Venus Rising

(From "Venus Rising")

 

For six days now, the ship from Venus has been floating above us like the diaphanous nightgown of a honeymoon bride. Stare too intently, and it disappears. Right now, they’re hopping mad, but they’ve yet to make a decision. We’re certainly not going to approach them. The Venusians might reside upon our planetary Goddess of Love, but they’re not to be fornicated about with. Venus can dish out some pretty tough love, and I don’t think I ever want to see one of its citizens.

 

In my Bathsheba apartment in Barbados, Kris and I are reviewing the Venusians’ first and only ‘press conference’, filmed remotely from within a secure holding. She focuses on the screen like a bomb disposal expert checking for wires. I sip bottled water and munch on a cheesy curl. I can’t even bear to look out at the ocean view.

 

The sound of leaky pipes from the first steam engine fills the room. It’s the Venusian ‘voice’, or rather, their simulacrum of a human voice, created by merging the ionospheric waves of our sister planets. We’ve heard this PR speech several times now. Their representative makes some kind of throat-clearing noise and begins. “Organic life, not dissimilar to your own, started on Venus over two billion years ago. When our surface liquid began to evaporate, it derailed our evolutionary cycle and sent us spinning in a new direction.

 

“To counteract dehydration, we developed a means of extracting liquid from the surface. Soon after, we discovered we no longer needed it. Our re-evolution allowed us to survive in the only place that remained remotely habitable: our atmosphere.”