Short Stories

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The planet is a moon of Jupiter. Frothing volcanoes with steam and lava surrounded our state of the art space-lander dubbed – Life Finder 13. We have found this relatively safe landing point after one month of orbiting around this, the satellite of the largest planet of our solar system. Before that we had been en route from Station One on Earth’s moon for almost 5 years. The excitement of our crew of six had worn thin along with our bodies over the years. But on this day the buzz of excitement has returned with the first deployment of the Life Finder 13 from our main ship to this moon. The hopes are very high that we might indeed find evidence of live forms.

Our mission is the same as that of our sending board back on Earth. The Center of New Technologies for Recognition of Life (CONTROL) is an internationally funded non-governmental organization with one goal: “to locate the existence of life outside of the planet Earth.” It began in 2020 with great fanfare and lots of cash from donors representing every corner of the earth. Many of the technologies of space travel in the late 21st century owe their existence to CONTROL. From the latest toaster ovens and appliances to the alternative energy powered vehicles of the road. Fruit of our organization’s efforts can be found in practically every home in the world. But all of these are just side effects of our mission.

First was a permanent space station and port on Earth’s moon. From there countless missions of various sizes were sent out looking for life on Mars. The accounts of the missions were well spun but oddly absent of one thing – evidence of life forms. During our crew’s countless hours of chit chat we all have come to basically the same conclusion; for all of the money and effort nothing of real importance relating to discovering life had been yet discovered. On a few occasions our conversations have moved to more philosophical processing and sometimes even god-talk. We can discuss these things here in the sanctuary of our surrounding vacuum. But those topics will not be found in any of the articles or public news releases chronicling our search for life. Interesting rocks, photos of vistas, and details of fascinating geological findings fill the pages of magazines and news articles. And there is another thing that can not be found in reports on our mission. No traces of even the most basic form of life have been found. There are plenty of stories but they rely on artist conceptions and long stretches of the imagination. Not too long ago I began to consider why.

Why does humanity have such an appetite for our sort of expedition? We have life at every turn on Earth in every shape and size imaginable. On my computer library I have searched articles and libraries and could really only come to two satisfying conclusions. The first is that mankind as a whole wants out. It is mankind’s dream to find “heaven,” a place where we can go and leave our nasty history behind. The second motivation is the same as that of Darwin long ago. We need to explain our origin in a way that we do not need a creator. Basically we see the sickened state that we have put our own planet into and recognize our need for something different. But we want it to be within our own control to make it so.

On this day, however, I have put those distracting thoughts to the back of my mind. I, like everyone else who is monitoring our work, desperately want mankind to get out of its desperate situation. Our hopes are resting on this mission to find life here or elsewhere. And we sincerely hope that that life will somehow be better than what we left behind. We can certainly use the help of a greater life form.

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