Looking for a New Life – The Space Cuckoo
Not right here, or right now. But elsewhere, in a far future.
Looking for a New Life
The telescope operators and their data imbibers continue to assess exoplanets on the basis of a pristine natural environment. They're looking for water, methane, carbon dioxide – the building blocks and metabolised waste of carbon-based lifeforms. But our species' expansion isn't developing towards such a state. You only need to extrapolate what humans are doing to Earth, our sole reference point for this comparative search for distant signs of life, to realise that.
As we replace jungle and plain with monoculture and factories; tear up woodland for more bricks, tar and concrete; pollute every continent and ocean with chemicals, plastic and hormones; irreversibly damage and disrupt the trophic webs of interconnected life across land and ocean; as we still try to eat what's left whilst burning carbon in a hurried, purposeless pursuit of a better life; none of those trustworthy life signatures we so eagerly seek on other worlds will be visible to those who might be searching for us. If there are such beings, they will assume we are already dead or dying; a short, destructive span of trivial existence. or that yet another planet's most successful – and disruptive – organisms have upped and left.
These aliens (which we oddly always assume resemble us in both morphology and psychology) might have already achieved, unwittingly or deliberately, what we continue to plough towards. Or they might also be looking for a lifeboat to save themselves. But the planet we're killing presents no such long-term opportunity. So we'll be left to drift alone, because that's the signal we're sending into the rest of the universe: that this is a dark place to raise your offspring, a failed place to prosper. This is only a planet to learn from the unwittingly suicidal, yet still sentient. The soon-to-be-dead.
Unless…
The Space Cuckoo
The Makers had taught us size was a matter of perspective. That our sliding scale depended as much on an observer’s skewed perception as any distance. Within this galaxy’s outer slice, we’d laboured to discover new ways of embracing our voracious needs. We practised as often as our training allowed, enticing pseudo-hosts to crave their moment of wonder and approach our tiny, bright stars. When they bent their course tighter, spiralling in towards us, we shrank our frame, condensing our strung-out matter.
Curiosity shouldn’t be a cold, premature killer. Instead, our disguise led them to bind to us, until we could indulge in the most intimate of embraces allowed by this universe’s random dance. The empty husks of countless absorbed hosts now littered the liminal spaces between the old and the new; between the dying stars we once lived amongst, and the bright newborns the Makers – through their grace and mystery – had led us to.
<cuckoo = a brood parasite, former resident of Earth>“Sensors report something off the port bow, Captain.”
“Something? I need specifics, Ensign.”
“It’s dispersed, Ma’am. Denser than the earlier stellar dust. Diameter estimated at one tenth AU. No, wait. It’s shrinking, like a…”
“Velocity?”
“Er, unsure. It’s… it’s collapsing into itself. No obvious reference frame.”
“Curve us about, Pilot. Two mil-cliks on a radial from the object. Place it broadside to port.”
“Aye, aye, Ma’am.”
<cuckoo = strange, weird or bizarre>They are intrigued – as they should be. For we can emanate a breathless beauty. Camouflage comes in many forms. A cloak of deceit is too obvious, but an oddity in the void is almost irresistible. We collapse ourselves to match their distance with the teasing details we wish to display; large enough to remain visible; small enough to be enigmatic. Until we can sense their simplicity within the vacuum’s transparency.
<cuckoo = binaural tone utilising space-time mediation (ref: ‘ansible’)>“Sensor update, Ensign. What do we have here?”
“It’s biological, Ma’am.”
“You’re positive?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Both mutational and counter-entropic to background noise.”
“No imaging possible?”
“Resolution remains insufficient, despite closing intercept.”
We had found an egg to be the most accepted universal form: helpless yet filled with potential. For those strung between the stars in a skein of wandering ignorance, we display to our finders only what is required to trigger sufficient remorse. For they will also have memories of unforgivable acts of planetary self-destruction. It is why they are here.
So when they spy us, we do not show.
When they slide up beside us, we do not show.
When they feel brave enough to grip us, we do not show.
When they are finally curious enough to take us inside, seared scars of guilt ensure our keepers become attentive nurturers of a fragile new life.
<cuckoo = mad, insane, off their trolley>“Ma’am, team reports successful capture.”
“Initiate screening and report.”
“No radiation, Ma’am. Reflectivity is nominal. Magnetism negligible. No micro or macro secretions, or even accretion. Skin is… inert. Odd.”
“Magnify visual, please. Closer…. What are those markings?”
“Superficial cracks and brittleness indicate several millennia of interstellar ablation.”
“And those strange projections?”
“I believe it might be analysing us.”
“What?”
<cuckoo = a necessary deceit to survive, even thrive. A lie.>Imprinting had never been a problem – not only the physical but also the mental, the emotional, even the spiritual. Our successful incubation satisfied our host’s care and curiosity. It also fed us their wants and fears, their deepest joys and darkest desires; it allowed our lie to break free in an abrupt, violent hatching.
We ingressed into their dreams, pushing naïve nurturing to the brink of insanity. As they gazed into the precipice of eternity we fed from their untethered minds. As they fell into our gravity’s well, freed from rational thought, our potent new form was suffused in universal ecstasy. As our lifecycle concluded, we gave thanks to the Makers’ infinite well of charity.
<cuckoo = the first sign of Spring (trad.)>
This is so unsettling and chilling! You really honed in on the vastness and seeming emptiness of space in such a masterful way, and the interspersed cuckoo definitions were a fantastic touch!
After reading this I think I must retire from writing. It’s brilliant!