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knotty-pink-hair · 1 month

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Logs 8-11…“Night Expedition Training with Axiom the Scientist and his Apprentice Vivette of the S.S. Sentinel”

I spent the remainder of the night worrying—parasitic and burrowing thoughts going in all directions—and once I’d had enough of that, I went to the kitchen and wrote drafts of letters to Aster on my kopad none of which I intended to send.

My eyes felt heavy. The morning light gradually transitioned from dawn’s deep blue to white. Hearing my teammates beginning to stir in the sleeping quarters filled me with agitation.

Zileke was the first up with her hair pinned messily to the top of her head. When she got to the kitchen, she stared at me for a long moment.

“What are you doing up?” She asked me. Yew danced next to her waiting for her food.

“Ehhh,” I offered.

“You better not drag your feet later. You have training.”

Zileke dropped the food bowl onto the floor. Yew tore into it slopping it all over her muzzle. Klark came into the kitchen next with a look of befuddlement. I imagined he had quiet mornings sipping his tea, reading the news on his kopad, and here being the last up seemed to embarrass him.

“What’s all this about?” He asked as he gestured to everything. “You all could have slept longer. I told you this. We’re moving the ship this morning to sector 64.”

I nodded.

Zileke responded, “I’m sure Thistle stayed up all night watching the onion for any rogue pikmin activity.” It sounded like a joke—Klark scoffed and went to put the kettle on—and then she sounded irritated, “I’m very observant. I know you made her paranoid. If she doesn’t sleep, she’s useless.”

“It’s nothing. I had some bad dreams,” I told her. My eyes flicked over to Yew. She had gravy all over her face.

“What are you, five years old? I’m giving you a sleep aid later. You’ll be too tired to have bad dreams,” Zileke said.

To Klark and I’s dismay, this was not the end of the conversation. It was a new day, reenergized, and Zileke took the opportunity to recall numerous past transgressions. I had no mental capacity to follow her line of thought. Klark took his morning tea to the cockpit, but Zileke followed him.

I feared our ship would crash intentionally.

***

A few hours later, our ship descended and came to rest upon a beach. The surrounding area had innumerable pockets in the sand; from above, they looked like the seed pod of a lotus flower. These were tide pools. According to the ship, they were full of treasures and cave systems but not much food.

The food was located eastward where grasses grew and stabilized the sand into dunes. This is where Zileke, Klark, and Yew would be harvesting in tandem with unit 3267.

We walked a short distance to the other team’s ship. They were a party of seven—four field workers, two security officers, and one juicer. They had two sporty-looking gray pups with long snouts and cropped ears. Klark shook everyone’s hand; everyone seemed to already know him. The team’s lead Limerick embraced him with familiar warmth. I wondered if Klark had trained her.

Zileke went straight for the field workers profusely exclaiming how relieved she was to have extra help, teammates who knew what they were doing and could do it well. This exclamation was received with a chorus of agreement.

“The second she’s around other people, she takes the opportunity to drag our names through the mud,” I said to myself although Klark heard me.

“Oh, she’s only dragging your name, Thistle,” he said.

“Thank you, sir.”

Klark grinned. Limerick pushed past him to shake my hand.

She said, “I’ve seen your progress on the voyage logs, Thistle. A real tough thorn you are! I think I’d prefer calling you that—Thorn. You know it’s hard to find new security officers with your kind of character."

I chirped ‘thank you.’

They left my side to join Zileke and the other field workers. The group carefully marked their kopads with different colors to highlight their harvest routes. Klark rattled off names of fruit or vegetables along each path and gave the field workers their quotas for the day. Even Limerick deferred to his authority and marked her kopad accordingly.

One security officer—Palmas—went around carefully inspecting each of the field workers’ suits and helmets. He ran a wand over their bodies checking for any punctures in the suit polymers. The other security officer was a beast of a woman named Drogheda. When she approached me, she cast a shadow so I could look up at her without the sun hitting my eyes. She put a monstrous hand down on my shoulder. She told me she too had taken naturally to a security position. Sometimes her squad of 15 pikmin even rode on her back like they would a pup.

“Isn’t that heavy?” I squeaked.

“Heavy?” Drogheda asked.

Klark hollered at me to start walking to the Sentinel.

I trekked through the sand a while before looking back. Zileke had mounted Yew; two of the other field workers had mounted the gray pups, which howled in excitement. Pikmin slid down the legs of 3267’s onion seemingly forever. Their squad would easily reach 200.

I turned forward, watched the sand carefully for eye stems of hidden predators buried beneath my feet. I walked until I saw the Sentinel on the horizon, and then I sat by a large pool. Puckering blinnows [small fish] swam together in a pod causing ripples on the water surface. Beneath the blinnows a large peckish artistocrab [fiddler crab] crept carefully on its stick legs over a massive hole—a hole that seemed too large for any creature.

My eyelids drooped. I tried to imagine myself at home on Koppai. The sounds of the beach—the waves, the wind, and the nearby droning of yellow wollyhops [frogs] kept me from accepting the fantasy of home.

I watched with disinterest as the S.S. Fledgling appeared overhead, spit out a red pikmin, and then zoomed away. The redmin stood up, dazed, his stem whirling around. He hobbled over to me and sat down. There was a sticky note slapped on his forehead that read Specimen.

I was surprised to see how quickly Klark had managed to single out Sock. Our problematic little redmin had gotten quite good at blending in with his squad. Even that level of awareness was off-putting; Sock knew he shouldn’t stand out, but he could not prevent certain functions: his catatonic states, his confusion. We had agreed that I would complete the solo trip to the Sentinel, and Klark would send Sock along in the Fledgling whenever they managed to sniff him out.

All three of us had anticipated about four hours of harvest before Sock would fall out of step with the squad and reveal himself. But instead he managed to do it in 30 minutes.

Did that mean his condition was worsening?

I reached forward and gently peeled the note off his forehead. Sock tried to stick this in his mouth. We walked together through the remainder of the tidepools. Sock stopped several times to look in the pools—he lashed out at his reflection, tried wading out up to his chest to reach a blinnow, which thankfully swam away. More than once I whistled at him, tried to redirect his attention. It was a longer walk than it should have been. He quit messing with the water after I grabbed him and carried him awhile. Then when I put him back down he tried my patience with digging. Before I could correct him, he’d come running to my side as if he’d been following all along. He did however find a broken scallop shell in the sand, and this he handed over to me as if remembering the time I confiscated the bulbear eye stem.

Eventually we came to an incline where the Sentinel safely rested out of reach of high tide. I was halfway up the dune when I heard the tell-tale cry of a distressed pikmin.

I turned around, watched Sock sputtering in a pool.

And I did not react. I knew it would not take long for him to drown. Twelve more seconds maybe.

But I found myself running down to him. I pulled him out of the water; he’d ripped off his flower petals while panicking and was a leafhead once again.

I pressed my helmet against his face and shouted, “What is wrong with you?! Just stop! Stop it!”

I don’t know why this started me crying—his stupid little coughs as he tried to clear his lungs of water—it took a long time to console myself and then climb the hill to the ship. Axiom’s assistant Vivette looked deeply concerned as I approached with pathetic and hopeless Sock holding my hand like a child.

***

Vivette and I sat at a picnic table outside of the ship. The table had an umbrella, which bathed us in welcome shade as the sun grew hotter with the afternoon.

We both observed Sock in his tiny makeshift prison. It was a pup cage though Vivette explained they’d never had a pup. She wasn’t one for conversation—thankfully I wasn’t either—and only asked me a few questions related to the patient. His behavior—confused, sometimes nocturnal, prone to catatonic states, etc. The only thing Vivette seemed to care about was Sock’s mindless chewing on fallen prey. I told her it was a symptom of confusion as he wasn’t consuming any meat, but she dismissed my comment. I gave her the petals Sock had lost during his bout in the tidepool. There were micro blue veins on them that I had not noticed before. Finally, physical evidence of infection.

Vivette said she’d view a petal under her microscope in addition to a sample of Sock’s blood. After a long pause, she added,

“Axiom is asleep and will be asleep until dusk. I suggest you also get some rest although I cannot tell you what to do.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said.

“Please don’t come inside the ship. I find other people very distracting when I work, and I have 30 vials of Cure to make before your Night Expedition.”

“Okay.”

“If you need anything, send me a message on my kopad so you won’t have to come inside.”

“I understand thanks, Vivette.”

She nodded, scurried off into the ship and closed the hull door. I half-wondered if she’d lock it.

And for the next eight or so hours I laid on the picnic table, arms crossed over my chest, dozing and listening to Sock.

Hmm hmm-hmm hmmmm hmmmm he hummed.

***

The picnic table caused a terrible aching in my back, and this woke me from my nap. It was nighttime. The wollyhops were in full chorus and gone was the comfortable warmth of the afternoon sun. Above me, a green light emanated from the top of the umbrella.

I pushed myself upright with a loud groan. The light above me wavered on the umbrella, and the faces of five glow pikmin peered down at me having heard my movement. They blinked at me with those mishappen blue eyes—and chittered to each other.

Another appeared like a wisp beside me and sniffed my suit. Several of them hovered near the pup cage, but Sock had fallen silent. He was very much awake—I saw his eyes in the darkness—but he kept himself perfectly still. At least part of his survival instincts remained intact; pikmin unfortunate enough to find themselves outside of an onion at nightfall knew they had to hide and keep quiet to survive until morning.

I admitted to myself I was relieved Sock had not somehow escaped his cage. I wasn’t sure if this was rational to consider. It was hard to say.

When I stood up, the glowmin disappeared in a wink. The hull door of the ship slammed open, and a man with short blonde hair stomped down the stairs. Vivette followed him with a green vial in her hand. They both wore black suits.

Black, really? At night…

“What do they think we are, machines?!” The man hollered. I jumped at the volume of his voice. “I get a few hours of sleep and wake up to another damn request for immediate extraction!”

“It seems most unreasonable, Dr. Axiom,” Vivette said, and she tried to push the vial into his hand.

“Most unreasonable!” Axiom shouted into the night air. “Most unreasonable indeed! Outrageous even! Working like we do 12 hours a day, no help, no breaks, and you’re not even certified. How long do they expect me to put up with—gimme that vial—”

I watched with horror as he worked his arm out of his suit sleeve, rifled through his torso, and then pulled the vial through the suit’s zipper. He brought the vial up to the inside of his helmet and drank.

“Uhhh,” I said stupidly.

He smacked his lips, stared straight ahead, then nodded.

“Yep, that’s good. Check off batch test.”

“Yes, doctor,” Vivette replied. “Thirty vials are prepared for queued request 113. Their ship will arrive in 36 minutes to collect the cargo.”

“I’ll be sure to fuck off then in the next 36 minutes.”

“Yes, doctor.”

Axiom walked over to the pup cage and gave it a kick. Sock didn’t make a sound. Axiom bent over to look at him.

“What’s this all about?” He asked.

“Infected redmin from KoCo Freight unit 6321. Exhibiting symptoms of—”

“Easy, Vivette. I know what it is. I want to know what it’s about, how big of a problem it’s going to be, if I should expect my blood pressure to spike.” He paused and then addressed me. “Thistle, is it? From Garrenoi on Koppai?”

“Aye,” I said.

“Garrenoi home of the Acidic Pool Valley. Great place for research on anaerobic bacteria. Nice dry heat. Always end up leaving with less interns then when you started.” He winked. “But enough chatting, we have 34 minutes to leave the area and thus avoid thinly veiled threats from the Rescue Corps.”

“Thirty-three minutes, doctor,” Vivette added.

“Alright, let’s go sleepy bones! Up and at ‘em! Come on now!” Axiom yelled. He took a stick and started banging the pup cage. I winced. We heard something like a whisper of giggles, and then the ground and the sky filled with burning green embers—the glowmin. “Oh you’ll put on a show for Thistle, how cute. Giggling like little fae. So nice of you to join us.” But Axiom’s voice was endearing. The glowmin flocked to him and raised their little arms to touch his suit. “Everybody’s here. Okay then. Off we go.”

And we headed out while Vivette stayed and moved crates of what I imagine were vials from inside the ship to outside refrigeration units. I saw Sock’s eyes staring out at us while we departed, and I turned away so that I didn’t have to see him.

***

I thought it was a good idea to review several voyage logs from the Rescue Corps to get an idea of what a Nighttime Expedition should look like.

I paid careful attention to all protocols, took copious notes on my kopad with highlights. Doctor Axiom was exemplary in every decision he made. He operated on an advanced level of Dandori like I had not seen before. Doctor Axiom, if I could best describe him, was a Rube Goldberg Machine of ramshackle efficiency.

He also broke every protocol for a Nighttime Expedition and should probably be discharged from service.

Axiom used military-grade knives to engage night creatures himself when necessary. He stopped for snacks frequently and seemed to have no concern for perimeter security. He attached to my backpack a wireless speaker and played classical music so loud it echoed off the sand dunes additionally acting like a beacon to nearby predators.

Several times during combat Axiom received a direct message on his kopad and stopped what he was doing to ANSWER. He’d be red-faced, typing, grumbling about bureaucratic bull “shite” while I frantically whistled commands to the shrieking glowmin. I couldn’t believe how much fighting and collecting happened with no commands whatsoever. The glowmin behaved autonomously most of the time as if all they needed was the doctor’s presence to assure them.

Aside from the constant terror and near-death encounters, there was not much to report of our five nights together. Despite the darkness, I felt like a shadow following Axiom around and carrying things for him including six packs of highly caffeinated cola. I also toted around an assortment of snacks, bombs, academic journals, and no less than 40 glowmin seedlings at a time.

Most of the night Axiom charged glowmin to collect glow pellets out of vacant tide pools or pockets in the sand. The glowmin carried them—seemingly from all directions—to tricknolls, which illuminated green and convulsed with sap.

[a lumiknoll is a plant with exposed root ends called tricknolls; both parts of this plant can absorb glow pellets and make sap, which is then used to make Cure]

Axiom paid no mind to how many tricknolls we lost from night creatures; it was all in his periphery. Any formidable creatures we faced would be met with the power of a glowmob—some 112 glowmin—illuminating the nearby terrain with the brightness of a small sun before unleashing a violent shockwave.

It was terrifying. Each night we were assaulted by creatures with red eyes reflecting in the starlight. There were times the glowmin attached themselves to an enemy and subdued it before I could even tell what it was. Towering Shaggy and Baldy Long Legs [daddy long legs spiders] stepped on our tricknolls and left behind green-sap footprints. Burrowing Shearwigs [beetle-like insects] several times blackened the sky above their swarms were so large as they descended on a lumiknoll. And how could I forget a Smoky Progg [sludge-like enemy] spitting up projectile stomach acid not 30 feet away from the ship, Vivette, and all our supplies.

On one pathetic occasion I found myself on the back of a runaway Dweevil [a spider], which took Axiom 45 minutes to catch up to while he battled salmonella he’d contracted from eating tainted peanut butter. Despite ongoing diarrhea and horrific abdominal cramping, Axiom did not take any nights off. He wouldn’t even entertain the thought. Too many clients had backorders of cure waiting for leaflings.

Even if you’re dead, there’s work to be done.

The constant chaos was peppered with numerous calls from Vivette as she worked on cure vials or shipment pickups. Axiom exhaled in exasperation every time his kopad chirped with an incoming call, but he never failed to answer her. Nearly every call involved a Rescue Corps officer stationed at the Sentinel for pickup refusing to be placated by Vivette’s reassurances barking about the delayed order or lack of available Cure, demanding to speak to Axiom. There were passionate verbal fights over speaker phone every night, which never seemed to upset Vivette. I could hear her typing away on her kopad—probably answering messages—while Axiom and an officer shouted at each other in primal rage.

If I said a tiny fraction of what Axiom said to an officer, I would be fined and discharged within 24 hours and here he was slewing vitriol at anybody criticizing his (or Vivette’s) work ethic. The verbal altercations enraged Axiom so much that his kopad would alert repeatedly from spiked blood pressure. Or maybe it was spiked caffeine levels.

No amount of poor behavior brought trouble to Axiom’s doorstep. He was equal parts irreplaceable and insubordinate. The Rescue Corps knew it. Axiom knew it. The government knew it.

They could slap his wrist for disciplinary action over and over again, but it was all formalities.

This was the first time I had been exposed to essential defiance. Nothing looked quite the same after.

***

When it came time to switch roles and work alongside Vivette, I was all but useless—a slimy, sloppy sack of goo. I was so tired I felt like I was oozing.

I sat on a stool and watched bleary-eyed as Vivette took a pipette and added proteins to a batch of vials. She kept checking over her shoulder, which annoyed me greatly as we both knew I was fighting to stay focused.

She called me over when I started to nod off. We stared at the batch through our clear goggles, my pipette carefully suspended above; I squeezed four drops of cloudy fluid—glow sap—into each vial. It was hours of careful application and measurement. The temperature of the fluids had to be cautiously monitored. Sugar levels and alkaline levels had to be just right for the bacteria. Under the microscope, they were hairy-looking beans wiggling toward any green beads of glow sap, feasting on them and then later splitting in binary fission. It was all very meticulous and irritating. A single mismeasurement ruined an entire batch, which ordinarily should feel like a minor disappointment, but it did not feel that way. It felt so much worse. Every ordinary mistake on my part meant one less batch ready for pickup, which meant a dozen patients left in leafling state.

The urgency to save lives felt all-consuming. Even when we stepped away to eat or rest our eyes, my mind kept ruminating as if I was still making Cure. Vivette did not reprimand me any time I messed up. She kept a neutral expression and never raised her voice in anger. I imagined her standing on a frozen lake observing fractals of cracks spreading through the ice. She seemed to await the inevitable with a sort of tension but not fear. Something else I couldn’t name.

There was no permanent solution to the leafling crisis. Our lab grown bacteria once consumed bypassed a patient’s immune system and flipped genetic switches on or off. Leafling or human. This was not the same as getting sick and developing antibodies. The same person could be changed into a leafling and cured multiple times. Finding a permanent solution to this problem meant potential breakdown of a patient’s DNA, and ethically the whole matter was considered illegal under the pretense of ‘genoism.’

The weight of this knowledge exhausted me. This was highly specialized labor with no possible end on the horizon.

Outside the sun was high in the sky, and the ship reverberated with Axiom’s snoring in the next room. By the time our work in the lab was complete, it was dark outside with the final orange streaks of sunset fading into navy. Vivette and I walked back and forth from the ship to the outside refrigeration units carrying boxes of cure vials. We waved goodbye to Axiom and the glowmin as they headed out to harvest.

Rescue Corps ships arrived at our base every 30 minutes—sometimes concurrently—to pick up the cure batches. The officers in their red suits didn’t bat an eye at me. They had dark circles under their eyes, spoke shortly with Vivette, stood with perfect posture upright and alert. Each pickup an officer would extend their wrist for Vivette to sign some form on a kopad. Once they got the signature, they were able to takeoff. There were those of course who decided they had two minutes to have Vivette call Axiom so they could have a shouting match.

What unnerved me was the silent familiarity the officers had with Vivette and she with them—everyone knew each other’s names without referencing digital nametags. These officers had made multiple pickups from the S.S. Sentinel meaning they had multiple accidents themselves, or clients demanding cure.

This provided me with unfiltered anxiety of how prevalent the leafling problem was. And the officers seemed to be in a rush; there was no time to consider how things operated, how they could maybe improve the manufacture of cure vials.

There was no time to lose. Or maybe if you were a leafling you really had all the time in the world. The state of things didn’t bother you. Why would they? You weren’t yourself anymore.

***

On the fifth and final evening, the three of us sat around a fire. The glowmin hovered around us, next to us, above us like fireflies. We listened as they sang quietly under the louder chorus of frogs.

We were full from dinner and sat in quiet contemplation.

Back at the basecamp of my unit and unit 3267, there were two KoCo Freight ships picking up crates of juice. I observed the pickup on my kopad; digital numbers ticked away on the right side of the screen as Klark verified data.

Axiom took Sock out of the pup cage and sat the pikmin on his lap. This action immediately ceased the glowmins’ singing; some dissipated altogether. Axiom lifted Sock’s arms, squeezed his legs, pulled at his stem. Sock didn’t move whatsoever—a lifeless doll. The glowmin regarded him with wary expressions.

I sighed heavily, said, “This is the first time I’ve seen other pikmin treat So—I mean—they’ve never treated the redmin differently before. The glowmin must know something is wrong with him.”

Axiom nodded. I was tired from our work these past four days, and it did not register in my mind when Axiom took out a syringe and injected Sock in his side. My heart skipped. “Did you—is that the medicine to—?”

“Yep,” Axiom said. He placed Sock on my lap and then returned to his seat. “He’ll knock off in a moment.”

“Oh, I didn’t think you’d do that right—right now. Klark said I’d feed him nectar.”

Vivette looked over her glasses at me.

“We were scheduled to euthanize the redmin yesterday, actually. But we experienced a delay,” she said. Axiom waved at her.

“What is a schedule but a foolish attempt to control the hands of fate,” Axiom said. I felt him looking at me, but I sat there stupidly staring at Sock, my temple throbbing as I felt myself getting upset. “It’s hard not to get attached. Thistle, dear, you know I mean that when I say it.”

He did. The knives, the bombs. He tried diligently to protect his glowmin from being killed even though some academics speculated glow pikmin did not experience death at all, not as we understand, but rather underwent a transitional state.

I did not care for that argument because glowmin screamed in agony the same as any other pikmin when they were being crushed inside the mandibles of a predator.

Sock blinked his eyes very slowly, looked up at me. I gently ran my hand up and down his back. He turned his head and looked at a group of glowmin sitting on top of the ship.

“I’m sorry, Sock,” I whispered for only him to hear.

“Mmm,” Axiom grumbled uncomfortably. He slapped his knees, said, “We’ll have a clear picture of everything with the autopsy. It’s vitally important for the wellbeing of the other pikmin. Hell, even the glowmin. What do you call him? Sock?”

I flinched. “Sock will have done a mighty good thing for his onion. His death will be important. You know, some harvesters do not respect the humanity of pikmin. They see them as disposable. Never have that outlook on sentient life, Thistle, ever. We don’t see people that way when they’re reduced to leaflings. Look how hard we work to produce cure, to get them back in their right minds. The pikmin see us as indispensable. I’m certain my glowmin would mourn my body for days. Besides myself and Vivette, they don’t have anyone looking out for them.”

Sock slumped in my arms.

“You know, Dr. Axiom, the first time I saw you I thought you might die. You drank cure vial as if it was nothing,” I said with a soft laugh. I held Sock’s head upright so he could look at the stars. “Why would you do such a crazy thing?”

Axiom laughed loudly. “Ah,” he said. “That’s the least crazy thing I’ve done in the time you’ve been with me. Right, Vivette?” She ignored us both and typed away at her kopad. “Drinking the cure was not madness. My kopad checks for certain protein levels; anything short of perfection would have alarmed—”

“And potentially damaged your DNA,” Vivette muttered.

“Ha! It’s a quick and efficient process I assure you, Thistle. I always perform final batch tests for Vivette who thankfully has never been leaf-turned.”

He smiled at her, but she did not look up from her kopad. “My dear Vivette. You appear to have lost all social etiquette. I’ve kept you in the lab too long.”

She looked up from typing.

“Don’t mourn for this sick pikmin, Thistle,” Vivette said; she nearly growled. “Attachment begets grief and this breaks down the body’s capacity to produce.” She frowned at her kopad. “Grief clouds the mind…distracts the senses…”

“Human qualities, I’m afraid,” Axiom said.

“…creates a state of semi-awareness, of fragmented reality…”

“I wouldn’t describe it that way in a eulogy, but yes—”

“…a state of languishing decay—both in the mind and the body— for an indeterminate amount of time…”

“Something about the night sky brings out the human need to philosophize,” Axiom said. “Our ancestors gave up countless hours of sleep to lie awake and discuss all the things they didn’t understand about the world.”

“…if only we could forgo sleep then we’d finally catch up,” Vivette whispered.

Axiom said more after this, how he’d been changed into a leafling some five or six times, but gradually my hearing became muffled. Sock convulsed one time and then went limp in my arms, his eyes still fixed on the stars.

My pulse beat heavily in my temple. The glowmin reappeared around us having sensed Sock’s death. One of them drew near to me, lifted one of Sock’s arms and sniffed. And suddenly the perimeter motion sensors alarmed, and Vivette fell out of her seat, running to the Sentinel to put the shields up and protect the cargo. Axiom stumbled out of his chair, whistling for the glowmin, and cursed himself for putting his knives away. I watched him disappear into the tall grass with a string of glowmin hurrying after him.

The surrounding area quickly dimmed in the absence of the glowmin, and I carried Sock’s body over to the pup cage. I knelt and put his body inside knowing his corpse needed protection.

I walked into the darkness towards the north perimeter fence. It emitted a faint white light in the distance. When I reached it, I stood and scanned the area. Out on the beach red eyes of predators reflected in the starlight, bobbing in and out of the tide. A pair of scorchcakes [a pancake-like mollusk] marked a single point of burning light on the beach.

No predators appeared on my kopad. I checked the atmosphere above us for any ship activity, which was completely clear. On my way back to the Sentinel, I saw Axiom standing with his hands on his knees. As I got closer, I realized he was breathing hard from running. The glowmin had all dispersed.

“What happened?” I asked him.

“Hell of a strange thing!” Axiom yelled. “Just ran right through camp! Knocked everything over—just flailing its big arms—" he said several things, something about damages, and then finally shook my shoulder. “Thistle, are you listening?!”

“Ye-yes.”

“It was one of those huge white bastards—what are they called—you know what I mean? The one that attracts spectralids!”

“You mean a mamuta?” I asked. [a heart-shaped creature with arms and legs]

“Yes! It even ran through the campfire. It had to have injured itself. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

I walked to the campfire. Logs and rocks were tossed in all directions, footprints of embers led some fifteen feet away before smoldering. The picnic table had been upturned; the umbrella was smashed.

“Ehhh,” I muttered. Axiom didn’t hear me. He’d already marched over to the ship and banged his fist repeatedly on the hull door shouting at Vivette to lift the shields. He’d yell something, then mutter something, then yell again—it became apparent Vivette was scared and would not come out.

I glanced at the pup cage. Sock’s red body was dimly visible in the starlight. I checked my kopad again, but the map was blank. My mind began turning—Klark had warned me that some things failed to appear on our electronics. Could it be the bulblax migration?

I fetched a pale of water and doused the remaining embers, wondering about this predicament. For a mamuta to tear through camp—not attacking but fleeing—indicated prey behavior.

Predators on PNF-404 did not attack each other for food unless driven to in desperation. This was a law of nature—herbivores provided nutrients from their diet—something a predator could not get from consuming other predators.

Standing there, hands on my hips, I saw a green haze pulsating out in the dunes. The glowmin had pursued something…

“I’m going out, Axiom,” I yelled to him.

At that moment, Axiom received an incoming call on his kopad. “Everything happens at the same time,” he growled. He pointed a finger at me, said, “Don’t do anything stupid, Thistle. I mean it.”

At least he hadn’t called me feral.

I switched on my headlamp, hurried into the dunes. An aurora of green illuminated the sky again and then faded—too far away. I shuffled down an incline, still looking up at the sky, and fell halfway down.

I got up and got going again. Two minutes of running. Nothing. Tremors in the earth. Then I stumbled, looked back and forth while my headlamp lit up the ground—an erratic pattern of swipes and pitfalls were visible in the sand.

“The mamuta,” I whispered. It had tried pounding something into the sand using its massive arms. Usually this buried pikmin, and then they needed to be plucked.

I glanced forward, and my headlamp shown on a glowmin just as it disappeared into the grass. I followed it, crossed a dried stream bed surrounded by wollyhops—their red eyes glowed in the darkness. [pibald-colored frogs]

“Ehhh,” I groaned. One of the frogs rubbed its forearms together. “Shit.” It hopped—I bolted toward the grass—and then I was airborne. A creature carried me by my legs letting me hang upside down while it hovered in the air. Its wings made a racket of buzzing—I writhed against its grasp and then it threw me down hard into the sand. [swooping snitchbug—a flying insect with long green arms]

My vision spun. My kopad alerted as my suit took damage from the impact. The snitchbug divebombed for me again, tried to take me up, but I broke its grasp and fell. I army-crawled into the nearby grass hearing the loud buzzing trailing behind me.

I waited. The snitchbug cast a shadow from the starlight as it patrolled above me. Then it swooped again and captured a glowmin, but the glowmin evaporated from its claws.

I made my way through the blades of grass until they thinned. Then before me I saw a bare field littered with leafy bases. These I recognized instantly—they were the remains of used-up candypop buds. They were a natural resource during harvesting that allowed us to throw five pikmin into a flower head, which then chemically changed the breed of pikmin.

But all of these candypop buds had been used. I knelt to examine one of the leafy bases, and movement caught my eye—several redmin crawled out from under a scallop shell and made a run for the grasses.

I blared my whistle, but the redmin did not respond and disappeared. To my right, the sky illuminated with green light. Glowmin rained down slowly, advanced on the remaining candypop buds and—to my astonishment—began destroying them. I whistled at them to stop.

They froze, their misshapen blue eyes regarding me with… confusion? Aggression? More of them came down from the sky appearing out of thin air, and they gravitated toward me.

“What is going on?” I asked them.

And in the next moment they came together forming a glowmob of their own volition.

“Stop, stop, don’t—!” I shouted.

The proceeding shockwave wiped out the candypop field, sent me flying backward into a wall of rocks, cracking my helmet.

For some reason, I did not feel afraid this time around; through my blurred vision I saw a multitude of hairline cracks. I heard only my kopad alerting, and then nothing.

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