Prologue: The Arrival
When they first saw me, they called me an amphibian, which admittedly left me a bit confused. However I don’t mind if you imagine me as a frog. Over time, some people started calling me a native or indigenous person. Interestingly, appearance isn’t as important to us as it seems to be to most of you. That’s why some have even called me wise.
Chapter 1: The Origins of the Vacuterrans
The story of my people began eons ago, millions of years in the past, and millions of light-years away in the vastness of the cosmos, in realms untouched by human presence—except for her voice: “This is Captain Fei of the starship CTR30-II, transmitting on all available frequencies. Any nearby vessels or monitoring stations, please respond. Repeat, this is Captain Fei of the starship CTR30-II, requesting assistance. Over.”
When recounting the story of our people, we begin with a decisive moment when an emergency sprang a child like me into action. Much like in countless other cultures, the journey that shaped our existence is at the heart of our narrative.
Back then, open spaces for children to play were becoming as scarce as the air our ancestors once breathed. The atmosphere around them was evaporating into space. Families and friends searched for answers in each other’s wide-open eyes. However, disbelief was plastered on everyone’s faces. When your planet is losing its atmosphere, there’s simply no one to blame, and nothing you can do; it’s irreversible. Our people prepared for impending extinction.
Not Jibb. He became increasingly excited by the sight of the moon through his bedroom window. As our atmosphere thinned, the giant rock grew clearer and incredibly luminous in the sky. “I gotta touch it,” he thought, sliding out from the fragile safety of his home.
Chapter 2: Jibb’s Leap
His small yet determined youthful leaps on the asphalt echoed through the empty streets, drawing the curious gaze of both children and adults confined to their homes. With no clue of what he was about to do, Jibb climbed the jungle gym at the neighborhood playground; a true king of the kindergarten’s recess.
Standing tall with his feet securely gripping the metal pipes, he stretched one of his arms and tried to touch the moon. However, it didn’t take long until he realized his large curious eyes were just deceiving him, that bright-blue rock wasn’t as near as he had imagined. This posed no issue for him, though. Flexing his strong knees, he loosened the grip of his feet, and then leapt. He went so high in the sky that his body felt weightless.
Jibb had just launched himself into space. Arms and legs outstretched, our little hero was flying towards the moon. With a smile on his face, he was spontaneously discovering how our thick skins, our huge internal airbags, and our protective eye lenses make us natural space travelers.
He was the first, and then millions and millions of us followed into space. Soon, we were visiting nearby planets and moons to harvest air for our airbags, returning with this fresh air to replenish our own atmosphere; it became a routine part of our daily lives.
Jibb came back from the moon with so much air compressed in his internal bags that he was able to refill the entire atmosphere of his family’s house. And just because Jibb wanted to touch the moon, our people have been able to help innumerable planets on the verge of extinction.
Chapter 3: The Encounter
As I boarded Captain Fei’s starship, I learned that her planet, Earth, was facing a similar situation. It wasn’t my first time in space, but it was definitely the farthest from home I had ever been.
It took me over three decades to reach Starship CTR30-II.
I passed through the deactivated airlock while Captain Fei’s hologram remarked, “You look a little pale…” I couldn’t respond immediately, so she added, “Please, follow me. Our greenhouse can provide the light your symbiotic partners need.”
She was correct. In our language, “green” means “happy.” When we appear pale, it indicates that our symbiotic photosynthetic friends have retreated into the depths of the crevices in our skin, leaving us in a low-energy state, which can become irreversible if it persists for more than a couple of years.
Chapter 4: Call of Destiny
The warmth of the greenhouse, the sight of my bag of tools floating in the void through the transparent walls of the starship… I found myself transported 35 years into the past. “This is Captain Fei of the starship CTR30-II, transmitting on all available frequencies…” It felt as though I were still a 10-year-old, basking in the warm glow of our sun, floating gently on an asteroid with my beloved friends, brothers, and sisters.
We’re each given a ham radio and a bag of tools on our first day of school. And those items often become lifelong companions, following us throughout our existence.
For centuries, atop that asteroid, we kids have gathered around the old radio antenna with our amateur radios, where we’d have fun listening to radio signals drifting through the cosmos “… Any nearby vessels or monitoring stations, please respond. Repeat, this is Captain Fei of the starship CTR30-II, requesting assistance. Over.”
As I heard the urgency in her voice over the communication channel, I intuitively knew it was my time to act. That was literally my call of destiny.
“Starship CTR30-II, QRZ? Confirm your coordinates: X: -124.5, Y: 78.2, Z: 210.9. QSL? Over.” I released the button and waited for her response, which seemed to take an eternity to arrive.
“QSL. Coordinates confirmed. Over.”
“En route to provide assistance. Operator signing off. 73.”
Chapter 5: In the Spaceship Corridors
Despite Captain Fei’s holographic form, I learned that not every human is a translucent image floating through the abandoned corridors of a deteriorating starship.
“Humans are ephemeral beings,” she said. Sadly, I soon also learned that, at that juncture, the CTR30-II’s ephemeral crew members had been stored in the cargo hold for more than three hundred years. “What should I call you?”
“Jarb,” I wasn’t leaning on the starship walls for support anymore, but it didn’t mean I was fully recovered from the journey; my mind still felt like a swirling pool of mud. “I’m… I’m sorry to hear that… that your… your crew… found the end of their existence…”
“Thank you for your condolences, Jarb. Back then, our crew represented humanity’s second attempt to reach the planetary system of Proxima Centauri—our second frustrated scientific mission. We couldn’t maintain our speed at 4% of the speed of light for long enough; once again, our estimations proved incorrect. We were heading back home after covering less than one quarter of the planned distance when the messages began flooding in. It was the ground crew informing us that Earth was facing a catastrophic atmospheric crisis due to the Sun’s premature transformation into a red giant. It would be unethical for us to return without bringing assistance. However, we had no inkling that highly advanced civilizations existed anywhere in the universe. Nevertheless, given the frequent stellar flares affecting the exoplanets orbiting Proxima Centauri, we reasoned that if advanced civilizations did exist there, we should proceed to make contact. Thus, we redirected our limited resources toward approaching your fascinating planetary system.”
“Excuse me… Captain Fei…,” before continuing to walk, I had to lean for a while on the wall, “How… is it that you can… speak my language?”
“Jarb, over the past few decades autonomous intelligent agents from various civilizations have periodically visited our starship. They not only upgraded our computer systems multiple times but also made other significant contributions, allowing me to continue transmitting the distress signal you kindly received. During their last update of my database, I learned about your altruistic people and how you’ve assisted countless planets in overcoming atmospheric crises. You Vacuterrans have been highly esteemed by countless civilizations for thousands of years. You are extremely smart beings. By the age of ten, many of you are already skilled engineers, and by twelve, numerous Vacuterrans have earned PhDs in atmospheric sciences or astrobiology. You possess the exceptional ability to traverse space at speeds exceeding 1,079,251.2 kilometers per hour, relying solely on your natural physiology, which includes your unique propulsion organs. Despite the capability to colonize entire galaxies without relying on technology, your civilization has consciously chosen to be the kindest in the mapped cosmos.” She stopped in front of a closed door. After a few cranks, the activation motor unlocked it, revealing the entrance to my cabin. “Vacuterrans have influenced philosophies, ethics, and spiritual practices across the universe. You have even become synonymous with interspecific friendship and respect. Jarb, please rest until your metabolic system is reestablished and you are able to eat. I’m sorry that this is all I can offer to you right now.”
Chapter 6: When Earth First Saw Me
I had ample time to meditate on the politeness of Captain Fei’s hologram, only to realize that it doesn’t reflect other humans’ behavior at all.
It took me more than 150 additional years to finally touch down my parachutes on a suffocating, evaporating planet Earth.
When they first saw me, they called me an amphibian, which admittedly left me a bit confused. Then, I was able to understand it; you were making fun of me.
On that popular podcast, with a noisy respirator covering his face, the host asked me, “Can I call you Mr. Frog, Mr. Frog?”
I replied, “Of course, but you don’t need to address me as ‘Mr.’; we can just be friends.” That’s when the other guests and the entire production team burst into laughter.
None of Captain Fei’s books and manuals that I had the pleasure of reading during my journey could have predicted the behavior I encountered, mainly because these texts only portrayed your technical understanding of the world around you. Perhaps the fear of extinction had transformed humans from curious idealists into cruel creatures.
Chapter 7: In a Radio Studio
In a radio studio, initially as quiet as a deep dive in space, I found myself as a guest. There, a bearded man with long hair and a rusty respirator—proudly labeled ‘steampunk’—began speaking into his broadcast microphone.
“Let me get this straight, buddy… First off, welcome, if that even matters. So, I’ve heard a lot about you, you know… You’re this strange-looking frog, and you’re pretty confident you’re going to fly—FLY!—to some moon where you claim you found water, right? Then, you’re going to somehow extract air from that—PROBABLY FROZEN—water through your skin and then come back to Earth and blow that air until our atmosphere is completely replenished? I’m pretty sure you could pull that off… but only if you had the specs of Godzilla or something! How tall are you again? Sorry, buddy, but fact is, you just look like a 5.6-feet bag of bones!”
Suddenly, the telephone rang, and a muffled voice echoed from the speakers, “Yo, Bob. What’s up, bro! And greetings to you, honored being from outer space, this is the Emperor of Earth!”
“Greetings, Your Majesty!” I replied.
The studio erupted in laughter as the voice continued, “You know, it’s been scorching down here in my kingdom lately. I wonder, are you familiar with what a pool float is?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, I’m familiar with the concept of pool floats. They come in different shapes and—”
“Excellent, excellent… So, I have this giant inflatable shark somewhere in my garage… I demand you to come by ASAP and inflate it…”
As another wave of explosive laughs at my expense stunned my senses, the door violently swung open, and a young lady stormed in. Ripping off her headphones and respirator, she yelled, “Enough! Enough, you freaking morons! Can’t you understand what you’re doing? This gentleman just said he’s a 199-year-old elderly. He can’t fly anymore! He can’t fly anymore, you freaking bullies! I’m done with you all, I’m done. Come, Mr. Jarb, come with me, please. Damn you all, damn you all, you freaking stupid humans, I’m tired of this shit, tired!”
It felt as if Captain Fei was standing right before me, no longer a trembling, translucent image, but a solid, formidable presence. That was Ms. Tangerine. She led me to her cozy apartment.
Chapter 8: Ms. Tangerine
Holding a stack of towels, she came up to me and said, “Hey Mr. Jarb, how about a nice warm bath? You’re in luck—it’s our water usage day!”
“Can we be friends, Ms. Tangerine?” I promptly asked.
“Uh? Oh, yeah, sure, why not? Friends, yeah, definitely! By the way, sorry if this seems weird, but… you can take this with you to the bathtub.” She pulled out a little rubber frog from between the towels and handed it to me.
“It’s like a tiny version of me! Thanks, my friend. I love it.”
As the rubber version of me floated on the warm water, my mind soared through the cold vastness of the cosmos and took me to approximately 39 trillion kilometers away, where I encountered Starship CTR30-II floating in the vacuum more than 150 years before.
Chapter 9: Echoes from the Past
The vessel’s robotic arm had brought in my bag of tools, and I began repairing the nuclear thermal propulsion engines.
“Yes, Captain Fei,” I replied, my voice echoing as I crawled through one of the rocket nozzles to torque a bolt. “The top speed of CTR30-II will be 1/25 of the speed of light. I’m making some tweaks we learned at school, so I’m confident the hydrogen will be enough to reach Lagrange Point 4. From there, I’ll proceed on my own—it’ll be just a half-hour descent to Earth.”
“I’m glad we’ll be able to return Starship CTR30-II to its rightful place, Jarb. You’ll also be pleased to know that I’ve finally located all the materials you need to handcraft your parachute. You can gently find them highlighted on the main computer screen in the bridge.”
Tangerine’s partner suddenly splashed into the bathtub, snapping me back to reality.
Chapter 10: Hairstyling
“Hey there, my cheerful friend!” He responded by licking my face and then barked while staring at me. “Sorry, I still can’t understand your language. Maybe you want the spiky hairstyle you have in that photo on the corridor’s wall, huh?” Woof, woof! “There you go. You were right, this totally suits your electrifying personality, George!”
“OMG, OMG, George!” Tangerine rushed over like a hurricane. “Get out, George! Get out of the bathtub, boy! Whoaaa!” She stumbled and fell into the water. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Jarb! I’m a walking disaster. I’m so sorry! C’mon, George, c’mon, good boy, leave Jarb alone, boy.”
“You’re welcome to stay, Tangerine. You and your partner. There’s room for all of us.”
“What?!” She pulled the wet hair from her face, as if opening a curtain.
“I said you can stay if you wish…”
“No, I mean the other part… Me and my…?”
“You and George, your partner.”
“Oh, oh, no, no! George? No, George is not my partner… Oh, my partner? No! No! He’s a pet… you know, a dog, just a dog.”
“I’m sorry. I thought the baby you are carrying was George’s too. I read about pregnancy in Captain Fei’s book. You humans can’t individually generate a baby.”
“What? What? A baby? What baby? I’m not… I’m not expecting a baby…”
“Sorry, I might have misread the signals. Do you want a spiky hairstyle too, my friend Tangerine?”
“Oh, a spiky hairstyle? A spiky hairstyle! Yeah, why not? Let’s go for it, my friend!”
Chapter 11: They Also Traveled to Earth
Yes, Jarb was right. At that moment, my mother was indeed pregnant. She took one of those over-the-counter pregnancy tests that very day. As for who my biological father is, I don’t care. As the only green human being in the universe, I’m categorically stating: Jarb is my dad, my friend, my brother, and my sister, period.
I was born almost simultaneously with the arrival of the first wave of his beloved friends, brothers, and sisters from space, bringing us fresh air to breathe.
Before landing on Earth, over the previous decades, my dad himself discovered planets, moons, and asteroids containing harvestable air. He laid the right quantity of eggs on each one of those. As the eggs hatched, my dad’s friends—the microorganisms living on his body and consequently on his offspring’s too—guided the newborns on what they should accomplish. These friends taught them everything they needed to know. And then they traveled to Earth with their naked bodies, carrying nothing more than their individually handcrafted bags of tools and parachutes.
Chapter 12: A Legacy of Kindness
Mom and dad were resting on the sofa, sipping tea, flipping through the pages of illustrated books, talking with each other.
“On our planet, we are all the same person,” dad said. “We are clones of each other; we share all knowledge and possess identical existences with the same meaning. The only genetic variability we have is from our friends living within us. They have evolved over billions of years, so they are smarter than us, and they continuously adapt us to pursue our humble destiny as a civilization: making friends everywhere.”
“I wish I had, you know, all those crazy experiences you’ve had in life, Jarb,” my mom replied. “I mean, you’ve traveled millions of kilometers in space without a spaceship… Geez, that’s freaking insane! You’re like a superhero. To me, I mean, to me you’re truly a superhero, geez, you really are.”
“Thanks for your compliments, my dear Tangerine. And surely, my friend, I can arrange that for you.”
“What? What? No, that’s impossible. I was just… just… rambling. Do you understand? Sometimes humans just say things, things they wish they could have or… humans are stupid, you know? Don’t take everything they say seriously. Sorry, I’m not really good at explaining that kind of stuff, I mean, any kind of stuff at all. I just… I just press buttons at a local radio station, you know.”
“I understand, Tangerine. But I still maintain, I can arrange that for you.”
“No, no… Thank you, but… No, no, oh, traveling in space without a spaceship, that scares the shit outta me… Thanks, but, but… thanks, Jarb! You’re such a nice person, you know… you’re the best… the best, you know, the best person ever.”
“Thanks again for your kind appreciation, Tangerine. But all you would need to do is take off your garments, my friend. And as we hugged each other, I would ask my green friends to slowly share with you everything I know, every experience I’ve had in my life. And not just that, you would also experience everything my people have experienced over millions of years. You would hear the voices of our ancestors as a persistent intuition guiding you every day of your life. And even when my existence comes to an end, we will still remain friends.”
My mom replied to my dad with tears in her eyes: “I don’t… I don’t deserve that, Jarb. I really don’t. Sometimes I just wish humankind was completely annihilated from the face of this planet so that everything else could live in complete peace. Anyways, if you could, just if you could, if you could ask your friends to… to befriend this baby instead?” She caressed her belly as she spoke.
Epilogue: A New Dawn
The story I told you was told to me by my dad’s friends. Sometimes this green human just can’t tell whether it’s him, dad, or dad’s friends speaking.
Anyway, for the past thirty years, I’ve been attempting to educate other engineers about the modifications my dad made to the engines of Starship CTR30-II. Thus far, nobody has succeeded in persuading Captain Fei’s hologram to activate the vessel so we can witness the engines in action.
My dad’s body was buried alongside Captain Fei’s ephemeral version. George passed away a few days later. Both, George and my dad, have the same picture and inscription on their tombstones: “Friends forever.” It’s a photo of them bathing together. My dad died smiling; he never stopped smiling. He said the sound of a clarinet is the most beautiful he had ever heard. His people’s philosophy states: “The best way to travel in space is by relying on your friends, not on technology.”