The Answer to Life - it's not 42!!!!
Posted: Friday, November 07, 2008
by Andy Bacon
http://www.tatlaue.com
K always felt nervous at this stage. He felt as if at any moment he could lose all control over his bodily functions. Then he wouldn't only be sh*tting himself in a metaphorical sense. He sat, rigid in his seat. Bones and muscles tensed at the prospect of the unknown experience that was about to unfold before him and his colleagues. His face stared straight ahead at a faceless fellow co-worker who stared back, unemotional and relaxed. K tried to avoid his eyes, more through embarrassment at his own lack of courage than anything else.
They all had their own idea of what was about to befall them, based on past knowledge and the briefing they had been given before the adventure had begun.
Most of K's colleagues had many years of experience on which to draw their preconceived conclusions. K was relatively new to the role and therefore created his presumptions from his anxiety and nervous disposition. This showed in his face.
During the last few days of the long journey from the previous exploratory landing, briefings had taken place regularly to provide all TAKers with as much knowledge about the planet as possible. Many experiment results, graphs and photographic images provided by dozens of probes and landing droids that had been sent to this quadrant over the past few decades were revealed to the TAKers. Each probe sent back millions of bytes of information about all planets within range of its trajectory, many of which happened to be within this unique solar system. One planet in particular intrigued the Republic, due to its unique giant diamond shaped protrusion and its three equally sized moons. The 'Diamond Planet' as it had become rather lamely referred to, held the evidence of some incredible former race, but had no obvious signs of any intelligent inhabitants now. This kind of planet was like Sincha dust to the universe's exploratory civilisations.
K's ship had already explored four of the eight planets identified as being potentially useful within this solar system. Some planets were investigated for their ores and precious stones, others for their fauna and flora. Very occasionally the planets were also inspected with a view to colonisation - an act that allowed the Republic to expand its viral-like spread across the galaxy even further. Not satisfied with plaguing their home planet with their extensive presence to the point of virtual self destruction, the Republic's race now felt it necessary to expand their reign of terror over less developed species of plant and animal life on planets all across the reachable universe.
TAK regiments were never given the full details of what use the planet had been provisionally short-listed for, in case it impaired or influenced their reports and feedback. The Republic's exploration council believed that if the TAK teams knew a planet was destined for colonisation, they might well view their investigations with that fact in mind. The council concluded that this could cause problems if the TAK investigators were to allow strange things like morals and ethics to taint their views, especially when there may be delicate existing races inhabiting the planet. And that just would not do. To have an undeveloped and weak race of beings, as yet undiscovered, ruin the Republic's plans would simply not be acceptable. To keep the TAK teams in the dark was far more logical.
K thought about this for a second, as he had done many times in the past. He recalled the cynics in the squadron who often speculated that the real reason the Republic only gave them limited information was because the council didn't want the 'TAKers' to know when valuable ore and rocks were being searched for. Some investigative 'specimens' may accidentally get mislaid and the Republic might suddenly be faced with a great number of early retirements to Kaser6 . The cynics would continue; declaring that TAKers did not have morals and ethics anyway, so why would the council presume that menial things such as weak inhabitants of a planet influence the validity of their reports? This cut K to the core. He joined this elite scientific military squadron to do good for his race. For the first two years of his final rookie training he firmly believed that he was helping to mix and develop races and cultures to better the universe, to spread genes and to allow new and improved creations to take forward a mixed-race civilisation. After his third rookie training year, his colleagues had long since destroyed that rather naive and patriotic view, turning him into half the cynic they had already become. K was beginning to realise that the TAK teams were simply the sharp bit of a poisonous dart that was slowly spreading the plague of the Republic across the galaxy. He had recently started to realise that all they were doing was making the rich guys richer and spreading the disease, social problems and greed of the Republic further into the outer reaches of the universe. But he still had an obligation to at least try and make it right didn't he?
K had planned his entire existence around doing this job from a very early age. This is all he had ever wanted to be. He had studied for five years to be highly qualified in investigative sciences. If truth were known, he was massively over qualified to be a TAKer. But K wanted to be the best TAKer in the Republic - studying new life forms and analysing the best ways his species could harness the riches of a planet without destroying its life- balance. He wanted to be a pioneering scientist, not only for his own, personal sense of well being, or for his 'king and country'. He didn't even want to dedicate his life to this cause for his planet. He did it for his entire race - the Human race.
That feeling made K want to cry. He had dedicated his life, his mind and soul to doing good for the Human race. It had been his childhood dream to be a hero of a different kind - a hero of scientific investigation. He had been betrayed. Not by the fact that the job wasn't everything he expected it to be, but by the false image that was portrayed by his race to itself about what it was they were doing. It had always been promoted as being about the expansion of knowledge, learning and Human evolution. The reality was, just as it had been thousands of years ago when they were still investigating the various continents on their own home planet, that it was really just about greed and selfishness. Powerful humans just wanted to be more and more powerful, no matter what the cost - especially if the brunt of the cost was suffered by lesser creatures.
K no longer felt proud about the work he was doing. He felt frustrated that his years of hard work and study had been for a role that could be viewed ( especially in the eyes of inhabitants of a short-listed planet) as destructive and malicious. But he did feel proud that his own personal intentions for being a TAKer were honest and good. K's motivations were not just based on patriotism to his race, they were loyal to his own values. That was very important to K. He was so proud of his reasons for wanting to be a TAKer that he had recently started to view it as everybody else's fault that the job was actually destructive and corrupt, not his. However, knowing this unavoidable fact made K feel very small and insignificant. In the grand scheme of things, he realised that he really didn't matter at all, and that he was unlikely to be able to make a difference. That upset him, because that's what he had always wanted: to make a difference and to really matter. He wanted to change the way the Republic viewed a new planet as a treasure trove to be ransacked, raped, pillaged and deserted.
But if K didn't do this job, some other poor git with a slight aptitude for science and handling small fire-arms, who had a childhood dream of making a difference to the human race, would end up sitting here. Then that unsuspecting fool would be sh*tting himself in this plummeting landing craft, suffering this anguish, excitement, pent-up frustration and nail-biting tension. That same poor git would be the one discovering new plants and animals, analysing their distant paths through an ever-evolving ecological journey. The poor bastard would be setting foot on planets where no human being had ever been before, instead of K.
Right now, K wouldn't change places with anyone! He was a mixed up mess of emotions and contradictory feelings.
A sudden heart-stopping jerk bought K's surroundings back to his attention in a single flash. This always happened, but it never ceased to scare the oxygen out of K. The atmosphere of all planets had a violent effect on the lander.
After the deceptive motionlessness of smooth open space, the brutal jerking and shaking of the atmosphere always came as a bit of a shock to the system.
The planet's natural defence system tried its hardest to incinerate the mechanical meteorite invader, heating its metal exterior to near melting point. The intense buffeting served as an excellent cocktail shaker, waking every sense in K's body and increasing his heart rate to a healthy one hundred and fifty beats per minute. All TAKers refer to this entry period as the 'happy hour'. It started the blood pumping as the nervous system was kicked into action, preparing itself to be ready for anything. K felt his blood rush around his body and head. His heart pumped hard as his glands worked overtime to release adrenalin and other stimulative hormones to create a fox-alert, cat-nimble, bear-powerful, human, ready to investigate rocks, soil, flora samples and possibly even some animal cr*p, if he was really lucky!
That wasn't K's entire job though. He did have to be a genuine soldier too.
True, they had the elite front-runners to secure the area and hold off any unexpected attacks from local beings, which rarely happened, but K still had to be aware of his surroundings and be prepared to use his weapons and hands in self-defence, if ever it came to that. It never had, much to K's relief, but he always wondered how he would fare. Would his many years of training jump immediately back into place when they were needed, making K a fighting machine to be reckoned with? Or would he curl up like a baby girl and start to suck his thumb in a panic stricken pool of his own waste products? K (and most of his colleagues, including his commanding officer) suspected the latter. K knew he was a lover, not a fighter. But in all honesty, he was pretty diabolical at the former as well!
Now past the outer reaches of the planet's atmospheric self-defence, the lander rocked and jolted slightly more sedately as it found its way through the uncharted sky, smashing through huge pockets of rising warm air, only to be suddenly released into a plummeting pocket of cold. The roller-coaster ride made K feel nauseous, but he knew he could not be sick. The embarrassment would be too much to bear. There were no windows where K sat, so he could not view the horizon to stop the stomach-churning motion of the craft making him turn green. He decided to look around the familiar surroundings of the craft's interior, concentrating on specific details in an attempt to take his mind off the pending reappearance of his last meal.
Opposite him, strapped into heavy-set padded flight seats were a number of his colleagues. Each deep in their own thoughts, lost in their own worlds of memories, musings and mild anxieties. Each man dealt with the excitement and anticipation of the journey and task ahead in their own way. Some were contemplating what may be encountered on the ground, others were quietly thinking about what should have been said last night in that argument with their wives. The most cynical of all were wondering if the planet held as many riches as the Republic was banking on, and whether this would be the trip in which they would die a horrible and painful death.
Next to K sat Two-eye, so called because of his three eyes. Two-eye was a unique individual, with an exceptional background to his scientific education.
When he was a youth, dabbling with experiments as a crazed yet advanced biologist, Two-eye and some of his equally twisted college friends at the Tower Hill University of Species Science had experimented with the growth and attachment of all manner of additional body parts onto their own bodies. Most of the operations proved successful, making Two-eye's social circle a strange array of self-mutilated advanced scientists with a droll - and simply not very funny - sense of humour. Two-eye's best friends, Forearms and Oneear, had never truly recovered from the trauma experienced by the social problems of their late friend Three-cock. Three, as he was lovingly referred to by his closest friends, and many of his open-minded mistresses, had died four weeks after recovering from one of the group's many experimental operations. Three's student peers speculated as to the cause of his sudden death. Some concluded that it was due to over-indulgence, others said that sustained heightened pleasure was as lethal as severe depression, and that's what got the better of him. The coroner declared that Three had died of a massive cardiac arrest, where his heart had virtually exploded. Three's body was found after a five-way, eight-hour sex session, his face contorted into the strangest, most perverse grin anyone had ever seen. The corpse's eyes were wide open and no facial features could be moved. It was as if rigor mortis had set in immediately - freezing his face and highly twisted body into a picture of rapturous ecstasy for eternity. At the funeral, the truly unique shape of Three-cock's coffin provided welcome light-hearted relief to what was otherwise a very sombre occasion.
K smiled as he recalled some of the wild, yet rather cruel stories Two-eye told of his student experiments. Visions of half goat, half pig creatures, an elongated horse with twelve legs, capable of carrying 20 people (a bit like an equestrian bus), and for some strange reason, an ant-leaf. Two-eye was extremely proud of that one as he claimed it as a social victory for ant society - a lazy ant could get away with not carrying any leaves as he had one permanently attached to his body. Two-eye had a very distorted view of life.
K's attention returned to the scene in front of him once again. He noticed a fellow TAKer looking in his direction. He smiled the half-hearted all-knowing smile one worker gives to another, the universe over - head rising up slightly with one eye-brow raised, which roughly translates to 'here we go again - business as usual'. The reply, as expected, was an equivalent wry smile and sharp upward head movement, acknowledging K, giving the automatic response of 'Yeah - same-old, same-old'.
As the landing craft descended through the buffeting air, K's ears began to pop as the atmospheric pressure changed. He continually pinched his nose and blew hard through his nasal passages to release the pressure in his head.
Failure to do so at this speed of descent could mean that his ear-drums would implode. They had been falling through the bumpy atmosphere now for well over half an hour. By K's rough calculations, it would only be a few more minutes of shaking and shuddering before they made their final approach and landed on the surface of the undiscovered world. Then the excitement really started.
Eventually, after what seemed like an age, the bone-crunching juddering subsided as the descent slowed. After a few more moments of smooth, decelerating flight, the lander came to a sudden jolting halt as the heavy weight of the vehicle impacted the planet's surface. The cacophony of noises and motion sensations gradually died down as the engines were switched off.
The mandatory ten minute settling period went by, as slowly as ever, as the preliminary landing area checks were made by the cabin crew via a complex array of high-tech equipment which scanned the immediate surroundings for imminent danger. Very rarely was an exploration called off at this stage, as so many pre-landing investigations and tests were carried out from the distant safety of the mother ship.
Only once to K's knowledge had an expedition been aborted after landing, and that had been due to human error. The hugely embarrassing legend, although somewhat embellished by the story tellers over the years, told of a ground observation specialist who had called off the mission due to some rather strange ground chemical readings. The reading had shown a rather high level of AV359F2G, a known and extremely volatile bog gas that had been used many times throughout history in chemical warfare - highly effectively. As it happened, they later discovered that the lander had set down in an area largely inhabited by pig-like creatures. Through pure, unfortunate fluke, a part of the landers undercarriage had succeeded in pinning a live pig to the ground by its ear, whilst the environmental testing probe had entered the pig in a truly undignified manner. Much to the anguish of the hog, the investigative gadget proceeded to prod around its innards to reveal extremely high levels of dangerous gases which caused the panic-retreat- much to the pig's relief.
A simple and innocent mistake, but one which had repercussions for many a year and for many a TAKer. Never had the TAKer academy been so humiliated.
For months after the incident was leaked to the general public, pigs of all types were found attached to a variety of poles. Live, stuffed, inflatable, it really didn't matter - the joke was the same. Some were placed atop flagpoles, others to trees, fence posts and lamp posts. There seemed to be no end to the inventive combinations a professional society could be ridiculed for accidentally sticking a probe into an alien pig's arse. Provided the equation consisted of a pig and a pole, anything went. For many months, these self-proclaimed practical jokers had a field day at the TAKer academy's expense. It had taken decades to live it down, and even to this day, at prestigious events and gala gatherings where the senior members of TAK staff were present, you could still make out distant pig-like squealing noises from the crowd.
The wait was over. The front-runners were given the order to stand, check their equipment and disembark. The doors opened, sending in a wave of warmth, light and smells that sent K's senses racing. The front-runners quickly exited the craft, shouting commands at one another. K's heart was still racing, but his adrenalin was no longer induced by the death-defying drop through the sky, or the possibility of a horrible demise from a massive native predator. It was the excited child in K, anxious to see the wonders of the new planet that drove his adrenalin release and pounding heart now. He wanted to get out there and discover new plant life, investigate new minerals, document new species of animal. He couldn't wait to understand their survival needs by prodding around in their faeces to see what they ate. The excitement was almost unbearable, but K had to keep it contained. If he didn't keep his enthusiasm covered under the shroud of his bored 'business as usual' exterior, he would stick out like a French kiss at a family reunion.
That would have dire consequences, as K had discovered many times in the past.
If you let-on you were still excited about the work you did, colleagues would allow you to do all of the terrible jobs. K assumed this was the same in any industry, the universe over, and therefore did not fight it. But he wanted to do everything within the vast array of interesting tasks that were required of TAKers, so he continued the charade that he was as disinterested as his colleagues. He often wondered if any other TAKers felt this way, but quickly discarded this line of thinking, as there would be no way of finding out without blowing his cover, and that could mean months of clearing up his colleagues' messes. It was simply too risky.
After a few more moments, the front-runners had established that the area was secure and safe for the TAKers to exit the craft. Orders were given to K and his fellow scientific pioneers to stand and prepare their instruments, weapons and collecting devices. K found it difficult to contain his excitement and let out a little yelp, like a small puppy about to go for ' walkies'. Coming to his senses quickly, he covered it up with a series of small coughs. It didn't matter how many times he faced this situation - it still filled him with anxious glee. Being amongst the first human beings to set foot on a planet to investigate its usefulness for future generations was a great privilege, and one that should not be taken lightly. The experience never lost its interest and novelty. Not for K, anyway.
Once TAK A4 had collectively secured their equipment, they were finally given the command to disembark. K walked down the short central aisle of the lander, following the single-file line of his fellow TAKers, and turned left at the doorway into the bright orange sunshine that streamed in through the large opening. K took in his first view of the warm new world, as he stepped out onto the sun-kissed metal gantry. Unlike his colleagues, he took a moment to bask in the awesome sight. It was beautiful. The sun was bright, the trees were huge and the sounds were incredible, varied and rich with life. Strange woops and whistles could be heard all around. It was alive with strange new species. All for K to discover - he mentally rubbed his hands with excited anticipation. A few seconds later he took the necessary few steps down the steep ramp to the thrilling new terra-firma, and again took a moment to look around. The wonderful new surroundings bombarded his impatient senses, as K struggled to keep his nonchalant exterior composed.
He smiled conspicuously at the prospect of investigating these new specimens of flora and fauna, logging their habitat and behaviour. He only wished he could go beyond the realms of ticking boxes on a multiple-choice questionnaire, to specify whether the creatures were passive or dangerous, edible or poisonous, four legs or two. But that was the unfortunate mundane aspect of his job. All jobs have to have a boring part to them, and this restrictive practice was K's....
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