Scorched Earth, Alien Wonders
Chapter 4: First Contact

After a few hours of bone-jarring travel on the back of our donkey shuttle, we arrived near the stark, desolate edge of Suburbia. It was a prairie dog colony of about two earth acres with a few hundred dirt-domed entrances that, from what we were told, led down into vast and intricate underground chambers. Jones, who looked like a primate, but hopped like a kangaroo, jumped over to join us after we all descended from the donkey’s back.

“Okay, Torie, time to go back into stasis,” I said to our cheerful bot-shifter.

He snorted once then his long ears started to swirl upward, followed quickly by his front legs and the rest of his body, until he looked like a dancing, ballerina funnel before plopping onto the ground as a pair of binoculars.

A geez, he’s showing off already.

I walked over, touched a spot on the side of the binocs and watched them shrink to miniature size. Using a short strap, I hung the mini-binocs around my neck, and looked out to survey the strange landscape of Suburbia. It was mostly flat, which made the prairie dog mounds more distinctive for as far as the eye could see. There wasn’t a hint of color. Just brown dirt and what appeared to be a big, dead tree, with many bare and knurled branches, standing like a lonely sentinel in the middle of town.

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something about the place felt familiar. We noticed the town’s resident prairie dogs were emerging from their homes into the increasing light.

“Can we please, pretty please, find a place out of this face-melting heat?” asked Brown.

“Yeah, pretty please,” Davis joined in.

“That’s our number one priority, believe me,” I said, standing with my paw-hand shading my eyes.

I couldn’t see anything that would provide even an impish modicum of shade, except that tragically malformed, dead-looking tree, so I decided that should be our destination. Then quite unexpectedly, we were approached by a curious family of prairie dogs. They strolled right up to greet the strangers in town and our big, weird looking escort.

“Hello,” I said simply.

Without giving them a chance to respond, I immediately started introducing each of us by our first and last Earth names, without Special Forces titles. I explained that we were from a colony of giant prairie dog cousins...and that we were fleeing from an attack by a nocturnal, two- headed beast...and that we—along with our two-tailed monkey protector—were the only survivors.

Are they gonna buy this shit?

The PD’s listened to my claim with rapt fascination, smiling all the while, and didn’t show any hint of not believing my preposterous story.

They were a dad, mom and four pups.

“Hello. My name is Buster and this is my mate Sally. My daughters, Sheena and Sadie...sons, Toffer and Mannie.”

Not a single question...they really were a nice, gullible bunch.

I could tell Brown was having a tough time containing herself from reaching out to touch the adorable, toothy, smiling, critters that were much smaller than we were. The pups stared at us and giggled, but Sally scolded them for being impolite.

We didn’t know it then, but it later came as an unexpected surprise how quickly the whole town’s population would accept us as members of their own clan, even if we were taller than them and hanging out with a peculiar looking monkey. During the introductions, we discovered something that hadn’t shown up in our research as we continued chatting with our first contact family.

Buster, the poppa, said PD’s never used last names.

“Really? Are you the only ‘Buster’ in the whole community?” I asked, incredulous that we had missed such information, because we wasted time rehearsing how to respond to our first AND last names without hesitation.

“No, there are a few other ‘Busters’ in town,” he replied, as the pups started wrestling around in the dirt under the watchful eye of their mother.

“But from what I’ve seen, prairie dogs in Suburbia all look alike, so how can you tell each other apart without name distinction?” Moore asked with genuine curiosity.

Perplexed by the question, Buster, Sally and all the pups stopped what they were doing to look at us like we were two-headed toads. Then they started yipping and guffawing with delightful sounding laughter.

“What do you mean we all look alike?” Buster chuckled. “Are you guys from another planet or something?”

“Not exactly,” I said, with a grin. “But our nomadic customs are different. We use last names for identification purposes.”

“But we are as different as the day’s inferno is to the night swelter,” offered Sally, just Sally.

“No two prairie dogs smell the same, so last names don’t matter here,” explained Buster. “We greet strangers and others we haven’t seen in a while by smiling, touching noses and taking a big whiff.”

You can’t be serious!

So, that is when we learned that smiling was an invitation for strangers to engage in olfactory identification cues.

“Thanks, and that is interesting,” I said, not looking forward to the prospect of touching anyone’s nose or teeth. “But we need to talk with the PD in charge of Suburbia as soon as possible. Can you please help us?”

It was important that we find the town leader and explain who we were and why we were on Earth, because Rosen law dictated such courtesy be extended to any species we impersonated.

“Yeah, take us to your leader,” chimed in jokester Davis, using his best Twilight Zone voice.

“Sure thing,” said Buster. “That would be Mayor Daisy. We can take you to meet her.”

“Great. We’ll follow you,” I said, casting an annoyed look at Davis.

I let everyone follow Buster ahead of me as I lagged behind to have a chat with my comedian TO.

“Take us to your leader?” I mocked Davis. “C’mon, that wasn’t a bit funny. Can we get to know these critters a little more before you turn on your clown act?”

“It was kinda funny,” responded the smiling Davis, who had no intention of taking my scolding seriously.

I moved on up to fall in place behind Buster as we traversed the parched trail. I noticed there wasn’t a sign of human beings anywhere near the place. I had thought the mission was going to be in, out, done...and we’d be back on Rosen sipping salted, calibrees in a matter of days. But I was beginning to suspect things were going to take a lot longer, and it wasn’t helping to settle my increasingly, frazzled mood.

My team and I, including Jones at the rear, followed Buster’s family in single file along the arid, trail for what seemed like forever in the blistering sun, but it was only a few minutes.

The mini-binocs still hung around my neck.

Our new PD friends smiled at other prairie dogs sitting along the path, which was also seen as a sign of good manners, so we smiled back, not wanting to appear unfriendly.

Sally and her four rambunctious pups peeled off in another direction along the way and we kept following Buster until he came to the largest dirt mound in town only a stone’s throw from the dead, twisted tree. He explained it was the mayor’s residence, and the town’s community gathering place.

“I’ll go in and get Mayor Daisy,” said Buster, then he disappeared down the shadowy hole.

I had actually done a little research on the culture of Earth, so my thoughts wandered to a far-fetched story I remembered reading about called, “Alice in Wonderland.”

Doesn’t seem so far-fetched now...

My team quickly gathered in a circle, and I learned everyone had the same problem on their mind...except Jones.

“Captain, these prairie dog critters are all very nice, but seriously, are we going to have to touch noses with everyone we talk to?” asked Moore.

“Yeah, it sounds like a personal hygiene problem,” agreed Doc.

“Not to mention an invasion of personal space problem” Davis joined in.

“Oh, c’mon, Davis, where’s your sense of humor?” I teased.

“The Doc’s right,” said Brown. “Besides, I wasn’t trained in the art of nose-sniffing communications.”

“I agree, it’s a bad idea,” Moore said. “After all, we’re Rosenians in disguise. Chances are pretty damn good we aren’t going to smell like real prairie dogs.”

“Okay, okay. You’re right. I don’t want to repeat the same dialog we just had with Buster every time, so I’ll come up with something.”

Just then, Buster reappeared with a petite prairie dog right behind him. She stood on her hind legs at the top of the entrance and looked up at us through kind eyes, with a big, welcoming smile on her face.

Buster must have filled her in on our nomadic-giant-cousins-escape-beast-attack story, because she didn’t seem at all surprised by our height discrepancy or our strange looking monkey friend.

I noticed Mayor Daisy was wearing a tiny, silver, earring clamped to her left ear.

Prairie dogs make fashion statements?

“Thank you, Buster, but can we please talk to the mayor about our visit in private?” I asked, not wanting to sound rude.

“Sure,” Buster said cheerfully, and he scampered back in the direction of his family. Buster-just-Buster didn’t show the slightest offense at being summarily excluded from the business involving five strange, giant, meerkat-like, prairie dogs accompanied by an odd-looking primate that showed up unannounced in Suburbia that particular day.

I turned my attention to the nice mayor lady, but I suddenly felt very awkward looking at that smile on her face, knowing she expected me to touch her nose, and give her the olfactory once-over.

“Pleased to meet you, Mayor Daisy,” I said with bravado. “We have traveled a long way to conduct an exploratory survey and scientific experiment in your community, so please forgive my lack of social graces at this point, because it’s all a part of the study.”

I had decided on the spot to abandon the previous nocturnal-beast-attack explanation.

“Ahhh,” said Daisy, in a puzzled, but understanding tone.

I always found that having a doctorate in BS diplomacy came in handy on such occasions. Something along the line of, “if you can’t dazzle ’em with brilliance then baffle ’em with bullshit”.

“Is there someplace we can talk out of this insufferable heat?” I asked, knowing my crew tended to get crabby in desert-like conditions, though clearly residents of Suburbia had made adaptions.

“I know just the place,” Daisy said. “Follow me.” She turned and disappeared down the burrow entrance.

The words “rabbit hole” and “suspicious trap” popped into my mind at that moment. But I didn’t care, as long as it was cooler down there.

“Let’s go!” I said to my team. Holding onto the mini-binocs with one paw-hand, I jumped into the opening head first then I used my hind feet as brakes to slow my descent on the way down.

“I guess it can’t be any worse than traversing intergalactic wormholes,” said Doc before he plunged in head first, holding onto his eye glasses.

Then Davis, Moore and Brown followed suit. Jones hesitated, but decided squirming down a big hole was preferable to standing alone in the heat, while drawing stares from Suburbia town-folk.

We shuffled down the nearly vertical, 2-foot-wide tunnel in the dark for a few minutes. The air was stale, but cooler as we descended down from the top layer of heat-conducting dirt and rocks. I saw an increasing glow underneath us, and realized the tunnel was curving sharply to the right. We plunged on knowing Mayor Daisy was somewhere close in front of us.

“Welcome to the Suburbia Community Center,” said Daisy sitting in the middle of the enormous, empty chamber we plopped into—one on top of the other.

It may be called the “Community Center” by Suburbia’s town-folk, but from that day forward, my team and I referred to it as the “Rabbit Hole”. The place was softly lit by solar-powered, computer devices. The glowing machines were thin, 20-inch displays positioned on shallow, dirt ledges, about 4-feet from the floor all around the chamber wall.

There were dozens, upon dozens of them.

Daisy explained that a huge pile of the mechanisms were discovered not far from Suburbia many decades ago, by past generations of town-folk. Apparently, they had all worked together to bring the devices down into the Rabbit Hole to use for light and entertainment, because they were also programed with hundreds of man-made movies and TV shows. In addition, they found a case containing dozens of discs of other movies that could be inserted into the devices.

“Wow, this is amazing,” I said looking around at a place that could easily hold hundreds of prairie dogs. “How do you keep the light going all the time in this dark place?”

“We have maintenance teams that rotate moving the devices to the surface once every full moon to lay in the sun for solar recharge,” Daisy explained.

“Holy backache that sounds like a lot of work” responded Moore, remembering how industrious PD’s were, according to his research.

“Yeah, they say it’s a much easier job bringing them back down,” replied Daisy, with a giggle.

“What’s that on the wall over there?” asked Brown as she pointed toward the east side of the chamber.

“I would say that’s a human,” offered Davis. It was a framed picture of a gray haired, distinguished looking man, with a gray mustache.

“That’s our idol from human-kind, Mr. Ted Turner,” said Daisy. “He did a lot to protect our prairie dog ancestors at a time when many other humans were killing them by the millions.”

What?

“By the millions?” I asked, nervously adjusting the mini-binocs around my neck, knowing such news would not be received well by my planet’s paranoid leaders.

“Well, it goes back a few centuries, but, yeah...by the millions...over time,” responded Daisy, who also turned out to be the town historian.

“Was your human idol the only good one on Earth?” I asked.

“Oh, not at all,” said Daisy emphatically. “There are lots of good humans, and we get to watch them every night on our entertainment devices.”

“Oh, that’s good to know,” I said, relieved that all humans weren’t cold-blooded, prairie-dog bashing, barbarians.

“Who is that other man in the wall picture on that side,” Davis asked.

“Oh, that’s Kevin Bacon.”

“Is he a hero of your ancestors, too?”

“Ahh...well, mostly he’s our hero,” and with that, Daisy hesitated. “I’m sorry, but you mentioned something on the surface about an experiment?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said, ready to jump right in. “You might want to get comfortable, because it’s a long story.”

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