CHAPTER 36
ICARUS
A GREATER UNDERSTANDING
Early in the morning, before the sun rose, Icarus was woken by one of his proximity sensors. He lay there pretending to sleep.
“Time to start catching fish,” the voice of Atuatuk, said shining a bright light in their eyes.
The light also gave off a noise that lit up the room with sound that human ears couldn’t hear. Icarus assumed it was meant to flood the world with information for echolocation. Sound waves were bouncing off all surfaces around them.
Icarus shot up out of the ground, pretending to be startled.
“We’ll have you make some mattresses next. You don’t want to sleep on the dirt when winter comes,” Atuatuk said before also waking Ship.
He guided them past the mud huts to an area of the commune they’d never been to. They passed hot pools where food was fermenting and showers where a couple of people were starting to get ready. He led them both to a cave entrance and guided them inside.
They were walking down the dark cave, and not once did Atuatuk turn on his flashlight.
Icarus began to get worried. Was this a trap? Did he know who they really were? Concerns and ideas started to race through Icarus’s mind.
“Who sent you here?” Atuatuk asked when they had finally reached the end. “Your auras are off, and you haven’t died. Most who fail to be chosen die within ten days.”
“No one sent us,” Icarus said. “We told you why we came.”
“Don’t lie to me. I can read your mind. I was an Atua once. That skill is still with me.”
Icarus didn’t know what to do. He grabbed Ship’s hand. “Any ideas?” he asked Ship through their private communication channel.
“Should we tell him the truth?”
“That’s the last thing we should do,” Icarus replied, thinking hard. He decided not to say a thing. Instead, he displayed the aliens’ version of fear. He began shaking and bringing his knees together.
“I can see it in your aura. You’re telling the truth,” Atuatuk said. “I needed to be sure. You’re very lucky to have survived.”
Icarus kept showing fear as he asked his next question. “Did you think the Atua sent us?”
“No. This kind of infiltration is beneath them. If they wanted information, they would abduct one of my people and pull the information right out of their head. The Atua would never let any of their followers grovel enough to get let in. That’s how I knew you weren’t from them, but I still worried you were from another country.” Atuatuk turned the his flashlight on. “You must have many questions, so ask them.”
“Why do those who don’t get chosen die?”
“It’s how the Atua control our people. They decide who can reproduce. They decide who is not worthy of living. In your case, it looks like they tried to kill you but didn’t succeed. You must have had a young one enter you.”
Icarus thought about that for a moment; it made sense that this was how they kept the population of the Penquins under their control. When the Atua entered a Penquin’s body, they must also look at their genetic makeup and decide whether they fit. In this situation, the Atua were directly influencing evolution—it sounded like it wasn’t the fittest who got to reproduce, it was the ones the Atua chose. “Young Atua?”
“Oh, I see. You don’t understand them properly, do you? I’ll tell you the true history of the Atua. Everything I learned from when I was Atua. We both coevolved, Penquins and Atua. They evolved to hide inside of our bodies for warmth and safety. We evolved to be changed by them. To change sexes once we have been touched by them.
“It sounds simple, but our two species are so different from each other, we really shouldn’t have coevolved in the way we did.
“They tell lies. The Atua believe they evolved intelligence and then gave us this intelligence. But I believe we evolved to think first. And then they gained that knowledge from us. We were the smart ones first.” Atuatuk paused for a moment. He was looking in Icarus’s eyes, trying to read him, trying to understand whether he was taking this all in.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The idea of two species coevolving together wasn’t something fundamentally interesting to Icarus. Humans had long known this fact. Most of humanity’s pets were smarter than the wild versions of the animals because of their selection for these traits. Still, maybe this wasn’t common knowledge among the Penquin aliens.
Both Icarus and Ship made faces of astonishment, as if this was a world-shattering idea.
Atuatuk took this as confirmation he was impressing them both and continued: “The Atua aren’t like you or me. To give birth, they must die, their body consumed to make room for the many, many young that burst out of their body. So only the old give up their life to have children.
“For most of our two species’ coexistence, this relationship has balanced us quite well. They gave us the ability to reproduce. We gave them protection in our bodies so they could live a long time.
“About ten thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine cycles ago,” Atuatuk said, the translator obviously having trouble with the alien’s unit of measurement, “the Atua invented regeneration. They became immortal. Which on its own is not a bad thing. But the Atua treat seniority as the most important measure in their society. So suddenly none of them wanted to give up their lives to reproduce.”
“You might be wondering why this matters, why I’m telling you all this. This is of much importance. Old Atua don’t want to do what is best for all of us. They are prioritizing protecting their own lives and not the lives of the Penquins too.”
“Give me an example. How do they not do what’s best for us?”
“Do you know what an alien is?”
Icarus pretended to consider the question for a bit before answering. “It’s a smart animal like us but from another world?”
“You are wise for someone who was thrown away by the Atua. Yes, well, the Atua know of three species of alien that they trapped on their home world. Another that will reach us in a few hundred cycles.”
Icarus’s mind began to race. Was humanity the one trapped on their home world? Was Angelique the other alien headed toward them? Wait, they know of three other aliens? Icarus wondered in his mind. Did that include the Dottiens? He wanted to tell this alien that he knew so much more. He wanted to ask pointed questions. But he couldn’t ask without revealing himself. “Are these other aliens evil?”
“Yes,” Atuatuk said. “Any alien that can move across the stars must be resource hungry. They will definitely want to take the resources from our planet. And that’s why we must be ready to fight back.”
“How do we do that?”
“We need more planets ourselves. The Atua are stopping us from visiting more planets.”
“I’m confused. Why don’t they want us visiting other planets?” Icarus asked. “I thought you said they trapped an alien on their home world.”
“You see, the Atua aren’t very smart. They would rather use and take. The Atua built space-traveling machines. We have the technology. I know the Atua stole a lot from the aliens they trapped. But we can’t use the technology to transport ourselves to another world. The way us Penquins make children, we could send ourselves across the galaxy. But the Atua are different. Their nuknukcho doesn’t survive very long. It especially doesn’t last long enough with all the radiation out in space.”
That was a new word Icarus hadn’t heard before. Icarus queried his database and found the closest equivalent word to it was DNA. If Icarus was listening right, he was saying the Atua’s bodies and the embryos couldn’t survive space. He assumed this also meant they hadn’t figured out how to print whatever they used as DNA.
“Are you saying we survive out in space? We can cross the stars?”
“We already have. There was one Penquin that crossed the stars. And they killed him. His mind became a computer.”
If Icarus was listening right, Atuatuk had just said they had the technology to upload minds into the simulation.
“They killed him because they no longer had the ability to enter his mind and control it. Even after he traveled to all the closest star systems looking for alien threats. They killed him.”
“Did you say computer minds?” Icarus asked, acting dumb. “Can the Atua do that?”
“They can do it to us, but not to themselves. Their minds work differently from ours. They can’t do it. And none of them are willing to be test subjects and risk death.”
Atuatuk stood up and began walking out of the cave, as if to signal he was done.
Icarus wanted nothing more than to keep asking questions. “What do you believe we should do?”
“I know we need to find a way to live without them. To live inside a simulated reality. We need to build our own technology and go explore the stars. We don’t need the Atua to do it. We can explore without them. We can protect them from the aliens if we have the resources to fight back.”
“How did you get smarter? How did the Atua change you?”
“They don’t really change you. Well, not at first. We give the Atua the ability to share knowledge with one another. We act as hosts absorbing their knowledge, and when other Atua enter us, we can share that knowledge with them.”
Icarus wanted to interrupt him and ask what he meant by share knowledge with one another. Did this mean that Atua took knowledge from the host Penquin, and if that Penquin had knowledge from another Atua, then that was carried over, too? Icarus made a note to ask that question when he could.
“There’s no way for the Atua to make us smarter. You just have access to all their knowledge, everything they’ve learned over their life. Now, usually before the Atua frees you, they actually make you dumber. You still retain the knowledge, but you lose your mind. You lose the part of your brain that gives you free will. You become a servant for them. My Atua died before this happened. So I have all the memories and also free will. That’s why I know the truth. I know they are evil.”
Atuatuk paused for a moment. He closed his eyes. Icarus got the feeling Atuatuk was scanning the world around him through his other senses. “You lied!” he yelled accusingly toward both Icarus and Ship. He jumped forward, pushing Icarus and Ship to the ground, and then ran out the cave.
Icarus and Ship looked at each other confused, wondering what had just happened.