Alex’s Claim – Look Inside

The Turned Gods – Character Companion Novella

Alex laid in bed, staring out the window at the dull gray sky. The sound of tiny raindrops rhythmically tapping against the windowpane made him want to roll over and cover his head. He had forgotten rain had been scheduled for today. How unfortunate when he had cardio planned, as all he wanted was to run alone across the open plains, with nothing but the vast, empty Rasan horizon in sight, not to slog through mud and cold, wet wild grass.

“Training room it is then,” he said to an empty room. He didn’t have a problem with running in the rain; to him, it was only water. He just didn’t feel like it today. It was unlike him to be so lazy. Then again, his enthusiasm for everything had waned in the past few years. Things had changed so much, as he wandered through life without an obvious purpose.

His brothers had moved on with their lives, increasing the distance between them. He no longer attended family gatherings where everyone celebrated events and accomplishments. His father and his father’s mate had a new daughter, but that wasn’t what had changed things. Alex loved the girl, who had nothing but a sweet smile and a calm disposition for anyone who approached her. There was no jealousy or animosity towards the child, even though he hardly ever saw her. No, that wasn’t his problem at all. After a conflict with the outsiders, his mother had disappeared, leaving a cavernous hole in his life. The rest of the community seemed to have moved on from the event, living with a frivolity he couldn’t experience.

Alex could not move past it. No one knew where she was. If she had been killed, they should have felt it, shouldn’t they? Her mate, Ivan, insisted she would return, but Alex had already given in to his grief, unable to be soothed by Ivan’s assertion. This was the second time he had lost her, and he seemed the only one convinced that this time it was permanent. He had searched for years with nothing to show for his efforts. The only thing that seemed to last was his anger towards everyone around him for their growing apathy.

He pondered the thought as he changed into his running gear.

Moments later, Alex trudged into the training room and saw Paneth on one of the running pads.

“You didn’t want to run in the rain either?” Alex asked.

“Oh, I don’t care about that. I just want to watch the matches,” Paneth answered, pointing to the screen in front of his pad.

“That doesn’t look like any contest I’ve seen. What are they playing at?” Alex looked at the display, puzzled.

“I’m not exactly certain. It’s an ancient game they used to engage in on one of the Terran planets, T-2866. They call it Earth. Like there aren’t already a million planets named after dirt. Regardless, the contest has various names in different districts on the planet. It’s most widely called foot ball. Some places call it soccer and call a totally different, more brutal game, which seems to have nothing to do with striking a ball, foot ball. Either way, it’s fascinating.” Paneth nodded toward the screen, then screamed. “What in all hells?! How could he miss that? There’s nothing in his way!” He enunciated his words by striking out at the air in front of him.

“Why are there only males on the field?” Alex asked, curiously. “When I was on Earth, I only saw a few sporting events with my brothers and Ivan. I do think they called that one football too, but it was a different game.”

“Well, as close as I can figure, they separated their contests by gender at first. I’ve observed games with all female combatants and they’re much more vicious. It is possible the males couldn’t compete at the beginning,” Paneth guessed. He really had no idea why male and female teams would be separated, especially since they didn’t seem to play against each other either.

“What about now? Do they still have these contests? Maybe I’ll make a stop there while I am on leave. I’d like to see one of these competitions played live. You know we still have a cabin on 2866, but I don’t remember much about sport on the planet,” Alex admitted.

“Alex, they don’t play anything on that planet anymore. There was a massive underwater earthquake caused by the sea floor collapsing into a void underneath, created from excessive petroleum extraction. All the ice caps collapsed into the oceans at once, prompting enormous tidal waves and flooding the whole thing almost ten years ago. There’s scarcely any land left and not many hominids, either.”

“I went on a fishing trip there a decade or so ago. It doesn’t seem realistic. Even if all the ice caps melted, the sea rise would barely be three to four-hundred feet. It wouldn’t all be underwater. Are you sure you’re thinking of the right planet?”

Alex knew overpopulation had plunged the planet into some rough ecological shape, but he thought they had been working toward solutions. It should have been getting better.

“You mean your fishing trip, where you disappeared for a whole year and came back pouting like a little wabbie?” Paneth glanced teasingly at Alex.

Alex rolled his eyes and gestured in front of him to start his pad.

Paneth smirked. “Yeah, I’m sure. Most of the inhabitants evacuated to colonies on Mars, Europa, and Ganymede. They still haven’t mastered the technology to get to habitable planets outside of their own sol system yet, but they were able to engineer stable atmospheres and melt ice into water on the places they could reach.” Paneth swiped at the screen, pausing the game he was watching. “Here, look at this,” he said, bringing up an image narrative of the evacuation procedure.

“If they were able to do all of that, why didn’t they fix the planet they already lived on?”

Paneth could only guess at an answer. “Because humans are wasteful. Why would they fix something they broke when they can get themselves something new?”

Alex didn’t know the answer to that question either. He turned his attention to the images on the screen.

There wasn’t any information in the broadcast on the current state of whatever remained. The only mention was a short section about the residual population squabbling over supplying resources to the outer colonies. Terran protesters were angered over being expected to support colonies of people who ruined their planet and abandoned it.

Alex ran as he watched in silence. He couldn’t say it shocked him humans had practically destroyed such a perfect sphere in a short time span. They were still such a primitive, greedy and completely oblivious species for the most part. They were probably astonished that the planet was fighting to save itself from them. As he read, he decided he wanted to see what had happened for himself. He had visited numerous times over the last few centuries and there were people on that planet he had attachments to.

“I guess I’ve decided where I’m taking my retreat.” Alex swiped Paneth’s screen to the side, opening his own screen in front of him. He started researching the current climate and remaining land masses as best he could. Most of the information he wanted wasn’t available in the current record, but should be in the planetary archives. Alex loathed doing archive research. In actuality, he loathed any type of research. He would go talk to Viv instead. Earth was her origin planet and her brother Vito still lived there the last he heard.

In Alex’s memory, the old cabin was high enough in the mountains that it should still be there, even after massive tidal waves. With Rasan technology securing the cabin, there was little chance anyone outside of the turned would be able to occupy it. There was an even slimmer chance any human with device access was alive and remained behind when humans evacuated. Alex contemplated his options. His overwhelming need to know what happened was drawing him there. This had a chance to be a welcome distraction from his monotonous existence.

Paneth shook his head, reviving the sports match he had previously been watching. “That’s not what I would consider a vacation,” he muttered.

“C’mon Paneth. It’s exciting. How often do you get to see the rebirth of a planet and the resurgence of an, albeit primitive species? When was the last time you firsthand witnessed a species on the precipice of venturing outside of their own sol system for the first time? I can’t not go to see it for myself.” Alex didn’t want Paneth to know the underlying reason he was going was personal. The reason he was moody and despondent when he came back the last time had been personal, too.

Paneth couldn’t see what was so important to Alex about this planet, although he was aware of a historical element regarding the origin of their species. Those events took place centuries ago. Paneth preferred keeping the past in the past. He couldn’t see why Alex enjoyed spending time in a place where his mother used to live, either. To Paneth, those ventures only brought up painful memories, which is why he only visited his home planet of Jur when it was absolutely necessary, and always at the insistence of his father, who Paneth still blamed for his own mother’s death.

Alex stepped off the running pad and ported out without saying anything, leaving Paneth alone, shaking his head.