some microfiction
"It looks like Universe C137 is nearing collapse."
"Another one? Why'd sentience fail this time?"
"The pack animal problem. It's too easy to get them to choose mythology over facts."
"We're losing all sapience?"
"Yes, I give it a hundred years local time before there are no observers left."
"Nobody to collapse the wavefront. Oh well. Set it to snap back and big bang again. Stick with an omnivore, but try one with weaker social bonds next time."
"Will do."
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The arrival of the ships was astonishing. They didn't fly in from outer space but simply /appeared/, high above all the world's significant cities. The blast of displaced air flattened a few of the more fragile buildings.
Even more astonishing was the message they broadcast directly into every human mind. They announced their intention to exterminate all sapient life, and offered the option of dying last to any collaborator and their family.
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Many centuries after the bombs dropped...
Young Jimbo was ecstatic. Lightning had struck a dead tree and made it burn, but he wasn't afraid. He captured the fire. It turned out to be fairly easy. As long as he fed it dry sticks, it stayed alive. He'd tamed fire!
Old Pete was watching, unseen. He knew the tales. It's not the fire that's dangerous, it's the smoke. The smoke destroyed the ancients.
He crept up and cut Jimbo's throat, then pissed the fire out.
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I saw him coming this time, and grabbed a fist sized rock. He almost got me last time, and I’d even briefly regretted instigating the situation. Who knew an office worker could be so dangerous?
Head-on, it was no contest. He wielded a pair of scissors out the bottom of his fist like a horror movie villain, and I smashed them out of his hand with my rock before braining him. It was almost a perfect murder.
Too bad about that journalist who put it in the paper.
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Julie felt her cod squirm pleasurably as it ingested a dollop of menstrual fluid. She made a mental note to eat some roughage later today to help it digest, but most of her mind was on Bill.
Bill stood in front of her, glassy eyed and almost pleading. "C'mon, Jules. Let's make a baby."
Julie sighed in faux exasperation and acquiesced. Bill carefully pressed his cod against hers.
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Wee, sleekit, tim'rous yeastie
So I'm breaking in a new assistant. This one's overzealous and annoyingly helpful, which is a definite improvement over the last. That's one of the downsides to working for a criminal enterprise--bad help.
I was scanning my quadrant when this one popped up on the bridge with a grin. "Look, boss. I found one!" Surprisingly, it looked like he had. The nitrogen and oxygen ratio in the planet's atmosphere was nearly perfect.
With those ratios alone half the galaxy could get high. It just needed a little more carbon dioxide plus a few hydrocarbons for flavoring. "Does it have a sentient species or do we need to uplift one?"
"No, we're good there. An arboreal developed sapience a while back. They just discovered fossil fuels."
"A pack animal?"
"Oh yes. I wouldn't bother you otherwise. Get the right one to think the way you want and the rest will follow."
I notified HQ and plotted a course.
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"...and after three hours of fighting with it, the damn thing still leaked! A two hundred dollar Kohler! I took it back to Home Depot and got the basic one I install in all my rental units. Took a half hour to install and doesn't leak. Sally will just have to live without a detachable head in the shower. I never understood why that was so important to her, anyway."
I didn't have the heart to tell him.
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"Honey! You're going to be late for school. Put on your helmet while I cycle the lock."
Jenny donned her heavy helmet and settled the spineguard in place. Once outside home security, she flipped her visor up and took a deep breath. She knew her mother would have, like, a literal cow if she got caught, but Jenny really liked the smell of unprocessed air.
She met with Ben and started walking to school. Ben had seen her with her visor up, and started ragging on her.
"You think you're so tough! What would you do if a bee saw you with your visor up? You're stupid."
"Am not!" said Jenny.
"Am too! It's like you want to die."
"Naaah, I'm just brave. Unlike some people."
"Oh yeah? It's like that, is it? Ok then."
As Ben took off his helmet, Jenny heard a thin, quiet buzzing noise that quickly dopplered closer. Before she could shout, a tiny thumb sized drone raced across her field of vision and detonated in Ben's face, blowing off his head.
Jenny wouldn't let herself sob, although a few tears leaked out the corners of her eyes. She'd already seen this too many times before. Everyone had. The scientists said it would still be many years before the bees got old and wore out.
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I kilgored a story once about a race, the Koomi, that evolved on a 12-g planet. They were slow, but incredibly strong, and all wanted to leave their own crushing gravity for a smaller planet.
When Earth finally contacts galactic civilization, civilization is generally uninterested. We don't have anything valuable enough to make us worth conquering, and haven't discovered any art or philosophy that wasn't done better a billion years ago.
The only sentient species among millions that has any interest in Earth at all are the Koomi. They want our gravity well, so to speak, and don't need sleep. They start emigrating to here and filling all the menial positions in society where 24 hr/day work and enormous strength are an asset. They flood Earth and siphon up all the ditchdigger-type jobs. This causes such disruption that we outlaw exoplanet immigration, but that only drives their migration underground.
And that is how Earth got swamped by illegal aliens.
:)
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Starship Kwai exploration log, year 21,452 CE (local reckoning)
Discovered inhabited planet, [type-c (sub 1)], orbiting yellow star [type e3]
Sapient inhabitants:
1) world-spanning linked network of sentient machine intelligence. Dominant.
2) bipeds descended from arboreals. Subordinate.
Major industries:
1) kitty cat farming
2) public displays of copulation
Evaluation:
Mostly harmless.