I
Some time ago, when even I wasn't even living, an alien creature on a journey through space was suddenly stopped in his path by an object of unimaginable size and struck down, crash-landing onto our planet. Panicking, he realized that the components of the mothership in which he was travelling were gone, but he only had thirty days to collect them before he succumbed to the poisons of the air. With the help of our race, he would return to his own planet and to his kind before his time ran out. With his help, we would finally become strong enough to survive on our own.
The story of this Great Commander, as we call him, has become integral in our society. Without his help, we wouldn't be living today. We would have never known how to defeat enemies without running away in fear, how to conquer different hazards that required different types of our kind—we had no idea before we watched him observe our qualities and put them to work. The Great Commander brought out the best in us. He also led to the establishment of the scouting group of which I am a part.
Of course, all stories have their beginnings. I like to listen to the way the one whom I trust the most, Spots, tells it. We were both "firsts"—I was the first of yellow color that the Great Commander met, he was the first ever. Meaning, of course, the first one to reenter the world following the eradication of our species. He was also the first one of our race to trust the Great Commander. Here is how he always likes to tell the origin story to the curious:
The Great Commander crash-landed in his mothership just after a mass genocide of our race. Climbing out of his broken, dented ship, he spotted the red mothership. It, knowing that there were no more reds, produced a single red seed. The red leaf waved to the Great Commander, and he was naturally curious about it. He reached for it and pulled it out of the ground. The resulting red stared at him, and he stared back, perplexed. The red listened to him talking to himself while looking at the red light on the top of what appeared to be his stem. What was that bright light? Spots was immediately compelled to it, and he did not protest with whatever the Great Commander wished to do after that. The light and several calls that the Great Commander emitted all attracted those of our society to him immediately, and we learned immediately to trust him, even in situations of danger. That's how we became involved with the life of the Great Commander.
There were times when Spots doubted the Great Commander, but he always saw that the Great Commander was guilty or remorseful following a failed mission or the loss of many lives. Spots could tell that he cared about our race, even though his primary goal was getting himself off of the planet.
We figured out the facts about the Great Commander starting when we noticed that he would always return to his mothership at the end of the day. We sometimes carried alien artifacts back to the ship, and the ship would look less beaten-up following our task. Once I noticed he was crossing off a list at the day's beginning. There were thirty spaces—I thought about it for a while before I realized it meant he only had thirty days to spend on the planet. And the poisonous air? Well, one day a red was curious and crept up behind the Great Commander, trying to move the orb surrounding his head to which the light and its stem were attached. The Great Commander did not notice at first, but he turned around and quickly shook his head, frowning. The red innocently stepped back and shrugged. He mentioned to a few yellows, including me, later, that he thought that the orb protected the Great Commander from the hazards of the planet. I put the pieces together and figured out the Great Commander's story before all the others.
Before all this happened, of course, I met the Great Commander, too.
I was sitting in the ground, the first seed to come out of the yellow mothership, when I was rudely plucked by a foreign body. He had a curious appearance and could not be one of our race, and as Spots described, I was drawn to the light immediately. I trusted him, too. Spots and I realized, more so than many others, that the Great Commander was doing something wonderful for us in the midst of his self-preservation. He was teaching us how to survive, too.
As I've said, that's what led to the scouts.
I met Spots on my third day of life. He and I both had flowers on our heads already and had been recruited to work as soldiers under the Great Commander. We were assigned to a piece of the mothership following a few intense battles against forest enemies and were next to each other while we carried the enormous alien hunk back to base camp. Our race has a great sense of direction, and we knew exactly where to go to return to the motherships. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe this is a skill granted to us when we are just seeds.
Spots said offhand to me, "Isn't this strange to you?"
"What?" I replied.
"All of a sudden, we gotta help some weird alien out and fix his mothership for him? That isn't weird at all to you?"
"I…I guess I never questioned it. Why?"
He turned to the right for a second, retaining his grip on the item. "I don't know. Just thinking. Ignore me if you want."
"Um…All right."
"I'm Spots."
"Rye."
"Okay. I've never talked to anyone other than a red."
"You're talking to a yellow right now."
"And she's talking to me. That's weird."
"What's up with you and things being weird?"
"It's a weird world, I guess." We had finally arrived back at base camp. He stared as the mothership sucked up the ship part.
"Do you think there are more of those aliens?" I whispered.
"Not here, at least," he said.
As our group of forty waited for the Great Commander to return, Spots and I strolled base camp and talked.
Spots said, "Do you like the Great Commander?"
"I dunno. I think he's very smart. I trust him. I think he likes our race. There's nothing much else to be said."
"Yeah. Why does his stem look like that?"
"I don't think it's a stem. There's no leaf, bud, or flower at the top. Besides, his stem would bend back if it were really a stem—it sticks straight up. Maybe it's something else. I don't care that much about what he looks like. There's no time to be inquisitive when you're learning so much."
"Slow down with the big words."
"Sorry. Did you get the point, though?"
He nodded. "You mean like, he's teaching us how to defeat enemies and get organized in groups?"
"Other things, too. How to explore, how to watch out for things, how to observe the land and dangers…"
"You're right. Definitely."
After I talked to Spots about the Great Commander, I thought about what he had been teaching us. If we could somehow establish a group to teach all of these habits and make leaders—if we could get groups trained in this way—it would be far easier for us to survive than before. Spots and I could do it. I could tell just from talking to him that he was aware of what the Great Commander was trying to teach us, even if he had asked the trite questions of what was on his head and why we were working for his sake. I resolved to ask Spots the next time I was able to get in touch with him.
It was just my luck that the next day Spots and I ended up at the head of the unit that the Great Commander took out. I secretly wondered if he recognized certain ones of us and picked us out on purpose. I hoped this thought was true and kept it to myself to make the work feel even lighter.
I tapped Spots in the back of the head. He turned around and looked at me, and I said my name so that he recognized me.
"What's going on?"
"I have an important idea to talk about with you."
"Just me? You just met me yesterday!"
"Well, I just met the Great Commander two days ago and I'm placing my life in his hands, and he's not even from our race."
He was quiet after that. I told him a short summary of my idea, and he was skeptical at first. "How's this going to help us?"
"Do you think the Great Commander is going to be here forever? Can we really survive without him? You were the first one back in the world after the extinction. You should know how dangerous it is for us."
He squinted and tapped his nose, continuing to follow the Great Commander. "You know, I guess I do kinda take him for granted, and I would have never thought of it that way if you wouldn't have said all this stuff about it."
"So do you want to set it up?"
"Yeah, we should."
