emotions under *#!%^*> control!”
Heartness stepped back, her mouth open in shock. She raised her hand as though she was going to hit him again, then stopped.
Cuddly saw his chance and quickly inched his way, nervously, between them.
Captain Hogart was gasping for breath, angry, feeling betrayed, his left cheek smarting and turning red. Cuddly turned to him first.
“Captain, you may not have realized it, but we have all been affected by the binary suns. We have never seen Captain, sorry, Admiral Heartness ever hit someone, or even display these strong emotions before. We don’t know you but we’re sure you wouldn’t be insulting an admiral if you were yourself either. I believe your natural human stubbornness has increased.”
He turned to the admiral. “Ma’am, with all due respect, if you have a problem with the new command of this ship I respectively ask you to take it through the relevant channels, or discuss this in private. This is not a forum for airing grievances. All the crew here will make allowances for the disruptive reality we are in now, but if you could please be more professional. I believe your natural human annoyance has increased.”
Heartness shook, suddenly realizing what she had done. She looked confused. She reached out to Cuddly who inched away a little, so she pulled her hand back. “It’s alright Cuddly. I think I’ve got it.”
She took a deep breath, awkwardly walked around Cuddly and went over to Hogart who stood staring at her, simmering. She briefly looked at the other crewmembers. They were all watching her, wondering what this strange human would do next.
Tears, unbidden, came to her eyes, as her annoyance quickly turned to guilt. She touched a finger to her cheek in surprise as she felt one drip from her lashes.
A particularly dense level of lava began rising through the room, the reddish movement making the Center look almost demonic.
Slowly and carefully she walked around Hogart’s station and went over to him. This time, she carefully placed her hand on his cheek, tears streaming down her face. “Oh Jonathan, I’m so so sorry. It feels like I’m menopausal or overtired, or something. I don’t know what affect the suns are having on me, but I’m really not myself. I should never have hit you. Can you forgive me?”
She stepped back to give him some space and held out her arms, biting her lip, looking for a hug.
Hogart’s heart melted when he saw his friend crying, broken and vulnerable. He nodded dumbly, and Heartness came over to him and hugged him, held him tight, her arms rubbing his back, whispering ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ in his ear, then stroking his face, stroking his neck, stroking his…
Moments later they were kissing passionately as the level of frequency shifted magma rose and completely blurred out all light in the Stellar Flash.
Puppy made a tsk tsk sound. “Humans!” his translator said. The other aliens couldn’t help but agree with him.
It would be another half an hour before the Stellar Flash made it to the other side, and began its course towards the first planet.
Storyteller’s note: Information regarding this period of time during the mission could not be retrieved from any crew member. Suspect temporal anomaly.
Chapter 17
The Three Bodies Problem
"Well, here we are," said Heartness.
The room was quite nondescript. Barely fifty square meters with a cupboard at the back and three flat sheets of blue materials on separate shelves. Next to this was a complicated looking machine with pipes of liquid connected to a horizontal glass tube.
"We’ve never been here before," said Hogart, looking around distastefully.
"You’ve never been here before. This is where the Storytellers are stored." Heartness pointed at the three sheets on the shelves.
Hogart raised an eyebrow. He'd known about them, but this was the first time he'd had the chance to see any of them. Even so, his eyes were drawn to the middle shelf where the most interesting looking one seemed to lay.
The Storytellers were a race of people from the upper levels of Frequency Zero that could flit in between Zero and One quite easily. They were able to remember their experiences in Frequency One and bring memories of them back to Frequency Zero. Most aliens were only able to bring back symbolic representations of their memories, which tended to be incomplete or suffer from perception filtering.
All ships that shifted between Frequencies required a Storyteller to keep a record. Unfortunately, Jorjarar had been killed by the Queen and so, the ship no longer had any way to bring the records back.
"Do we really need one? This mission hasn't been going that well, and I'd really like to forget it," said Hogart.
"Captain Hogart, you know this is law. And, besides, if nothing was recorded, how would you explain the deaths of your three crew members to their families? Without a record, you might not just be legally responsible, you might be tried for their murder personally."
"I'm sorry that they died, but I still have a problem with the Storyteller monitoring all our thoughts."
They approached the cupboard and looked at the three blue sheets lying on the shelves. Each one had a raised shape that looked like an alien.
"You're kidding me," said Hogart. "Are they in some kind of suspended animation?"
"They're like tardigrades. You can remove all their moisture and store them, then just bring them out when they're needed. Many of them have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, so being flat for a few of them doesn't affect them at all."
Hogart looked at the three bodies on the shelves and wondered what to do. "Any particular order?"
"If you start saying eenie meenie I'm going to be very upset," said Heartness.
Hogart had been about to bring his fingers out but thought better of it.
"But, we've already lost over half of the mission," said Hogart. "Will the Storyteller be able to figure out what has already happened from our memories?"
"In this rare situation, when you lose a Storyteller, the new one will fill in the gaps from the existing records and any memories it can get, but it may not be that accurate in getting every person's observations. Don't forget it won't just be monitoring the crew in the Center, it will be monitoring all of the crew. It has no idea who will be involved in the final story so it needs to be aware of every member, then make a decision about what information is relevant when it gets back to Frequency Zero. We might not end up with all of the crew's views."
Hogart looked closely at the outlines. In this situation, he'd probably want to get the biggest one, just in case the Queen somehow tried to attack again. That looked to be number two, a handsome, hairy four-armed, two-legged creature with a long powerful snout that looked a bit like an Earth bear. "Greg," said Hogart, reading the tag. "Did you name these?"
"I think the Storytellers deliberately gave themselves names that we might like."
Hogart looked at the other names. Geemoneel and Sesheenleoo. Well, at least none of them were called Solo. He liked the name of Greg the most. It seemed to represent a strong Storyteller name. "Alright. I think Greg is the best choice. Let's get him into the system."
Hogart pulled up the half-tube glass covering, then grabbed the thin blue block of 'Greg' and put him carefully inside. Then he pulled the lid down, making sure it was completely sealed.
"I was just thinking," he said. "He's got four powerful arms, and by the look of it, four compelling eyes. Two on the front and two on the back giving him excellent all-round vision – better than most aliens. Won't the fact that he's used to having four arms and seeing 360 degrees cause the record to be a bit strange?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I just think if we're trying to create records for human beings, we need to get a humanoid to represent the story here. Otherwise, we'll get pretty alien concepts creeping into the storyline." Hogart absently rubbed his sides, wishing he had four arms like the creature in front of him. He couldn't imagine how he could have survived so long with just two.
Heartness laughed. "Oh, we ha
ve a human editor at the other end that should catch most of these. As many people reading the stories are going to have an interest in science fiction too, the editor's job also includes replacing many of the Storyteller’s alien jokes with human references to past SF hits. Usually something obscure from the 21st century so that it doesn't really interrupt the flow of the conversation or act as a red herring for the story, but can cause a devout SF fan to groan."
"Fantastic," said Hogart, reaching over and turning on the activation button. "Rehydrate, rehydrate."
The tubes filled with multiple liquids of many colors, and the block immediately began to inflate, the creature's head, torso, arms and legs popping up and getting larger. Then Hogart realized that there wasn't any block anymore as the edges were absorbed into the recreation of the creature. Soon there was just a hairy, blue, four-armed bear-like Greg inside the tube.
A graph on the side of the capsule began to beep with life signs, and Greg's eyes flickered awake.
"Well," said Hogart. "It looks like my privacy is over."
#
Greg set to work, connecting his mind to the Stellar Flash interface and recovering some of the lost materials from Jorjarar's records. Much of Jorjarar's records were, unfortunately, not up to Greg's standards and had to have extensive rewrites to be more accurate. Greg was surprised to find that in the first draft, most of the aliens had overlarge mammary glands. Even the males. He was happy to have been able to fix some of that storyline.
The crew had shifted the Storyteller's area to a new place, far away from the Quarantine bay, at Greg's request. They were very happy to get him anything he wanted.
Greg was very concerned that his predecessor had met an untimely death but was very happy with the care and interest that all the crew took in him. When he walked to his recording room, many of the aliens on board greeted him, told him how honored they were to give him their memories for his records, and how they looked forward to continuing to work with him in the future.
Both Heartness and Hogart bowed to Greg as he set up, then left him to enjoy the comforts of his Storytelling area as only someone as sophisticated and handsome as Greg could.
#
"I guess, if there is a section about Greg in the records, it'll be positive and glowing?" asked Hogart.
"Oh, no. I'm sure the Storytellers are incredibly unbiased. They need to see all sides, so anything that Greg writes will be absolutely accurate."
"That's good to hear. He seems very trustworthy," said Hogart.
"Oh, he is," agreed Heartness.
#
The Stellar Flash continued on its way to its next destination where they hoped to find more of the strangely armless mushbugs.
Chapter 18
Evolution
The Stellar Flash turned slightly and settled into orbit around the blue and brown planet. Thicker cloud cover obscured much of the surface, but what they could see suggested a similar amount of land to the previous planet they’d visited. Though it wasn’t as brown and purple as the other ones.
“Zooming now,” said Amy.
The spherical screen zoomed its view down to one of the land masses, and both Hogart and Heartness gasped at what it returned. Thousands of brown and black mushbugs with wings and legs flying about huge conical multiple-door mounds that stretched at least a kilometer into the sky.
This planet had more water than the last, the sky was blue and the oxygen levels were higher. Some of the structures looking artistic, some looked functional, but all were clean and did not look like there was anything remotely polluting about them.
"OMG! It's a mushbug utopia," said Hogart.
Heartness nodded. "Well, this is more like it. Wish our drones had been able to translate this information to our frequency."
"So, the Queen is from a less developed nation, still bent on war. This one has passed that," said Hogart.
As the planet turned beneath them, they quickly viewed more of the civilization, from floating structures on the water, to energy conversion systems to low orbital elevators.
"Captain," said Cuddly. "I'm receiving a message. They have detected our presence and would like to make contact."
Hogart grinned. "Well, let's make contact!" he said.
#
Hogart had decided that, this time, the meeting should take place on their ship. He didn't want a repeat of what had happened last time he met the mushbugs. A brief flashback of Cuddly spraying him caused him to shudder. Definitely not.
With the queen’s pieces secure, everyone across the ship had packed away their nanite suits and were watching the unfolding first contact meeting happen via their in-room terminals. If something was to go wrong with the meeting, they were ready to activate their suits again.
The Center crew decided to wait in hangar one and greet their guests when they arrived. From this vantage point they could see just a sliver of the planet, and a tiny round speck leaving orbit and getting larger.
Moments later, a large oval ship, almost mushbug-shaped, with no obvious propulsion, floated through the force field and landed, extending six landing struts. The front of the ship dissolved, little hexagonal pieces folding back, and several mushbugs floated out.
As they took up positions in a row along the outside of the craft, Hogart noted some interesting details.
These mushbugs looked slightly different to the ones they'd encountered before. Not only were their eyes bigger and their stomachs ridgeless, featuring six legs like the queen, there were definite male and female attributes. The males seemed to be slightly larger with spikes on their claws, while the females seemed to be slightly longer. Both of these new types of mushbugs had long tails, too.
The wings were a noticeable difference, however, but these were kept under their shell casings. They looked more like fins than wings, and Hogart suspected they were only used for guidance.
Telekinetic ability seemed to have molded the entire civilization.
"They look a bit like a cross between horseshoe crabs and trilobites," whispered Hogart, his antennae on silent.
"But are more plant than animal," said Amy, hers also on silent, waiting for the first mushbug to speak.
All the crew wore their nanite suits, and this time they'd all grown antennae to communicate.
"Admiral, I believe you should do the honors." Hogart indicated for Heartness to step forward.
"Oh, no. I'm just a passenger. It's your ship now."
"I was afraid you'd say that." He stepped over to be directly in front of the mushbugs and said a prepared speech for these occasions, glad that he could finally use it. "Though minds and body forms may be different, it is through the heart that we are one." His antennae scratched then twisted with the sentences.
The leader mushbug seemed to react positively, its antennae replying that it was a great honor to meet them, though Hogart was worried he might be anthropomorphizing again.
But, he was sure there were some similarities across the alien cultures. After all, if they didn’t attack, then you could assume that they were friendly, right?
Feeling safer in this knowledge, though also slightly uncomfortable considering it was only a few hours ago that the queen had tried to dismember him in that very room, Hogart led the mushbugs out of the hangar. They headed into the wide corridors that led to a more comfortable meeting room. The rest of his crew followed.
The meeting room had been decorated with brown and white wall paneling, the pattern broken by strips of black wood, with lots of soft mats, Japanese style. With the mushbugs preferring their legs to be folded under them when not moving, Hogart thought this was probably the best way to have a meeting, though the five heavy antennae on his back meant leaning forward cross-legged was probably going to require a few days rest to recover.
The darker brown-colored mushbug began speaking. "You may address me as Scart," it said. "I believe you must record our meeting, and names will make things easier for you."
"Thank you, Scart," said Hog
art, nodding. "You may address me as Jonathan."
"We will not, but we understand the exchange. It is not our culture to have names."
"Well, Scart, how do you tell each other apart?"
"We are all parts of the whole."
"So, you have a Queen too?"
At this Scart quickly flicked his antennae at his companions who replied back, theirs flicking ominously fast.
"You visited the lower planet," the main mushbug stated. "We monitored your arrival and departure."
Hogart raised his eyes at this. The frequency they'd chosen really didn't work here.
"We recorded a slight mass shift which suggested a large amount of matter had left the planet. We assumed a queen was seeding, or perhaps another immigration attempt. What can you tell us about that?"
Hogart looked embarrassed. "We attempted to make first contact with the queen on that planet during her splitting period and were jailed, then blackmailed. The queen wanted our technology."
"Ah," said Scart. "So, you captured her?"
"Err, not exactly. She broke apart when she hit our ship. We collected all her pieces and she put herself together, killed three of my crew, then we found a way to pull her apart again before she killed anyone else."
"Killed?" asked Scart. It looked like he needed more information on this matter. Had they laws regarding queens killing aliens? He conferred with his companions further, then turned to Hogart. "You can die?"
Hogart looked surprised. "Well, yes. We only have one life, and then we die when we either have a severe accident or get too old."
Scart seemed to look concerned. "You are inferior. We don't want to be infected by your death disease."
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