Young Writers Society

Chapter 2 – What Makes Us Human

None of the people in the village believed her. In hindsight, Elly wasn’t sure why she expected them to, considering how ridiculous the story was, but she had to tell someone. Her aunt, her parents, her uncles, her friends and all five of her cousins all assumed she must have seen a mirage in the desert, or drank some fermented juice in the jungle. She had gone to every elder in the village before even considering her parents or her aunt, but despite being rather level headed about it, none of them were willing to believe it without seeing it.

Elly knew she wasn’t crazy, and first thing in the morning set out to find him again, water skin and dried meat in hand. On the way there, she grew horrified at the thought that he would be gone, and she would have no way of knowing who he was or where he came from, but sure enough, when she arrived, there he was.

B’s face was somehow more distressed than it had been the first day, and she could tell he had cried a few more times during the night. His face looked paler now (still more red than hers), and weathered. His body looked stiff, even for something apparently coated in rock. When he saw her approach, his eyes had a certain desperation to them, and she wondered what had happened to him during the night.

“Hi. I brought you more water.”

His hand shook as he reached out to take it from her. His brow furrowed as he drank, and he didn’t give off the sense that it relieved him at all.

“I hope you slept well...” Elly said cautiously. B looked up. His eyes said it all.

“I-“ The words seemed to get caught in his throat. “I need to find a way to stay warm at night. Like maybe I could dig a hole, or drape something over me while I sleep to keep the warmth in?”

Elly raised her eyebrows. “Like a blanket?”

B stared dumbly at her face.

“You don’t know what a blanket is,” she asked, the words sounding more like a statement than a question. “I’ll get something to drape over you that should help you stay warm, but for now, you should probably eat something.” Elly looked down at the potato in the sand, which now had a total of two small bites out of it. Judging by the weak expression on B’s face, she assumed the second bite had also ended up on the ground. The girl held out the piece of dried meat. B stared at it for a moment questioningly.

“That’s a dead animal, isn’t it.”

“It’s part of one, yes...”

“Don’t tell me you eat that too.”

Elly scoffed. “You can’t just waste away here in the desert. If you don’t eat, you’ll die. Do they not have common sense where you come from?”

B chuckled and quietly repeated “common sense”, before lying back onto the rocky sand. “I can waste away perfectly fine thank you. Watch me.”

Elly was stupefied. There were few people in the village as stubborn as her, much less more stubborn. She couldn’t understand why someone would prefer to starve to death when there were other options, but she wasn’t going to let him get away with it if she could help it. At the very least, he was going to explain some things to her before he died, that much she would make sure of.

“So... if they don’t eat roots or meat where you come from, what do they eat?”

B sat up. For a second he seemed to be asking himself if someone like Elly really existed, that he had to explain all this to her. “We eat nutrients.”

Elly gave him a blank stare. “That means absolutely nothing to me.”

This time it was B who scoffed. “Do you know anything about human biology?”

“Biology is... a type of dance?”

The boy sighed heavily. “Why don’t you ask something else, this would really take a while for me to explain.”

“Okay... what is that giant green flower bud behind you?”

B turned around in shock, as if worried something had snuck up on him. After doing a full three-sixty, he realized what she was talking about.

“That?” he asked, pointing at the flower. Elly nodded. “that’s a jettison pod. It’s what-“ he paused and looked bitterly at the ground, tears welling in his eyes. “It’s what I came here in.”

Whatever it was that kept making him so unhappy seemed to come back to him, and his mouth twisted into a grimace to fight back his tears.

“Does it have to do with the reason you’re sad?”

His face blackened. B’s eyes drilled a hole into the dirt in front of him, and Elly decided it was time to change the subject.

“Why are you... green?”

B looked up, the sadness on his face replacing itself with amusement. “Why are you brown?” He asked, pointing down at the tan leather shirt and pants Elly wore.

“Well that’s simple. The animal hide they made this out of was brown. What’s your excuse, you’re part lizard?”

“What’s a-? Never mind. The suit I’m wearing has a protective layer on the outside made of a green glass polymer. It’s pretty standard for technocrats.”

Elly’s eyes widened. She didn’t understand nearly every other word, but she was definitely making progress. “What’s a technocrat?”

B let out a long pained groan. “Listen,” he said, after a pause, “There are probably a lot of things that you won’t understand even if I explained them to you, so I don’t know why I’m even bothering to talk to you. Why do you care so much anyway? I thought I asked you to leave me alone and let me die.”

Elly was starting to feel something new towards B. She wasn’t just curious now, she was mad. “Are you stupid?” She spat angrily. B looked up in surprise.

“What?”

“Do you have any idea what you being here means to me? Are you really that stupid that you think you’re the only one in the world who matters?”

B opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t decide on what to say, and closed it. Elly continued.

“All my life I’ve looked up at the sky and wondered if anyone was looking back. Now I know for sure that someone, probably a lot of someones, was, and you just want me to be content with that? You fell from the sky! You’re not allowed to just do something like that and expect that you won’t have an impact on anyone!”

The words seemed to sink in for B like water into the ground, and the boy pursed his lips and looked stern. His eyes glanced up to hers, and then back down to the ground. He almost started to cry again, but Elly wasn’t finished.

“Did you even stop to consider how I might feel about all this?”

B looked puzzled, and then seemed to understand. He met her eyes again, this time with a sort of confidence. “I see now. This must be a lot to take in for you if you’ve never seen- well someone like me before. It’s understandable that you’d be curious. I’ve been somewhat rude to you, and I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Elly said.

The two youths paused for a moment, and then B’s face broke out into a wide grin. “You wanna see something interesting?”

Elly furrowed her brow and nodded cautiously. B pressed his pointer finger to the spot on his neck where his skin met the green covering. To Elly’s utter amazement, the green all over the boy’s body began to move. As if the entire covering had suddenly turned into water, it began to slide off of him with great speed, but the truly amazing thing was that it wasn’t just sliding down. In fact, most of it was sliding up, pooling onto the boy’s arm, and eventually coalescing into a small green ball in the palm of his hand. B was now no longer green; he was white, covered from feet to neck in a skintight garment whiter even than milk. Elly had never seen anything so perfectly white, and in the bright desert sun, he really did look like an angel.

“Here,” he said, offering her the green orb. This must be how he felt taking the potato, Elly mused as she gingerly held out her hand to take it. B dropped it into her palm, and to her surprise, it was hard, like a stone.

“But thats-“

“Impossible?” B grinned from ear to ear now, relishing her surprise.

“Beyond impossible.”

“You can keep it,” he chirped, standing up. “It’s mostly useless without a power core anyway.”

Elly was examining the orb so intently that she hardly noticed the boy had crept back into the flower pod thing.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to see if there are any other toys lying around for you to play with. Just that small display seemed to make you pretty happy,” he called from within the petals. Elly peeked over the edge of it to try and see what he was doing.

“Since when do you care about making me happy?”

“I figure it’s the least I can do,” he called back, “You helped me, and I wasn’t very appreciative, so I’m trying to make it up to you.”

Elly smiled. His attitude turned around surprisingly quickly, she thought. Almost too quickly... I should be careful until I know more about him. Still, Elly’s curiosity got the best of her, and she cautiously climbed over the large green petal of the pod and stood inside it with B.

The inside was just like the exterior, smooth, green, and vaguely translucent. As she looked closer, there were occasional holes in the sides of the petals that B seemed to be searching the inside of. On one of the petals was a panel with tiny green lights blinking mildly.

“Well, I couldn’t find anything in any of these containers, but there’s still the built-in log in the onboard terminal,” B said. “You might like this.”

“There’s wood inside this thing?”

B chuckled. “Not that kind of log.” He slid his finger along the lights on the panel in a complicated pattern that Elly couldn’t follow. When he was finished, he turned away from her and began to speak.

“This is 21-B-6 making my first log recording on- well, wherever I am.” When he finished, he slid his finger once more over the lights and turned to Elly with a smile.

“Now what?” she asked, a little worried over the fact that he had just addressed the wall of the pod. Maybe I shouldn’t have let him spend the night in the desert, she thought. Instead of responding, he slid his finger along the lights in another pattern and turned back towards her.

“This is 21-B-6 making my first log recording on- well, wherever I am.”

Elly’s mouth dropped completely open. “There’s another person? No it’s not that. You can speak without moving your lips? How are you doing that?!”

B tapped the light again, and the sentence repeated, exactly as it had the first two times.

“It’s coming from that panel,” Elly observed. “So you can capture a voice? And use it over and over again?”

B smiled. “You catch on quick. It’s essentially like that.”

“Does it ever run out?”

“Only when the power core does. And that should be in about a day or two, give or take.” The boy grimaced, remembering his current situation. His stomach growled loudly.

Elly stepped out of the pod. “We’ve got to fix this food situation. I hope you’ve reconsidered your decision to starve to death.”

“Even if I did,” say the boy, “I’m not sure I’m able to stomach what you eat here. Are you sure you don’t have anything else to eat?”

Elly thought for a bit. “There are berries in the woods sometimes, but they’re hard to find. I’ll try to get some for you.”

“Thanks.”

***

Elly did find the berries, but by the time she had a sizable amount, it was nearly dusk. She hurried back to the village to pick up a spare blanket, and returned with haste, not wanting to be caught in the woods after dark and risk being attacked by a beast. B thanked her for the blanket and the food and she sprinted home, clutching the green orb in the pouch pocket of her shirt.

She still knew so little, but she felt like she was understanding more and more every second. She now knew that he called himself a technocrat, whatever that was, and that he wasn’t actually green. That alone was a huge step in the right direction, but there were so many questions left unanswered. In any case they would have to wait till tomorrow.

“Elly Ma, where on earth have you been?”

Elly looked over at her aunt, who was sitting cross-legged on her bedding with a stern expression. There would be no sneaking into the tent while she slept this time.

“I was picking berries.”

“All day, and most of the night too? I know you like to explore, believe me, your mother was the same way as a girl, but you can’t make this a habit. We missed you at the bonfire, and believe it or not, there are still potatoes to pick, even during a bumper harvest.”

“I’m sorry Aunt Ki, I know you worry about me, but I’m fifteen now; you really shouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t have to, if you would worry about yourself once in a while. What if you got eaten by a wolf or a bear in the woods?”

“I’ll be more careful about when I come home in the future... I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Aunt Ki sighed. “You’re not entirely wrong. The reason you don’t sleep in your parent’s tent anymore is so you’ll grow into a woman without people worrying over you and making all your decisions for you, but I’m worse than your mother. So much for custom.”

Elly smiled warmly.

“I just want what’s best for you, Elly. You know that.”

“I do.”

The girl reached out and embraced her aunt. “You know, by the way...” Elly started.

“Hmm?”

“I wasn’t lying about that boy I met. He’s really not from around here, and I really met him in the desert.”

The girl’s aunt looked at her for a long while with a puzzled visage. “Are you feeling alight? Maybe you should talk to Elder Kyo.” she said finally.

Elly sighed and wished her aunt good night. She knew she would understand eventually. Aunt Ki is nothing if not reasonable, thought Elly. As she drifted off to sleep, she wrapped her hand around the green orb like a child clutching a doll, and wondered how B was doing.

The next day, when Elly made her way back to the site of the crash, she knew at a distance that something was wrong. For starters, there was an awful lot more purple than there should have been. Her heart starting to beat faster, Elly broke into a run and came upon B, a few steps from the pod, sprawled face down on the ground. The blanket she had given him was a good distance away, as if he had thrown it at some point. All around him were spots of purple mush that looked like someone had crushed the berries Elly had found and tossed them on the ground.

“B!” she called, realizing in horror that he might not be alive. To her relief, he looked up at her, but his face didn’t fill her with confidence. His eyes were bloodshot beyond belief; his skin was almost as pale as hers, and his white jumpsuit was now covered completely in sand and stained with drops of purple.

“B, what happened?”

The boy blinked weakly and tried to roll over. “You told me those berries were safe to eat...”

“They are safe to eat; I’ve been eating them for years! What happened to you?”

“My body isn’t acclimated to food this... raw. I threw them all up,” he moaned, and crawled to his knees. Elly didn’t know what to say.

“I didn’t sleep at all,” he continued. “I haven’t eaten in days, and the nights are as cold as the days are hot here. I- I just want to die already!” His last statement echoed over the rocks and made Elly’s blood feel cold.

“Fine,” Elly spat. B looked up, shocked to hear her so accepting of the idea. “If you want to die in the dust like a coward, that’s your choice and I can’t stop you.”

B seemed to be trying to figure out if she was serious or not, and said nothing.

“But you owe me one thing before you do,” she continued. The boy tilted his head. “You owe me an explanation. You have to at least tell me what you’re so upset about that you’d rather die than live. You owe me that much.”

B started to answer, but gagged suddenly, and spat a tiny bit of purple onto the sand. His dry heaving transitioned slowly into sobs, and tears filled his eyes once again. “You want to know so badly?” B asked through labored breaths. “I’ll tell you. I’m from space. I’m from beyond the sky. I used to fly among the stars and planets; I used to see things... I used to do and create things you couldn’t even begin to imagine. I lived a perfect life, and it only got more promising every day. I was a prodigy, a visionary. Men and women twice my age looked up to me. That’s the life of a technocrat. If you’re good with technology, they worship you, and I was among the best. And then... And then I did something bad. Something really bad. One of the few things that warrants banishment, the harshest penalty short of death. So they kicked me out. They took all my tech, everything I owned, and they stranded me on this shitty rock to die. You want to know why I’m upset? There you have it. I used to be a god, and now I’m a worm. If you were in my position you’d want to die too, but you can’t understand how I feel.”

B turned his back to Elly and put his head in his hands.

“You’re right,” she said. “I can’t. I can’t even conceive of what life was like for you before all this, and I don’t know anything about technocrats or banishment. But I do know about life. My younger brother died when he was six months old,” Elly said, tears welling in her eyes. B shifted slightly, as if he wanted to say he was sorry for her loss, but reconsidered it.

“I didn’t get a choice,” She continued bitterly. “He died, and there was nothing I could do. I would have liked to have known him, but now I never will. Life is hard. I’ve lived my whole life on this “shitty rock”, and every day I wake up with a smile and pick potatoes. Why? Because that’s what humans do. We don’t sit down and take tragedy quietly. We keep moving.” Elly wiped the tears from her eyes. “We move on and we deal with it. We fight, we adapt, we handle it. Because that’s what makes us human.”

She paused, and her words rang through the desert air, mixing with the whistling of the wind over the rocks. B stayed with his back turned to her, and she wondered if he was still listening.

“So fine,” she said. “If you still want to die, I won’t bother you anymore; waste away for all I care. But know this: if that’s what you choose, you’re actively giving up the one thing they didn’t take from you.”

B rose his head slightly, but didn’t face her. Elly clutched the orb in her pocket.

“The one thing they can never take from you. Your humanity.”

As her last words sunk in, B seemed to quiver, gently at first, but now violently. His hand shook heavily as he rose and reached out for something on the ground. It was the potato. As he moved towards it, Elly caught a glimpse at his face, and remarked that the sadness seemed gone from it. As he brought the potato to his mouth, she could see that his hand was shaking not out of fear, but out of anger. In one brutal motion, he took a large bite out of the sandy root and swallowed it. The first bite seemed to give him courage, and he attacked it again and again, tearing bits off with his teeth like a wild animal. Elly was dumbstruck. B wasn’t just eating the potato, he was devouring it. It was as if his hunger had completely overpowered him, but it couldn’t just be that, there was something else. There was a certain spitefulness to how he ate it, like it was the one thing that stood between him and all his goals.

Having eaten most of the potato, B turned towards Elly with an expression as sickly as it was content. “You’re wrong,” he said, taking another violent bite with disgusted expression. “My humanity isn’t the only thing they can’t strip from me. I’ve still got my intellect.”

Elly held up the green orb, almost by instinct.

“You showed me that even the least of what I can do is an incredible feat here,” He said, washing down bits of potato with a swig of water. “You’ve got practically nothing and you’re still moving forward. The least I can do is use my knowledge to help your village and repay your kindness.”

Elly didn’t know what to say as he continued to bite the potato with vicious fervor. She smiled warmly and for the first time since his arrival, had to look up to meet his eyes.

“But in all seriousness,” said B, holding up the last of the root before popping it in his mouth. “You should really be cooking these things.”