The Human

PART 1

There exists a kind of veil—floating, I guess, inside or maybe above the planet’s atmosphere—that makes you forget. When we passed through it on our way here, it sapped every memory of our previous life.

That’s one theory anyway.

I don’t know if it’s right, and I can’t speak to the state of Hamilton’s memory because he’s a dog. What I do know is that apart from my name and a vague understanding that I was a human, I had no idea who I was or how we ended up on that beach.

I guess we fell out of the sky?

That’s what Buddy said. But then, how did we get into the sky in the first place?

His name isn’t really Buddy, by the way, the small alien who dragged me from the surf. “What’s your name?” I asked him, once I’d come to terms with the fact that somehow I was no longer on Earth.

“I am just me,” he said.

“Yeah, but what do people call you?”

“They just say, ‘Hello!’”

“No, but like, how do you know when someone’s talking to you specifically?”

“If a person is looking at me when they speak or if there is no one else in the vicinity, I know that I am being addressed.”

“Okay buddy, but I need to call you something…”

And there you have it.

He was an astoundingly literal creature, inquisitive in the least logical ways, and even in spite of his frustrating inability to think in the abstract I liked him right away—even if I had mistaken him for a child at first. A bald, tan human child with a biggish head. He only came up just above my knee, but he had all the same features in all the same places. Two eyes, two ears, a mouth and a nose. Two hands, two feet, twelve fingers, four toes—

Hold up. He only had two toes on each of his bare feet.

And his hands were symmetrical: four three-jointed fingers, just like a normal person’s, but with a thumb sticking out of each side.

No, this was not a human child. This was something else.

When I realized this was characteristic of an entire race of beings, also with no name, I decided to call them Digitals.

Once I got my bearings—I mean as much as I could, amnesic brain and alien planet considered—Buddy escorted me to his village, a miniature extraterrestrial rendition of an Alaskan fishing town set between the sea and a range of hills. Wooden domiciles populated a geometric grid, all of them weather-beaten and built for efficiency rather than comfort. Simple, cubic, and exactly enough space for their inhabitants.

As such, the first hut the Digitals gave us was a very tight squeeze. Plus, it was destroyed by a hurricane. On the first night we were there. While we slept inside it.

Lucky for Hamilton, he was safe in his crate, so none of the debris was able to crush him. Lucky for me, these cubes were built for people a third my size, meaning thin walls and roofs that for sure gave me a few lacerations but were not heavy enough to kill me.

The next morning about a billion ants, give or take, emerged from the loam and carried the deceased into the forest at the north edge of the village. Without a moment’s mourning, the surviving Digitals went straight to work constructing a new, bigger cube where Hamilton and I might fit more comfortably. They worked just like the ants, with unspoken coordination and impressive speed. The whole structure was done by noon.

As it turned out, these poor people would endure three or four hurricanes a week, and the mornings after were always the same: the ants carried the dead from the rubble and the Digitals got to work.

They didn’t have jobs, per se, and there was no leader. They just did what needed to be done, when it needed to be done, as a community. They spoke English somehow, but they had no written language. They drew diagrams, but they had no art. They drank only water, which bubbled up from a kind of rock fountain in the center of the village, and they ate only three bland foods: these reddish kind of rhubarb-looking vegetable stalks, melons that fell from trees, and fish bigger than they were. They’d gather, they’d build, and they’d fish. When the work was done, they’d sleep.

Buddy was an insanely good fisherman, impressive as hell with a spear. The fish would jump high out of the sea and Buddy would stand on the pier, waiting and watching the ripples in the water. He would time it with such precision, and from twenty or thirty yards away he’d drive that spear right through a leaping fish. I’d hate to be on the receiving end of that weapon, I can tell you that.

The other Digitals lived in pairs. Buddy, for some reason, lived alone with his pet “turtle,” a nameless creature with a color-changing shell. While the others did not care to know me on any kind of personal level, Buddy was concerned about me and my safety. And while none of these aliens seemed to have much in the way of emotions, Buddy possessed a kind of sadness—although, somehow, I don’t think he knew it.

With some time to acclimate to my new life, I started to remember the broad strokes of where I’d come from. Like I was an American and I was pushing forty and I had a job I probably hated, even if I couldn’t remember what it was. I was reasonably certain I wasn’t a space traveler, because that’s not a thing, but I couldn’t narrow it down any more than that. I was able to recall facts and general trivia, and every so often the shape of a tree might spark a quick flashback or a smell might trigger a kind of déjà vu. Glimpses into whatever life I’d left behind, but nothing concrete enough to piece together who I was.

Although.

My mind did conjure a particular series of images so often they couldn’t be anything but a memory. Throwing a duffel in the trunk of a car and pulling out of an underground parking garage, Hamilton in his kennel in the back seat. In the rain, I think.

Anyway.

The days here were mostly fine. Although the fact that this planet had two suns gave me a colossal headache. I mean, a planet can’t orbit two suns. The gravitational pull would be all kinds of fucked up. Believe it or not, that stressed me out more than my absent memory did.

Regardless, Hamilton and I would spend most of our days going for long walks. We’d explore, visit other villages where the people also did not care about me, at all, but were happy to let me borrow their watercraft. Well, “happy” isn’t the right word. They were…cordial, maybe? Generous, at least. In any case, they encouraged me to take their pontoon boats—a bit cramped at my size, but with a nice little basket where I could secure my twelve-pound terrier—and told me to just leave them on shore for the next person in need.

The nights were harder.

Thankfully, an impossibly bright moon hung in the sky. Way too large to logically allow for any kind of nighttime at all, yet somehow the sky around it was dark. It was comforting, the way its light streamed through my windows, never leaving me in what might have been a panic-inducing blackness.

Still, at night I was alone with my thoughts.

Some nights I’d make my way to Buddy’s cube and ask him how the moon could be so bright. How do they measure a year with two suns? Does their planet ever pass between them? Have there always been hurricanes? What was he doing out on the pier alone in the middle of a giant storm when I supposedly fell from the sky?

But Buddy never wanted to talk at night—he barely wanted to answer questions during the day—so I’d lie awake, alone. Frustrated and without purpose.

I wasn’t in any hurry to get home. In fact, the idea hadn’t even crossed my mind. In hindsight, I recognize how insane that sounds. But you have to realize that at the time, without my memories, I didn’t know what home was or what I’d be trying to get back to.

This was just my life now.

But each night as darkness fell I was consumed by a certain hollowness, like a hole where something had been ripped out of me.

I missed someone.

I missed someone terribly.

Trouble was, I wasn’t sure whom.

PART 2

I believe the human fell from the sky, but I did not see it. I only heard the splash. And so I ran from the pier to drag him out of the water before he did drown.

The human was a very strange creature indeed. He did not remember many things about himself, but he appeared to understand many things about my planet. For instance, the human knew that my planet is round like a melon.

“But human, if my planet is round like a melon, why do we not fall off?”

“Because of gravity. Please call me Eric.”

He attempted to explain gravity using combinations of words which had no meaning to me. “I mean, look at the curve of the horizon.” He pointed to the sea. “This planet must be very small.”

He insisted on proving to me that he was correct, even though I did not think it was important whether my planet was round like a melon. And so he gathered his animal which also had fallen from the sky only inside a kind of box, a satchel of vegetable stalks, and a receptacle for water, and he walked out of my village.

“Be careful of snakes!” I shouted after him. Snakes is the human word for the deadly slithering creatures which live in our forests. We do not name so many things as humans do. I would have warned him also of wolves, but wolves do not exist on Level 1 except sometimes they arrive.

The human returned after some days from the opposite direction. “See, Buddy?” he said to another of my people. “Round. Five days, just walking, biking, or rowing in a straight line. This is a very small planet.”

“I am here!” I shouted from a perch where I sat sharpening a spear.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said to the other person. “I thought you were Buddy.” Then he approached me. “See? Round.” He picked up a melon which had fallen from a tree and dragged his finger along its surface to show me his route. I suppose my planet is round like a melon, but it does not matter.

The human would often knock upon the door of my cube even when I was sleeping to ask unimportant questions. My people had constructed a large cube specifically for him and his animal to sleep in, but I suspected the human was perhaps afraid to be alone at night and so his mind created nonsense.

“I’m still trying to figure this out. How do you calculate the length of a year, like for real? I mean, with two suns. It’s impossible.”

The human had always been quite upset by the fact that my planet now had two suns. On this night, he had made a kind of drawing stick from the branch of a sap bush and created many diagrams on a piece of debris which had once been part of a cube wall.

“I can’t figure out how it works. Does your planet ever pass between them? Do you have like double years?”

It was difficult to see his drawings by the light of the moon only, but it did not matter as they had no meaning to me. I too am curious about some things—it is my gift—but not so late at night when I am tired. If I were to have questions, I would discover the answer on my own or I would ask another person at an appropriate time of day.

“My planet does not pass between the suns, for they are in the sky. And years simply are,” I explained.

When I said things such as this, the human would become quite red in the face and throw his hands up over his head and say, “How can you be content not knowing?”

During the daytime, the human would attempt to be helpful but he was not as efficient as my people at completing basic tasks. And so while my people were busy repairing cubes which had been damaged by hurricanes or gathering ripe melons which had fallen from the trees or spearing the fish which jump high out of the sea, the human simply wandered about experiencing emotions. There were three which he seemed to prefer. He called them anger, sadness, and frustration, and he spent much of his time feeling them. My people know only two emotions, full and empty, and we do our best to ignore them.

After the human had spent some weeks on my planet, he attempted once again to aid my people in constructing a cube, but as he is quite three times the size of us, he used far too much strength and collapsed an entire wall. This caused him to become frustrated and then angry and then sad. All three of his favorite emotions. We assured him that we did not require his assistance, and so he drooped his head forward and slowly walked to the shore where he failed to spear a fish and then kicked up a cloud of sand. When he had finished being quite upset at the ground, he spied an object which he extracted from the rocks. I could not see what he held, but it surely made him very excited indeed.

Some time later, as I drank from the fountain in the square, another of my people said that she had seen the human traveling down a particular path through the forest—a thing which he should not have done. I did not even think to take a bicycle, I simply ran straight through the woods to find him.

They were already in the metal box, the human and his animal, when I reached the edge of the forest. I screamed at the human not to press any buttons, but the doors were sliding shut already. They were very fortunate indeed, for when the doors reopened both the human and his animal were still alive.

“You never use the lift without a plan,” I shouted. “It is far too dangerous!”

“Jeez, it’s just an elevator. I’ve been in hundreds. Why didn’t you tell me this was here?”

“Where did you go?”

“Just down to two.”

“Level 2 is the most dangerous of all.” I had gripped his hand and was pulling him away from the treacherous box. “You are very fortunate to still be living, human.”

“I mean, it was a bit windy, but I wouldn’t call it dangerous.”

“You must never use the lift. The below people would kill you.”

“There are people in the basements? Hang on, hang on.” He wrested his hand from mine. “Stop. You keep people in the basements?”

“They are not basements. I do not know what are basements. They are levels. And we do not keep them. It is where they live.”

“What are they, people like you?”

“They are not my people. My people live here on Level 1.”

“Well, let’s go check it out.” He began to walk back toward the lift, but I leaped at his knees and knocked him to the ground. His animal jumped up at me, perhaps believing that this was play.

“You cannot!” I shouted, as his animal licked at my arm.

“Alright, alright. Get off of me.”

But I sat upon his chest and yelled into his face. “Human, you would be killed. It is far too dangerous.”

“Fine. Alright. Will you get off of me, please?”

“I will not until you promise.”

“I promise, all right?” I allowed the human to stand. He brushed his hands along his legs and back to rid himself of leaves, then bent to scratch the head of his animal who was now jumping at his leg. “What’s down there?”

I explained to the human that my planet contains twelve levels populated by different people and creatures and treacherous things. The human had great difficulty understanding how each level could exist inside the next with its own atmosphere and stars and moons and suns. “It is not important,” I told him, and convinced him to accompany me back to my village.

During the entire journey the human repeatedly walked off the path to step on crispy brown and orange leaves. “You know, your numbers are all wrong. If you’re going to call something level whatever, twelve, that level should be twelve incremental rises above the ground. Not like twelve basements deep. You know?”

I did not know. How could the numbers be wrong? They are simply the numbers which have always been written upon the doors of the lift.

“Maybe P12 instead,” he said.

“Why?”

“Stands for parking.”

“Parking? There is no parking. The below people do not have bicycles, or pedicabs. Only my people have these.”

“It’s just because often underground levels are for parking, at least in America.”

“What is America?”

“My country, where I’m from.”

“You are a human. You are from Earth.”

“Earth is my planet. America is my country.”

“What is a country?” I smelled the offensive creatures which the human calls basically-skunks-more-or-less ahead, and so I guided us down a side path which I knew also to lead to my beach.

“A country is a part of a planet,” he said, “with borders and sometimes different languages and different people and things.”

“Ah, like levels.”

“No. Not…it’s different.” He seemed quite annoyed with me. “Yes, I mean okay, your planet’s levels sound sort of like my planet’s countries, only vertical instead of horizontal.”

“And you can travel to other countries?”

“Yes. Because I’m an American, I can go to most countries.”

“But people from other countries cannot come to America? It is the same. The below people cannot come to Level 1, but my people can travel to any level. The lift will not allow a person to travel any higher than their home.”

“You can go down, but you can’t go up,” he said, nodding his head.

I thought to explain that you indeed can go up if you have first gone down, for how else would a person return home, but I did not wish to have this conversation any longer.