Special Bonus Excerpt: Space Oddity

This one's for everyone!

I had the notion that this concept would be a chapter long before I even sold a sequel, and I'm PRETTY pleased with how it came out, and I was telling folks on the Discord about it, and I've had an espresso martini, SO YOU GET IT EARLY.

What's so special about humanity? STRAP YOURSELF THE EFF IN.

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11. Hug Me Tight

The human ability to compartmentalize trauma into two very distinct boxes; one of punch-drunk, truly embarrassing enthusiasm for the source of that trauma and one for blanket denial that anything has ever happened anywhere to anyone, was the first and most immediately apparent thing that marked the blue (ish) Monkey Planet out specially among even the wild variations of the Milky Way’s constantly iterating game of DNA Mr. Potato Head.

The second, far more serious powerset, took a bit longer for the rest of the class to notice. Enough time for a few hopping ex-pat nests to spring up. A Klavaret cafe in Rotterdam, a Yurtmak strain of highly successful Cross-Fit in gyms across Russia, unholy 321 benders at every call center without a data cap. A Smaragdi stand-up modesty act called Please Do Not Take My Wife, I Like Her Very Much took the Golden Gibbo at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, Slozhit end-times cults drove the superheroes and princesses from Times Square, an Esca singer won The Voice and, in accordance with the newly-negotiated prize package, immediately began to ritually ingest Adam Levine, who seemed, in the end, more relieved than anything.

Anywhere on Earth you went you could find Utorak backpackers shooting their shot at paleolithic stone circles, Lummutis players asking intently about microtransactions, Voorpret consultants kicking back and sipping on dirty receptor proteins on the rocks in the NHS commissioner’s executive lounge, all hands, feet, proboscii, and tentacles on deck and on the prowl in Ibiza.

A Sziv for every sauna, an Alunizar for every intelligence agency.

Even Olabil the Friendless, last of the Inaki and the Lensari, undertook the long voyage to visit the elephants at the Zoologischer Garten Berlin. The ancient pachyderm and his symbiotic firelies, refugees from the drifting, still-burning chunks of Big Mama Auriga Epsilon in the constellation of the same, stood to their full biolumenescent height, tusks akimbo, dignity in check, and vibrated:

“Hello. I have come a long way. I am alone.”

“Nuh-uh, boo,” vibrated Edgar the Asian Elephant right back from behind glass, grass, and several educational diagrams of himself. “I like your dots.”

This exchange set off a serious visa dispute, taxonomical crisis, and television development bidding war more or less everywhere.

Things were going fine.

Actually, with all government representatives away at Klavaret Kamp for De-Kuntifying Korrupted Kiddos working hard on not barking over their Kibble at the other Kampers and earning their No More Resource-Guarding and Basic Pre-School Skills badges, things were going very well indeed.

For a little while.

The first glimmer of an inkling of a shadow of a screaming flashing all-hours neon sign that something was deeply wrong with that weird little place was a simple pair of images indignantly hurled on a tight-beam data-blast into civilized space from the general vicinity of Leith.

It showed a simple, five-fingered, gently cupped human hand (Fig. A) and another, this one moving backwards and down while maintaining its tenderly curved shape. (Fig. B).

The only included text read, in Old Keshet:

It has begun. Again.

A few weeks later, Hrodos burst into the communal lounge of Magic Natura Animal Sanctuary, Water Park & Polynesian Lodge Resort in Benidorm, sobbing in terror.

The aliens, who had fully booked this particular resort for the next century, to keep out the local riff-raff, found this devastating to their evening plans, mainly because Hrodos was not invited to Rock Around the New Drugs Happy Fun Times Tree Party and MLM Presentation (Multi-Genders Snort Free). Hrodos had never been invited to anything and never would be, as Hrodos was a sentient storm from a gas giant located approximately underneath the washing-up rack holding the Big Dipper that made Jupiter’s Great Red Spot look like a right ballbag. Hrodos had laid out quite a lot of dosh for the atmospheric compressors, lightning containment fields, and radical gale force bypass surgery required to treat Hrodoself to a real overseas holiday for once, and nothing was turning out the way Hrodos had dreamed.

“If they did it to me, they can do it to any one of you.” Hrodos accepted a cup of restorative silver iodide salts from the flippers of a sympathetic Yoomp. “These people are psychopaths. I can’t believe I gave them twelve points in the final. Don’t tell anyone. I’ll never live it down.” The golden twilit hurricane’s beach-ready bod shuddered in shame.

“It can’t be so awful as all that,” coaed the Yoomp, who was wearing a tube top and a bum bag that both read Spaniards Do It for Blood and Treasure, and would until the day she passed from this mortal existence to the great Yoomp-tank in the sky. “What did those nasty hair-havers do to you, poor baby?”

“A human…” the eye of Hrodos’ storm filled with tears. “A human petted me. And they’ll do it to you too! All of you! No one is safe!”

A silky, almost unrealistically soft and round Keshet called Tärn took a deep drag on a cigarette she’d nicked off Edward Wickerley, a sad electrician from Leeds who insisted he had a valid long-standing reservation at Magic Natura, flicked it onto the unlit dancefloor, and crushed it out with her furry foot.

“I told you. This place is bent. Barricade the doors if you want. It won’t help.”

It’s not that humanity invented becoming so overwhelmed by the powerful cuteness of a particularly fluffy being that one is compelled by a drive stronger than survival, sex, loyalty, or the accumulation of resources to stroke its head and asking who is a good boy in a totally altered speaking voice over and over until both the petter and the pettee turn into a calcified leash and wallet resting on a pile of dusty cold bones.

That dubious behavior is so universal that can I pet your dog? is statistically the most commonly uttered phrase, in all languages, in the history of the galaxy, followed by not all Alunizar and what do you feel like for dinner, I’m easy, no not that place…or that one either.

So to some extent, you can’t realistically make your debut on the galactic stage without expecting pets to follow. Dealing with this constant threat formed a major foreign policy plank for the Keshet, Meleg, Slozhit, Esca, Lummutis, and Elakhon, who comprised a Loose Confederation of the Pretty Ones. The Naranca Empire, who occupied the entire Talata Quadrant and only emerged to sell inferior cheese to the masters of cheese arts and buy, at the outside, novelty t-shirts and nothing else, who not only habitually declined to participate in the Metagalactic Grand Prix, but were so self-centered they had real trouble even remembering what, when, or that it was, had once launched a full invasion of the Sladoded Tertius system with the objective of everybody getting to pet one extra-stripey Meleg the Emperor had seen on a bootleg stream of The Only Way Is Dissolving My Immediate Social Circle In the Acid Swamp.

But no one, no one, had ever so much as idly considered the ROI on petting Hrodos. That sort of thing was a Keshet problem. A Meleg problem. It probably wouldn’t even be a Lummutis problem if they’d just let everybody see what they had going on under those cartoon avatars. If you dressed modestly, didn’t go out at night, watched your drink, and your species didn’t fall into the small/cute/soft demographic, you had nothing to worry about.

Until now.

The Esca can control your emotions with the vibrations of their voices. The Yurtmak can separate anything overtly sticky-outty from your torso with all the effort of a newborn popping a dummy out of their mouths. The Voorpret can steal your man, inhabit his lifeless body, and use it to send dick pics to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way before you even have time to wonder who ordered all this photography equipment. Hrodos is psychic, the Utorak are telekinetic, the Yoomp can talk to plants, and the 321 will border on omniscient and omnipotent if they ever get past their crippling addiction to mobile gaming.

What unique power lay slumbering in the genome of homo sapiens sapiens?

Humans. Will pet. Anything.

Puppies and kittens? Yes. Bunnies, ferrets, parakeets? Don’t mind if they do. Lions, tigers, ligers, tions? That’s the dream. Foxes, raccoons, badgers, grizzly bears, fruit bats? Well, who hasn’t made sure to keep an emergency rabies shot and a wet wipe in their purse just in case?

Frogs? Sure, why not? Snakes? I guess? Squid? Hold on, are you taking them out of the water first? Spiders? Wait. Spider Monkeys? Slow down, how many legs are involved? Spider Octopi? Safeword. Japanese Spider Crabs? What’s happening? Why is everything spiders down there? Spider Wasps? Make it stop.

Rocks? Sticks? Great White Sharks? Xenomorphs? AR-15 Semi-Automatic Rifles with Upgraded Magazine Capacity? Literally just a statue of a dog who died a hundred years ago but was probably a decent bloke?

What the fuck.

The galaxy was slowly waking up to the horrifying truth about humanity: no matter how hideous, dangeous, pustulant, inanimate, awkward, oozing, or wholly indifferent to and incompatible with the continuation of life, in specific or in general, there was a human who would love it, cuddle it, call it their pwecious baby-poo, spend way too much money on accessories for it, maintain a webpage in its honor long after its death and/or recycling, and let it sleep on the bed against all hygeine recommendations. And if their human life partner objected, it wasn’t the African ball python who had to sleep on the couch.

Many humans had a great deal of trouble using this extraordinary ability on other human beings, but rest assured, while Allison Smith may not get her insulin in time to not die, Alphonse the Rescue Scorpion will never want for funds to re-take his sixth bite-test.

In a serious academic paper titled Hope This Email Finds You Well: Echolocatory Cries, Calls, and Territorial Songs of Earth, Adjunct Professor Caliginous Vellichor, the Untenureable, the Elakh scholar responsible for re-classifying Alunizar from aquatic gastropod to difficult confectionary in the latest edition of Guess Who? Stranger Danger Edition, the definitive repository of xenobiological information, had this to say to a symposium on the care and feeding of aliens:

Let me fucking tell you something1 about where human[2][3] beings[4][5][6] are coming from.[7][8][9][10][11][12]

About six hundred years ago they were nearly wiped out by a highly-infectious bacterium called Yersinia Pestis, carried by fleas joyriding on the common rat. Our good friend Y. Pestis was such a flamboyant artist-in-residence that it gave people a wee sniffle, then a wee bleeding their lung-lining out their eyeballs, and finally they fall down and their armpits explode. It’s pure shrieking chance that humans survived to become our problem. Well, I know you don’t ‘trust my research methods’ just because I ‘told everyone vaccines cause alligator blood’ and now everyone’s fresh out and all the kids have space-measles, but this is the fucking truth [Citation Needed] [Citation Needed]

Not only are there still common rats all over the biosphere, but those freaks keep them as pets! Ha ha you had an enormous hand in nearly driving our entire species to extinction here is a #TeamRat pillow to sleep on, a kicky exercise wheel to keep you lean and fit, and oooh look at these cute little sweaters for when it’s cold out! One of them says Rat Lives Matter, pay no attention to the human screaming for help outside the Rat Palace!

Get yourself a chair because you cannot un-know that there are FORTY-THREE SEPARATE Rat Fancier’s Magazines in an array of options: Weekly, Monthly, and Digest!

I, Caliginious Vellichor, have personally witnessed the manufacture, sale, and tender, loving care of plushies in the shape of, not only Y. Pestis cells, but HIV, syphilis, Ebola, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and whooping cough, a disease that exclusively kills very young children. With smiley faces on them.

They love it. They collect them. They think it’s hilarious. Y. Pestis burned through their species like the death of hope and their offspring snuggle it to fall asleep at night after feeding the creature that brought it to their grandmother a couple of tasty carrots.

Fellow Worldcon attendees, we have deeply underestimated this species. Meet me in the bar if you want to know about pet rocks, because I am STEAMING.

After explaining all this to the gathered ex-patriate community, the Keshet known as Tärn poured herself a long tall crate-mounted drip-dispenser of tequila and whispered:

“The fucked-up part is…it’s happened to me. A lot. I’m just…really, really cute, lads. And…” Tärn drew a ragged breath. “It’s extraordinary. Have you ever let a human pet you? There’s nothing like it.” The Keshet began to weep. “Nothing in this universe. It’s grotesque.”

“I liked it,” admitted Hrodos, who everyone had forgotten was there, because that was the best option when Hrodos was anywhere near you, “I liked it so much.”

“I know, honey,” Tärn sighed. “I know.” She turned to the others and hissed: “This never fucking leaves this room, got it? What happens on Earth stays on Earth. Now just sit tight. I’m going to…”

“Yes,” breathed a Meleg.

“Say it,” the Yoomp in the tube top hummed.

“Do it,” murmured a Yurtmak who had never in his life been scratched behind the ears.

The Keshet nodded. Once, twice. Then she said the words they were all waiting for.

“All right. Get us some champers and mood lighting. I’m gonna let Edward in.”