The Station, Part 39

Funny, it’s like one of those things that, once you’ve learned them, it stays with you forever. Take tree climbing. The last time I did this I was just a boy, prepubescent and with nothing but dreams in my head. It’s coming back—the old habits, knowing just where to place a hand or foot without slipping. And I’ve never been this particular tree before. So unlike the first time I…when was that? I remember the tree. Where was that tree though? I can see it, looking huge compared to my small size. What was that tree called? I see the leaves, the structure of its branches, and the top of it looking so far up in the sky. The feeling of fear and excitement of climbing into it is fresh again, another first time, but make all the more fearful—the body I have now is so different. I’m still learning it. The hands wrap so well around the tree’s lower branches and my feet, with the foot coverings off, I’ve discovered have their own natural traction now. The foot coverings seem rather redundant now; they are getting loose anyway. Everything feels so much more fluid, connected somehow. It’s not all there yet, I can feel. Some other details need to be worked out.

I’ve gotten high enough to reach the lowest of the fruit. I can also stretch further than before. The new body is more limber as well. Was it built specifically for tree climbing? I doubt it. But the changes all have their purposes. This is no randomness. The ease of walking, the relative lack of physical needs such as food and water, and the lack of sunburn, I’m thinking this is yet another adaptation, rather than absence of ultraviolet light.

The fruit is defiantly like a fig. It’s not too terrible, but won’t ever be a first choice. So unlike the last fruit, that one, dare I say, supernatural thing back there in the savannah, where no such fruit of that kind would ever belong. It was meant just for me.

I eaten a few more figs and that seems to have quelled my hunger for now. Curious, it didn’t take that many, just a mere handful. Do I require that much less to eat? If so, it will be most assuredly an asset here. Come to think of it, so are all of my other…miraculous adaptations. Each has shown to be quite useful. And it all began right after my sickness. The sickness that I’ve grown more and more doubtful was ever such a thing. The sickness which preceded the first signs that my humanity would, at least in part, sacrificed in the name of survival. What else could it have been other than that fruit. One that for a short time might have been the death of me. I can see now that it was the very thing that has enabled to continue to exist.

Am I unique in this way, the sole member of a brand new hybrid, or a wholly new species. An amalgam of human and alien DNA? And what is at work here that make s the effort to keep this lone human alive? That impossible fruit gave me new life, literally. I should be thankful, but I’m not. I’m expectant and curious as to what will come next, even looking forward to it in some fashion. But I don’t want it. I’ve never wanted it. If this place knows anything about me, it’s that I want to go home. To Earth. And I need Frontier to make that happen.

I saw her in the dream. She is working. She is bound by threads to this place and so close to freedom it would seem. The hub of all the tunnels leads to all the other chambers. I saw it in the hologram in my dream. That is the answer I have managed to retain. I know it. The dream was the learning experience I knew it to be. And I know how to get there. And I’m more prepared than ever before for the journey.