could join in the Tribe’s (Clan Council many years prior) votes and meetings. Miriana, the eldest of Tyra’s adult children, would have gifted her mother’s portable to her eldest child, but by that time, even the great-computerated portable had simply suffered too much decay for such a young person to run around with. So, the Housenn Sohill clan decided to let the computerable live out its last days with its original owner. Solarvoltaic technology was highly advanced, energy-tech; especially when one took great care of the photon-based receptive portals. It was more of the mechanics of the portables and for synthetic laborer Number Four where they started to suffer decay.

Another reason for the homo sapiens’ growth and stability in those days was due to the new, regional location they had migrated to. The distant plateaus—relative to the old Colony’s ruins—had much more fertile ground. Darker, with more nutrients for the Colony’s produce’s seeds and general vegetation, when planet cMaj’s short rainy seasons hit. Small trees began to sprout for the first time in the tiny Colony’s existence! They were too young at the time to see if they would bare any fruit, but it was a true indicator that the Tribe had found much better land for them to settle on.

It helped that they had a geologist amongst their Tribe in Fillip Natsome; there to point out which terrestrial patches were best for agriculture and other geological features that showed more promise for building modest stone-housing for the growing Tribe with cMaj’s moderate rains, its soils, and the many stone-features throughout the landscape…

One of the unexpected issues that the six original Colonists (then four after Cairo an Preun’s and Charmain Sohill’s deaths) of the Tribe had not thought of in the early days of their families on planet cMaj was the lack of other animal species! Of course, there were the Tardigrades back at the old Ship’s ruins—technically, they were considered a type of proto-animal. From what the Tribe could speculate, the Tardigrades were able to feed off the residue of the crash site of the old Ship. The Colonists never ventured anywhere close to the debris field, especially ever since the Move.

Since the rogue synths that were left on cMaj were pretty much forced to re-locate—much like the humans!—due to the exploding population of the irradiated and enlarged Tardigrade species that survived the old Ship’s bombing, the Colonists weren’t sure what they were up to in those days, much less the surviving rogue synthetic beings on cMaj’s three moons. For, unlike their human counterparts on the three moons, they did not have to worry about food nor water. However, there still was the exposure to the vacuum of space and its extreme swings from absolute freezing to boiling hot—depending on when the moons’ night and day cycles. As formidable the computerated beings were, all synthetic beings were not omnipotent!

What they were able to learn about the rogue synths was from their useful friend, synthetic laborer Number Four, as he took several reconnaissance missions by himself out to the old Ship’s ruins and zipped his trips in live-time…no longer restricted by the worries of the rogue synths detecting their signals as they once had. That, or, perhaps, after dealing with the unexpected onslaught of the Tardigrades it was possible the rogue synthetic laborers on cMaj simply did not want to fight a war on two fronts…

Aside from the various species of the Tardigrades hundreds of miles from the re-established settlement, all other animals that were on various farms and allocated land-plots from the old Colony were killed during the Synthetics’ Rebellion bombing! After millions of years of evolution of each, respective, animal species’ ancestral development on planet Earth many eons before, thousands of animal and other sentient species were wiped out during the Rebellion in mere seconds. Literally, nowhere else in the universe did those species live. So, it was a mass-extinction of many species; never to be seen again, except in the archives of the Tribe’s devices and their portables and synth Number Four.

Hence, the original Colonists and their portables had to educate the children of the Three Clans of what they had just missed from the deep antiquities of their mother-planet! Many of the younger children wanted to travel to the ruins to see if they could actually find any of those Earth-based animals yet alive; roaming around the old debris-site without the humans knowing it! Needless to say, the adults and the portables had to explain to the toddlers such situation was impossible…

The elderly woman, Tyra Housenn Sohill, was the Councilor of the officially established township that was named after the now-defunct Colony: Vestige 2.

Years prior, while an Preun and Sohill were still alive, the Tribe had voted to continue with the human tradition of incorporating a township and all the other cultural and political aspects associated with it. Again, the Tribe had purposely stuck to that old model from the space-Colony of the nodule-government. It was the elders of the Tribes—Cairo an Preun, Fillip Natsome, Luciana Salomenes, Lanay Thuall, Charmain Sohill, and Tyra Housenn, that all had the institutional memory of the old ways from the old Ship. And the elders, along with the portables and synth Number Four, taught the new generations how to run a government; established a, albeit, simple monetary system for the tiny Colony; schemed demarcations of land-use that was generally within the perimeters of the settlement; set up a court-system for any disputes that happened within the Settlement—and they were more of them, just as the population of humans grew.

All this; the very, slowly re-emerging of homo sapiens, was all under the governance of the Tribe Councilor Tyra Housenn Sohill…

“You seem bothered by something, Councilor,” the old, scuffed-up portable computerated device said to Tyra. It was securely propped up against some of Tyra’s personal knickknacks and miscellaneous stone tools on one of her relatively crude dressers of her domicile mastaba. They were in the commons area of the Councilor’s abode; Tyra picking up a few things from the social during her son’s visit with his grandchild and the rest of the extended family of the Housenn Sohill clan.

“Well…looking at the little ones that were just here made me think about how we should probably start on that new irrigation system,” she finally said after taking a seat on one of her equally-crude chairs—though, the Colonists had taken to utilizing some of the extra vegetative husks as cushions for chairs. “Doesn’t take much to use up the water we do have for hygiene…three more babies for the Tribe to think about now!”

“Indeed…Plus, Councilor, we still have that issue of trying to replicate the old Ship’s solarvoltaic technology. It’s proven to be harder for the Colonists to pursue than we’ve anticipated.”

The elderly woman with the long, bounded-up hair was already nodding to the portable’s point. “As we all figured it would be…we just need to find a way to push our remaining jets from those personal-flyers to go a little hotter! Then we’ll be able to make glass and use that as photonic conductors.”

There was a pause from the old portable. “Councilor Housenn Sohill…what if we found some other way of conducting cMaj’s local starlight into energy? Chemist-Salomenes and her family have been experimenting with the possibility of direct use of the sand from that tiny lake that the Thuall Clan had discovered.”

She thought on the portable’s question. Her lean, lined face pinching with thought. “Well, obviously anytime one converts a sun’s energy directly to use without having to manufacture the receptors would be…” She shook her head after thinking more on it, then smiled. “Well, I’ve never heard such technological prospects since we were on the old Ship half a century ago! I know you, my friend…so, why are you asking me about this sand?”

“It would be nothing less than a significant jump of technological feat for this Colony since the Rebellion, as you’ve stated, Councilor…but there seems to be a limit to this, even if the an Preun Salomenes Clan were to succeed in direct-solarvoltaic conductivity. At least, in human principles…Councilor; the lake is occupied.”

There was a space of confused quietness in the Housenn Sohill household.

“What do you mean by, Occupied, portable? Tardigrades?”

“No…the sand, Councilor Housenn Sohill…”

A soured look from the tribal chief. “What!”

Anticipating Tyra’s reaction, the portable device projected recordings of moving pictions of a landscape on cMaj with a moderate-sized lake that had a meager coastline. In the projection were the four adult children of Cairo an Preun and his widow, Chemist-Luciana Salomenes; whom was a few years older than the Councilor. Some of the grandchildren helped in some of the experiments as well. The portable projected several scenes and stages of the Clan’s scientific pursuits of the sands of cMaj, under the guidance of Chemist-Salomenes, utilizing yet-functioning tools from a couple of defunct single-flyers and other antique tools and equipment from the old Ship, Vestige.

“The an Preun Salomenes Clan asked me and all the other remaining computerables to document the clan’s experiments with the lake’s sand for the Tribe’s posterity. That is, if this little colony is fortunate enough to have a posterity…they asked this after the Thuall Clan’s discovery of how the coastline’s sand that rims it would seem to shift in a matter of a few hours! The best we can tell at this point, it’s almost as if the individual sand-pebbles themselves are moving in a flock-formation—much like bird species from our late-Colony! Only much slower, of course.

“The Thuall Clan coordinated with the Salomenes, and they were finally able to confirm that the sand on cMaj—at least, with this small lake—is alive and sentient! I’m sorry to tell you a few days later, Councilor Housenn Sohill, but the an Preun Salomenes clan insisted to limit the number of people who knew about cMaj’s sand—”

“Stars, the entire tribe would all flock there at once and who knows what the sands’ reaction could be,” Tyra finished out with an understanding nod.

“Precisely, Councilor…”

By that time, Councilor Housenn Sohill’s mind was reeling! On top of everything else the Three Clans had survived during those decades after the destruction of the Colony of the last of the homo sapiens, now that the barest of numbers of that species was finally starting to regain some footing in civilization and technological pursuits to help boost their numbers, the Tribe now had a major moral issue to deal with.

In the ancients of times of human space travels, the thought of alien, sentient beings on other planets were distant fantasies for homo sapiens. But Tyra Housenn Sohill’s small colony was the alien on cMaj and there was no fantasy-element to any of their situation!

“I know it’s quite a bit too late to ask this,” Tyra finally said after a long thought, “but why hadn’t our computerated scans on the old Ship and our scout ships picked up their life signs when we first arrived in the cMaj system?”

“I surmise, Councilor, that as advanced as our late-colony was, they simply were too used to carbon-based lifeforms. Most likely they did not imagine the possibility of other lifeforms even being able to exist in other elemental forms…”

A silent nod from the elderly woman as she watched the moving pictions of Luciana’s family working as a professional lab team within the clan’s mastaba-huts. Some of the footage were outdoors. It was the most scientific settings she had seen since the late-Colony.

“We have a lot to talk about as a Settlement, don’t we, portable?” Tyra’s eyes never left the projections.

“That we do, Councilor Housenn Sohill. I have to admit, I thought you would’ve been elated to finally verify that humans aren’t the only, living sentient beings in the universe! If I may say so, Councilor, I don’t think you realize how proud your ancestors would be of this little Tribe for having finally discovered life on another planet after all those eons!”

She continued to silently watch the projections hovering in the middle of her mastaba’s common-space. “So, portable, my question is: If the sands on cMaj is alive, what else is alive on this planet we haven’t even thought of? I’m no scientist, but common sense seems to dictate there are far more other species that are alive and sentient on a planet than just one species.”

“Councilor Housenn Sohill, I had wondered that very same thing the second I received the confirmation from the an Preun Salomenes clan…”

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