Photograph reprinted with permission from “an old guy I know who worked for Industrial Light & Magic years ago.”

Closing my eyes, I anticipate adventure, uncertain of what awaits me, reaching the surface of a terrain that my Earthbound life isn’t ready for after being asleep for the better part of ten years. Expectations. That’s what the scientists asked me to not have. How does one NOT have expectations? Zero communication with the last Earth outpost for more than ten years. Thousands of hours of positive affirmations played through the earbuds. I suppose that was to make sure that I was used to some voices; knowing the sound of another’s voice definitely would shock and surprise me.

Ten years of blissful sleep. My expectations didn’t measure up to the reality of the stark blackness of unconsciousness. They tell you it’s like going in for surgery. One second after the mask covers your nose and mouth, and BOOM! You are out! Like a bb gun shooting out a streetlight. Out cold in less than three seconds. And when you do wake up? Cotton fills your mouth. So dry you can’t feel your own tongue, much less your lips. But they do their best to convey the reality of the long space flight.

I’ve been on the ground in this new world for roughly five minutes. Five minutes. The bagged water is cold and refreshing, helping to clear my head of the cobwebs of years of sleep, years of being pulled and stretched periodically to prevent atrophy of the firm muscles I had before the flight. Moving in less gravity is a lot like learning how to walk. The unsteadiness is like a baby giraffe attempting to stand. Unsteady, wobbling around like a circus clown walking on stilts. Even though you are inside the craft still, and there’s not a soul around to witness your clumsiness, I felt the redness of embarrassment creep into my face.

As curious as I was to see my new surroundings, I didn’t vary the protocols, knowing my life depended on structure, as it were. With a clearer head, I’d begun the spacecraft’s preliminary checks. Flashing lights. Computer screens that only the most seasoned technician could or would understand. Or, in my case, the pilot of the craft. After fifteen minutes of double-checking the calculations and instrumentation, I knew I was okay. The ship was intact. And so was I, at least for the moment.

My first peek out the small window took my breath away. With only Earthbound senses to compare the new terrain, I used a little creativity to describe what I was seeing. I’m a tech guy, a scientist before I was a pilot, and creative words and descriptors evaded me like cotton candy melting in your mouth. It fades before you can really taste it. (You have no idea how long it took me to come up with that description . . . but here I am alone with my thoughts.)

Yellowish clouds floating through what was nitrogen-helium gas? Spectacular! Earth’s clouds didn’t even come close. There was nothing I had seen quite like it. I couldn’t tell if the circle-spot on the horizon was a gas cloud, like the one we’ve seen in countless pictures of Jupiter, or if it was a star thousand of light-years away from my vantage point. Sticklike structures, maybe buildings, but it was probably grass, hills, or perhaps even mountains, jutted out from the surface. If these forms were alive, and in all likelihood, they were, they reached up to the top part of the atmosphere.

“What’s that?” I said, barely recognizing my own voice. Not hearing another human voice for so long is a bit disconcerting, but hearing your own ringing in your ears? It sent shivers down my spine. “Those are – aliens?” The question sounded surreal, even to me. Aliens? Life on another planet that one had seen before? Was it possible? Questions ran around in my mind like a hamster on one of those wheel thingies. Spinning round and round without another human to bounce these questions off of. Damn it.

As I watched the aliens walk away from me, the structures bent and swayed back and forth. Judging the distance was tricky, not knowing if the grasslike forms were turning and shifting or if the beings were. The beings were tall, thin, and gangly, probably due to the lower gravity and low level of gases in the atmosphere. I couldn’t see faces as they were growing farther and farther away, but one was clearly more; what I would say was effeminate looking. The pair glided across the structures with the grace of a ballerina, slow and articulate. An appendage, an arm, maybe, reached out for the appendage of the other being as if ‘she’ wanted to hold hands. A very intimate reach.  

Below them, I’m not sure if you would call it ground level or lower than that, whispy figures seem to glide or hover below the figures. Each was separate but together, connected in the same way pussy willows appear. They acted the same way a pet dog would, staying close to their owner, loyal to the bitter end.

My senses were overloaded, overwhelmed at the sheer newness of the planet and everything on it. Blackness washed over me once more.