Orion's Belt

By Mark Thomas McDonough

“How long have I been on Prime now. Seven years? Five before the magnetic anomaly and two afterwards, not counting of course, the two hundred years in 'hib sleep', and still, there are so many mysteries on Prime.”

John remains alone until the mothership arrives. However, the rescuers inform him that they came not to rescue him, but to rescue their lagging human colony located on an asteroid named 'Hope'.

Nonetheless, John learns that a handful of adults volunteer to remain behind. The bad news: “Congratulations, John, you just became the ugly uncle to twelve children who think you're a cannibal.”

The possibility of another destructive solar magnetic anomaly constantly reminds John that, eventually, he must resolve the final equation: is Prime humankind's last hope?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665541978

Mark Thomas McDonough

Mark Thomas McDonough is a (retired) attorney. The author is a former paratrooper and veteran of Vietnam. He spent thirty-one years employed by the U.S. Army and federal government. Upon retirement, he retreated to the beautiful mountains of West Virginia. This is the author’s fifth novel, including his second science fiction project. His first sci-fi project was Roper: Three - Zero - Zero - One.

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PART I

CHAPTER 1

S quatting on the large rock and staring sharply down below, I was having another shitty day. Planet Prime is a beautiful planet, but not so much when you’re hungry, dirty, morose, and maybe more than a little bit worried. My stomach growled. I owned this protesting stomach. My name is John Kwan. The robots that raised me sometimes referred to me as servant or charge and in the rarest of moments Master John. The military had more precise nomenclature, referring to me frequently as trainee, asshole, dipshit, peon, or in the most generous of times private. I have answered and responded to a variety of insults and names during my life. As on so many other nutritionally challenged days in my vast experience, I ignored my stomach. It doesn’t like to be ignored, but since my brain is in charge, or at least it tries to be most of the time, I survive. When my brain ceases to function in this alien environment, I will die.

However, notwithstanding my stomach’s protest, if I had a choice between feeding my growl or drinking a hearty beer, I would have fought an old-fashioned yellow Earth tiger for that cold beer. Not that I or anyone else alive had ever truly seen a real tiger, as that species disappeared from human Earth, along with the vast majority of all large Terran mammals, long ago, perishing during the twenty-first century amid The Great Die-Off. Naturally, since I was born in the twenty-third century and raised in a boarding school removed from society, all my tigers were in picture books.

Immediately preceding my birth, the development of one of the most scintillating scientific inventions in modern humankind occurred: the Marcos Drive, developed by Jose Marcos, a recluse with limited social skills, or so the historical record reports. Thanks to Jose Marcos and his wonderful interstellar light-smattering space drive, I’m now stuck on this shitty alien planet, hungry and being stalked by a river monster. I hate river monsters. Thank you, Jose Marcos, you motherfucker! I was talking to myself, or the universe or the rocks, out loud again. Solitude will do that for you. Extreme solitude sometimes brings visions in the sky, faces in the stars, voices in the solitary nights.

I rubbed my scraggly chin. Hadn’t attempted a real shave in a month or more. From my vantage point on the high ridge, I continued my scrupulous survey of the colorful valley below. Orange blossoms and a cacophony of broad- and slim-leafed green vegetation intermixed with yellow flowers all merging with brown soil and black-gray rocks, which camouflaged many not-nice creatures hiding in the underbrush and hunting me for food.

I observed no movement. But observation alone remains an inexact science. In more than several instances, my natural senses have betrayed me, providing an all-clear signal only to find myself surprised on a trail facing a menacing beast. Yet the good news is that the local beasts had not yet acquired a taste for human flesh; at least for now, I was more an oddity to be investigated than food. While the beasts sorted out the details of what I was, I would take those few seconds to flee or climb or, when necessity required, to kill. In several places, I’d discerned piles of crushed animal bones, including cracked open skulls. This proved that something wicked lurked within the inviting, colorful valley below me.

Fortuitously, most of the local predators hunted one another for food, but nature had not placed me at the top of Prime’s food chain. Over the past two years, since awakening from the hibernation pod, I spent as much time hunting as fleeing from the hunt, dodging prodigious predators intent on filling their bellies. Through it all, while deliberately examining the valley below me, I wondered. Am I really the only human left alive on this planet?

Seems so, I responded out loud to myself.

Haven’t I always habituated in survival mode? Albeit never in caveman style. When I first arrived on Prime, I had a modern, equipped cabin, plenty of freeze-dried Earth food, company of sorts from a robot that drove me around in a miniature delivery cart, and numerous high-tech devices for entertainment and company. Not bad for a prison cell. Best of all, I had the entire planet to myself. Worst of all, I had the entire planet to myself. Boring? Yes, but not so bad if I obeyed the rules and restrictions and avoided hungry beasts.

My keepers had assured me that so long as I stayed within the limits of this narrow, forested valley, nothing injurious would happen to me. For five Terran years, I preferred not to test that assertion. However, The Event changed all of that, altering my reliable circumstances and thrusting me into my present stomach-growling predicament. Without keepers, hunger—the insatiable growling of the central abdomen—became a constant, irksome companion. I was often very hungry, but so were the increasing number of predators that began wandering into the valley at will. Whatever previously prevented their incursions must have ceased to function, as multitudinous hungry beasts now utilized my valley and me for food sources. Did Prime’s original designers and keepers construct electronic or other hidden barriers that had blocked easy access to my valley? No way to know for sure; but one thing I did know, more and more predators kept arriving and, except for some of the prior off-limit areas, that had never happened before in my valley.

Prime’s sun, which is also named Prime, rose overhead. Whomever or whatever named this star system and its habitable planet didn’t have much room for imagination. Maybe they could have identified this planetary body using a frigging number. I looked up at the shining sun—Prime. It would be a hot day, but gratefully, not a scorcher. Very rare to have a scorcher. Magnetic thunderstorms, that’s another story entirely. I always kept a nice cave or a deep hidey-hole nearby for those raging magnetic storms. They could last from a couple of hours to a few days. Worst case scenario was another full-blown magnetic event. In that case, without access to a deeper cavern, I was dead for sure. I sighed. Hope that doesn’t happen anytime soon. The last full-blown magnetic storm ruined my cabin, destroyed my robot friend, wiped out my high-tech power system, and left me truly all alone.

At a distance, my keen eyes observed a few red whisper birds soaring over a grove of orange-blossomed Jaspur trees. The floral scent drifted and softly permeated the air with perfume. I wondered if that scent guided insect feeders to their orange gold as did the scent of flowers on Earth and other planets. The blue sky above added context and hues to the lure of the land, camouflaging, as always, those fucking hidden predators. Thankfully, Prime had few nagging insects to sear and burrow into my skin; I mean, there are insects galore, especially during peak flowering season, but the insects hadn’t adapted to feeding on human blood yet, or else they managed a few bites but found my poor-protein blood unpalatable. However, dirt, grime, and heat gleefully took the lead on making me gruff, itchy, and slightly miserable. It’s hard to believe that at times I yearned for the good ol’ days when I was imprisoned in my high-tech prison cabin, instructed by artificial intelligence and computer programs as I conducted my daily scheduled and improvised activities.

Far, far away, I thought I could glimpse the ocean. Or was it a mirage? Out there. Way over there. I had been briefed by robots and computers before I landed that Prime did indeed have an ocean, a huge ocean, and it was just over that range of large hills and small mountains, all located a scant sixty miles away as the red whisper birds fly.

No visible safe travel lanes leaving the valley suggested themselves to me. I was stuck in the valley and totally stranded without supplies. As we used to say in the military, you’re stuck until the powers that be decide to ‘un-stick’ you. However, on planet Prime, there were no powers that be. Just me. Perhaps, I mused, it was good to be stuck here in familiar territory, my eerily Earth-like paradise valley. To the uninitiated, while the river might seem like it was safe for passage, its banks were strewn with piles of bones proving that the river was the main highway for the most savage of beasts, the river monster, which is a ferocious beast I’d rather not cross paths with on land much less encounter near or upon the water.

The sweet, subtle scent of orange-blossomed Jaspur trees wafted about me, producing a sense of contentment. That’s an easy way to die, I said out loud, wiping the feel-good thoughts immediately from my mind. No time for that. I turned quickly, searching for predators, especially the huge toad-like river monster that prowled my river valley. We both called it home, but only the river monster moved about freely and unmolested. I was definitely not at the top of the food chain. The river monster was a mean-looking creature, standing twice my size. I was grateful that it tended to stay close to the lazily moving river, snaking around several bends below me.

Occasionally, a juvenile river monster seeking its own territory entered my valley. If the smaller river monster encountered the huge river monster, the juvenile beast went running for the hills. If the juvenile river monster spotted me, I went running for the hills. I was reminded of this by a glance at the deep-riven scar on my left arm. That was six months ago. A close call for sure, causing me to spend more and more time at the higher elevations, which was keeping me much further away from the easy food and water necessary for continued survival. My stomach growled again. Patience, I muttered out loud.

How long had it been now? Five years before the anomaly, and now two years alone after surviving in the hib pod. Seven years total on planet Prime. I laid my crude spear upon the ground and wiped my roughened right hand across gaunt, hairy cheeks. Damn, what I wouldn’t give for a beer … a cold beer … and some people for company, or a robot, I yelled to all the clouds drifting above me. They didn’t respond. Finally, I decided that out of all the amusements that I missed from civilized life, it was cold beer that I really missed. Earth had risen to a galactic empire back in the day, but beer dated back to the time of the early dinosaurs battling cavemen on Earth, or so the tale goes. A nice cold brew was always relaxing on a hot summer day. Even in the military, when I was stationed on various god awful crummy planets, when sometimes, everything turned to shit in my hands, nothing turned made life all better than someone handing me an ice cold beer. Mankind conquered the galaxy using the Marcos Drive and three-hundred-and-sixty-four cases of cold beer.

Am I talking out loud again? Very loudly, I feared, for the red whisper birds had heard me and buzzed up and away for safety. They weren’t afraid of me; they just couldn’t tolerate my verbal outbursts on a planet filled with fruit and honey, and of course, river monsters. By my speaking out loud, I had given every predator prowling the southern half of the valley my precise location, which was bad for the nearby red whisper birds but much worst for me. Or were my intermittent primal outbursts necessary for survival?

I chuckled ruefully at my meandering thoughts, the birds’ distant flight, and my empty stomach. A robot will do, I yelled. Maybe a woman too. Upon reflection, it would be a genuine toss-up between what I really needed more: a beautiful woman or a cold beer. On a scale of one to ten, in personality I was a negative thirteen, but since I was the only male human on this planet, I figured I had an outside chance at befriending a lonely female. And where was the nearest female? Does anyone even know I’m here? Does anyone even make cold beer anywhere anymore? Was there even an empire?

A mostly cloudless sky. A handful of puffy pillows drifting overhead. A small cloud drifted and changed direction, almost silver in color. It moved haphazardly, navigating in zigzag patterns like a red whisper bird that had tasted too much rich fruit. The cloud drifted from the north of my valley southward toward me. Clouds rarely do that. Clouds never do that!

I yelled to the sky and the demons in the air, Clouds never do that!

With my exuberant verbal barrage, I began running, scrambling, shoving my way from my visual perch through the underbrush, cutting across the ridge, skipping down the long winding trail leading to the river’s edge. I dodged, ran like a wolf seeking dinner, making a beeline, running like a bat out of hell down the wooded side of my small mountain. Stems and leaves and bushes slapping me in the face, gripping my calves, pulling at my chest, blocking my way. Yet, I ran. I’m here! I’m here!

Oh my God, I thought. Let it be true. Let it be someone—anyone. Thus, I ran, realizing ten seconds later that I had, in my exuberance, forgot about my mortal enemy, the river monster. Oh shit! I thought, don’t let me get eaten by a river monster. Not after all this crap! Hence, I ran, even harder now. It had been a long two years all alone but for the whispering of birds and constant threat of predators, the fucking predators. Fuck the predators! I screamed. I’m here. Hold on. Don’t go away!

Despite my best gorilla-forced efforts to entice the silver cloud to drift in my direction, it didn’t spot me. Ignoring me, the silver teardrop drifted further and further away from my beating hooves. (Toes protruding from wrapped and rewrapped cotton and leather totally can be called hooves.)

Goddamn it, I hollered, but faintly, catching flickers of silver glints in the bright blue sky as the small silver cloud zigzagged away from me, heading northward up the valley. In one last challenge, I chose not to whimper. Assholes! Don’t fucking leave me here!

Then the cloud disappeared like morning dew on the yellow-green grass. The silver cloud zigzagged over a small mountain northwest of my location; the mountain was not ominous, obviously several klicks outside the valley’s perimeter. I’d never been there. The silver cloud’s departure left me gasping from the ordeal of intense running, dodging, and jumping. Now, covered with sweat, snot, and saliva-drivel, I dropped unceremoniously to my knees. Shit! I was now in the lower south valley—not a good place to be found puking my guts out. This part of the valley was river monster territory; it also was crawling with sucky, creepy-crawling, scary snake-like beasts. I referred to these crawlies as tanglers; questionable naming or not, I’d seen them drop on smaller critters, strangling them.

Fuck all of you, assholes. I whispered, cursing the gods that sent me here, while I bent over, heaving in utter exhaustion. People on Terra would have died to have my semi-starving six-pack of abdomen muscles. Breathing deeply, I stared about the rock-strewn ground that was covered with intermittently spread weeds and bushes, which all but impeded ordinary travel while hiding any creatures possibly wanting to ambush me for dinner.

I learned a long time ago from growing up as an abandoned child in the creche that whining is not a good defense mechanism. The creche, ceremoniously named The Echo Facility for Special Children, functioned as an old-fashioned, primitive orphanage of sorts, warehousing unwanted children until they could be military or otherwise useful. The facility that raised me professed to a design purpose of housing and feeding in need children, but as a pubescent teenager, it was not lost on me that my particular childhood experience seemed to emulate military experience seen in the vids. This was later confirmed during my military enlistment, when I saw the discernible similarity between my nanny robots and military drill instructors.

I screamed to the skies again! Waving my hands, gesticulating, I beseeched the gods of fortune, got to my tired feet, and began running in the general direction of the mountain northwest of the river. Taking my chances that the river monster would be entertained more than hungry, I kept running and waving my arms insanely. Amid my precarious predicament, I could not help but recall all my years, all seven of them, on this worthless, planet. My head felt ready to explode. My heart kept pumping more out of fear than purpose, and my feet, like dreams beneath me, moved like pistons, rocketing over sharp rocks. And I ran. Five years in total lockdown, subsisting alone on this prison planet called Prime. Then The Event occurred, a solar magnetic anomaly that vaporized my encampment, totaled most of the functioning electronic equipment on this planet, and forced me into the hibernation pod for two hundred fucking years, all spent in hib sleep. Now, two additional years scraping for food, I survived as best I could on my prison planet.

Until today, dodging hungry river monsters remained my primary order of business; and so I hustled—watching for hungry predators, assorted tanglers—and my mind continued racing as fast as my spinning feet … I kept running … motion propelling me forward, upwards, downwards.

My torn leather boots moved like blades on picturesque windmills; thus, at top hoof speed, I scrambled, but now, ever downwards, running down the hillside, closing the distance to the land of the river monster. All the while I prayed for the silver cloud’s return.

Stumbling. Sliding to my knees. Adrenaline overtaking me. Keep moving! I ordered myself. Sweat poured into my eyes, blinding me intermittently, causing me to stumble over the additional hidden outcrops of rocks, but I managed to keep to my feet. Why was I running? The teardrop, silver craft had already disappeared. But now, I’m in open land alongside the river, I responded and continued to move.

It was a gamble. A toss-up. Get eaten by the river monster or maybe catch a spaceship ride home, back to the empire, if there still was one. Get eaten by the river monster or maybe receive a cold beer. Trip over a tangler and be strangled alive, at least that’s what I feared after I saw those sketchy creepy-crawlers snaring small critters—strangling them alive, or … Keep moving! And my body protested, gasping, sobbing for oxygen, but it obeyed me. One thing I love about my body, in a pinch it always came through for me. I kept moving.

As I learned from Jaspur in my creche days at the Echo Facility, when all else fails ask yourself, How much do I want this?

The creche. Mostly raised by stoic, unsympathetic, impersonal robot nannies, except Jaspur, of course, that wonderful nurturing caregiver. Hadn’t thought of her in years. Once, when some of the creche older boys had slapped me around for fun, Jaspur took me aside and, scolding me, she asked, Where’s your guts, boy? Next time the boys approached me for some fun, I went a tad crazy and began slapping them around. I gave as good as I got. Afterward, I noticed how those particularly troublesome boys were suddenly gone. Why? Was it a lesson learned?

Several weeks later, Jaspur took me aside from my daily chores, and she asked me, John, have you ever heard of a female genius named Kwan? I shook my head no. John, are you sure? She was a geneticist from one of the older English territories. Again, I shook my head.

Jaspur, why are you asking me this?

Jaspur looked at me directly for a few moments, pausing before speaking. John, when you were very young that geneticist and her husband died in a mysterious aircar accident. Her husband invented the Marcos Drive. John, as you know, everyone knows that aircar accidents never happen; they are fail-proof travel.

Why are you sharing this with me, Jaspur? What does this have to do with me?

It has nothing to do with you, but it’s a sensitive subject. However, if you are ever asked anything about these people, you must also pretend you know absolutely nothing.

I shrugged. But Jaspur, I don’t know anything.

Good. Keep it that way. Never mention this subject or these famous people to anyone ever again. Now, get back to your chores. I noticed you’ve gotten rather lax in your chores lately. Move along. Puzzled, I departed.

Sometimes in the creche, I gambled, trading my dessert for a chance to visit the forbidden apple orchard, hoping not to get caught. Once you gamble, you can’t hold back; you must go for it.

Go for it! I urged myself in spastic fashion, inclusive of choking on sweat and regurgitated stew concocted from water mixed with flowers and the flesh of an unknown animal that resembled a Terran rabbit. Do it now!

My feet pummeled me tortuously through Prime’s heavy, grasping, clawing thickets. Moving my arms tai chi-like through the bushes, my knees went up and down, imitating machined pistons … up and down, up and down; flowing like the wind occasionally, stumbling like a drunken monkey most of the time, and I went for it. I hadn’t realized there were so many thorn bushes growing alongside the lazy river.

Thickets ripped, slashing the skin off my arms and legs. Thorns found the creases in my clothes and ripped them off my torso. I really wanted that spaceship ride home, and a beer, and maybe to see real people or even a fucking robot again. Gambling even against the rampaging river monster that controlled this territory—I gambled it all. In my heart, I just hoped the silver cloud soaring in Prime’s beautiful sky spotted me before the local river monster took another shot at chasing me as a tasty meal. For my short-lived academic career, no one had ever accused me of being particularly cerebral. Ridiculously, as I ran, I have to admit that I wondered, just for a nanosecond mind you, if, possibly if, a miraculously inconceivable if, there could be an attractive woman in that silver cloud. As a fallback position, I would take any human face. Seven years on Prime. Far too long for a total loss of human companionship.

CHAPTER 2

I nitially, I made notes—on tech devices, old-fashioned note cards—just cryptic written meanderings, authored more for amusement, writing to and for myself. Talking out loud was a second, backup form of entertainment. However, no one listened or cared. Thus, I transcribed words on paper, cardboard, my memory, an electronic recording device when available. Noticeably, what with me not having any crystal levitation devices, I didn’t build any fantasia-like pyramids for transmitting messages across space and time.

Yet, I continued writing my story; bored, I