Team Building

A Short Story © 2023 by Randy Brown

We desperately needed some downtime after our first several weeks as astronauts-in-training. I think our instructors sensed it as well since they gave us a weekday afternoon off. I suggested an outing to White Sands National Park and the other four members of the team grumbled their agreement.

"It's like a beach without water," said Peter. He turned in place, taking in a 360-degree view of pure white dunes. The afternoon sun reflected brightly off the gypsum and we'd all been smart enough to wear sunglasses.

"Don't be shy with the sunblock," I said. "I've had friends who came away from here sunburned so bad they looked like lobsters."

"Okay, Lewis. Tell us again why you brought us here?" asked Eve. She set a cooler on the packed sand next to a picnic table. The covered tables ringed the open parking area and each backed up to a dune of varying height.

"To culture you apes a little bit on what sites southern New Mexico has to offer. Besides, it's a national park. And unique."

"Except for everywhere in Florida with white beaches. And an ocean." Peter shook his head.

"You seem stuck on the beaches thing," said Sandra. I felt like she'd become the unspoken leader of our team. She wore white shorts and had pulled her dark hair back in a tidy ponytail. "Is it better to take off your shoes or keep them on?"

"Take them off and go barefoot. Otherwise you'll just end up with sand in your shoes."

Sandra tossed her shoes into the back of the SUV we'd driven from the SpaceFirst campus to our picnic. She turned and said, "Colt! Head's up."

Our fifth team member turned from depositing grocery bags on the table only to be beaned by a foam football. Sandra squealed at the look on his face and ran toward the nearest dune as he picked up the ball and chased her.

With the car unloaded we brought out the other equipment, and soon Peter and I winged a Frisbee back and forth across the flat while the others hiked across nearby dunes. After a half-hour my shoulder needed a rest and we converged on the picnic table. I tossed a bottle of water to Peter and he downed half in one gulp.

"Is it always this hot here?" he asked. Peter came from Boston, a fair distance from the desert climate of the Southwest United States. His accent sounded like a caricature, Italian to the core. I'd also learned his father had been a cop and Peter was the youngest of five kids.

"Nah, it cools down in winter."

"This is the weirdest place I've ever been."

"Wait 'til you start traveling to other planets and star systems."

"True."

We gazed at our teammates, who'd trekked to the top of a dune about a quarter-mile away. The indents of their tracks in the rippled sand extended back toward us. Peter and I watched them for several silent seconds. Silent externally, that is, because my AI, which I'd named Ray after my great-grandfather, picked that moment to make a comment only I could hear.

Did you see how Eve was looking at you? Ray connected to me through an implant in my brain and all he had to do was transmit a thought and I understood. No talking required.

Shut up. I didn't need an AI goading me into hooking up with one of my teammates.

Colt's definitely better looking and has the body of a Greek god, but for some reason she's got eyes for you.

I thought I told you to shut up.

So rude.

Keep it up. I can be ruder.

I shook my head and tried to clear Ray's comments from my brain. He was right, though. I'd noticed Eve stealing glances at me now and then, and she'd caught me doing the same. If we felt a mutual attraction, which I wasn't going to admit to Ray, there was nothing we could do about it anyway since dating amongst our team violated SpaceFirst company rules.

"Come on, I'll show you how to sled on these things." We picked up a couple of sheets of thick blue plastic and I led him to the top of the dune.

"Really? Sledding?" Even though he wore dark sunglasses I could read his expression as he looked back down the steep dune.

"Yeah. The sledding is the fun part, but there's no ski lift to bring you back up."

He gestured for me to go first. I sat, flattened the plastic, and pulled the front edge back so it was rounded. My feet off to the sides, I kicked and shot down the dune, bouncing over ridges of sand and sliding onto the level parking lot at the end.

"Your turn," I shouted up the dune at Peter, who stood silhouetted against the spotless blue sky.

He surprised me by being game and sliding down without hesitation. When he reached the bottom he ground to a halt and tipped over. He laughed as I extended a hand to help him up.

We went up and down a half-dozen times. When I reached the bottom on my last slide I took a few steps back to the dune and collapsed on my back. Peter slid down and then did the same. "That's more exercise than I planned for today," he said.

I gasped for air. The altitude in the high desert was almost a mile, and even though I was used to it the exertion had worn me out.

"You and me both," I said. "We should've brought oxygen tanks."

"I thought those were for old people."

"That's how I feel right now."

I learned more about my teammates every day, but Peter still seemed like a closed book to me. If we ever chanced into a time for heart-to-heart discussions, this was it. He didn't come across as a guy who talked about his feelings, though, and we sat in mostly comfortable silence until the others returned. They took turns sliding down the dune, and I went a couple more times myself.

We gathered around the covered picnic table and all grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler. "So, this is it?" asked Eve. "Miles and miles of dunes and nothing else to do?"

"You gotta admit, it is kind of cool to see," said Colt. He was from Texas and used to the desert landscape. "But yeah, what else is there?"

"The view at night is spectacular. You're lucky, I brought us here on a Full Moon Night. The park rangers do a program in an amphitheater back the way we came, and the dunes light up like daytime. It's pretty impressive."

Sandra cocked her head at me and raised an eyebrow. "We're supposed to wait until the sun goes down? That's like three hours away."

"Good grief, you're worse than a bunch of kids. It's not my job to entertain you the whole time." My face flushed with embarrassment, since I actually had been the one to bring them here and I felt a degree of responsibility to make sure they enjoyed themselves.

Eve piped in with a question. "So, what does your family do when they come here?" She swatted at her feet to knock off sand stuck there, which I knew was a futile move. The fine grains stuck to people and things like magnets. We'd be finding specks of sand in the SUV for months after this trip.

"Well, we play catch, go for walks, and bury each other."

"What? What do you mean, you bury each other?" asked Sandra, a note of concern in her voice.

I laughed, trying to put her at ease. "Nothing evil. If you start digging in the sand, it gets cooler and kind of damp a few inches down. My family always digs a big hole, someone jumps in, and we fill it back up. That way the only thing sticking out is the person's head."

Peter shook his head. "You people are weird."

I shrugged, knowing how it sounded. "True, but it's a good way to occupy the kids for a while. Usually one of the uncles volunteers to be buried and the kids have a blast."

"Still weird," said Sandra. "I'm not volunteering for that."

"What do they dig with?" asked Colt.

"Sometimes they have those little plastic buckets and shovels. But you can dig with your hands. Here, I'll show you."

"You're volunteering to be buried?" asked Eve. She said it playfully, and I'd bet money if I could have seen her eyes behind the sunglasses they twinkled.

"We'll see how it goes." I led the four of them halfway up the dune and started digging with both hands, flinging sand between my legs down the slope. In half a minute I reached the cooler layer I'd told them about. I excavated a little more and called them closer.

"Feel that," I said, pointing at the hole. The sand on top of the dunes accumulated loose and always shifting with the winds, but I'd exposed sand packed tighter, cool to the touch, and creamy colored as opposed to the stark white of the top layer.

Sandra picked up a handful and looked up at me. "Wow, that's different than I expected."

"Yeah," said Peter. "Must be nice to be buried in this if it's a hot summer day."

"I vote we bury Lewis," said Eve, tilting her chin up as if making a motion in court.

"It's going to take a pretty big hole," said Sandra. "Maybe you guys dig it out and Eve and I'll fill it back in."

"Deal," said Colt. "Let's bury this guy."

He immediately started flinging sand all over the place as he dug in with both hands. Peter joined him and I shook my head.

"We might even unbury you before we eat dinner," said Sandra.

"No man left behind," said Eve. I considered helping the guys dig the hole, but just like with kids, it occupied them and they weren't complaining about anything.

"Ow," exclaimed Colt, standing suddenly upright and holding the fingers on his left hand.

"What?" asked Sandra, immediately taking a step toward him. It seemed instinctual that she'd be first to respond.

"I hit something hard," said Colt. He leaned back over side of the hole and tentatively swept away the packed sand from where he'd been digging.

All of us gathered closer, curious to see what he'd uncovered. Eve figured it out first.

"Is that a bone?" she asked, her voice pitched higher than normal.

"What? What kind of bone?" I asked.

"Don't know yet. Let me get it out," said Colt. He wore a sleeveless t-shirt to emphasize his muscled arms, and they rippled as he moved more sand and then tugged out the object, holding it up for all of us to see.

"That's a bone all right," said Peter.

"Is it human?" asked Eve, once again in a worried tone.

"Let me see," said Sandra, extending her hand. Colt dropped it into her palm. The bone had been scoured clean either by the glacial movement of the sand dune or before burial. I tried to identify what I saw and compared it to a mental image of a skeleton in my mind. A human skeleton.

"Maybe it's from a coyote or something that died out here," I said, trying to keep everyone from jumping to conclusions.

It's a portion of a human forearm, said Ray in my head. See how that joint has wrist bones still attached to it?

You're kidding me. How did you know that?

While you are standing around gawking at it I compared it to the anatomy of all animal skeletons in my database. Human is the only one with a high degree of commonality with those bones.

Stop talking like a computer.

Fine. It's human.

"Looks like we might have found a body. Or what's left of it," I said. I could tell from the expressions on their faces their own AIs were giving them the same info Ray had just told me.

Sandra dropped the bone like a hot potato. "Oh my gosh."

Peter retrieved it immediately and twirled it in front of his face. "It's just a bone. Same thing that's inside you."

Without a word, Eve turned and walked down the dune.

"It's just a bone," repeated Peter after her. She trudged further away without responding.

"Are there more?" asked Sandra. Colt turned and moved more sand around the area where he'd found it. We watched for a couple of minutes and I considered breathing a sigh of relief when he stopped. He whisked sand away from his new find and we all saw a rounded surface, clearly bone but different from our first discovery.

Probably a skull, said Ray.

"Stop," I said out loud. Colt stood upright and backed away. "I think it's time to let the park rangers know what we found."

Peter still held the original bone. "So as to not disturb the crime scene, right?"

"Something like that," I mumbled.

"You want to go find a ranger?" asked Sandra. "The rest of us can wait with Eve over by the picnic table."

I glanced across the white gypsum sand to see Eve pacing nervously by the table. She held her hands in front of her, rubbing them together as if trying to remove something unclean.

"Yeah," I said reluctantly. It looked like our picnic was over.

"That's not a toy," said Sandra to Peter, who tossed the first bone from hand to hand.

"Sorry," he said, and set it down in the hole gently, then backed away.

I trudged down the dune and aimed toward the SUV. Eve noticed my approach and intercepted me. "Where are you going?" she asked.

"To find a park ranger."

"Did you find more bones?"

"Yeah."

"Can I come with you?"

In normal circumstances I would have been excited to be alone with Eve. Her personality, her looks, even the smell of her…all off limits to me. Still, I couldn't refuse her and she appeared agitated about our discovery.

"Sure, hop in."

I drove us out of the parking area onto the main road, plowed and maintained by the park service. We passed other parking areas and I scanned them for a vehicle with the distinctive light green paint job. I finally found one, pulled up beside it, and convinced the ranger to follow me back to our picnic site.

"Are you okay?" I asked Eve while I u-turned our vehicle to lead the ranger.

Eve directed her focus out the windshield, sunglasses hiding her expression, arms folded across her chest. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Come on, you can tell me," I said lightly, trying to blow away the dark cloud over her head.

She remained silent as we drove onto the main road and I thought she'd stay that way the rest of the day. She surprised me, though.

"It's not the bone," she said. "That doesn’t gross me out or anything."

Then what? I wanted to say but kept quiet to let her keep going.

"It's the thought of it. What it's doing there. Somebody must've been murdered there and the killer buried them. Or killed them somewhere else and moved the bones there."

"We don't know the person was murdered," I said, and immediately realized how stupid it sounded.

"Why else would the bones be there?"

I took a left into our picnic area and maneuvered the SUV to the picnic table where the other three members of our group sat in the shade. They appeared subdued, shoulders slumped and wearing serious expressions.

After we parked, the ranger greeted all of us, took down our names, and asked us for a description of how we found the bones. He jotted our comments in a small notebook, which I thought had gone out of use decades before with the advent of iPads and tablets. Sandra took over and led him up the dune to the hole Colt and Peter dug. They commiserated there for several minutes before hiking back to us.

The tall, lanky ranger had the look of someone who'd wrestled livestock on one of the nearby ranches. He tipped back his hat and surveyed our group. "I've gotta call in the sheriff and a team to help out. This is Federal land, but I don't have the stuff to dig this up and collect it."

"How long will that take?" asked Eve. She still seemed withdrawn into her shell.

"Long enough. The sheriff'll want to talk with you, but I have all your information and we can contact you if needed after that. If you can wait around until he gets here that'd be great."

Several of us nodded, none displaying excitement over being stuck there for several more hours.

"Have there been any missing people?" asked Peter. "Any idea who that could be?"

The ranger shrugged and placed his small notebook back in a chest pocket over his heart. "No idea. People go missing around here all the time. Have you heard of the Fountain murders?"

We all shook our head. The name rang a bell in my memory but I didn't know the details. I was sure Ray could find me the story in a heartbeat but I listened to the ranger.

"He was a lawyer around these parts back in the late 1800s, defended Billy the Kid at one point. He and his little boy were headed home after a trip to the mountains where he'd been prosecuting cattle rustlers. Anyway, he and his son were killed and nobody ever found the bodies. All they ever found was their wagon with bloodstains. I guess that's the most famous story of missing people around here."

"Do you think this could be him?" asked Colt. Skepticism tinged his voice.

"Doubtful. That was a century and a half ago."

"I wonder who it could be then," Colt said quietly, probably talking in his mind to his own AI and looking up missing people.

"No telling," said the ranger. "Supposedly, gangs from Juarez and El Paso come up here and bury bodies, but I've never seen it."

"Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to," I said, picturing the thousands of square miles of desert around us where someone could bury evidence without a trace.

"Let me go call this in. Y'all just sit tight." The ranger nodded and walked away while the five of us sat on the picnic table benches. Eve sat beside me as if our brief talk in the car made me a temporary anchor in the storm.

Colt started in on me. "Thanks a lot for bringing us out here, Lewis. Great place you got here."

"Yeah, thanks a lot," said Sandra, piling on with the sarcasm. "Did this kind of thing happen every time you and your family came here?"

"It's not always this exciting," I said, still feeling bad about inadvertently putting my teammates through the ordeal. "I can almost guarantee you this won't happen again next time we come here."

"Almost," echoed Sandra. "That doesn't sound like a voice of confidence."

"Next time we go to a beach, let's find one with water," said Colt. "I vote for Padre Island or someplace in Florida."

"Are you okay?" Sandra reached across the table and touched Eve's arm. "You're being awful quiet."

Eve shook her head. "Sorry."

"You don't have to be sorry," I said. I was going to pat her on the shoulder or put my arm around her but that seemed awkward.

"It just felt evil," said Eve. "I don't know how to describe it. It was like something that should've stayed buried, and my imagination went off. All these possibilities of how that person got killed flashed through my mind." She paused. "I'm usually not that morbid."

Peter extended his hand and patted Eve like Sandra had done. It was awkward and Eve blanched almost imperceptibly. I caught her flinch but wasn't sure the others had seen it. "It's okay," he said. "Just a story we can laugh about someday."

"Doubtful." Eve's voice sounded small and distant.

"How long do you think we'll have to wait?" Sandra asked me.

I thought of all the times over the years I'd driven on the highway just over the speed limit and been passed by sheriffs' cruisers like my own car stood still. Usually without their emergency lights on. "Based on my experience, not too long."

Our conversation over the next half-hour came and went in what felt like strained interludes. When we talked we probed each other's thoughts, learning what made each person tick, and I feared encountering an episode like this could set us back as a team. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like it might impact us so badly we'd never recover. I knew our leaders at SpaceFirst wanted us to function like a team and not five individuals.

Heat waves from the packed sand of the parking lot wavered around us. An occasional breeze provided momentary relief from the high temperatures as we tried our best to all fit into the patch of shade under the picnic table overhang.

To add to our wonderful day the sheriff took his time getting there. Another park ranger came and went, but a couple of hours later we still waited. Peter grew restless and paced within a few hundred yards of our site. The women took a walk over to the low brick building with public restrooms in the center of the parking area. I asked the ranger if we really needed to be present and he assured me we had to talk with law enforcement at some point and might as well do it right away.

When the deputy finally arrived, Colt seemed in a bad mood after waiting so long. I think he wanted to say about five words and get out of there. An orange glow surrounded us as the sun started to hide itself behind the mountains to the west. We'd eaten cold fried chicken and sides we'd brought from the KFC in town. Nobody acted hungry and the atmosphere around the meal shrouded us in an unnatural silence.

The sheriff's deputy spoke to us each in turn, recording our IDs and getting our version of events. I thought it overkill, no pun intended, considering we didn't have that much to report. I'd read enough mysteries to know he searched for holes and inconsistencies in our narratives. He'd dismissed me and I'd turned to return to the picnic table when I stopped.

"Hey, can you do us a favor?" I asked.

He looked up from his tablet, where he'd been entering his notes. He stood a little below average height, bald, and clearly never refused donuts. I almost felt bad about noticing the stereotype. "What?" he asked in a clipped tone.

"Can you keep our names out of the news on this? We're astronauts with SpaceFirst and it'd be great if the company didn't get this kind of publicity."

"Why?"

I shuffled my feet on the packed sand, which quickly cooled off without the sun's rays baking it directly.

"We have a press conference coming up and I don't think our CEO would be too happy if the reporters spend all their time asking us about this."

He eyed me with the look someone gives when they think you're an idiot. "Not my call."

"Whose call is it?"

"The Otero County Sheriff. My boss."

He'd decided to pass the buck. I could raise the stakes a little bit. Sheriff was an elected position, meaning politics played a role in whether he or she kept their job every time an election came around.

"Maybe I should have our CEO call your boss."

His eyes flashed panic for a split-second and I caught it. The deputy shook his head. Our CEO provided a lot of economic benefit to the area with SpaceFirst and all its employees, as well as political donations and influence. Billionaires tended to have that kind of effect. Getting on his bad side would be a bad move for a local politician.

"I'll talk with Sheriff Kearney. I'm sure we can keep your names out of it."

I nodded, my point made. "Thanks." I returned to the group.

"Can we get out of here now?" asked Colt.

The darkened sky spoke of how long we'd been there. "Yeah, let's bug out," I said.

The group moved as one toward the SUV. We'd already repacked our supplies into the back so I plugged our destination into the nav computer and we started our way home.

I felt bad for my teammates with what'd happened compared to the experience I wanted for them. On nights when Earth's satellite was in its new phase and completely dark you could see the stars in exquisite detail, each one a unique jewel in the canopy overhead. On this night the light of the moon would transform the world but we'd miss it.

The two-lane road led us on a meandering path through the dunes. We passed a long line of cars entering the park, people coming in late for Full Moon Night. I felt bad my friends weren't going to experience the beauty of the monthly event. The road angled east and I saw the first sliver of the moon rising above the mountains.

I immediately took over from the nav programming and jerked the vehicle into a turnout to our right and heard someone in the backseat grunt at the sudden movement. A couple of cars had already parked there but it didn't look overly crowded and I found room for the SUV.

"What're you doing?" exclaimed Peter.

"I want you to see this," I said.

"Can't we just go home?" said Eve. "We're all exhausted."

"Ten minutes. That's all."

"Seriously, Lewis, just take us home," said Sandra.

I killed the power. "You won't regret it."

Nobody moved when I opened my door and jumped out.

"Come on. I know it's been a crappy day but this might salvage it a little."

"Fine." Colt sat in the front passenger's seat and when he pushed his door open the other three grumbled and climbed their way out of the back seats.

I led the group up a steep dune just yards off the road. They followed slowly, crouched over and balancing on their hands, feet sinking into the loose sand and cascading rivulets in their wake. I reached the top first and turned around, gazing to the east with hands on my hips, trying to catch my breath after the ascent. Colt arrived next, followed by Sandra, Peter, and finally Eve.

The moon rose quickly, half of it now exposed over the mountain range lining the eastern horizon. We watched in silence as the disk grew every second, like it knew we were on limited time. It seemed a star unto itself, the dazzling white light reflecting all around us, turning night into day. The cloudless sky seemed to bask in its glory.

The dunes around us shimmered and I felt like we'd been transported to another world. The landscape appeared familiar and alien at the same time. I sensed movement to my left and looked to find Sandra sitting, her legs hanging over the top edge of the dune. Slowly, everyone else followed suit and we all stared at the moon.

"Someday one of us will be there," said Sandra.

"Boring," said Peter. "People have already walked on the moon."

"Yeah, that'll just be a quick test of the spacecraft. We won't actually land on it." Colt was right. Our plan consisted of testing the SpaceFirst technology by jumping in turn to orbit each of the planets in our solar system before anyone attempted an interstellar jump.

Everyone settled into silence. The moon focused like a spotlight on Earth. It amazed me how it reflected so much sunlight without any interior furnace of its own to produce the illumination surrounding us.

We'd sat quietly for much more than the allotted ten minutes when Eve spoke.

"Thank you for this, Lewis."

The three others voiced their agreement.

It was all I needed to hear to know our team would be just fine.