Category: Stories

They are Smol – and It’s a Smol World: Chapter 6

Post author By TPH
Post date July 19, 2019
2 Comments on They are Smol – and It’s a Smol World: Chapter 6

It is said everyone knows – in the way that “everyone” knows things – that liquor, tortilla/potato chip and porno sales skyrocket before a bad storm. You know the type of storms, the ones that are guaranteed to knock out power? Where the weatherman comes on and tells you this is a bad one, to shelter or leave the area, etc., etc.? See, liquor, chip and porn sales skyrocket before a bad storm because there’s not much to do in a blackout other than drink, snack and uh… well. Entertain yourselves in the way and manner that all mankind has done since the discovery of genitalia.

However, since babies tend to come whenever they damn well decide to, we can only hazard a guess – you talk to the maternity ward of a hospital or to professional midwives and sure, they’ll say there are baby “seasons” but to pin it down to a specific time or tie it to a specific hurricane or storm system… that’s ridiculous. This is why it’s one of those “everyone” knows facts; for the majority of modern human history there was no way to really tell if this was a fact or not.

It is also said in a way that “everyone” knows, that when you have no work you tend to slow down and enjoy things more often – as long as there’s no impending threat to your livelihood, of course. If you’re let go or get fired, but you can and do get a job lined up in a week or two, you’ve got a mini-vacation. Go to bed late, sleep in, have a day trip here or there and enjoy the family you have. Sure, that might lead to some more… extracurriculars, seeing as how you’re spending more time at home, but again – “everyone” knows that happens (but can’t prove it), and it’s to be expected.

Luciana Aleman believed that she, her 17 siblings, and her couple hundred immediate relatives were the perfect, living proof that “everyone” was absolutely fucking correct.

After the Great Clusterfuck, there was no power outside of major city centers for quite some time. Almost every Maternity ward in the world (and some offworld, if you’d believe the stories of being at overcapacity) now actually had the data to back up an almost literal, biblical flood of infants being born roughly 9-11 months after everything went to utter shit. The ones that came early were, of course, the “we’re gonna die so might as well” and the ones that came later were the “we’re out of rubbers but eh”. Her Grandfathers and Grandmothers were somewhere in the middle of that wave, but none of her Great-grandparents would tell and the Catholic Church didn’t really care as long as they went to mass and were baptized on time.

Then came the fabricators and the almost nonexistent demand for blue-class jobs. Sure, if you were a master electrician or welder or something you were fine, but her Grandfather was a migrant sharecropper, like his father before him and his father before him. If the Americans weren’t planting crops (and they weren’t at the time) then you don’t have much to do…

And so, over the couple decades it took for everyone to pull themselves together, her Great-Grandparents ended up gracing the earth in the traditional way, and Luciana was happy to count on 8 Great-uncles and 11 Great-aunts in her immediate family, which of course led to another 27 uncles and 35 aunts – not inclusive of her father and mother. Her parents apparently took a look at the size of their immediate family and considered it a challenge.

Luciana was the first shot in the subsequent and impromptu baby war amongst the Aleman clan. She came first, then a couple of her cousins were born, and then everything kinda just got out of hand. Luciana was joined by Martin, but then her uncle Sebastian – the first uncle Sebastian, not the second – had triplets and well…

Well it’s not like Papa Ricardo was gonna stop. At this point, the cost of living was so low, and Sofia is a beautiful lady, and they’ve got power and A/C and 150,000 on-demand channels and all the comforts of modern living and Abuela demands sacrifice…

So after Martin came the first set of twins, Mia and Catalina. Then Thomas, Gabriel, Joaquin and Andres, Zoe, Ana Sofia – the last of the girls – and then something happened and it was all boys after that. Juan Pablo, Juan Diego, Juan Jose, Juan David, Juan Sebastian, Juan Manuel, Juan Martin and little Juan Esteban.

Come to think of it, that something might have been her father ascending to lifelong dad-jokehood, because as he would say later in his life “If you’ve seen Juan of my boys you’ve seen ‘em all.”

Luciana smirked at her reflection in the port-side “window”, the green-gray planet hanging lazily below them. ‘At least my name isn’t a dad joke.’ She mused, using an idle thought to ping her implant about the new world she was orbiting. It’s name was “Gentle Expanse”, but “Green Fields” or “Quiet Meadow” might have been a better translation. Even after all these years and universal updates, things still were a bit wonky with the matrixes – and it really didn’t help that language kept evolving, especially human language. There were your traditional derivatives, sure, but now an entire ‘star-farer’s lexicon’ to add to the mix. Silver City translated well enough; you build a silver mine, and then a city to support the mine. Done and done.

What was really intriguing was the fact that they were going to be building a city-within-a-city. The SC planning board basically gave them unfettered and heavily deregulated permits to build… whatever they wanted to do. Whereas most people back home who were getting sick of there being so many people signed up in a heartbeat, they were more the city-living type to begin with; architects, scientists, coffee drink engineers, manbun archivists – you know the type. Her father took one look at the list of people who applied, simply put “farmer” in occupation, and now…

Now here she was, taking a decade off from her second PHD in Geochemistry to help her father find the “good earth” to start planting.

“Luci?”

Luciana turned from her musings and smiled, waving at her Abuela. “Hey there Abi! Sorry, are we already going down?”

Isabella nodded – well. She was nearing 130, so her “nod” was more of an upper-body-wiggle, but it got the message through. “Mmm. Your father has finally settled on a few acres of land he wants to work on, so we’re going to be taking a ship down in the next week or so.” Isabella leaned forward into her granddaughter’s kiss, the much taller woman leaning down to gently touch the old woman’s forhead. “And with that trip down, you could find yourself sitting next t-”

“Abi.”

Isabella scrunched up her nose, looking up at her granddaughter. Her single granddaughter. Her single, 40 year old Granddaughter. “All I want is for you to be happy, Mi Luzita.”

Luciana sighed internally. “Abi. I’m onto you – all you want are more great-grandchildren.”

“All I want are some great-grandchildren, yes! You’re the eldest, you should lead by example!”

“Abi. I know for a fact that I have nieces and nephews back home.”

“Yes.” Isabella said, matter-of-factly. “Back home. Not here.”

Luciana laughed, patting her grandmother on the back as they turned towards the exit door from the observation gallery. “So what, if the great-grandchildren aren’t near you they don’t exist?!”

Isabella looked up at her, a twinkle in her eye. “Shroginder!” She said, knowingly, as the door slid shut. The elevator pinged softly, and the two of them began to move down… and to the left.

“Abi, you know that’s not how this works.”

“Beh!”

Luciana rolled her eyes, adjusting her grandmother’s shawl. “Well. I’m certain you’ll work your grandmotherly ways and I’ll end up with a husband and 400 children, but that’s after I get you and papa settled. There’s no need for you to cause a scene when we land-”

“I do not cause scenes.” Isabella said, straightening up to her fearsomely hunched over height of ‘somewhere around 5’nothing’. “I cause memories.”

The Jornissian was screaming.

The Jornissian was screaming, trapped in his house, as the intruders advanced, and there was nothing he could do. He had already expended all the ammunition in his weapon, he had thrown any physical objects he could get his hands on, but nothing would stop their march forward. Cornered in his room – trapped – and facing death, he screamed.

smol humans T-posing to assert dominance around a cornered snek

The warmcuddles around him had assumed the dominance position, and the raw energy they were channeling was unstoppable.

[willows_and_towers]: “[LEAVE ME BE I PAID MY OXYGEN TAX-]”

[JOHN MADDEN]: “[JOHN MADDEN. JOHN MADDEN. JOHN MADDEN.]”

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her]: “[MOON IS MOON IS MOON IS MOON IS MOON]”

[BEP BEP BEP]: “[L_L_L_L_L_L_L_L_L_L_L_L_L-]”

Jonathan was having an excellent day. So lost in the deepest lore of this shitposting server he spent days – nay, weeks in the VR chat, taking breaks only to eat, sleep or use the pee bottle roomba. He had taken turns in other free bodies (the snake ones being the weirdest ones) and had happily shared his own model to the server, starting the JohnMadden Johneymen shitposting clan (which now numbered in the dozens and was therefore, unstoppable). Currently they had cornered a newbie who foolishly joined the human-only server in a non-human avatar, and must be shown the error of their ways.

Look, he didn’t make the shitposting rules (technically, nobody did) – he just enforced them.

[willows_and_towers]: “[NO STEP! HAIL FREEDONIA!]”

[willows_and_towers] [DISCONNECTED]

[willows_and_towers] [JOINED]

[willows_and_towers: “[WHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWHWH]”

The four humans T-posed at each other for a few more minutes before the walls melted away as a replica zephyr station fell from the heavens and killed everybody. Jon nodded in approval on his bed, the alien feeling of actually moving for the first time in a couple hours causing his neck to lock up.

“Ack, fuck.”

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her] turned to Jon, disconnecting all his joints to flop about in concern. “[You alright?]”

“Yeah, yeah-” Jon grunted as he sat up, the sudden lack of insulating bedding causing him to shudder as his damp body was kissed by the relatively cool air. “Fuck. I gotta shower.”

“[Showers are a myth invented by Ghengis Kahn to sell eggs.]” [BEP BEP BEP] helpfully added, growing his feet and shrinking his body to get into connection with his obvious hobbit ancestry.

“Real talk it was the Egyptians all along. Fucking furries.” Jon murmured, reaching up to tilt his VR helmet up. The admittedly dim artificial light of his quarters hurt his eyes, and he screwed them shut in self-defense. With a few subvocalized commands to his implant he went ‘AFK’, his physical avatar graying out as he peeled the visor from his face.

He could feel it peel away, and idly wondered exactly how long he’d been in. As his eyes adjusted to “real” light once more, he looked around his one-room abode; food wrappers scattered haphazardly on the floor, random stains of various fluids (again stop that it’s fanta) on the carpeting, the actual cleaning roomba screeching in the corner as a literal mob of piss-bottles fenced it in, the existential dread of knocking one of them over causing the robot to shake violently-

“Fuck. I gotta clean up too.”

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her] poked his friend’s body, his “hand” going right through [JOHN MADDEN]’s torso. “[He’s gone again.]”

[BEP BEP BEP] shrugged, now basically a head ontop of giant feet. “[And? He takes breaks all the damn time – probably on while at work.]”

“[Maybe.]” [Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her] mused, looking around for a new target for the shitposting clan to attack. “[Just seems odd, thou-]”

There was an alert that flashed across everyone’s vision, causing the whole server to stop dead in it’s tracks.

[Best_at_Tech][@ADMIN]: [MEMORY BUFFER PURGE INCOMING LEAVE NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE TRACED TO DEFAULT.]

A quirk of galactic nodes is that they stored vast – and I mean, almost incomprehensibly vast amounts of data – and would send that data out in almost-real time to other nodes via quantum linking; basically, a bit would flip on one node that would flip on another node halfway across the galaxy, and this would write/read data instantaneously. It wasn’t a perfect science, however, and sometimes things needed to be resent. Therefore, it behooved every system to keep a couple-day or couple-week log of data sitting on the node on the off-chance something needed to be pulled again. This of course didn’t count the data that had to sit for longer (such as census data, tax data, etc.) on the off chance that a backup was needed from a few years ago.

Really, just think of it as a 2 month real-time moment-by-moment backup of the entire Internet and you’re starting to get an idea as to what I’m talking about in terms of scope and amount of data stored. Even though their memory capacity was vast it was not infinite, and sections would be wiped – purged – if they were deemed out of date or no longer necessary. The only parts that would be ignored (and logged as ignored) are the parts that were actively being used; Who was there, why they were there and what they were doing would be noted and logged in a government database for some policy wonk to review and figure out if the algorithm needed tweaking sometime in the next couple decades.

However, when you’ve created an arguably extremely illegal server on a government rack that exists to drain the pent-up excitement of shitposters hyped for their new human neighbors, you very much don’t want to be on that list. Hell, you don’t want anyone to even know that bit of server space was being used!

So, wordlessly the entire server – well, almost the entire server, logged right off and started to wipe their history. After the purge the same secret path to the same server location would exist, and the world could be rebuilt. Anyone who stayed online would be … still there when everyone came back, but their personal info would be stamped for everyone to see. It’s the death of anonymity, and the absolute last thing anyone wanted was that kind of blackmail to exist.

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her] cringed, externally, and looked at the AFK [JOHN MADDEN]. “[I’m sorry.]” he said softly, as he logged off.

Tags Sci-Fi, They are Smol, Comedy

They are Smol – and it’s a Smol World: Chapter 5

Post author By TPH
Post date July 12, 2019
3 Comments on They are Smol – and it’s a Smol World: Chapter 5

[wp-night-mode-button style="1"]

Now in the movies, when a ship warps into a new star system they’re able to instantly come in at orbit of a planet, drop shields, deploy fighters, shoot guns, activate evasive maneuvers and all sorts of wonderful things that Hollybollywood would have you believe human starships can do. The real truth of the matter is that’s all bullshit. Once you warp into a system – even a well mapped system – you’re effectively blind until the EM spectrum can come back on and let you know who’s around you, where you are, and what the heck is going on, and almost most importantly, where the fuck is the system’s star. Although this takes milliseconds at most and nanoseconds at best, it’s still a delay.

So the real M.O. of any ship warping anywhere is to do so next to a pre-established buoy or marker of some sort, let your ship systems come back online, parse the data and then vacate the premises as quickly as possible. Although collisions can and do happen they are astronomically (hah!) rare, as space is vast, there are multiple entry points into any given system, legal ships radio ahead for the system’s Space Traffic Control to coordinate warp-out spots in spacetime and no good captain worth their salt sticks around on the off chance there’s an emergency warp coming in.

However, Reach was special.

I don’t mean that in a “Humanity uncovered in a few short decades answers to thousand year old technological riddles” kind of way, but in a “oh God we’re shipping families of a species that actually fits in the galactic census margin of error” and “I’ve heard the stories of what goes on in their R&D departments and if something goes wrong it will all be our fault” kind of way. When you have such precious cargo arriving at ludicrous speed, you tend to enact certain …overzealous safety measures. Reach and her escorts enjoyed a very close warp-in to Gentle Expanse, her multiple moons between sinking behind and cresting over the planet – on the off chance there were issues, rescue and repair was just a few minutes away, and everyone could be evacuated within an hour. Reach was also escorted by the Terran Combat Ships My Hand Slipped and La Chancla, as well as almost a dozen senate battle cruisers, logistics carriers, medical ships and a handful of dreadnoughts. Reach also enjoyed the dubious accolade of being the only escorted non-combat ship in 4,000 years to warp into a populated and mapped system and have absolutely no space traffic whatsoever cluttering up their EM broadcasts.

Like I said, Reach was special.

And so Reach, special, special Reach, sat just out of reach of it’s landing zone as various senate ships meandered throughout the system, re-re-re-mapping every navigational hazard, updating Galactic nodes, verifying the moratorium of new ship traffic with traffic control, setting up a defensive perimeter (cause you never know) and ultimately spending a couple extra hours blasting a few errant comets and meteorites that may have proved to be a problem to the colony in the next 780,000 years. The colonists aboard Reach weren’t too concerned about the delay – almost all of their excitement and time were spent pouring over geographical maps, reports of local flora and fauna, possible city layouts, connecting and setting up their own Galactic Net Node and other extremely interesting things that you, the reader, probably don’t want to know anything about. It was the navigational crew, the operations teams – and the military, especially, who started to go mad at just sitting there for hours, and then days as absolutely nothing of interest happened. When they finally did get the green light to move forward, it was only a 10 minute trip to orbit… and then the beginning of a multiple months-long stay as they unloaded their cargo.

Space travel, everybody.

== CHAT ENABLED ==

+) [PRIVATE CHATROOM 188.6@#!@.7&&23—99R JOINED]

+) [PASSKEY]: ***********************************************************************

+) [PASSKEY ACCEPTED]

+) [(TEXT)] / [SIMULATION]

+) [TEXT ONLY ACTIVATED]

[USER ACTIVITY]

[Poet of Stars][ACTIVE]

[Best_at_Tech][DORMANT]

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her][JOINED]

[dramdrunk][OFFLINE]

[MEGAMEGAMEGA][OFFLINE]

= = =

Ngruzren-of-Arzgr idly scrolled through his list of servers, logging into some, logging out of others, and making note of who was online and where. His tooth prosthetic was out, his clothing gone, and he was draped over a spherical beanbag in a way only the young (or those who are limber) are able to do. His eyes were glazed over, his tongue idly licking the gummy gap in his mouth.

= = =

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her]: [Who’s actually here?]

[Poet of Stars]: [Hey. Not joining us in Simulation?]

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her]: [Nah. I’m not up for it.]

[Poet of Stars]: [Fair enough – just know that you still have that whole black-heart default av.]

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her]: [What?! I swore I changed it-]

[Poet of Stars]: [Maybe on some other chatroom, but not globally. I mean, I don’t care, I’m just saying-]

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her]: [Fine, fine. I’ll hop in.]

= = =

Ngruzren-of-Arzgr frowned as he kicked in a few more subroutines with his implant, the embedded room computer taking on most of the processing load as he reached above and behind him, blindly pawing at the floor for a headset. Eventually – after a few groans, rolling over to actually search, and then realizing he was laying on top of his new pair all along – he put on the earpieces, a hard-light visor projecting perfectly over his eyes, ears and muzzle. He reached his arms out as he lay splayed on the floor, the room’s optics recording his position, marking it as “neutral” and building a world completely around him.

= = =

Ngruzren-of-Arzgr appeared, suddenly, in a wide open field with no atmosphere – the stars of his home system’s sky whizzing past him at ludicrous speed. The earth yawned open below him, breaking apart into various floating islands, twisted sculptures of art and geometry, and in one case a pen of [Night-Terror]-beasts, beating themselves impotently against the glass. He fell, and continued to fall, sighing as he passed rapidly through a solid carved-stone floor, through the dungeon below, and out the other side into the void.

He was, of course, not himself, which any sensible person would realize at this point. No, at this particular junction he was still his default offline persona, a night-rage beating black heart wreathed in ice and claw.

Ngruzren-of-Arzgr cringed internally at that description. It wasn’t a phase, it was simple experimentation, but… thank goodness he got past that as quick as he did.

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her]:”[Hey! I thought you fixed NoCollision! Ik’itili?!]”

[Poet of Stars] called out from somewhere and nowhere at the same time. “[No, she’s offline! And I don’t know – log out and change avs before you log back in?]”

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her] sighed, force-quitting the simulation chatroom. The sound and feeling of air whooshing over his body immediately stopped, and the expanse-less and featureless void that sat at the bottom of the map gave way… to his bedroom ceiling again.

Mentally switching avatars, Ngruzren-of-Arzgr logged back into the private server, no longer appearing at the zenith of the skymap but instead on the ground itself. [Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her] rolled his shoulders and fluffed his mane once more; He was a svelte gauntling, his blood-blue fur and skin glistening like thousands of droplets of frozen rain, or captive stars seen through a pane of ice. Teeth white as fallen snow, eyes a deep and mysterious black – but unlike the haggard and well, gaunt demons of yore, he was muscled. Fit. Proportioned in all the right ways to make the ladies notice hi-

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her] stopped his mental train of thought as a tiny-chomper stood before him, smiling with his tiny chompers.

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her]:”[Wh. Uh. WHU.]”

The tiny-chomper shook his head disapprovingly. [Poet of Stars]:”[Oh no no. That’s not good at all. The correct greeting is ‘Hello! Pleasure to meet you!’ with an alternative ‘Do you need any help?’. Zero marks, go back to-]”

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her]:”[Wait, Swipressnssren?! How did – how did you get that model?!]”

[Poet of Stars] bowed dramatically – for a tiny-chomper, that is – and digitally ‘held out’ a file archive, which [Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her] accepted and began to download. [Poet of Stars]:”[Well, turns out our little tech diva knows a thing or to – or knows a few people – and somehow got a copy of some hard-light tiny-chompers. Tell me, do I look… familiar?]”

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her] shook his head, studying the alien before him. ”[No, I’d remember a tiny-chomper if I saw one…]”

[Poet of Stars]:“[Really?]” he said, suddenly making the avatar twist it’s features in fear. “[But life day will be ruined-]”

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her] groaned in voice chat and in real life, Ngruzren-of-Arzgr’s limbs going limp against the floor as he felt the life drain from his body.

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her]:“[Are you Kidding me?!]”

[Poet of Stars]:”[Nope. But the continued good news is that she also somehow got the randomization customization files as well, and the control behind it. You can customize your own tiny-chomper! And there’s also a server address…]”

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her] grinned as he dismissed his avatar, returning to the default ‘ball of light’, before running the package he was just given.

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her]:”[Whelp. There goes my evening.]”

Jonathan Protaganista was bored out of his mind.

Now, usually this would be cause for fear amongst his coworkers, his managers and, generally, everyone aboard whichever station he happened to be serving on at any given time. However, Jon was doing his best to stay out of trouble, out of the way, and most importantly, out of the spotlight. This wasn’t due to him turning over a new leaf at being selected/press-ganged into serving on Reach, which would undoubtedly put his name somewhere in the history books – probably near the bottom, in -50 typefont, if we’re being honest. No, he stayed out of the way and out of trouble and out of the spotlight for one very simple reason, which goes back to the most ancient of maritime law, and logically extended into the depths of space itself:

When the ship was away from port, the Captain’s word was law.

And although Jon could bullshit his way around his coworkers and his managers and generally everyone else who had no idea what he did but nodded sagely and made the appropriate knowing mouthsounds at bigly-sounding words, he could not bullshit a ship’s Captain who wanted to make history, his crew who were on a mission and a security team who could – and would! – throw him in the brig for weeks or months at a time.

The brig has no Wi-Fi, man. That’s inhumane.

So he sat in his room, day in, day out, only taking in what food his tamed herd of roombas would deliver to his door. His position was also basically outsourced; Jon was a master slacker above all things, and it wasn’t difficult to build a program and rewire a few robots to do his job in his stead. In regards to entertainment, Quantum communication was a thing, and the delay in getting the new media, news and art from home was measured in seconds as opposed to years. This was great for watching ‘the big game’, but absolutely terrible for gaming. Jon lives in a society, and that society put the millisecond latency he was used to in twitch shooters such as Cookie Clicker at the bottom of the “needs” bin.

And so Jonathan Protaganista was bored out of his mind. Although most games had a VR/AR switch, with his modest crew quarters and lack of a holodeck on the ship, he was forced to game by screen. Like an animal. When contextual clues that felt natural were reduced to indicator markers on the edge of that screen – it didn’t matter if it was wrap-around visor and in 32K, it still felt off. Stilted. So Jon did the next best thing a bored man can do alone in his room with a connection to the Internet.

No, not that. Stop that. Get your mind out of the gutter.

I am, of course, talking about shitposting. A few second delay is untenable for PVP or even PVE MMO games, but message boards? Text servers? That’s absolutely fine, man… If only he wasn’t banned from most of them. Turns out you can’t shitpost too hard when you’ve got a forced, fixed IIP ID.

“Server list… let’s see. Omnigender breathairians – banned. Karnakian Truthers – banned. Hollow moon theorists – banned. Flat-galaxy – banned. Mandatory Nanomachine Injections for US Senators – Ugh. There’s nothing fucking good left.” Jon murmured, his old haunts shunning him from his lack of VPN and proxy spoofs to hide behind. “Is there anything local I can do? Not like I’m fucking staying.”

His eyes tracked to various menu icons, his gloved hands gripping controllers to input and select text and icon choices. Eventually he connected to the ‘local’ GalNet node, his translation matrix working overtime to download a couple petabytes of data. Slowly, before his very eyes, unintelligible script formed words, then sentences, then inflection, meaning slowly sifting through byte by byte. After the translations loaded he completely ignored the welcome screen, the about section, and various other helpful and noble sites on his way to degeneracy.

Jonathan Protaganista was a master slacker, and he had various tricks up his sleeve to get to the “good” stuff. It wasn’t but a few weeks after a Galactic Node was established around Earth’s orbit decades ago that his spiritual lieges and slacker shaman ancestors put forth a titanic effort to crack, dismantle, hack, abuse, and shitpost furiously through all of the firewalls, botnet protections, and various other physical and digital protections put in place by his species’ benefactors.

Truth be told, they didn’t make it. They didn’t crack the GalNet node, but they pried it open just a little. Enough for some wiggle room. What tricks weren’t classified beyond ‘CIA blacksite visit’ were shared amongst slackers such as himself, and he was pleased to find that most nodes – or at least, the only other node he’s ever touched – seemed similar enough for him to root around in.

So he did.

“Porn, porn, vintage movies that I don’t care about, porn, games I can’t play, porn, financials of companies I don’t care about, porn, ah. FINALLY.”

Jon stumbled around the alien navigation, the same intuition that came to three races sharing millenia together completely lost on him. It took him a good 45 minutes just to find a server list, and even then all the options were either encoded or gibberish.

All but the one he joined.

== CHAT ENABLED ==

+) [PRIVATE CHATROOM WELCOME_ALL_HUMANS JOINED]

+) [PASSKEY: NULL]

+) [PASSKEY ACCEPTED]

+) [TEXT] / [(VISOR)]

+) [VR CHAT ACTIVATED]

[USER ACTIVITY][Page 1 of 57]

[LOOK_AT_MY_LIMBS][ACTIVE]

[HATEHATE][ACTIVE]

[MY TEETH HURT][ACTIVE]

[LIMBSY FACEMAN][ACTIVE]

[AAAAAAAAA][ACTIVE]

[BEP BEP BEP][ACTIVE]

[cuddle-me-now][DORMANT]

[LOUD_NOISES][ACTIVE]

[BbBbBbBbBbBbBbBbBbB][DORMANT]

[BURNING_MAN][DORMANT]

= = =

Jon smiled. The text that spilled past him – pouring past him in a speed almost too fast to see, was nothing but pure shitposting. Around him, a cacophony of noise; there was Roleplaying, conspiracy theories, random noises, people challenging others to duels, a few people with avatars running around completely naked-

These were his people.

He ported in his default avatar – a simple scan of his own body, he didn’t care – and walked right up to the nearest human being.

[JOHN MADDEN]:”AEIOU.”

The human, [Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her], turned and grinned, flailing his arms in ways that obviously broke every bone in ‘his’ body. “[BRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBRBR]”

And over the next four hours, a friendship was born.

Tags They are Smol, Comedy, Smol, Sci-Fi

Stories They are Smol Oneshot

They are Smol – AND INDEPENDENT

Post author By TPH
Post date July 5, 2019
10 Comments on They are Smol – AND INDEPENDENT

[wp-night-mode-button style="1"]

The glow flickered before his tired eyes, and Glenn smiled.

“And we have how many of these things?”

Jonathan looked at the clipboard tablet, scrolling through the declared items list. “About 5,000 of these for this station. We can hand out about 10 per employee.”

The glow changed to something a bit more frantic, sparks spreading across Glenn’s desk. He picked up the device and twisted it’s base – the sparks exploded out in more fury, coating his desk in white-hot light.

And only light.

“I’m absolutely astounded the aliens didn’t think of this. A hard-light sparkler.” Glenn twisted the base of the e-cigarette looking device the other way, and the sparkles condensed and abated until the tip was little more than a glow with some aspirations. “No chance of actual fire?”

“None. It only broadcasts a maximum of a foot in any direction; after that something fucky happens with the wavelength holding the hardlight together – hell, I don’t know, I’m not a luxologist or whatever they’re calling it – and it loses cohesion. Kinda fades away, but in a matter of miliseconds. But no heat.”

Glenn cupped his hand over the end and turned it up, the sparks casting a harsh enough light under his palm to illuminate through his skin – but other than a nice, dull and healthy red there was nothing. No pain, no force, even. Just pretty, pretty light.

“10 per employee? Let’s be honest here – we can triple that and just hand it to the few-”

– – –

“-AMERICANS and I WILL NOT HAVE MY CULTURE NEUTERED LIKE THIS.” Jessica ranted, holding 3 max-level sparklers between each finger like wolverine, pointing them accusingly at the filthy britbong colonizer before her.

“Jessica, look.” Mike said, sighing. “We can’t have explosives on the station-”

“Not with that attitude-”

“-it’s too much of a hazard-”

“No, not if you’re safe! I’ve only blown my fingers off like, three times, max, and the pinky finger doesn’t even count. It’s like an hour to reattach them if you can find most of it-”

“-You literally grabbed the sparklers out of the box, lit as many as you could, and started to throw them around the break room.”

Jessica narrowed her eyes at her erstwhile friend and colleague. “America.”

“That- ugh.” Mike sighed, rubbing his eyes. “That’s. That’s literally the point-”

“What happened to you, Mike?” Jessica said, softly, her ever-sparkling wolverine claws lowering to her sides. “You used to be… well. Mike. Is it because Shaggy-”

“Her NAME was Sheila, and no. That’s not it at all.” Mike said, crossing his arms. “And look, we’re just taking a break, alright? I mean… sure, I need to start pulling my weight a little bit more, and I should have a direction in my life by now, but, I mean. It’s not like …”

The two of them stood in the breakroom, looking at each other for a few moments before Mike broke eye contact. “Look. Doesn’t matter. Point is this is what you get – and hell, it’s not like half the world doesn’t celebrate independence from Britain at some point in the year, so, it’s not that spec-”

“Michael J. Fox, I swear to you on everything I hold dear, I will end you if you end that sentence.”

“First, that’s not my name, second, we also became independen-”

Jessica threw her hands up, the sparklers casting a menacing backlight as she cried out in exasperation. “You wrote a strongly worded letter like, 300 years after you were founded. You don’t fucking COUNT.”

“Yes we do.” Mike responded matter-of-factly. “And we don’t care. This is what you get for celebrations; try not to destroy too many of them – other employees on the station want to celebrate their own holidays too.” And with that, he turned on his heel and stormed out, foolishly turning his back on the rabid hard-light-casting wolverine with too-much free time. This was his first mistake.

And he symbolically turned his back on America too, so. That’s his second mistake.

America.

– – – – –

Rgrezneh-of-Hrzgaren sighed as she hand-counted the boxes from Elevator Cargo Transport 11-C, making marks on an extremely archaic paper clipboard. The Tiny-chompers demanded that everything be double-checked – even when that double-checking happened on the ground, by drone, by scanned computer and a half-dozen other algorithms and automated systems – but it was their culture and their systems and if she had to do it to stop ‘the rise of Cargonia’ (whatever that is) then she had to do it.

Rgrezneh-of-Hrzgaren also took a bit of a guilty pleasure in taking her time counting the boxes; it was an active warehouse, after all, so she was surrounded by a dozen or so other tiny-chompers at any given time, along with their helper drones and other senate members. Every so often she would share a knowing look with her colleagues – usually when one of them were hover-handing around a tiny-chomper as it climbed a shelf or rode a drone because “it’s quicker this way”.

“{Mmm. Crate 11-C-418. Stable Magnesium, copper chloride, potassium nitra-}”

“[Hey!]”

Rgrezneh turned around before looking down a half second later, a [human] female standing before her, a large cylindrical bag hanging off her shoulder. “[Hi!]”

“{Oh! Hello, uh…}”

“[You can call me tiny-chomper eagle-screm – at least, everyone else does. I was uh, wondering something.]”

Rgrezneh put on her best “I’m interested” look, but behind that mask her mind was racing. It was an open secret that the tiny-chompers would… attempt to get the upper hand on negotiations whenever they possibly could, and the things they would usually ask for would seem innocent at first pass.

Key words there being “seem innocent”.

“{Yes?}”

“[Well. I was simply wondering, uh. I know you help manage the incoming supplies from Dirt and I know you’re probably busy and I was just hoping-]”

“{I will not let any tiny-chomper have ‘first dibs’ on what comes up from Dirt. I don’t need that lecture. Again.}”

“[No, no – nothing like that. I was just curious – Is that the metalworking and industrial powder shipment headed towards [Bright Riser before the Dawn]? The droneship test?]”

Rgrezneh thought for a moment: A human she has never seen asking an almost innocent question about a shipment headed towards one of their inner planets. There was nothing classified about what was happening on the world, the ship was an unmanned drone carrier on a well-plotted and public transit, the containers held nothing but common and semi-processed materials worth a credit per half-dozen kilos, and everything within the containers was inert.

Something terrible was going to happen.

“{I’m… sorry, who are you? I don’t see you in Warehouse yellows-}”

“[Oh! I’m just uh, walking through, you know how it is. Stretching the legs.]”

“{You said you were… Eagle-screm?}” Rgrezneh questioned, pulling up the personnel reports with her implant and keying in the tiny-chomper name into the identification database. ”{. . .The same Eagle-screm that is floppy-nap’s friend?}”

“[You know floppy-nap? Are you Rgrezneh?]”

Rgrezneh blinked. “{Y-yes?}”

Eagle-screm narrowed her tiny eyes at the much larger female, and although there was absolutely no way the tiny-chomper could physically hurt the Dorarizin, her body subconsciously tensed to be on the receiving end of a pounce. “[Woman… what did you do to the male?]”

Rgrezneh was taken aback, tucking the clipboard under her arm. “{I… if you’re interested in him as a mate-}”

It was Eagle-screm’s turn to physically flinch backwards, causing Rgrezneh to mirror her movement slightly. “[What?! Agh, NO. No, just – he used to be fun and now he’s like… actually doing his job and stuff.]”

“{Well isn’t that a good thing? Shouldn’t he be trying to make his system and the galaxy a better place?}”

“[I guess…]” Eagle-screm said, wrapping her arms around herself in what Rgrezneh recognized was a self-soothing gesture. “[I just… think he’s doing it for the wrong reasons, yanno? Like, to get you back or something-]”

Rgrezneh sighed. “{Look, your Year-End celebration was special, and I enjoyed my time with floppy-nap, but… I mean. I just don’t see a future with him, you know? I’m all for stability, but when it’s just sleeping, eating and – cuddling, it gets old.}”

“[Mmm. Well. I’m not here to play matchmaker, but I will say that’s a very dumb reason to drop someone.]”

Clearing her throat, Rgrezneh stood up to her full height. “{Yes, well. My reasons are my own, and I certainly don’t need to be lectured by someone I just met about matters of the heart. Now, what in the five packs do you want? Tell me or get out – I don’t even think you’re supposed to be here.}”

Eagle-screm smiled. Rgrezneh did not like this smile.

“[Well. It’s my people’s independence day celebration coming up, and we received a shipment of these from Dirt-]” Eagle-screm pulled out a small, battery operated something and turned it on. Immediately the tip began to glow, and a small fountain of deteriorating hard light shells spewed out of it in an omnidirectional haze. “[You can check them for yourself, but they’re approved for the station for celebrations. I realized that some of my colleagues on [Bright Riser before the Dawn] may not have anything like this, so I was hoping to just add them to the shipment. Maybe a dozen or so – you can check with Stationmaster Tiny-Chomper Astral-projecting-out-of-his-body-because-he’s-done-with-everything, but they’re inert and safe for transport.]”

Eagle-screm put the tiny battery-powered light diffuser in Rgrezneh’s paw, the small thing almost disappearing as the Dorarizin closed her hand around it. “{I mean… I’ll have to check, but. The drone won’t be leaving for another day, and – when is your celebration?}”

“[Tomorrow.]”

“{It won’t get there.}”

“[I know.]” Eagle-screm shrugged. “[But as my people say, ‘better late than never’. I just got these a day ago – or today? I don’t know, time is… weird up here.]”

“{If you’re missing time that means you need more sleep, tiny-chomper.}”

Eagle-screm rolled her eyes in a sarcastic manner. “[Gosh, MOTHER. Thank you for your concern. I’m just asking, is it alright if I pack this and add it to the shipment?]”

An innocent request. Everything approved – darkest hells, manufactured to safety specifications. Everything would be scanned, in triplicate, and packed safely.

Something terrible was going to happen.

“{I don’t… think I can allow this.}”

“[Why?]”

‘{Because I have a gut feeling and you tiny-chompers do shit like this all the time}’ Rgrezneh thought, sighing internally. “{There’s not enough space.}”

“[I checked the manifest – tiny-chomper hello-big-boots says you’re sending the drone out only 3/4 full.]”

“{Wasn’t he building a dispenser-}”

“[Yeah, I helped him with that and we just got to talking!]”

Rgrezneh chewed her cheek in worry. “{I don’t have the table capacity to pack these properly-}”

“[Already done.]”

“{. . . You’ll need to get the package scanned-}”

“[Alrea-]”

“{I will need to scan the package.}”

“[Ok!]” Eagle-screm said, hefting the bag from her shoulder to the ground. She unzipped it and struggled slightly to pull out a large (for her) octagonal tube, already sealed with various ‘approved’ stickers, declaring the contents inside and by which inspector approved what part of the contents. Rgrezneh picked up the light container, hefting it in her hand as she turned it over to examine.

“{…what’s the padding?}”

“[Well, around each sparkler are hardpacked aluminum-magnesium shells. Hello-big-boots and I figured it would make more sense to pack them in material the colony would need anyway, killing two birds with one stone[Trans:: Idiom?]]”

“{Alright… interesting choice. Follow me please.}” Rgrezneh said, turning and loping slowly to a contraband station. She took some pleasure in hearing the fast-walking-almost-jogging padding of her suspicious visitor, Eagle-screm breathing hard to match pace.

The two of them reached the standalone island table, the new package addition being placed on the glowing pad. Immediately a few small mechanical arms popped out of the table face, pressing themselves against the packing shell itself. Sonar, radar, lidar and various other -ars pulsed through the arm, giving anyone whose implant was attenuated to the device a full view of the inside of the package.

Tubes. Tubes packed in aluminum and magnesium, densely and tightly wrapped together in what looked like… simple cellulose fibers, coated with a binder. Sure, there was a little void on the front and back, but that was to be expected given how tiny-chompers did… anything. The spectrogram began to read off the various ingredients inside – aluminum, magnesium, sulphur, silicon, lithium, cellulose, oxygen, iron-

Inert. Inert. Inert. Her implant, almost boringly so, tagged each ingredient as inert, given their positions and compositions within the container. Sure, Lithium and Di-hydrogen Monoxide were an explosive combination together, but when separated by iron and aluminum – not so much.

“{This is just a normal package.}”

“[Uh. Yeah.]”

“{. . . Who put this together?}”

“[Me, Hello-big-boots, Tiny-chomper Cave-Moon-gel.]” Eagle-screm said, innocently.

Rgrezneh’s hackles were fully risen, her fur was standing on end, there was something not making sense but for the life of her she couldn’t pin it with her claws. The cold feeling in her stomach grew to numb her limbs, and with a thought the table shut down.

“{I guess… I’ll put it in the shipment.}”

“[Great! It’s already labeled, so. It should wedge in pretty nicely.]”

“{Yeah.}”

The two of them looked at each other for a moment.

“{……well?}”

“[OH! Right, ok, see ya!]”

And the tiny-chomper, totally innocently, breaking no rules and doing nothing underhandedly, going through the proper channels, with no criminal history or reprimands for vandalism, theft and/or violence, slipped a completely innocent and innocuous care package onto a drone ship headed out the very next day.

Rgrezneh did not sleep until it left the station.

– – – – – – –

The Jornissian looked up from her book as a familiar chirp interrupted her thoughts. Coming up to her slowly was a very familiar Karnakian. “[Hey Tr’Grakz.]”

“[Greetings, Shpressnrek! How do you fare today?!]”

The Jornissian shrugged, putting a marker in the borrowed human book she was reading. “[Pretty good. I was told by a few of the [Humans] to hang out here – glad to see you made it as well.]”

The Karnakian almost full-body bobbed up and down, a 1000% eager smile spreading across his features. “[Yes! Apparently the [American] territory is celebrating it’s independence today – I was told to show up here as well to partake in the festivities!]”

The door opened again, and a few more Dorarizin, Karnakians and Jornissians wandered in, pulling up seats or just taking in the scenery of the planet below them. Shpressnrek leaned in close – which is easy to do when your whole body is a spine – tilting her head to the open door. “[You’re… recording all this, I trust?]”

“[Me?!]” The Karnakian said, shocked. “[Why, I would never! I also would never make them available on Galnet Node 714-B, Under 118.4JB-22./966. Ever.]”

“[Very good.]” Shpressnrek smiled. “[I’d also hate to add my own footage to such a place, if it ever were to exist-.]”

The door opened again, this time filling in with various warmcuddles and little-needs-protectings. The two friends nodded at each other and separated, the Jornissian making herself presentable and the Karnakian… apparently scaling the sheer wall in order to ‘not be in the way’.

To their credit, none of the Humans even flinched as the Karnakian gouged talon-holds in the aluminum. Whether they were chalking it up to cultural difference or ‘it’s that feathery fuck again’, we will never know.

“[Hello, Shpressnrek.]”

The Jornissian turned around – again, super easy to do when you’re just a spine with ambition – and nodded her head in greeting at her Dorarizin friend. “[Rgrezneh! Good to see y- you look terrible.]”

Rgrezneh shrugged, unceremoniously sitting down next to her friend. “[Yeah. No sleep, just… You ever have a [Human] come up to you and-]”

“[Oh by Hsresh-who-shepherds-the-lost, what happened.]”

“[Nothing.]”

“[Oh no.]”

“[I know.]”

The Jornissian started to look around, her implant pinging a few of her colleagues with a Code Gray. A few more heads of various races were suddenly on swivels.

“[What happened. Tell me exactly what happened.]”

“[I put an approved, scanned, inert package on a drone ship to [Venus] at the behest of [Jessica], who has no record at all.]”

“[Oh no.]”

“[I know.]”

“[Where is this ship now?]”

“[Bearing 224.]”

Shpressnrek paused for a moment, her mouth moving in a subvocalized speech as she tapped into a network that Rgrezneh could only speculate at. Each person that was stationed here had their own; ways of getting messages to allies, of pulling strings, of setting events in motion. In other instances, this would be for intelligence and counterintelligence gathering, sabotage and subterfuge. Around Earth, however, the mission of every network was much more simple:

Protect these little idiots, and please, to whatever deity is listening, don’t let them blow themselves up. Again.

“[…Alright. I have someone who’s nesting with a tower control operator. She’s got an override.]”

Rgrezneh’s face soured a little. “[Isn’t that… a bit cruel, though?]”

“[Do you have any idea how many times they’ve already almost defaced their moon? And not in the ‘emergency landing splat’ level of defacing, but in the ‘I have a maser powered by a ship’s engine and no atmosphere or oversight to stop me’ level?]”

“[No, I mean-]”

“[Fifteen. Fifteen times, this past year alone.]”

“[I’m not talking about that – I mean, your colleague nesting with the [Human]. Isn’t that kind of cruel?]”

Shpressnrek tilted her torso, keeping her eyes level with her friend. “[What?]”

“[Just. Are you getting close to the [Human] because you care for them, or is it to be in a position to leverage them?]”

Shpressnrek stared, hard, for a moment, before sliding down into herself. “[Ah. This is about [Mike].]”

“[ . . . ]”

The Jornissian sighed – or just hummed, it’s hard to tell even when translators worked flawlessly between the two ancient species – and picked at a couple errant scales. “[I’m not going to deny that it happens, sure, but in this case I don’t think so. It’s always a case-by-case basis.]”

“[So how do you know?]”

“[I mean. I figure that’s up to you. If you have thoughts that you’re using [Mike] for his position, and are ashamed of that thought, then I’d venture to say that you do actually like him. If you didn’t, then you wouldn’t care that he loves you.]”

Rgrezneh stared long out the window, small specks of light dancing on shipping lanes only their AIs could see. “[I guess.]”

“You guess what?”

The two aliens – apex predators, both – full-body tensed in surprise, rounding on the human who had dared to just… walk up to them like that!

“[Mike!]”

“Y-yeah?!” Mike said, arms up in a vaguely ‘I should probably try to protect my face’ kind of way. “I uh – I hope I’m not interrupting anything, but I just… wanted to say hi, is all. Um.”

The Dorarizin and the Human stared at each other, silently.

“Did you get-”

“[I saw that-]”

They both stopped, then smiled. “You first, please.”

“[I saw that you, ah, have been putting in a lot of work recently. That’s good, [Mike].]” Rgrezneh said, softly. “[I’m glad to see you’re pulling your weight.]”

“Oh! Y-yeah, I uh. I figure as one of the people who run this joint, I should probably get my act together. Um. So. So that’s what I’ve been doing.”

“[It’s… good! It’s actually very good, and… well. I’d love to help you -OH SWEET ANCESTORS NO.]”

Mike and Shpressnrek turned to look at what had immediately derailed Rgrezneh’s train of thought. Shpressnrek immediately started to furiously whisper something to herself, but Mike just shrugged and waved Jessica over.

“Eyo!”

“EYO YOURSELF, YOU FUCKING LEAF.”

Rgrezneh growled, but Mike just sighed. “That’s… normal. For Americans.”

“[The sparkling red, white and blue clothing?]”

“Yes.”

“[The hard-light sparklers taped to every part of her body-]”

“Yes.”

“[The – is that a kinetic weapon?!]”

“It better not be – JESS-”

“DON’T TREAD ON M- oh goddamnit give that back to me-” Jessica whined, as a Karnakian pulled the freshly-printed long-rifle from her arms, holding it just up and out of her reach. It – and the station – was safe… as long as her high jump remained weak.

“…this is normal for Americans.”

“[All of them?]”

“Yes. Well. Just this time of year. Or Memorial Day. Or when they get bored.”

The three station employees watched in silence as the American jumped a few times for the weapon, said something very rude to the Karnakian while giving him a kick in the jewels, and stormed over.

“Jessica, that was actually assault, and we’ll have to-”

“[Wait, [Jessica]?!” Shpressnrek murmured, a horrible dawning realization spreading across her features.

“SHALL. NOT.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and those rights are yours if you’re on your territory’s sovereign soil-”

“My Country’s fucking soil, Mike.” Jessica hissed, poking her finger a bit too roughly into the Canadian’s chest. “And everywhere I am is America.”

“[N-no. This is Zephyr Station 8.]” Shpressnrek helpfully clarified, nodding to herself.

“Am I here?”

“[Y…es?]”

“Then this is America.” Jessica hooted, holding up her wolverine-sparkler hands in triumph. “AND YOU WILL ALL BOW BEFORE ME-”

“Listen here, I don’t give a fuck! I’m tired of every year you people-”

“What do you mean you people-”

As Mike and Jessica began to fight, Shpressnrek made a furious set of calls. Whatever was on that drone ship had to be stopped, right now. A few moments down the chain and the confirmation came back – emergency stop, all engines reverse.

Shpressnrek shared a look with Rgrezneh. It was half “go get your man” and half “we’ve stopped the worst of it.”

It was at that point that a small, infinitesimal speck of the vast universe spread before the party-goers lit up like the fucking sun, in orange, blue, purple and green – the gas cloud of fire and dust spreading apart to be many dozens, if not hundreds of kilometers wide.

You see. When you full stop a droneship that has gravitational plates, momentum is conserved.

When momentum is conserved, you have a shifting of contents. Since everything is tied down and packed tightly, this isn’t too much of an issue.

But there’s a gap.

When you have a gap in an octagonal tube, the contents shift forward suddenly, rapidly. The cellulose bindings, lovingly coated in phosphorous sulfide, grind against the rough iron oxide interior of the container, causing, well.

Fire.

Fire and Magnesium/Aluminum are what traditional sparklers are made of.

Traditional sparklers burn hot enough to kickstart a thermogenic reaction between aluminum and iron oxide.

This combination of metals is known as Thermite.

And so the container made out of solid Thermite melted through the container below it, igniting the magnesium, copper chloride, potassium nitrate and the half-dozen other industrial metal powders that do thousands of things in the construction and metalworking industries.

But they also make some very pretty fireworks.

Mike stared, in awe and horror, at the expanding space-firework. “Jessica what did you d-”

“SHALL NOT”

Tags They are Smol

Stories They are Smol

They are Smol – and it’s a Smol World: Chapter 4

Post author By TPH
Post date June 21, 2019
1 Comment on They are Smol – and it’s a Smol World: Chapter 4

[wp-night-mode-button style="1"]

For the first few weeks, they fought against the machine – purposefully working slow in protest.

The next few weeks after that, they returned to routine, albeit grumbling all the time.

However, It was within Month 5 of the great staffing, resupply and fitting of Reach, in the Year of Our Lord 2184, in the third dimension, in the Sol system (wherein Humanity was born and accidentally yeeted into the stars) whereupon arguably the most momentous occasion of the last 40 years occurred:

Jonathan Protaganista and Aisha Batal Alrawaya completed an honest-to-God full day’s worth of work.

It was such an anomaly that at first HR believed it to be a mistake; this forced both Jon and Aisha to spend an additional 15 minutes at work past their leave-by time to verify that yes, they were in fact at their stations doing their jobs, and no – it wasn’t a motorized blow-up doll sitting at their desks. Again. Their supervisor was eventually called in, who corroborated their stories – and furnished further proof of his eyewitness account by producing no less than 100 lottery tickets for the Powerball 37 drawing that same day. In a bizarre twist of fate (and the sudden, totally rational fear that the two of them were replaced by body snatchers from Pluto) HR decided to give them the next few days off – as a thank you for actually doing real work for once.

“I just don’t get it.”

Aisha shrugged, pouring herself another shot of tequila. “Who cares? Shit, if I knew working hard would get us more time off I would’ve started earlier! Like in college. Or preschool.”

“Well, ok, fair point – but I mean more what they’re doing with the first round of colonists. The Reach is going to be jumping with a full escort, right?”

There was the sound of glass-on-table as the empty shot was slammed down, Aisha grunting for a moment before replying. “Fuck. Yeah, I guess so? Couple of our own navy with some Senate heavy-hitters. I mean, it is our first colony ship, and everyone wants to make nice. Bury the hatchet and all that.”

“No.” Jon murmured, staring out the digital “windows” of the bar that they were currently occupying at 11AM on a Tuesday. Reach sat heavy and fat, like a bundle of cigars taped together a little to thickly in the middle, a swarm of lights dancing around it’s entire form in a symphony of engineering, operations and logistics. The majority of work was done; seeds and soil, livestock and pets, people and personnel were already on-board with their families, settling in to what would amount to a couple-month stay on-ship before a final drop to the new world.

Literally, in their cases.

“I mean more like… Sure there was a waitlist to go, but they’re doing 3 rounds of colonization? And it’s not to meet demand – It just seems weird.”

The bottle of Tequila was upended, the last few drops splashing into the half-full shot glass. “Mmm. Grunts first – grunts first always. Then the middlemen to make shit difficult for the grunts, then the upper class to pretend they did it all by themselves and never needed the grunts in the first place.”

Jon laughed mirthlessly, rolling his eyes. “Dramatic today, aren’t we?”

Aisha whined something half-heartedly mocking in response, downing the half-shot of tequila with absolutely no fanfare whatsoever. “Nngh. Jon, what’s your actual fucking question? Whenever you start thinking you get moody – your brain’s not used to working that hard-”

“Firstly, fuck you, you fuck like a limp fish and Faiza told me she thinks of Batgirl when she fucks you.”

“Good taste. S’why I’m gon’ marry her.”

“Secondly, the mix seems super weird. Construction crews, fine. Electricians – ok. Doctors, no shit. But Botanists? Xenobiologists? Survivalists? This world’s been occupied before we fucking discovered fire or some shit, why are they going?”

“Iunno. To prove that their shiny new degree actually means something? Gotta prove to daddy that his creds were worth spending, or that you really did need that decade to backpack around pan-africa to find yourself~”

Jon turned to look at his now very drunk comrade, scooting his beer closer to his side of the table and away from longing eyes. “Wow. I mean, I always heard lesbians had daddy issues buhOWWWW~” The statement died in his throat by a savage – well, ‘savage’ drunken kick connected with his shin.

“Asshole.” Aisha stated, resting her chin on the table.

Jon responded to the insult by slamming back his beer, letting the larger glass thunk heartily against the faux wood table. “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we got 3 days off – fucking finally – so what do you want to do with ‘em?”

There was a small pause before Aisha looked up from her headrest, eyes only taking a few moments to focus. “Hey. Do you suppose the raid servers are empty cause everyone’s pulling overtime?”

They shared a look – You know the type I’m talking about. The sudden realization that all the cheaters, wall-hackers, chinese gold farmers (yes it’s still a problem in the future), enemy guilds, faction whores and tryhard powergamers were otherwise offline and their game would be… untainted. Pure. NPC-rich. Loot rich.

There would be nobody to stop them from powergaming.

“RACEYOUTOTHEDECK-”

“FUCK-”

Ngruzren-of-Arzgr was sweating, hard. Figuratively.

It had been 6 months of blood, sweat and tears to get to this point; the general orientation class was a breeze, and so he foolishly signed up for the intermediate offering. Then the advanced. Soon, what started as an undefined but necessary urge to work with the new colonists had morphed into an almost full-blown obsession. He parlayed his connections, his ‘life experience’, and his damn good grades to end up in the group that was presenting a final student project to the Gentle Expanse/Silver City tourism and public safety board.

It was 6 months worth of work condensed into a wordless set of diagrams that would help educate any Senate species, regardless of what their base written script was, or if their translators were working, on how to interact with the tiny-chompers. Hundreds, literalhundreds of iterations were put together in order to make the best possible collage of information, presented in the most clear possible way. Ngruzren’s team wasn’t even presenting the entire library of work; theirs was literally just a small chunk of a larger effort. Still, it was before both a city and planetary board of directors, and needed to be given the due weight and respect of the job put before him.

Ngruzren-of-Arzgr was sweating, hard… over a free safety pamphlet.

He stayed in the sideline, letting his body language show that he was extremely interested in what his Jornissian colleague was saying – he wasn’t really, the team lead had rehearsed the speech so often that he could say it from memory in a pinch, but presentation was everything at this stage and so he let his body show he was occupied in rapt attention while his mind wandered.

His dad kept looking at him with a look, a looky look that looked… looky, and Ngruzren didn’t know what to make of it. The night-rage thing… ok, granted, he looked fine but black was so limiting as a color and really, he looked better when he highlighted his own natural fur color and stayed with pastel clothing and bright accessories. The large mane wasn’t such a big pain-in-the-tail to keep as he was cautioned about, and… ok, it was nice that Mom was taking more time at home after winning the bid. But that’s not why he stopped with the night-rage hassle… honest.

Ngruzren kept going back to that look, like a hunter to the tracks of his missing prey. It didn’t make any sense! Sure, he might have suddenly found his passion in these new aliens, but is that such a bad thing? His life before was going to be reviewing drone core samples and sitting at a desk doing paperwork! Sure, steady and well-paid work, but boring as all get-out. At least here he could interact with people! Sure, they might be smaller, and weaker, and need help and should be herded properly and sometimes needed their food prepa-

Ngruzren inhaled, sharply, as the realization hit him so hard he physically swayed. He was packless, he went into season, the tiny-chompers were so small and cute, his father’s knowing look-

A sharp round of applause broke his epiphany, and he looked around confused for a moment – until he stood up, joining the rest of his team, clapping for some reason.

A female Dorarizin – the name escaped Ngruzren at the moment – stood, professionally adjusting her chest stays. “{Excellent presentation! We are most pleased to accept this addition to the localized training directory! I’m also speaking for my associates here – but given your team’s drive and dedication, that it would be remiss of us to not allow you all the chance to work with the tiny-chompers as well.}” Was she – was she looking directly at him? “{We still have many more positions to go through, but I’m almost certain your passion will intertwine with those open gaps and fill them quite nicely.]”

Ngruzren tilted his head slightly… Was. Was that a wink?

Ngruzren-of-Arzgr blinked, hard, as the female who was old enough to be his mother and was probably happily married already, continued to talk about next steps, promoting synergy, and other managerial talk, giving that same look to… to everyone else in the room.

Ugh.

Swipressnssren stared, unblinking, at his Dorarizin table-mate as he downed another bag of Hufflepuffs – what were essentially triple-fried skin-rinds of some sort of animal, the things powdered and coated with various savory and sweet flavors. Nori had to have devoured at least 12,000 calories in the past 10 minutes, and that’s just what Swipressnssren had personally witnessed.

“<Um. I take it the meeting didn’t go well?>”

Nori growled something noncommittal before swallowing another mouthful of the trashy junk food. “[No. Went fine, everything’s fine.]”

“<Hmm. Doesn’t sound fine.>”

Ngruzren-of-Arzgr crumpled up the tinfoil packaging, dropping it onto the heap of it’s bretheren on the table. “[The design was approved, the presentation went off without a hitch, and I am almost totally certain that I’ll have a position as a warmcuddle tour guide within the year. Frozen hells, I’ll probably even be in charge of an entire city block or two. Yay.]”

Swipressnssren sank into his coils slightly as he studied the alien-yet-familiar body language of his friend, his hands resting idly on his midsection coil. “<The amount of venom you just spat in that statement would make any old tooth proud. What’s going on, really?>”

Ngruzren – Nori, as he was called in the Jornissian’s tongue – frowned, grumbling something untranslatable as he stared at the tabletop before him, almost boring a hole through it with the intensity of his gaze.

“<Come on. I know that thing with your last… girlfriends didn’t work out->”

“[Why are you assuming it’s a girl problem?]”

“<Well, is it?>” The Jornissian hummed, rolling his shoulders in curiosity. “<It’s either women or work at this stage in life – unless you’ve found out you’re a proud papa->”

There was another nondescript mumble, and Swipressnssren stuttered. “<Wh-what? With whom->”

“[Ugh, you’re sounding as bad as my Mother.]” Nori smirked, his hands reaching up to play with the metal wrappers to what was left of his prodigious feast. “[No, it’s not girls, I promise. It’s just… well, like. Have you ever just caught yourself doing something stupid-]”

“<Me? Never.>”

“[Hah. Try to pretend you’re mortal, for a moment. But like. You catch yourself doing something stupid and then realize why?]”

“<…Introspection. You’re telling me you just now discovered introspectio->”

“[No, you coiled shit.]” Nori grinned – ah, finally a smile! – flicking a rolled up ball of tin at the Jornissian. “[I just… Well, you know I’ve been in an extended season because I have no pack.]”

“<Right. I mean, I thought you looked good with the whole black-sun thing going on->”

“[Just. Ok. Um, Thanks. But. So I’m in extended season with no female packmates. Brain’s flooded with all sorts of hormones and stuff.]”

Swipressnssren quirked his eyebrow as high as it could physically go – which wasn’t too far, given his physiology and the musculature of his hood, so it was a true feat. “<A… are you trying to tell me where hatchlings come from?>”

That comment earned him an entire fistful of wrappers bouncing off his head.

“[No, UGH. Look. Just… I’m in a mood right now – and I know, shutup – and like. I’m nearing the end of my development, and historically guys would’ve paired off by now – and a few months ago, we started to get into this warmcuddle research kick, right?]”

“<Riiight…. I’m not… you’re a cuddlefucker?>”

“[No.]” Ngruzren-of-Arzgr deadpanned, his hands kneading his forearms roughly. “[I just realized why I wanted to even do all of this.]”

“<Why’s that?>”

Nori looked up at his friend, as 1 million KM above him – at that very moment, in fact – Reach broke warp, gravitational waves rippling through the first alien star system that Mankind would call home.

“[I want pups.]”

Tags Sci-Fi, They are Smol, Comedy, Cute, Smol

Stories They are Smol

They are Smol – and it’s a Smol World: Chapter 3

Post author By TPH
Post date June 14, 2019
3 Comments on They are Smol – and it’s a Smol World: Chapter 3

[wp-night-mode-button style="1"]

Pip

“[-And now, in local news. Another illegal personnel smuggling operation was busted earlier today operating around the Gas Giant Cloudpearl; Senate Teams lead by the H.S.T.’s own regional law enforcement discovered a network of hollowed-out asteroids at the edge of the gravity well. As they were discovered within 5 calendar years of creation squatters’ rights will not-]”

Pip

“[-letion of the dome, which allows for their own day-night rythm.]” The Jornissian professor on-screen said, shifting slightly in his seat.

“[I see! But won’t they be able to adapt like the rest of us?]” The Karnakian host questioned, leaning over his table with an eager expression on his face. “[I thought one of the reasons why we won the bid was because our planet and theirs are so similar?]”

“[From an atmospheric and gravitic comparison – yes, absolutely. However, we rotate much slower so no – a day on Gentle Expanse is roughly 1 1/2 of their entire day/night cycles on Dirt. It’s not a question of adapting to a couple extra hours of work or rest, but an extreme marathon of staying up and sleeping. I’ve been assured by the tiny-chompers that staying up longer than 13 hours at a time begins to impair their judgment, with extreme cases – 20 hours or so – even leading to audio/visual hallucinations.]”

“[Good heavens! So is that also the reasons for those isolation pods popping up around the colonization zo-]”

Pip

“[-ning is complimentary, but mandatory if you wish to be a tiny-chomper local guide or coworker. For an introductory rate of 500GRC you can enroll in our 10-week certified basic training course, enabling you to qualify for further specialized interaction opportunities. Top Mark Training Company: Preparing you for the workplace of tomorrow, today.]”

Pip

“{Daaaaaaaaad~}”

Dzgranra-of-Arzgr sighed as he worked the hard light projector, the remote long lost to him. His wives had thankfully put the lump of titanium in some reach of the house that would be safe from all prying eyes and paws – including those of his eldest son, all of his daughters, and the wives themselves. It wasn’t the first time the remote had been lost, but the fact that they put a child-lock on all remote broadcasting to the panel was both touching, and infuriating.

As if his children were so ill-mannered to watch a pay-to-own series without asking first.

As if he didn’t deserve to watch more pay-to-own series!

Pip

“[-st saying, if you’re not planning on serving them you shouldn’t be forced to qualify! These new regulations are going to put me out of business – I’m a Jornissian-only establishment; I can’t and don’t cater to anyone else, and that’s never been a problem-]”

The not-insignificant pile of pups that were congealed on the center rug began to wiggle as one; Dad was concentrating, and this could not be allowed to continue.

“{Daaaaaaaad it’s gonna staaaaart~}”

“{I know, loves, I know.}”

Pip

“[-TO SAVE THE DAY-]”

“{-THE SUPER SPACE TEAM, HOORAY!}” The entire mass of under-9-year-old pups cheered at once at the top of their lungs, temporarily deafening their father and quite possibly rattling all the windows in the house.

For the first – or last – time that week (depending on when you consider the week to start and end), Ngruzren-of-Arzgr was woken up 15 minutes before his alarm clock by the cacophony of voices, and smiled.

The evil Dr. Dark laughed triumphantly as she held the tiny-chomper fiercely by the shoulder, the smaller alien crying out in pain as the stonification ray was pressed to his head. “[Not another move forward, Super Space Team! If you move a single micrometer, I’ll petrify this tiny-chomper – and then move onto the rest of his family!]”

“[No! Help me, Super Space Team! If Dr. Dark petrifies us all, the life-day celebration will be ruined!]” the tiny-chomper said, interrupted in real-time in the entertainment den by gasps of shock from the pup-pile. Ngruzren-of-Arzgr, for his part, rolled his eyes as he watched the unfolding ‘drama’ from the stairwell hall, making sure to stay silent and still lest he be noticed and dragged into the pile himself.

The actor playing the evil Dr. Dark shook the very obvious hard-light automaton of tiny-chomper soft-but-helpful. “[Not another word out of you!]”

“[Enough!]” Prince Solaris said, the male Dorarizin posing dramatically – or as dramatically as you could – in his ‘super sun suit’, beads of pure stars charging up. “[You won’t be turning him or any of the other tiny-chompers into stone today!]”

“[Or any other day!]” the absolutely garishly pink Karnakian Time Priest chimed in, her own suit turning a few painful shades of color that made Ngruzren-of-Arzgr physically flinch but drew excited cheers from his little siblings.

“[At the end of this battle, I’ll be adding you to my heat rock collection!]” the disturbingly blood-blue Jornissian Space Ranger finished, his last pose forming the final link between the other two Super Space Teammates, glyphs of power glowing on their bodie-

“{Ancestors. Kill me now.}” Ngruzren-of-Arzgr murmured as he watched his little sisters become absolutely absorbed in the ensuing scripted fight/acrobatics scene. He looked around the den with a wry grin, finally noticing his father at the opposite end of the room waving him over with a bowl of Drzulr in his hand. Ngruzren-of-Arzgr would have taken a long, slow time to sneak around the hyper-attentive siblings, but … well.

Saturday morning cartoons.

So instead, he just quickly – but still somewhat quietly – made his way around the back of the pile, every so often catching a glance of the tiny-chomper being physically tossed to safety from one Super Space Team-member to another in a bid to yadda yadda yadda.

“{Good morning, Dad.}” Ngruzren said softly, gently bumping his head against his father’s.

“{Good morning, Son. Sleep well?}”

“{Mmhmm.}” Ngruzren murmured, walking into the kitchen to see if the pot was still full. “{We out of dryspice?}”

“{No, but if the tumbler’s useless let me know. I had to throw at least half of it out because someone left the lid open and some flea-prawn got into the spice.}”

“{Nk-Grenz? If it’s not one of my moms’ it’s another-}”

Dzgranra chuckled softly as he rested against the kitchen wall, keeping an eye on his children as he sipped the slurry from the bowl. “{Mmmm. Well, with us winning that settlement bid – which, I’ll have you know I gave your mother no end of tongue-lashing over keeping that secret from me-}”

“{I know, I heard – both types.}”

Dzgranra growled a somewhat embarrassed, impressed and chiding retort at his sons’ liveliness. “{Well, it had been a few weeks, and I’m not seeing you move out young man-}”

“{I know, I know. It just didn’t work out.}”

Dzgranra hummed softly into his bowl, taking another deep dreg of the sauce-like concoction, his senses perking up the more he imbibed. “{Mmm. Well. Regardless, I’m glad to see that your studies have improved – and that your fur color is back to normal.}”

Now it was Ngruzrens’ turn to hum softly, his eyes playfully narrowing at his father. “{It just became too much of a hassle to keep up. I’m keeping the long mane, though.}”

“{Ah.}” Dzgranra acknowledged, leaning into the den to see the screen again. The tiny-chomper was riding on the back of the Karnakian hero, the entire team escaping from an exploding secret lair of some sort. “{Well, still. I know you’ve thrown yourself back into your studies – which is good – but we can’t keep putting off a fitting, son. You’re at least a year overdue-}”

“{Dad. Now?}” Ngruzren said, adding the finishing garnishes to his bowl of morning pick-me-up. “{Look. I’m mostly sitting in lectures and modeling classes, I’m not giving oral presentations, and as you can hear my words aren’t slurred-}”

“{Mm.}”

“{…well. Not badly.}”

“{Look, I’m certain if you wanted to work with your mother she could arrange an internship-}”

“{I-it’s not that, Dad.}”

Dzgranra spared a hard side-glance at his youngest, unmarried son – who looked away at the gaze. “{Well? What’s got you doing a complete turnaround then?}”

“{I… uh. I wanna work with them.}”

“{With-}”

“{withthetinychompers.}” Ngruzren murmured all at once, not so much savoring his bowl of Drzulr as just taking the entire thing down as a shot.

“{You want to work. With the tiny-chompers. Son, your mother may have some sway but you’re very young and I’m pretty sure all those slots are taken-}”

“{Well then maybe as a tour guide then?! I don’t know – why are you so quick to-}”

“{Son. You’re studying to be a geochemical engineer.}”

“{A-and?}”

“{… and you’re applying to be a tour guide. What’s this really about, really?}”

“{I just…}”

Dzgranra looked at his son, hard, as the boy murmured half-truths and full lies to the both of them. Ngruzren was doing his best to convince his father – or himself – that he just needed some time to think, to see what the new species had to offer, to broaden his horizons, and it’s not like he was dropping out – really! He just wanted to take a break and make new friends and-

‘{Oh dear.}’ Dzgranra thought to himself as he watched his son stammer through excuse after excuse. ‘{His biological clock is hitting him hard this year.}’

The internal and external monologues were broken by another deafening cheer from the entertainment room – Dzgranra poked his head in to just miss the end-of-episode terrible joke, and the Super whatever team all laughed together with about a couple dozen generic tiny-chompers all dancing around them celebrating… life day, apparently.

“{Alright! Get cleaned up – we’re going to the park today-}”

There was another cheer and the excited babbling of voices, the thumping-patter of little feet, and the sudden tight pressure around his legs as his smallest instinctively found their favorite post yet again.

“{You coming, son? I could use the – no biting – help, if you’re interested.}”

“{Nah, I’m going to meet up with Trilly and Sweeps today.}” Ngruzren said, uncouthly licking the bowl clean before dropping it into the washbasin. “{He’s already done the first level of certification clearance, and he’s helping us both pass.}”

“{Alright… If you’re sure that’s what you want.}”

“{It is, Dad.}”

“You sure that’s what you want?”

Jonathan nodded, crouched behind the hard-light brick barricade. His HUD showed Aisha on a rooftop not 300m away, gun trained just over his head. Behind him, the shambling dead – both those hit with the nanovirus, and the robots who became unwitting carriers.

“Alright. When I start firing, you start moving. Ready?”

Jon tensed.

“Go-”

The staccato rapport of Aisha’s plasma sniper rifle broke the silence of the abandoned city, alerting both the other scavvies and roidroids to their location. Jon moved with purpose, the jump-jets in his boots activating to fling him against the plastic-glass of an abandoned clinic, the additional noise a distraction to the malfunctioning robots that shambled towards his new position. Thankfully their own AI didn’t give them complete object permanence, and Aisha was far enough outside of their AoE that her bolts-

There was an alarm.

“Awwwwww” Jon complained, his dead-sprint down a hallway turning into a light jog, and that into a lazy faceplant on the mossy, wet floor. A few moments later, the entire world glowed a pure white, and he was alone.

Jon’s rented holodeck was a 10m x 10m x 10m cube; large enough for any human to do most any activity in and not hit the walls with just basic movement. Combine that with a “moving” omni-directional floor and realistic hard-light feedback, and the fat l337 G4m3r was no more; you wanted to wall-ride then you had to git gud and ride that wall. You wanted to be a super soldier? I hope you like tackling people for actual finishing moves! And you wanted to be a scavenger in the reboot of the best post-apocalyptic FPS of all time –

Well. You had to be a jack of all trades, sure, but you also had to make sure to have enough money on your card to keep your session running.

“Jon you cheap fuck, if you timed out and left me to the horde-”

“Aisha, I swear to God I didn’t time out – The uh, game booted me out-”

“Fuck you, Jon! This is an endgame scavvie run – AAAAGGGHH FUCK I’M IN A STASIS FIELD. JON YOU LIMP-DICKED-”

There was an aggrivated sigh as Jon lifted the helmet from his face, the exit door now the only thing well-illuminated enough to see. “Sorry, Aisha.”

“Yeah, so am I, fuck. Now I gotta repair my Epics.” Aisha pinged inside his ear, grumbling. “You owe me some sunshards.”

“Yeah, yeah. I could’ve sworn I put in 20 creds, though.”

“20?! Four days off in a row and you’re planning on an all-nighter?”

Jon shrugged – not that anyone else could see it – and began to walk out of the holodeck. “Yeah, yeah. You tried Zero-Bean yet? Shit’s super concentrated-”

As he opened the door the corresponding door across the hallway opened up, his battle-buddy/slacker-buddy/work-wife Aisha emerging with a slight frown on her face. “Don’t think you can bribe me with coffee, Jon. That was a fucked thing to… Huh.” Jon followed her gaze to the panel on his room; it still said he was paying, and that he had a good 9 hours left on the rental. “Huh.”

“Ah! I fucking knew it! What the hell, my chip works fine-”

“Maybe their reader fucked up? I guess I can’t be too mad at you now, seeing as how it’s a hardware failure or somethin.”

Jon pressed the ‘assistance’ button on the panel, and an obnoxious red light appeared over his door. “Yeah, well, that shit still sucks. It ate my creds and fucked up our run; we’re gonna be back in lobby for another hour to get an open slot-”

“Jon.”

Jonathan turned to look at Aisha, who had pulled up and unlocked her tablet with her implant. The frown on her face had deepened considerably over the past few seconds, and she scrolled down what seemed to be an unnecessarily long email chain rapidly. “What?”

“Well I figured out what fucked up our session – Admiral Smalls.”

“Whaaaaaaaaat? He can fucking do that?”

“Yep. We’re on duty again; Reach is coming back ahead of schedule, and…” Jon deafened himself temporarily to his teammate as he subvocalized a few commands, his implant responding to and unlocking his own personal tablet/assistant. He quickly picked up on the email thread that was growing by the second, skimming responses almost as quick as they came.

“Fuck’s sake. No teardown? Refuel, check, and load up?”

“Fuck. So that cocksucker turns around Humanity’s first colony ship in record time-”

“-and we get a month of overtime pay. Fucking great. I’m filing with the Union after this.”

“As am I, this is bullshit.”

Jon let out a soft grunt as the realization hit him. “Fuck, you and Faiza had that thing, right?”

“Had, yes. But at least she’s on call too, so-”

“Bullet: Dodged.”

“Right? Fuck this. We’re supposed to load up and be shipped out in… 6 months? 6 Months overtime-”

The two slackers grumbled much louder than they really should have as their anger fed off one another. By the time they had exited the recreation wing, they were joined by a group of other slacker ne’er do wells, who all agreed upon one fundamental fact:

Mandatory 8 hour workdays were barbaric.

Tags Sci-Fi, They are Smol, Comedy, Cute, Smol