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Chapter Text

I write this as we rest on the surface of the planet. We awoke as the ship began its descent. Cryo-stasis is not a subject with which I am knowledgeable. I have used its medical applications in small ways in my practice back home, but freezing entire human beings for reanimation down the line was something I initially believed to be beyond our current capabilities. When I say we awoke, I stress that we were not allowed to be free from our capsules. I could see across the room to see my friend, Sherlock Holmes, with his head moving around as he tried to take in the grand whole of sensory data from the experience. I can describe the experience as being possibly the loudest I have ever experienced, with the computer systems beeping and buzzing as they processed the information. 

The ship’s onboard automaton, Manowar, was rushing to and from pods to check the vitals of each of us. Thankfully, we only sustained one loss. I cannot say that I was overly familiar with the work of the young Belgian journalist, but he was to be, in a sense, our scribe while on the planet. 

Perhaps this is a poor place to start off. The story truly begins in our digs at the now-famed fortified flat at 221B Baker Street. I was lounging in my chair, and my friend had recently inhaled what I might generously describe as a small mountain of pure, uncut cocaine. I don’t touch the stuff myself, so I felt the need to sit on the sidelines to ensure he didn’t have another overdose. The way he described it, he thought of it as a way of staving off boredom. After all, why wouldn’t he be bored? He’d recently defeated the crime lord, Moriarty, and dismantled the monster’s network of horrors. Afterwards, he found himself suddenly listless as cases became like drops of water in the Sahara. 

“Must you do that?” I asked. 

Holmes shot me a very mean look, and I opted to drop the case entirely. 

He didn’t drop it. In a sense, Sherlock Holmes is akin to a dog, and you have to force him to drop things. Otherwise, he gets territorial. 

“It’s essential the, the, the fucking process, Watson,” said Holmes. The repeated use of ‘the’ is not in fact a typo, but an accurate recreation of him being trapped in a loop following a heavy intake of the drug.

The drug-induced mania and euphoria that my friend associates with it must have been short-lived because moments after taking it in, we were treated to a knock and the door to our room, and he quickly had to hide the Zip-Lok baggie of white powder in the folds of the couch. 

Good timing, too, because Mrs. Hudson opened up the door without warning and let two strange men into our flat. A man with hair that was very obviously dyed a fluorescent shade of blonde, wearing a white suit, stepped in first, followed close behind by a nearly identical-looking man with brown hair in a black suit. 

“Hope we haven’t caught you at a bad time,” said the blonde man. 

“Never better,” lied my friend. “Watson, would you be so kind as to offer Mr. Pierce and Mr. White a brandy?”

“It’s like one in the afternoon,” said the man in the black suit. 

“John,” said the blonde man. “Don’t be rude.” 

The blonde man spoke with a pronounced accent typical of the American South, while his counterpart spoke with an indistinct accent that Holmes would later tell me originates from Upstate New York. 

“I am fascinated to see you work your detective magic in real time, Mister Holmes,” said the blonde man. “Can I ask how you knew our names?” 

“I read the papers,” said Holmes. “Even now I collect every edition of a newspaper printed in the Greater London Metropolitan Area. You and Mister Pierce arrived in London just yesterday, and The Daily Express was quick to print up a piece about Adventure Inc. coming to Britain.” 

“Could I get some clarification on who is who?” I asked. 

“Of course,” said the blonde man.

He introduced himself as Buck White, and his partner introduced himself as John Pierce. 

“As your detective friend helpfully stated,” said Buck White. “We’re the financiers behind the company known to the wider world as Adventure Inc., and we’re here to see about offering you boys a job.” 

“There isn’t a mystery to be solved?” I asked. “That’s more of our typical business.” 

“We have been what you might call collecting,” said John Pierce. “For the past two years, we’ve been recruiting people for a project called the 'Star Shot Programme’.” 

Holmes took the end of a pipe between his teeth and lit it, blowing smoke into the air as the two men explained the Star Shot Programme.

“What it boils down to is, we’ve been seeking out extraordinary people, and we are putting them together as a team who will touch down on the surface of a recently discovered planet. A little place we’ve been calling Copernicus Twelve,” explained John Pierce.

“Which is what we settled on because everyone seemed real mad when I wanted to call it ‘Buckland 1000, ’” quipped Buck White. 

“And I fit your bill?” asked Holmes. 

“Who else but…what was it you called him in your most recent blog, doc?” asked Buck White. “The foremost champion of the law.” 

Holmes turned to me with a look that was wholly atypical of his usual non-expression. It almost looked pleading. Then he turned back to John Pierce and Buck White. “Will Watson be able to accompany me into space?” 

“I like to think of us as a package deal,” I said, immediately excited by the prospect of venturing into the stars. 

Pierce and White exchanged a look with each other. 

“I’m sure we can accommodate the doctor,” said John Pierce. “You have to understand, though, there will be no coming back to Earth.” 

“That’s fine,” I said. 

Holmes nodded. 

“No, you really need to understand, there will be minimal communication with Earth,” said Buck White. “You’ll never see your families again.” 

“That’s fine,” parroted Holmes. “My brother can manage things without me.” 

“I haven’t any relations still alive that I would write home to,” I said. 

Pierce smiled, and White looked a bit saddened by our collective response. 

Chapter Text

The next month found us in Florida. Many of my blog readers will recall that particular state from the case of the Five Orange Pips in its relationship to my friend’s skirmish with the Ku Klux Klan. We arrived in Orlando and took a taxi to a town named St. Petersburg. At my insistence, we dined at a PJ’s Oyster Bar, and I ate a chicken sandwich and a pint of what the menu called a “St. Pete Blonde Ale.” 

From there, another taxi took us out to our main target. The Adventure Inc. Everglade Compound. It was an imposing structure that was out in the middle of nowhere in the Floridaian swamp. 

It was home to the same state-of-the-art equipment found at NASA and a sort of dormitory for those who would be a part of our ‘pod’. John Pierce introduced us to the man who would be our pilot of sorts. I refer to him as a man here, but defining whether or not he is human is debatable. Manowar is an artificial intelligence, a robot that was constructed by the now long-dead nation of Utopia. 

Manowar spoke with an accent that neither I nor Holmes could place. As far as Pierce and White knew, this was the voice of the Utopian people. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Doctor Watson,” said Manowar. “I started reading up on your blog when Buck mentioned that you and Mister Holmes had agreed to take part in our celestial voyage.” 

It was the first time I had ever met a robot. So, I was unsure about what the code of acceptable behavior was. Typically, Americans went for advanced robotic figures. There were so many in the U.S that you’d see them on TV or the news. The United Kingdom didn’t really have the same fetish for machinery that the rest of the world had. Though I heard for a time about a series of robots guarding a castle in Scotland. 

A young man entered, he was perhaps nineteen with sand-blonde hair that was swept back into a pompadour, while his rather cherubic face was scratchy with the beginnings of a beard. 

“A pleasure, sirs,” said the young man, at once revealing himself to have a Sussex accent. “My name is Christopher, glad to see I’m not the only Englishman on this jaunt.” 

“The pleasure is all ours,” I said, speaking for Holmes as he inspected young Christopher. 

“You’re a spiritualist,” said Holmes. “And a beekeeper. Why were you selected to be a part of this group?” 

Christopher took a step back and crossed his arms in a defensive display. His face was screwed into a look of confusion. 

“How’d you know all that from just a glance?” asked Christopher.

“There’s slight swelling around your wrists. You don’t own a decent beekeeper’s suit, so when you dig into the hives, they get at your wrists, don’t they?” suggested Holmes. 

Christopher started to anxiously rub his wrists. “Right, how about the spiritualism? I didn’t say a thing about it.” 

“You were in Hellbore when you were seventeen,” said Holmes. “I found a copy last year and leafed through it out of boredom. I was fascinated by your essay on Tulpa.” 

“I prefer to use the term ‘Thought-Form’ these days. I didn’t realize how appropriative it was back then,” said Christopher. “As for what I’m doing here. It has more to do with the bees than it does my occult practices. Adventure Inc. wants me to set up a beekeeping facility on the planet, see how bees might interact with the native insects.” 

“There are insects on Copernicus Twelve?” I asked. 

“Well…We call them insects now,” said Christopher. “It’s the simplest term. They’re small animals that pollinate the local flora. I’m sure after a few decades of studying them, we’ll have a whole new set of words for them.” 

“I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of beehives,” said Holmes. “I often thought that if I were to retire from the great business of deduction, I would devote myself to such a task.” 

“I can teach you what I know,” said Christopher. “If you want to follow me out to the concourse, I can introduce you to the rest of the pod.” 

He led us out to a grassy quad that put me into the mindset of my university days. I was relieved to see that we weren’t the only men in our thirties. There was a much older man with forearms that were swollen like watermelons who was busying himself by talking with a rail-thin woman in a red and black dress. 

Then there was the journalist, Tintin. He was engaged in conversation with a South American woman who was about Christopher’s age. An African-American woman whose age I could not tell stood by and listened to whatever it was the journalist was trying to say. I must say, his English was very good, if a bit on the posh side.

“You might recognize Tintin from his work with some Belgian paper,” said Christopher. “That’s Popeye, Olive, Maria, and Marian.” 

The group of conversationalists didn’t acknowledge us beyond a tip of the head, but I took in that Popeye, Olive, and Marian were the sole Americans in our pod, with Maria coming from a nation formerly known as Xochtan. I understand that political upheaval has since caused it to be absorbed into surrounding nations. 

“The way I understand it,” Christopher said. “Maria Irado’s some kind of a low-level psychic talent. Pierce and White wanted her boyfriend, but he died last year. Car accident. Marian is some kind of engineering prodigy, worked for a few years as a masked vigilante.” 

“America’s crawling with those, and they seem to crop up every few years,” muttered Holmes. 

“Indeed,” said Christopher. “Popeye has freakish strength. I heard someone way he can push around battleships like a kid playing with toys in the bath. His girlfriend, Olive…well… She’s something of a polymath. What I understand is she’s going to try to map out the area we’ll have dominion over.” 

---

A month into the stay, we were broken up into teams that would occasionally break up and reform into new configurations. I worked with Popeye first. We got along swimmingly after I found out that he was a military man as well. This was tempered slightly when I discovered he was in the Navy. 

I felt rather stupid when he and I loaded a crate that contained a collapsible boat onto the seedship Aurora. 

“Y’know, Doc Watsin,” said Popeye in this peculiar accent that was American, but not from anywhere anybody seemed to recognize. “If your leg be botherin’ you that much, yas can have the science fellas running this shindig replace it.” 

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ve spent the last seven years ignoring the pain in it. I won’t stop now.” 

“Suit y’self,” said Popeye. 

When we inevitably parted, I found myself paired up with Olive. She’s a lot like Holmes in many respects. She is, as I have mentioned before, so thin that it’s worrisome. I insisted on having her run a series of tests to prove that she wasn’t gravely ill, but she moves and carries herself as best as she can. It was also at the conclusion of one of these tests that I found that she hits like a mule. It was then that I decided to conclude my tests. Olive Oyl is fine and healthy. 

I was next paired with Christopher, but that was hardly noteworthy. We completed a task that he’d started with Holmes, which was loading crates of frozen bees into a freezer box on the seedship. 

I was never paired up with Tintin or Maria. My last partnership was with Marian Michaels, as she explained to me the finer points of her technology that had been enhanced by the sizeable budget of Adventure Inc.  

She held up a kind of glider suit that was lined with LED lamps that generated a blinding white light when illuminated. The reason I know this was that she flashed me with them for two seconds to demonstrate what they do. 

“These will be a part of our standard walking-around suits,” explained Marian Micheals. 

She slipped on a glove that had suckers on the ends of it like the digits of a frog. 

“These are clingers,” she said. “When I was going around as The Butterfly, these kept me stuck to the underside of a helicopter for two hours, and that was when I had to force myself off of it.” 

“Will we really need all of this?” I asked. 

“Don’t know really,” said Marian Michaels. “Pierce and White seem to think so. There’s going to be another team in the northern hemisphere who have different equipment from us, so I think maybe they’re hedging their bets on us having to modify stuff when we arrive.” 

Chapter Text

I begin again as I have before in the cryostasis chamber of the seedship, Aurora. After checking on us one by one, Manowar rushed me over to where the still frozen body of Tintin rested. He was still in the upright position, his face permanently locked into an expression of serenity. The Westian reagent that was supposed to facilitate the thawing process had not taken effect, and as a result, the young journalist was frozen. The way I understand the reagent is that in some people, it simply doesn’t work. Some kind of genetic incompatibility. I cursed Pierce and White because they ought to have tested Tintin in the year leading up to the launch. Christ, it should have been a prerequisite that it be tested. We’re lucky that Tintin was the only casualty. Everyone else thawed out fine, and we adjourned to the flight deck. 

By that point, the entire structure of the seedship was shaking and rattling. Holmes remained silent, and I casually observed him as he took in the new variety of sensations. We were enclosed in temporary environmental hazard suits. They were akin to the spacesuits utilized by spacewalkers the world over, but not nearly as bulky. The air that circulated through the suit was oddly floral with hints of artificial lavender and peach. I wondered if the sensory data would be too much for my friend. 

The ship ascended into a clearing that looked to me a lot like one of the prairies of North America, though in the distance, I could make out the shape of vast mountain ranges. A few miles outside of the landing spot, the grass gave way to coarse sand and pebbles, both of which were varyingly blue and violet. Some distance in the opposite direction was a vast lake that was undoubtedly teeming with exotic and alien life. We kept the body of Tintin aboard the ship until we were ready to bury him.

The days on Copernicus Twelve are roughly eight hours long. Night took its hold not long after we landed on the surface, and we only had time to set up the first of the shelter pods. The pods are roughly the size of two Econoline vans stacked on top of one another, with space that’s ostensibly for experimentation or computer setup and another space reserved for sleeping.

“Looks like the space has’ta be recommmedated,” said Popeye. 

“All too correct, Mister Popeye,” said Holmes. 

Everyone got out the sleeping bags, and we lined them up side-by-side and end-to-end as it was necessary. Holmes and I shared a sleeping bag with him wrapping his slender arms around my body much in the same way a python might wrap around a boar, but in this instance, he was not trying to constrict me, but cuddle me for warmth and comfort. I can’t say that I cared much about what the others were doing. The only ones who didn’t sleep with a partner were Marian, Christopher, and Maria. Manowar sat by the door, staring at nothing in particular. 

A shrill noise split the air as we were all jolted awake by some internal alarm of the pod several hours later. The son had not yet breached the horizon, but we were somewhat rested by earth time standards. 

I went to the ship to procure shovels for Tintin’s burial, but I was stopped by Olive. 

“Doctor, there’s an easier way around this,” she said. 

Olive went into the ship and marched down the ramp wearing one of the two extra-dermal ‘drysuits’. The drysuit is a machine that is kind of like if you gave a bulldozer the shape of a human (broadly). It’s completely sealed to protect the operator from environmental hazards, much like our spacesuits. Only the drysuit made Olive twenty feet tall and armored.

Olive manipulated the onboard limbs of the drysuit to start to dig a hole that was six feet deep and five feet long. Poor Tintin wasn’t exactly a tall man. 

We held a small funeral for him. All of us gathered around the small plot, but nobody said anything because, in truth, we did not know much about him. 

“We…” I began. “Commit you to the soil, Tintin. We…all of us are far away from home in this undiscovered country.  But you now rest in the undiscovered country. May you find safety and peace.” 

I improvised a bit. It was rough, but nobody was about to hold it against me. He was our first casualty on the planet, though he would not be the last. As soon as I concluded my monologue, Holmes and Marian departed while Popeye and Olive went to set up the rest of our habitations so that we could avoid sleeping together like that again. 

Several hours were spent setting up the medical bay on the ship with Maria, who didn’t say much. 

The last handful of daylight hours were spent preparing dinner. It wasn’t a flashy affair like the meals I have described in the past. All the meals were Adventure Inc. branded. This meant that they consisted of dehydrated foods and the dreaded meal gels. Popeye’s diet was the green meal gel, which I take to be a cruel vegetable-based gelatin, and chamomile tea, which he sucked out of a biodegradable plastic bag. 

Holmes and I shared a drag off of a berry-flavored vape pen that he’d brought with him and dined on dehydrated sausages and shelf-stable protein waffles. Our meal was mirrored by all but Popeye. Popeye and his disgusting goddamned liquid diet that made me kind of want to hit him, but I abstained from doing that or telegraphing my irritation with him. Frankly, I cannot recall with accuracy why it made me so angry. I feel as though living with Holmes should have built up an immunity to the habits of others. I think I might have been irritable quitting liquor cold turkey. 

“What should we call this place?” asked Olive. 

“It’s already got a name, love,” said Popeye. “Copernik-cus Twelve.” 

“Oh well, I know that,” said Olive. “I just mean this place we’ve landed. It’s got to have a name. Doesn’t it? After all, what are people generations from now going to call this colony after we’re long gone?” 

“I think we need to reframe the whole concept of the project,” said Maria. “Colony and colonization imply that we’re taking the land from somebody else, doesn’t it?” 

“Well, whichever way you shake it,” said Olive. “We’re gonna have to call it something.” 

“I put forward that we call the settlement, Utopia,” said Manowar, who was standing feet away from our cooking station, scanning the horizon with his myriad of onboard sensors. 

“I feel as though you might be biased, friend,” said Christopher. “Utopia feels a touch optimistic. We need something we can rally behind.” 

Holmes closed his eyes and took in a deep draw on the vape pen before exhaling its vapor directly into my mouth. I can’t say that I cared all that much about what the name of our little town would be. 

“We’ll have to set up the bees soon,” said Holmes. “They cannot stay frozen for much longer…Perhaps something like Hive. Hive One?”

Everyone kind of mulled the suggestion over. I didn’t mind the name, but as I said, I was busy with other things, so the name of the town didn’t matter to me.

“Plainville,” suggested Marian. “After all, look at everything around us. Just miles and miles of plains.” 

“We could call it Laketown,” offered Popeye. 

“I like Plainville,” said Christopher. 

“Kiss ass,” muttered Popeye. 

“New Xochtan,” suggested Maria. 

“It’s got a bit of kick to it,” said Marian. 

“I like it,” said Christopher, who was clearly just copying whatever opinion it was that Miss Marian Michaels held. 

So that became the name of our settlement. Our base of operations. New Xochtan. 

Chapter Text

I’m a man of the world, you understand. I’ve seen apiaries before. I’ve been to the Sussex Downs with Holmes on many occasions to gawk at beekeepers. The ones that were a part of the Star Shot Programme were wholly alien to me. It was I, Marian, Christopher, and Holmes who set up the dome. It was a clear semi-plastic that felt close to glass, though not nearly as fragile, while also being transparent. Once that was done, we planted a variety of flowers in clear blue nutrient gel: goldenrods, coneflowers, black-eyed susans, and the like. Then there came the hives. Many are familiar with the setup of ordinary hives. A box with a series of partitioned sections that are easily removed from the top so honey and combs can be extracted. Ordinarily, these are made out of wood and are shaped like a box. For this case, this was not so. The hives were flat-bottomed white egg shapes with the partitioned sections arranged like drawers on a dresser, and an opening in the top for the bees to come and go as they pleased to tend to the flowers. 

“This suit is so much better than the one I have at home,” said Christopher on his first day tending to the bees once they’d thawed. 

It was true, or at least the suit was much better than the ones I had seen back on Earth. A thick plastic tunic, zipper-sealed in the back by Marian, and a helmet with a clear, semi-plastic bubble. Air was supplied strangely, though, instead of having an opening for air to come through or any sort of disposable tank. Oxygen was provided by a refillable capsule that was about the size of a mid-range fire extinguisher. Each capsule contained what Holmes described as a terrarium of plants.  Constantly churning out oxygen in an almost entirely enclosed environment. Feeding off the carbon output of himself and Christopher. 

Marian and I were banished from the dome once it was finished construction and we both watched as Holmes and Christopher played with the bees. 

---

It was at the three-hour mark that I went out of the collapsible boat with Popeye and Olive. It was a vessel that was suited to three people, but I imagine we could have squeezed Holmes onto it, what with both himself and Olive being thin like stick insects. 

“We’re gonna have to catch dinner fer t’night,” said Popeye as he produced a fishing rod and cast a line with a bit of stink bait on the end of it. 

“We don’t even know if the animals in this lake will go for the bait,” said Olive. 

“Course they will,” said Popeye. “They're too stupid to know otherwise.” 

“Like dodos,” I offered.

“Yeah, doc,” said Popeye. “Like dodos. I bet dodos tasted delict-tous.” 

“We also can’t eat it right away, Popeye,” said Olive. “We don’t know what sorts of parasites these things will contain. Nothing.” 

“It’ll be hittermis,” said Popeye. 

The length of Popeye’s rod bent and curved as something tugged on the line. Popeye gripped the length and jerked wildly as he attempted to make it come up. Olive groaned as the sailor man made the boat rock. 

“Steady on now!” I ejaculated. 

“It’s comin’!” shouted Popeye. “I can feel it gettin’ closer!” 

“Oh god!” shouted Olive. “You’re going to swamp the boat!” 

Popeye hoisted the line up and we all witnessed his catch. It was similar enough to a fish back on earth, but only in the broadest of categories. In place of a typical fish mouth was a mass of tentacles and feelers. The scale patterns were shimmering and grey-silver. 

Popeye was not a tall man, but still, this fish-thing seemed to dwarf him. The sailor held out one arm and then began to punch the fish multiple times as it thrashed about on his line. I grabbed the sides of the boat, attempting to hold it in place as we took on more water. 

Meanwhile, Olive tried her hardest to get the motor running to get us back to shore, but every pull on the chain just gave a sputtering cough. It was like a lawnmower that just refused to start. I released the sides of the boat the second I heard that motor roar to life. I then took up one of the emergency oars and started batting at the fish-thing while Popeye pummeled it. 

The fish-thing shot black, coppery fluid all over us, spewing it forth from its gills and its squamous maw. It was then that I noticed tears flowing down Popeye’s cheek, cutting through the gunk that had been sprayed in his face. I started to cry too. I didn’t set out to be a killer again, and here I was swatting a poor aquatic beast that was too stupid to know to be afraid of people. I just kept bringing the oar down against the fish-thing’s side until I heard something break and until it ceased thrashing. 

We arrived at the shore, and Popeye dragged it the entire way to the bikes, and we jetted off down to New Xochtan. Everyone had finished their tasks and were preparing lunch when they saw us covered in sweat and goo, hauling the fish-thing around like some kind of hunting prize. 

“That’s goddamn horrifying,” said Christopher. “Why is it here?”

“It’s dinner,” said Popeye. 

“It’s not dinner, we still don’t know what it’s like, for all we know, you two dopes hauled something poisonous out of the lake and beat it to death for no reason,” sniped Olive. 

“Is that why you’re covered in that…ink?” asked Marian. 

It was then that I recalled that the thing spewed a horrible fluid on us. 

“C’mon, John,” said Holmes. “You require a shower.” 

I won’t go into detail about what happened in the shower cylinder. But let it be said that Holmes and I did more than clean ourselves. I don’t detail it here. But I just want the reader to know that I got laid and it was awesome.

Afterwards, Holmes and I shared a post-handy rip off of his slick vape pen. The flavor of the evening was pomegranate, if you must know. By the time everything was over, night had begun to fall. Popeye, before his shower, had loaded the fish-thing into one of the great machines on the ship. It was similar in shape as the shower cylinders, but it was laid horizontally, and had a harem of machines hooked up to either base of it. Screens and monitors demonstrated walls of near incomprehensible data from the creature. 

Olive breathed loudly through her nose, “As far as the great machine can tell…the fish is not poisonous. Its meat should be safe to eat.”

Popeye gave a little smirk and propped his bulbous chin up on his hands, “And?” 

“And,” she sighed. “I’m sorry for calling you and Doctor Watson dopes.” 

The sailor planted a little kiss on Olive’s forehead and departed to the firepit, fish-thing slung over his shoulder like luggage. 

Dinner was a pretty decent affair, I think. Popeye slit the fish thing open after hacking off its head before discarding it into a bin. He slit the creature from neck to tail fin and began to tear the guts free from its body. The air was thick with a pungent smell that was almost like oil. Horrible, fish oil smell permeated everything, and Popeye simply remained, tearing away at the guts of this fish-thing. All the while, I couldn’t help but wonder if we could have made a crude form of Tako out of the tentacles on the fish-thing’s head. Guts went into the bin, eliminating that thought instantaneously. 

We watched as brilliant magenta and hyperbolic orange stars cut across the night sky as Popeye served up fish-thing steaks with a side of green meal gel. I smeared my meal gel on the slab of meat like one does jelly on toast. I feel that I shall miss toast most of all.

Chapter Text

We were contacted not by the northernmost settlement, but by another. One from the west. They call themselves the West Egg Group. I was up late one night at the radio station we set up in our pod. Holmes was asleep, his head resting on my lap. With one hand, I acted as disc jockey and with the other, I gently combed Holmes’ hair. 

The voice was soft, American, and cut through the hum of Here Comes the Sun, “Hello?” 

I saw Holmes’s eyes flutter open, and he set up, “That’s not a part of the song.” 

I continued to pet his hair, his soft, silky, yet thinning hair. One day, his hair will be gone, and all I will have are my memories of running my fingers through it. 

I adjusted our radio equipment to allow me to transmit a message back, and I whispered into the microphone, feeling a bit like a schoolboy talking on the phone so his parents could not hear him. 

“Hello?” I parroted back. 

“This is Nicholas Carraway of the West Egg Group, who is this?” asked the voice. 

“This is Doctor John Watson, Adventure Inc Southern Settlement,” I said. 

Nicholas Carraway made an irritated noise on his end of the radio. I’m not sure if he meant for us to hear it or not. 

“Things are in an absolute tailspin in our settlement. Where are you located?” asked Nicholas Carraway. 

I was about to speak when Holmes clasped his hand over my mouth and gently dragged me away from my radio equipment. 

“Watson,” he said in a hushed tone once we were far away from my microphone. 

“Yesh?” I said, my mouth still gagged by his rather large, spidery hand. 

“We mustn’t give away our location to strangers,” said Holmes. “Adventure Inc. never said anything about another group on the planet except for the northern team.” 

I apprehensively pried his hand free of my mouth so I could speak. “We don’t know if they’re not the northern team or not.”

“Did he sound pleased to hear when we mentioned Adventure Inc.?” asked Holmes. 

“Not particularly, no,” I said. “We’ll have to rouse the others and put it to a vote.” 

So we did. Everyone may have hated us in that moment as we gathered outside of what Holmes and I had started to call the Baker Street Pod. Even Manowar was there, and I’d almost completely forgotten that he existed. 

“So, there’s a signal asking for help and we’re to ignore it because you’re suspicious of them?” asked Marian. 

“That’s about the scale of things,” said Holmes. 

“Well, that’s bullshit,” said Marian. “We should try to help them regardless of their intentions. We can handle whatever gets thrown our way.” 

Holmes flattened his lips, seeming to consider in the moment the possibilities. I’ve known him long enough that at times our minds are as one. I knew he was bored and wanted a bit of excitement beyond what I could offer him in our sleeping bags. 

He made a little noise that was halfway between a squeak and a grunt.

“All in favor of welcoming the…what did you call them? West Egg Group people to New Xochtan, raise your hand,” said Marian, raising her hand. 

Her eyes immediately darted to Christopher, who immediately mirrored her—little kiss ass. 

By the end of the count, it was Christopher, Marian, Popeye, and Manowar who raised their hands.

All opposed included myself, Holmes, and Olive. We were very easily outvoted, and Olive seemed to be particularly perturbed by the direction Popeye chose to vote. Part of me wondered if we could count dearly departed Tintin as a vote in our favor, but I knew everyone would find me ghoulish for making such a suggestion, so I kept quiet. 

Naturally, now that democracy had taken effect, I chose to go and transmit our coordinates to Nicholas Carraway. 

---

We were unprepared for the veritable circus that would approach our settlement. The majority of the West Egg Group arrived on modified solar-electric bikes similar to the ones we had in storage on the seedship. But there was one vehicle that was wholly unique to us. It had the same broad shape as our drysuit, but slim and covered with an almost ceramic coating of eggshell white paint. It was only when it got close that I realized that the thing I assumed to be an armored vehicle was a man. 

The topmost armored chest folded down, revealing the face of a man locked inside of a metal helmet with a clear plastic visor. 

“I am Jay Gatsby, and this is my coterie,” said the machine-man. 

He introduced us to his various friends. Nicholas Carraway turned out to be a man in his late twenties who was gradually ceasing to be a twink. The rest were women: Daisy Fay, a blonde-haired woman wearing a grey jumpsuit like a janitor, Jordan Baker, a dark-haired woman dressed in the same kind of jumpsuit but with the top half of it tied at her waist, showing off a black tank top with some band’s logo. In fact, the only person who wasn’t wearing a jumpsuit was the woman known to us as Daffy Dill, who was dressed in cargo pants and a tank top. She was a veritable mountain of a woman, with arms that were like the bodies of crushing pythons. 

After introductions were made, Gatsby sat down (as best as he could, given his mechanical body) and explained the situation. 

“We received word a few days ago following the meteor shower,” said Gatsby. “It was coming from a settlement in the north that had started to call itself Babylon…Really unfortunate name.” 

“I’m confused,” I lied. I just wanted to be nosy. “How is it that you came to be on Copernicus Twelve without the aid of Adventure Inc.?”

“Well, that’s easy, old sport,” said Gatsby. “I paid for and have everything built so we could take it to the stars. We’ve outgrown Earth, you understand. I imagine Adventure Inc. has similar aspirations.” 

“Understood,” I said. “Continue.”

He immediately turned away from me like I ceased to exist. 

“As I was saying,” said Gatsby. “After the meteor shower, we received word from the settlement saying that one of the rocks had fallen to the surface, and it was weird.” 

“Weird how?” asked Holmes. 

“They said that the rock was glowing with ‘strange’ and ‘unnatural’ colors and had continued to shrink as the day went on,” said Gatsby. “So, I sent a few of the boys over to figure things out, and they haven’t returned. I say boys, but Plastic Peter is a robot fella and Tom is well…Tom.” 

“So this is to be a rescue mission,” said Holmes and why did you reach out to us?” 

“In truth,” interrupted Nicholas Carraway. “We were trying to reach out to anyone who might be on the planet, and your doctor picked us up.” 

Some deep and savage part of myself wanted to bash in Carraway’s face with a rock. I felt he was too similar to me, and for that crime, he needed to die. Violently, even. 

“So,” said Gatsby. “Would you be willing to help us venture north to figure out what’s happened to our people and your counterparts?”

Chapter Text

Naturally, I went. I’m the only trained medical professional between our two groups, so it was an easy choice for me. Really, the only ones who remained behind at New Xochtan were Daisy, Nicholas, Jordan, Christopher, Olive, and Marian. The ones who went with us were physical forces to be reckoned with. Between the two of them, Daffy and Popeye could probably level a mountain, and that was before anyone factored in the mechanical prowess of Manowar and Jay Gatsby.

We decided not to use the seedship as a means of transportation, citing the need to conserve fuel and supplies. Instead, we took the modified solar bikes that the West Egg group provided, as well as our Light Mechanical Transports. Though the latter were less efficient than the solar bikes, we were able to match pace with them until we reached the wooded border that separated our little slice of land from the northern settlement. The trees were as wide as redwoods and dwarfed us considerably as they stretched high towards the heavens. I thought about it for a while. Was this what most of the Earth would look like without the corrupting hand of man? Maybe this could be different. A world with people, but without colonialism tainting every aspect of life.

“Your thoughts are very loud, Doctor,” said Maria Irado when we stopped to make camp.

I’d not known a psi-talent before Maria, and having been acquainted with Holmes for so many years, I thought that their talents were similar. I had privately hoped that Maria was something of a charlatan.

“Are they?” I asked, testing the waters to see if she would come up with some Holmesian deduction.

“Very,” said Maria. “You’re thinking about colonialism and you’re afraid that this is some kinda cosmic legacy of it.”

I bit my inner cheek. She was correct right down to the very root of it. “What gave me away?”

“Nothing,” said Maria. “I can literally hear them. Your thoughts seep out of your skull like smoke out of a pipe.”

I said nothing to that, and to be honest, I tried to silence my thoughts because I found such a statement profoundly terrifying. Later, I would ask Holmes about it, fully expecting him to explain what gave me away and how she might have deduced that my thoughts had turned towards that of colonization.

“No, psi-talents are real,” he said. “Of varying degrees. I once met a man who professed to be in tune enough with nature to be able to sense spirits or ghosts. But as that isn’t my area of expertise, I cannot provide color commentary.”

This wasn’t comforting. This wasn’t comforting at all. My feelings about worrying over colonization were not assuaged.

We had to carry the bikes and the LMTs over several miles of dense woodlands before we reached the site. All around the encampment were scattered habitation pods and earth fruits that had grown fat and wild. At the centre of it all was a massive crater.

We found the remains of the robot known as Peter Plastic, dashed against a rudimentary barricade. He was roughly the size of a child’s doll, so it was easy to imagine someone or something thrashing the robot severely. Manowar picked up his pieces and slid the remains of Peter Plastic into a cloth bag.

“We can repair him at a later date, I think,” said Manowar. Cold machine, colder than Holmes on a winter’s day.

“Be nice,” muttered Maria as she brushed past me, her eyes wide. “There’s something foul about the soil here. Who was the northernmost team? Did they ever tell us?”

“Blow me down,” said Popeye. “The therr Blasted Heath.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Daffy as she plucked a peach from one of the trees and took a bite, only to immediately spit the bite out into the grass.

“I know what he’s talking about,” said Gatsby. “Blasted Heath is a part of New England, old sport. In 1927 a meteor landed just west of Arkham, Massachusetts. The land grew wild, but nothing grew properly again.”

“I’ve read about that,” said Holmes. “Some sort of radiation, I think.”

I took out our Geiger counter, immediately concerned that we were soaking up rads in the midst of this ‘Blasted Heath’ as Popeye called it. To my shock, the machine did not click or tick with anything more than what would have been the typical background radiation.

“That is,” said Holmes. “Supposing that this was the same type of meteorite.”

“Still, this whole area has an unnatural foulness about it,” said Maria. “Someone’s here. Someone’s there.”

Maria cast her hand forward, towards one of the overturned life pods, and we all started towards it as a group. Though we were all fairly comfortable allowing Gatsby and Manowar to take the lead. I privately hoped that we wouldn’t encounter whatever it was that dashed poor Peter Plastic.

Manowar gently wrenched the door off. Well…I suppose it was as gently as one could do such an act. I’ve smelled corpse-stench before. It’s not alien to me. But the inside of the pod smelled almost like someone had been cooking meat that had turned sour.

“The light was the most brilliant thing,” said a voice from inside the pod.

“Tom?” called out Daffy.

“It sounds like him, but not quite,” said Gatsby. “Tom? Tom, is that you, old sport?”

A low, reptilian hiss cut through the air, and Gatsby turned on the lights of the pod. All the space age furniture and equipment was broken and tossed on its side. Likely from when the meteor struck and knocked everything about. There was pile of matter in the centre of the floor, blackened liquid with the faintest hints of bone interrupting the continuity.

From the other side of the ruined couch came a face. Human enough. I could tell at one point he had been a rather dashing and handsome-looking man. But now, the figure looked kind of like if you took a blowtorch to a Ken doll. When he threw his arms over the couch to crawl towards us, it was impossible not to notice that they were too long and his legs too short.

“Tom, what the hell happened, man?” asked Gatsby, who took a step back.

I found it interesting that even locked in this mechanical frame, Jay Gatsby still felt repulsion and horror, the same as anyone else.

“There was just something so beautiful about the light, Gatsby,” said the creature, Tom. “It was brighter than the sun. It was alive too. Alive with the kinds of colors that artists can’t even dream of.”

He moved like a gorilla, running using his arms and propelling himself at us through the door.

“Jesus!” shouted Daffy before she delivered a brick-breaking punch to Tom’s face.

I watched the already melted face crunch and began to sag suddenly.

“Really, Daffy?” said the broken voice of Tom. “After all I’ve done for you?”

Popeye grabbed and hefted up the entire life pod and used it as a melee weapon, knocking Tom away and slamming his body into the length of one of the mighty trees. Together, he and Manowar rolled the life pod back, pinning Tom in place against the tree. The man-creature howled the entire time as we left the blighted place.

We spent the rest of the journey back to the southern camp in silence. Manowar rested on the back of Daffy’s solar bike and idly started to repair Peter Plastic. By the time we reached New Xochtan, he’d completed a rudimentary frame for the little robot.

We explained the situation to everyone, and once again, we were locked in a kind of horrible silence.

“So, now we have to just wait for unimaginable horrors to come and get us. Perhaps in the night?” asked Marian.

“Well, not wait for them,” said Christopher. “If this thing is anything like what happened in Arkham, then the original monster has long since departed. What’s left behind is the taint and the rot of its touch.”

“It’s partially mental, and I think most of us here have strong mental facilities, so we should be able to hold our own against the madness,” she looked from Daffy to Popeye. “Most of us. The rest might struggle with it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Daffy. “I’m plenty strong.”

She demonstrated this by flexing her bicep, and the silence that followed was broken by the girlish giggling of the thirty-something Olive Oyl.

Popeye frowned at his girlfriend and proceeded to turn his attention back to Daffy, “She’s sayin’ that we’re not the brightest o’bulbs in the box.”

“Oh,” said Daffy. “I mean, I figured.”

Sometimes, I want to lock people into gigantic boxes and have them do games and unlock puzzles for my amusement. Perhaps I would even feed them delicious chicken as a reward for doing such things.

Maria Irado looked at me from across the circle with wide, angry eyes. It was then that I truly believed in her psychic powers.

Dinner that night was a somber affair, but to my incredible relief. The West Egg group started cultivating Wine before they landed on Copernicus Twelve and had plans for brewing beer in the meantime. I must admit that I powered through two bottles of wine before I started singing the greatest hits of Paul McCartney in his post-Beatles career. Holmes scooped me up in his arms before I could make too much of a fool out of myself and carried me off to our pod.