The return of the departed

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Some legends of the exodus tell us it took place only a few hundred years ago, others that it was a thousand. I think it was nearer a few hundred, but we can’t say with any certainty because of the darkness that followed, a time when not even the sun would rise to be counted. And the archives tell us that long before then, the earth had begun a period of change, one that rendered the complexity of machine-life difficult. So, our ancestors built the last of their great machines, and rode them to the stars.

But the learned teach us a star is like the sun, and very far away, too far for machines to reach, at least within the lifetime of a man. It was to somewhere closer, then, we believe, most probably one of the wandering stars, they went, and which are not stars, but more like the earth, only barren, and where, without machines, a man could not survive at all. Such stories would remain stories, always out of reach of what is true, except sometimes the departed return, and because the stories have a power to them, we persist in calling them star-men.

They don’t come very often, though their frequency is observed to be increasing. The manner of their coming is always foreshadowed by the dark of the moon, so we are watchful at such times, watching for their machines as they streak across the sky. The machines are often left broken and burned, leading us to believe the star-men do not come of their own choice, that they are sent as exiles from their world, that indeed their survival on arrival here is far from certain.

Thanks to the archives, we understand much of the times before the exodus, but of course we know nothing of what happened to the star-men afterwards, whether they thrived in their new world, or found things hard. It seems foolish to us that you would sooner risk a barren place, than adapt to the changes of the earth, or seek to ameliorate those changes by such skill with machines as our ancestors clearly possessed. But the records also tell us there were terrible periods of instability, that in the decades leading up to the exodus many creatures and food-crops perished. And of the billions of mankind who once walked the earth, it is estimated only ten thousand souls survived the upheavals. Those who joined the exodus then had good reason to believe they were preserving man’s very existence. It was a rational decision, though one enacted at the expense of everyone left behind, who we presume were expected to perish.

All we know of them now is that they resemble us, as men I mean, though of those we have seen, in whole or part, they have grown taller, but much weaker than we are, and they are slower on the ground. Their world has changed them in other ways too, for they are also of such a violent nature, even to their own kind, we counsel they must be avoided at all costs, and not engaged with the limited arms, such as we possess.

Their armaments are powerful, warlike, unnecessarily destructive, and terrible in the wounds they inflict. The elders say it is our good fortune the star-men do not survive long, that it is sufficient for us to evade them, while we let the microbia of the earth – to which we are immune – do their work. It is fortunate, too, their weapons fade in potency to nothing over time, rendering them useless. Those we have recovered are dismantled by our craftsmen, and their materials either re-purposed, or destroyed.

There are no records of any interaction between us, other than of the violent kind. Indeed, it is believed civilised dialogue is impossible, and that all attempts are ill-advised. Certainly the archives bear this out in the accounts of those of our kind who have been lost to the star-men’s aggression. It is better, then, to observe, and evade util such a time as the microbia have felled them for us. But it does not stop one from wondering about their reasoning, for they are a cunning species, though they appear to lack the moral consciousness they must surely once have possessed when they walked among us as brothers. One wonders too about the reasoning of those who send them, and of course about the nature of their machine-world, which must by now be beyond all imagining.

The learned tell of how, before the exodus, our ancestors first used machines to explore these distant worlds. One wonders, then, why the star-men do not do the same thing, if they wish to know the earth once more, and how it fares. This rather supports the conclusion curiosity is not their intent, that these are men who have been banished, and perhaps are not typical of their kind. But if so, why inflict upon them a certain death, after the trouble of delivering them here at the expense of valuable materials, when a more efficient death could surely be arranged in their own world?

And so it is, news reaches us by breathless runner, of another machine observed coming down with great violence, in the mountains, to the north. There is word of burning, and of the forest peoples who live there, scattering in fear. It frustrates us we cannot ask the star-men what they want, and what they mean by these absurd incursions.

Riding out, we meet people on the trails. They speak of fire raining down, and setting the forest alight. The wise man, who rides with us, assures us it is the impact of the machine that has caused the fires, that we need not fear any new and fiendish weaponry. But he has the inner sight, this man, and tells us also that though he senses no living star-men will be found, there is still something of an ill omen about the fear in the eyes of those running towards us. We proceed cautiously, therefore, while remaining faithful in the knowledge our horses can scent a star-man from afar, and with greater ease than they can a bear, that they can differentiate even between the scent of living or dead.

So it’s strange when the horses are undisturbed, even when we ride them up to the crater’s edge. There are only small pieces of the machine remaining, and a scent of burning, though by now the fires have died out to a low fog of smouldering. Even under such cataclysmic circumstances, there are normally remains to be found, but after searching in a wide circle for many days, we conclude nothing living rode this machine to earth. We turn then to seeing what materials we might salvage.

It is the wise man then who begins to find particular pieces of machine, and uses his insight to bring them together in such a way as to reveal a truth that leaves us cold. He finds a torso, a limb, a hand, then a skull, but none of it is flesh or bone. All of it machine, fashioned in the human form. We count several such forms who have ridden in place of star-men, and this perplexes us deeply, but the wise man most of all. The departed, he tells us, have diverged so far from us in kind, that in their machine world, they have themselves now become,… machines.