by Luke Kondor
He sat up on the bed. Floral duvet. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle curtains. Gravity. All of it was peculiar to say the least.
The smell. What was that smell? It made Moomamu want to speak words he’d never heard before. Angry ones.
In the corner of the room was a small wooden desk with a computing device on it. Beneath the desk … a ginger mammal, burying its turds in a sandbox. It meowed and he suddenly knew where he was. This was one of the smaller Earth mammals — a cat.
He yawned and stretched like he’d seen many carbon-based lifeforms do before. The ginger cat climbed up on to the bed by his feet and curled up. Moomamu had never seen one so close up before. He looked at the subtle stripes in his fur, at the finer hairs coming out of its ears, at its little pink nose, scarred from battles for dominance.
“Well …” he said with a tongue and a set of vocal chords he’d never used before. “This is unexpected.”
***
Moomamu climbed out of the bed and stood. The room was small and dark. It was like he was trapped in a box.
He listened and heard crunching noises nearby. Crunching and clinking.
He walked over to the computing device and saw his own reflection on the blank screen. He was definitely a human. He was male, mid-life, an odd patch of grey on the side of his head, and a fluffy beard around his face and down past his … what was it called? The throat bit that stuck out? His Adam’s apple.
There was also a tattoo on his shoulder, in a language even he didn’t understand. Thick black lettering swirled around the top of his shoulder and on to his back, further round than his human eyes allowed.
He turned to the cat.
“Where are we, little feline? What part of Earth?” he asked.
It cocked its head and looked at him with its lime-slice eyes and made a soothing, vibrating sound.
“You can’t talk?” he said. “Something got your tongue?”
It rested its head on its front legs and closed its eyes.
“Fine … you’re very rude.”
Moomamu knew a lot about a lot of things. He could tell you that Earth had seasons because it was tilted on a 23.4 degree axis. He could tell you that a castle of sand on an Earth beach was held together by water surface tension. He could tell you that that the dinosaurs became extinct sixty-five million years ago. They became extinct because an ancient race of alien hunters teleported them back to their home planet for an exotic gaming season. But he couldn’t tell you who Michael Jackson was.
He was just a living thing. A stupid living thing with limited mental capabilities.
He walked to the door, pushed it open, and walked into a slightly larger room. This one had all sorts of noises and smells. It had some water points, a refrigeration device, and a human being in it. This particular human being was eating little bits of dried grain in a bowl of cow lactation. Milk was the name of it.
The human looked kind of pathetic. It had short brown hair, shaved at the sides, and was wearing pink sleeping clothes.
“Morning,” it said before wiping a drop of milk from its chin.
“Is that what it is?” Moomamu said, pointing at its face.
It shrugged. “Nine a.m. … ish,” it said.
“Nine … and there’s twenty-four hours in a day on this planet right?” He pointed harder. His hand was nearing the human’s nose.
“Sure,” it said.
“I have some questions,” he said. He’d always noticed that the most successful creatures of the universe were the dominant, authoritative types. “What type of human are you?”
It scooped up another spoonful of circular dried grain and stuffed it into its mouth. A small cardboard box was on the table in front of the human. It read ‘Cheerios’.
“Listen human … I don’t have time for mind games.”
It crunched.
Moomamu waited, pointing as hard as he could. His fingertip was shaking with effort until the human conceded and swallowed.
“What do you mean?” it asked.
“Well,” he scoffed. “Have you a plug or a socket? A penis or a vagina? Do you have any Y chromosomes in you?”
The human looked down at two lumps protruding from its chest.
“Well … I have boobs. Does that help?”
“Boobs?” Moomamu said.
“You know, like for feeding babies?” it said, not expressing any emotion at all.
“Ah,” Moomamu said, nodding and relaxing his finger. “Mammary glands … for spawn.”
He took a step towards the female human and rested his hand on the table. He saw patches of bacteria and mould growing in the corners of the room. He thought of the tiny insects crawling around in the carpet at his feet. And then he thought about the billions of microscopic creatures covering the surfaces, and probably his own body. He’d never been this close to life before. He shuddered.
“So,” the human said. “Are you new here?”
“Yes,” Moomamu said. “I am new here. I don’t know why I’m here, but I don’t want to be and I want to go home.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Everyone feels like that when they first come to London. Especially right at the beginning. It’s like buyer’s remorse or something.”
“No, you miss my point, human. I’m better than this. I’m … like a god to you. I should be. Before now, before waking up as a human, I was a complex collection of consciousness and space-life. If you were to hear my voice back then, it would have been incomprehensible to you. I should be somewhere else. Not here.” He stopped talking and sighed.
“I get it. You’re confident. That will do you well in London. But have you got a job?”
“I had one. That’s my point. I was a Thinker.”
“So like a degree in philosophy or whatever?” she said.
Moomamu shrugged.
“Okay, so rent in London is super-expensive so I suggest you get yourself a new job as soon as possible. I know you spent the last four years busting your balls to get that super-relevant philosophy degree, but it doesn’t mean shit. You need a job.” She stood and placed her bowl and her metal eating stick on the side of the sink. “I knew the landlord said we’d be getting a new guy, but I didn’t know that I’d have to teach you London-life as well.”
“London, is that where we are then?” Moomamu said, standing on his tip-toes, trying to get away from the carpet life as much as possible.
“Shoreditch, to be precise,” she said. “Chance Street.” She turned and looked Moomamu up and down. “And put some clothes on.”
He looked at himself.
“I’m fine as I am,” he said. “Thank you for your advice, androgynous human female, but I will now be leaving. I am going home.”
“It’s Marta,” she said. “And if you’re going to live here …”
Moomamu had heard enough. He left the female human to her talking and walked out of the door, made his way down a small set of stairs, and through another door to the outside world.
Markus Schmiebler
Markus and Louise. Mr and Mrs Schmiebler. Married for nine days before it happened. The event.
When Markus first messaged Louise through an online dating program he was convinced that it wouldn’t lead anywhere.
How could it? You can’t meet people through the internet. Not like, in real life.
He was worried that Louise wouldn’t look like her profile picture. Or maybe she’d been lying about her interests. Was she really into the TV series Lost like she said she was? Or worse, what if she was actually a man pretending to be a girl called Louise? And he was going to pounce and steal all of his belongings? Or even his anal virginity?
After an emotional advert on the TV depicted a man ending up alone, he sent her the message asking if she’d liked to meet up. It turned out the advert was for the dating site in question. So it worked. Good job, advert.
When they first messaged each other they asked the basic questions — where do you work, what do you do, what are your hobbies
?
Louise told him that she was a bit of a gamer and it turned out they’d both been playing the same online game for years. Fantasy Swords Online: A Game Of Dragons And Magic. They were on different servers, and literally millions of people played the game, but what were the chances? Turns out pretty high, but that’s not the point
He liked her pink and blue hair on her picture. He liked her cute little nose and her plush lips.
“Would you like to meet up for a coffee?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said. “Definitely.” And that was that.
When they did meet, Markus fell in love before he could even take off his coat. Her profile picture didn’t do her justice. It didn’t show off her icy blue eyes or her big smile with her perfect teeth.
He’d been shaking in his boots all day leading up to the coffee date, but all that left as soon as she said “Hello” and kissed him on the cheek.
They drank coffee and talked about gaming, and before they knew it two hours had passed. They scheduled to meet up again the following day, and then arranged to meet up a couple of days after that, and again after that.
The regular coffee dates soon turned into an ‘official’ thing. Facebook updates, telling their parents, kissing. You know, the usual making-it-real activities.
Six months after that, Louise’s contract ended on her flat. At the time, it seemed like the obvious thing to do was to move into Markus’s house-share with him. He only lived with one other person. Some weirdo with ferrets. They moved out a month later anyway, so they soon had the house to themselves.
Their friends had warned them that living with each other so soon into the relationship could kill it dead, but they found the opposite to be true. It brought them closer. They would make each other breakfast and packed lunches for work, and would sit and watch TV and drink wine in the evenings.
Markus and Louise were happy. So happy, in fact, that only two months later, Markus proposed to Louise. It was unplanned, and completely out of character for him, but he couldn’t stop himself. He’d just finished a particularly difficult dungeon on Fantasy Swords Online and he was feeling elated. He took the first thing that looked like a ring, a potato chip in the shape of a hoop, and placed it on her finger and said “Will you marry me?” and she said “Yes, of course.”
Their wedding day was both beautiful and quirky. They didn’t have much money to spend on the decorations, so they decided to make as many of them as possible. Upcycling was the theme. They used origami techniques to make swans to place on the tables and to make roses to hand to each other. They made boutonnieres out of odd bits of spring and wire and various fabrics. And the groomsmen wore All-star Converse Shoes, decorated in various tie-dye patterns.
When Markus saw Louise all dressed up he fell in love all over again. Her hair had a fresh coat of pink and blue hair dye and she’d used blue lipstick to match. She looked like a real character from Fantasy Swords Online. She looked like she belonged somewhere more magical than this world. Like Fantasy Swords Online.
Embracing the quirkiness of their children and the wedding, their parents played along with it all, apart from the vegan menu. Markus’s mother had smuggled in a pack of cooked ham and started handing it out to all the guests at the dinner.
“I’ve got you covered,” she said as she gave a slice to everyone she deemed carnivorous.
During the ceremony, she read Dr Seuss’s poem on mutual weirdness and everyone agreed it was apt. Louise’s father gave an improvised speech on the time he gave her a set of crayons. Apparently she’d coloured outside the lines in her colouring book and had gone on to colour outside the lines of life. His gaze lingered on Markus with that last line. He’d never approved of Markus’s tattoos or his stretched piercings in his ears. Her father called them misplaced butt-plugs. Still, he got applause.
On that wedding evening, they consummated their marriage to the soundtrack of the original Mario game. It was the perfect way to end the day. And afterwards they looked into each other’s eyes until drifting off to sleep in each other’s arms.
They repeated that night for the following eight days.
But on the ninth day, when they found themselves back at home settling back into normalcy, they climbed under the covers, warmed up, and began.
It was all going fine until Markus noticed that they were floating. He was on top of her in the missionary position, or, as he preferred to call it, classic mode, and they were floating a foot above the bed.
He looked to Louise, but she wasn’t even there anymore. Her eyes were milky white, her mouth wide open. Her skin cold to the touch.
“Louise,” he said. “Louise are you okay?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Louise!” he screamed, and with that they fell back down to the bed and Louise woke up. Her eyes back to their normal blue. Her skin warming.
Markus grabbed her by the shoulders, panicked and sweaty.
Louise looked confused more than anything. She looked around the room trying to make sense of everything.
“Louise? We should take you to hospital,” he said, and she looked at him like she was working out a puzzle. “Louise?” he said.
“Where am I?” she said. “Who are you?”
Carol Francis
“You see, it was always a matter of time … and space. Thirteen point eight billion years ago, the sphincter of the universe clenched, puckered up and spat forth a great black mess.” Carol adjusted the phone in her hand and placed her free hand on her chin. “A hot mess that only actually recently, very very recently, cooled down enough to form those great bollocks of fire in the sky we call stars, and then further cooled, and bits of space dust and shit crashed together to form what we know as planets.”
Her blue merle border collie, Indie, was outside in the garden. She was at the edge touching her nose to the flowers, chewing grass, that sort of thing.
Carol listened to the person on the other end of the phone. She heard her breathing. Was she even listening?
“And so … one of those planets is the one that we find ourselves on in this point in time. The planet Earth. The third rock from the sun.”
She noticed a gathering of dust beneath the kitchen worktop, which she was currently leaning against. Small bundles of detritus brought in from the outside world, making her kitchen look untidy.
“Skip forward many years and life starts to form. Little germs of DNA that find their way along, do the evolution dance, and start to work with tools.”
She rubbed her chin with her index finger, feeling the little knobbly hairs on a mole. Outside, Indie barked at something.
“Then we find ourselves with fire, wheels, hammers, knives, screwdrivers, computer screens that resemble fireplaces, and Reddit — full of porn, people being retarded, and people in pain, missing fingers, bull horns to the face — that sort of thing.”
She stood and walked to the kitchen sink. On top of the faucet was a damp flannel, which she picked up, turned back around and began wiping down the side.
Indie barked again.
“Indie!” she shouted, who then stopped barking and looked to the kitchen window. “Sorry about that, so where were we?”
“Carol,” the voice on the other end of the phone said. Female, elderly, frail. “I just wanted to …”
“Hang on, June,” Carol said, interrupting her. “I’ll have to call you back.”
She walked to the kitchen window and banged her hand against it. Indie was one foot into the neighbour’s garden.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she said.
Indie tentatively took a step backwards.
Carol shook her head, sighed, and then opened the patio door and took a step outside.
The back garden was long and full of green. The grass was well-kept. Trimmed borders. Nothing overgrown. The patio was littered with dog toys and a small pile of dog poo in the corner that Carol hadn’t picked up yet.
The house itself was detached, in the middle
of England. It was a nice neighbourhood.
It was the kind of place to retire, which was exactly what she planned to do.
Indie ran up to Carol and nuzzled her nose into her side. She kneeled down and placed her hand on Indie’s shoulder, kissed her on the nose, and stood back up.
Indie ran and grabbed a ball from the garden and dropped the slobbery thing in Carol’s hand.
“Thanks,” she said, before throwing the ball down the garden.
As Indie ran after it, Carol looked up and saw the moon in the daylight sky. She took a deep breath and took her phone out of her pocket and called June back up.
“Hi, Carol,” June said quickly “Look, if you could just let me know if you’re coming to agility training on Wednesday? We’ve got a small tournament at the weekend and I really would like you to come and …”
“Hang on a second, June,” she said and smiled as she heard June’s exhaustive sigh. “I’d only just gotten onto humans.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well … I need to go back to the start. I skipped forward a little.”
“Please,” June said, “this is important.”
Indie ran back to Carol and placed the ball in her hand. Carol winced at the saliva dripping off it.
“Important?” she said, before throwing it again. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, June. Would you please listen to me for a second. Just for a second.”
She heard silence. A breath. A giving in.
“Go on …”
“Have you ever heard of the calendar of Earth’s history?” she asked.
“No, Carol, I haven’t heard of the calendar of Earth’s history.”
“Brilliant,” Carol said. “Let me start you on the first day of the year in that lovely winter month … January. Let me tell you, the January of Earth was a good time to stay indoors, if you know what I mean. It was uninhabitable.”
She wiped the saliva in her hand on her trousers and stepped off the patio and into the garden.
