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Stories They are Smol

They are Smol – and it’s a Smol World: Chapter 11

Retail – well, the vast majority of retail out there – is a soul-sucking experience. You work in a glorified box putting other boxes on shelves and talking to people about those boxes, and if you’re lucky they don’t blame you for their wife leaving them and taking the kids. One retail job is just the same as another; you can work for Best Buy and then move to Wal*Mart and not realize there was a change other than the uniform that you’re wearing. However, there are a few places where working in retail can actually build up some skills you can use later in life (either to parlay into a better job or to just impress your friends/family/that cutie at the bar):

  • Bartending
  • Beauty Care
  • Masseuse

And of course, the purview of all liberal arts majors

  • Barrista

Now this isn’t to say that you need to go into $50,000 of debt in order to be employed by Starbucks – I mean, it helps, but it’s not a requirement. It’s simply to say that you can develop a set of skills that you take with you for the rest of your life, much like the shame of getting a degree that “was your passion” and then not following up on it with a career in that field. But some people – a rare few – end up figuring out that they like working in retail, that they like doing what they’re doing, and that they like mixing drinks and little snacks for others.

Rssesnsen – nee Cheery – happened to be one of them. She enjoyed making and mixing everything from a standard hnz’sprssen for the businessman on the go or a freshly-toasted sra-flatbread with miscellaneous toppings up to picking out and hand-mixing the dozens and dozens of loose leaf teas to steep for those regulars who came in to work on their novel that was totally going to come out one day, you’ll see. After some basic guidance from the (admittedly cute) Swipressnssren on what was absolutely toxic and what other foods should be avoided for her new guests, she began to rack her brain for some sort of flavor profile that she could use.

Most of her go-to stimulants were right-out. Of the ones that were left, they either needed to be toasted in order to bring out the flavor, or powdered to all get-out so they dissolved completely in water. Speaking of, is water the only thing she could give the warmcuddles? Or would some of the oil-based drinks work too? Tolerance for thickness in their fluids – if they didn’t mind something with mouthfeel she could go with a more porridge-like consistency, but that might actually leech out the full-bodyness of whatever else she puts in!

Good challenges were few and far between, and Rssesnsen enjoyed every moment of it as she continued to think and think and think …

“Why… is she doing that?” Luzita asked no one in particular, as the bright red giant snake-person started to writhe in place, staring off into the middle distance. What started with a simple head wiggle soon turned to full body gyrations, and now Cheery was performing loops and twirls that no human could hope to recreate – at least, with their spine still intact. It was utterly fascinating, if it wasn’t so absolutely out of place.

“[I um… I don’t know. She seems deep in thought though.]” Wiggles mused, looking at the Jornissian with curiosity. “[Maybe we just… give her some time?]”

There was a slightly-broken voice’d hum of The Streets of Cairo as a tennis ball tipped cane began to wiggle in the air just above the countertop, the Jornissian across the counter subconsciously beginning to follow it.

“Abuela!”

“Beh! I could be brewing the coffee myself-”

“Mama, give her some time-” Sofia said, lowering the cane below the counter. “And don’t be rude.”

“[OH!]”

The group jumped a little as Cheery had an epiphany, her arms a flurry of activity as she basically stayed “put” while leaning everywhere behind the bar, pulling ingredients from hither and yon. “[I think I have something for you! Give me a few moments and I’ll put that together – you want it hot, or cold?”

“Hot”

“Cold”

“Before I pass on-”

Abuela-

“[I’ll just make one hot and one cold! No worries!]” Cheery chirped, shaking up a concoction vigorously before dumping it into what looked like a flash-cooker, the sounds of drinkcraft quickly overpowering the background noise of the other patrons. With a bit of a flourish a large cup was produced, the hot drink poured and pushed over to Sofia. The human looked at the drink with pursed lips, before turning to look at her escorts questioningly.

“Uh, how-”

“[Ah! Allow me.]” Persimmon said, fishing in his messenger bag for a small cylindrical device. Popping a casing over the tip, he stuck it in the center of the drink, thumbing it on. “[Mass spectrometer. It won’t affect the taste at all, but we can see-]”

He was interrupted by a beep, and as he tilted the device’s base towards him a readout began pouring into his implant. “[Ah… Cheery?]”

“[Mmmmmm?]”

“[This is poison.]”

“[Excuse you, I may not make the best drinks on this rock but-]”

“[Ah! No no-]” Persimmon backpedaled furiously as the girls giggled softly, the faux pas causing him to blush lightly. “[J-just, they can’t have it. It’s not Human-approved.]”

“[Oh. What should I omit?]” Cheery sighed, stopping in mid-prep.

“[I uh. I can’t say. The spectrometer will just tell us if it’s poisonous, not what made it poisonous.]”

Cheery shared a flat look with Persimmon before dumping the half-finished cold drink down the drain, putting a broad smile back on her face. “[Well. We’ll just have to try again!]”

The first 3 drinks were mostly experiments; one tested positive for mercury, another, cyanide. The third one had a very exotic neurotoxin that acted along the same lines as irukandji venom, so that was mainly ruled out so as to not have the humans writhing in pain for the next day or three. At the 5th drink, Rssesnsen was almost certain that she had it, only to be told that that much sodium might actually kill the humans at worst, and at best was not healthy for them at all. Drinks 6 – 12 were iterations on drink until it was pointed out that the concoction smelled like a fermented shoe and that absolutely nobody was going to give that a shot. This was unfortunate because to the Jornissian palate it actually tasted somewhat hearty, earthy, with a few bright notes at the end.

Then Rssesnsen mentally smacked herself in the face because of course they wouldn’t taste things right, and tossed out almost everything she had done at that point to start over. Drinks 13 – 18 were better, but still not where things needed to be, and around drink she felt her facade crack just a little.

Rssesnsen was going to serve them a drink, by Nressre-whose-eyes-are-the-moons, or die trying. If only that manic laughter would just stop for a few seconds she could think straight-

“Um.”

“Why… is she laughing?” Luzita asked, frozen in place in that I’m-too-terrified-to-move-but-I-probably-shouldn’t-be-here kind of way. Cheery had become decidedly less so as the cups started to pile up; the initial complaint her mother was simply trying to make of “this cup is the size of my torso” had morphed into… whatever this was.

“[I don’t know, but just stay calm. We’ll protect you if necessary.]” Tipo said, making it a point to slide up to the counter proper. “[Though I don’t think it’ll come to that-]”

“[Looks like a work-related mental break-]” Wiggles said, helpfully and probably a bit too loudly, catching the attention of the slightly-more-unhinged Cheery.

“[No, NO, nono, it’s fine, it’s all fine, look at how fine it is-]”

There was the crackling sound of electricity from somewhere below the counter and a very furious ‘Abuela, not yet-’, but that was enough to snap Cheery from her reverie. With an absolutely exasperated sigh, she just gripped an entire packet of powdered spice – a thickening agent, usually – and just dumped it into a pot of boiling water.

“[We begin by the process of elimination! The drink knows what it is because it knows what it isn’t-]” Cheery began to rant, stirring the quickly-dissolving spice into the thickening water. With a flourish that was mostly “splash it close enough to the target” an extra large cup was half-filled, slid over to the counter, and the preparations for the next concoction began in earnest.

She was halfway through adding in an entire bag of spoons before there was a cheery little ding as the mass spectrometer shrugged and said “eh.” She froze with rapt attention as the far-too-large cup was then gingerly picked up and wiped clean of recently-boiling water.

“So… like I was going to say before… uh…” Sofia murmured, her gaze blocked by the forest of failure before her, “can… can we get that in a smaller cup?”

“[Sure! Suresuresuresure-]” Cheery rambled, pulling out one of each size cup she had. The XXL was right out, as was the XL, the L, and the M. The small was… ok, but, much to everyone’s chagrin, the tester cup was just right. The one drink was gingerly poured into the serving-cup, and handed below the counter to the somehow-not-dead-yet-from-waiting Isabella. She sipped from it gently, her face going from inquisitive to sour.

“Bleh.”

“[Hahahahahahaahahaaaaaaaaaaa is it bad? Of course it’s bad, of course it’s-]”

“Bad, yes. This means it’s good.”

“[W-what?]”

The little old lady steeled herself and in one swift gulp downed the entire concoction.

“Wh-”

“Mom-”

“[Nice-]” Wiggles said appreciatively.

“[Um, are you – we don’t know how that’s going to affect you -]”

“Bah!” The voice-below-the-counter said dismissively, the cup being Kobe’d back onto the countertop. “Tonight we live forever!”

Cheery looked at the two other women, who just shook their heads. “We’re fine, thank you.”

Tipo shrugged and ordered a drink.

So it turned out that “tonight”, “forever”, and “immortal” were all very flexible terms. Once the countertop was cleaned out of the various failed experiments and a few normal drinks were ordered (as well as a sly exchange of contact information) the next step was finding some place to park and enjoy the ambiance of a couple-dozen Jornissians staring at you with laser focus.

Not the most relaxing thing to happen, but, close enough. The real issue was that the options were a divot that already proved too smooth for the humans to settle into (although it was amusing for Luzita to slide around in the pit for a while) or a booth. The booths were comfy, in a word – cozy. This was not just because they were tastefully enclosed save for a single entrance/exit, but you were also sticking in three massive aliens who had to be very mindful of their various limbs as the humans nestled in between them. Awkward silence gave way to light chatter, and eventually the conversation flowed naturally. Simple, mundane questions of ‘what’s good to eat here’ and ‘what’s the weather like? Do you have seasons?’ turned into more pointed ‘stay out of this section of the city’ and ‘this company is a scam’ and all the other juicy gossip that a local can drop on a new neighbor.

One voice started strong in the conversation, but as the night drug on, became more and more rare, until a light snore broke a very pointed conversation about the universal merits of animal fat.

Isabella – Abuela – had fallen asleep against Tipo.

“Oh! I’m sorry-” Sofia smiled, touching Tipo’s arm. “It’s been a long day for her. We should probably get going back.”

“[Y-yeah. But… but I can’t move.]”

Sofia furrowed her brow as Luciana continued to make small talk with the other two guardians. “What do you mean?”

“[I mean-]” and he gave a pointed look to the little old lady currently burrowed into his side. “[If I do I’ll wake her up! I can’t move.]”

“It’s fine – look. Mama!” Sofia called, sliding her legs up to stand on the seat, leaning over the counter to shake Isabella. “Mama, let’s go now. Come on.”

Her efforts were met with a murmur and a much louder snore. Sofia pursed her lips and looked up at Tipo. “Can you shake her?”

“[No.]” Ngruzren said, surprising everyone at the table including himself with the intensity of his rejection. “[N-no. It’s fine. This is fine.]”

“Well you can’t very well just sit here for the next 8 hours!”

Tipo looked around at the rest of the cafe who were all very much ok with this idea, eventually locking eyes with Cheery who was over-enthusiastically nodding.

“[I mean-]”

“No. Come on, just… just pick her up and let’s go.”

“[But that could be unsafe-]”

Sofia rolled her eyes and turned to the other two chaperones. “Can one of you…?” She let the question linger as she motioned over to her mother, who was dead to the rest of the world.

“[I mean, we have installed comfort pods around this section of the city specifically for this purpose.]” Persimmon mused. “[We could just deposit her in one of them, let her rest, and then come back when she’s awake.]”

“[No.]” Sofia said, surprising everyone at the table including herself with the intensity of that rejection. “We are not leaving mama on the fucking street!”

“[Ah, ah… ok]” Persimmon said, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “[Well, the other option is to carry her, which could be hazardous – seeing as how she’s elderly and humans’ muscles relax to a startling degree when unconscious.]”

“Well we’re not leaving her on the street-”

“[And I don’t feel comfortable carrying her it’s fine really we can just stay like this it’s ok-]”

“Por que no los dos?”

The table turned to Luciana, who just shrugged a bit. “They’re comfort pods, but they had to have been installed somehow. Let’s just… uninstall them and carry the pod. Between the three of you, you can do that, right?”

The three aliens shared a curious look with each other, as well as a few subconscious flexes.

“[…sure. We could do that.]” Wiggles said, slowly, and was met with no opposition.

“Great!” Luciana clapped her hands, placing them on the table. “Now let’s get outta here.”

Categories
Stories They are Smol

They are Smol – and it’s a Smol World: Chapter 9

A/N: Hey everyone – sorry for the delay in posting! I was getting over some health issues that suddenly cropped up, and they really kinda just… stopped me dead in my tracks. But the troubles are behind us, and we should be back to our regular posting schedule! To make up for the lack of smol, please accept this late superpost!

– – – – – – – –

Gentle Expanse was an alien planet, and if this is a fact that surprises you at this point in the story, I honestly don’t know what to tell you. I point it out merely because when we see Star Wars or Star Trek or Star Tzar (very popular in the 2080s) we tend to either (1) land on a hostile planet whose atmosphere is poison, temperatures are deadly, where any surface liquid is acid, or (2) Land somewhere vaguely Earth-ish, but with one or two odd plants.

Gentle Expanse was picked because it was Earthlike; The gravity was just a little heavier, the days a bit longer, but the atmosphere was basically the right composition and water flowed freely on it’s surface. There were mountains and valleys and rivers and lakes and oceans, and it’s about at that point that the similarities ended. A separate, non-terraformed planet in the goldilocks’ zone would have it’s own tree of life and it’s own way of doing things.

Seeing as how they weren’t allowed the land far from the city and civilization, they picked the furthest point from their bustling neighbors to build their homestead. It … the spires of the city rose in the distance, kilometers away, so you could pretend that you were far out, but civilization still seemed to loom close. Andres Aleman, or as his friends and family called him “Double-A”, reflected on these facts as he tested the earth. There wasn’t so much “grass” on the planet as small, crumbly… well the closest thing would be some sort of multi-hued fungus with a stiff root system, and once you got that out of the way the little critters – all names unknown to human science – skittered out of the way to show a slightly gray hard-pack earth. Double-A took his spade and struck it into the ground, it yielding like wet clay under the metal’s edge. Turning it over he found it somewhat porous and teeming with life.

“So, how does it look?”

Double-A turned towards his elder brother, Tomas, and shrugged. “Hell if I know. There’s a good ecosystem here, sure, but. I have no idea if any of this would eat roots, or if we can even plant here.”

Tomas frowned and knelt, the setting of his new home’s one large sun painting his back a vivid orange in the dimming light. He poked at the mass of dirt, watching it break apart easily under his tool. “Well. At least we won’t have issue plowing, but… is that all fungus?”

“I don’t think so. We sent ahead our specs to the UTF, and they wouldn’t just send us out here without-”

“Double-A, you still trust that the government isn’t inept. This is why you fail.”

Tomas was rewarded for his playful snark with a lump of alien soil tossed onto his shoes. “Ass.” Double-A said, taking another spade of dirt out of the land before them. “But seriously. Fungus destroys our crops, and we can’t have root-eating pests. These are basic things that would’ve been covered by the Agriculture Department of the United Terran Federation, right?”

“I’d assume so, or else this is going to be one hell of a short-lived colony.”

“So… what first? Wheat? Corn? I’m voting corn-”

“Corn tortillas are the best, but I think we might go with potato-”

Potato?! Are you MAD?” Double-A said, reeling back in somewhat-fake shock. “Latkes are heresy, and it’s physically impossible to make a mole matzah ball soup! That’s how we lost Grandpa Bimbo, God rest his bear-loving soul.”

Tomas just stared at his brother for a few moments, desperately trying to determine if he was being serious before shaking his head. “No, you idiot. They’re easy to grow, nutritionally dense, are used in multiple cultures and pretty hardy – we can sell them to basically everyone. We’ll also be able to determine with them exactly what here eats what, so we don’t waste our other seed crops. We have the budget for hydroponics, but…”

Tomas stared ahead in contemplation, the meadow stretching out from their haphazardly-built landing/homestead site. The not-fungus grass stalks swayed slightly in the breeze, a few of them opening up in “blossoms” from some external or internal stimuli that was just as alien as the landscape before him. Insects – probably? – darted from open bloom to open bloom, and in the distance strange noises of small things echoed in the encroaching dusk. The meadow continued for some acres until hitting, for lack of a better term, the “woods”; large spindly swaying growths, limbs fat and lumpy with… fruit? Sap? Tomas didn’t know. They reminded him of fat yet barren oak trees, soft-looking yet ponderously huge and heavy limbs intertwining with their neighbors for mutual support, forming almost a singular structure if you forgot to see the forest for the trees. The wind went through them, sometimes whistling, always rustling – and that, at least, was close enough to home that Tomas could appreciate the whole thing, tamping down the subconscious desire to set fire to the whole damn thing and grow proper plants in their stead.

“…fire.”

“Hmm?”

Tomas blinked and stood up, rolling his shoulders. “We should get a fire going, seeing as how it’s going to be night here soon – we can get some cooking done, keep warm and keep setting up camp.”

“Aren’t fires illegal? I mean – they made a big to-do about using light generators instead-”

“Yeah, but fuck’em. We’ve got fire suppressant gear, and it’s not like we’ll be making some sort of massive blaze. Just something to cook with, yanno?”

“Eh. Yeah, sure, I haven’t started a fire in years. We still got that chorizo?”

Admiral Smalls was, first and foremost, not a small man – that joke had been made many times before, and had caused a few fights as well. At 5’11” he towered over the rest of his crew, though that was mainly due to him being seated at his station on the bridge – which, of course, necessitated that he be at the highest point to look over everyone’ shoulders. The initial un-docking of Reach and her escort was exciting, the forming of the trans-spacial field and the activation of the warp drive was historical, and the actual jump itself was-

Well. It was fun, though he’d never admit it openly. Seeing everything blow by you, punching through your home system in a matter of hours what would have taken years, if not decades, and then the great expanse. A trillion trillion points of light, moving around your ship in every direction. Each one a new star, a new galaxy, a new adventure

He sighed, dejected. That was probably the reason why the UTF refused to name any ship “Enterprise”; that call of adventure and discovery was intoxicating, but as it had been drilled into him a thousand times already, warping into systems you haven’t mapped is how you die via instantaneous deceleration. Although he’d love to land on strange new worlds, he didn’t want to do it face-first and at speeds that would vaporize him into his constituent atoms.

So he did the next best thing; piloting well-mapped space lanes that no human had done before. Still got to discover things, still got to see things before anyone else, and much like the rest of human history when some new place was “discovered”, you just had to push the locals out of the way and plant a flag to call it a day.

However, now all that was done; they warped into a new system, there was a bit of a lightshow, pictures and videos were taken and shared and now… now they just sat there in orbit, an impossibly heavy ship seemingly suspended in the heavens by the will of some god. Sure, shuttles were going to and from the surface with perfect regularity, and slowly their holds were being emptied of their cargo – both passengers and livestock – but there was nothing to do. Gentle Expanse was not a port of call, per se – it was a simple self-sustaining colony world, whose main exports were nothing more than a few generic sauces and a bright, iridescent powder that they sustainably harvested off of some local wildlife. There was no place for him to give his crew shore leave. There was no allied shipyard to do work on Reach, if there even was anything to do. There were no pirates, no battles to be fought, no exotic aliens to meet – or seduce – no ancient artifacts to meddle with.

This, of course, only left paperwork.

For the past week and a half, once their geostationary orbit was settled in, the only thing that crossed the Admiral’s desk were the same shuttle schedules, the same cargo manifesto debriefs – he responded by rubber-stamping in the same place his approval for that day’s schedule and sent out to Gentle Expanses’ colonial government the same request he made every day, which basically amounted to “ya got any junk tech lying around? I’ll haul it away for free.”

For this was his life now; Admiral Smalls, first among peers to be given the prestigious honor of leading mankind to their first off-system colony world had been reduced to rummaging around in alien trashbins for bits of broken tech. Partially because Humanity didn’t want to always build things from scratch (fixing things up saved resources after all), but as it was told to him by one of the R&D wonks back on earth, “why innovate when you can reverse engineer?” Gentle Expanse had it’s blacklist of technology it couldn’t give us, sure, but who’s to say that an old generator or broken transport wouldn’t yield some secret that would advance Human technology by decades?

A gentle pip interrupted Adm. Smalls’ musing, followed closely by another. He tapped his consoles’ screen, maximizing both messages.

The first one was a nice surprise: Apparently Silver City had spun up a few civilian training courses for human interaction, and had an excess amount of damaged and/or malfunctioning hard light projectors, and was willing to part with all them for the paltry sum of 1,750KG of Au. Done and done.

The second pip… well, it was a surprise, but a curious one. It originated from deep within the bowels of his on-board tech department, and wasn’t so much of a red flag as it was an inconsistency. Adm. Smalls tapped a few icons on his station, pulling up a secure connection with…

Well. We’ll just call them the spooks. You know who I mean.

And so Admiral Smalls and The Person He Was Talking To discussed an interesting spike of EM radiation that was transmitted from his ship to the local galactic network node that led to an access point that didn’t exist, and apparently contained no data.

Hisssssss-pop

Double-A sighed as the fire crackled and murmured, fed on broken crates, paper stuffing and wooden pallets. Its’ fuel wasn’t pretty, but it was comforting none the less, the orange glow of the fire casting jumping shadows against the temporary shelter. Temporary was a bit of a misnomer; it was a modular home, a space double-wide, but the build quality was such that there was no real reason for it to not be permanent, save for the fact that it looked ugly as hell and Double-A could swear he heard banjo music play softly whenever he used the restroom.

“Did you find the pan?” he called out behind him, kicking in an errant piece of wood with his boot.

“No! We’re gonna have to use foil.” Tomas called out over the sound of rummaging. “That’s all I found. Foil and butter.”

“Didn’t mom say she packed everything we’d need though-”

“Yeah, well! Uh.” Tomas poked his head out of the temporary shelter, giving his best I have no fucking clue expression. “Mom probably put them somewhere.”

“Did you check the fridge?”

“I…”

Really-

“Shutup, fuck you, I’m tired and this place is weird.”

Usually Double-A would have continued the banter, playfully trading jabs with his brother, but in this case… he was right. The place was weird. Admittedly, everything outside of Earth was “weird”, but in different ways; the trip up the spire, the alien simulations, the interior of a spaceship – sure, weird, but somehow… human. You were in odd places doing odd things that your grandparents couldn’t dream of, but it was still somehow comforting, even if every experience was new and somewhat terrifying, because someone had been there before. Somebody – some human – had planned out that sector, had riveted that corridor together, had swept the halls and painted the walls. But as Double-A looked out over the night that held no moon over the not-grass as strange sounds echoed through the not-woods, he shuddered.

This place was weird.

The wind passed through the trees – Double-A forced himself to call them trees – the sound almost comforting to his overworked mind.

“I found the things!”

“Good!” Double-A called, tossing another few wood scraps onto the fire, orange light burning bright. “I’m really considering putting up some of those generators, yanno? Like. I get the whole campfire feel, but-”

“—-Ö—.”

Double-A stopped mid-sentence, his breath hitching in his throat. What was that noise?

… … …

He shuddered, again, and held out his hands to the fire. If this planet at least had a moon there might have been a chance for a lit night, but as it stood the darkness around their little settlement was all-encompassing and impregnable. It was… it seemed to swallow the light, and in some sort of ancient defiance, Double-A tossed on a few more scraps of wood, stoking the fire brighter.

“. . . öööö-”

“Yeah ok that’s definitely something-”

“What’s definitely something?” Tomas called out, carrying tinfoil-wrapped chorizo-and-butter bundles. “Cause if you’re talking about my new interstellarly-famous buttered sausage then-”

“Sssh!” Double-A hissed, staring out into the void. There was a hasty silence behind him, and he was soon joined by his brother, who wordlessly passed him a shotgun.

“What? Wild animal?”

“I don’t-”

“Öööööööööööö~”

“What the fuck-”

Safeties were clicked off, shells were racked, and the two Aleman brothers stood defiant against the night.

“…well that was anti-clim-OHGODDAMNIT-” Tomas cried out as something descended silently from above, it’s wings beating silent against the night, great compound eyes glowing balefully in the reflection of the single sputtering firelight. Double-A turned, the butt of his shotgun slamming into the beast and seeming to both skid off of it’s chitinous shell and sink into it’s soft flesh, the beast letting out another mournful ‘öööööö’.

Horrifyingly, the call was returned – above the brothers, behind them, before them. There was the sound of somethings landing on their home, landing on their equipment, landing on them.

Silver City was an established city on an established colony world in an established system. This meant that public services were basically everywhere they needed to be; if you were in a city or space station you could rest easy knowing that power, water, atmosphere, life support and various other necessities on the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs were basically guaranteed. Even if you weren’t – say you found your ship sputtering out of fuel near the diamond cloud – you could take it easy knowing that at worst, within a couple local days a rescue barge would be towing you back to the nearest port. At best you’d be close enough to a well-traveled lane that someone would just pump you some fuel for a tenner.

This, of course, meant that there was an entire apparatus of the state that was purpose-built for mundane surveillance; no matter how freedom-loving and privacy-guarding a populace was, it was important for the government to know where the water pipes were breaking, where those electrical surges were coming from, and exactly what the heck was causing the nitrogen levels to climb in cargo bay 7. When you’re monitoring water/gas/electric/sewage/atmosphere you might as well stick a camera there too, if only to dissuade illegal tampering and to check up on your maintenance crew.

As with any municipal government there were local laws; don’t speed near the heliosphere or you’ll ionize your hull. Don’t dive into our gas giant’s planetary rings or else you’ll wind up destroying them – for one, and for two you’ll have to pay to smooth them back out. But one that had been ingrained into the very architecture of Gentle Expanse itself was simply thus:

Only use blue lights.

Blue, from deep azure to an almost pure “white” was acceptable. What was absolutely not acceptable was anything else. So when there was a pinprick of orange in the natural-park-turned-colony-site, there was concern and a few raised flags amongst the city planners. When the orange light grew, an animal control/rescue unit was dispatched.

When the fireball lit up the night, central services sent everyone they could.

“YOU MOTHERFUCKERS”

ÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖ-”

There was the rapport of gunfire and the beast darted back and up into the darkness, disturbingly fast. They were legion – diving towards the brothers, throwing themselves against toppled machinery, and most surprisingly – eagerly, ecstatically diving into the fire, the force of their impact catching the dust in the air alight. Beating their wings they fanned the flame, and some – screaming – would take to the sky again, igniting in the air in a burst of ichor and color, like some twisted biological firework. The ichor itself also seemed flammable – or something, Tomas couldn’t tell – but the house was on fire. The transport was on fire.

Everything was on fire.

There was the blast from Andres’ shotgun somewhere to his right; he was still alive. Good. Tomas raised his own weapon and fired a round into the skull of one of the creatures that circled the remnants of the camp, the force knocking the beast off of the tractor’s cabin. A few moments later it shakily lifted off, listing hard to the right – and with another shot it was felled.

“WHY WON’T THEY FUCKING LEAVE-”

“I DON’T KNOW – HOW MANY MORE SHELLS YOU GOT?”

ÖÖÖÖ-”

Two more shots rang out into the night. “FUCK, UH. MAYBE FFFFFGODDAMNIT-”

There was the sound of a scuffle and of a few meaty thuds, and then the blast from his brother’s shotgun going off.

“DID YOU KEEP YOUR GUN?”

“YEAH! FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT.” There was the sound of another meaty kick, and the call-and-response of ÖÖÖÖ in the night as the swarm beat around and within the camp, a haphazard orgy of animalistic confusion and instinct sewing chaos. “WHERE ARE YOU?”

“NEAR THE TRACTOR. YOU?”

“AH. SPRAYER.”

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE THINGS?!”

“I DON’T KNOW – LOOK! EYES, uh, SOUTH! THERE!”

Tomas guessed where his brother was pointing – the night sky was alight with a pinprick swarm of lights coming from the nearby city, and at what he was hoping was an incredible speed.

“FUCKING FINALLY.

“{Time to target?}”

“[45 Seconds.]”

Zngrer-of-Drgrabgh checked her harness once more as her partner/pilot Szreshnstrst skimmed them low against the ground. They were approaching the [human] homestead in question at near mach-1, so the deceleration was going to hit them fast and hard. Planetary special forces were rarely called out for rescue missions, especially on Gentle Expanse, but considering the fireball that lit up the night sky a few minutes ago, the [Night-Terror]-beasts most likely whipped up into a frenzy. The planet was, well, infested with them, and there was no real way to kill them without damaging the local ecology. Dissuasion and containment were the best ways to go, so…

“[15 seconds.]”

So she and another team were going to swoop in fast and hard, pop floodlights to disorient the dumb beasts, fast-rope down and evac the [humans]. When the dawn broke they could survey and repair the damage, but right now safety was the most important priority.

“[3…2…1… BRACE-]”

Zngrer-of-Drgrabgh gritted her teeth as she was slammed, hard into her harness, her suit cushioning her from just a few of the nearly 30Gs of force her body felt as they went from nearly mach 1 to a standstill over the course of a few yards. The blast of air from their interceptor shuttles scattered most of the swarm, punching a hole wide enough to allow for an exfil. Wordlessly Zngrer-of-Drgrabgh swung the door wide open and fell into the night.

For a few moments she fell into darkness, and then a dazzling light beamed behind her, bathing the devastated homestead in a pure, white light. The two [humans], disoriented, fired up into the air – much to her chagrin, one of the rounds smacked harmlessly into her stomach. With a heavy thud Zngrer landed near one of the [humans], wrapping her forearm firmly but gently around his torso.

She was rewarded with a shotgun-stock strike to the head.

“{CITIZEN, YOU ARE BEING RESCUED.}” She spoke, calmly but with authority. “{PLEASE stop resisting.}”

“[THEY CAN SPEAK NOW, BATTERY-TYPE-A! THEY GOT ME-]”

“[DON’T GO INTO THE LIGHT SMALL-BUT-FORGETFUL! THAT’S HOW THEY GET YOU-]”

Pursing her lips she activated the retrieval winch, and both her and her charge were pulled smoothly into the air. The [human] squirmed in her grip for a few more seconds before going utterly limp, seeming to accept his fate.

“{Don’t worry, [Human]. I’m from the government and I’m here to help- why are you squirming again calm down-}”

Categories
They are Smol Stories

They are Smol – and it’s a Smol World: Chapter 8

“Bokka-bokka-bokka-bok.”

“Bokka-bokka-bokka-bok.”

“Bokka-bokka-bokka-bok-

“Eggsmerelda!” Juan Esteban scolded, looking into the chicken carrier he was pushing out of the transport. He was answered with four flaps of the hen’s wings, before a full-body shake and an inquisitive stare. “Don’t you look at me like that! The pilot did his best.”

“Bok.”

“Nuh! That sinking feeling in your gut isn’t the precursor to something terrible – it’s just feeling this planet’s gravity, Eggsmerelda.”

The hen narrowed her eyes accusingly at her human caretaker, before looking tilting her head to see past him. She didn’t know enough about astrophysics or metaphysics to argue with the human, and figured her time would be best spent providing exposition to the rest of her flock.

Eggsmerelda cast her gaze outside of the livestock carrier to the planet she and all but 4 of her descendants would call home for the rest of time, and clucked softly to herself. Landing Zone 5 of the Human Partition of Silver City was a massive pad, all things considered; roughly 800,000 square feet of landing and unloading area per shuttlecraft, and this was one of 25 such pads that had been erected in a straight line along the border to help ease the flow of goods and personnel down to the surface of [Gentle Expanse]. This entire pad was currently taken up by the Aleman family – the parents, children, their various livestock, seed and starter crops. Juan Esteban, being the youngest child at 7, was put in charge of the more manageable livestock – and there’s nothing more manageable than a chicken in a coop.

“Rrr. Rrrrrr.”

“See? I told you, it’s fine. Papa says that we’ll make you a nice run near the house, and since there are no hawks here we might be able to give you a full acre!”

“Bok.”

“I know!” Juan Esteban agreed, nodding his boyish head sagely. “We have much more space than we did back home.”

“Bok.”

“Hmm?” Juan Esteban said, looking over to one of the elevator booths. The Landing Zone pads weren’t at ground level; They were the “rooftops” of various purpose-built complexes that would eventually manage the transfer of packages, immigrants and tourists to and from the surface. Right now, as they were mostly half-built, the Landing Zone pads and buildings were more …multipurpose. Anything from keeping sheep in (what would eventually be) basketball court to housing in the frequent flyer’s lounge was allowed, as long as it was temporary. The elevators themselves were a little more than half-built, but just barely; nothing more than part of the actual pad that would sink down to the lower levels, and a pop-up guardrail to corral the goods in transit from falling off the side. Currently standing on one of the elevators was a group of real life aliens-

Juan Esteban basically vibrated with excitement.

“Bok.”

No. I’m goin’ over and saying hi!”

“Bok.”

“Oh COME ON. It’ll be ok!”

“…Bok.”

“Look, Papa won’t know!”

“Papa won’t know what?” Ricardo said, smiling softly as his youngest damn near jumped out of his skin.

“H-How did you-”

“Whenever children get really quiet, that’s when you know something is wrong. Besides, you should listen to Eggsmerelda – she’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

“Bok.” Eggsmerelda said quietly in agreement.

Juan Esteban turned bright red, wrapping his arms around his torso and staring at his feet in utter embarassment. “H-How long-”

“Long enough, son. You’re not the only one who talks to the animals, yanno.” Ricardo stated, gently patting Juan Esteban on the head. “You don’t really grow out of it, and they do listen.”

Juan Esteban mumbled something half-audible in response, the encouraging clucking of Eggsmerelda not helping to pull him out of his funk. Ricardo sighed, then pushed his son slightly on the back towards the elevator. “Come on, we might as well see what they want.”

“Really?!”

“Mmm. And you’re not going alone. Besides, it’s always good manners to meet the neighbors.”

The elevator was bright, airy, and built to human standards – which is a nice way of saying it was open-air, windswept and very slow.

“[No, but seriously.]” Ik’itili said, ruffling her feathers slightly in worry before fussing them all back into place under her vest. “[What if we learned the truth?]”

“[I really really really don’t think that’s the case.]” Swipressnssren said, curling his tail back in on itself in a casual non-threatening rest position. “[If anything it was a bored warmcuddle who accidentally got lost on the GalNet and stumbled into the server.]”

“[But he was saying things-]”

“[Warmcuddles tend to do that.]” Swipressnssren responded coyly, earning him a bap with a feathered arm. He repositioned his sash, tucking the city guides’ standard issue tablet under his arm while doing so. “[Seriously, though. I don’t think that he was giving us the unedited truth-]”

“[Deepest Lore is what he called it – the secrets behind the secrets!]” Ik’itili chirped, giving a little full-body wiggle. “[What if he accidentally gave us the answers to perfect cross-species communication!? What if we’re able to be the best guides ever – Team, what if we can put it in a book and get it published?! We’d be famous-]”

“[We haven’t even met our first warmcuddle yet – in the flesh, I mean.]”

“[Hard light training dummies are basically little-needs-protectings-]”

“[That’s speciest.]” Ngruzren-of-Arzgr growled, grinning as he adjusted his leisure outfit, absentmindedly running a claw through his mane. “[And I’m reporting both of you for illegal fraternization with a tiny-chomper.]”

“[[John Madden] is more than a little-needs-protecting, Ngruzren. He’s eternal.]”

“[I have checked at least 15 times – there is no church of the touchdown, and the sacred playbook doesn’t exi-]”

The three of them tensed internally as the elevator began to slow down further – if you could believe such a thing – the top of the landing pad slowly inching towards eye-level.

“[I could jump it.]”

“[No.]”

“[M’ could.]” Ik’itili grinned, squatting. “[It’s just a little hop, really.]”

“[I’ll pluck your tailfeathers as you jump.]” Threatened Swipressnssren, smiling as they crested the floor. “[Now stand up already and act professional. We’re about to make introductions.]”

“[Fiiiiiine.]” Cooed Ik’itili, standing up and stretching her legs. “[But only because I’m the most professional of us all.]”

As the trio rose from the depths of the building and into the light, they looked around curiously; arrayed in a semicircle around the fat, bulky landing craft were all manner of cages, boxes and crates – most of them looking utilitarian and multipurpose in use and design. Every few crates would be broken up by a cage holding some exotic dirt animal – some were easily identifiable from the shared Human media; those over there were horses, that one – a cow. Some were utterly alien to the group, their purposes only guessed at. A cacophony of animal noises would every so often be blown towards them on the wind, before abruptly changing course and becoming almost mute. The elevator floor connected with the floor of the landing pad with an audible thunk, magnetic locks snapping into place. The movement apparently caught the attention of one of the offloaders, and eventually a trio of humans began to wobble their way over.

“[The song begins. Or as [John] would say – around folk be woke.]”

“[Damnit, Ngruzren, not you too.]”

“Ah.”

Ricardo was the patriarch of the Aleman family, and as such had a certain swagger to his walk. That swagger ended about halfway to the elevator once he got a really good look at the aliens waiting for him, and was altogether a distant memory once the size disparity was put into stark contrast. His son, Juan Esteban, went from eagerly power-walking before his daddy to standing beside him to now almost being pushed forward from the side.

“D-dad-”

“N-now now. They’re… they’re nice. A bit more… more than the holos, but. We trained for this.”

“Iunwanna-”

“It’ll be fine.”

Both Ricardo and Juan Esteban jumped slightly as Luciana had the audacity to… walk beside them for the past few moments. “Really though. They look aggressive, but it’s fine.”

“Mmm. I just… can’t read ‘em.” Ricardo murmured, voice low with worry.

“You… do realize you can just talk to them, right?”

“[Hello [Humans]!]” The giant werewolf bellowed, waving an arm like a treetrunk in a close-enough approximation of a greeting.

“See?” Luciana said, half-laughing as she waved back. “Besides, we’re far too deep in now to get cold feet – HELLO!” she called out, leading her family forward. “Pleasure to meet you!”

“[Greetings! I am greetings, and it is nice to meet you.]” The mountain of a beast said, ears perked forward.

“Oh! I uh. The pleasure is all ours! I’m Luciana, and this is my father Ricardo and my youngest brother, Juan Esteban – who is… hiding behind dad’s legs because he’s shy.”

The giant raptor knelt down, tilting it’s head to the side. “[I can help you hide better if you’d like!]” it beamed, and Juan’s grip on his father’s leg began to cut off circulation.

“T-that’s alright. What’s your names?” Ricardo grimaced, attempting to keep his demeanor through his child’s death-grip.

“[I’m Hello! And this is Welcome!]” the raptor motioned with a free arm to the giant snake, who dipped it’s head. “[Though, seeing as how this is our first meeting and calibration, it might make sense to pick new names for us!]”

“Oh! Uh, we can do that?”

“[Certainly! The names you give us will be logged by our implants and propagated out to every new human we meet. We will also do the same for you, if you don’t mind.]” The raptor screech-sang softly, it’s head remaining level with Juan Esteban’s while it’s body moved.

“Um.”

“[Could you say your name for calibration?]”

Everyone turned to little Juan Esteban, whose whole world was nothing but his father’s back.

“It’s… Juan. Juan Esteban.” Ricardo answered, his hand reaching back to assuredly pat his child on the shoulder.

“[Juan Juan Esteban.]”

“No, just Juan Esteban.”

“[Just Juan Esteban.]” the raptor said, without an ounce of confusion but a pinch of playfulness.

“Juan Esteban!” The child protested loud enough to finally be heard, not moving from his father’s side.

“[Hello Juan Esteban! What would you like to name me?]”

The child – for the first time since they got within earshot – peeked around his parent. “W-what?”

“[You can name me! What would you like to call me – my name is-]”

And then the raptor sang.

“[- but you can call me what you want.]”

“Um. Uh. Wh.. Ah.”

The boy stuttered for a few moments, staring down the unblinking and oddly kind monster before him as it swayed from side to side-

“W-wiggles?”

The raptor stopped moving, the wolf-bear looked away suddenly and the snake seemed to bite it’s lip. Using such a common word meant that it was perfectly translated over, so there was no mistaking or masking the name.

“[Wiggles.]”

“Yeah?”

The Karnakian looked up at the human patriarch with a deadpan expression. “[Wiggles.]”

“Ah-hh…” Ricardo grinned, shrugging, As Luciana started to lose it as silently as she could. “I mean… you did ask a child to name you.”

“[Wiggles.]” Wiggles the Karnakian said, looking back at her teammates.

“[Well, Wiggles, let’s not monopolize their time any longer than we should!]” The giant snake – Jornissian – said, bowing slightly. “[Although, I would prefer to be named something a bit more… mature.]”

“And uh, how do you say your name?”

And the snake purred.

“Uh… Persimmon? It’s a fruit that we cultivate, very sweet.”

“[Persimmon. Sure, thank you. And your name?]”

“Ricardo Aleman.”

“[Ricardo Aleman. It is a pleasure to meet you, Ricardo Aleman.]”

“L-likewise.”

Finally, the giant bear-wolf stepped forward, giving a gentle bow to Luciana. “[And what is your name?]”

“Luciana Aleman.”

“[Luciana. It’s a pleasure.]” and the wolf-bear – a Dorarizin – held out it’s hand in a very human-like greeting.

“Oh!” Luciana beamed, and gave a half-curtsy before reaching out and gripping the alien’s hand in a firm-for-a-human grip. “The pleasure is all mine!”

Luciana smiled wide, and remembering his training, Ngruzren-of-Arzgr mimicked the gesture – a light blush across his features.

They both tensed as there was a slip, and a decoupling. The alien facial gesture of a human “smile” working muscles in ways that usually aren’t moved in such a way. There was a loud plink, and a slight scattering of enamel-on-metal.

Ngruzren-of-Arzgr’s prosthetic lay on the ground between them.

“I uh…”

Luciana looked down and then back up at the frozen alien. If she had taken the more advanced orientation classes she would’ve known the look of utter mortification that was on Ngruzren’s features, but the thousand-yard stare was enough. She pulled her hand out of the Dorarizins’ and bent down, picking up the hefty implant.

“T.. I think this is yours.” She said quietly, placing it in his hand.

“[. . .]”

The two trios looked at each other for a few eternities, frozen in collective embarrassment until there was a fierce cough that snapped everyone out of their horrified reverie. Materializing between them both was a small, oval woman, and she immediately commanded everyone’s attention.

“I am Isabella Fransisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz y Aleman. You may call me Abuela. And we will call you Tipo.”

Tipo closed his mouth, a stormfront of dark emotion covering his face. Abuela received only a nod of recognition for her interruption, and she sighed.

“Well, there’s nothing to be done for it. Come on – Juan, get your mother.” Isabella stated matter-of-factly, and the youngest child scampered off as ordered. “Ricardo and the boys will unload, stable and transport what needs to be done. Myself, Mi Luzita and Sofia will join you for a tour of the city, and that will be that. Now.”

The small and arguably frail woman took the Dorarizin’s paw and began to ‘lead’ him away in a way that was more suggestion than anything else. “Come, come. We will fix this, come.”

Wiggles and Persimmon looked at each other and then back at Luciana, who shrugged and clapped her hands a couple times, attempting to break the spell. “I uh… yeah! So. Sun’s setting, what’s good to do at night around here?”

“[Well…… we have some very nice [human]-friendly shopping we could take you to. The sun won’t rise for another 15 hours, so you have plenty of time to see what you want to see. We could also try some of the [human]-friendly restaurants and cafes, if you’d like?]”

“I think that would be great! Um. What’s good around here?”

“[Well, there are some places that serve caffeine, which might be useful if you’d like to spend a few hours out – or if you just want to get something quick and then head back to the unloading dock…]”

And so Luciana made small talk, soon joined by her mother Sofia who had some suggestions of her own. Eventually the addition of having someone who missed the recent unpleasentness and the momentum of excited conversation soon smoothed over the awkward start to the evening, and as a group they “boarded” the elevator and began the slow, safe ride down.

And for the entire ride Abuela sat in Tipo’s lap, singing softly as she was cradled gently by his arms.

Together, they descended into the blue-lit city below.

Categories
Stories They are Smol

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.

Categories
They are Smol Stories

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

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]

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[USER ACTIVITY]

[Poet of Stars][ACTIVE]

[Best_at_Tech][DORMANT]

[Stole_yo_girl_and_dumped_her][JOINED]

[dramdrunk][OFFLINE]

[MEGAMEGAMEGA][OFFLINE]

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= = =

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 ==

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[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]

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[BbBbBbBbBbBbBbBbBbB][DORMANT]

[BURNING_MAN][DORMANT]

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= = =

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.