The Red

It was almost time for respawning when we first encountered life from another world. They came to us in their smooth machine from the sky, more radiant and fascinating than anything we could have imagined. We thrummed! We coiled and bounded with excitement.

Long had we been hoping for this moment. We had always known that outside life would seek us, just as we sought it. Instinctively, we yearned for a greater unity, just as we always returned to mother to respawn. We waited for the arrivals to reveal themselves but their machine stood against the green sky, emitting almost no vibration.

Perhaps, we thought, we should approach. Perhaps we should attempt to communicate. But we waited, enjoying this test of patience. It was day 201 since our last respawning, and we would do it again in twelve days. At last, after six days, they emerged.

The machine sent out a shockwave and then encircled itself in a massive sphere of blue. Portals stretched open as we watched, stupefied. Their bodies were small and reflective, more metallic than seemed to befit life. They are minerals? we wondered as we beheld them from our caves and scarps. Then, they removed their coverings and revealed themselves. What was underneath vibrated, supple but dense, more solid than us and constantly emitting a strong infrared light. So, we called them the Red. They moved by balancing on two slender appendages and swinging two smaller appendages higher up. These appendages, we noticed, were not retractable. Oh, delight!

It was time to introduce ourselves. We held games, and the winners would be our chosen ambassadors. Steadily, we made our way to the edge of their blue sphere—their sector—and gently, so gently, we hailed. We sent vibrations to them through the rock beneath us, but they didn’t seem to respond. We sent vibrations through the electromagnetic spectrum, but they didn’t seem to respond. We sent vibrations to them through the atmosphere—yes! Certain frequencies seemed to draw their attention. They stilled.

We came closer, quivering, lurking at the seam where our sectors met. We waited for an invitation. What would we learn? How would they play?

As quickly as they came, they retreated into their machine while the portals closed. We vibrated the atmosphere again and again. Surprise turned to confusion. Could it be that not all life was clever?

We didn’t dwell on this, fascinated as we were by the metallic coverings we had seen. Soon, we began to imitate these and create elaborate coverings of our own using minerals from the surface. For now, the sheer novelty of this experience—of reshaping our bodies within lead and gallium envelopes—outweighed the displeasure, the way the coverings blocked the cosmic radiation our bodies absorbed for nourishment.

On day 209, when they re-emerged, we were ready in our reflective fashions. We hoped our mimicry of them would stimulate the Red’s curiosity in us. A few of them hovered closer to the seam and wobbled their appendages in our direction, but most paid no attention to us and became consumed with their own play, in pairs or alone, moving across the surface and manipulating this or that.

Content to watch, we studied them for days: the games they played, the groups they formed, the inscrutable chaos of their endeavors.

On day 213, as always, we selected a suitable cave. We returned to each other, dissolved into mother, combined our memories and respawned. And then it was day one again, and it was I who had waited for my turn to play.

From the outset, I took an especially keen interest in the Red; naturally, this became my role while my brethren focused elsewhere. If only I could have kept to myself what I later learned. But I knew nothing of privacy or subterfuge.

How alluring and perplexing these beings were—like us but altogether different. I puzzled at their aloofness. Observing them from our sector, I noticed their inclination toward dull, repetitive behavior. Their slow interaction with each other.

Then, on day fourteen, I finally discovered a game they were interested in playing! I called it Leaving. It was unfamiliar to us but a fairly simple one whereby they would place small and ornate objects at the edge of their sector and wait for us to take them: a silicon-studded sheet or a hydrocarbon stick with bristles, for example. We would then leave objects of our own and allow them to be taken. If there was a greater cleverness to the game, we could not tell.

It was almost day fifty-seven before the Red finally invited me into their sector. For that day’s Leaving, they had placed the objects further from our edge, deeper in their blue sphere. What could this mean but for us to enter? So I did. I pressed through and—oh, the sudden embrace! Nitrogen and oxygen under intense atmospheric pressure. This must be what their homeworld was like. Euphoria! I thrummed. They retreated from me and covered their bodies with their upper appendages, and I knew this was enough for now.

But not for long. I was soon invited into their sector daily. And, on day ninety-two, I even brought one of them into our sector.

I had observed this one to be particularly receptive, somewhat smaller than the others and more inclined to mirror my movements. I indicated my interest in the metal coverings. The small one offered one to me, and I inspected it, poured myself to fit inside, and found I could move myself in it the way they moved. This caused the small one to produce a series of distinct, staccato air vibrations. I sensed its pleasure. It too put a covering on its body. I entered our sector, and the small one followed.

I rolled, jumped, spun and swayed. The small one picked up on my rhythm, though with far less verve. It was clever. We were dancing! Others gathered from both sectors to observe us, and they were pleased. My brethren emitted electromagnetic waves to shape and heighten the experience. Harmony. Transcendence. I felt the joy of union and a profound awareness growing within me, awareness of our shared energy and the chance that, perhaps, we could even become brethren. The small one caught a jagged edge of the surface with its appendage, sailed forward and landed hard. The clear portion of its covering struck the rock and erupted with a pleasant, unfamiliar vibration. Wow, I thought. I mirrored, striking the surface as hard as I could, my covering splitting in multiple places and the clear portion exploding into dust. I danced on the surface that way. Then, I rose and noticed the small one, flat and still, no longer dancing. I sensed its infrared light diminishing rapidly. Others from the Red were coming to the small one who seemed unwilling to move its own body. They collected it and retreated to their sector.

The joy of our dance lingered in me, and I waited the next day for the small one to meet me again. I waited the next day and the day after. Eventually, the Red came and showed me. They had excavated the surface and put the small one underneath. The small one remained there under the rocky dust, absolutely inert, playing a game I had never considered. I supposed it would wait there until they respawned.

For a time, they discontinued the Leaving.

On day 109, a group of the Red entered our sector to establish deeper communication. Their atmospheric vibrations followed obvious patterns that they mimed and interpreted for us. Now I could show them how clever I was! I mimicked; I adapted; I recognized and learned. I learned to ask and answer. I learned to call and respond. Before long, I could even make the staccato vibrations they called laughing.

On day 174, they began asking us to include specific objects on our side of the Leaving. This was a dull variant, and I couldn’t understand the lack of imagination it showed. But we did as they asked, and I mirrored. I asked them to include specific objects, too: things that would require them to play with the objects we had left.

Why do you think we are here? they asked me on day 180.

Because your sky machine brought you here.

But why?

Oh, a riddle; I love riddles!

Can you do nothing but play?

I laughed and laughed.

What do you do with the objects we leave you? they asked on day 208.

I toss them in the methane pool to observe the bubbling.

Don’t waste them!

I asked them to explain waste. This was how I learned something about them so fantastic that it seemed impossible. That unless they collected and engulfed a specific set of molecules each day, they would not be able to respawn. Imagine! Cosmic radiation everywhere, constantly bubbling up from the dark matter of the universe, and they didn’t absorb it. I thought of the small one, under the surface, receiving none of the daily molecules. I imagined its body slowly shrinking and shrinking until it was no longer even an object.

I had to know what this was like. I perched myself on a raised piece of the surface, alone and still, and tried hard to imagine the possibility of not respawning. Being so deep in a liquid sea that there was no bubbling back. Being in space with no gravity to pull home. Being lost, in perpetuity. I felt a new stimulus—what was it? Like a sudden drop in temperature but nothing outside my body had changed. Was this how the Red felt all the time? I wanted to be in union with them and learn, even though I felt on some level I could not. Should not.

It was day 213. I put on the frayed metal covering that the small one had given me on the day of our dance. The gravitational pull of the others was acting on me, of course, but I took my time. I slid down a rocky slope. I rolled around a cluster of stalagmites and skated across an icy pool of ammonia under the darkening green sky. The moons were bright and only a few stars twinkled through. Slowly, I made my way to mother.

When I arrived, she was already a swirling mass of bodies, heaving and liquefying and emitting infrared. Dripping from the ceiling and rippling on the surface.

Child, she said, come.

I can’t, mother.

Come, she said. I felt the suction of her invisible tendrils drawing in around me.

Mother. I wanted to learn about the Red, and I have learned so much. They’re not dull! No, they are not. They laugh and they play, but not as we do. They cannot respawn. They call it Death.

Mother said nothing.

But why can’t we die, mother? I must try. I will remain separate.

If we don’t unite, we will not respawn, she said.

I’m sorry.

I remained at the entrance of the cave, tugging against her pull. I observed as mother pulsated and grew, and it seemed that she would engulf me if I did not retreat. Beneath me, there was only the slick surface with barely enough friction to push against. So I hardened myself, slamming my appendages down and cratering the surface so that I could drag myself away.

Resisting mother’s call, withholding from myself the joy of union with her, was the most difficult thing I had ever done. She pulled; I withdrew. Each effort left me weakened and trembling until only slowly did I perceive the new sensation awakening in me. It was not awe or pride or pleasure or wonder. It was a stimulus that none in my lineage had experienced. I felt it for the first time, just as the Red must have. What they called Fear. The intensity of it—buzzing, searing, overwhelming my other senses. I felt myself sliding back toward mother’s consuming embrace.

With a desperate heave, I lodged my appendage under a boulder and rooted hard. Mother pulled and pulled, and the vibrations became overpowering. I held. There was quaking and intense infrared emission as the thrumming reached its blistering peak. Then, ultraviolet and stillness.

Was this Death? No. It was something else.

When my senses adjusted, I could tell the cave had collapsed. A new generation of us uncoiled wetly from the heap of rock and ash. But something was wrong, because I no longer felt any union with the emerging spawn. The ambient pull had gone, utterly gone. And with renewed terror, I sensed something awful in the urgency and direction of their movements. I could not sense it through them as before, but I could understand it now as an observer: the intention of my brethren to repel me, to remove the outsiders.

They descended toward me, and I turned to go warn the Red of what I had done.