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So it was that I departed that world of the intelligent machines. Nearly crippled with remorse, but buoyed by a sense of unexpected hope, I found myself adrift in another endless night.
My next planet was an excruciating disappointment. Perfect in every respect - crystal clear air, sparkling water, green vegetation and abundant as a still-life painting - but not a trace of intelligent life. No life other than insects, birds and some small mammal-type creatures scurrying about. I shrank away on a moonlit beach into a grain of perfect white sand.
My next dozen worlds were nearly as bad - a radiantly pretty blue and green orb, peopled by great shimmering columnar forms, seemingly liquid, completely unaware of my presence. Another was a world of crystalline beings who communicated by vibrations in the ground. Another was a war-ravaged planet, where the victors used axes and clubs to make war. Hardly advanced out of a stone age culture.
My twentieth set-down was on a world with the remains of a human-like civilization. The artifacts were there, but not the people. So much like many humanoid worlds I visited, I walked passed their towering, windowless skyscrapers, the gutted office complexes, the crumbling brownstones and the overrun parks of a metropolis by the sea. I found many signs of life - but no life itself. Maybe the people were cowering in the shadows from the unwelcomed stranger - me. But most of this civilization had departed - possible decades before - and nature was slowly reclaiming this world.
I was into my thirtieth cycle. I had taken to catching restful naps between worlds and when in relatively safe shelters on land. My spirit was slowly being broken. I grew tired, not from lack of sleep, but from a weariness of soul. It was a tiredness of mind and purpose. I was continually depressed, lonely and disparing. I can't tell you how many endless voids and cycles I passed through. I lost count after a hundred. I refused to keep count. How many universes I encountered? Innumerable! One was unique. Nowhere a burning sun, nowhere a bright star or life-filled planet, just cold lifeless rocks. This entire universe was dead. It had reached its final phase like every other universe must come to know in a hundred trillion years.
I thought of ending it all. I considered all sorts of ways to end my life. The most disheartening thing was that many advanced civilizations had the means to stop my shrinkage, but would not interfere. There was the dispare and trap. Trap indeed. And endless voyage through the infinitesimal.
When the emerging universe inside a fallen leaf took shape, I chose a super-cluster at random, then a lusterless but utilitarian little nebulae and one of its spiral arms. Swept along in the swarm of bright stars, careful to avoid its core with its deadly radiation and black holes, I selected a mediocre yellow sun in its periphery with nine planets. The other planets, except one, were gas giants. I maneuvered in toward the third planet.
Entering the planet's orbital plain I became enthralled with how familiar the planet looked. There was one large companion moon, lifeless and pitted with thousands of impact craters. The third planet was blue and lusciously green with scattered puffs of white clouds. There were seven continents I could make out scattered across the globe - two in its Western Hemisphere, one at the South pole, the others were connected in a giant land mass in the eastern hemisphere. Most of the planet was covered in water, the poles having thick ice-caps. I saw beautiful ribs of tall mountain ranges and long snaking rivers, interior lakes and captured seas. Where the atmosphere was driven by thermal convection and the planet's rotation, huge weather systems had formed. I tried to avoid these massive hurricanes.
I was especially careful coming in. I landed several hundred miles off the eastern coast of the Western Hemisphere. It seemed the most promising of the seven land-masses. I squat low on impact, lessening the blow. Then I gently eased my hands into the ongoing ripples of the tidal wave. I learned how to calm their effects. Their east coast still took a wash, but not as violently as it might have been. Five miles tall, I began to walk towards the shore.
Even from a hundred miles out, I could discern the sprawl of a large coastal city. There were hundreds of structures of all sizes stretching as far as I could see. Most of the concentration was on a central island, perhaps twelve miles long and four miles wide. Steel and cable bridges connected the mainland to the island city. There were towering skyscrapers clustered in its lower and middle parts. Ships of all types plied the busy harbors. Concrete and wooden piers extended everywhere along the waterfront, mostly the lower half of the central island.
Moving slowly ashore, I found myself quickly surrounded by boats and tiny, circling aircraft. Numerous times I had to stop to avoid the propeller-driven airplanes. I was also afraid of swamping the puny boats.
By the time I reached the upper bay near its eastern estuary, I was half my original size. Carefully stepping over the graceful bridges, I heard ship horns blowing. The aircraft circled my head sometimes veering in for a closer look.
Waiting for my height to drop down under a mile, I ventured in looking for a foothold. The aircraft moved in tight whenever I got close to land.
When I was down to five hundred feet, a barge came out loaded with a large multitude of people, guided by two large tugs. They moved close to my shins and the tugs dropped anchor. On shore, everywhere I looked, thousands of tiny creatures, very much like myself, waited and watched. I became self-conscious of my nakedness for the first time! These beings looked so much like me, I was thrust back to my own society and millions of eyes were staring at my privacy! I waved at them in a gesture of friendship. They waved back and roared and cheered. Ships with red and white markings cruised slowly back and forth and eventually all but two of the military aircraft left the area. They were replaced with other prop-driven aircraft and helicopters with bright and strange markings.
When I was down to two hundred feet, a group of these humans came out on boats and circled around my thighs. I was standing deep in the bay. As I grew smaller still, this group of observers grew more bold. They touched my bare skin! I let them. They tried to communicate in sign language after their attempts on a bull-horn proved fruitless. Their features were greatly like mine. Their faces were thin and oval, bald headed or a full head of hair, large and small. Their clothing was of various design. The men wore suits with hats, the ladies, knee-length dresses. Some men sported mustaches, but a majority were clean-shaven. The hair color ranged from jet black, brunette to strawberry blonde and platinum blonde. There seemed to be a mixture of races as well. I could discern a white-skinned race, some with wide eyes, other with slanted eye-lids and high cheekbones. Others were black with dark pepper-corn type of tight spiral hair. There were a myriad of sizes, tall and short. They were a beautiful group of people. It was extremely interesting for me.
I stepped out of the bay onto the docks in the lower southeasternmost tip of the island city. Eventually I hit seventy feet and the observers motioned me forward. Many had crude looking camera with them, exposed bulbs for flashes. Some were holding note pads, other carried tri-pod motion picture cameras and reel-to-reel portable tape recorders. Every window in every building were filled with people straining to get a better look. The barg in the bay followed me in filled with curious onlookers, some in military uniform, others with tweed suits. I took them to be reporters. I was surrounded.
The Coast-Guard-like cutters kept back other overly-engrossed boats and ships from crowding into the harbor. As my size continued to dwindle, I tried to answer their questions with rudimentary sign-language. I could not use my telepathic powers for fear of knocking some unconscious. I was still too large. It was when I reached thirty-five feet high, that I decided I'd better scoot away and find a safe haven or else I may be taken into custody, or worse.
I journeyed up a main thoroughfare at first slowly, then when I noticed the way in front of me was clear, I bolted and ran up the middle of the street. All around me people lined the streets. There were parked vehicles, some were two-door or four-door sedan type cars, some were double-decker buses, some heavy-duty trucks. There were construction sites along the way with all sorts of cement mixers, cranes, dereks and other construction equipment. It was a deeply dense populated metropolis with massive buildings some twenty to sixty stories high. Others still taller. As I approached the mid-section of the city, the boulevard I was on seemed to angle and cross other main streets and avenues. Two tall spires rose in the distance, one with triangular windows at its top crowned with a sharply pointed spire, the other was slightly taller with a single tower topped with a dome-like structure with a knob at its very top. They were maybe fourteen hundred feet tall.
I made my way further uptown until I reached a central location, where there were trees, grass, boulders and museum-like structures - right in the middle of a city of concrete and steel. I took it to be a recreation area of some sort for the inhabitants to relax and stroll through it. Further into it heading north, i came upon a large lake or reservoir. People scattered in every direction as I made my way through this park area. Many vehicles with flashing lights and sirens converged on me from all directions. The men wore blue uniforms with glittering badges and multi-cornered hats with a short black brim. I took them to be city police, not military.
I made my way after nightfall up passed the park's northern boundary and emerged into that part of the city that seemed to have apartment dwellings instead of the massive skyscrapers of the lower parts. It was there that I took refuge in your garden and hid from my pursuers.
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Final Chapter VIII - "From Whence I Came"
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