Our Roots, our Destiny (Chapter 8)

Genefrod had wandered as far as the edge of the forest before he finally found the wreckage of his spacecraft. He surveyed the flattened hull for any surviving technology--a radio, a battery, something. After tumbling at hundreds of RPM, falling through re-entry backwards, and smashing into the ground at however many hundred meters per second, there wasn't much left. He found a survival kit, which was mostly mangled up and broken. A knife, a few hundred-year-old rations which he couldn't eat if he wanted to, and a small flashlight were all that remained. He turned his attention to the blurry, reddened third quarter Mun high in the sky. Between it and the brown smog, everything was coated in a dull tan light, dim enough to barely register as colored. No chance of seeing any stars. He looked at the forest. It looked like a pristine living forest, albeit with no grass, no leaves on the forest floor, and no hint of animal life. No birdsong, no crickets chirping, the only rustles coming from the wind.

"Why did Kerigh have to keep all of this a secret. I don't understand. Surely they must have seen this already."

Genefrod took his camera out and took some photos of the environment. The shadows cast by the camera flash were unsettling to say the least. The (now cracked) screen on the arm of his space suit lit up. 'SIGNAL ACQUIRED'

"Genefrod here, can anyone pick up this signal?"

"Desfield here. Genefrod, we're reading you, but you're not legible. We're pointing the SKI at you in a minute. We're having trouble localizing your signal."

"I'm enabling my beacon signal, for what it's worth," Genefrod said.

Genefrod took the knife and started to carve off a few pieces of tree bark and some twigs and leaves. The tree almost recoiled as the twig was pruned, and a clear fluid bubbled out of the wound. Genefrod observed small green tendrils expand out of the twig and slowly writhe. He touched one with his mitten, and it stuck to it. "Ack!" Genefrod said, and he wiped the twig off of his sample.

"That's not how Kerbin trees work!" Genefrod said. "They should have sent down Groden! Or Debelyn!"

"Say again, Genefrod," Desfield said.

"Destiny Awaits, I'm in a forest. And it's like nothing we have back at home. The trees have these tendrils inside, they look perfectly healthy and normal from the outside. There isn't any other life around here I can see."

"Why didn't Root's report mention this?" Desfield muttered.

"I don't know, but consider me REAL skeptical." Genefrod said. "Look, guys, I think you're gonna have to do without Groden's cooking for a while. I need him down here with me. Or somewhere down here."

"I don't know if that can be arranged just yet. After what you've been through we definitely don't want to re-use any... antiques, anymore."

"No kidding!"

"Are you injured?"

"I can take a beating nowadays Des. I'm just sore is all. Really hoping you guys have a plan to pick me up."

"The Entreprize is getting ready for launch and is heading your way."

"I dunno what they're going to do for a landing site. It's forest as far as I can see, except for the mountain."

"There's a lake 5 km northeast of you. They claim they can land in it. You just have to get there."

"In jogging pants that's a one hour walk. I can't go that far in a space suit."

"You'll have a couple hours before they get there. Go as far as you can on foot."

"Right," Genefrod said, and he pulled up the navigation app on his arm-screen. "Can you send me navigation information?"

"Give us a few minutes."

Genefrod started trodding through the dense but homogenous vegetation towards the northeast. It wasn't long before the deep red glow of an all-too-alien dawn began to light the way, but just as things got brighter, he reached the denser parts of the forest. More vines, more densely packed trees. The vines seemed to pulsate. Eventually he had to begin cutting through the vines. That was a mistake.

The vines ruptured, and revealed something about their true nature: they were pipes carrying some sort of fluid, and the forest did NOT like that. Slowly but surely the vines constricted towards Genefrod. He backed up, tried to run away, but the structures were relentless. Slowly but inevitably the vines became denser and denser, and tendrils started to seep out around the floor. Genefrod tried to cut the tendrils, but as soon as one was gone, another was approaching. At a snail's pace, Genefrod found himself trapped in a dense web of a nightmarish, twisted version of trees and vines. And he screamed.