0245 - 2025.09 Spiders from Mars (Seventeen)

Do you ever have one of those days when things, well, don’t turn out as planned? The sort where you wake up twenty minutes late and for the rest of the day you play catch-up? Where the traffic lights are red, where the client meeting starts right on time and you’re still across the street, where the boss books a “quick call” at the same time you promised to get the kids from childcare.

No??

I have trouble believing you. We all have days like this. But I digress.

I don’t have those specific problems, because I’m out at Trappist 17 - that’s the 17th planet in the Trappist system, and the most Earth like. You know, 40 light years away, in the news ten years ago when they announced a voyage of discovery? No bells? Never mind.

Seventeen is what I imagine Earth was like before there were too many people. The vegetation is similar, something akin to a larch forest, no mega fauna, lots of birds so we assume dinosaurs of some form in the past, dirt scurrying insects. And the air!

So warm and sweet and unpolluted. Only about 17% oxygen so it’s breathable if you don’t exert yourself. Which is a long way of saying we don’t wear sealed suits anymore and just carry supplemental oxygen as we go about cataloguing the environment.

Ah, I can hear you thinking, War of the Worlds and all that. Germs and bacteria!

Well so far - fingers crossed - all our pre and post arrival immunisation has worked brilliantly. Tailored to the individual, with minimal side effects, everyone feeling healthier than ever. Except for our doctors, who remain in protective gear and isolation in case something goes wrong with the rest of us. Funny that it’s back to front.

As you may have gathered, I am a bit of a storyteller, even making my daily log entries. I’ll try to come to the point, because the doctors are checking me out as I report. They insist I record what happened, and as it’s beamed back to Earth I don’t know the audience.

This morning I slept in. We all did but I was the last up, last to get dressed, last to eat breakfast. We had all kicked on a bit last night, as we all feel like we’re seventeen again thanks to those drugs, but I’m three times that age and my body needed a few more zeds. The coffee was over-brewed and I had to wait for the hot water to recover.

Consequently I was last to the wooded area we are about to dig, the others had started and I wanted to catch up. A square metre, each, that’s all, seeing how many critters inhabit the space.

I took a photo as I arrived. The forest floor, leaf litter, fallen wood and bits and pieces. We photograph every centimetre down as we go, standard operating procedure. The sun, Trappist Q, was low in the morning sky, giving a golden glow to everything.

In my square there appeared to be a tree root, more likely a broken piece of rotten wood, all covered in fuzzy tendrils as the fungi consumed dead organic material. It’s in the picture.

As I said, I was late, the others were waiting, and the metaphorical traffic lights had been against me. So I didn’t stop, look, and check.

I also didn’t want to admit I’d left my rake behind, so I reached in to move the ground litter away with my hand. My gloved hand, no contamination of the samples allowed, but it’s a thin glove.

“Wait, Jack.” said Mandy, on the square across from me, noticing. “I’ll be finished in a minute, you can use my rake.” Mandy was a quick worker, and considerate.

Ray looked across, assessing my predicament. “Yeah, be careful Jack. Something scurried away when I started.”

“What was it?” I joked. “A Spider from Mars?“

It seemed amusing, after the drinking games we had played last night, but maybe it was my hangover. I’d won, in a last man standing competition, with no challengers beyond the seventeenth round.

“No.” said Ray. “Spiders from Mars have twelve legs. My wriggler only had five.”

“Like this?” I grabbed the woody thing and waved it at Ray. “Is this your spider?”

Sorry, I’m stopping here.

I’m feeling faint and the doctor, behind his mask, seems alarmed that my fingers have green spots. He counted. Seventeen.

Technique: #digital
Theme: #abstract
Highlight colour: #yellow

Series: #space #mini-sci-fi