Author: Andrew

THREE, TWO, ONE.

The station speakers went quiet and the whole facility rumbled for about 20 seconds.

A robot tour guide turned to the empty room. “That was the firing of the main seed launcher. The launcher fires a seed packet approximately once every 10 minutes. Well, occasionally it will be down for maintenance…..but not very often!”

It wheeled forward, turned its head back and made a gesture. “Follow me. Let’s go see how they build the seed packets.”

Nobody followed. There hadn’t been a tour at the facility for a long time. Life on the planet had died long again. The robots didn’t care. They just did what they were programmed to do. Every day they cleaned and maintained the launcher. And every day they led a group of nobodies through out the station.

“The Invirito Station was built to spread life through out the universe. Each day special seeds packet is loaded into the launcher and shot into deep space. This is where we build the packets,” said the tour guide.

Behind a clear glass wall was a bevy of robots in an assembly line of sorts. Each was uniquely designed to help build the seed packets and move them along the line. It looked like a complex process, but it was actually pretty simple.

“You can see here where the rock material is crushed and then put back together to form a sphere. This outer surface should be strong enough to survive the deep, dark and dangerous expanse of space,” the robot repeated just as it had done over and over.

“And there. There is the life of the seed. We fill each of those with a special mixture of organic materials. The mixtures vary from seed to seed. This helps add diversity to our universe.”

The robots packed a round metal container with a sludge of organic material. They encased the metal with a thick layer of rock. A final machine sealed it all together into a large ball.

The ball rolled onto a platform and into the large gun shaped launcher. The launcher adjusted it trajectory.

THREE, TWO, ONE.

The facility rumbled again as the ball was shot into space. It roared off into the distance. After a bit a large solar sail opened up and pulled the seed away from the station and the planet.

The tour guide robot turned again to the empty room of nobodies. “That seed is headed to a lucky planet in the milky way.

“What a lucky planet, don’t you think?”

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Restrone built a lovely little home on the nucleus of an atom. He picked iron for its stability. It was a cute mid century modern with a couple bedrooms. He painted it green with white trim. At night he would sit out in the garden and watch electrons spin metallic rainbows. There were nights he never wanted to go in.

He spent the weekends on little projects. He planted grass in the front yard. He built a nice white fence. It was crooked, but it was his.

Restrone was proud.

He loved his garden the most. He painted in red flowers. Shades of chrysanthemums and waves of marigolds splashed the wavy hills. They perfectly complimented the green house with the white trim. This was by design.

The years past and he got old. He tried to keep up on the repairs, but it got the best of him. Those we’re dark days on the iron. The roof leaked. The fence needed painting. The flowers died.

His house on the atom was empty for a good long while after he past away. Some blamed it on the market. Iron was expensive these day. Some said it was just too much work to repair that old run down house.

Margaret was different. She saw the beauty in the disrepair. And the iron actually appealed to her. She was tired of living in unstable atoms. It took its toll on her. The iron would be worth the extra money.

On a Tuesday in the Spring she bought the little green house on the iron. On Wednesday she planted some flowers. They were red.

This was by design.

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Nature wants to kill you. The bugs, the rocks, the weather.

Especially here. Especially now.

I learned this at a young age. Many don’t. You read about them. I would occasionally stumble on their bodies. I’d find them hunched up on the edge of some cliff. Freezing to death will put a very distinctive look on your face. I remember them all.

So I prepare.

I think about all the ways this planet is going to try to kill me. And I prepare. It’s not as easy as it seems. You can only carry so much stuff. You have to prioritize. You have to learn to have just enough. Just enough stuff to help save you.

That string saw saved me on RG-F2. A log rolled over on my leg. I was able to cut through it to set myself free. I made a splint and hobbled back. I didn’t die that day.

Sure…sure…we have technology. I have a pack of stuff that is supposed to save me. I use it. I respect it. But, really it’s just another thing you have to plan for. Do you have power? Is it functioning correctly?

I once pulled a guy out a canyon on Meticon. He was reading his positioning system wrong and got lost. Unprepared people get lost. There is really no excuse for getting lost.

Like Evan Crabby. Evan Crabby is lost somewhere on this fucking planet. He was unprepared. So here I am looking for him. It’s not going well. And now I suspect this planet will kill us both.

That’s when it gets you. Nature, that is. When you give up. I never thought I would be here, but I am. Robert Folcum of the Planetary Rescue is giving up.

I’m tired. Tired of fighting this. I prepared for the storm. I prepared for terrain. I prepared for Evan Crabby.

I prepared for all of this and nature is still going to kill me today.

 

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It wasn’t intentional. I guess I just sat in that damn chair listening for too long. It grew on me.

I know, I know…my training. At first I didn’t understand it. It was so different from anything we have. We don’t have that intensity, that vigor, that purpose.

You made me listen to it. Over and over. I became obsessed with it. I would finish my shift and it wouldn’t go away. It drilled deep in my brain.

‘Cause London is drowning, and I, I live by the river

It progressed from there. I was about a year in when I started trying to figure out how I could bootleg it. Each day I pilfered a few items. It was stuff that wouldn’t be missed. It’s not like it was difficult. I mean we are engineers.

The hardest part was concealing it. I give you guys credit, you make it hard for us. The security was amazing. Not only did I have to patch into the system, I had to hack something together to record the damn things.

It was complicated, but not impossible. I had two things going for me, determination and time. I wanted to hold this beautiful noise for the rest of my life. I was pretty motivated. I wish you had sent me to a different planet. A planet with shitty music. Then I wouldn’t be here. Then WE wouldn’t be here.

“But WE are here Mr. Servo,” said a voice from the darkness. “Can you explain how the recordings got on the network?”

My assignment on the monitoring ship was coming to an end. I needed to figure out a way to bring the music back with me. I mean you guys pretty much strip us naked before you send us back.

I broke the digital files up and coded them into static. It took me forever. But, again…I had time. Then when I would send audio messages back to my family, I would insert the static. I figured once I was home, I would decode them. It easily got past your detection system. No one noticed. It was pretty genius.

“How did they get on the network, Mr. servo?!”

I guess I didn’t realize other people would be monitoring those transmissions. They were looking for things. I mean, it may come as a shock to you, but not everyone is all bully on the silence in regard to other cultures. They know we are there. They are looking for things. They are curious. I didn’t mean for this music to hit the network. I just wanted to keep listening to it after my assignment was over.

“Let the record show the Alserdon Servo has confessed to being a source of cultural contamination. Let it also show that he broke his observers oath. You are aware of what happens next Mr. Servo?”

Do I know? Listen, I didn’t mean for this to happen. But I am now convinced I was meant for this to happen. What’s next? The rebellion is next.

No future
No future
No future for me

No future
No future
No future for you

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“Keep it down you schmucks,” Keven said as she motioned for everyone to stop near the fence. She turned and whispered, “You’re up Andy.” A large man with a small case waddled up to the front of the group. He clipped some cables to the fence and attached a small tablet. His face lit up from the glow of the screen. Everyone could see the concentration on his face. BEEP. BEEP. BEEEEEEP. Keven frantically waved. “Sound off, Andy. Sound off!!” The night got quiet again. The gate ahead of them clicked and opened. Keven slapped Andy on the back. “Nice job. Let’s go.”

They quickly moved through the fence and moved toward the parking lot. There ahead of them was the largest fleet of automated vehicles in the city. They came in all different shapes and styles. Busses, cars, trucks. They stopped at the first one the came up on. No need to be picky. It was your basic gray metal four door sedan. A commuter. Keven grabbed a long metal device from his pocket. She attached it to the data port on the side of the vehicle. Pop. The doors opened.

People didn’t drive cars anymore. But, they hadn’t really gotten rid of the things manual driven cars had. Power petal, brakes, steering column. No one really knows why. It’s not like those items were needed anymore. Maybe it was to make us feel safe. Maybe the car companies couldn’t remove the humanity from their creations? Who knows. Andy attached his screen and after a few moments he said, “She’s good to go.” He slid out of the drivers seat and Keven slid in. She attached a small steering wheel to the car.

Keven won the dice roll. She would drive first. She revved the electric motor. And punched it. “Hold on to your balls, my brothers.” The car sped out of the lot on onto the road way. She pushed it as hard as she could as they moved closer to the city. Driving was different now. There were no stop signs. No traffic lights. No signs. Computers don’t care about these things. All the other cars on the road were connected.It wouldn’t be long before the automated police cars would get word of the erratic driving. Until then, they took turns driving around the city.

They were free. They were alive. They were out for a Sunday drive.

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On an island in the North Sea lived a man. He lived there alone, on purpose. For as long as he could remember he would randomly jump backward and forward in time. Yes, time. It was usually a day or two either way. The longest jump was a week. It took him a long time to understand this about himself. He lived a tortured life until he found the island. The isolation helped him deal with his affliction.

Over the years he learned to predict when he was about to jump. Going forward or back had a particular feel to it. Backward was a tingle in his legs. Forward started as a slow migraine in his head. Eventually he worked out in his body what was causing the episodes. He worked and worked until he perfected a device that could hinder the jumps. This was an exciting development.

After testing it for a few weeks, he decided to leave the island. He arranged for a ship to pick him up. There he stood on the dock that Tuesday morning. The device he made was rather large. He hid it as well as he could in a very large green backpack. The ship arrived and he boarded. He never took the pack off. He slept in it. He ate in it. The passengers looked at him as queer at first, but soon he was just another North Sea oddity.

Late one evening, at about halfway to their destination the small ship was sideswiped by another larger ship. It was a horrific night. The screams turned to full on panic as both ships started to sink. The man stood motionless on the deck. His eyes welled up with tears as he disconnected the apparatus and dropped the back pack to the deck. Forward or back, it was a flip of the coin. Either way he would be dead again. 

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Adam put his clothes into the basket on the floor. He stepped up on the platform. The technician removed the small metal band from around his neck. This was the first time it had been removed since puberty. The technician threw the collar in a basket and motioned for Adam to move along. 

Adam followed the rest of the men into a large classroom. He rubbed his neck, sat down and looked around. Forty or so naked boys sat in the room, touching, scratching or massaging their newly exposed necks.

The tingles started. He had read about it, but had never actually experienced it. It intensified and his groin began to ache as his small, flaccid penis became erect.

He was afraid to touch it so he just stared.

A gray haired technician stepped to the front of the room. “Listen up, gentlemen,” he barked. “The Federal government would like to remind you of some things. First of all, the women, men and others in this facility are here of their own free will. This means that everything that happens in the next room is consensual. According to the Mordright Accords we have activated Safeword Protocols. If your partner says, SAFEWORD, please move along and find someone more suited to your tastes. Failure to adhere to this will result in immediate termination. Have fun. And remember murder is still a capital offence”

The doors swung open and the men pushed and screamed their way into the facility.

Adam eyes tried to adjust as he stumbled into the large dark room. It was bad enough he was dealing with his first erection, but now this. Bodies were everywhere. Men were everywhere. The screaming over took him. He sank into a dark corner and slid to the floor. There beside him on the floor he noticed a petite naked woman. She was bleeding and crying.

It was this moment that Adam realized there was nothing consensual about the facility.

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The first non-human President was a Tackbo. Sociologists blamed the declining human birth rate. Others pointed out that it was impossible to keep up with species like the Tackbo, that produce more offspring. Humans lost the evolutionary birth cycle war. We couldn’t keep up. It was just a matter of time before we were the minority. Some were angry. They said we lost the planet. They said that the Earth belonged to humans. Speciesism reared its ugly head that year. It was reminiscent of the racism wars humans had been fighting for a long time. It didn’t last long. The reality of it all was that despite being Tackbo, Martin Song was the best candidate. And aliens had for the most part moved the planet to a better place. They reversed global warming. They solved our energy problems. They brought diversity to a stagnant and dying planet. People were content. Earth was content. Or at least it seemed.

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“When we sing, we rejoice.” The words are written on a piece of paper long ago stuffed in the front of some old forgotten book. As it turns out, this particular book had not been touched for many, many years — until today. There were policies and procedures to make sure something like this wouldn’t happen. Checks. Double checks. Sweeps. The damage this kind of illicit information could do is unmeasurable. They knew the danger. Sammy Swee has the paper now. It fell out as she paged through a book she picked up by accident. It now sits on the edge of her terminal in her living quarters.

When we sing, we rejoice.

She knew the words, but the meaning was lost. She dared not type the words together. Maybe separately, one by one, but together? Not together. The paper sat there. Days went by. Months went by. Slowly she pieced together the meaning. Singing was an old Earth tradition that was now lost. No one remembers why. To rejoice because of singing?

When we sing, we rejoice.

When they sing, they rejoice.

When I sing, I rejoice.

I want to sing, thought Sammy Swee.

And so the revolution began.

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A million or more died during the great war. Gord the Fourth was not one of them. He and a few relatives caught a break right at the beginning of the chaotic reformation. I’ve been told it was a bleak time. They would later say something about being in the right place at the right time, but the reality was, they worked hard every day to catch that break. It was not an accident that day the transport came to the refugee camp to pick up new workers. Gord was pretty young at the time. He really shouldn’t remember much of this, but pain, anguish and despair will burn the memories right into you. He didn’t talk about it often. He would tell the stories to those who asked — most didn’t. I mean, why would they? Gord looked and spoke just like one of them. Why would he be any different? Why would they expect his experiences to be different? But, they were. Luckily the young are malitable. As they moved West, from city to city Gord changed. He lost his Eastern accent. He even started to look more and more Western. Gord 2 and Martin 6 helped with that. Every night they would work on his components. A wheel assembly here, a light adjustment there. Slowly he started to look just like everyone else. Now you can’t even tell. Well, I couldn’t tell. I just assumed we all came from the same factory. I was wrong. Gord just blends in with the big city now. It makes me wonder how many others have a different story than mine.  

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