TRIAL AND ERROR | short stories + snippets

Best Friend Space Adventure: The Garden, pt 1

After a few minutes of failure, he grows tired and tosses it in the rubbish bin. He misses spectacularly again and the compact knocks against his desk drawer, flying open from the impact.

At first, he assumes it's a lens flare. The sun catches the mirror and shoots light right into his eyes. It fries his brain.

But a moment later, the iridescent puddle is still on his bedroom floor. Did the Victorian fidget toy have this much liquid mercury inside it? Is he about to die?

Despite this thought, Caleb gets up, shoving on his indoor off-brand rainbow Croc and picking up his crutches, and moves closer to it. It's like looking into a well if wells had proper lighting. At the very bottom is a pile of gravel.

"Caleb, don't touch–"

Too late. Nicolás manages to seize only the back of Caleb's crop-top like the scruff of a kitten before Caleb touches the puddle.

A swirl of colours, a distressing sense of gravity. Then salt, an unfamiliar pressure, a strange heat, and–

"Oh! Pretty rock!" Caleb crouches to pluck the stone from the ground. It's blue, with a wave-like webbing of pink and white. He shoves it into the side pocket of his shorts. That's coming home with him.

Then Caleb spots another, not far away, which he pockets as well. This one is black but it sparkles. Not in the way black stones usually sparkle, but so much that it would be better described as a glow. Like something from a Barbie film.

If Caleb was inside a Barbie film, he would pick Mermaidia. For obvious reasons. As in, the ocean! Even if the sea creatures have cursed blue eyes.

"Caleb, the sky is pink," Nicolás informs him when Caleb has slipped a fourth rock into his pocket. "There are also two moons."

He looks up.

The sky is indeed pink, a flamingo shade of blush. One of the moons is so large that, for a moment, he's terrified it will collide with whatever planet they're on. The second is not notably different than the moon of Earth, though its colour is more golden than silver.

They're standing in some sort of desert. No, on second thought, it reminds him more of a building site. It's not uniform sand beneath their feet but bedrock. It must have been cleared some time ago because blades of grass poke out of the gravel in tufts. There are no piles of felled trees or CAT excavators anywhere in sight, though.

In fact, the only thing in sight from where they stand is a cluster of iridescent growths some four hundred metres away. Skyscrapers, maybe.

"The portal... thing is gone," Nicolás remarks, clearly building some sort of Things to Stress About list.

Caleb reckons it's something he'll worry about once he gets bored of the alien rocks. But he doesn't want Nicolás to faint or lose all his hair, so he crutches back some metres and finds the compact on the gravel.

It's open but the mirror inside is cracked. Caleb shuts it and opens it again. Shuts it and throws it on the ground like skipping rocks or a Poké Ball. Nothing.

"We're so fucked." Nicolás covers his face with his hands. "I'm never gonna finish my coursework on time. I told you I was busy today."

The fear that had begun to fish-flop in his gut stops. Irritation hops in his chest instead as he squints up at Nicolás. "We're lost in space and you're worried about your grades? Maybe you shouldn't leave all your assignments last minute."

"I wasn't planning on visiting any alien planets today."

"Develop better time management skills."

"Cheers, mate."

They glare in different directions. This is the moment when they normally recede to sulk in their own rooms until they eventually get too bored or hungry. Unfortunately, there's nowhere for either to go in the middle of this vast nothingness.

The heat is unbearable.

Caleb may be half Ethiopian but he is also half Japanese and if there is one thing Sachiko has taught him, it's that the sun is enemy number one. He's not wearing any sunblock, and the shorts and crop-top don't exactly provide coverage.

But the heat doesn't scald his skin the way the sun does. It's only incredibly heavy and incredibly bright. He's grateful for the cowboy hat for shielding his eyes.

"Let's just head that way, right?" Nicolás eventually says, gesturing at the pillars in the distance.

Caleb agrees and they start the walk. Their progress is disorientingly slow. Gravity must be lower here, and whilst that means that the strain on his body is less, it also makes it significantly more difficult to manoeuvre around in crutches.

They walk and walk and walk, and yet the pillars don't seem to get any closer.

Eventually, they get near enough to realise that they're not buildings. They're trees. Trees twice as tall as anything on Earth.

It's a forest, the thing they're heading toward, all sorts of other funky things growing below the skyscraper-like broadleaves. Nikki's eyes might turn heart-shaped.

Any thought of his applied mathematics coursework is wiped from his mind. He sprints toward the trees, then rounds back to Caleb, and speeds ahead again. He forgets the Best Friends on Strange Planets Code of 'stick together' when they're within ten strides of the first tree and runs into the vegetation.

Like the rocks, the forest is composed of colours so bright that Caleb is sure their true brilliance is not visible to the human eye.

Sometimes he wishes he had been born as a mantis shrimp instead of a human. Mantis shrimp have twelve different colour channels whereas humans only have three. He wants to see a rainbow through the eyes of a shrimp. How much gayity is there that he will never unlock?

Males also have two penises and they fluoresce during mating which must make sex much more interesting than human sex. Briefly, Caleb considers looking for a harness that would allow him to have two penises.

The forest is wonderfully cool whilst somehow not being dark. As he continues deeper (Nicolás is running around hyperactively), it feels like entering a cloud. Humidity clings to the air, some drops as large as rain but they don't fall. It doesn't make sense but breathing tastes good...?

There are regular-sized trees too. Nearest to him, something similar to a willow. Its leaves are green on top and pink on the underside. A flock of... birds bursts out of it, except they move through the air like fish. They're all gone before Caleb can get a closer look.

He tilts his head up and, sure enough, sees more movement up in the canopy. They really do swim in the air, but he sees no scales. He's not sure he sees feathers either.

He moves away from the willow, a sliver of pink sky opening–

"Put your hands up."