The other side of the island - Part 2 (story)

Part 1

Officially, the mission’s aim was to study the sea-turtles that nestled on the island. Green turtles, as the presentation brief mentioned in passing, and Jonathan pictured them as an army of multilegged soldiers with bright emerald shells, scurrying down the beach, ready to brave the waters again once their eggs had been safely deposited ashore. It was only after a few days he found out their name came not from the dark olive carapaces, but from the green fat stored under the shell, widely used for the preparation of many turtle delicacies. He almost threw up the soup he’d just had and never tasted anything that came from turtles for the next twenty years. Their mere sight made him feel uncomfortable, but their meetings were fortunately rare as the turtles kept to the other side of the island, to the small gulf that doubled as a harbor.

The first meetings with Frieda left Jonathan just as uncomfortable, as the creature had a sickly look. The small veins pulsing under the too sensitive translucent skin made her appear a ghostly blue. That extreme sensitivity had caused a lot of worries, especially in the early days when the creature was prone to fits and trashed the room trying to break out of the enclosure. Her arms and legs would be covered in purple blotches, but the swelling went away as quickly as it had appeared.
When Jonathan Fuller came to the island, Frieda had been there for three weeks already and was just beginning to settle in her new environment. Or so it seemed.
The young psychologist was expected to establish contact with the little alien, no taller than a 12 year old and just as difficult.
She’d spend hours curled up on her mattress, so markedly oblivious of the small world around her she seemed deprived of all senses, although tests had shown sudden noises startled her and she preferred bright lights.
When Jonathan suggested the metal blinds on the windows should be taken down, she took to staring at the sky for hours on end, her very thin lips rounded as if she were whistling. Which indeed she was, or maybe that was like singing for her species. If that was music, none of the humans at the mission ever got to know if it was beautiful or not, as it was way beyond their hearing range. Measurements put the sounds in a range well above the abilities of all known creatures on earth. Not even bottlenose dolphins would be able to hear her, much less respond. And yet, some days Frieda would sit very still, her head slightly tilted as if listening to music coming from afar. Whatever it was that she was hearing, machines never picked up on those sounds.
With her hairless body and disturbingly thin arms, Frieda could hardly be said to resemble humans, yet that slight tilt of the head and the intense concentration on her face reminded Jonathan of Helen. She used to sit just like that, when they stayed up until the early hours and he’d talk to her about things like self-awareness and human conditioning. To Helen’s rebellious nature, the whole concept of early conditioning was revolting. ‘Behaviors can be changed, I’m sure we can deprogram our brain and unlearn certain patterns’, she’d rail with all the conviction of a born optimist. ‘You might obtain a different response with a strong enough stimulus, but the original pattern never goes away, not truly, it just lurks below the surface, ready to reemerge if the original context presents itself once again’.

He tried not to think of Helen much as she was now outside his reach, he tried not to scratch an itch that was never to go away completely, a bit like the phantom limb syndrome. He’d lost a part of his being, but he took comfort in knowing that cutting all ties with her had been the right thing to do.
Studying Frieda was an amazing opportunity and he knew he’d have to give it everything. It was in his nature. As much as he cared for her, Helen would have been a distraction and he’d come to hate for that. The thing they once had would fall apart. Just like his parents’ marriage, although his father rarely spoke of that. ‘Your mother wanted a different sort of life’, was the explanation he’d give young Jonathan whenever he’d ask why she left. The boy wondered what sort of life was that and whether she carried a picture of him in her purse.
To their bitter surprise, it turned out that Frieda did not understand the concept of pictures. It was probably something to do with her eyes or maybe her brain was not wired to process two dimensional images. It was a terrible set-back for Jonathan who had pinned his hopes of getting through to her on showing her pictures, just like you do with a baby learning to talk. They presented her with diagrams of the sky, pictures of nature or images illustrating basic mathematical concepts an advanced species was bound to know, but she did not react to any of them. Maybe she didn’t understand what was expected of her, maybe the images were unfamiliar to her. Still, the photos taken at the crash scene had to elicit some response, Jonathan hoped. The board members had a heated argument whether she’d find the photos too disturbing, but Jonathan insisted they had to jolt her out of her sleepwalking state. Even if it meant using pictures of the other body found at the crash site, the alien with the cracked skull they’d found Frieda cradling in her lap.
The picture meant nothing to her. She scanned the image briefly than turned her eyes back to watching seagulls flying outside the window.
If the pictures left her completely undisturbed, seeing the silvery jumpsuit of her partner almost broke her. The item had been retrieved mostly undamaged, just a few minor tears on the sleeves, which no one knew how to repair. Actually, it was not the sight of the jumpsuit, but most likely the feel of it in her hands. And the smell it carried. That was the first time they heard her making any sounds, high-pitched halting cries of distress that went on for hours. There was nothing human to those cries. If anything, they sounded like the strange call of an exotic bird, her tone increasingly more frantic as no one answered her cries. Frieda would not budge from her mattress, she did not as much as glance at the plate of meats she’d normally feed upon. Her whole universe had been reduced to that piece of alien cloth that carried the memory of the one she had lost.
The display of such a human reaction of mourning, something only few animals are capable of, gave new hope to the very dispirited Jonathan. What’s the universal reaction when seeing someone in deep suffering? Compassion. If he could just show her he cared maybe they could finally make a connection.

(To be continued)

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