The Greatest Commodity (First Draft)

Not Alone

The sun had risen again on the gloomy world, Messier, named in honor of the ancient astronomer.

Kessick Arnes was working outdoors, landscaping. This involved ripping out the trunks of 'trees' and turning hundreds of acres of soil. Luckily for him, he had many others working with him. It was backbreaking work, sweat dripped down his body, his back ached, and his limbs continually protested. He was thankful for this world's lack of bloodsucking insects; a species that infested his native world which was unfortunately brought there from Mars by the original colonists -- who got them from Earth. He was happy to be free from those buzzing parasites, none of the native life was sufficiently compatible with human biology to find them tasty either; which was a bonus.

As usual, the captain stood there watching them, not helping at all.

"Hey Cap!" Called an exhausted worker. "Could you get off your lead feet and help us, you lazy-assed aristocrat?"

"Insults don't help." Another warned, breathless. "They spend their entire lives listening to our insults, their immune. They don't care!"

The captain ignored the exchange and calls. Lazy as usual, she just pretended that she was completely alone.

Kessick felt quite angry towards the captain for not helping. Of course, as an upper-class individual, she didn't understand or respect the notion of working. As far as she was concerned, her financing of the colonization was sacrifice enough, why should she have to prove her worth any further? But Kessick had a distinct feeling that was there a food crisis, she would soon find herself on a table with an apple in her mouth.

The environment was so foggy as to make visibility limited to only a few hundred meters. It was like living in a box with fuzzy white walls. There were no shadows, the light was perpetually diffuse, coming from all directions at once. While not as loud as the night creatures, there was a faint birdcall. The plant life swayed in the wind, some of them had the texture of plastic and crinkled like a shopping bag. Everything was slightly damp, the wet environment provided no opportunity for things to dry, there was frequent rain; this was one of the few dry times -- in the summer, it was hard to imagine how horrible the winters were going to be.

Kessick was bent down, busy trying to turn a particularly solid section of soil. It had gained the consistency of cloth, the dirt somehow forming fibers and entangling together. "Doc! I got something fun for you to stare at!"

The colony's xenobiologist, Remny Ori, put down his tablet, motioning to close the app; which Kessick found suspicious, but it wasn't any of his business. The scientist came to Kessick's side and asked. "So what's got you hollerin'?"

"This." Kessick pointed at the ground where his shovel had failed to penetrate what looked like a feed sack.

"Hmmm...." Ori bent down to examine... whatever it was. He opened his case and pulled out several scientific tools and apparatus. "I never leave home without 'em!" He joked, everybody knew he frequently had to be reminded not to forget them; he'd already forgotten to bring his tools on at least one exploratory hike, people were mad at him given that he was unable to give them any information on those weird vines that kept trying to hug people... very creepy vines, but they were attracted to anything, even inanimate objects like rocks and containers; the hikers soon realized it had been hardly personal.

Ori poked and prodded at the fibrous thing, without any luck. "Would you mind vacating this spot, please?" He asked. Kessick was only too happy to oblige, he had an excuse to stop working! He immediately left, heading home in hopes of a good shower and a night of reading some books he'd borrowed from another colonist who had been infinitely more prepared than he.

The scientist set to work, first setting up a tape barrier to warn others away from the spot. He then grabbed his tools and began mulling over the thing -- what was it?

With considerable effort, Ori managed to extract the thing, digging away the surrounding dirt and gently lifting the limp object out of the ground. He suddenly felt embarrassed, it was nothing more than a feed sack! But then he froze in shock, a feed sack! Where had this fabric garment come from?

The captain noticed the discovery and came over, brushing past several pissed-off looking laborers who mumbled vulgar insults under their breaths collectively.

"What have you found, Doctor?" She asked. Reaching out to touch the thing, Ori reflexively pulled it away from her before coming to his senses and surrendering the object.

"It's some sort of sack." He answered, still shaking. "And it's not one of ours!"

"Oh... shit." The captain understood the implications. "If this is what we're guessing, it could be either very good or very bad. I sincerely hope that this is just some sort of native life that looks like a sack to our conditioned eyes, can you run some tests, please?"

Ori nervously nodded assent. Like her, he hoped it was just some form of a plant.

It wasn't.

The news got out quickly. The threat of alien intelligence now loomed. The doctor had examined the rate of degradation in the cloth, it was decaying too fast to be more than a year or two old. There was a civilization presently on this world. Judging from the lack of lighted cities in orbit, a primitive one; which was both good and bad, good in that they could easily be fought or contained, bad in that they might tend more towards savage hostility than intellectual thought and might not bother to think before putting into action whatever weapons they might use. But the threat was real, somewhere in this world was a living civilization!

It was the talk of the town. What did they look like? Was there any chance of them being human, perhaps? An older colony founded discreetly sometime before? Rumors abounded, but no answers.

Kessick lay in bed, the curtains drawn to block out the daylight. He couldn't sleep, the worries were too big on his mind. Who were they? And were they friendly?