This challenge was to write a short story that begins with the following line from John Mayer’s new album Continuum: "Gravity is working against me and gravity wants to bring me down."
Gravity is working against me, and gravity wants to bring me down. I'm floating here in my escape pod with too much time to think, too much time to relive the events that brought me to this point, too much time to second guess our actions and reactions. What if we had done this... or maybe that...? Would the Numidians still have blasted our ship into smithereens? Was there any possibility that we could have talked our way out? After all, we were only on a peaceful mission, exploring and trying to learn more about our galaxy. We had no warlike intent. Our shields and weapons were for purely defensive purposes.
When we approached the Numidian system, there were no warning buoys or beacons, so we presumed the Federation found nothing dangerous here. It didn't occur to us that the Federation had never had anyone report back from scouting expeditions to this region of space. It appeared to be just a lovely little planet, much resembling Earth as it looks from space. We were so excited to pick up radio signals coming from the surface of the fourth planet in the system. Our universal translator seemed to be working perfectly, and before long, we had enough of a vocabulary to be able to communicate with them.
Seeing them on our screens, we were amazed. They were tall, thin, ethereal looking beings who looked as if a good breeze would blow them away. And their speech was so soft and melodic in sound. Their eyes were large and luminous. Their hair was so unusual, resembling feathers more than hair, really. They seemed almost like angels to us. Perhaps that's why everything went to hell in a hand basket so quickly. We just weren't expecting them to respond so violently to what was an innocent mistake.
We opened discussions with them, first requesting permission to land a small party on the surface of the planet. This was adamantly refused. We then invited them to send a small delegation to visit our ship. That they were willing to accept, and so we beamed the three Numidians aboard. We took them into the Captain's Mess where refreshments were served. We invited them to share a meal with us, and they accepted. While it was being prepared, we entered negotiations with them regarding trade between our two worlds. They seemed pleased with the prospect, and we were, too.
Our meal was finally ready to be served and smelled so delicious. As it was being served, the Numidian who seemed in charge of the delegation sniffed at the aroma intently. "What manner of food is this?" As we explained that it was chicken, he seemed puzzled because of course the word was not readily translatable by the universal translator, at least not without a lot more input. So, we started showing them pictures of animals from Earth. "And to which of these is this food related?" he asked. We pointed out the chickens and birds, explaining that chickens were raised as food on our planet but that this meat was actually created in our food replicators.
How could we have been prepared for their reaction? There was just no way we could have known. No way at all! Not without a lot more time spent learning about them. We couldn't have known that on their planet evolution had taken an avian path. We couldn't have known that to them we had just committed an unforgivable sin.
They rose as one and harshly demanded to be beamed back down to the planet. Our pleas for an explanation were summarily dismissed! So we acceded to their demands and let them go.
Once we were alone again, we began trying to figure out what had just happened. Eventually someone suggested feeding a picture of a Numidian into the computer for analysis. Imagine our shock when it came back that they were related to birds! We had just invited them to dine on their ancestors, in effect.
Well, the retaliation didn't take long. We were only able to make it into the escape pods because of an alert crewman scanning the planet when the pulse of light came from the surface towards the ship. The pods were flung everywhere. I couldn't see any others as I floated in my orbit above the Numidians' world. Try as I might I don't see how we could have figured it out in time to avoid this catastrophe.
My orbit is decaying, slowly but surely. Gravity is working against me, and gravity is trying to bring me down. It shouldn't be long now...
Copyright © 2006 by Judith Ann Neary. All rights reserved.
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