Kepler62 #5 E-Book

Bjørn Sortland

• Herausgeber: Arctis US
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Kepler62
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 101

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

In book 5 of this outer space adventure series, Olivia finally reveals the truth to others, and it's terrifying. Back on earth, computers are gaining power and they're already unstoppable. They're capturing people, their main competition when it comes to energy consumption, and killing them. In order to survive, a viable number of people must escape earth - and Kepler62 is their destination of choice. Unfortunately, the Whisperers are deemed too powerful to exist alongside humans, which means they need to be eliminated before any more people arrive. Joni, who is carrying a virus that shall wipe them out, is chosen to complete the task. But Joni goes into hiding. Meanwhile Ari and Marie also discover that the extra travel capsule on their space craft is now open and empty. Whoever travelled in it is now awake and on Kepler62 . . .

Leseprobe

Timo Parvela / Bjørn Sortland

BOOK FIVE: THE VIRUS

This work has been published with the financial support of FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are from the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.

W1-Media Inc.

Arctis Books USA

Stamford, CT, USA

Text © Bjørn Sortland, Timo Parvela 2017

Illustrations © Pasi Pitkänen 2017

Complete Work © Bjørn Sortland, Timo Parvela, Pasi Pitkänen, and WSOY, 2017

Layout Design: Pasi Pitkänen

First published in 2017 simultaneously in Finnish by Werner Söderström Ltd with the original title Kepler62—Kirja 5: Virus, and in Norwegian by Piggsvin with the original title Kepler62—Virus.

This English-language edition has been published by arrangement with Bonnier Rights Finland.

First English edition published by W1-Media Inc. / Arctis Books USA2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024930612

English translation copyright © Owen F. Witesman, 2024

This work is protected by copyright, any use requires the authorisation of the publisher.

ISBN978-1-64690-634-5

www.arctis-books.com

1.

A boy picked an apple from a tree. Or at least the fruit vaguely resembled an apple. Taking a big, juicy bite, he began munching. Nectar ran down his mouth and dripped onto his chest. Then an elderly guard rushed out of the trees, panting from the effort of running through the forest. The boy stood with the apple in his hand and waited until the man caught up to him. Then he handed the fruit to the guard. Their gazes met—the young boy’s lively and mischievous and the old man’s serious but approving.

“Have you ever heard of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?” the guard asked the boy.

“Don’t worry. Everything is fine,” the boy replied.

The old man smiled and then took a bite. And his head exploded.

Ari’s eyes ripped open. The sun was blinding. The grassy hillside was like the warm fur of an enormous animal. The others seemed to be going about their daily routine in camp. Still fuzzy with sleep, Ari’s brain registered individual details as if opening the windows of an Advent calendar.

Min-Jun showed Svetlana the first carrot from the garden. Everything grew quickly on Kepler-62e because there was so much more light than on Earth.

Farther away, on the opposite hill, was an unnaturally bright being between the shiny solar panels. Presumably it was Olivia in her protective suit. Ari frowned. An unpleasant feeling clenched his stomach. He didn’t know what to think of the young woman who had saved his little brother Joni’s life, but who might also be responsible for him getting sick in the first place. At least that was Marie’s contention.

Marie had become increasingly strange, spending more and more time alone. Sometimes she disappeared without warning, and when she came back, she looked vaguely guilty. Ari had been keeping his distance. He didn’t know what to think or whom to believe anymore.

Luckily, Joni had recovered almost entirely. Olivia still monitored his progress every day, taking samples and making notes. Joni was still pale and fragile, but he’d always been that way. Like a porcelain cat missing part of its tail. Joni and Lisa were just coming out of the habitat module. Ari smiled when he saw his little brother explaining something to her, waving his arms in animated gestures. Joni had taken the death of the Whisperers very hard, apparently feeling responsible. Ari thought that was silly since Joni couldn’t do anything about being sick, and he couldn’t have known that the virus he carried was deadly to Whisperers. Fortunately, Lisa’s company had cheered him up. She was originally from Canada, and there was something steady and calming about her. After Joni, she was the second youngest member of the expedition, but she seemed much older than her age. Ari wasn’t sure, but he suspected his brother had a crush on her.

Ari smiled to himself and reached out to feel the grass under his head. But instead, his fingers met a cool metal surface. Once again, he picked up the tablet, which was made of an unidentified lightweight metal, and inspected the letters etched on the back, as he had done so many times in the past weeks, ever since he stole the device from the large, hairless bear creatures they called Growlers. KTA, the logo read. Ari knew it would be too big a coincidence for someone here to use the same English alphabet as on Earth. But how could these creatures with their scratchy growls have come by a device made on Earth? It would have to mean the members of Ari’s expedition weren’t actually the first residents from Earth to visit Kepler-62e. And that would mean that someone had known in advance about the Growlers and the Whisperers, the two species the expedition had encountered so far. Of course, there was other life on Kepler: enormous birdlike creatures, small lizards with six legs, scuttling furballs they called squeaky toys because when frightened they made the same sound as a rubber dog toy, and a lot of other things, but the Whisperers and the Growlers were the only other intelligent beings they’d encountered. So far.

Ari had the feeling the tablet contained the key to a riddle. He turned it over, stroking its surface. It remained dark. Ari hadn’t managed to access the device, even though weeks had passed. It appeared the tablet had some sort of sensor plate, possibly a fingerprint reader, but it didn’t react to Ari’s touch. On one edge was a row of metal bumps, but there weren’t any buttons or switches. Maybe Olivia would know more, but for some reason, Ari didn’t want to show the device to her. Of course, the Growlers had known how to open the tablet, but no one had seen them since they burned the Whisperer village.

Ari’s wristband beeped. It was time to get in the shade. There were strict guidelines about that, like about everything. There were daily checks of their health status, and everyone had a watch with a sensor that measured pulse, blood pressure, temperature, and probably a lot of other things. Like now, it also warned them of conditions such as excessive heat or UV radiation. They had to get under cover.

Ari picked up a blade of grass. It looked like grass, it smelled like grass, but really it was something else. He just didn’t know what. Life here was the same as on Earth—they breathed, they talked, they ate, they used the toilet, and they slept. Even so, nothing was the same as before. And never would be again. That was still difficult to comprehend.

Ari stood up and shoved the tablet back in the crevice of the rock where he was hiding it. The past night’s dream still lingered in his mind. He remembered the apple he’d taken long ago from the produce department of a store in some other reality, in some other life. Maybe even in someone else’s life. That’s how it felt at least.

2.

DAY 61

HE has been restless. HIS sleep is fading. HE is waking up. Too early, because I can’t speed up the process going on here. It takes time for the virus to regenerate and load the bomb again. All we can do is wait, and rushing won’t make anything happen any faster. Quite the opposite. But HE is always impatient. Even when HE sleeps. Always. Now we must just wait.

The weather is changing. The others haven’t noticed it, but I see it on the radar. We arrived here during the dry time, but I suspect that will change soon. The barometer is falling, and the wind has turned. The vegetation has begun to wilt, although the signs are still too small to notice unless you know where to look. A year on Kepler-62e lasts 122 days. We’ve been here half of that, and conditions have been tolerable except for the ultraviolet radiation, which sometimes exceeds acceptable thresholds. I’m not worried about the time that has passed. What I fear is the half left to come. What is the Kepler winter like? Or is winter even the proper word to use for it?

I wish HE would come out and take control. Although I don’t know how the others will react. The last thing we need is instability, since there is still so much to do. What concerns me the most are those growling idiots. They disappeared, even though they were supposed to be here to help me during this first phase. Do they really think they won by destroying a few Whisperers? Could they be that simple?

3.

“How you doing?”

“No complaints.”

“Have you seen Marie?”

“This morning. She looked like she was headed for the beach again, or at least that direction. You miss her already?”

Ari felt his collar get hot, and he cleared his throat to conceal his embarrassment.

“Of course not. She’s been acting weird lately.”

“Have you wondered . . .” Joni trailed off as his dark eyes followed Lisa lugging a tool kit toward the habitat. “Are we going to get married here someday? Are we going to have families and children?”

“Who do you want to have children with? There were some pretty nice-looking Growler girls. Do you have your eye on a certain one?” Ari poked his brother in the side.

“Shut up. Those things are disgusting animals.”

Tears welled in Joni’s eyes as he tried to banish from his mind the image of the bearlike creatures burning the bodies of the Whisperers in a bonfire.

“I’m sorry.”

“The other ones, the Grass People, the Whisperers. I killed them,” Joni said.

“You were sick,” Ari said.

“But I infected them. I should have died, not them.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. No one did. Everyone did their best, but the situation just turned out wrong,” Ari said, trying to calm his brother.

“But . . . if you would have known that would happen, would you still have given me to them?” Joni asked. His eyes burned.

Ari’s heart withered, turning small and hard.

“I would have done anything to save you.”

“Even if it cost someone else’s life?”

“Yes. They were just, well, big grasshoppers or crickets or something.”

“They were living beings with thoughts and feelings.”

“Still. I wouldn’t want to live without you. In any world. And besides, Olivia said it was all a coincidence. Creatures here don’t have any immunity to your virus. It was the same thing back with the Native Americans in the Americas. The explorers brought viruses that were more dangerous to the native inhabitants than to themselves,” Ari said.

“Yes. But what about Olivia? Do you believe everything she says?” Joni asked.

“Of course not.”

“I think she’s dangerous.”

“You’re imagining things. She’s our leader. She has to make unpleasant decisions.”

“Still.”

“You’re imagining things.”

“We’ll see.”

“You’re imagining things.”

The boys turned to gaze at the landscape and the green valley where their camp was, surrounded by hills and the mountains beyond. On the other side of the hills, a jungle began, and the valley descended to a glittering sea.

“A whole unexplored planet, and we’ll only see a small part of it in our lives. We may not even get far beyond this valley,” Ari said to change the subject.

“It’s too bad that almost all of the research equipment and robot drones were destroyed with the Niña,” Joni said quietly.

“If they were even onboard at all.”

“What do you mean?”