posted 01-21-99 10:20 PM ET     

Where to start? Time flies, I suppose, when you're building a new human society completely from scratch. Can it really be fifteen years since our pod it the hilly soil of Eye of Planet. Can it really be fewer than sixty since my eyes last caught sight of Earth? No, it is an eternity. Enough has happened to keep the historians busy for millennia at least. Here are my memories, it written form, of some of these world-shaking events.

-Just outside of Gaia's Landing
-M.Y. 2100
-Planetfall +2 weeks
-Dr. H. Aveer, Xenobiologist

There was quite a stir in Gaia's Landing. For one thing, everyone had finally stopped complaining about living conditions. Half the population had been moved into the mutant trees, and it would only take a few more days to finish the switch. We were somewhat undecided whether that was a good thing, but the results of preliminary tests had done something to calm our fears.
But the main reason for the excitement was the loss of Exploration Parties I and II. Three days after Party I had set out to explore the northern area, we had lost all communications. They never returned. A secod party was dispatched to search for them, armed with the vast majority of weapons in our whole pod. The same mysterious end struck them, as well. Skye decided that, until the situation was cleared up, no one could leave the makeshift dome except qualified personnel. This included the farmers who were slowly seeding Planet's fertile soil with Earth plants, as well as the miners who were doing preliminary searches for important minerals. It also, as a matter of fact, included scientists whose work was 'vital to the continuation of the colony.' While my work wasn't that vital, I was anxious to start exploring the Chironian ecology. After bothering the neccesary departments for a while, the growing Gaian government decided to give me a temporary pass for outside excursions.
Thus, early one morning, I gathered a portable chemical laboratory. A few specimen jars, (you never know) a shredder pistol, (again, you never do know what's out there) And left the dome's protected environment. My suit made it king of clumsy to walk anywhere, but I eventually reached my destination, a particularly thick patch of fungus behind a ridge. From there, the landscape looked refreshingly alien. The tops of the small hills blocked the lit dome of the base, and xenofungus seemed to spread for miles around.
I began looking at a particularly interesting clump when some movement caught my eye. An illusion. I did a couple of chemical experiments, and suddenly saw it again. Intrigued, I approached.
There, sitting on a camoflauging spore of xenofungus, was arguably the strangest spectacle humankind had ever seen. It wasn't a worm. It was more like a snake, long and slithering. But it wasn't a snake. Its 'head' looked more like a sea anemone or something.
Radiating from the center came weird, indescribable things that made it look like a jellyfish.
[i]Animal life![/i]
I took my specimen jar, and noiselessly aprroached it. Then, without warning, the thing leaped up and stung me.
I think.
I never saw the thing move, and yet it perceptably injured me. These things move fast.
With my self-preservation instinct flaring up, I pulled out my shredder pistol. When I was turning it on, I accidently fired at myself! I let out a scream of pain.
Wait a second. The safety switch was still in the 'Off' position. It couldn't fire. Besides, one doesn't often survive a direct pistol shot. I looked at the alien. Suddenly, it didn't seem so innocent anymore...
As I leveled my pistol to aim, I felt another intense blow against me. Nothing had happened. The alien worm was sitting there, minding its own business. It hadn't moved a muscle.
I looked around frantically. There was no one around. Suddenly, my mind felt an intense pressure, like it was being melted into component atoms, and...
And I fought it back. I stood up straight and said "Mind Worm, you cannot harm me. Your stings are imaginary. I will stand up to you. I will not allow you to kill me."
The mind worm raised its watery tentacle in what looked vaguely like a salute.

Whoareyouweareplanetmindwhyareyouherewheredidyoucomefromwillyouhurtuswhatareyoudoingknowyouofplanetssecretscareyouforplanetwhatbeyouwhoother sweMINDWORM.

My mind took the full flood of information at once. I looked at the creature in awe. "Are you telepathic? Are you sentinent?"

whattelepathicwenotknowtelepathicwenotknowearthwordswenotknowearthcultureyeshehavemindyeswetalkwithmindyesweusemindallcanusemindwejustknowho wwejustseemind.

"We are Earthlings. We come in peace." I had always wanted to say that line, since my earliest days of study on Mars. Yet it now seemed strangely inadequate. "We need to get to know you, Mind Worm," I told the creature. We humans are here to stay. Come back to the dome with us. As I said that, I sudden;y felt an empathic bond, as if the Mind Worm and I were one and the same.

wecometodomewithyoulongweseedomelongwewonderwhatindomeyoulivetheredomebadtoomuchoxygentoolittlenitrogenyoufriendsohgoodhappywe!