The Missing Link
Written by Thom Holmes Illustrated by Craig Orback
It was a day like any other day on the desolate, scrubby planet the colonists called Dig. Light-years stood between
them and their home planet. Ten thousand years separated their race from the mysterious ancestors who had sent
them out to explore and colonize the galaxy.
Jenn Barton ceased working to observe the supply shuttle taking off for their home planet. Its vapor trail shimmered
silver and white in a long, luminous streak, like a giant sword reflecting the sun. Jenn, fascinated by the sight, laid
down her chisel and reclined against a nearby rock. It took nearly a minute before the distant roar of the blasting
rocket resounded overhead. The sound reminded Jenn of rumbling pieces of metal, a substance in short supply on this
abandoned planet.
Like her companion, Tetsu, Jenn had been born during a lengthy journey to the planet they now inhabited. They had
spent the first 12 of their 14 years living on a spaceship. Jenn truly enjoyed traveling in space and longed for it again.
She actually was more comfortable on the cool, smooth metal of the inner hull of the spaceship than on the planet’s
red soil that often crumbled underfoot.
The planet they were living on did not have an official name.✱ Its classification number was WJR-1100. The colonists
simply called it Dig because it was the site of an archaeological dig.
They were on a quest to find the origin of their ancestry. Nobody understood how humans had conquered space and
spread to other planets in the galaxy. There were many unanswered questions because all the clues to the origin of
humankind seemed to have vanished about 10,000 years ago.
Dig was discovered in a remote corner of the galaxy just when it seemed as if the answers would never surface. A
colony was formed for the sole purpose of exploring the planet to gather evidence of the human race.
The colony was located near badlands, where the first signs of an ancient civilization had been discovered. The
colonists had unearthed the remains of a vast buried city, so large that it took nearly the entire first year just to
determine its borders. The ancient city covered many square miles of territory and sloped down to what used to be an
enormous body of water. Now, it was basically a treeless expanse with little water, sharp hills, and mesas carved out
of the earth. Buried beneath these hills were the ruins of an ancient civilization. Its ancestry was still a mystery,
since no remains of the inhabitants had been discovered.
Each day, Tetsu and Jenn labored at the archaeological site for several hours in the morning. Tetsu was uncovering
an ancient wall, cleaning it off bit by bit, working from the top down. He had already estimated that it only descended
about three feet, but he realized there was no telling how far down it really went because it disappeared into the side
of a hill. Unfortunately for Tetsu, it would probably take several weeks to remove the mountain of debris stacked on
top of this wall.
Jenn’s dig location was smaller but more interesting. She had begun to uncover a room within an ancient dwelling.
Only a slight ridge indicated where the floor had once met the walls.
Once a week, the colony historian, Bebe Rain View, visited the archaeological site. Her major responsibility was to
identify the objects uncovered by the archaeologists or their student assistants. She was very knowledgeable and
knew the smallest details about every artifact that had been discovered during the past 2,000 years. She was an
expert historian and had not seen any artifact anywhere that she couldn’t identify or explain, which is why she had
been assigned to Dig. Bebe herself was ever hopeful of discovering something novel, something challenging,
and something that would enable her to better understand her ancestry.
Today Bebe gathered together the student members of the crew for her weekly lecture. Jenn and Tetsu sat together
in the hot sun, since there was no shade at the dig site. Fortunately, they could bear the bright sun because their eyes
automatically switched to polarized viewing to eliminate the glare. When they turned to face the historian, there was
the quiet buzzing sound of tiny servo motors as each student’s eyes made the adjustment.
“Today we will review what we know about our ancestors so far,” started Bebe.
“We aren’t exactly sure about their physical appearance,” said a girl sitting up front.
“It’s true,” explained Bebe, “that we have never found a body of one of our ancient ancestors, but there are other clues
that tell us about them. We have discovered several of their tools,” she offered, “and we also know a number of things
about their dwelling places.”
Bebe reached into one of the deep pockets of her lab coat and pulled out a pair of old scissors. She always had something
interesting to show the students.
Bebe held the ancient scissors high and waved them slowly so that everyone could see them. “These scissors that were
discovered,” she explained, “are more than 10,000 years old.” Bebe passed the ancient scissors around so the students could
examine them. “Scissors are one of our most important index artifacts. As far as we know, the human race is the only civilization
that utilized them. If you locate scissors or other similar artifacts, you will have found evidence of our ancestors on this very
planet.”
After the lecture, everyone left class optimistic about the possibility of discovering a novel artifact.
at the dig had to readjust their scratch-resistant eyelids to protect their optic lenses because the wind was kicking up clouds of
dirt everywhere. Jenn, on her hands and knees, bent her head down to closely examine the edge of the mound where she was
digging.
Tetsu was busier than usual today, digging into the side of the hill that entombed a wall. He was chopping away relentlessly at
the stone and dirt with a pickax. Unexpectedly, the place where he was digging began to crumble, giving way to a heavy rock on
top of it. Tetsu stood frozen momentarily, realizing that a landslide was about to descend on him.
Jenn had been listening to the steady rhythm of Tetsu’s digging all morning. She was startled when it ceased, and looked up as
Tetsu threw down his pick and began scrambling out of the way
of falling rock and other debris. She quickly leapt up from her spot, but the damage had already been done.
She surveyed Tetsu’s condition and immediately summoned help. Linking her cerebral transmitter to the emergency squad, she
reported, “There is a Code 8 at Pit 14. Tetsu Durben has been injured in a landslide.” They had all been programmed with
emergency messages like this. “Code 8” informed the rescue computer that the injury included some damage to the
computational circuits in the head. At the same time that she was sending the emergency message, she relayed a global
positioning signal to a satellite and back down to the emergency squad. The geographic coordinates would pinpoint their
location within inches and allow the rescue craft to quickly locate them.
“Don’t try to move,” Jenn said, comforting Tetsu.
He was buried up to his knees in fallen rubble, and his blue, metallic arm lay crushed six feet away. It had been pinned by the
large rock as he scrambled to escape the landslide. The wires in his empty shoulder socket probed the air for the missing limb.
Jenn tucked the loose ends into Tetsu’s body shell as she leaned his head on her lap.
When he tried to turn his head to look at her, his neck jerked back and forth due to a damaged servo loop. She could see that
one eye had been crushed by a rock and was disabled. The other showed a faint glimmer of light in its lens.
“The good news, Tetsu, is that I don’t see any damage that can’t be replaced or repaired easily. I do not know if they’ll have
another arm in your exact shade of metallic blue, but I think you’ll be back up and about in no time.”
The students were sent home early because of Tetsu’s accident. The safety officer of the crew questioned Jenn for a little while.
She played back her audio and video record of the accident for the
officer. The high-speed data transfer only took about 20 seconds to transmit her 25-minute recording of the accident. The
officer could play it back at whatever speed he wished.
At the dig site the next day, Jenn noticed that much of the hill had been cleared away to prevent another landslide. She settled
down and quickly got to work, carefully scraping away near the edge of the wall she had been uncovering. Suddenly, she came
upon something hard. Brushing away the dirt, she saw that the color and texture of the object were different from the rock and
dirt around it. Could she have discovered an artifact? She carefully and deliberately removed the object from its position and
examined it closely. Jenn rummaged through her visual memory bank to find similar shapes and determined that it might
possibly be an ink pen! “What a stroke of probability!” she thought to herself.
Jenn transmitted a signal to the archaeologists, informing them that she had discovered an artifact in Pit 14.
As she continued to cautiously scrape away where the pen had been, Jenn discovered another foreign object. Carefully clearing
the dirt from around the second object, she could see that it was hard, brownish, and rather brittle, unlike metal. Its surface was
bumpier and didn’t resemble something created by a human being.
When Bebe arrived, Jenn handed her the first artifact. Bebe could hardly contain her excitement as she examined the discovery.
“My word, child, you’ve uncovered something very important here!” she exclaimed, leaning over Jenn’s shoulder to get a better
view of what she was doing.
Jenn, barely listening, worked on the second object, carefully brushing away the dirt to discover that there were more than one
of the long, brown objects. There were two, then three, then four, and each was about three to four inches long. Digging further,
she saw that the objects all seemed to be connected to some smaller pieces. Then, a shorter fifth piece revealed itself off to the
side.
She could see now that the object was made up of several interconnected pieces. They were not metal, but were made of some
organic substance she had never seen.
Bebe was closely monitoring Jenn’s every move. “What else have you discovered?”
Jenn pointed at the brown pieces lying in the dirt. “I think they might possibly be bones.”
“What kind of bones do you think they are?” Bebe asked, trying to conceal her growing excitement.
“I think it’s a hand, a hand clasping the pen,” explained Jenn. Although she had removed the pen, a record of the image remained
in Jenn’s computer memory, and she quickly transmitted the image to Bebe.
Jenn’s discovery was the kind that changes history. The archaeologists permitted Jenn to continue digging under the tutelage of
Bebe. The bony hand that Jenn had unearthed led to an arm, then a shoulder, and finally, to an entire skeleton. After finding the
skull, they paused to celebrate what they had discovered. The biological skeleton that they had discovered was identical to their
own robotic components.
“Perhaps, at last, we may have discovered the missing link to our ancestors,” proclaimed Bebe. “Is it possible that our ancestors
were biological creatures, not robots like us?”
The past lay buried at the feet of the colonists on Dig, and there was much work yet to be done.