The Untold Story

June 22 5561, that was the morning that everything changed, I woke that morning and I felt it, something was wrong, something in the days plan was not going right, it was 0:500 and the crewmaster had not shown his face, he always showed his face at 04:45 and yell “all right you bunch of lay space crap, get your asses out of bed, there’s work to be done” Frances was 17 in life years old, a redhead pimple face punk, who probably got the position from knowing someone; who knew someone; who knew someone and so on, that was how things worked with Terra Corporate, well I didn’t care I’m 46 in life years and I did my job. I was the best aqua-terra-transformer that corporate had, they knew it, I knew it and Frances knew it, he used the smarts he had, or I should say the little he had, he stayed away from me. I didn’t need to kiss ass to become the head of my department.

The other people were starting to stir out of bed, there were comments on why he had not shown up yet, I heard someone say “I think he got a new pimple on his face and is afraid if it pops he’ll ruin all our work” I heard Catherine respond “well if Frances even goes near my project and ruins it, he’ll be kissing T-Corps ass all the ways back to Earth” Catherine's a tough broad, but with real nice curves, she talks tough, but she can be a softie, she only acts tough and that’s because she the only female in the group, her dark brown hair makes her look like she 18, but she has no qualms telling you she’s 25 and the best nanonite handler in the solar-system, this was the third terra-tranformation planet we have worked on together. 

Patrick had turned on the multiplex viewer and was checking out what the planet looked like, he was my assistant, and he had been with me for the past 10.5 life years. I was hoping it would be a good day to work on the blue ocean….we just called it the blue ocean, the color was really going to be dark red and that’s because of the two suns that this system has. The fractural colors from the two suns give the sky a pink tinge and that gives the water the dark red look, added to that, the whole planet itself is a dark red color; there wasn’t much I could do about it.

There were a couple of things I had not tried. I put in a request for some additional equipment to see if it would be possible to have the water take on a blue or clear tinge color, but T-Corp in their infinite wisdom didn’t want to spring for the extra equipment, the word from T-Corp was…



‘Frank, after careful review we think that a planet with dark

red water system would be a change of pace from the mundane

and predictable blue or clear color, so in light of this decision

we feel that the need for the extra equipment will not be cost

effective to send, we acknowledge your great contribution to

(Planet Staxtion) keep up the good work, we here at the

Terra Corporation know that you will have the planet looking

just like Earth’



Just like Earth? did they even know what earth looked like? they should have, they were on it, I’ve only seen viewer pictures of earth, never been there myself, T-Corp must have be out of their space fairing minds if they thought I was going to perform some miracle, what was I suppose to do, stick my finger in the water and will it to the same pigmentation as earth, look like earth, with a pink sky a red planet and dark red water. What was going to be next, go to earth and change the water there so it matched Staxtion,

I made sure I saved that message to my secure net-box, just encase they came back later and said I didn’t do my job correctly, I also encrypted it into a message that I sent to my sister Leu, so she could put it into her secure net-box. …. Earth is our planet of origin; it’s the planet our race came from.

I went over to the multiplex viewer and asked Patrick what it looked like, he turned to me with a look of confusion “just like it did yesterday, but empty” and he hesitated “there’s no one out there”

“What do you mean” I said “there no one out there, Paul’s crew is supposed to be working on the night plants”

The others heard what Patrick said and started to crowd around, speculation was flying everywhere. Catherine moved next to me “could they be having a meeting and we were not told” she asked

“No Frances would have told us” I answered.

Michael the day-plant department head was on the other side of Patrick “what if Frances just went and decided not to wake us up and say he told us, which would put us out of sorts with T-Corp” he said

“If he did that, I’ll pop that pimple right off his shoulders” Catherine yelled, making hand gestures to the effect of strangling him.

I turned around to face everyone “slow down, first I don’t see Frances doing anything like that to us, he maybe a shit punk, but he’s not that much of a shit punk, there has got to be a reason why Paul’s crew is not out there”

Someone yelled out “like what” I didn’t see who said it.

“Maybe there a new weather development and they had to come in, maybe someone from Corp is here and had them come in, I don’t know the answer, but there’s got to be a reason, we’ll find out when we go up, but right now I’m going to take a shower, I don’t feel like going up there smelling like a Dieoxan Beast, especially if Corp is here” ….you don’t know what a Dieoxan Beast is, well it’s really not a beast, it’s one of the indigent animal life forms on a planet that was named Dieoxan that I helped terra-form, it looks a lot like an old earth animal called a buffalo, you don’t know what a buffalo is either, never mind the point I was trying to make is that this beast can be smelled as far as away as a kilometer and if their in a pack you can smell them as far as two kilometers, they smell real bad, they make a skunk smell nice, ….ahhh ok….a small furry earth animal with a white strip going down it’s back, if scared or cornered it will give off a distasteful pungent smell, got it? Good.

So I headed to the shower room, Catherine and a few others joined me, our shower room is a huge room that has stalls.

Each person has there own shower stall, you step in and your weight activates the shower, the temperature is regulated by your voice, you say hotter or colder depending on how you like your shower, I like mine hot.

While I was drying off, I could hear Catherine from her stall still cussing out Frances, even though he wasn’t there, I could tell by the sound of her tone that she really thought Frances had bounced on us; ….ok….ahh…bounce is when a ship is landing and the pilot comes down too fast, the ship will bounce up and on the way down crash, it’s not a good thing.

I went over to her stall to try and talk some sense into her, I really didn’t think Frances had bounced us, and there was no reason for him to do something like that. I said to her “Catherine calm down, when we get up top we’ll see what’s going on, now if we do find out that Frances has something to do with this, I’ll help you, and we’ll take him to the blue room and deep freeze him, what’s T-Corp going to do, fire us?, we’re their two top people!”

….You know I love that little box you have there, it translate language fantastically, but I just wish it had an earth dictionary with it and please don’t ask what a dictionary is….alright; deep freeze, when we set out from one solar system to another, it takes about 50 to 100 years to get from one to the other and we don’t live that long so we get into these chambers that put us to sleep for the duration of the trip, their call cryo-tubes, we call the deep freeze beds.

….Let’s see, I would say T-Corp has about 10 of them ships floating around out there….no…. there is no pilot, the ships are all automated, the ships system will wake a few of the crew at a predetermined time, when we are close to the new planet,….or incase of emergency.

….we don’t, once we finish terra-forming a planet, we return to the ship, it takes us on to the next planet that we’re going to terra-form. We could elect to stay behind on the planet, if we wanted too, there have been some I’m told that will stay behind just to wait for a ship that is going to be heading back towards earth….naaa I love doing my job and each planet is a new adventure for me.

….with the back pay that T-Corp owes me right now I could retire a rich man, that’s if I decided to settle down on any planet….no….I have no interest in going to earth, too crowded, if anyplace I’d go to back to Silack….I’m not really sure, but I would say Earth right now must have about 10 billion people on it, hmm…Silack I’d say has about 4 thousand settlers on it, maybe 6 thousand by now, but it’s such a beautiful planet, the water is such a deep calm blue color something very close to the color of your tail, it’s just a little darker.

….I would have to guess, maybe 3 to 4 thousand planets.…wow!... I just noticed that the color of your tail changes shades of blue, I’m sorry I hope that was not an improper thing to say….that’s what T-Corp is all about, they send out ships to a planet in any part of the universe and we terra-form it and then the settlers come and colonies it.

         Ok back to my story, after I dried off and calmed Catherine down, I headed to the main bunk room to get dressed, as soon as I walked back into the room, Patrick came bursting in yelling something about “there gone, there all gone” he came in so fast, he didn’t have time to stop before crashing into Chris, I don’t know maybe he didn’t see Chris, I’m not totally sure, but he sent the tray of crystal-lite glass that Chris was carrying, flying up into the air and Patrick hit the floor and the crystal-lite glass came raining down on top of him….just so you know crystal-lite glass is very, Very, VERY sharp, poor Patrick he had pieces sticking out of his arms, legs, chest, and his face, he was a bloody mess, I never felt more helpless in my entire life….no, we could not touch him, but Scott who is Catherine’s assistant took off quick to get a med-bot, now there is a hard working kid, well he’s really not a kid, that just a figure of speech….why the med-bot, that’s because if we tried to pull out any of those shards from him, those shards would slice our fingers to shreds and med-bots have metal hands…well no….we weren’t even thinking about what he had said, our attention was diverted to the situation of trying to keep him still, a slight move could shift a shard and kill him right there….no….unfortunately a shard had severed a main artery on his left wrist and he bleed to death before Scott had returned, we had already put a blanket over him….oh….that, that’s a sign of respect that us humans do for our dead.

When Scott had returned, he came back with the med-bot, but he was the one who informed us that there was no one else in the complex, that’s when we understood what Patrick was trying to tell us, some of them started to panic and ran out of the room to see for themselves, the others looked at me, as if I had all the answers….well….because I was the most senior person there, I had been with T-Corp since I was twenty two, I started with T-Corp back in 4785…. I know….just remember I’ve spent many years in the deep freeze beds….no….I don’t know where Earth is, but I’m sure one of the ships back on the planet should have it programmed into it.

Well lets see…..Catherine, Scott, Mark, and Anthony stayed with me, I told them we would search the complex level by level before we would search outside, we needed to regroup with the others Paul, John, Chris, Richard and Philip.

I went to the intercom and made an open announcement throughout the complex, telling the others to meet up with us in the main conference hall, which was 4 levels up from where our bunk room was.

….your right, there has to be a logical explanation as to where everyone was, 34 people just don’t disappear, if there was some sort of emergency during the night someone would have hit the security alert….ahhh…. I’m not sure if you know this, but there is saliva running down the side of your jaw, jowl whatever you call that part of your mouth….ya right there….you got it….well any how; going on, we went to the conference hall, but the others never showed up, we waited a good thirty minutes, I made another announcement on the intercom, asking anyone to answer back…no….no one answered back. I’ll tell you at this point I was getting worried, but I was trying not to let on to the others that I was worried, the first thing on my mind was for us to get to the weapons room and arm ourselves and that was another 2 levels up, so I told everyone that we were going to make a slow careful search on the way to the weapons room and then we would search the rest of the complex.

I took the lead heading out the door, Catherine was right behind me then Scott and Mark with Anthony watching our backside, we searched each of the lab rooms and started to head up to the second level when we heard this loud sound and the complex was starting to vibrate, I knew it was not coming from inside the complex, I told them we weren’t going to take the lift, it would be safer if we went up through the conduit ladders, my thinking was that we would have been hidden from sight and would come out closer to the weapons room, at this point Scott started to freak out on us, he started mumbling and ranting “we are all going to disappear like everyone else” I grabbed a hold of his arm and shook him, I told him “your not helping the situation any by becoming hysterical”….no….it didn’t help he was breaking down, so Catherine turned on him and cocked him one right in the jaw, I don’t think she meant to hit him so hard, but Scott dropped like someone had went and turned off the anti-gravity stabilizer, he was out cold, I developed a new found respect for her and was glad I never tangled with her before….really….our culture is different, women have equal rights, I really should correct myself, that’s not totally true, on most of our settled worlds woman are equal, there are a few worlds that the male species of our race are the dominate of the two, even right now our galactic president is a female, I can’t remember her name off hand, but what I’m lead to believe is that she is not very well liked….no, not because of gender, but because of her flip flopping on issues, well that’s what I’ve been told, unless she does anything that would effect me, I don’t care…. I know we keep straying off the subject, ok getting back on track again, now where was I….that’s right….the tough female knocked out Scott, well we decided to leave Scott in one of the access rooms in the conduit, Mark decided to stay there just incase he woke up and wouldn’t freak out even more.

I knew the sound was coming from outside the complex, so we headed to the weapons room and armed ourselves and we started to head up to the main level, just as we started to leave the weapons room the vibration stopped and the sound became softer until we couldn’t hear it anymore, we raced to the main level hoping to look out the view ports to see what it was that was making the sound….no….we didn’t see anything except the red planet and pink sky and our unmanned equipment, Catherine was tense and shouting “they left us, them good for nothing bastards left us here”

“Catherine” I, very calmly informed her “they couldn’t have left us, the ships are still here”

she took another look out the view port, which only confirmed what I had told her.

After that we rendezvous back with Mark and Scott, by now Scott was calm but in a state of shock and his jaw surly sore; he was massaging it and making sure it still opened and closed.

I gathered everyone together and told them “we stick together and search the whole complex from bottom to top” no one argued with me, it seemed that I got myself appointed leader of this group, we started back down in our bunk room and went from room to room and the rooms that we could not open, we laser them open, as it turned out we were the last five people in that complex….well I’m getting to that….it’s ok….would it be ok if I had another one of those blue drinks, what did you call it?.....Etury….I’ll try to remember that.

When we finished the whole complex, I went and activated the distress signal, I put Mark in charge of vosline….it’s a communication device it stands for ‘Voice Over Space Line’ it’s suppose to make messages travel at faster than light speed to the destination that it’s programmed for, I’m not that technical with that stuff, though I really should be, it was part of my training when I joined T-Corp.

Once I done that I crossed my fingers and hoped….crossing your fingers is a good luck thing with us, like this….ya…. I can see that would be difficult for you to do with only four digits and their not made the way ours is….well yes….that for sure, we are very much different, I feel a bit strange knowing that I’m sitting on a box on this table and still have to look up to see your face and your sitting down in a chair, you must be about fifteen feet high when your standing up.

I’m getting to that part you were asking about. With any luck, any ship that is in the area would receive the message I had Mark send, I had him put it on a repeat send, plus that and the distress signal and they would contact us, after I did that I informed everyone that we were going to search outside….I told you I was getting to it.

We suited up and headed outside, hoping that we would be able to find someone or something out there….No we didn’t, we checked the ships, we went to worksite – AD and worksite – HT, we tried to stay out there for as long as we could, but our oxygen levels were getting low and the planets wind was strong that day, I would say it rated a flag 7.9 and that’s really strong….Yes we went back inside, it was really the only thing we could do, we had to wait and hope that a ship picked up the distress signal or our SOS message….Before you showed up, we had been waiting for about seventeen days….Ya, I know we were pretty leery of you, we never saw your kind before, if you didn’t bring out that language translator, I’m not sure what would have happened….We know that now and we’re very grateful for your offer of help, I’m just hoping that Mark can figure out your communications so we can send a call to T-Corp and get a ship to meet with us, I mean you or your people, are we heading in the direction that I gave you?....oh, that’s good, I’m almost positive that we’re heading in the right direction of Earth, but like I told you before, I’m not a navigator and my knowledge is from training that I received from T-Corp….Well I’m hoping that too, if a ship picks up the distress signal, it will automatically change course and head for it, well that’s what I got from the training at T-Corp, I’m still in shock, I really can’t believe there is a whole entire race that lives on ships and not on a planet, how many ships did you say you had?....wow, eight hundred and thirty two and there all as big as this one?....What’s that beeping sound?....Dinner time, then I should let you go to dinner, if you could have someone return me to my friends….What! We’re the guest of honor at the dinner, wow that’s really is nice of you….Yes, of course how could we say no, I’ll just follow you….Well, and I guess it would be faster if you carried me, ok, we’ll do it that way….What a big din- - ing ro-om, when you said that we were the guest of honor at dinner, you neglected to inform us that we….are….the….Dinner.