The coconut crab crawled up the bole of the palm. Salt wind buffeted its red-brown shell. The hermit emerged from its hole to forage carrying the memories of its entire species. Day-to-day life changed little in centuries, allowing all their memories to fold into its genetics. Any specific events indelible, the rest forgotten in the forage.

It hardly noticed castaways. Feeding on them, they were soon lost among other meals. The sun out, the sun dim, gray sky or night, barely made an impression. Its antennae would clear the feathered flaps of their lungs, once larval gills. A mother would carry her young on her belly until it was time for the sea to take them, then she too would forget. Tide in, tide out, and the slap of water on the beach.

Humanity came and went, leaving a long nuclear winter. But the generations in the cool enjoyed the stunted coconut palms. Not so far to climb. While the great colonies on Tuvalu and Vanuatu were lost beneath the waves, the radiation fed the other colonies.

It was not so much the trees were smaller, but the crabs were that much larger. Greater than tanks and barges of the old world. Feasting on fish and flotsam, sharks and sea creatures that collapsed exhausted and oxygen starved on their shores. A crab’s coconut, their mental capacity, was vast for such simple beings.

Rarely did anything come from above. When the ammonia breathers arrived, they pressed their fish bowl helmets against the carapace of the great ones. Exhausted by gravity, one chose to nap on a comfortable rock, while the others explored. Lying on their back, the rock rose beneath them. Time went backward for the pincer’d one, as it collected memories of another planet, another evolution. Transferred through a psychic link.

The coconut crab knew the beauty of a green sky, touched by rosy clouds. Purple fleshed beings that roamed and gathered, coveting other species. Their philosophy and religions vast, and their respect for living things genuine. This allowed their technology to flourish far beyond other worlds’ capacity.

When the alien discovered the massive storage capacity, the crab became a repository for their civilization. And when the record was complete, the nap ended. They rose from the noble creature’s backs, returned to orbit and left a satellite marker, lest they should forget their history. A gateway to their home world when traveling the stars.

Naturalists believed (when they existed) that the coconut crab had no sense of time. Now their memories were half filled with alien histories. The mental compartments blurred and bled into each other. Things became odd in their tiny minds. Sea grapes and bark became delicious, though poisonous to them. Well, the them which were not them.

The hermits planted things and clacked claws, sharing profound ideas when brushing antennae. They wondered, as never before, and this was particularly disastrous when you lived on a small island under the palms.