This is for CommunityInteractive's "Welcome to the World" prompt in response to AvantPop's core values of unconventional ideas, experimentation, and an amalgamation of past and future.

--

Sergeant Major Collins had been the one to make the decision, and it hadn't been an easy one. With their low fuel tanks, their only shot at returning to Earth - not that that had been the plan in the first place - was to attempt slingshotting around the unknown planet. If they managed to about face in the approximate direction of Earth, they'd then have to cut their thrusters and drift through space aimlessly to save fuel, trusting their original path and trajectory to carry them back to the Milky Way, and then only reactivate the thrusters once within an astronomical stone's throw of their home planet. That was all on the assumption that they'd managed to secure the correct exit angle from the slingshot maneuver; an error of 0.5 degrees would catapult them to a separate galaxy entirely. And that they hadn't been pulled into the planet's gravitational pull and smashed on its surface.

Kindly put, it was a suicide attempt if Collins had ever heard one. He'd opted for a different course of action, one that most didn't agree with; although they all spoke different tongues, their general resentment carried well enough through harsh tones and narrowed eyes. Instead of attempting to make it back to Earth and face the consequences of a failed attempt to colonize outside their galaxy, they would simply land on the closest planetary structure, conserving whatever fuel they could, and pray that it was sustainable for life. It was nearly as improbable as the first option, but nearly was the key word, and it was that margin that Collins had weighed his decision upon.

They had a chance for survival here. Not much of a chance, and maybe not long of a survival, but there were innumerably more risks with any other choice.

And so they'd set down on Planet Zarathustra. That was what Collins, fancying himself a novice philosopher and pioneer of space, had deemed it in his own mind. He was the only American on board the Argonaut, and although there were several other English-speaking humans on board the vessel, he hadn't had much contact with them. Each person had been chosen purposely from every pocket in the world - doctors, technicians, scientists; each had earned their spot on the Argonaut. No two people had been chosen from the same nation. The selection process had been lengthy and precise; the chosen ones couldn't be so vital to Earth that their absence would influence profound negative consequences, but they had to be invaluable to the mission. Collins had been chosen to take command, likely because there weren't many others worth snatching from America despite its demand to be represented.

The sheer intellect of the personnel at times weighed on him more heavily than the induced gravity holding them down, but they'd faced the most common difficulty from day one - the barrier of communication. At most, he could only address twenty to thirty percent of those on board at once; English was his primary and only language, and even among those who spoke it as a secondary tongue, his reach was low. He considered it a rather large blessing that the head pilot spoke English, or else things would have gotten very sticky very fast.

At present, he was trying to explain their next steps. He'd managed to get everyone suited up - there were approximately 50 non-crew personnel in addition to the 10-man team running the Argonaut and Collins himself - but he was having difficulty explaining that he wanted to assemble an exploration party to take a quick look around the unfamiliar planet. After having no luck with language and hand gestures, he finally went to the side and pulled out the easel. Most of their trip so far had been one giant game of Pictionary, only in the end, he had no authentic verification that they'd guessed correctly.

Collins had never been a decent artist, but after six months on the Argonaut, he'd refined his stick figure technique; a circle on a triangle indicated a women, and a circle on a stick indicated a man. An ellipse with a trapezoid on the end and three circles for windows represented the Arognaut, and a circle with two rings around it indicated a planet. In truth, Collins drew every planet like it was Saturn because that was the only way to differentiate a circle from a planet on the easel despite the gross inaccuracy. But Collins wasn't an artist, and he wasn't a scientist; he was a leader, a communicator. The lack of common language would not stop him from reaching others with his ideas.

Collins threw up a Saturn-esque planet on the easel and tapped it twice with the marker before pointing at the ground to indicate that the Saturn on the board was the planet they were currently on. He received a few nods and thumbs up to indicate that the message had been received. He turned back to the easel, and just for emphasis (and a little of his growing artistic pride), he added the Argonaut - one ellipse, one trapezoid, three circles - just above the planet. There was the possibility that maybe it would clue a few more people in, but really, he just thought it was a nice detail to add. He did a quick scan across the room once more to make sure that everyone was pretty much on the same page - his page - and, satisfied, turned back to the board, shifting slightly in front of it so they wouldn't see what he drew until he stepped aside. He relished the suspense of the unveiling, which would have been rendered all the more enticing if he'd known exact what he'd been unveiling. As of current, his mind was a blank canvas.

He tapped the marker against his chin, forgetting as usual that the cap was off and that he had given himself an impromptu series of dark freckles that stood out rather unfortunately against his pasty white skin and ruddy cheeks. The planet, he'd done easily. But the next part was difficult. How was he supposed to indicate an expedition?

He flipped to a new sheet in the easel and redrew the planet and the Argonaut so they took up the entire sheet. Then, within the confines of the planet and below the Argonaut, he drew five circles, two of them accompanied by triangles and three by sticks to indicate two women and three men. Then he paused, feeling as though his portrayal might be interpreted as sexist given that only 40% of his stick figure population was female, and he added another circle and triangle to the mix. Five had a nice even ring to it, but he didn't want to get political at this early stage. Next, he needed to indicate that he would go on the expedition, but he wasn't sure quite how. He could draw E-9 insignia of a Sergeant Major with three chevrons, a star, and three stripes swooping below, but it would be difficult to draw it to size with the stick figure, and he couldn't be sure that everyone was familiar with the symbol.

A burst of inspiration hit him, and he turned to the crowd, revealing the six figures, and as they all squinted at the drawing, he used the marker to draw a wavy mustache just above his upper lip before adding a mustache to one of the stick figures on the easel. He turned back to see recognition spreading among the ranks, and he nodded, satisfied. He went to stroke his new mustache instinctively before realizing that there was nothing tangible to stroke.

He turned back to the drawing and added a dashed line swooping and circling all across the planet before returning to the Argonaut. He then drew a magnifying glass to symbolize investigation and a safari hat to indicate adventure. Then he put a question mark over each of the stick figures with the exception of the one figure sporting a handsome new mustache.

Collins turned back to the crowd before him. He tapped on the question mark over one of the circle-and-triangle installments before waving the marker at his audience.

Well? he seemed to ask with a twist of his eyebrows. Who will it be?

A woman in the front row, seemingly of South American descent, raised her hand, and Collins beckoned her to the front of the crowd. He tapped the two other question marks for the females and received two more volunteers, one Japanese and one African, before gathering two male volunteers from Germany and Ukraine. He dismissed the general assembly and turned to the five volunteers. He flipped to a new sheet and drew a scroll of parchment paper. He realized quickly that he'd skipped ahead, and he added a skull before the scroll. Then he scrawled a few indecipherable lines on the scrolls and added pictures of money and jewels. He turned back to them to see if they'd understood.

Instead of several thumbs up, he received a few tilted heads and furrowed brows. The German gestured toward the marker, and Collins relinquished it, moving aside so the German could use the easel. He drew a hat with a skull on it, then a half circle for a head, a shaded in circle for an eye, and an eye patch, all of which was followed by a question mark.

Collins shook his head and made an X with his arms. No, not a pirate! This isn't a treasure hunt! he wanted to scream, but he just tapped the marker against his chin, adding several more freckles to his collection, before drawing a circle and a stick, this time with a bit of distance between them. Then he drew a sword in that gap and two X's instead of eyes.

The German stared at the drawing before tapping back on the pirate with increasing insistence. The others nodded. The pirate idea seemed to really resonate with them.

No, no, no! Collins thought, biting his lip as panic set in. How was he supposed to convey that they needed to draw up their wills in case the expedition failed drastically?

He made several more attempts, even pantomiming his throat being slit, but every attempt circled back to pirates in their perception. Collins eventually gave up, deciding just to write up his own will at least, but he realized that it would be read by those on the Argonaut. He couldn't rely on English to carry his message.

So he inscribed the same images on the easel onto a slip of paper that he pressed into his breast pocket. On the scroll, he drew a stick man and stick woman, the man with a mustache and a heart between them, and drew bags of money. He had a wife back on Earth, the only person he'd left behind, and he wanted it all to go to her. As an explanation for his death, he drew a little map underneath, a dashed line running across it to an X to indicate their expedition. His first hope was that the will would never be needed; his second hope was that, in the occasion that it was, someone would understand and pass along his words.

--

On the expedition, the slip of paper escaped from his pocket while he focused on his new mustache, and many years later, fell rather implausibly into the hands of a renowned collector.

"By golly, it's a treasure map," he immediately ascertained and went on to spend the rest of his life searching for a treasure that had never existed.

In the end, Collins' Earthbound wife had always had every intention of taking all his money anyway, however, so things all worked out as intended in the end.