Oasis

Water was all around Carine. It began pouring into the pod as soon as she forced the door open—she should have known there was something wrong when she had to use her shoulder to move the door on its hinges. Carine told herself not to panic, took a deep breath, and slipped into the water. Luckily, it was midday and the light of a sun illuminated the surface of the water above her. She was certain she could make it that far without needing to breathe. Carine propelled herself upward as quickly as could, parting the vast waters with each stroke. Her lungs strained as her throat began to tighten. She told her self not give up, to hold on, because she was almost to the top. She couldn't allow herself to wonder how far from land she would once she was above the water.

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Janelle and Bethany collided with Stefan and Noah within fifteen minutes and had barely gotten the introductions out of the way when Ramón appeared just as confused the rest of them.

"Was that you guys?" Ramón asked before bothering to introduce himself. "The music I mean."

Noah shook his head and his read hair whirled around viciously. "No way, I was gonna ask you the same thing."

"This is getting creepy. I mean what are the odds that we're hearing the same music when we started out so far from each other?" Janelle pondered on her own words as she surveyed the area. "Do you think it's coming from multiple places?"

"Maybe." Stefan admitted. "But I think we should should concentrate on finding water and food, not chase phantom songs."

Noah's eyes went wide as though he'd just remembered something, then he reached out to Stefan and sked, "How's Ralph doing?"

Stefan placed the tiny turtle in Noah's hand gently and  shrugged. "I don't know how long he can hold out."

"Is that a turtle?!" Bethany exclaimed.

"Wait,  you found a turtle on  the planet?"

"Yes and no," Stefan proceeded to explain how he snuck the turtle on board.

Janelle and Bethany exchanged glances as if they were asking each other's opinions, then shrugged simultaneously.

"Food and water would be nice," Ram&oactue;n agreed.

"I wonder how much time we have until sunset," Janelle pointed to the sun looming in the sky. "This we'll be ok without shelter?"

"Guess we'll find out," Noah shrugged. "Unless you have a tent handy."

"Wait—why don't we have tents?" Ramón asked. "What nutjub planned this?"

"You're right," Stefan scratched his head. "The pods have to have tents hidden in them somewhere. Maybe food too."

"So?" Janelle raised her eyebrow in Stefan's direction. "Are we going to a pod, or to find water?"

"I say we vote," Stefan shrugged. "Majority wins."

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Carine broke the water's surface and gasped desperately for air. At first, her mind was too preoccupied with replenishing her lungs with the thin air around her to search for land, but once her heart rate began to slow, and her breathing became steady, her eyes began their 360 of the horizon. In the distance she could see a rocky shore, along with five women waving frantically in her direction. Carine wondered if they were in trouble or simply trying to get her attention.

Her body was tired, but she couldn't stay in the water forever. Besides, she'd seen fish—small, but alive‐swimming beneath the soft gentle waves. The scientists were wrong, there was life, and Carine was no longer sure she was safe in the water.

Janelle gasped as she exited her pod slowly; the colors swirling in the bark of the trees were breathtaking. She reached for her Mini-Me—a computer-phone-medical hybrid device that adapted to its owner over time—to take a photo. As the image came into focus on the screen, Janelle wished she could use the device to make a phone call. If cell phone companies hadn't been so greedy, perhaps they would have invested more time in making communication between devices possible without the cell towers.

"How am I going to find everyone else?" Janelle muttered to herself and then shouted, "Hello! Anyone else out there?"

After taking in the silence, Janelle rummaged through her escape pod for something that might help. If she stayed put she had shelter, but she still didn't have any food or water. She wished she had been able to sneak something useful into her pod, but by the time she had given any thought to the pod, they were plummeting toward the planet about to die—temporary survival had been her only concern.

She sighed, debating internally if she should abandon the pod in search of food and of course, other survivors. As she turned away from the pod, she heard the sound of leaves rustling. Searching for the source, she spun around until she noticed the trees shaking gently to her right.

"Hello?" Janelle called out. "Who's there?"

A girl, a little taller than Janelle, with long dark hair and a bright smile emerged from the rainbow of turquoise leaves. Excitement radiated through her expression as she took off in a sprint toward Janelle.

"I heard you calling out earlier. I was worried I'd picked the wrong direction." Her accent was strong, and recognizably British, although her features suggested she might have been from an Asian country. Janelle pushed the observation to the side; it didn't matter. What mattered was that she wasn't alone anymore and the two of them could begin the search for food.

Winded, the girl came to a stop but didn't hesitate to embrace Janelle in a warm hug. "I'm Bethany."

Janelle went stiff at the breach of her personal space, but realizing that they may be the only two humans left in the universe, was overcome with emotion. She held back the wave of emotion she felt crashing inside and returned the friendly squeeze. "I'm glad you're here. I'm Janelle."

"I'm terrified." Bethany admitted, her shoulders slumped as she leaned against Janelle's pod. "Fiddle sticks! What are we supposed to do, now? How are we going to survive?"

Janelle shook her head. "I don't know. I guess we should find some food or something. The main ship and the commander pods have food, so if we can find one of those... Or maybe, there are some berry bushes in the woods... I don't know."

Bethany nodded in agreement. "No, I think you're on to something." Her eyes lingered on the multicolored bark of a nearby tree and she shuddered. "We should look for a commander pod. The berries here might be poisonous."

Just as Janelle started to agree with her, she heart a faint sound, similar to a mother humming a lullably. The notes were full and well pitched, but there was an odd quality about them that Janelle couldn't place her finger on. Instinctively, she turned to Bethany, who was leaning closer to the sound to get a better listen.

"Do you hear that?" she mouthed.

Janelle nodded. She took a long gaze at one of the taller trees nearby. Its branches were strong and sturdy, strong enough to support her weight, she surmised. She glanced at her nails, freshly manicured a painted just before she left Earth. She'd known it would be the last one she ever had, and she'd hoped it would last her more than her first twenty minutes on their new planet.

"We need a better vantage point to see where it came from." Janelle pointed at the tree and gave in to the fact that her days of manicured nails were officially over. "There's no use wandering blindly, right? I'm going to see if I can climb it."

"Are you sure that's safe?" Bethany's eyes ran the length of the tree; a fall from even one of the lower branches was not going to be pretty and they didn't know if any doctors had survived the crash. Bethany turned her eyes to Janelle and studied the stranger carefully. She didn't look like she could climb a tree—her nails were perfectly done and string of fancy pearls hung from her neck. "I don't think—"

"Well? I'm open to other ideas. I'm not ready to mess these nails up!" Janelle flashed Bethany a view of the orange and yellow swirls that decorated her nails. "What do you suggest?"

Bethany sighed, she didn't actually have another idea. "Fiddle sticks," she muttered. "I don't know."

Janelle shrugged and took her shoes off. "I won't go too high," she assured Bethany. "And I'll be extra careful."

The grass was soft like blades of silk tickling her toes as she made her way to the tree. She laid her hand on the rough magenta bark of the tree with the lowest bottom branch and sighed before hoisting her self up. It had been a long time since she'd needed any upper body strength and she could feel her arms shaking as they tried to support her climb. She couldn't give up, though. The tree was solid, all she had to do was keep her balance as she made her way higher.

"It's not so bad," Janelle called down to Bethany.

Bethany chewed her fingernails nervously. "Just be careful."

"Absolutely!"

Janelle smiled to herself. The higher she climbed, the more she could see and it was beautiful. In the canopy of teal colored leaves, she could see that the forest was much larger than she expected. There were mountains in the far distance, but more importantly there was a clearing between the trees and the mountains.

"I think I found water," she called out. "It's kind of far though."

She continued surveying the terrain, hoping for a closer option. As her eyes swept the horizon, she noticed a section of the forest where the trees leaned haphazardly and many of the tops were doubled over. Her eyes strained to make out the steel gray of familiar metal, and she could feel her heart begin to race.

"I found a pod!" she exclaimed, excitedly. "It looks too small to be a commander pod, but maybe thats where the music came from. It's pretty close."

Bethany perked up at the sound of more survivors. "Can you see anyone?"

"No." Janelle focused on the area where the pod, disappointed that her discovery hadn't borne any fruit—of course all of the pods made it to the ground, that was how gravity worked. But something caught her eye, something red, something that was moving. "Wait, I think I see someone..."

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Stefan and Noah debated which direction the music had come from.

"It must be another survivor, right?" Noah said shakily. "They have to be near by."

"I don't see what else it could be," Stefan shrugged nervously, he was certain the sound had come from Noah's pod. "Which way you want to start looking?"

Noah's expression told Stefan he was equally confused. After a few seconds, he pointed to his left at random. "That way maybe?"

Stefan nodded. "We should be on the look out for water, too."

"Yeah. Good plan."

The two guys snaked over and under the fallen tree's from the wreckage before disappearing into the forest. Noah's red hair bobbed wildly as he sped walked forward. Stefan kept the pace, absentmindedly petting Ralph as they rushed toward nothing. At least two was better than one...

Stefan waited for the jolting to stop, but even with his escape pod snuggly planted in the planet's surface, his mind told him he was still spinning. His senses were confused, and his limbs were tense. He scolded himself for tensing during the plunge, knowing each second of tension would cost him hours of muscle pain later. As he waited for his brain to catch up with the stillness of his body, Stefan surveyed himself for injuries. When he found none, he sighed and closed his eyes.

The visions behind his eyelids were tangled fragments of memories that didn't belong together... His mother encouraging him to board The Ark, her dark eyes hiding the painful truth that she would not join him. The smell of soot and ash as the cinders from Yellowstone's eruption rained down for days upon days. The red and green shell of his pet turtle, Ralph—

Ralph!

Stefan spun around in his seat, his eyes searching for the fragile companion he'd snuck on The Ark. Luck had been with him that turtles could enter cryosleep and that he had been able to sneak Ralph in his chamber without the scientists noticing, but he was doubtful the escape pod had kept Ralph free from injury. In the sloping corner of the pod, the bold red design of Ralph's shell caught Stefan's eye. Stefan bent slowly to scoop up the baby turtle and whispered calmly, hoping that inside the shell, there was still a living creature able to hear him.

"Its ok Ralph. I have you." Stefan stroked the shell of the turtle and sighed. "Don't worry, we'll find you a pond to live in and everything will be ok. Ralph?"

Perhaps Ralph recognized Stefan's voice, that's what Stefan wanted to believe, or perhaps Ralph had finally recovered from the shaking and spinning of the crash. Either way, the unmistakable green and black stripes of his head slowly emerged from the brightly colored shell. Once his feet appeared and he began walking across Stefan's hand, Stefan knew his little friend was uninjured.

"Time to get moving, Ralph."

Stefan used the weight of his shoulder to pry open the escape pod's door, flooding the two Earthlings with a welcome burst of golden light.

From the sight of the planet from The Ark's windows, Stefan had doubted the scientists' assurance that there was a small amount of vegetation on the planet. He had expected a vast expanse of sand, like the dunes of the great deserts back on Earth. Instead, he was greeted with the lushness of alien grass and alien trees. The blades were not straight like the grass on earth, but rather twisted and turned in spirals, like a curly fur enveloping the ground. As he took his first steps, the grass was soft beneath the soles of his feet. It sunk beneath his weight, then spiraled upward again without the slightest trace of his footprint.

But Stefan's eyes could not focus on the grass. The trees were unlike anything he could imaging. The leaves were neither green, nor blue, but a beautiful blending of the two--some closer to green, others closer to blue. The canopy of teal leaves swayed above trunks of various colors and sizes. The bark of each type of tree was cloaked with streaks of beautiful color. Most of the trees were a single color, but a few boasted as many as three shades tattooing the trunk. Stefan admired the beautiful trees, running his free hand over the smooth bark and taking in their scent. As the thought creeped up on him that the bark could be poisonous, he drew back his hand and began his search.

There has to be water around here somewhere. He thought to himself. What did Grandpa say his grandparents use to do?  Stefan shook his head, his ancestors would be ashamed to know that he didn't know any of their customs or traditions, but more importantly, Stefan was ashamed to know that he hadn't bothered to learn.

He took a deep breath and let the sound of the planet fill his ears. Stefan froze, hoping for the sound of rushing water—there would be no animals to lead him to their secret watering hole, and GPS was some thing they might never have again. There was the faint sound of wind ruffling the blue-green leaves above him, and the muted sound of his and Ralph's strained breathing. Everything else was silent.

After a few unsuccessful minutes passed by, he continued walking. Tree after tree, rock after rock, the forest seemed to stretch on forever.  Of course, Stefan knew that wasn't the case, but he couldn't help marvel at the how much he had underestimated the scientists.

Stefan stopped again—he thought he heard something. As he stood still again, he heard a faint melody to his left. It was just a few notes, barely audible, sporadically dancing in and out of silence. Stefan knew it wasn't water, but the scientists' had reported that there was no animal life, let alone intelligent life, on the planet.

Where is that music coming from? Stefan wondered. It has to be another survivor... 

Temporarily putting aside Ralph's need for water,—while holding out hope that this direction would also lead him to water—Stefan set out in a light jog toward the sound. He hadn't stopped to think about the possibility of being the only one to survive the crash, and now that he'd found hope that he wasn't, it was all he could think about... The thought of dying on a strange planet all alone hit Stefan like a wave. He hoped with all the strength he had, that his ears had not betrayed him, that just beyond the trees, there was at least one more person.

It didn't take long for another pod to come into view—it was wedged between a large tree with lavender bark and a gray rock, that reminded Stefan of granite. The door of the pod was slightly ajar, caught by the rock. A thick arm could be seen through trying to force the door open to no avail.

"Hold on." Stefan called out. "I'm coming to help."

There was a loud exhale and the arm disappeared. "I have no idea who you are, but you're my new best friend."

Stefan chuckled. "I'm Stefan."

"Noah."

"Well, Noah, your door is wedged on a rock. I think I can move it though." Stefan inspected the rock for a moment, looking for the flattest section of the surface. When he found a semi-smooth place, he set Ralph down gently, then slid both hands beneath it. As he began lifting the stone, an involuntary grunt escaped his lungs. "Whoo...maybe I should call this a boulder. It's heavier than it looks."

Noah swore. "Don't tell me I'm stuck in here."

"Nope." Stefan sucked in more air, "Almost..." more air, "got..." and more air, "it." Still heaving, Stefan retrieved Ralph while instructing Noah to try the pod door again.

This time the door swung open easily and out stepped a stocky red-head with piercing blue eyes. He was older than Stefan, but not by much. His shaggy hair bobbed around his face and a wide smile spread across his face.

"Thanks man. I thought I was a goner." Noah started to give Stefan a brotherly hug but stopped when he saw Ralph in his hand. His eyebrows twitched upward as his eyes moved from the turtle to Stefan. "You found a turtle? I thought there wasn't any animal life."

Stefan shook his head. "This is my pet Ralph. I snuck him on The Ark when we left Earth."

Noah stroked the turtle's shell. "Hey Ralph, how does it feel to be the only known turtle in the universe?"

"I was started to think I was the only human left, then I heard you singing."

"Me singing? Man, I can't sing to save my life." Noah scrunched his face in confusion, then shook his head. "I heard the singing in the distance and then you showed up so I figured it was you."

"Definitely not. I followed the sound to your pod."

The two guys searched the area with their eyes, then looked at each other nervously. "So where'd it come from then?" they both asked.