Whisps

By John Teehan

Xenopologist Andrew Bishop heads off to the new colony world of Desiderata to investigate reports of a previously-unknown planetary intelligence. Worlds collide as Bishop is presented with the possibility of life in a form entirely new to his experience.

This is a fun, thoughtful first-contact sort of story suitable for readers both young and old.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Teehan
• Release date: Mar 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301210718

John Teehan

John Teehan is a writer, artist, musician, and all-round stand-up sort of guy, ya know? He hails from the wild salt marshes of West Warwick, RI where he can be often found taunting sleeping dragons and mooning passing spaceships. Yeah... the town council isn't sure what to do about all of that.

Book preview

Whisps

by John Teehan

Copyright 2013 John Teehan

Smashwords Edition

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Chapter 1

On Desiderata the natives communicate without misunderstanding or contradiction of meaning--be it purposeful or not. If one native knows the difference between a truth and a lie, they all know. Perhaps that is the greatest barrier in communication between our two species. For us, the difference between truth and falsehood lies in the individual.

--Will of the Whisps, Andrew Bishop, 520, B.E.

Among themselves, they had no name for their world. It was simply their world. A place for existence--a frame of reference--with an environment pleasant enough where life was calm, and pale blue skies which stretched across the horizons, punctuated occasionally by small clouds that saw to it that cycled moisture through the ecosystem from time to time.

Then one day a group of alien ships arrived carrying a form of life much different from their own. After some initial contacts and probings, a conversation of sorts took place:

They are a limited and frail species, said one.

Nonetheless, replied another, they have spanned many worlds.

Their strength lays in their number, commented yet another.

One paused, then said, They vary much from our experience. We should touch them further.

They may not be strong enough.

Then we will touch them lightly. Coax them. We must communicate.

Perhaps they will go away, suggested another.

We know they will not, one said.

We could destroy this specific infestation, but more would come. We must make them understand, and soon.

This is your will? another asked.

Millions of others spoke all at once, then quickly became silent.

This is our will, one finally said.

So it is, then, replied all the many others.

Andrew Bishop leaned back in his chair with his feet propped up on his desk, closed his eyes, and gave his thoughts a good long stretch. He visualized a simple man back on old Earth--back when fire was the latest rage and the wheel but a dream--and looked up at the stars, wondering what all those twinkling lights were about.

From that primitive man he travelled forward in time and imagined the stars above as points of dazzling light painted inside a bowl covering the Earth. He listened to tribal elders tell stories of hunters, wizards, and great chiefs whose souls became stars. Up in the night sky a warrior armed with the club stalked a lion. Or perhaps he saw a bull and a maiden. Behind them, an eagle plummeted to snatch up an unwary rabbit.

Much later he’d look at stars and took comfort in their constancy. With the stars as his guide, a man could navigate a ship through perilous seas to explore new horizons; open up new lands. Meet new and fascinating peoples and civilizations.

Eventually he’d view the stars through gigantic lenses and begin to investigate the origins of the universe. He would ask serious questions. Were there other planets like his own? Was there life out there in a universe full of stars?

Eventually he would come to learn of the vast distances between stars, and be discouraged, but the dream remained. The dream to explore and to discover. The dream to touch the stars and make them his own.

That dream would be realized. But when it was--mankind would experience a bit of a shock.

To their surprise, the galaxy turned out to be teeming with life. Intelligent life. Mankind had so long been the center of its own universe, that despite all the conjecture and wonder, they had never really been fully prepared for the possibility of intelligent life besides themselves. In many ways, more than a seven hundred years after the first human met its first nonhuman intelligence on an planet orbiting Tau Ceti, the human race still wasn’t quite ready to accept that it was not the only jewel of God’s creation.

A noise interupted