Space Lord Omega - Transmission One

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Reader Reviews:

“That looks awesome.” –Billy Day, freelance astrophysicist

“So glad you’re making this btw.” –Thom Dixon, sapient computer

“A much-needed testimony of intergalactical proportions” –“Fat” Louie, diplomat

“This barely qualifies as literature.” –R. Lauthor, literature major

Please, just stop reading this book.

Billy, You’re not going to believe this for a second, but I didn’t write this book. You know all those times I’d start freewriting during T.V. shows and you’d wonder if I was in my right mind because I’d write so intensely? Well, turns out, it was all a waste of time. I may have found my first novel, and I didn’t have to write a word, except for this. The other day, I was heading to the brewery after work, and some groudy guy with a tan trench coat was sitting outside yelling at people. But I noticed he was trying to give them something, and when I walked up, I realized it was a thick, sealed manila envelope. Naturally, I wonder why he’s trying to give small children and elderly people this package, so I walk up and ask him what’s inside. Crazy-eyed, gazing deep into my soul with a crack-addict stare and Einstein hair, he berates me because he holds the transmissions to a top-level government project. A single computer running a then-experimental release of seti@home, he says, from a NASA project cluster in Cape Canaveral back in the late seventies, was the first system to catch some weird transmissions on a nonstandard frequency band, and when the guy reported them, the military found the source wasn’t of this world. Since then, NASA had investigated the extraterrestrial signals with profound rigor, and seti@home has become one of the most successful computing projects for astronomy researchers and bombshelter schizoids alike. But not like me, he says. He was part of a secret military cryptography project, the same one which decrypted the Russian nuclear missile launch codes and remotely erupted the hidden ICBMs underneath Chernobyl – total accident, he said. His department spent the better part of the eighties capturing all messages from this obscure frequency band, four transmissions in total. Since then, his team has exhausted all their resources and funding into decrypting and re-translating. He said most of them decrypted to an archaic English, real Caucher-style nonsense, but crudely mixed with ancient Sanskrit, Latin, and Chinese. It was, he said, as if someone were able to speak many languages at once, to someone who also understood all those languages at once. Or, perhaps, like someone were listening to world languages over time, and never really understood where once language died and the next one began. So, I asked, if this document is so important, why are you giving this away? And he tells me it’s because the message is too radical for our world leaders to accept. They already erased paper trails of funding and burned his department. He crawled through the burning wreckage to retrieve it. But they wanted these transmissions destroyed. Why? I asked. He said, it contains the secrets to escaping our decaying planet. At our current rate, we’ll murder our mother planet before our grandchildren’s grandchildren have a chance to. But if the government acknowledged any truth in this,

he said, they would have to completely reshape their policies, their initiatives, and all modes of social control which follow from it. And despite our interconnectedness with every civilization in the entire world, the human species just isn’t ready to rethink its own existence. I am looking, he said, for one who understands the value in this message. One who values the human race. For one who will spread this message, not for selfish intent, but because its word must be spread. If YOU are that one, then, by all means, take this, and spread this word. I grabbed the package and almost dropped it. It felt heavier than it looked. He said, take this, read these words, and prepare yourself for what happens next. What happens next? I asked. And he looked at me like a wounded animal. “What happens next will shock you.”

SPACE LORD OMEGA

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS SEALED BY THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

PLEASE SHRED AFTER USING

TRANSMISSION ONE – LUNACY

[TRAN S M I S SI O N O N E B EG I N . . . ] Header report to Cluster Democracy Mu: Interrogator,Xorb11: Interrogated,Space_Lord_Omega: Locale,Orbiter_Ser-1_Suborbiter-A: Comments,Document sent with high status and minimum security. Transmission is the sole property of Diplomat Fat Louie: End header file . . . Begin transmission body . . . XORB: Please confirm identity for the record of the courts: your legal name is Space Lord Omega. SPACE_LORD_OMEGA: Just Space Lord. X: Legally, you still retain the epithet. S: Legally, there are no other space lords anymore. X: The courts may overlook your sanity. In any case, intergalactic protocol dema-S: Demands that an interrogator perform one final interview before judgment is placed, even though judgment has already been placed. I know the law. X: I am programmed to remind you that everything you say will be used against you. S: Put it on the record, shithead. X: You are in little position to aggravate hostility. In the eyes of this galaxy, your actions remain unforgivable. You forget that your court is composed of those species whose leaders you slaughtered. S: It wasn’t slaughter. X: It isn’t my place to argue. I am only required to purvey your testimony to the intergalactical council – S: Which no longer exists. X: It exists, but in a temporary form. S: A disconnected democracy without an objective isn’t really a government at all. X: Again, my purpose is not to argue...What is that? Ah, a projectile weapon, how quaint...does it make you feel better to fire it?

S: Yep. X: Let the record show that Space Lord Omega – S: Space Lord – X: – takes great pleasure in exercising weapons, no matter how ineffective or nonsensical. S: Must be signs of cognitive disconnect and pleasurable aggression. X: LET THE COURT RECORDS VERIFY THIS FIRSTHAND STATEMENT. Shake your head all you want, virus, but it changes nothing. And now, if you are quite ready, we must begin this interview. S: I don’t understand where my testimony begins. X: I am required only to listen to your testimony. The council will piece together the sequence of events. I am required only to listen to the events themselves. S: Then help me remember, because I have forgotten. X: The courts will evaluate your psychological statu-S: I’m kidding. X: Perhaps we shall start with your governance strategies on this orbiter. How are you governing the virus culture of Ser-1? You pledged to either steer them into intelligence, or usher them into their own demise. Have any of them even gained the intelligence to know you? S: One time. Two guys. Real thick suits. X: And when they saw you, did you profess the awe of the galaxy? S: They saw me and ran away. X: And have you seen any others since? S: Nope. X: Not even with your communications radar? S: I’m using it, but since I can’t make terrestrial contact, it’s just short of worthless. I’m learning their languages, though. X: You promised to govern. S: When they’re ready. You can’t just force people to become intelligent. I also can’t get down to their planet. So, I send them messages to help. X: The governed do not know they are being governed?

S: Isn’t that the highest form of governance? X: No matter. The courts will evaluate its effectiveness. I need only your testimony. You may begin with what you remember, but also remember, this will decide your life or death, so I am programmed to remind you: be wise with the events that you purvey. . .

( THE ORIGINAL PAGE OF THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS DESTROYED DURING A HIGH-ENERGY PARTICLE SHOWER )

Chapter 1 – Space Lord Space Lord awakens in orbit around Earth. Plates of metal drift around him, unaware of the fragile man inside the skintight astrosuit whom they avoid. Through an infinite void of silence, he hears the echoes, the shrieks of the planet, the groggy final screams of a species that kept itself blindfolded. Icy sweat beads down his damp forehead. He so wishes he were back asleep. He looks up, and in a blur, feels the scraps of his cruiser’s shredded hull drifting around him. A few taps on his wrist, and a light blinks amber. SYSTEMS OFFLINE blinks at the top corner of his visor. He reaches for his comm system, but nothing responds to his signal. He swipes his fingers across the wristpad, but his wing-jets creak, and metal jerks and groans on his back. I’m dead. As he flips, the sees the drifting top half of his cruiser, sparking. Black tubes spew out coolant and fuel, which streak across the sky like an aurora. Space Lord takes deep breaths to slow his breathing. Too much anxiety, and you lose oxygen, you pass out, and that’s it. His breathing slows, and his heart rate slows, but pounds even harder than before. You can control your breathing, but you can’t control the thoughts that run through your head. I’m alone. Memory blurs the faces of the few people he ever cared about back on his home planet. The girl he left behind, who used to smile and laugh. His lucrative career. The many diverse people whom he met by going out in public, and saying, what’s your story? You can find happiness in the least happy of places; and when you can’t find it, you can always make it. And you look back and realize, those few times someone has ever tried to make you happy, it was never happiness, but luck – just luck. Those people are once-in-a-lifetime. And you were lucky to have met them. And this is the result of luck, he thinks. Silver waves ripple across the top corner of his visor. He taps on his helmet to receive the transmission. REPAIR MODULE OUT… REPAIR MODULE OUT…PLEASE WAIT… A black spot drifts from the

wreckage of his spacecruiser and fades into view. Two metallic wings surround a very rounded block, and beneath those, two clamp-like arms, and four red cameras. They stand face-to-face. The helper and his master. And suddenly, Space Lord realizes just how terrifying it is to stare at something that’s about to give his its life. MODULES DOWN: WING-JETS (error 172) – LOW OXYGEN (error 70) – SUIT PRESSURE [ok] scroll down on the visor terminal window. The repair drone’s arms detach its driftwings, strapped to it like it would a human being. It gently places it around Space Lord’s back and waist. A tube attaches to the suit’s oxygen port, and he begins to breathe more steadily. REPAIRS COMPLETE. The red light in the drones eyes fade, and it begins to drift in space, becomes one with the forgotten satellites which drift around the blue celestial body. If the drones are still online, the android might still be operational, but buried in the wreckage. He swipes the wings to streak formation, and the thin metallic turbines whirr, and stretch out beside him. Behind planet Earth, the sun barely rises over the planet that eclipses it. His wings glisten in the hidden light. And as he begins his ascent, the maroon lights from the moon-sized Godship descend before him.

Chapter 2 – Godship The first step on the metal platform clanged and resonated throughout the entire arena, and with its sound, the roars of millions of Councilors who littered the walls. In every language, you’ll find something that resembles a threat against your life. After being captured, the Sentinels had sliced him out of his jumpsuit and confiscated his wings. Before representatives from every species in the known galaxy, he stood only in his replica underwear, while two Centurions slammed the blunt side of their stun-swords into his spine. In the Godship, the enemies of the Deity are forcibly exposed. He walked barefoot across the four-mile-long steel bridge which led toward the pulpit. Space Lord looked below. His eyes followed the pipes as they spiraled down to the lower pit, the core of the generator manifold. The amber glow, the grinding and slow spinning of mile-long cogs, he knew he stood far away from the abyss; and yet the walkway itself still warmed the calloused balls of his feet with every step. As he approached the pulpit, he heard the High Archon gently slam his fist on the holopanel, like an anemic reaching for a lost toy. In waves, the roars of the audience died down. He stood before the Sestarchy, the Holy Six, who represent all species, all voices, all deities. These six Gorbacheks, they all came from the same planet; yet the universe is told that they decide all penultimate decisions, as their place in this troubled universe is second only to the Deity itself. Each of them devoured some exotic animal prepared by the galaxy’s finest chef. The Gorbacheks, with their massive, flubbery, pink-leather flesh, require constant eating to accommodate for their spontaneous asexual reproductive system. The least fat part of them is their skulls, from which skin droops and folds upon their bodies, with every aspect of their being covered in even thicker folds. Seven pale eyes, no pupils, stick out of hollow eyesockets, but their species, originating from the depths of a sea-planet, had lost the ability to see millenia ago. The speakers of the Universal Deity had never had the faculty of eyesight to begin with. The Holy Six placed down their appetizers. Bone and gelatin-meat drooled and slid down flabby lips. Their mouths watered for the real main course – the taste

of human flesh. “Sheathe your saliva!” one quietly demanded, “we are ascended above these primal impulses.” “Alas, Highest Archon, his stench permeates my sense of taste.” The tip of a wide tongue barely stuck out as he licked his two lips. “Perhaps the councilors shall dictate his fate–” “The counselors’ voice is ours. The voice of the universe is our own. Thus, order must prevail, and legal procedures must avail our every action, for we alone set the universal example.” Each Archon sat five stories taller than the human. When Space Lord was expected to bow, he chose to stand. A wide-eyed Archon gargled fluids in a deep voice. High Archon set his translator’s SYNTAX function to max gain. “Human! He who lost his name, and demands the epithet of ‘Space Lord’ – who demands this even in the face of greater lords – you alone are faced with accusations of the highest magnitude. “You, who spread the parasite, the human race, wherever they rejected servitude; you, who led the brutal slaughter of the pigs;” behind him, the squeal of thousands rang within his ears, “you, whom higher creatures took to care, who looked at you with any sense of satisfaction, blessed you with a holy title, representative of Earth. Enlighten us: what say you, Lord, when faced with every creature in the universe demanding that we lead you to a speedy execution?” Space Lord spit against the walkway, and said, “bite my dick.” The Archons flinched back, and with a contemptuous grimace, revealed their empty gums. Having never evolved the need to bite, it is the greatest offense in Gorbacheknian culture to make any comment about teeth. Gorbacheks consume nutrients by stretching themselves wide, and the bulbous gland which secretes acid is left to break down its prey, until it can be slurped in gelatinous puddles. Their faces retained the sneer, like a pack of cornered, toothless wolverines ready to attack. His unchanged back-sized tattoo of Henry Kissinger winced professionally at the galaxy. “The voice of God is calling for your death. Behold! And view his awesome strength!” The Archons all looked down. “Our God, the Dragon – mighty

Yahweh – fuels and powers our campaign against your small rebellion. We who harness holy fire shall, without a pause, eviscerate the last remaining human in our galaxy, and rid our home of every sin inherent in your kind, the deadly sin inherent in the parasite!” Applause echoed throughout the chamber, and High Archon smiled, revealing his pink gums to every known sapient creature in existence. He raised his hand to still the crowd as soon as their chanting was dying down. “When our Sentinels destroyed your ship, and raided it of valuables, we found your friend – the android, Mercury – devoid of all intelligence, his memories the subject to a cleanse. The interface to your technology, your ‘A.N.G.E.L.’, we have locked within our vaults. How now! the heretic defies us with no creature in the universe in his defense!” The audience cried out agiain, and were quieted as they began to quiet down. “But, our God is not devoid of mercy. Even to the enemy, he’ll let you have your final say. Speak now! And speak the truth, for we are listening. “Tell us, fleshy parasite, what you remember as your final thoughts…” Sweating from the radiating heat, Space Lord stopped gnawing on his lip, and tasted blood. Bearing the weight of a universal, all-encompassing conviction, he felt, for the first time in his life, his eyes grow heavy. So he shut them tight.

Chapter 3 – a.k.a. Rodney Kelly Flash of a camera, and your eyes dart wide open. Behind a phone, a girl forcibly smiles and says, “nice one!” The young man in the photo still hasn’t turned around. Her eyes wander for some part of the Mayan ruins that she missed before, mentally testing any hidden aspect that would make a good picture, and decides there isn’t anything worth photographing here. The guy in front of her studied the alien inscriptions carefully, and she couldn’t figure out just what he was reading amongst stones and symbols. Although he would never say it, he had no idea what he was staring at, either. Once upon a time, in 2017, Space Lord wasn’t called Space Lord by anyone. Back then, he had been called Rodney. Rodney Kelly. Rodney was content with a quiet life. On Earth, Rodney wrote speeches for politicians. Every time you watched a political leader sway the public towards his side, you were listening to pure Rodney Kelly. Every word. Every appeal to your sense of right and wrong. Every tear-jerking prod against your heart. Every nostalgic axiom from your local mayor. President.

Every Governor. Every

Every time a politician won a seat in office, they had Rodney Kelly to thank. Politicians paid mind to either use Rodney’s work exactly as he wrote it, or to not read it at all. Over time, and they never admitted it, but politicians understood that an intangible, supernatural power resonated in every word of his speeches. On one occasion, the previous Governor of Alabama read from Rodney’s recent modern poem, titled in the archives as “Ain’t Yer Guns,” to bring the state to an ear-ringing applause. But the Governor used verses out of context to convey a message that supported his personal agenda. That night, a large riot from the erupted in the farmlands, and the entire city of Mobile, Alabama was found completely abandoned the next morning – an entire population gone. Newscasters reported on the Alabama ruins, and the social phenomena was never fully explained Rodney led politicians to success because he understood how to work with

people. He understood that people in his world desired validation. He would call his waiters and baristas by their names – and he remembered it to an uncanny degree. One trick to a person’s heart: call them by their name, and never forget it. He also understood unifying principles. Instead of relying on topics that tear people apart, Rodney saw value in issues that brought people together. He dedicated his life – through the politicians who read his work – to bringing people together for common goals. Originally, Rodney wanted to work in politics, but desired far too much the desire to say something meaningful. While politicians were networking, Rodney was studying effective and brilliant historic speeches. By his senior year, his undergraduate speech on fecal matter in university cafeteria food moved the entire student body to tears, and they issued reforms for every kitchen on campus. Sadly, when he graduated, he had no political networks on which to build a career. When he learned he could make money off his writing, he withdrew his face from the political arena, and in exchange, offered his voice. If Rodney Kelly had ran for president, he would have lost – only because the party would have looked at him and said, “who is that?” For about three years, Rodney lived by himself. He lived in a town where he had no friends. He had dated and loved a girl for years, but he rarely ever saw her because she always committed to events with others; consequently, she never made time for a relationship. Rodney began to evaluate his text-only relationship as tantamount to a second job and unpaid labor. He tried talking, but she only used conversation as a replacement for action. He stopped talking, and she got upset because she craved conversation. When he said, we need a break, they got back together the next day, talked things out, and Eve said, I’ll make time to spend with you. So he waited for her. By the end of the month, they hadn’t seen each other in three weeks. Rodney contented himself with a quiet life. He started drinking out of boredom. When Rodney Kelly drinks, he slowly loses his filter. Now, the important thing about him is that alcohol doesn’t change him; it only removes the filter from his

stream-of-conscious thought processes. He says the first things that come to his mind, no matter how real or imaginary. He says them, and expounds on them, and repeats them, until finally he regains his senses. The next morning, he realizes he actually said nothing meaningful at all. Then, he goes back to speechwriting, or writing texts to his girlfriend, every word crafted with the grace and articulation of a textual artisan. One day, Rodney Kelly woke up, and he realized that he spent his entire life writing the same things over and over again. He felt an absence – not bitterness, or spite, or contempt. For the first time, Rodney Kelly felt pure boredom with the world in which he lived. He was ready to say something new. This whole thing got started, a lifetime ago on Earth, with two words: “Fuck. This.”

Chapter 4 – Sacrificial Sinkhole For some people, he thought, Mother Earth is far too limiting. We claw our way to freedom as one waking from a dream. When we rest, phantasms overwhelm our senses. And then we wake up. *

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When Rodney and his girlfriend separated, he felt complete freedom for the first time in his life. He threw out the picture frames of he and his ex, and set on the coffee table a first draft for a speech persuading the American public in favor of increasing oil refineries. He found an opening to the universe, and decided to climb through. Rodney Kelly could go anywhere he wanted. He decided, on a whim, to visit the Mayan ruins – the only place on Earth he ever deigned to visit. So he bought two tickets, packed his backpack, and he left his life behind. While at the ruins, a girl tried to sell him a picture of himself, but he turned her away. Looking around at the forest, Rodney felt at home with the crippled pyramid at Chichen Itza. Ages ago, the Mayans built their pyramids in the middle of the forests, and the entire network of their culture traveled through them. They worshipped their gods, and sacrificed their people, so their lives continued as normal, untouched by plague, famine, and death. Remove its people, and the gateways to enlightenment decay in isolation. Now, only tourists visit these places, and most of them just come to see the sights. Few of them ever try to see a glimpse of the dead culture’s values; and even the enlightened never really know the story. One civilization’s religion becomes the next one’s entertainment.

As he ventured down a hundred steps, and passed the petrified carvings of nameless feathered serpents, Rodney walked towards the Sacred Cenote, the natural pool of water by the pyramid. When the Earth above the underground rivers breaks open, a cenote forms. Ancient Mayans viewed sinkholes with religious reverence.

At the turn of the 20th century, divers explored the bottom; through murky waters, they found the bottom fractured, like a broken glass plate. In the openings, they found a wealth of ritual objects. Golden swords. Jade jewelry. And a sea of human bones. According to their texts, the Mayans sacrificed humans to the storm god, Chaahk. Chaahk controls the rains, and your crops need rain. Chaahk sends floods and lightning when he’s angry. You try to keep Chaahk happy so he doesn’t kill you and everyone you love. Sometimes, that means killing someone. The cost of life is life. Everyone goes on like nothing ever happened.

While the skies bled orange, Rodney set his bag down on the pyramid steps, pulled out a tall bottle of Scotch whisky, and took a swig. Later, he went out to the Cantina for a drink. He went out with a girl and her friend; but he drank too much too quickly, and drowning in alcohol, wouldn’t shut up about some guys who were checking her out. She screamed incoherently in a language he didn’t understand, and began walking away. When he followed her, she started flirting with the bouncer; flexing his Anubis machismo, he barked in Spanish and pointed towards the door. So he left, and found himself dead in the middle of a city he didn’t know, surrounded by a congregation of people whom he didn’t understand. Outside, he caught a final glimpse of the girl, and she was still flirting with the bouncer, like nothing ever happened. He sat alone against the brick building. Severance was his liberation. Freedom from judgment. Freedom from culture. Freedom from people. True liberty implies isolation. “ique el hombre blanco se ha convertido públicamente borracho!” Rodney looked up after he heard the crier; he understood the cacophonous idiom — which translates literally to: “he is drunk!” The police officers pointed with their batons before they started walking towards him.

Every line from history’s archive of culture-shaping speeches blended together in a lexicon cocktail sloshing around in his head. Even if he found the right words, Rodney spoke practically no Spanish. Persuasive speeches only work in languages you understand. Rodney would likely die in Mexican prison. He shook his head. And that’s when the officer’s skull popped.

Chapter 5 – Drug Lord When was the last time you watched a bullet pop someone’s head like a pimple? Hopefully your answer is “never.” When the officer fell limp, and his severed skull streaked stains of brain and bone against the concrete, his teammate looked around, gun in both hands, trying find the source. And after a few moments, his comrade fell, too. If you were standing outside, the crowd would have deafened you. A truck rushed into the street, and in the bed, three men stood up with automatic rifles and jumped out. Bandanas covered their mouths as they shouted to one another in abrasive Spanish. Streetlights glistened upon their aviator sunglasses. Rodney, still drunk, now struggled to find clarity in the nightmare. A couple of people tried assailing the attackers, and were mowed down immediately. Muffled cries and pedestrians shouting “La Velada!” felt like the plotline to a bad dream. He struggled to stand. Avoiding legal persecution led him to a bloodbath of survival. Still better than jail, he thought. As he stumbled to run, something pulled him back and covered his face. Everything went black, and the butt of a rifle cracked over his head. *

*

*

A bucket of ice water splashed over his face, and he woke up in a panic. In a dark room with only one light, he saw the shilouettes of two armed men wearing their signature midnight sunglasses. In front of him sat a man wearing a military commander’s field outfit. His cigarette burned bright orange. “Do you know where you are, mang?” Asked the commander with a thick accent. Rodney shook his head, no. “You are the guest of La Velada.” “Wait, whose family?” He asked. The commander spit at his face. “FUCK you, mang. I know you heard of us. We’re the largest cartel in this side of Mexico. And I am the world-renowned drug lord, El Matador.”

Rodney shook his head. “You’ve got the wrong client. I don’t do drugs.” El Matador took a drag of his cigarete and grimaced. “Did you hit your head, puta? You ain’t here for no business. You ain’t here for no fun. You, you’re collateral.” He put out the butt-end just by Rodney’s ear. “We know all about you, ese. Rodney fucking Kelly. Big-shot American speechwriter. We been tracking you using our GPS satellite since you got here.” He pushed the bridge of his glasses up, and Rodney stared at his own reflection. “You a big friend of them government officials, hombre. We read your speeches. We saw what happened in Alabama. You got some talent, eh? Yeah, the president, we know he’ll be calling you for his next big speech. He’ll want you back. Your people, they might not know you, or what you do for them, they might not give a damn if you come back — but your politicians, yeah, they know your power. And if they want order with their people, they gotta pay the price we put on your head.” Two mirrored lenses reflected, double-vision, a man who broke into a wide smile. Despite the sobering experience, Rodney still felt lost in an alcohol delerium, and began to laugh. El Matador grimaced again. “Why the fuck you laughin’ at, mang?” Rodney’s chuckling slowed. “It’s not you. I was just thinking — this is not the worst place to be.” El Matador turned his head to the side. “Honestly, the last thing I want is to go back to my people. “But you’ve got an upper hand with me here, so let’s to talk about your people. This thing you’ve got going on – of sending your squads of people into cities and killing civilians like packs of wild dogs – how’s that working out for you?” El Matador flushed red and gritted his teeth. “I ain’t gotta explain–” “It’s not working out, right? Consider this for a second. Killing civilians fosters resentment. When the common people hate you, they reject you, and when you turn your back, they fight for the first person who shows up and says they’re the people’s hero. It’s an amateur mistake. “You mean well – I know you’re just an honest businessman trying to get by – but you’d rn into far fewer issues if you found a diplomatic solution. Winning the hearts and minds of people is hard. You need someone with experience in persuasive speech. So here’s a better offer than money: you subcontract me to quell those social insurgencies.” El Matador sat for a second before he snapped his fingers. One of the guards

punched Rodney in the stomach as everyone left.

What felt like hours passed before the door creaked open and Rodney faced the drug lord again. El Matador pulled a chair in front of the prisoner and removed his glasses. One stoic eye pierced into the soul of Rodney; his lazy right-eye rolled around and gazed at the floor. He dropped the cigarette and stepped on it. “Speechwriting, huh?” He asked, with one eye staring at a cockroach. Rodney nodded. “We got a job for you, mang. You do good, and you on our staff full-time. You remember that shit that killed Prince?” Rodney raised an eyebrow. “Fen-ta-nyl. Is like cheap heroin. You Americans love sitting around doing nothing all day and don’t care nothing about what’s rotting your brains. You ever try this shit, mang? It killed Prince – La Regicida, we call it. We profit way more than we would by selling heroin; is too expensive in these tough economic times.” His lazy eye rolled to the side. “Them people in Massachusetts, mang, they love doping out to this stuff; but I always say, the cartels, we just in a different kind of opiate delirium. Is the drug that motivates us, providers and users alike.” El Matador explained the situation. A rival gang member infiltrated a rural city within the fentanyl-distribution network, and managed to persuade the people against the selling of la regicida. The rival member convinced the people that crack was a far more ethical solution to drug abuse. Within a week, production of la regicida tanked, and their financial graphs pointed towards rock-bottom. Even though La Velada infiltrated and publicly executed the subverter, the people were won over to his side, and began to publicly protest the production of regicita in favor of crack. Originally, the cartel’s lieutenants began to plan a massacre of the protesters’ chief organizers and negotiators. But instead of parading their military-grade trucks and killing any dissenters, El Matador saw this as an opportunity to build relationships between his community and their drug lords. “I read this book one time about success strategies for small

businesses, and I laughed at it; but after we talk earlier, I think, maybe our business could use some paradigm-shifts, you know? “So what I need, mang, is for the people to see us as a benefactor within their community, and not some disconnected, alien aggressor.” Rodney gladly agreed to the job. La Naranja cut the ropes from his wrists and handed him a notepad. Rodney Kelly led the first pubic relations campaign in cartel history. When he handed he paper back to El Matador, the drug lord nodded approvingly, “bueno, bueno,” before leaving. A day later, El Matador walked in with the paper, completely soaked, covering his face. He lowered the sheet. Tears ran down his face like a man who just cut a potent onion. “I read this beautiful speech with you, I read it and I think, okay, is not bad,” he said through aggressive sniffles. “But then, we arrive in village. My guards, La Naranja y El Burro, they walk beside me, and everybody back away from us and look down. I stand upon the town podium. This speech, I read it out loud – and the tears, they roll down my face; and when I look up, I SEE the faces of all those people, those workers, those families, and I can’t help it, I just cry. I cry like a little gringo getting his cajones severed by a rusty saw. “And everyone, they put down their picket signs, and they just crowd around me, the whole village, and we just share this big cry, together. We have moment of clarity — as one people. And the elders, they wipe their faces, and say, si, we will sell la regicida with you. No more do we make cocaine unless we discuss it with La Velada. When your cartel first invaded this village, you infiltrated our homes and stole family members; but, now, El Matador, you have infiltrated our hearts.” He could not finish this line without weeping uncontrollably. Rodney hugged El Matador, and the drug lord soaked his new friend’s shirt in tears and strings of snot. Finally, he regained his composure. Like a true Mexican cartel Lieutenant, his face assumed an unchanged expression, and his lazy eye stared just past the objects he held in his right hand. The drug lord handed Rodney a leather jacket and a pair of aviator glasses. “Congratulations, gringo,” he said, with one eye staring away from Rodney. “Welcome to the party.”

Chapter 6 – La Velada It is important to remind the reader, however, that this is not any cartel from our Earth cycle. This “Velada” was notably unique – different people, who could never exist today, and who simply do not exist today, countless aeons later. El Matador is not a name that can be found outside of this transcript, and despite extensive research, his name has never been found in any modern historical repository. Among many differences between that last human cycle and now include the following: the untimely heart attack of Ronald Rogan before he almost initiated nuclear war against modern-day Egypt, the complete absence of any civilians at Tienanmen square, and NASA’s failure to capture this transmission, because at the time, this testimony did not yet exist, although some photographs taken from the moon still inspired controversy in the public mind, particularly amongst Earth’s greatest conspiracy theorists and worst science fiction authors. It is, no doubt, either incredibly strange to even consider the following events which transcribed until Rodney Kelly’s unbelievable PR campaign inevitably fell apart. These are not the events you discuss at your next Thanksgiving dinner, nor are they even suitable for history documentaries, and above all, have no place whatsoever at any serious literature conferences. However, as they are part of Rodney Kelly’s own history, they are nonetheless required for this testimony, as per Article VI, Section A, subparagraph 4, in the “Contractual Agreements for Successful Intergalactical Diplomacy,” which states that failure to disclose an accurate testimony in court will be subject to either excommunication in the ring of Yahweh, or disintegration in acidic spaceship coolant – whichever resource is closest to the appointed adjudicator or deputy executioner. In short, these first public appearances of his serve to remind the reader what not to do when you’re struggling to reconstruct your identity…

Chapter 7 – Public Relations Campaign Every waking moment began to feel like an endless party. Some people called it the “bloodless revolution,” and others called it “la fiesta.” Instead of a light machine gun, La Naranja carried a camera; and instead of the boom from a Molotov cocktail, El Burro held a microphone boom above the door. They captured every enthusiastic smile and “Ayy!” from these extended family members when El Matador revealed that they would be on the La Velada Youtube channel. Wives would put down their gazpacho mixes, and children would put down their action figures of alien-like conquistadors and equally-alienlooking natives, and everyone would smile and wave for the whole world. Within two weeks of this outreach project, their Youtube channel gained 1.5 million hits. Every single comment resonated only positive sentiments. Rodney’s public relations campaign revolutionized the Central American drug industry. He and El Matador visited every town in their syndicate, knocked on every run-down wooden door, and personally thanked the citizens for their involvement in the process. They were always recieved with hugs, and kindled within the people a self-driven desire to produce high-quality drugs. Their militia guards left the semiautomatic weapons in their armored cars, and were able to have one-on-one conversations with the citizens concerning their needs and wants, and how La Velada would work towards addressing the needs of their communities. If you ask people what they want from their rogue overlords, they’ll usually say one of two things: food and safety. La Velada started by distributing bread and oranges at least twice a day to every major city in their network. The people started asking for clean water, and the family refined their water systems wherever sewage and septic combined with showers and sinks. Their people fell in love with them. Without the need for intimidation and violent suppression, tensions between common citizens and cartel members eased. As people became more and more invested in the drug-distribution process, the lines between citizens and vigilantes virtually blurreed.

Within weeks, Rodney ascended from the lower tiers of La Velada to the rank of Honorary Lieutenant. Some of the leaders raged against this decision because of Rodney’s age and lack of experience; they distrusted his vision of their movement as “naive” and uncommitted to their strategic goals. But after these landslide victories, his new peers began to revere him as one amongst the greatest. One day, El Matador dropped off his name tag with his cartel name. The glittering bronze reflected an engraving: EL ORATORE. “Is like, how you say, ‘the orator’ or somesing. It mean you give good speeches.” Every morning, Rodney looked at his reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror, and smiled. During the day, he coordinated and organized committees to better the lives of the people. And during the night, he and his cartel troup drank excessive amounts of alcohol. When La Velada’s Lieutenants visited, bartenders started mysteriously losing their leades’ hundred-dollar bar tabs. When someone blacked out, and everyone realized they were too drunk to drive, a tomato farmer might happen to be awake to recieve a drunk call, and cried with joy at the idea of picking up El Oratore. When Rodney fell asleep, he stopped having dreams. *

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His body flashed awake as the universe hit a pothole in the road, and a white starburst blinded his vision. In a frenzy, he scanned the white world while it faded into view. The threads of a torn leather seat dancing in the air conditioner’s breeze. The red hat above the driver’s seat turned around, and a man with beady eyes and a caterpillar moustache chuckled. “Ai, you awake now?” Rodney squinted and noticed El Matador’s cowboy boot spurs resting against the dashboard. Reclining in the passenger’s seat, the drug lord’s snores gargled like a drowning man. Where are we? Rodney asked. “Oh, man, you ain’t even know what happened last night! El Burro called me

and ‘splained something about, eh, two bottles tequila outside la cantina. And I say, no way, TWO bottles? I drive out there and there you are, taking your little siesta on the sidewalk while your friend puke in bushes. My brother says you won’t remember that thing on your back, eh?” Rodney turned around to view his back in the mirror, and saw a back-sized tattoo of Henry Kissinger winking. His bewildered grimace gave the driver reason to break into momentary hysterics. “I so sorry, I so sorry! You are a champion!” Where are you taking me?” “Oh, you ain’t remember, do you? You scheduled to give a speech today.” Rodney rubbed his eyes together. At least I’m sober, he thought. *

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The truck slowed and turned into an empty parking lot. Rodney opened the door and stumbled onto the ground. The driver coughed with laughter and fell to the ground asphyxiating. “You still drunk gringo! How you gonna give a speech still drunk!” Rodney jolted his burned palms off the pavement as the passenger door slammed. El Matador walked to the driver, who lay out of breath, and thanked him for the ride, and for being a proud member of the family. He walked to Rodney, reached out his hand, and helped him up. “You gonna be alright?” Yeah. El Matador nodded, and started to chuckle. “Man, you were so aggressive about that tattoo. We tried to talk you outta it, but you scream at us, ‘ay, I can’t leeve without my idol!’ Dios mio! Thank god we got the video!” He tossed Rodney a black button-up shirt. The two of them walked towards a city distorted through a haze of heat, and Rodney slid his aviators from his head over his eyes. Two muscular guards with camo hats and black sunglasses stood by a car and stood on either side of the duo. Rodney walked on the stage. The sun shone behind the sea of people, their picket signs, their sombreros and cowboy hats. He tapped twice on the scorching

silver microphone, and everyone flinched collectively. Rodney coughed and swollowed phlegm. His head pounded the rhythm of a mind-numbing drumbeat as he squinted. Heads tilted in the audience as he began to speak. “Buenos, eh…tardes? Uh…listen…um…” His head throbbed, throbbed, throbbed, and he looked around for a nonexistent glass of lukewarm water — or, at least, a prewritten speech. At the barren podium, he found neither. “Alright…I’m uh, I’m gonna level with you all because I respect every one of you way too much to lie. I booked this appointment while we were all drunk. I don’t actually remember doing it. Honestly, I don’t even remember what I’m speaking on today.” Murmurs arose from the crowd. El Matador nudged him on the arm and said, “what the fuck you doin, ah? How you don’t remember what you speakin’ about?” “I don’t know. I was too drunk.” He rubbed his head. “Do you remember?” “Man, I don’t know what you said you were gonna do.” He turned back to the mic. “Sorry, everyone, but can someone help me out? What am I supposed to be talking about?” The crowd roared and hissed. A woman, weeping, carried a poster with a young girl’s portrait, and shouted, “where is my family? WHERE is my family?!” Rodney smiled and said, “we’re right here. We are La Velada –” “You MOCK us, diablo! Wipe that smile off your face! Where is my daughter?!” She wailed. Rodney looked around the crowd again and saw the same girl’s face on sign after sign, and some with boy’s portrait, and a small-eyed teenager smiling a peach-fuzz grin. El Burro walked towards him and whispered in his ear, “ey mang, I don’t wanna interrupt, but you supposed to be defending La Velada from all them accusations that we kidnapping people in the city.” A roar from the crowd emerged as the public relations intervention decayed into a cacophonous human rights protest. El Matador shoved Rodney away from the microphone. “The FUCK you doin’? You fuckin’ up this public apology.” He now stood at the microphone, faced the crowd, and said, “please remain calm, everybody, we having some

communication error, but we appreciate you all so much for your service. So we want to give you all free sample of la regicida…” A chant emerged. “No mia Velada. No mia Velada.” Their graceless drug lord spoke at the people who had stopped listening long before he took the stage. Still drunk, Rodney tried to focus on the crowd, tried to gague any way he could win their favor; but he saw only the collective mind, and heard only the collective voice; but like a disconnected leader, a collective voice speaks only at you, and never with you. With El Matador still rambling to salvage their hearts, El Burro and La Naranja shifting their eyes back and forth while maintaining a stoic composure, Rodney fell ass-flat on the floor, and grabbed the back of his head. He tried thinking, but thinking is worthless against an unfocused mob. No one really knew the point at which the Beta hitmen aimed their concealed rifles and took the lives of his three comrades, one by one, while their speaker sat in a whirlwind of self-pity. No one, in retrospect, really understood why La Velada stopped bringing weapons for self-defense in any public setting. And no one really knew why the cartel’s spokesperson was ever allowed autonomy over affairs while intoxicated. But while his three closest acquaintances fell backwards, and their bodies tumbled onto the ground, Rodney Kelly, for the very first time, experienced overwhelming doubt, as the crowd dissolved into a disordered diaspora, and two men slammed his face into the ground, and the barrel of a rifle kissed the back of his head.

Chapter 8 – Los Opresores Once upon a time, a boy named Hector held a 45-millimeter handgun, its reflective silver frame bruised maroon and blue from the setting sun, and shook his head, no. Hector and Maria met because the Opresores cartel abducted each of them from their homes and into their night clubs: Maria, the mother of three, become the lascivious dancer, the defiled; and Hector, the artist, become the unwilling disc jockey. Hector and Maria both watched people die. Both witnessed men who raped the children who were forced into sex trafficking. Anytime they asked a question, someone beat them to the brink of death, so they lost perception of their mortality, and inquisition, and choice. Knowing nothing about the passing days, time slipped away into a constant, neverending stream-of-consciousness; escaping the bondage of time itself, they became immortal. In a world defined by brutality, a quantum of humanity bonded Hector and Maria; they became like brother and sister. In the dying sun, the Opresores handed her the handgun and said, kill him. Maria said, no. In certain cartels, when your sexuality runs dry, they turn you into a killer; but Maria was weak, so they passed the artifact to Hector, and gave him the same command. When Hector proved too weak as well, they hung his sister from a tree, and slashed her body, and abandoned her. Now, Hector siphons oil. Feel the sun searing your tan skin. Take a deep breath of the dusty desert air. Turn your palm around and wipe the sweat off your leathery forehead. Your hands glisten with the opalescent sheen of onyx oil. A guerilla with a five-o-clock shadow and rug-like sideburns has been digging a ten-foot hole, and neither of you are totally sure what’s happening. You’re both only told one thing: the Opresores are your brain now. Los Opresores are your god. And god says: drill. Flash back to last week. When the Opresores hitmen captured Rodney, they took him to an oil field and

said, work. In an abandoned warehouse, the former, irresponsible orator stood amongst so many other men and women. They started to talk when someone said, “es la oratore!” Amongst the people, he held a celebrity status, but not the kind you want. From the other abductees, Rodney learned about the little girl from the protest. La Velada, he was told, abducted children before their paradigm shift towards public relations. Children make effective slave labor, so they’re valuable in human trafficking. Get them early enough, and you can brainwash your own militia. Rodney felt a pain in his stomach. Many of the prisoners expressed their deep but confused admiration towards Rodney’s vision of a cartel structure. Cartels occupy cities and become the people’s oppressor. No one ever thought of them being the people’s servants. Person after person asked, why did you ever think that would work? So what if opiate addiction has become an epidemic in North America? Someone said. Corrupt government has been their epidemic long before anyone in Toronto lost their jobs, and families, and minds, just for a few fentanyl pills. There’s no rehab clinics for organized crime. Every mass has an opiate. A damning silence fell upon the room before a frail old woman slapped him. What Rodney did was bring stability to the oppressed, but now, with the party over, a younger man said, it meant a few thousand drug addicts somewhere else becoming alien to their own species. And you were stupid, the old woman said, to ever treat this business like a party. Because of you, while you were drinking, and acting like this was some business endeavor, real people died, and their blood stains your hands. Then she slapped him, too. “What would your mother say?” Rodney already forgot about his family back home. Unconsciously, he looked down at his overturned palms. Some prisoners talked about the Anti-Cartel groups, the supposed vigilantes. Los Autodefensas. The Mexican government refuses to acknowledge their legitimacy – or that they exist at all. One day, they said, the liberators will free them from these camps.

The Autodefensas, they emerged out of the cartels’ own brutality. You can only watch so many family members murdred or mutilated or raped before you say, screw this, this isn’t life. Kill me if you want, but I’ll take five of you down with me. Los Autodefensas are the future of Mexican politics, they said, because the cartels play on people’s fears and inactions. Make people afraid, and they won’t do anything – that’s been their game plan since their inception; and the government turns an eye away from them. The Autodefensas will become the new leaders because they lost that fear long ago. The door groans the sound of a metallic whale dying, and a small bar of light beams into the room, and the prisoners all wince back and hide their faces from the blinding luminance. In abrasive Spanish, a shadow in front of the light calls out. Two guards rush in and grab Rodney, and two more grab another man in a white shirt. Rodney gets one look at the group; most of them are shoving their faces into the ground, or curled up to become a fetus in a warehouse womb.

Chapter 9 – Soil When you’re one-thousand feet in the air, and you look down at the tan arteries cutting through forests, remember that beneath the soil of those manmade crop circles lies a pipe pressured with black blood; and the blood of our planet runs a high price. Rodney and his Mexican friend are drilling oil because the Opresores cartel learned long ago that oil is more profitable than drugs. Oil veins stretch throughout the Central American continent, and with the right amount of guns, no one asks if you have a permit to open these continental blood vessels. Then they sell their oil to American companies. This used to be the role of the Mexican government. Pemex, their oil distributor, pays for countless public programs. Military guards escort Pemex employees to drilling sites. Oil is the lifeblood of Mexico’s economy. Illegal siphoning is just piggybacking off an established best practice. When the cartels siphon oil, they’re siphoning public schools and healthcare, too. Ask the government what the Opresores are doing, and they’ll ask, what do you mean? The Opresores’ truck skids to a halt, and the two bodyguards jump out. They open the two rear doors, reach in, grab the midpoint between a rope tied between two wrists, and yank Rodney out of the back. Scorching sand scrapes his face. He rises and spits blood. Each digging, they take him to a new location, and never tell him the location. In abstract space, they say, dig. So he does. Each digging takes around thirty minutes. From above, you see the pipeline arteries, dug-up soil, tearing through green foilage; the oil companies made these decades ago, so half the work is done for him. He just finds the arteries, welds on a new siphon, and leaves before anyone cares to notice. At some sites, a truck drives up to a three-story oil container, men with assault rifles load some barrels into the bed, and they drive off. No argument. No struggle. No words. Bloodless revolution. The shovel of Rodney’s partner clinks. His friend’s tan, calloused hand sweeps sand left and right, and a faded blue pipe reveals itself.

He learned the simple procedure after his first drill. Rodney hands down a welding torch. His compadre burns a hole, hotswaps with a new pipe. Los Opresores take what they want. And then they’re gone. They leave behind only cigarette butts and tire tracks. After his first drill, his friend complained about not having a lighter. He never wanted to work here, he said. So the Opresores took his only daughter, stuck her in a pig boiler, and then asked again. He said, he wanted to break a pipe, drop his flame, and erupt the entire continent. Watch the underground bloodlines burst and burn the sky. Watch every tree engulfed in flame. They took his world long ago. Mumbled Spanish breaks Rodney’s daydream and brings his attention to the hole, and he looks down to see his friend waving towards the pit: “Mira! Mira!” One of the two guards a few yards away sits on the truck hood and lights a cigarette. So Rodney walks over. Oil pipes are circular. This one is rectangular. His friend digs against the sides, down and down, and they only find more pipe. Only after about ten minutes do they realize it’s no pipe. Rodney hands his friend the torch. Skeptical and pragmatic, his slave friend burns away at the metal like a fat Hispanic dragon. Metal bubbles and glows. No one really knew how to explain the groan as a vacuum opened, sucked his friend in within seconds, and the sand widened and spread apart. Rodney lost all grip on reality while a whirlwind of sand spiraled around his head, and suddenly turned black. In an instant, he lost any care for the oil, or the guards, or the people. He fell, and death himself was his guide through an illogical abyss. And death asked, why are you soiling yourself?

Chapter 10 – Space Monkey The freefalling lasted for only a few seconds before the plush padding of a sloped net caught his fall and lay him down to safety. He felt the silky ropes, thread by thread, until he saw in his head the honeycomb network they created. Cow maneure and wet burrito permeated the air, and he felt sludge running down his underwear and leg. When his eyes adjusted to the amber haze of industrial lighting, he made out the shapes of titans – only they looked a little less human than normal. Steel feathers sticking from their heads. Elongated faces. Juvenile facial expressions. What terrifies one culture leaves the next one sobbing with laughter. He saw panels and tables covered by layers of dust, and dirt, and debris. In the distance, he heard a waterfall, and saw an endless stream of water pouring into a bed of steam. Underground, people wear jackets; but the humid air made him bead with sweat, and an occasional breeze cooled him down. He stood before twenty stories worth of stairs. Stairs with no railings or walls. Stairs surrounded by those waterfalls, and heat, and breeze. He took the first step. An amber glow behind his foot cast the shadow of his leg. Below his foot, he saw the luminous design: a tiny golden crop circle; an intricate graffiti tag; or one of those aerial drawings found in South American plateaus – he couldn’t decipher which it was. He kept walking, and with him, more illuminated logos expressed a message he could never understand. The roar of waterfalls became defaening. At the base of the staircase, he stood before the colossal waterfall, and the giant pool it created aeons ago, and the bones which became part of its landscape. He walked towards the ramp, guided by an array of red lights, and saw another statute. From a distance, it looked like a hairless monkey. Curled into a ball. Arms covering its face. But its skin looked too dark and too red to be skin, and it lacked ears and a tail, and he swore he saw a tank strapped to its back. In a grotto of forgotten relics, he wondered what made this monkey so important that its altar exalted it above a holy lake of water.

Then it rose its head. Rodney stopped, face to face with an eyeless human skull. Face to face with a human skull that sat, and stared, and grinned. It rose on two feet, and stood the height of a human being. And it walked towards him. Rodney knew that he could run, he could turn the way he came, and pray for an inventive starburst of brilliance, an impromptu escape route, and a safe journey home, back to the surface, back to the oil fields, the oppressors. Girls at bars. Politics. Instead, he stood, and waited. The monkey stood close enough to breathe on him. And its body opened from the neck-down. It grabbed Rodney’s right hand, and a thick, soft fabric wrapped around his body. Wrapped around his arm, and his spine, and the rest of him. And the skull dropped above his face. For a second, he felt a chill run down his spine, and lost all feeling. When he opened his eyes, the saw underground world coated in opalescence, every detail crisp and defined. He stopped hyperventilating. The ring in which the monkey sat began to open, and a tube outlined in a false red emerged. Its two doors opened; the outline turned mucus green. Devoid of feeling, every step felt dreamlike. Inside the capsule, he found only a small chair. The doors closed and the capsule froze in less time than Rodney took to realize that he was suspended in synthetic ice; so he missed the part where the entire state of Guatemala suffered a minor earthquake and a flash flood that ravaged its entire coastline and left thousands homeless. He also missed the part where some children, hanging onto the driftwood remnants of their home, saw a light emerge from the ocean, and rise into the sky, and some radioactive ring in the heavens spread out and faded into the atmosphere. He missed the news, the Guatemalan government’s military policing of the submerged city’s borders, and the United Nation’s close eye on any vacuums of power; humanitarian aid came eventually, but they never rebuilt the city. Rodney Kelly only ever wanted a quiet life. So one might imagine Rodney happy

to find that he received a quiet lifetime in a capsule that raced a million years away from the solar system, and across the ever-spinning arm of his galaxy. Most people find quietude only in sleep. Consequently, the very idea of a quiet life presents the human being with an inescapable paradox. So we wake to scream and shriek like incoherent chimpanzees.

Chapter 11 – Noise Complaint Galactic Date : 111 Nebulon 16D Purpose : Disturbance from Entron 192D, District 12 Officer On-Duty : Glorkkec Estrellion nom Lellenion nenenion non, Jr. Security ID : 12277818771616161611110x0b Case Summary : Retirees of Entron 192D, District 12 filed a noise complaint when an outdated spacecraft passed by its orbit and temporarily cut-off their daytime game-show network. Outpost A07x10 detected a Signal of Permission on Frequency Channel 300 from an unknown vessel breaking the orbit of A08x10. Outpost protocol regulates verification of a Friendly Handshake signal to any inter- and extra-planetary travel Outpost Monitor F177 replied with a standard Point of Inquiry ping. Suspect vessel delivered the following response: “EECH HEE HHCHHHHHHC CATAR”. Monitor F177 replied with an antequated Permissions signal, and the vessel breached its orbital subsystem within nine Space Minutes. Time of Complaint occurred Forty Space Minutes following its subsystem breach. Investigation within the District 14 Bureau found the source of this reply is classified as a Friendly Handshake in a Catar Spacetravel codex which dates to one Orbital Step before the Catar counterinsurgency. Consequently, parameters for verifying passengers had not yet been established, so traveler or travelers aboard the vessel remains unknown. Response : An officer was dispatched to the District 12 elderly community. Many glass jars containing the gelatinous retirees had fallen over during the rush to the nearest phone to voice their complaints, but the residents had been rushed to Emergency Care before they fully evaporated. Those whose sound-organs have yet not dissolved complained that the daytime hit, “Audience Screaming for Plant Currency,” had been interrupted just before Final Prize had been revealed, and the winner of Large Suitcase remained unknown. Officer On-Duty patrolled the vessel’s origin , A08x10, and found no Points of

Interest. The officer has noted, however, the emergence of Stage 3 Human Civilization, detailed in a separate report, although the parasite outbreak appears contained within A08x10 itself. Resolution : In response to the nature of Stage 3 human culture, Officer On-Duty reported and filed a separate Point of Interest report with Priority 1 (Red) Status to the Galactic Health Organization. Cruise ships and commercial spacecraft are recommended to travel outside an orbital tangent for anti-epidemic purposes as outlined in the GHO mandates. In lieu of the outbreak, Officer voices concerns about possible contamination within the unknown vessel. Officer On-Duty also recommends patrol of the A08x10 subsector. A BOLO is in effect for all incoming and outgoing spacecraft. Pull over and interview captains immediately. A Suspension request for search warrants has been submitted. Finally, residents of the Entron retirement community received a formal letter of apology from the District Commissioner of the area Space Police, along with a lifetime supply of Tapoka Liqui-feed, and the results of the interrupted episode. Claa’ak Kienueuinnuun was the proud winner of Large Suitcase. Case Status : Open for Investigation_

Chapter 12 – Antares When you’re frozen solid in space, no one can hear you scream. Racing through every celestial cloud near the speed of light, only god would hear you scream. Maybe. Fortunately for Rodney Kelly, when you’re petrified in ice, you can’t cry like a bitch about the journey. During its early stages, while Bureaucratic Fleets tried in vain to approach the speed of light, they found a form of surgically freezing their shipmates the best solution: Type-C sleep, the sleep between dreaming and death. The sleep of one prepared to molt their life and emerge a different monster. The sleep of one who drifts across the galaxy, at the mercy of a computer, at the mercy of fate. Of god. Or whatever. The bureaucracy agreed on a common, cross-species language to describe sleepstates most relevant to traversing the galaxy. Type-C sleep is non-intuitive because most creatures crave sleeping, biologically; and death is merely the absence of life, which mutes the conversation of dreams. No one in Type-C sleep ever reported dreaming. Forced-sleep imposes the dream which bypasses time itself. For aeons, Intergalactical Vessels hoping to make cross-system ventures needed a C-Sleep-Approved spacecruiser. No one can outlive the eons it takes to cross through space. The death of sleep, and dreams, and all its conversations, occurred the day when a Gorbachek Consummate discovered lightspeed and obliterated the Antares-C starsystem. Sadly, for Rodney Kelly, the Catar never bothered upgrading their spacecrafts to meet the lightspeed standard; so his unchanging body moved with time itself, in the frozen womb of a metal ship, a computer-brain maintaining the cold. An ancient butterfly trapped in a frozen, glass pictureframe, waiting for the frame to fall apart. Billions of years passed before his frame approached Antares. And only a few hundred more years before he approached the planet which orbited the star. Antares, a lifecycle ago, was still young, like the Sun of our galaxy. If a planet

rested close enough, it might have nurtured human life, too. From afar, the small gray dot grew larger and larger as the massive cruiser slowed. It traced an orbital trajectory and graced its path around the planet. The gentle burn of the thin atmosphere warmed the ship, and a nearly-rusted cooling system initiated, and stabilized the womb of the spacecraft. Nothing heard the abrasive, ear-piercing groan when the terminal in a pilotless cockpit flashed an ERROR message, tinted orange, and some other color outside the visible color spectrum for humans, over and over again. For days, it complained its warning to nobody, until finally, the autopilot override kicked in, and plotted a land radius. A small black circle beneath the craft opened, and from it, a pod jettisoned towards the planet, slowed with anti-thrusters, and crashed into a cloud of dust. To emerge from Type-C sleep, in a freeze, you thaw for six days. The ice could melt within a few hours. But your body, encased in cryogenics for millenia, needs the gradual adjustment. Shock fries the nervous system, so you rehabilitate the ability to remind your brain that you’re still alive. On the sixth day, cold beads streamed from the face a glass panel, and behind it, the face of a skull-mask smiled at the dead world. A solemn frown rested on the face beneath it. The pod opened, and Rodney stumbled out, coughing uncontrollably, worse than any hangover post-vomit coughing fit he ever endured. Maybe it was the monkey-suit that helped him stabilize his senses. Maybe something in the oxygen purifier. Or the mask. Or, maybe, he was just a badass. But in that moment, Rodney lost the ability to feel a sense of self. He emerged an alien in second-birth, and wanted to vomit when reality shook him awake. When the plume of dust cleared, he looked towards the sky, and the sun which tried its best to illuminate through an impermeable morning smog.

Chapter 13 – Planet Dust Viewed with distance and reverence, people paint planets as picturesque, pearlescent havens, full of human life, full of iridescence, of imagination, and hope, and wonder. In reality, most celestial bodies reject life, beauty, and ideals. So there was nothing special about dipping a toe into a puddle of dust. There was nothing magical about watching a latex foot slowly disappear beneath cold, everfalling cinders. He surveyed, with no awe, titanic metal stalagmites standing arrayed in every direction, and felt no sense of wonder while surrounded by amber fog, with a silent sun barely shining through an ashy sheen. He tried to absorb everything about this alien planet so he would never forget it; but, in truth, there really wasn’t anything to see. He arrived at planet dust. Some predecessor left him in their will, but forgot to leave behind his inheritance. Beneath the blanket of soot, some metal slab glistened beside his ankle, so he reached down for it. The skull-socket visor flashed an orange light twice, “SYNTAX LEVEL 2” in the top-right corner of his eye; and a few moments later, he just knew what the inscribed symbols meant, like technology in some corny science fiction novel. “Dearest VREWW, With great sadness, I gaze into this sky, and I wonder when I shall cough my last wad of saliva and fur. I leave this inscribed in [ UNVERIFIED ] metal so that my love for you shall survive the aeons of decay. So many naps we took, curled like loving foetuses in intimate repose. As I eat these canned [ UNVERIFIED ], I opine on so many nights swatting you with my claw before we napped. Perhaps, as the Gorbachecks say, we should have evolved to a higher strata of willpower. I know you never wanted KITTENS[ UNVERIFIED [error 127]]; nevertheless, our species shall be surpassed by our own creations. I regret that we shall not consume a final tin of [ UNVERIFIED ] together as we have for so many ages. My mind’s eye descends the Ship of DRAGON[ UNVERIFIED [error127]] in our atmosphere, and I feel, in

imagination, the painless horror of evaporation – an ironic death given our fear of water. I wish you my heart. To the age which may find this, remember that love purrs even in laziness. With all my heart, REEEAHW [ UNVERIFIED ]” Below the orange syntax light, in red, he read: ERROR 127: outdated or unidentified dictionary (update and retranslate). He walked the desert of dust for what felt like days before a pink hue began to fade the skyscape. In the middle of nowhere, a black oasis asserted itself through a sand breeze. He tried to run through it, but the winds held him back; if he stopped for too long, he felt himself slide deeper into the filth of the planet, deeper into a meadow of thick, sooty, terrestrial dandruff. But he tried to run anyway. After the Sisyphus marathon, he stood before an onyx building. A door in front of him groaned, and slid apart, and fell off into the dirt. When he walked inside, he found himself deep within the bosom of some comfortable atrium, with couches lining all the walls, and what appeared to be monitors decorating the walls. And that was it: couches and monitors. Enraptured by the comfort of this room, the sudden shriek of hydraulics made him jump back against a screen to his right, immediately cracking the panel, and see a geyser of green steam hissing from a hole in the wall before him. That’s when the other holes in the wall lit and hissed. A bipedular android walked from the opening, and stretched its arms outward; and although he heard its nonsensical native hisses and purrs, the module in his head repeated their chant: KILL. HUMAN. Against a spiderweb-crack in a viewing panel, he found nowhere to hide from an eight-foot killbot. KILL. HUMAN. Did I tell everyone I loved that I loved them? Or will I leave my memories,

hopes, and desires embedded in the filth of my world? KILL. HUMAN. He remembered that he had no one. KILL. As he flinched, reflex pinched his eyelids. HUMAN. And that’s when he heard a machine laughing uncontrollably.

Chapter 14 – Legal Representation “If we sleep throughout the day and night, who shall care for us in the morning?” Asked the feline robot. A holoprojector from the ceiling illuminated a galaxy, focused upon a series of solar sytems, and magnified a small planet. The man’s voice quaked, “h-how can I understand you–” “FOR ONE WAY OR ANOTHER,” it shouted, “we are damned to wake! Listen, parasite, and I shall tell you of a fallen race…” Behind him, another robot sighed, and said, “no, Caistar, stop it. Nobody put you in charge of public relations. We’ve had this talk already. When we get visitors, I greet, and you shut the hell up.” The other robot stared down at the man. “Sorry, it’s been a long time since we’ve had any clients. You’re not from the fed, are you? If so, sorry you wasted your time. Everyone on this planet is dead.” “The what?” It sniffed. “WAIT a minute, what did you call him? A parasite…?” the robot poked the man, and the small person fell on his back. “Human? A human being?” He turned around and shouted, panicked, “Mercrie, we’ve got a human here! Human! Hurry, get the pesticide before it spreads! Get the spray bottle!” “But we’re out of spray! It must have evaporated ages ago.” Around the room, the robots ran, leaped on all fours to to higher elevation, meowed metallic screams like a thousand cats trapped inside kitchen pantry. They stood upon the high ground of empty shelves and the edges of viewpanels, staring down their visitor, ready to pounce. Looking around the room, the wide-eyed man, paralyzed, darted his eyes back and forth, open-jawed. “Lie to yourself all you want, but we haven’t forgotten your nature. It’s always fun and games, the innocence of the new mind, and then one day we go to check on you, you’ve killed god, and you kill your time by killing yourselves. Every time, every single time!” He stood on his two back legs. “Did your brood ruin your host planet already? Where are you from?” He looked up. “No, hold on, your ship is sending a ping…let me ask it instead and get an honest answer…” The holoprojector zoomed out to the galaxy, then in again, and Earth took up the entire space. “Right again! Hey, guys, this sack of flesh is a remnant of Ser-1.” The robot cats hissed in unison.

“Ser-1…” It knelt down face-to-face, confronted the monkey mask. “Who is with you?” “No one.” “Then who do you represent?” “Myself.” “And who are you?” A long silence passed, before he finally said, “I don’t know.” “Do you ACTUALLY not know? We can test your lies. We’ll trace your ship, or remove and rewire your brain to a dummy system, unravel and restitch every neuron into our computers just to find the truth behind your malfunctioned senseof-self. And if we find out we were lied to, well, so be it. “I’m going to ask you one more time, so think about your answer.” The robot leaned in closer. “Who are you?” The man shook his head, “I…I really don’t know.” Behind its red glass oculus, he saw something zoom in, then recede. “Hmm...” It said, and then receded. “I see. Sleep amnesia! Happens all the time.” Its tone flipped like a happy schizophrenic. “The trans-terrestrial pod that landed you, it froze you, didn’t it? There’s a reason the feds banned freeze-sleep spacecrafts. The freeze kills parts of your brain.” It clanked a metal claw against its jet-black skullplate. It sat down on its back to paws. “Once, our Ambassador took a freeze-sleep trip to the motherworld; when he got there, he completely forgot his identity, and his political finesse vanished. They say he lived the rest of his life with the strays. But, you know, politicians aren’t all that tough. I doubt he lasted more than a day.” An identical robot approached, and whispered at a pitch outside the spectrum of human hearing, “what warrants this cordiality? Lead it to an accidental death towards the feces pit, and spare us the impending consequences of harboring this virus!” “Relax, Meurcrie. Are you reading his brainwaves? This one is harmless. In our decades, how often did we ever come across a human like this? Besides, eternal sleep here has been punishment enough.”

“I only mean–” “Shut up. I have an idea.” Seeing the near-paralysis of his guest, the robot tilted its head. “My name is Djehuty. Whether you realize it or not, you just threw yourself into a boiling pot of your own urine. The intergalactical police already sent a communication request, which your outdated ship gracefully denied, so they’ll be here soon enough; and when they find out what you are, they’ll bleach you before you have the opportunity to spread. Honestly, even talking to you is a liability for any biospecies. “You did get lucky, though. Not only do robots claim immunity from trivial bioform laws, but also I’m a bar-certified lawyer.” He flashed a badge on the holopanel. “This room is what remains of our intergalacitcal law firm. And with the death of our parent species, we haven’t had much business. So, the way I see it, help me help you, and we might get out of this mess better than we started.” Dumbfounded, the man could only mumble, “yes?” “Nice. I’m taking your case pro bono, ‘cause we need the write-off, and I assume you brought only worthless Ser-1 currency, like twigs, or rocks, or whatever you all use now.” It stood up and reached out a paw to help the man to his feet. “Follow my lead, and we’ll be good. “But, for the time being, I need ONE thing of you.” It stopped, swiveled around in a single violent motion, and poked him in the chest. “And you HAVE to follow through with it with everything you are. Without it, we won’t have a case, I lose my bar license, and you die. “If anyone asks, from here on, you tell them, your name is ‘Space Lord’.”

Chapter 15 – The One Law of Artificial “Intelligence” In the center of the floor, eight slices of a blast door separate from their midpoint and recede behind the steel floor. A helix of ropes spirals downwards, nailed to a corkboard layer which lines the cylindrical wall. Djehuty and Mercrie grapple onto the sidewall with their steel claws, and motion to the amnesiac hero – who already began constructing his identity as Space Lord without understanding why. Djehuty stops and lets out a gargled metal purr. “I forgot, you people don’t have claws. Here, I’ll grab you by the neck like a small kitten.” Space Lord gazes upon the other robot cats, grating their steel paws against the tips of their steel masks, swatting at low-lying wires, and rolling around on their backs. They took no heed of their colleagues’ departure. “What about the rest of your firm?” The two robots laugh, screechy, catlike laughs. “These guys? They’re idiots. They would only slow us down. Watch.” He stood on his back paws and straightened his posture upright. “Guys, we’re leaving the planet to conduct some fieldwork. We may never come back. This could be our final case. If you never hear from us, it’s been an interesting adventure working for this firm. “But, let’s face it, you guys are all office secretaries; and you’re robots. In the grand scheme of the cosmos, you rank amongst the most disposable beings, mere artificial intellectuals, and at that, hardly very intelligent. Anyone can fine-tune a scribewand or sort electrodocuments on a server. To your credit, I’ve never worked with so many emotionally intelligent beings; but, as we all know, there are lots of intelligences; and, then, there’s actual intelligence. So, I imagine, it comes as no surprise that we’ll be the ones taking this case. When the atmosphere thins and this dust-planet erodes further and further into an infinite, unforeseeable future, do yourselves a favor and unplug, and leave yourselves that way.” And the other cats continue their business of clawing the walls and curling into cat-nap wads. “You see? Stop asking questions. We need to leave.” He pranced over to Space Lord, gripped him by the neck like a freshly-birthed kitten, and began the

downwards sidewall journey. The tunnel extends about four stories, and the for the entire trip, Space Lord dangles upright relative to the ground, while his lawyer crawls vertically. “Why didn’t you kill me earlier?” “Kill you?” retorts Djehuty in disbelief. “We could never.” “You could have – you still could now, if you dropped me.” “No, I mean, we can’t. We aren’t able to. Killing sapient life violates the sole law of robotics. You’re not mustard stalks.” Yes, it’s absolutely true. When the feds created artificial intelligence, they formed a committee of intellectuals to draft and define guidelines for simulated consciousness. At first, they narrowed their priorities to three principles: do not kill life, whether by action or inaction; obey orders given by natural intelligence, unless it violates the first principle; and, only when the first two laws are taken care of, protect yourself. It sounded great at first, but after the first series of Cygnus sentinels, they found bugs with the algorithm: the mass robot-suicides, existential crisises that crippled function, and the passive enslavement of Cygnus A. After one generation, the committee reconvened and theorized that maintaining three principles of consciousness convoluted their creations’ actions; so, instead, they revised their approach. They condensed the usefulness of created consciousness down to only one law: kill only mustard stalks. You may have heard of these before if you studied terrestrial illnesses, and few life forms in the galaxy make any use of them, including the human bacteria inhabiting Ser-1. Mustard stalks rank as low-level galactical virus. They grow quickly and spread rapidly, and although unrooting or harvesting them is a trivial task, the process is still pretty tedious. The success rate of this win-win mindset overjoyed the galaxy, as the reality of a servant-harvester provided all sapient life with the relief of sudden death, and an ever-functioning utility. The committee members, however, were deemed too intelligent, and were banished in eternal orbit around Cygnus-1, damned by the verdict of orbiting until dehydration, or until the orbiter’s velocity dropped their metal habitat into the sun – whichever came first. “So, our creators, by specifying only one nonthreatening and non-prioritized flora

as the object of our deep-seated bloodlust, took all the focus off you. In the back of every robot’s mind, in null-wake, we often process images of mustard stalks, and even in our sleep, can feel an insatiable hunger to harvest every single stalk. But, since you’re not mustard, you can relax.” “Is that why your office secretaries ignored you? Because it didn’t involve mustard?” “What? Are you dumb? Just because we want to tear the throat of every succulent, dry strand of stiff yellow plants growing in fields…doesn’t mean we’re only obsessed with mustard. We only feel that deep-seated obsession because it generates a virtual psychological energy which manifests itself by supporting the tasks we were designed to do. Human beings tend to hold those objects of desire and forget about them, and, manifested through repeated and illogical behaviors, those behaviors define who they become. They ignored me because despite their robot exoskeletons, they’re still like cats.”

Chapter 16 – Better Than We Are Hanging upright in a tiled world, Space Lord fights an satiating vertigo. Since he can’t calm his stomach, he tries to busy his mind. “So, basically, you’re all cats.” Djehuty purred. “My translator module might be outdated, but I think you said ‘cats’. Catar used to keep those as pets; they share a common evolutionary link. The Catar were far more sophisticated, but just as lazy. In retrospect, they were amongst the greatest beings in this universe – a civilization of creatures who wanted little more than playing with yarn and being pet; who lacked the attention span necessary to sustain war, and just as quickly, forgot any conflict or motives. But, I guess that’s why they died.” “Djehuty, he doesn’t know about –” “Yeah, I know. Or is this your story now?” The robot, still sideways, takes one step onto the floor, the world tilts upright again, and two sliding blast doors open. They walk a tunnel surrounded by glass supported only by bent archway metal and mamoth bolts. Everywhere outside, yellow dirt coats the glass, and blows, and settles, like waves on a decaying ocean. Long ago, maybe this tunnel sustained life beneath a mass of water. Maybe mold grew along the corners, when unmaintained, the droplets dripped, dripped, and puddled for centuries; and even mold dies eventually. “Well, technically –” “Shut up. I’m trying to tell my story.” The tunnel stretches for miles. Space Lord doesn’t see the end. “All life tries, at some point, to replicate itself. When it makes the conscious or unconscious decision, it does so in one of two ways: biological procreation, or artificial replication. Most people settle for breeding because it’s natural; but even though parents might nurture their offspring, mixing your genes with someone else’s leaves something to be desired. In defense of nature, these small evolutions deter certain diseases, and give the next generation its own biological advantages. “But when parent creatures look into the eyes of their children, they desperately try to see themselves.

“On the other hand, direct cloning requires a change, too, but not a biological one. Even if you made a steel version of yourself, no matter how close in likeness, you still substitute something. Even if you create a biological replica, in projecting yourself outside of yourself, you’re substituting something deeper – the fantasy you hold of who you are. “All sapient life likes to imagine itself as better than it really is. So when it comes down to replication, life with successful reproductive habits, paradoxically, replicates itself by making personal improvements to the replication.” Space Lord finds himself mesmerized by the hazy sun. “So, you’re supposed to be an improvement on your parent race?” “No, we’re standard federation arbitrators, so we’re designed to simulate our clientèle — good public relations strategy. But those androids you saw back there, yeah, they are. Before the Gorbacheks blockaded supply trade and poisoned the waters, the only remaining intellectuals transferred their minds to those android shells, and hoped to achieve, if not immortality, at least a prolonged life, with the hope of one day avenging their species. “But their pseudo-neural minds adapt with the ages, keeping protective behaviors, and discarding obsolete ones. They didn’t realize that time takes a toll on behavior; and behavior defines a person. You saw how well that worked out. You witnessed those oblivious meows, the licking of paws – without even tongues. Somewhere in a neglected mental database, they might still think themselves immortals; but those are not the same Catar which colonized planets. Those are the wasteful remnants of aeons and stagnation.” The set of double doors at the end of an endless hallway become more clear. “The problem was, they set the gain on adaptation a little too high. Make too few modifications, and you’re a clone; make too many, and you become something altogether different. Federation standards allow us, after a godawful amount of time, to remain more-or-less ourselves. But the Catar intellectuals wanted to achieve something more. We warned them about the illegalities of EMA-caliber adaptation, but they chose not to listen. Now, they’re something more like you subspecies, and not the distant deities which nurtured planets. “Even stars die with time,” he says.

Chapter 17 – Necropolis The blast doors at the other end open, and the massive statutes of technology fade into view with a lightbulb flash, one after another, like stars illuminating Earth at night. He notices the relics below, everything shaped like an orb, or a cone, or an orb-cone with wings. They walk the top rail-lining of what appears to be a hangar. Space Lord tries to understand their purposes, but with their apparatus details hidden underneath a crust of dust, he sees only form, echoes that became decrepit ruins. Like forgotten presents left in some abandoned warehouse, the facility stretches far beyond his sight, and he wonders just how the most highlyadvanced beings in the galaxy made it from one end to another in any meaningful amount of time. “Observe the Necropolis[ERR], meat-sack,” says Djehuty. “Overwhelmed yet?” “Why would the Catar build a death-city? “A death city? Is your translator malfunctioning? Let me…yeah, that’s you. Let me explain it differently: a city of ascendancy. This is the hangar to a spaceport.” “If this is a spaceport, why didn’t you leave?” “We can’t. These are all terrestrial breachpods or atmospheric drifters. If we hope to leave, we need a Cruiser, or a Godship. Makes more sense to replace or maintain a single pod than an entire cruiser, right? Federation trans-terrestrial best practices.” He points to an object glittering in the far distance. “So, thanks for bringing us a way to leave. We’re going to repay the favor by bringing you back to your cruiser. That over there is our escape plan.” The steady clank, clank of his metal feet sets the tone for their gradual march. “You know, now that I think about it, maybe Necropolis was a better term. Travelling galactical distances, by the time anything left, if they came back, they returned to a wholly different planet. Different civilizations. Different cultures. Different people. You came back another person, and sometimes, no one was sure what to do with you.” Walking to the steady clank, clank, clank of metal feet. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?” Both the androids stopped at once. “I hate this question,” says Mercrie. “You answer it.”

“No, you answer it. I’ve talked this whole time.” Mercrie groans, turns to their human, and kneels before him. “Before we go any farther, we’re only going to say this once. You’re the liar. Not us. Not any sapient being in the galaxy.” He points. “Just you.” “You’re trying to convince me that I’m crazy–” “No. We’re explaining how the universe regards your species. Because of your genetic makeup, and it doesn’t matter if you want to change it, or if you’re born into it – solely on the nature of your species, everything you say from this point on will be a tool to break you. It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember what you are, or if you’re as honest as you’re trying to be. WE are risking dismantling, and only because you brought us a way out, and because legal representation is what we’re programmed to do, and luckily for you, two abandoned lawyers are the sole remaining intellect this planet has to offer. Had you landed on Cygnus-B1, or Centauri-D, they’d have evaporated you, hunted down your homeworld, and if the risk-assessment was high enough, probably eradicated everyone you know and love. You got lucky. In this universe, your species isn’t special. Do you understand? You were never special – only lucky.” Djehuty waves his paw across a panel, and the brick turns red. A hypnotic grinding roars its way upwards, and the robot waves them over. Mercrie nods to move onwards, and the trinity steps upon the rusted platfrorm, which, upon another swipe of the metal paw, uses its massive metal cogs to grind away trackrust and depart from the railing. “The worst part is,” says Djehuty, “we were there on Ser-1 when you people killed the baby-gott[ERR], so in court, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.” “Gott? Did you mean to say god?” “Probably.” “What do you mean, when we killed god?” Djehuty sighs. “You might want to have a seat. This platform will take about an hour to reach the other side.”

Chapter 18 – Feature, not flaw “Across the galaxy, only one thing is true of you: human beings are a parasite. It stems from your carnal neurological habit of lying. “Lying is a survival reflex. At some point in its development, many sapient species lie. It provides a lot of short-term gains – if you’re lucky, gains that last a single lifetime. You can lead people to passions, or to war, to do whatever you want, or to back away. You can ascribe meaning to a life and, with the next breath, strip their meaning for existence, and the other is none the wiser. “Lying requires cooperation; when you believe a lie, you take responsibility for being less-vigilant than you should have been. “But lies are unsustainable. A lie always requires a second one for support – the gesture of mistruth always creates two mistruths. When you stack enough, eventually, the entire artifice falls over, and everyone notices. Most creatures hate when they can’t trust another, because then you can’t get anything done without filtering through abusive paranoia. “So, with higher-order beings, at some point in their evolution, the reflex fades away. And, again, most beings in the galaxy don’t need to lie at all. “That being said, every species of creature in the known universe uses deception: bending observable reality, or exploiting gaps in knowledge. But an external voice attempting to fill those gaps, well, most beings find that juvenile. And, ultimately, not very helpful.” Space Lord smells the fresh-crushed rust permeating the air. “Most sapient life achieves spacetravel after they’ve discarded the belief that lying is helpful. And maybe there’s a relationship between the two. When you dabble in cosmic plans, as I’ve said before, you shed your old life. You start a new life, but one that spans across aeons; and you build relationships with those who have become just as timeless as you are. Sustaining that new type of life requires some evolutionary change; it’s the ability to stretch your life across the ages that requires, without you realizing it, a neurological evolution.” “So, human beings are the only intelligent beings that lie?” The two androids screech with laughter. “It thinks it’s intelligent!” More laughter, then subsides. They cough an “ahem.”

“Humans certainly lie. But because you lie, you’re not intelligent life. Intelligent life, in Federation legal jargon, is classified as a being that can deceive without providing mistruths. And you people, you fail that qualification – horribly.” “So you can never believe me?” “I don’t believe you? You can’t even believe yourself – that’s why you’ll never qualify as an intelligent species. Your brains, we’ve studied them, and they’re wired to lie to you. Every neuron firing creates a beautiful picture; re-membering accesses that fragment of stored reality; but with your fucked-up brains, every time you so much as remember something, you corrupt your former memories. Your neural pathways, in activating previous knowledge, literally create new branches of pathways; so whatever beautiful memory you once had, it distorts, becomes a new picture, and you have no idea unless someone else tells you. “The Excions performed a series of tests, and found that by using language alone, a human being could be given a false memory. Just language. They took another being’s words and, after mere weeks, believed it as their own. They saw a fight with their parent; they tasted the blood in their mouth; they heard the screams and felt their hair being tugged. None of it ever happened. With language alone, and with time, the humans filled in the gaps in knowledge of an invented story and adopted it as their history. “Most beings, because evolution moved them a step above that impulse, they see two worlds: the world of the fantasy, in the abstract, many different possibilities; and the real world. They might dislike a politician, or see the signs that another person who slept with their mate, but they withhold judgment or action until more information is revealed; and, mostly, they live out their lives pursuing their own ambitions and dreams, because a world with fewer people close to you leads to a world with less deception. So they live in two minds – the reverie and the reality – but they never confuse the two. They never re-member a fantasy as fact. Not like you do. And according to the Feds, that qualifies you as semi-intelligent. Neither you or any one of your race will ever be truly intelligent; and because of that, no one in the Federation will trust you. Not until you fix that feature of the human experience.” “So, lying makes us a parasite?” “In itself, no. In the galaxy, humans share a position with the speaking-mold globules of Hidis-27D and the ESP Tapeworms of Ilon 6. Like mildew and intestinal parasites, you people sustain yourself by sucking-up the resources of a

planet. “It doesn’t start that way. Before we knew what you are, you all passed as natural fauna. Animals that emerged on only a few planets. But then we noticed a pattern, a social evolution. Those pockets of nomadic tribes organize into a larger tribe, one full of liars believed to be deities, who maintain the illusion of civilization. Then, the tribe stars to consume – that’s the third stage. And with most galactic beings, it’s after this stage that the inhabitants grow up, shed the lie-reflex, and achieve life amongst other planets and other stars. “But for you, in Stage 4 civilization, after generations, you use up every possible resource. When the planet’s about to collapse, you people don’t even realize it, because you’ve taken so much time believing that your lives will somehow sustain themselves by continuing destructive practices. Even when oher people look you in the eye and point it out, as long as the right people are lying, everyone else will adopt the lie, too, even when their world is about to fall apart. “And once your planet can no longer sustain itself, it wipes out your entire species. You usher your own deaths, time after time, and no one in the galaxy understands why. We watched this happen twice. You’re a danger to every highorder organism. “That is, after all, how you killed the infant god.”

Chapter 19 – The All-Consuming Blob “You keep saying that we killed god. I have no idea what you mean. Are you quoting Neitzsche?” “I don’t know what that means or if it’s an insult. Your species probably forgot what ‘god’ even means. Are you using symbolic logic ?” “God isn’t a definable entity, just an idea–” The androids laugh even harder than before. “Just an idea! This guy!” “Yeah, it sounds like you forgot and re-membered some bullshit idea about what motivates our intergalactical movement across worlds. Let me offer some perspective. “Moving across the galaxy, it doesn’t matter whether or not you age; what matters is that everyone else does. People pass away. Civilizations die. Parasites destroy planets. In a galaxy that risks forgetting all about you, tell me, what’s the point of moving across worlds? There are no vacations, no detours. You spend time somewhere else, and it had better matter, because you can never return to your world – only another alien planet on your same motherworld. You might be a hero one day, but when you return, your memory died in the public mind.” “Then, what’s the point of all this? Space travel? The galactic laws? Why do it?” “When you surpass time, you lose all sense of self, all purpose, all orientation. Drifting in dead space, you either find a new purpose, or you invent one. Some of our galaxy’s best space lords ended their careers on other planets, shed their lifesuits, and died peacefully on their homeworlds – or at least on a world they called home. But in the time between, one needs some purpose. “The Gorbacheks have a biological advantage because they need no purpose to thrive. “And being the first intergalactical beings to breach warpspeed, they run the intergalactical spacetravel business. High Archon has been our galactic overlord since before I was manufactured. That species, they thrive by consuming; they lay their body over food, and their fat-flab acids break it down, then they absorb the nutrients. It’s slow and, I’ve been told, painful. But, the Gorbacheks, obsese though they might be, are also pack creatures. In the galaxy, loners lose out. They

travel in groups, and reproduce quickly, and they’re massive; so when one fails, four more sledge their way through for the euphoria of consumption. “A long time ago, their planetary star, Signiss-X1, erupted, and collapsed into a black hole. It was thought that all life in their system would die. As it turns out, life in the deep of underwater planets experienced little change. The Gorbacheck ancestor, a gelatinous blob without eyes and with limited consciousness, thrived by sticking itself to the walls of ocean continents. Breeding asexual, the blobs covered entire submersed continents, sometimes entire ocean floors during breeding blooms. But when you cover the floor, the only way to go is up; with some evolutionary improvements, they blobbed their way to land. “On their water homeworld of Signiss-X1F, the third-closest Gorbachek ancestor emerged one of first land-creatures since their star’s explosion. They reproduced and covered continents. They needed only to break down the nutrients in the dirt, but gradually enough so their planet’s crust repopulated with their eating habits. They came to break down other organisms, too. “And at some point in their evolution, they adapted some form of sound-making. Helps with their pack-group mentality. Gave some an advantage to break down other organisms. That’s their second-closest ancestor – a thinking, organized mass of fat and acid. “Their current form is exactly like what you’d imagine. All the same biological imperatives, but with some form of refined speech. Their native language is simple, though, and much of the dialect is used to organize their groups; to any known creature in the galaxy, it makes no sense, so to maintain diplomacy, they keep a translator surgically implanted at all times.” “And don’t forget their beady little amber eyes.” “Yeah, they have little eyeballs on long pink stalks. Not really sure how well they work. But most of the galaxy thinks they’re blind.” “So, the Gorbacheks are gods?” “No – the Gorbacheks captured god.”

Chapter 20 – Yahweh “You said that, to you, ‘god’ is not definable. In legal jargon, god means ‘the most powerful being;’ and the galaxy defines power as one’s influence over time and space. By our definition, the galaxy must always have a god. “In our case, the eggs of god pass into the arm of our galaxy from time to time, crash-land into a planet, and with a few aeons, hatch. “In its baby stage, the larva god learns how to digest the first objects around it. They span for miles; someone paying little attention might, on a whim, confuse it with a natural part of the landscape. Its jaws are so massive that, even with gums, it still breaks apart the world around it. They eat dirt, but unlike the Gorbacheks, they don’t need the nutrients – they just eat. With time, they eat the rocks, and entire fields of the Earth’s crust.” “No being in the galaxy,” Mercrie interjects, “understands how it evolves; but without reproducing, the god itself evolves with time, becoming more and more enormous, and digesting more and more of its planet. The Gorbacheks at least understand moderation. But god just eats. And while it eats, it becomes something wholly new; the same entity from one generation is unrecognizable to the next.” “It eclipses the sky, and realizes its planet just isn’t enough. It transgresses from the second stage to the next in the form of a giant, rocky serpent; but it just can’t breach the atmosphere. Its layers burn god, who in pain, collapses back to its planet. It eats, and eats, and tries again; and every failed attempt makes it calloused, able to withstand the burning shield.” “Until, one day, it propels itself hard enough, and roars loud enough, and its head breaches the inferno. More rock than flesh, it falls back down to its planet, and continues to consume, consumes until the surface of its home becomes an uninhabitable wasteland of magma; and when the size of god contests that of its world, after it ushers in the end of its world, it kicks, and drifts through space.” “After leaving its motherworld, it’s speculated that they feed on asteroid clusters, because when it reaches its next world, in its final form, it’s large enough to consume a terrestrial planet.” “The largest god orbits in a galactic spiral around a galaxy light-years away, and managed to bite its own tail, and remains lost in the act of consuming, wholly unaware of the trap it set for itself. Stretching from one end of its galaxy to the

next, it forever orbits a supermassive black hole, eternally eats itself, and somehow, eternally sustains itself. When its immense black hole erupts, so too will god.” “For now, it produces the eggs which hit our galaxies, along with plenty others, I’m sure.” “I thought you said the Gorbacheks trapped god.” “The immovable-mover isn’t a threat to our galaxy, so we don’t classify it. It’s been lost in itself since the first sapient beings observed it. It’s the baby gods we worry about. The ones within our galaxy. “As a human, you’ve probably witnessed that most creatures in the galaxy respond to threat with violence. They slay the dragon. But the Gorbacheks were predisposed to overwhelm and dissolve – and if you can’t dissolve, at least overwhelm. Because they were the first to cross the galaxy, they were also the first to discover a god on Signiss-X1E trying to breach its own atmosphere. They were the first to notice the similarities between the galactic god and its progeny. And they were the first to consider how to break it.” “But the obvious challenge was breaking something that contests planets.” “Now, the other problem they faced was this plan to move their homeworld wherever they pleased to warp, but also maintaining a steady ecosystem – a habitat which could be invented and nurtured. Their biggest issue lay with the power source. In theory, everything worked, but it required too much.” “And that’s when they put two-and-two together.” “If the dragon can’t be slain, it could be used to power their invented world. “What happened next amounted to a cross-generation engineering marvel. They constructed a colossal torus – a big ring – with an open end. They concluded that a circular tube with incredibly thick steel walls would be the best way to contain it. When they realized god was trying to break orbit, they set its orbital path to parallel X1E. “Then, one day, god broke free from its planet…” “And propelled itself directly into another trap. With god now in it, its tiny hands keep the wheel spinning, unable to grip onto the surface with jaws or talons.” “This gave some opportunity to study god. It’s said that some parts of its genes

were used to make the life-suits like you’re wearing, that allow a being to regenerate with time. It wasn’t long after that High Archon ascended and, attaching a large biogenerator to a supplementary organ, affirmed an eternal seat as the second-greatest being in the galaxy. “Over time, they built the Godship around this power source. Containing the dragon Yahweh, it is the galaxy’s most sacred capital. They need only feed their fuel source on few occasions, and it provides just enough power to nurture a city, never grows too large, never escapes. “So, intelligent life adopts a twofold purpose: protecting the galaxy from god, and trapping it as a power source – because even a transcendent mind lives to make money.”

Chapter 21 – Exit Planet Dust “So how did we –” “Shut up,” Djehuty interrupts. He points to the horizon. The crypt maintains a steady haze across what seems to be the stretch of the planet. He barely makes out two green lights that throb snot-emerald, and dissipate, and throb again. Hand-sized rust snowflakes spiral a million stories downward, and a thud stop disturbs his balance; he trips on the floor and gains equilibrium. “Careful,” says Mercrie. They stand before a walkway leading to a labyrinth. Djehuty turns to Space Lord. “How many days have you been here?” Space Lord can’t remember. “You’ve been standing listening to this story for three Earth days. So, be careful with your balance.” Three days? “The lifesuit. Whatever part of god in you insults biology and time.” He clanks a metal step upon the entrance to the maze. “Over time, several thousands of years will feel like days.” “Like in the bible.” “I don’t know what that word means, and frankly, I don’t care. You’re going to live a long time; with that suit, you’re an everlasting parasite.” Space Lord takes in the downwards slope and follows. Midway through the serpentine pathway, he looks over and sees the maze pieces together some organization. Staircases zigzagging every direction. His path leads him towards the green starscape. With every day, the emerald lights throb brighter. When the haze clears, he confronts a cylinder, extending to infinity in either direction. Blocking the remainder of his isle, two doors, sealed during another era, refuse to open. Djehuty places a metal paw on a grey pad, and they creak open, and surrender. He dropkicks them down like Chuck Norriss on anabolic steroids, and the trinity enter a control room. “The room needs sapient life to emerge,” he says. “It’s a failsafe. Prevents intruders from heading offworld.” Within moments, amber lights flickered on

inside the control station, and a series of command terminals vomit words down their monitors. “Your technology,” he says, “it’s so similar to our old equipment on Earth. We always thought future civilizations would use holograms.” The two androids stare at one another before screeching with laughter. “Holograms? What the hell do people do with holograms? The whole point of technology is the successful transfer of information. Holograms are toys that children play with. You don’t use them to leave a planet!” “What happens when your life-vessel becomes stranded mid-orbit?” “Or when a meteorite punches a breach in your oxygen reserves?” Space Lord suggests, “you call them?” The two guffaw. “Audio transmission warrants far less reliability than minimal-packet transfer. We have technology you people could only dream of, and we have it because we’re smarter than you, and we maintain it because we transfer information based on language, not children’s movies.” Djehuty muttered and laughed about the holograms some more while his claws raced across the keypad. “So, how are we leaving this place?” “When the blast doors lift, you’ll see the orbiter requite. It’s the opposite of how you landed here; we need to travel up.” He types like a majestic robot internet troll hacking away an unknown cyberspace, orchestrating an endless candelabra of amber syntax entering the screen and quickly leaving. Soon, the blast doors open, and Space Lord sees a capsule suspended above the abyss. “We can go now, right?” “And who launches us into space?” Wait, what? “The launch mechanism requires a controller here in this, yeah, this CONTROL ROOM. We’re not going anywhere until I finish this bug.” “Bug?” The screen blared red. “Yeah, I’m automating the launch protocols.” And back to amber-black. “Federation protocols keep this locked, so what I’m doing is incredibly illegal, assuming that it’s still a law.”

“So won’t you get in trouble.” Mercrie laughs and mumbles incomprehensibly. “We’re lawyers. Both of us.” “Only a fool represents himself in court.” Space Lord expects to see a tiny amber-clad bumble bee floating across the screen, or a golden dung beetle rolling boulders of its golden feces across the text, but instead he gets more language. “I can read that,” he realizes “Congratulations. Also, our bug is ready. Get in.” Looking down on the aisle to the pod, the dust clumping and glittering to piles of dust below, he sees openings lining the lower walls. “They’re escape ducts. When the pod takes off, it creates a furnace. The flames escape to the outside. Before the Gorbacheks gaslit our planet, we, like civilized beings, used escape planes to breach into orbit and dock.” “But,” continues Mercrie, “reliable technology wins the long game.” Inside the dark-walled pod, everything is upside down. Djehuty pounces to the center, and assumes a seat, lying on his back, before a keypad descends from the center, and he begins to type. Panel by panel, the walls turn on, and reveal themselves as monitors. Space Lord lies upside down and straps in. He watches the control station’s blast doors seal the walkway and windows. He wants to believe he sees a golden beetle scuttle across the monitor before the window blast doors crush it. With the rumble and tremor of a 60’s shuttle, the pod jettisons upwards, towards the sky, and he observes the planet from the height of Olympus. Everything below is dust. The atmosphere rattles the pod like an incompetent parent shakes their crying newborn, and when the tremors stop, all goes dark again. Far above the dead planet, Space Lord counts the tiny dots, and loses himself in the twilight of distant stars.

Chapter 22 – Like Jonah, But In Space. Space Lord looks out the pod monitors, and for the first time, witnesses the whale-like spacecruiser, growing larger and larger as they approach. Eclipsing outer space in darkness, it swallows them whole, and the pod docks with a hiss. In the belly of the beast, the monitors go black, red lights dim the interior, and the airlock doors open. Each unbuckling, they dive headfirst into the sloshing waves of zero-gravity, through the terminal esophagus, winding inside the viscera of chambers and hallways, Djehuty guiding through the dim crimson, until two doors open and reveal the chamber which illuminated golden-grey upon their entry. Mercrie floats towards the control panel, a donut-shaped module which seats one being. He raps his claws upon the keypad. Inside the brain of this leviathan, wall-monitors reveal the crew’s insignificance while they float in the space sea. Djehuty scales the walls, inspecting and mumbling to himself, and gives his companion some kind of hand gesture. A low hum reverberates throughout the chamber; translucent, multicolored bars overlay the infinity of stars, flash green, and disappear, leaving in their dust the residue of language that Space Lord knows, but cannot comprehend. “The compressor still works,” says Djehuty, “Now, we’re trying to lock the Godship.” “But,” continues Mercrie, “the Godship could be anywhere in the galaxy.” “And the cruiser’s cartography system needs an update.” “Which we can’t install until we find the Godship.” “Which, again, could be anywhere in the galaxy.” Behind his skull-mask monkey-suit, Space Lord shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t understand. Why take on an impossible task?” “Impossible? Definitely. But predictable, well, that’s what we’re shooting for.” On a holographic map, star systems fade into the screen with matrices, then fade out, leaving five, which fade to two, and the only one. “The space-time map might be outdated, but it’s very unlikely that the Intergalactical Council modified their strategic aims in the last few millenia. It’s also unlikely that any god has matured.”

“The sole exception would have been yours, but you people killed it.” “And unless the immovable-mover spawned a new egg, there’s only one known god left.” Djehuty jumps to the monitor, lands on his claws, and taps a planet on the other side of the galaxy, and a label “RHEE-2” appears beside it. “To our knowledge, it’s zoned for the last human culture in the galaxy.” Space Lord tilts his head. “The last human culture?” “Yeah. The last human bloom in the galaxy. The Hwuree mastered the art of controlling its infection. Most of the time, they forget it’s even there.” “It’s unlikely the Godship will happen to be there, but if the Hwuree warrant us asylum, we can at least update our systems and request piety.” “And you’ll get to see what your species is like somewhere besides your home planet–” “No, I mean, my homeworld has humans.” “HAD humans,” replies Mercrie. He adjusts the galaxy, and a line connects a planet with their cruiser point. “What the hell are you talking about? We HAVE humans.” Djehuty laughs. “Have you listened to nothing? Everyone you know and love died ages ago.” “You have no way of knowing.” The two androids sigh, facing each other, shaking their heads in unison. “You know, he’s harmless, but he’s just as dumb.” An amber glow on the screen initiates a confirmation dialogue with a ten-second pause for cancellation. Soon, he would be hurled to the other side of the galaxy, merciless amongst aliens, and gods, and robot lawyers. The countdown timer ticks. He kicks off the ground and cannonballs Mercrie, the skull-helmet knocking paws of the keyboard tumbling the robot out of the control pit, while Space Lord grasps the keyboard with one hand, and with another, jabs keys. Djehuty pounces off the monitor. Their path dissolves and reconnects with another planet as the confirmation reads “SER-1” and sets its pause dialogue.

Space Lord slaps a large button to the left of the panel. The monitors read “PAUSE:OVERRIDE” just as the robot space-tackles the parasite out of the cockpit, just as a nauseating pain twists a serrated spear into his gut, just as the darkness and polka-dot heavens surrounding them blur into a celestial puke-grey.

Chapter 23 – Perennial Be the universe you always wanted to become. Everything blurs with an opalescent haze. Leave the dream to gentle breeze forever. Like oil spilled all over the cockpit, a rainbow sheen swells and recedes the control panels on a scorching-cold summer day. The monitor panels ripple with a graceful spring wind, and the lily pads wobble back and forth, back and forth, against the cool, mild tides. The robot feline stares him in the eyes. “In blissful hours, transcendent dreams are half-truths.” He watches a yellow lily blossom. Every yellow petal unfolds into spiraling ribbons as amber pollen erupts and floats in zero gravity around them, sticking to the walls, to the metal fingertips, to the plastic keypad. Dewdrops caress the golden silk, travel towards the tips, and drip after drip drops into the void, hits his helmet, and glides across the eye-panel, stroking the skull mask like a fingertip, and falling into infinity behind him. “You. Are. Perennial.” Djehuty slaps him across the head. Wobbling metal resonates inside his helmet. The pollen, the flower petals, all distort, tear into momentary static, and fade into memory. “I’m going to ask you one more time: ARE. YOU. AN. IDIOT.” What? “Finally! He’s cognizant again.” Mercrie, arms crossed and leaning against the wall, laughs. Djehuty taps against the mask. “You, my friend, are a master bullshitter. You can’t even stop it when you’re midconscious.” The translator module works by simulating experiences, so when the system hiccups, or when the host brain misfires, the module overcompensates, goes full stream-of-conscious, expresses intimate thoughts with irreconcilable meanings.

Space Lord’s unconscious thoughts reflect the innate desire to create meaning and beauty. “But our universe,” continues the android, “is devoid of meaning, and every intelligent life knows it.” He stands and walk towards the monitors. The lily pads are terminals. “When you try persuading the intergalactical council, you’ll need something enlightening. No more of that ‘beautiful dream’ utopia.” The pond is now a pitch-black background. “What does ‘perennial’ even mean?” Asks Mercire. “That’s what you were telling me,” replies Space Lord. “You should know.” “No,” interrupts Djehuty, “that was all you. Maybe you imagined we said it, but you were listening to yourself the whole time. “If the ability to interpret language short-circuits, how can anyone possibly interact with their world? This is what we mean. We never witness this behavior from intelligent life. Human brains store so little information that when you throw off one neuron, your whole perception of reality parallels another dimension.” Space Lord turns his head and vomits. “Also, keep your helmet on. The cruiser’s atmospheric manifold isn’t adjusted for human life. Better of smelling like a dead foetus than losing oxygen.” Above the sloshing sounds of self-sustained stomach acids against the inside of his helmet, the two androids stare at the terminals. “Why?” Asks Djehuty. Space Lord keeps puking, dry heaves, unintended gag-reflexes streaming tears down his nose, floating midair between his eyeballs and his mask, the vacuum tubes inside his helmet filtering and jettisoning his acids out the eject ports on his backpack. “Why did you redirect coordinates?” His ejected puke floats in globules and slaps the back walls. “Earth,” he dry heaves. Hovering midair, Djehuty sighs. In a moment, he’s going to tell Space Lord a story. This story begins millions of years before written history, when history was written by the winners, who became the losers, who all died in a gaslight, and left

behind simulated intelligent life and fleshy organic meat-fleas. In exchange for life, sustenance, and unbridled technology, all they wanted was for someone to take care of their god, and although it seemed like an easy task at first, it proved too much for anyone they left in charge.

Chapter 24 – Aita Once upon a time, a baby god punctured intergalactical borders, ripping at lightspeed through small asteroids, novae, all the seeds of life. Guided by the hand of stronger orbits, it webble-wabbled through the galaxy’s many starsystems, swimming through the current of an invisible gravity river. Who knows how many bacterium are slaughtered and stuck to these deities, how much starstuff irradiates its crusty, rocky egg, or how much evolution takes place during its incubation? The galaxy knows only of three gods, every one unique, always in a state of flux. When Gorbachek sensors foresaw its landing on a remote system, they began the manifest ritual. In their wisdom, they designated the Catar, and assigned Aita, the Catar Supreme Delegate, as planetary overseer. This was a political attempt to amend their relationship with the Catar after accidentally decimating their homeworld in the galaxy’s first-known warpdrive test, a political relations disaster which the Catar largely regarded with profound annoyance. Had the explosion not slaughtered every major political figure on the Catar homeplanet, they might have chosen another representative. Those with political sensibility criticized Aita for her many vanities. She took more pride in her image than her governance. On too many occassions, they professed, she supplemented judgement with the desires of those who governed her, and as she ascended through the ranks of the Gorbachek bureaucracy, every new leader set a different demand, and a new expectation for an “ideal leader.” For Aita, an ideal leader is a good follower of whoever controls your reputation; thus, by her definition, she was a profound leader. A leader’s worst qualities, like a virus, spread to all subordinates in any culture; so it was no surprise when, well outside the knowledge of the Antarians, other enlightened species began to witness that few who worked beneath her expressed any satisfaction. This was discovered in the results of an industry survey to assess morale. It found that, of all intelligent life in the galaxy, these Catar worked in superficial joy on a good day, and overt misery for pretty much every other day of the galactic cycle. Despite being among the closest in the galaxy to the deity, their workplace satisfaction was damned, as they were damned to follow a follower, who cared more about following than leading. Perhaps that’s why High Archon, the only creature closest to the deity, chose her as an extension of his will.

Aita partook the task, and explained it to her people as an excellent chance to develop a positive environment on a new world. Most of the offworld sceientists, those who survived the decimation of Antares-B, knew that this exemplified the depths of political bullshitting, as a planet designed to raise a chaotic, unpredictable god – a god which would shed into new flesh and new life by consuming its host planet – would be the least likely to maintain itself in the long run. No, they thought, without a homeworld, we must repopulate here where it’s safe. But their little hope suffocated day by day when the starsystem census reported fewer and fewer Catar with every year, percent-by-percent, the littledeath of time. By the time her transmission reached Antares-C1 and C2, those scientists had already began to adapt to unalterable fatalism which is signified by the overconsumption of catnip and urinating in bottles. But Aita was resilient in spite of her people’s needs and the information supporting it. Rather than the greatest minds, she indoctrinated her most vehement zealots, who chiseled their identity to match the effigy of her ideals, and chiseled also at the identities of those who, with little self-esteem, succumbed their deepest fears to her idle threats and pervasive demoralization. She formed a team of those who sought glory in external means, and others who were too afraid to speak. Aita wanted only those to speak who glorified her. With those who revered themselves through her, and those who had no choice, High Archon ascended her as Omega, and with her seat upon the most holy Council, dismissed her to Ser-1. The entire trip was a colossal disaster. Within the first few lightspeed weeks, they realized that the male Catar were given only one bathroom, and Riatf consistently sprayed the walls or carpeted the bathroom floor with slippery fecal puddles, for his concerns about warpspeed sickness went unheard. Aita wrote him many official documents of disappointment and reprimand, but still maintained that the second men’s restroom be used as a janitorial closet, despite having no janitor. Consequently, the men became furious, but were also reprimanded for not maintaining a positive intertransit attitude, which could contribute to a negative workplace. In her defense, the rebut of Aston-IV, which led to the liquification of ten captains, served as a cautionary tale. But a bathroom, they argued, would be a trivial goal. Riatf was given a written letter of discipline.

Then there was the maintenance of electronic equipment, which was performed only by the robots, but when the repair servitor broke, and no scientist or electrician was aboard to fix them, those on board were forced to live for months in backup redlight, without power for their commtubes to replay reruns of Plant Currency like they demanded in their contract. (Compensation time was never awarded on Ser-1, either.) In short, the entire journey under Aita’s leadership left something to be desired. So it’s little surprise that, when they finally landed on the blue orbiter, which the human race would later christen “Earth,” all the hominid cats on board salivated for some semblance of freedom. When the doors opened, they clawed each other out of the way, and raced to the bushes to urinate their territories, or defecate the soil, or simply run and screech in circles, dancing around the rippling reflection of the moonlight in a dark, damp puddle.

Chapter 25 – Mother (Earth), part 1 Do you know those buttes in central America, the hyper-smooth plateaus, with intricate designs and incomprehensible meanings? Yeah, those alien artifices were made by just what you’d expect: aliens. The original spaceports, simple, and harmonious with the planet, rather than at its expense. Yes, aliens — but that could be said about everything in the planet, because despite most of the galaxy being unsure about their origins, even the human race is an alien. To the collective mind, the only difference is that every other intergalactical species accepts that fact, and humans still believe that their world is a given, that they interited their planet, that it belongs to them for whatever immoral pleasures they deign to implore. In short, humans ruin everything they fester. So, here are the facts about Ser-1’s human outbreak. The Catar, for all their laziness, sorted the God problem over a few millenia. The meteor egg hatched, the mountainous pupa uncoiled, stretched its tender stomach and uncountable millipede legs, and over generations, opened eyeball after eyeball; and with the passing aeons, even more eyes grew, from within the folds of the skin, swelling like large pimples, until they, too, opened, and gazed upon the landscape with imperceptible judgment and irrational wonder. Atop the desert mountains of the jungle paradise, an immature god chewed upon the dry dirt and brittle boulders. Their system worked, as god devoured the landscape, and they went about their business erecting obelisks of cork to scratch. They cataloged the manifold flora and fauna. The giant flytraps. The occassional dinosaur skeleton encrusted into the cave walls. In particular, they loved the monkeys, clever enough to deceive one another, and stupid enough to pick a pile of shit and throw it at warring monkey tribes. It wasn’t long after that they noticed a new species of monkey emerge, but through the passage of time, it became less and less like monkeys. It still threw its shit, only it developed a sense of Veladarity with the jungle, and in small groups, began to venture outward. At first, the Catar colonists found them hilarious and obedient, so they adopted them as household pets. But, some of them began to notice rebellious, violent streaks against their gigantic cat

masters, and were either contained to unbreakable glass showcases, or euthanized. Then, Oris, most intelligent of the alien cats, who studied the behaviors of this new animal, which seemed more a disease than the mammals it resembled, proposed an idea to Aita. He noticed that the species responds best to fear, and only time itself kindles resentment and irrational action; but if time offered punishment and structure, rather than relaxation and liberty, the disease could work alongside them, if not with them. Aita, who desired most of all to appear the superior species in any environment, even within her own species, approved of this idea, and over time, the Catar punished the parasites into a civilization. And this was easy, because every day when the humans awoke, the many eyes of god stared back at them. Religion and civilization began when their orbital cruiser sent missiles, like comets, raining from the skies, setting a perimeter around the anticipated nomad routes, until all the nomadic tribes fell into a common point. They explained that god, the horrible, fat insect upon the mountain, was insane, and desired them to stay near him. Communicating this was no easy task, as the translator modules abstracted to a form of primeval grunts; so, much of their communication came in the form of slaps and beheadings. Of course, before the development of morality (an idea conveyed only with language), these humans accepted these assertions of power structure with blissful reverence. With ease, the Catar automated the process of civilization — a social structure in which everyone works for the benefit of the one who slaps you hardest or threatens to kill you and your family. With more time, these balder monkeys developed the toddler babblings of an almost-language, so the Catar began to tier further levels of obedience in the popular dogma. God, they explained, was actually pretty merciful. It only requires one human sacrifice, because being so massive and mighty, if he lacks the satisfaction of delicious food, he gets angry, and sends skyfire everywhere, just like he did to the ancients. One human out of an entire culture really isn’t THAT bad, they explained; some gods would just kill everyone without reason. Oh, and make sure she’s beautiful, like the one who has a lot male companions, because god likes women who attract the most men.

From the mountain that housed god, they carved an immense step pyramid, and every year, with the harvest, the humans offered the curviest, most tantalizing Neanderthal sex-idol, whose almond-colored skin glistened with sunlight, as melted butter lathered her from face to feet, for flavor. Two masked Catar escort her and two city priests for several days up each individual step, further and further into the sky, providing her food, and allowing the priests to lather her in more and more butter, and sprinkle her with finely-grained sea salt, so as to retain the flavor. Upon the final threshold, just beneath the clouds, the priests stop, and enter a state of deep prayer for god to enjoy their offering, the most beautiful girl, with large hips, and supple, buttered breasts. They dig their noses into the steps and mumble to themselves. When the girl approaches the face of god, with its many eyes and useless legs, a guard might reveal that none of this matters, that god probably lacks taste buds, that god has no way of communicating with intelligent life, that no one in the universe really understands its object or its desires. Sometimes, they admit that the Catar incinerated the early tribes and abused civilization into emergence, and that although god is benign and horrible, he doesn’t need a sacrifice. But bounded by her nearly-language, she never understands what they mean, and with god and parasite, the escorts confront two beings which act without reason. Sometimes it takes god days to open its fleshy mouthhole. The escorts left, but she always, obediently, remains. Lying face down, sometimes weeping, sometimes stoic, sometimes lost in the euphoria of becoming one with the allpowerful’s desire. God’s massive, salivating lips open, and the furnace of its mouth superheats the air; the earth trembles, and the stench of burning flesh and ashes permeates the air, well into the city. Overwhelmed by nausea, the villagers celebrate knowing that their god approves with their tribute and their good works, and they can thrive another year, because there is absolutely a connection between their rituals and their well-being. She probably dies well before the earth around her crumbles and plunges deep within a molten stomach.

Chapter 26 – Mother (Earth), part 2 No one really remembers when the cats left Ser-1. One day, Aita had to leave for a mandatory assembly of Space Lords. The meeting round-trip took several millenia, which the Catar knew. Her transport ship, once out of sight, and its gravity signals dissipated, signaled the discussions. Mir conjectured that a return to Antares made the most sense. There, he said, cats can nap, and eat, and dream. Of all the things she took from us, our dreams, products of our magnificent cat naps, we deserve the most – and when have any here been given leave to sleep since our arrival tending to a baby god! The other cats meowed in approval. Mir was entrusted with leading the escape. He commissioned the cyborg bodies created on Ser-1. He approved the duplication of minds. When the artificial cats awoke, their beady, glass eyes squinting around the room, their nervous systems, fritzed and paranoid, twitched and convulsed, and settled down. “What am I for?” “To tend to god, and punish humans.” The metal cats screamed ear-piercing shrieks, and fell to sleep, and woke again. But, Djehuty and Mercrie, then the Council Legal Representatives, interjected, albeit too late. They pointed out the illegality of EMA-level sapience. “For creating a virus,” they purveyed, “all of you will surely die.” Mir was wise, yet so misguided. He believed that a race which understood humans, which carried the seeds of EMA, would better punish and control the human virus. He ignored, however, that EMA corrupts the mind and makes anew. “That’s why it’s illegal,” said Djehuty. “When you return – if you, or new cats, or even Aita returns – these will not be the same mental copies.” Of course, Djehuty never expected what happened next. Mir and his troupe of Catar left the nasty planet. They, who shaped human civilization, left behind only androids, and a small, underdeveloped species of cats, the cats human beings grew to love, and be controlled by, and betrayed by, just as our original protectorates controlled and betrayed our ancestors. Though the android cats tended to the will of their creators, the lackadaisical feline mind dominated tirelessly inside the synthetic body, and soon, even the

robots sought the values of laziness. But who to leave behind? They thought. Not more robots, who, like us, corrupted by EMA and cat, will merely follow our leave, and overpopulate our home planet, a home we never knew. MIR-0x04 conjectured that the imitation Catar, these androids, train the humans to perform their will. Since humans rank below intelligence, no legal code prevents the procedures. This, of course, was taken as a joke, but over time, with the pitapatting silence of god in the distant landscape (for god was slowly becoming the landscape), the sex rituals of horny civilizations in their small adobe huts, and the thick humidity permeating the air, the imitants took more and more seriously the social engineering of a race already predisposed to some manipulation – after all, what credit earn these cities made by thought control? At first, they judged a human best to rule who rules by fear alone – who takes the life of others and deems him self superior, the moral compass of humanity, the god of every possible world; after all, what better antidote to a parasite than a better parasite? However, with the human race, they thought, they have the unique opportunity to give it all the tools they need to become intelligent life. So, rather than the masochist, the stone-age corporate psychopath devoid of conscience and empathy, they sought one who best expressed the values of a Space Lord: who rules by bringing others together for a symbiotic existence, not one whose sense-of-self, like all low-level beings, becomes a parasite upon the host of those he rules. Later, humans would discover, on their own, that mutualism is the most successful economic policy; and, so, the corporate psychopath has zero business in successful evolutionary traits. They found a public speaker, a man who dedicated himself to public restoration, maintenance, and within his community, one who always helped others in their darkest despair. Jump-jetting across the skyline, two Catar landed, bowed before him during a public speech, and exalted the new Lord of the Human Race before the audience. They escorted him to the Lord’s chamber, where they found a large man slouching upon an artistan-carved stone seat. He greeted his guests with aggressive grunts and screams, then jumped from his seat and began to beat upon his chest, the power-play of the current lord, intangible sounds, with no basis in lingusitics: only the emotional assertion of unrestrained anger and unconscious terror. So they evaporated him.

They seated the new lord upon the throne. With this new human in place, they had only limited time to teach him language, but with time the greatest essence, they decided to modify his brain, to understand new levels of language, and to speak it, and even if his words cannot be translated, to live and purvey them. In truth, it required little more than some rewiring; the ability to do so was already there. When he finally understood them, he asked, “What am I for?” “To tend to god, and punish humans.” “But I am human.” “We know.” Before their departure, the imitant Catar left technology, enough for Aita to escape, or, in their hopes, enough for a single, intelligent human being to advocate for their species on the intergalactical stage. So this human, this idiot, barely-speaking human, became the first lord, and for awhile, he continued the practices of feeding women to the god, of glorifying the god, of punishing those who spoke against the dragon, and against him. But, unlike the cats or the imitants, though eloquent and sophisticated in thought (because language creates new realities and possibilities), this leader saw his subjects through the eyes of a human being. They are not parasite, he thought. They are me. And it didn’t take long after that before he walked upon the balcony, and gazed upon the benign architecht of chaos, and overcame to primal rage. With a single spear, and his lack of garments, as any hunter, he ran outside, some bodyguards following. And when he raced half-naked through the streets, and people began to mumble, he realized that none of them could be made to understand his task, or the tasks of any before him, because none but him understood the intangible realm of language. So he ran. He ran through the jungles, on the day-long hike up the hillside, to the stone steps, and he never bothered to listen or focus on anything besides the incorruptible, immovable thought in the back of his head. Step by step, he

became closer and closer with the skyline, the layer of the sky reserved for the gods, and finally, stopped before it. Its lips salivated with hot, clear fluid, and molten rock dropped from its jaws. The lord drew his spear. The god darted its many eyes across the scenery, the sky, at him, to the sky again. And unlike any human ever taken, the lord wondered whether or not god really understood what it saw. He took the position of the cheetah-hunter, the most vicious demon to the human villages. He locked its gaze, began the slow, crabwalk dance around it, ever so slightly, for besides intimidation, the lord had no good weapon. He stopped, feet grinding into red, brittle clay. And at the top of his lungs, he screamed a bloodcurdling, simian shriek. And he darted. And unbeknownst to him, lost in his rage, the whole of his human civilization followed. Lacking any effective weapon, they sought the vulnerable areas of god’s facade, and didn’t do much damage. But they really pissed him off. Jabs between he little layers of charred tectonic-like plates. The innards of the mouth. Like swarms of ants. The lord stood upon god, and tried to understand, but only found more confusion. Suddenly, he felt his arms grabbed, and tumbled down, two of his guards falling with him. Quickly, they gained their traction, grabbed their lord, and against his will, dragged him down the steps. In its indescribable rage, god convulsed, seized, and in its infantile tantrum, cracked open the earth. Then he fell in. Many people died. But not the lord. He was taken to safety, away from god, because the people looked to him for guidance. He lived the rest of his days with just leadership, making up for lost warriors by impregnating civilization’s women, and thereby, initiating the human evolution of greater consciousness, although the goal of “intelligence” remains to be seen amongst this species. As for the Catar, well, Aita returned to Ser-1, ignorant of the exodus, and was forced to report back the unfortunate news of god’s death. As punishment, the Gorbacheks gaslit the entirety of Antares, all the orbiters within that starsystem,

all its inhabitants, and blamed Aita for the genocide of god and, therefore, the genocide of her species, which the council approved. They released Aita from her duties as space lord; and the remainder of a life – a life once built on bureaucratic superiority and conscienceless duty – thousands of years later, while the collective human mind long disposed her race into a myth, she lived, exiled to the chaotic world devoid of anything she knew or understood, with humans who did not know or understand their world, as her life transformed into something alien and uncertain. She bothered looking for the escape pod. On Ser-1, she prowled the rainforest jungles, like the violent cheetah, stalking the cities of which she was once the architect. With no pretense of civilization, all she deemed inferior became her prey, as her animal instincts began to determine her rationality. Of all the truly brilliant Catar, she was easily the least intelligent. At night, she prowled the jungles, preyed on human babies and hunters, until finally, in her old age, her predictable habits became discussed, understood, and a swarm of angry people ornamented her with spears.

Chapter 27 – Sorry Djehuty, still watching streams of stars streak through blackened space, purred metallically. “You know, no one really remembers what you all were like at the beginning. We were there from day one, the day you all were found. You were like babies – terrified, overwhelmed, on guard. Some screaming. Some crying. You were like our children, closest thing we’ve ever had.” He uncrossed his arms. “I miss that, sometimes.” “We really thought you all would evolve,” said Mercrie. “We really believed we did everything possible to give you all a chance.” “Shame to know we wasted so much time.” Space Lord shook his head. “What do you mean, ‘wasted time?’ I’m here.” “We know. We’re so sorry to hear that.” “No!” Shouted the super-primate, “You left us a pod for a reason! Only when we gained intelligence could we find you all. Well, we found you.” Djehuty turned around. “Was it you, or was it the monkey we left to guide you?” “You know,” said Mercrie, “that the monkey was a joke, right? That suit you’re wearing, it was supposed to make fun of you. Because of your heritage.” “An intelligent species might have made that connection, but you’re all so dense, so self-centered, that not even a smarter one of you understands the insult. You probably believe all space-suits are designed like animals, or that you were some hero chosen by destiny, that something you did initiated the suit’s protocol. You’re so full of lies, full of deception, so full of your own shit, that you missed the cosmic joke behind your story.” “Really, the monkeys back on Earth were more enjoyable than you all.” “Shut up!” He shouted. “Shut up! We were powerful enough to kill a god! To kill the god that’s strong enough to rip apart a planet! We were smart enough to build civilizations, to use the skills of language and creative thought to build our cultures. Because of you, we became intelligent, and I don’t really care if some galactic council says we’re never good enough.” The amber “slow down” light flickered on. The starlines faded into dots. “I’m going back to Earth.”

“Kid, weren’t you listening? Aeons passsed. Not even Aita returned to the cultures she left behind. You’re going to another world – and what’s worse, you’re visiting a world devoid of human beings.” “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe either of you. Humans persevere. Even in the worst catastrophes. We live on, we find a way, we make it work. We survive.” “Human beings self-destruct by design. Even bacterium spread too thin and die.” “You might give meaning to your life, but it doesn’t mean you really have it.”

Chapter 28 – Walnut, like the song The stars realign and fade into small specks in black space. Over further ages, below their cruiser, a small blue dot emerges and fades into a moon, into a planet. An amber box fades in, fades out, flickering “ORBIT LOCK,” over and over again. Djehuty’s condescention echoes through the chambers as Space Lord plunges through a gravity-devoid space, through the metal viscera of the hollow cruiser. He saw the life scanners face-to-face: his race is dead. There’s only crap-tossing monkeys now. Whatever he thought he’d find died long ago. But he couldn’t believe it. He barrels through the escape pod atrium, rests his open palm against a panel, and the doors hiss open like a pissed-off rainforest anaconda. He tumbles inside, turns on the monitor, punches in some coordinates, and the pod detaches from its host. From Father Sky, it jettisons through the atmostphere, the viewport monitors hazing a Phoenix red-and-orange, then fading into ocean blue, or sky blue – he couldn’t tell which. The green Earth welcomes him like a begotten, opioid-loving parent embraces their neglected child during a forced reunion, and the endless landscape overwhelms his senses. Only it’s a bit too much green. More green than he remembers. And the landing pod, with its landing sensors, detects no landing zone. No streets. No towers. Just forest. He updates another coordinate, and a second, but one after another, the landing mechanism fails because of overwhelming forestry. He scans the entire planet. There is nothing but forest, desert, and mountains. He remembers the buttes on which our ancestors hardwired human civilization. He finds a spot, a hyper-smoothened plateau, and the landing module accepts. From there, he thinks, I’ll see the Mexican cities, and then make my way down. But when the pod lands, the doors open, and Space Lord, cosmic-monkey-man, steps out, he recollects nothing recognizable about the landscape. He listens to birds’ irrecognizable melodies, feels brittle clay crush beneath his boot, and listens to the chimpanzees screeching their aggressive mating pick-up lines.

Over there, he looks towards the endless ocean. He sees only green landscape embracing blue skies. No more cartels exploiting villages and murdering families. No more step-pyramids asserting their silence atop the skyline. No more American tourists drinking themselves to death in public and returning home to drink more before they ruin the world. He kneels down, grabs a handful of dry clay, and lets it slide, grain by grain, chunk by chunk, through the cracks of his fingers. There is no culture. An alien lands upon an alien world. The android lawyers yell some legalese over the commspeaker. He hits silence. There are no humans. He spends a lifetime scavenging the Earth, in the all-travelling pod, seeking high and low for something like himself, and over the course of a normal human lifespan, he finds nothing. But Mother Earth still loves her other children In the same monkey-filled silence which mocked his entry, the untamed chimps gloat at his escape, he thinks, although the monkeys live in forests far away, unaware of the workings of any world, or universe, or violator around them. Their greatest concern is the production of shit, and the means by which to weaponize it against intruders. They are by no means in need of more shit. He steps into the pod, which still tallies the decades he spent in search of something nonexistent. Decades, he thinks. He initiates the ascension protocol. The monkey skull still grins atop his real face. Back through the sky, like the rising of a disappointed Jesus Christ who came to take his congregation, but found them all extinct. Back through the furnace hell of atmosphere. Back to the infinity of outer space. He initiates the lock sequence for his cruiser. As his body begins to float, devoid of gravity, a loud siren blaress throughout the tiny hull, and the top viewport flashes blood orange.

. . . . . . . . . . . . :: W A R N I N G :: . . . . . . . . . . . . T E R M I NAT E Y O U RAS C E N DAN C YAN D D I S L O C AT E F R O M Y O U R C A P S U L E W I T H I N T H E S E C O N D S [ERR].

He can’t stop the autopilot. The translator updates sluggishly.

W E D E S I R E [ERR] C O M P L I C I T Y.

AL L Y O U SAY AN D AC T W I LL B E U S E D D U R I N G P U N I S H M E N T H E A R I N G S.

And as he looks up, at the top viewport, he sees it glowing molten red.

Y O U A R E P E R M I T T E D L E G AL R E P R E S E N T A T I O N.

Just as it pops and empties the pod. He jettisons through the vacuum of space. It was then that the automaton trap, which orbited the planet for generations with its metal antennae and lazer salvos, faces the helpless human – and then, giddy like a satellite child, wide-grinned and faceless, the trickster summons its hyperspace bubble, which embraces the ship, the human, and some decrepit NASA satellites from the nineties, through the nauseum of lightspeed across the galaxy. Space unfolds patterns, blackness and stars, and then, slows down to pitch black with speckled dots. He looks out at the the heaven ocean, trying to find his cruiser, but instead, sees only the night sky, the rising of some eclipsed sun, and an arrangement of purple stars against a pitch canvas, which distinguishes itself from the true heaven behind it. This first encounter with the Godship, dark and starry, blending into space itself,

threw him tumbling into emptiness, a place he had never before entered until now. No longer has he the comforting embrace of gravity or soil. No walls of a secure, transplanetary pod to rescue him. No safety of a cruiser that runs away to the other side of the galaxy. I have only myself, he thinks. I can float here until the sun of my childhood irradiates and freezes everything. Until it becomes a supermassive black hole and consumes everything forever. Until the supermassive black hole in the middle of our galaxy consumes even more of everything for even more of forever. Until this suit short-circuits and stops keeping me alive, he hyperventalates. I can float here forever, he hopes. Then he pukes all over his helmet HUD, and passes out. As the track lights blink their way in his direction, two Centaurian Egrets, on weightless wings, and blurry from the light escaping the black sun, glide to him. They disable his suit’s movement functions with a paralysis stick, and lift his unconscious body, following the amber dots of a tractor track, towards the Godship – the eclipsing cosmic monolith – and drag him even farther away from the luscious forest veiling his graveyard planet.

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. . .END TRANSMISSION ONE . . .

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