A Taste For Life

What happens when an archeological site on another planet gets an unexpected surprise

A Taste For Life


Demetrius Dumar was the son of a cook in the Dominion Imperial Navy. And so was his father’s father and his grandfather’s father, and his father before him going back generations to the time when space travel beyond the home system was just a dream. But being a cook was not for Demetrius. He wanted more out of life then spending countless of hours processing food for the multitude that took to run an interstellar cruiser between the stars. He wanted to see those stars, to experience the cultures that lived on those far off systems in a manner other then a crewman on shore leave. He got a taste of that life when they docked at Canaia 4 for a two week upgrade of the ship’s massive engines. It was there that he first saw the ruins of the only known non-human civilization to have existed. The gigantic plasticrete complexes, still magnificent though their colors have faded through the millennia, offered him a taste of what life can really be outside the of the day to day task feeding the crew inside the hulking behemoth. So, at the end of his two week shore leave he approached his immediate superior officer and handed in his resignation of commission. It was granted, for war was not seen in the immediate future and most conflicts in the provinces were at a low peak, and allowed to stay on Canaia to join the archeological team stationed there. Demetrius, who had taken onboard courses in anthropology and xenobiology, was happy and couldn’t wait to literally dig into his new life.

That was six months ago, before he was assigned to Professor Artemis Jones, a taskmaster of an academic, and taken to the godforsaken plains of Tunar where the average rainfall is 3 millimeters a terran year and the stretch of cloudless days have been five of the same measure of time and still going. There he had been working cleaning alien pictographs long embedded with sand and dust from a 30 meter by 40 meter vertical slab one centimeter at a time using a micro-picker as he hung from a sling. 1200 square meters, 120,000 square centimeters, and at average of 24 square centimeters per day he had so far only manage to clear just over 3 percent of his assigned area. An “importantly significant 3 percent that prove to be important”, he was told by his assignment leader whenever he fell below his quota. “No wonder the turn over rate was so high,” thought Demetrius to himself, “Still, it beats the alternative.” Fortunately, he was not alone on his assignment for besides himself, 8 others comprised the task group commissioned to clear six similar slabs to his own. All said, 14 of them worked, ate, slept and defecated  together hundreds of miles from the nearest civilized outpost. The monotony of the day’s work was only broken on occasion by a visit from “god-almighty-himself-Jones”. Today happen to be one such occasion.  

Jameson, the leader of the group, was showing Professor Jones the work done so far and the latest findings. Jones, in turn, took what little progress the group had made went on to expand on them in a long exposition of what the “Canaians” were doing here and what may have happened to them. What was known about them amounted to very few real facts and a lot of conjecture. Briefly, the Canaians (they got the name from the planet on which they were discovered) lived for ten thousand years before humans left their caves. At the height of their civilization they had expanded to included thousands of stellar systems and hundreds of thousands of habitable worlds. Then, sometime around 12,000 years ago, their sphere of influence began to wane for no apparent reason. So rapid was their decline that within a thousand years all that was left of their civilization existed only on the last planet to finally succumb to whatever catastrophe struck the Canaians. Canaia was that planet and Professor Jones was convinced that here was where the mystery of their disappearance may finally be solved. He believed that as the Canaians began to realize their inevitable demise made a plea to some forgotten god, or gods. In other words, their last moments were spent embracing religion this lone structure in the middle of no where was their folly. Demetrius had a couple of ideas of his own.

He wasn’t about to make the presumption that he was an expert in xeno-archeology, but there was something in the layout of the whole structure that struck Demetrius as familiar.  All eight slabs were set close to each other upon a 264 by 88 meter platform that you get to by climbing a narrow set of steps. On top, and directly in front of the monoliths, a wall of about 5 meters provided a narrow alley way separating it from the rest of the area and went the entire length of the platform. Jones called this area the “Holies of the Holies” and believed ancient priest performed secret rights away from the eyes of the spectators. In front and below this “temple structure” was another slab, smaller, that laid on its side and had been discovered to have buttons similar to a touch screen and several yet undecipherable markings on its top side. Leading to this “altar” (but which looked more like a control panel to Demetrius) was a labyrinth made of ridiculously low walls. Jones proposed that rather then to be a challenge, the maze was representative of a symbolic journey. But to Demetrius, none of this sounded right. The entire set up reminded him too much of something he knew but couldn’t get a handle on. From his height he noticed excitement below.

It seemed that in his impatience Jones wanted to prove his theories right and at the same time see what no average Canaian, nor man, has ever witnessed before.  Doctor Artemis Jones wanted to see first hand from the perspective of the temple priest what the temple did when you activated the altar below. He stood centered in the “Holies of the Holies” and waited as Jameson pushed buttons on the panel. A low rumble from within could be heard starting up and that’s when Demetrius finally figured out what he was looking at. But as he was about to scream for Jones to move out of the way, a trap door opened up swallowing the professor into its bowels. A series of barely distinguishable noises could be heard from within (but mercifully none from the doctor) and after what seemed like a few seconds out pops a loaf of processed meat half the size of a man next to the control panel below. This was what remained of the unfortunate Doctor Jones. Demetrius Dumar quickly climbed down to a very stunned Jameson and began an explanation that landed him in the annals of history.

According to Demetrius, it was not war or famine or disease that did the Canaians in. It wasn’t decadence nor a runaway bureaucracy that destroyed their once great empire. No, it wasn't any of those causes. The "temple" with it huge slabs that illustrated its "menu items" was a food processing center- a provider of fast-food. The Canaians had developed a taste for their own kind and in their gluttony simply ate themselves into extinction.