Chapter 7: The Mission

                                                     Chapter 7: The Mission

“Now that we have gotten our ice breaker out of the way, I’d like to get things moving,” Astuto said annoyed.

I wondered why Astuto seemed to be so time-sensitive.  I thought it was nice to get to know everyone on the team since my life was the only one truly on the line during this mission,

“As you know we have assembled to try to set things right between us animals and the people, the way it was intended to be.  I will let Eldey go over the specifics of the mission with you in a minute,” Astuto looked at Eldey.  “I know many of you see me as an old fuddy-duddy, but time is of the essence during this mission.  We will have only 40 days to succeed or fail our mission.”

Eldey interjected, “That is why Astuto has been trying to move things along.  Our mission is already on the clock.  It officially began the moment George entered the Garden tonight.  It is also important for us to know one another’s strengths and weaknesses.  Teamwork will be of utmost importance.”

After so many years being ‘Lonesome George’, I was happy to be surrounded by friends.  There it was; a new thought, a happy thought, Lonesome George was no longer all alone awaiting extinction.  I was now ‘extinct’ surrounded by friends who understood me. I mentally added air quotes to this thought to mock that apparent custom here in case anyone was listening.

“As most of you know, when we choose to go back there we get to go back in sets of three; a male, a female, and a young one,” Eldey said, turning his attention to me to make sure I was following these apparent rules. “I was one of the few species who went extinct and chose to go back and become extinct a second time.  It was by no means an easy experience, but it will be worth it if there is a chance to set things right between us and the people.”

Many nods of agreement were exchanged.  We all looked around to wonder what male and female animals would be paired up, as well as how young ones might fit into this picture.  I could see this bothered Stephen, the smallest of all the animals gathered and he piped up, “By young one, do you mean each of us will return there with a mate and a baby?  Won’t that make things more complicated?  I mean rather than just ten of us, we’d be talking about thirty animals, ten of those being babies or eggs?  Is that what you’re saying?”

“This return will not be like any that have ever been attempted in the past.  When we originally left the Garden, we left with three of our own kind.  When we left the boat after the Great Flood, we left with three of our own kind, but when we return this time we will return not as mates and young ones but as three groups of three; or as I like to think about them, ‘triads’,” Eldey clarified.

Wait did he just say left the boat?  Like the Ark boat I had heard about or some other boat I didn’t know about?   I was feeling overwhelmed again.  At first, I didn’t catch the mathematical quandary about Eldey’s last statement, but then it hit me.  Three groups of three were only nine animals.  What about the tenth one of us?  Was I going to be left alone on this mission since I had chosen to become extinct early?

“Yes. Yes.  The rule of three,” Astuto interjected in annoyance.  “We all know that certain numbers carry significance here in the Garden and back there.  That is why we must return in groups of three, but this time our return is different.  It’s not to be fruitful and multiply like both previous returns there.  It is to help.”

“Numbers are in no way trivial.  The number three is unifying, a number which tends to link to power.  The number forty has always held significance as well.  It is a number that has always been connected to washing or cleansing.  For instance, during the Great Flood, the rain washed over the earth there for forty days.  This was to clean the world from all of the corruption and evil that had built up over time.  Once George arrived here in the Garden on his own free will, the time to complete this mission to help cleanse the earth again had begun,” Eldey explained.

Martha had been extremely quiet, but this last tidbit seemed to get her brain spinning.  “Eldey, are you saying that our mission will be to go back and flood the earth with water and then clean it up with little brushes?  We don’t see how that will help the people or help ‘reset’ things back to a less corrupt state.”

“Martha, we are going to try to help clean up some of the corruption back there, but we can’t do that with water.  That was prohibited long ago, after the Great Flood.  Our missions in these groups of three over forty days will get at least seven of us back together in the same place.  This should give us the power to help temporarily ‘reset’ the earth.  Similarly, the Great Flood did not eradicate evil from the earth, but it helped usher in a small time of peace.  We are hopeful that during this ‘reset period’ we will be able to work with the people to set up a new age where people and animals can again live together in relative peace and harmony,” Eldey clarified.

There he went with his tiny flipper air quotes again.  Seriously, amidst the seriousness of this conversation, I still had to smirk seeing him do that.  So in two days or two nights, I wasn’t quite sure how much time had actually passed, I had learned that the Garden of Eden was a real place, not just a fable.   I had just learned that Noah’s Ark seemed to have been real too.  All of the animals of earth had actually crammed into a little boat with old Noah and his family two-by-two.  It really got me wondering what else may or may not be true.  I could probably spend the whole forty days asking Eldey and Astuto questions about these two events alone, but I knew there wasn’t time for that now.

“So Eldey and Astuto, can I ask why you think that forty days might not be enough time to complete this mission to ‘reset earth’.  I know that I am probably the slowest creature amongst us, well other than maybe George,” Stella turned her proportionately small head over to me and smiled sweetly, “No offense George, but I don’t understand what our mission is and why we can’t do it in forty days.”

Astuto and Eldey exchanged glances almost silently asking who should answer that question.  Astuto had begun tapping his foot while waiting, so Eldey stepped toward the enormous sea cow and explained, “Stella, as you know there have always been some ‘rules’ of sorts; here and there that we animals must adhere to.  When we go back there from the Garden, we must go back to groups of three. Until this mission, that group of three has always been composed solely of members of one species.  That is how we returned after the Great Flood, and how I tried to go back on my own to save the people. We were told to go forth and multiply and we did.  Along those same lines, when we return we have to return to a proper location back there.  For instance, as a Steller’s sea cow, you have to return to the cold arctic waters where your kind once roamed, so in the northern Pacific Ocean.  You can’t simply show up back there in the warm waters of Hawaii.  Does that make sense?”

Astuto seemingly trying to speed things up again and preempt follow up questions added on to Eldey’s carefully delivered statement, “You see our mission is to be able to willingly come together at a certain location back there from our ‘starting points’.  This has only ever happened once in history, and that was in the time before the Great Flood.  We were summoned to come and fill the giant Ark before the floods came.  Now of course not all of us animals were blessed with the abilities to make that great journey.  The dodos, for instance, had no feasible way to walk to the desert region of the Middle East.  We have always been a flightless bird on the island of Mauritius, so we had no way to make it to the Ark like many other animals. After the floods subsided, we were given the option to go back there with the people or stay in the Garden where many species who didn’t make it to the Ark had retreated to during the Great Flood.”

Upon hearing that I felt many more questions welling up and just before I was able to express some of my questions, I heard Astuto’s voice inside my head say, Just hold off on this question Tortoise, and I’ll explain more to you personally in a little while.  I know I said that I’d stay out of your head, but we need to get the rest of the animals here started on their part in this mission.  I turned toward Astuto and simply nodded slightly to let him know I had heard him and understood his directive.

Eldey continued addressing the group, but kept his eyes on Stella, “You see Stella when you go back, you must begin your part of the mission in the region where your kind once lived.  To put it simply we will be in groups of three starting in our geographic starting points, attempting to all come together at the same point on earth.  There is a certain power that we have when we band together.  That is why when many animals came into the Ark from all over the earth; there was the power to reset the earth.”

“Wait for a second,” Martha interjected.  “If that were the case; shouldn’t zoos like the one we went extinct be super powerful?  We mean we were in a cage next to a lot of other birds from all over the world.  There was this one guy from…”

“Sorry to cut you off Martha, but the simple answer to your question is that although zoos have animals from all around the earth, those creatures did not go to those zoos willingly. Animals must make the journey voluntarily,” Eldey explained. “Now to clarify your original question Stella, we will have 40 days to locate every animal from our group of returning triads, and then to make it to Pinta Island, George’s homeland, in the Pacific Ocean.”

What?  Why were all of these animals trying to go to Pinta Island?  There was nothing there but a bunch of goats and grass. Again, Astuto’s voice cut into my thoughts, Tortoise, you need to be patient, and Eldey and I will explain things to you in greater detail once we start our mission.

“For instance Stella; as you’ve stated, back there you are not a speedy animal.  In fact, you can only swim about ten miles an hour. Isn’t that right?” Astuto said a little too bluntly and Stella bashfully nodded her head.  “Simple math says that if Pinta Island is 4,600 miles away from where you will be starting.  At ten miles an hour it would take you twenty days of straight Open Ocean traveling to make it to Pinta Island,” Astuto calculated.

“But Astuto and Eldey, I can’t swim in the Open Ocean.  I’m not built for that, and I know it might sound odd coming from a massive sea creature like myself, but I have a fear of drowning,” Stella stated.

“I know Stella.  This mission is in no way going to be easy for any of us.  We will all have to get over our fears to complete our part.  You will need to decide what you can and cannot do once we return, but if seven of us do not make it to Pinta Island forty days from tonight, our mission will fail and our hope to reset things between us and the people will fail,” Eldey explained first to Stella and then making eye contact with each member of the group.

“But why only seven of us?  What about the other three?”  I asked concerned for the losses we could apparently be facing.

“As I explained earlier, there are certain numbers of significance here and there; forty, three, and seven.  Six of us must make it to Pinta Island and join the tortoise within the forty days, or we will fail.  Seven is the third number of significance,” Astuto said.   But to clarify and simplify this for everyone he simply and slowly said, “So we have forty days, working in teams of three, to get seven of us on Pinta Island.”

Eldey now seemed a little more concerned about the time this meeting was taking, and he called us all over to an open area of sand.  He asked us to make a circle around him, and he bent down and drew a quick sketch of the world as we knew it in the sand with his black and gray striped beak.  Eldey drew the outlines of the continents and added our homelands to the sketch.  Then he put our names in the locations where we’d be starting out and placed numbers next to each name.  To this sketch in the sand, he added dotted lines, outlining the journey as he saw it.  

He then explained the teams and the mission in greater, yet concise detail.  The first team of three, or ‘triad’ as he quoted them, was deemed the Southern Triad.  This included Moana, Benjamin, and Stephen.  Benjamin would have to travel from Tasmania to New Zealand, meet the two birds, and then get to Pinta Island.  

The second triad which Eldey deemed the Northern Triad would include himself, Martha, and Boomer.  They would team up and travel across the North American continent on foot.  They would then travel the rest of the way south via the Pacific Ocean.  

The third group, the Scattered Triad, would have the most complicated journey because their return was so… well so scattered.   The Scattered Triad would include Astuto who would travel a long distance from Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, across the Atlantic Ocean to the Falkland Islands where he would join Strong.  They would then travel north to Pinta Island where they would meet up with Stella who would be traveling twenty-some days straight south to meet them.  In theory, they should be the first triad to join me on Pinta Island.

This plan seemed simple enough, but Astuto and Eldey explained that we would not only have to worry about making it to Pinta Island in forty days, but we would have to face our fears and travel in ways that we’d never thought possible.  They explained that I would be in charge of directing the triads because going extinct before my appointed time gave me the ability to communicate with each animal in a similar way to how they seemed to communicate while in the Garden.  

The complication for the other animals was that they couldn’t communicate with any of the other creatures until they were with them.  If we didn’t all reach Pinta Island in forty days, I would apparently lose my ability to direct them, and they’d be totally on their own.  It seemed that the longer an animal was away from the Garden the less clearly they would be able to communicate. I had no idea how Astuto and Eldey knew this, but I knew I had to trust them because my life was in their hands…or wings.

One part of this explanation really scared many of us, and Astuto didn’t sugar coat it.  “Some of us might not make it, but it is critical that at least six of us can make it to join the tortoise within the forty-day window,” Astuto said with sternness in his voice.

Eldey quickly added to soften Astuto’s frank tone, “That is not to say that all of us cannot make it back to Pinta Island within the forty-day window.  Since we must return in triads, our options were either to send two groups of three or add a third triad to make sure we had a better chance at resetting things.  We want to make sure that if anyone did not make it, the mission still had a solid chance of succeeding.”

“Then there’s the serpent to worry about,” Astuto added, dashing any positive spin Eldey had attempted to establish.

Again as the serpent was mentioned there was a simultaneous shudder that seemed to go through the group.  I could only assume that this serpent was somehow connected to the original serpent in the Garden, but I had no idea how right that thought would turn out to be. I also wondered why Astuto couldn’t sometimes just add a little more compassion into the facts he delivered so bluntly, the way Eldey always managed to do.  Didn’t Astuto realize that if he painted things a little more positively, we might find it easier to listen to him?

  “Yes.  We all know that Lusadé, the serpent, is still a very real danger to this mission.  Indeed, he can only be in one place at a time, but still, he must have some idea that we are planning something.  He is very aware of many things, and I have no doubt his suspicions are up now that George went extinct much earlier than was originally planned.  Lusadé will do anything and everything in his power to try to thwart each of you.  He is a crafty creature who has no desire to see the people reset things again.  This is why it is so important that you find the fellow members of your triads before he finds you. Alone we are vulnerable, but together we will be able to withstand his attacks,” Eldey added.

“That is yet another reason we have asked so many of you to be a part of the mission.  When others like the tortoise have voluntarily gone extinct early to join our cause, Lusadé was able to get to them, play on their fears, before they could reset things back there,” Astuto explained.

“Many of you know that is what happened to Nessie and Pat when they returned to try to reset things between us and the people. We are hoping as a side effect of this mission, that they too will be able to get back to the Garden,” Eldey said. “They have been gone for such a long time that we have no way to contact them, but hopefully this mission will allow them to safely return with us to the Garden where they belong. They are brave animals who have been trying in vain to help out the people.  I hate knowing that they are out there in part because I sent them without fully understanding the ramifications.”

“So now to begin; let’s get in our triads,” Astuto barked.

The animals quickly fell into ranks.  I looked around as the animals scattered, flew, and waddled to their respective groups.   I tried to take it all in and admire these famous natural failures who were returning to try to help the very people who had eradicated them from the earth in the first place.  I felt a little clearer about what we were doing, so I intensely studied Eldey’s map in the ground, trying to memorize it the best that I could.  I knew it would be crucial knowledge for me to have as the apparent leader of this mission.

The Southern Triad gathered together next to the crystal clear stream that I had taken a drink from before.  They all took a long drink from the stream themselves, ate some orange fruit from beneath the tree, and then circled together.  Moana, the giant moa, stood silently unmoving, seemingly taking it all in.  Stephen, the little flightless wren, darted this way and that along the ground before scurrying over to the towering bird who lowered her proportionately tiny head to the ground.  Stephen then burrowed himself deep in the fur-like feathers of Moana before peeking back out.  

The thylacine, Benjamin, took another long drink from the stream, before heading toward the two birds of the Southern Triad.  Her short tawny fur glimmered in the light of the day, and her striped back danced side to side as she walked.  Benjamin placed her front paws in front of her and stretched out her back.  The muscles of her back rippled beneath her short fur and she let out a massive yawn.  I’d seen this in pictures of the Tasmanian tiger, but to see it in person was really a sight to behold. I wished I felt as confident as Benjamin appeared to be.

Benjamin was the only creature who I don’t think mentioned a fear.  I wanted to ask her about it but before I could speak, Eldey gave them final instructions, “Remember that timing is of the utmost importance.  Once you enter through the light, you will find yourselves in your homeland.  Remember to try to reach New Zealand and rendezvous as soon as possible.  You will have to be creative; finding ways to travel while avoiding the people.  If any of you is captured by the people, try to save your captured teammate only if a rescue seems possible. But if it seems too hazardous you may have to leave someone behind.  I know this will not be an easy thing to do, and I sincerely hope that none of us have to make that decision.  We do not want to lose anyone, but losing an entire triad would be devastating to the mission.  Remember that until you reach one another, George will be your only line of communication.”

It seemed that my part of the mission was to spend at least twenty of the forty days alone on Pinta Island with the goats.  I wasn’t too thrilled that my last post extinction days would be spent with the animal I loathed the most.  I wanted to ask about that, but I remembered Astuto’s voice that had asked me to be patient.  I decided that patience should prevail for now.

While I was still thinking these thoughts to myself I watched the three animals of the Southern Triad bow and disappear in a flash of light.  With that, only two triads were remaining and me.  The instructions to the Northern Triad were similar, but most of their journey would be across the North American continent.  They would have to avoid the people which might be easy for Martha who was a pigeon and an excellent flyer, but Boomer, being a heath hen was too heavy to fly very far at all. And Eldey, well he was a swimmer, not a long-distance walker.  I couldn’t imagine how they would be able to cross such a vast distance in so little time.

They also went and got a drink from the crystal stream and ate some food before congregating in the same area as the previous group.  Before they were taken away by the flash of light, Eldey came over next to me.  His deep brown eyes sparkled with excitement, but the compassion was there as well. I bent my head down to him and he whispered in my ear, “George, I know you can do this.  I know there is still anger at the people and possibly even some anger toward me because of your part in this mission, but I am proud of you for the sacrifice you made for Fausto.  You are more crucial than you know, and without you, even if seven of us arrive in Pinta Island in time, we cannot complete the reset mission.  You are the one who matters the most, and I will do everything in my power to help you.  But rest assured that when Lusadé finds out you are back, you will be his main target.  You must be strong George.  Remember that even when you are alone on the island, you will not be without your friends.  They need you and I need you, George.”

With that, the great auk took his place with the passenger pigeon and the heath hen and disappeared into the flash of light.  With the Northern and Southern Triads gone, the Scattered Triad fell in line.  Stella the massive Steller’s sea cow dunked her head under the water where she had moved and came up chewing some brownish-green seaweed, humming a tune to herself.  Astuto waddled over to the stream bending down to get a drink, flinging his shriveled beak back to swallow.  He picked up an orange fruit and swallowed it whole.  Strong, the Falkland Island Wolf, splashed in the water and came out twisting his body; throwing mist into the air around him.  He too took a long drink and partook of some of the orange fruit before walking over to the lagoon where Stella was waiting.  He made a jovial yip and leaped onto Stella’s back.  He stood there waiting for Astuto.

Astuto came over to me, cocking his head to the left and then to the right.  His yellow-orange eyes seemed to peer deep into my being and he said, “Good luck Tortoise.   I know that you still have more questions than answers now, but over the next forty days, Eldey and I can take turns explaining what we can to you.  Even though I’ve been here in the Garden for a long time and know many things, there are still many things I don’t understand myself.  Once you have gone extinct, there are many things that you simply understand without explanation.  There are many other things which wouldn’t make sense even if they were explained.  Tortoise, do your best to worry about the things you can understand and be content with not knowing the things you can’t comprehend.”

With that, the final triad flashed out of the Garden, and I was left alone.  I took a deep sigh knowing that I might have just sealed my doom, eternal extinction. I walked over to where the others had stood, took a drink, ate some orange fruit, and hoped for wisdom and strength to do my part, even though my real mission wasn’t totally clear to me.  The last thing I remembered was a blinding flash of light before total darkness.