The Landing Was Uneventful – Baltazar Works

The Landing Was Uneventful

Artist’s book. A space traveller lands on a planet and witnesses the evolution of a race of disturbed individuals of which s/he is one.
Year: 1995

The landing was uneventful. No hidden features, no seas.

A sun rolled across the land like a giant glebe.

A mountain greeted me.

Another sun prepared itself. An illuminating gas was relinquished.

Houses had been built in the meantime. Each had one roof and one wall. Collateral forms hung from the ceiling.

The natives possessed a robotic nature.

Like birds, they had no arms.

They feared what might inhabit the sky.

Some thought orbiting vehicles controlled their actions with digital or mesmeric transmissions.

These devices may have been launched from the surface.

Or they could have formed naturally from endemic space materials.

One individual pulled me aside and whispered into the back of my head.

He was convinced the planet was caught between contrary elements.

Others were prepared to escape on a daily basis.

They had constructed an aircraft for this purpose–for escape.

A ridiculous-looking child kept saying, It’s getting closer, closer.

I decided to get as far as possible from these people.

In the distance I spotted a wall.

Behind it was a woman operating a telescope.

She had seen something fall from the sky. At first it was just a speck.

It grew larger as it approached until it darkened the lens of her telescope.

It was then she recognized a member of the society missing for 100 years or more.

This person had got into a fight and accidentally cut off the important limbs.

Other things grew back instead, recombining allusions to soft and cold.

Soon the planet could not support her burgeoning weight. Her new contrivances allowed her to leave.

Eventually she lost her special abilities and was forced to return. The planet cracked open.

She wanted everyone to know that everything they had thought about their world was wrong.

The sky is empty after all.