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I'm trying to write 1000 words a day--pulpy science fiction, that sort of thing. Mmm-hmm. |
| A thousand words a day of pulpy science fiction starts, shorts, and sketches. Maybe some of them will be fleshed out at some point. Or, you know--maybe not. Hmm. |
| Two figures stood at the top of the rickety tower structure; one, the human, gripped the siderail with both hands and crouched, trying not to look down. The other, a Selasoid, balanced on a tripod of spindly legs and scanned the horizon with his radar. “Damn, it’s cold up here. Can’t we go down now?” the human asked. He was the commissioner of the local Selasoid Cooperation Committee. Someone had to serve as the escort for the visiting Selasoid delegation, and Hank had drawn the short straw. The Selasoid started clacking his mouthparts, and then the computerized language processor that was sewn into his breastplate started up. “We just got up here.” “Yeah, but I’m freezing.” The Selasoid continued to rotate his radar head around as his trunk came up from its pocket in the front of his breastplate and turned to point toward Hank. The alien’s eyeball—it wasn’t an eyeball, and the Selasoid didn’t use vision, but it served as a mechanism for sensing the environment—settled on Hank’s face. “You do seem to be turning a little blue.” “I thought y’all couldn’t see color.” The trunk retracted and descended back into its pocket. “We can’t. I was being sympathetic.” “I’m going down. I’ll wait in the car for you.” Hank stepped off toward the stairs, hanging onto the siderail hand over hand as he did so. “No, no, I’m almost done. I want you to rope down with me.” Hank turned. “You want me to what?” “Rope down with me,” the Selasoid said. The trunk came out again; it moved to a pouch on the Selasoid’s thigh, which, as a result of its spindly anatomy, was quite short and held nearly horizontally. A pair of tongue-like projections extended from inside the trunk. They deftly opened the pouch and brought out a coil of thin rope, then the trunk threw the main body of the coil over the edge of the rail, holding on to one end of it, and the thin rope extended all the way to the ground. “We’ll do back down on this rope.” “Um, absolutely not,” Hank responded. He turned and tried to take a step, but suddenly his leg simply would not move forward. It was as if there were some sort of thick transparent, invisible jelly that got thicker and thicker until it resisted further movement. Hank turned around. “What’s wrong with my leg all of a sudden?” “Nothing,” the Selasoid answered. His trunk was busy tying the end of the rope to the railing. To Hank’s horror, he lifted one of his spindly legs up and over the railing. His trunk tongues grasped the rope, and he lifted the second leg over. Now only a single one of his three legs remained on the platform. “Come on over and we’ll go down together.” The Selasoid shifted his weight and brought the third leg up and over the railing. “Come on.” Hank moved toward the Selasoid. His hands were in his pockets—the pockets weren’t doing a great job at keeping his hands warm, but it was better than having them out in the cold. In his left pocket was his pocketknife. He pulled it out and held it alongside his leg such that the Selasoid couldn’t see it with his radar. As Hank was moving toward the railing, the Selasoid began descending down the rope. He slowly disappeared down the rope, and as the top of his radar head left Hank’s line of sight, Hank moved a little more briskly to the railing. He brought the knife up, using his other hand to open the blade. When he got to the railing, he grasped it with one hand and leaned over enough to see the Selasoid. The top of the alien’s radar head was about 10 feet below the railing. In one smooth, deliberate movement, Hank cut through the rope. The release of tension in the portion of the rope that was tied to the railing made that end of it flop back and over onto the platform side of the rail. The rest of the rope, and the Selasoid, started descending at 9.8 feet per second per second to the ground 130 feet below. Hank turned away from the railing—he didn’t want to see the mess that the Selasoid would make when he hit the ground. He didn’t really want to hear it either, but he supposed that would be unavoidable, and indeed it was. The Selasoid hadn’t screamed or made any sort of vocal outburst at all, but when it hit the bare ground on that side of the tower, there was a wet splat that was hard for Hank to hear, followed by a single oddly pitched groan. Hank winced and braced himself to hear more. Perhaps the Selasoid would scream; perhaps he would moan; perhaps he would beg piteously for assistance. But he did not of this. There was just the lonely cawing of a single hawk, which was orbiting far above, and the white noise of the surrounding forest. At the bottom of the stairs which Hank and the Selasoid had climbed with some difficulty only half an hour ago were two backpacks, one intended for the human anatomy and one for the Selasoid, with extra-long straps and lower-slung cargo chamber. Inside each was two liters of water, two daily food packs, and in Hank’s pack, a variety of materials to start and support a warming fire. Hank would descend the tower, get the water and food out of the Selasoid’s pack, and prepare for the two-day hike back to the ship. He would enter, shower and sleep, and then when the orbiting return module was in the right place, he would blast off of this overgrown rock, dock with the module, and begin the long trip back to Earth. There would be questions and he’d have to answer them, but there would be no worry. As a legal matter, Selasoid were not capable of being torted, and there would be a replacement Selasoid—in fact, the replacement would almost certainly be a clone of the one that he had killed—in his office within the hour. |
| Dorothy felt the door slam through the walls of the ship’s pressurized living chamber. Her jaw tightened, but she waited for Roger to get through the inner door before she started complaining—the airlock didn’t have any air in it, so there’s be no point of screaming just yet. As he heard the cycle complete, she inhaled, and just as the inner door opened, she opened her mouth. “Roger! How many times have I told you, don’t slam that door!” “I didn’t slam the door,” Roger said through the speaker mounted in the front of his suit. He dropped the two bags he was carrying, which fell with a thud on the steel deck. “And don’t drop stuff on the damn floor!” Roger was unfastening the seals on his helmet and in another moment, he had it off. He dropped it too, and it loudly bounced on the deck a couple of times. “Why is it so cold in here?” he said. “Okay, now, when you go outside next time and your pressure starts falling because your helmet is leaking, don’t complain to me.” He stepped past her, past the small table where they ate, past the small galley, past the food storage lockers, past the downladder that led to the unpressurized parts of the ship and arrived at the environmental control panels. “This thing’s set to 20 degrees,” he said. One hand pulled the glove off of the other, and then he brought the ungloved hand up to the controls. He turned a knob. “Twenty-four is as cold as the worms can stand.” “They can stand a lot colder than 24,” Dorothy replied. “Yeah, yeah, I know. But they don’t make as much oxygen when they’re cold.” He turned away from the panel and pulled his other glove off. “Leave this at 24.” Dorothy rolled her eyes. “Aye-aye, Captain Bligh,” she said sarcastically. Roger ignored her comment and moved back to the table, where he sat down. He started unfastening the seals on his boots. “I took a look behind that boulder to the east. There’s a dry riverbed down there, I followed it for about three clicks. It’s a dry as a bone as far as I can see.” “What did the radar show?” Roger had his boots off. He stood up and started working on the seals on his suitpants. “Nothing.” “Nothing?” Dorothy repeated. “You had the range turned all the way up?” “Yeah. No water as far as the radar could see.” He had the seals open and he lifted first one leg and then the other out of the suitpants. “How much do we have in the tanks?” “About 400 liters.” “Hmm.” Roger wriggled out of the top and placed it on the deck next to the other parts of his suit. “When were the worms last watered?” Dorothy spun the captain’s chair around and stood up. “I watered this this morning, so they won’t need it again for a couple of days.” Roger stepped over to the captain’s chair and sat down. He activated screens down on the panel and studied them for a moment. “Okay, so we can stay here for a couple of days and let the worms build our O2 up, then we probably should launch and just orbit here for a while, don’t you think?” Dorothy shrugged. “We could charge up the batteries first.” Roger continued to work the panel. “Yeah, let’s do that first. That’ll take about three days. Then we can start cracking the atmosphere and get our water tanks filled up, that’s another two days.” He turned off the panel, stood up, and moved to retrieve his helmet and the bags that were still lying on the floor where he had dropped them. “I found something odd out there, some sort of material,” he said. “I got a sample to take a look.” “What kind of material?” Dorothy asked. “I don’t know what it is,” Roger said. “It’s some sort of greenish material.” “It’s probably alien poop,” Dorothy said. “And you brought it into the ship.” “There’s no life on this ridiculous little moon,” Roger said, stepping past her again. He carried the helmet in one hand and one of the bags in the other, and again, he stepped past the table, past the galley, past the lockers, past the downladder, but this time he continued past the environmental panel to the small countertop that served as the ship’s science station. There was a microscope, a spectrometer, weight scales and measures, and a variety of laboratory equipment and chemicals for analyzing materials. Most critically, there was an isolation box capable of holding a sample and permitting work to be done on it without exposing it to the environment of the interior of the ship. The box had clear panels on the top and on the sides, and there were holes with protective gloves installed so that materials inside the box could be manipulated without exposing the crew to whatever chemical or organic hazards might be present. Roger opened the isolation box, placed the entire bag inside, and closed it. Then he stuck his hands through the gloves and through them, started opening the bag. Inside was a plastic container with some sort of greenish material inside, just as Roger had reported. He moved the bag to the side and placed the plastic container front and center. Then he opened the top of the container and peered at the contents. Dorothy had moved into a position alongside him and she peered too; as a professional xenobiologist, she was familiar with most known alien life forms and the various sorts of metabolic products—poop—they might leave behind. “Look familiar?” Roger asked. “Nope,” Dorothy responded. As she moved away, she said “See if it reacts to potassium permanganate. That’ll tell you if there’s any carbon in there.” “Who’s the chemist here, you or me?” Roger asked dryly. “Yeah, yeah,” Dorothy responded. She heard him open the storage cabinets above the counter and then she heard the sound of bottles being placed on it. “Do a Wineberg stain, but don’t do it until I can come and take a look.” Roger grunted distractedly. And then: “Hmm. That’s strange….” His voice trailed off, and then it returned. “Oh, wow,” he said. Dorothy noticed something in his tone and was already rising from the small table and moving back toward him. “Oh, wow. Come take a look at—" |
| Heather had managed to slip away from her assigned table; she pushed the door to what she deduced from the diagram painted on it was the Ladies Room—the one for humans—and stepped inside. It was empty. There was a line of sinks against one mirrored wall, and a row of stalls along the wall on the other side. Heather stepped in front of the mirror and inspected her face. Behind her, a toilet flushed and then a young woman pushed the stall door open and took a place at one of the sinks. “You managed to get away too?” she said to Heather’s image in the mirror. “Yes.” Heather didn’t recognize her, but she could read the large letters NC on the woman’s blue-rimmed tag, which she wore on her blouse, just as Heather’s tag said DE. “I’m Heather Rouse, from Delaware.” “Jody Simmons, North Carolina. How are you liking it so far?” Heather shrugged. “It’s not what I expected.” “Oh, I know,” Jody said. “How about those whatever-they-ares from Ganymede? Did you see them?” Heather had done more than just see them; she knew most of them, had spoken to them, and had even visited one of the Ganymedeans, the one who was called Kim, in her home in Dover, Delaware. Heather volunteered at a relocation agency in Dover and had been assigned to help Kim and her family integrate into the human population. Kim had been eager to adapt, and she had done well, quickly learning how to interact with humans without drawing excessive attention to the rather extreme physical, chemical, and cultural differences between them. She had invited Heather for a home visit, and Heather had accepted. Ganymedean culture did not allow for the sharing of meals with strangers, or even with members of the otherwise close Ganymedean family units—it would be like asking a friend to join you in the bathroom while you defecate. So Heather arrived at Kim’s house late in the evening, well after the dinner hour. She parked her car and walked up the walk, but as she was climbing the steps to the porch, Kim opened the door. Kim’s mouthparts moved, and the yellow box attached to her breastplate activated. “Ah. Thank you for coming, please come on in,” it said in a pleasant, computer-generated voice. “Thank you,” Heather had replied, and she stepped inside. From the outside, the house looked like any other upper-middle-class mini-mansion that populated the lone exclusive suburb west of Dover. This one was a Cape Cod model, with steep gables that jutted forward and back. Inside, it did not resemble any house interior that Heather had ever seen or was likely to see. There were no interior walls at all. Inside, a packed-dirt ramp led down to a pit that occupied the entire area of the house; it was as if the shell of a house had been built over an open hole, which is exactly what had been done. The ramp descended quite steeply, and at its bottom, the dirt floor was peppered with holes at random intervals. To the side of the pit, pushed up against the dirt wall, was a small table, completely empty, and a single chair. Kim gestured at the table. “I set that up for you. Please have a seat.” “Oh, thank you so much,” Heather said. She crossed the dirt floor, gracefully avoiding the holes, pulled out the chair, and sat down. Kim followed her and assumed a posture on the dirt floor that was roughly equivalent to the posture that Heather had taken on the chair. Ganymedean anatomy did not allow for sitting on chairs, of course, and the posture that Kim took didn’t look very comfortable, but Heather knew it was a mistake to attribute human characteristics or expectations to her host. “It’s a pleasure to have you here. As soon as the Sun is fully down, the children should be waking up, and perhaps one of them will make an appearance.” “That would be fine,” Heather responded, although she hoped that she would be gone before any of the juveniles awoke. Ganymedeans were insectoid, and so their young pupated, but before that occurred, they were generally nocturnal, and generally did not become active until well into the night. Juvenile Ganymedeans were only marginally sentient, and so they didn’t always behave carefully around humans. Kim had brought some of her young into the relocation center, and did seem to have good control over their behavior, and so Heather hadn’t worried about it much, but now that she was in the home and now that she saw the number of gestation holes in the floor—there were literally dozens of them—she found herself wondering of Kim could control that many juveniles at once if they all woke up and started crawling around. As if on cue, from one of the holes in the floor, a juvenile Ganymedean raised its sensing tentacle and peered at Heather; as soon as Heather noticed, the tentacle jerked back into the hole, but Kim noticed. There was a series of gentle grinding sounds as her mouthparts moved, sounds which the translation box didn’t translate. Unknown to Heather, there was a register that Kim used with her brood that the translator circuitry could recognize and which it had been instructed not to translate, which was just as well, because generally there would have been no translation for what Kim would be saying to her children, or even what she might say to other adult Ganymedeans. In the four years since the Ganymedeans had arrived on Earth, their language had proved to be completely impenetrable to humans—only by virtue of the Ganymedeans efforts to adapt to human ideas of communication and with the help of the translation boxes, which nearly every adult Ganymedean wore on her breastplate while in public, could communication take place at all. Then Kim switched registers to something that the box would translate. “No, the brood will not come out tonight. They’ll pass the night in their holes.” “Oh, are you sure?” Heather asked. She was secretly relieved; she really didn’t know how to engage with the mostly unresponsive juveniles, and she generally ignored them when they were in the center. “Yes,” Kim said. “They must follow my directions, and I said no peeping.” After Heather replayed this scene in her mind, she returned her attention to the delegate from North Carolina. “I have some experience with them. I’m a volunteer at one of our relocation centers.” “Oh,” the delegate said, her face communicating her disgust. “Well, see you out there.” She turned and strode out of the bathroom door. ### 1115 |
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