MOAB � Mother Of All Boxsets

by George Saoulidis

  "Colonist, I'm afraid there's been some skirmishes in the sector between the Tristar Alliance and the Delian Brigade. We wouldn't want to risk the colonists' lives, so it will take some time. You are doing well as we can see from the automated reports and we ask you to please be patient for a little while longer, until hostilities quiet down and the routes open up again."

  Jay shrugged. He didn't know about politics but it didn't sound all that bad. Things would quiet down and the others would finally come. The colony was starting to feel like home now, he had settled down nice. He was sleeping in the allocated room, it was just a small bunk which would feel crowded after his roommate would arrive. Would he like snore at night and keep him up? Would he touch his stuff? He hoped not.

  Anyway, he'd deal with that when the others would come.

  He smoked his weed and kicked the damn farming drones. They never did what he wanted them to.

  "You need to program them," the computer said unhelpfully. Again.

  "I don't know no programming!" Jay complained, and he was right. The others would know, they'd have a cook, and a medic, and a chief, and a geosurvey specialist, and a programmer, and an engineer. That was the roster. He was a simple farm-hand, but he could carry his weight. No one would dare say that Jay wasn't doing what he was assigned to do.

  "Perhaps you can learn some programming," the computer said and presented an ebook.

  "Are you high? I ain't readin' no book!" Jay spat out and stormed out of the control hub in anger. That computer was getting too condescending, he could tell.

  Jay drove with the quad up to his favourite spot, up on the hill where he could see his crops from on high. He rolled up some of his weed and smoked it, feeling the calmness wash over him.

  Sure, he was alone, but it was kinda nice. Quiet. The drones and the colony hub made some whirring noise and spurted out steam or whatever, but other than that, it was just the rustling of the leaves when caressed by a warm wind. This place really was beautiful, a paradise.

  Stoned and smiling and enjoying the magnificent view, he rubbed one out, thinking about the chicks that would be coming to the colony. Would they be blondes? Redheads? Jay didn't mind, as long as they had nice legs. He liked nice legs in a woman. Sure, he liked the lips and the boobs and the face, but mostly the legs. Smooth, long, running his lips on every centimetre of their surface.

  He came on the dirt and sat there, breathing hard. No one was there to see him anyway, he could do whatever he damn pleased. He was all alone in the entire planet.

  Until the others would arrive.

  Another month passed and Jay felt the first chill of the planet's winter. It was nothing bad, just some biting wind and the leaves dying, it was all normal. You'd call it a gentle winter, really. He barely needed a jacket. He had grown a lot of muscle, working the plants was a relaxing, but hard job.

  The loneliness was really starting to bug him. He sent another message to Central. "Hey, any updates on those colonists? No problems here, I've fixed everything that popped up, but it's getting kinda lonely. Hey, just curious, are there any ladies coming? Jay out."

  He sent the message and waited for a reply.

  "Satellite down," the computer said.

  "What, ours?"

  "No, on the receiving end. Don't worry, Colonist, I'll keep retrying until the message goes through."

  "Thanks," Jay said and went to his room. He hit his head as he was getting down to bed, cursed loudly every single person's mother and grandmother, and then pulled his bedroll and went to the big room. The chief was supposed to get this one, and it was nice and roomy and had a big bed and kitchen automations.

  "This isn't your allocated room," the computer said and locked the doors right in his face.

  "Bite me!" Jay said and walked out.

  He came back inside with the quad. He hooked the doors onto the winch and got on the quad.

  "Jay, you are vandalising company property. This will be deducted from your pay."

  "Bite. Me." Jay stepped on the pedal and the doors came apart.

  "Woo hoo!" he cheered, and ran inside the big quarters. They were magnificent. "I'm gonna move out when the chief comes, don't worry," he said to the computer, and jumped on the bed.

  Oh, yeah. This was the good life.

  Another month passed.

  "Did my messages get through?"

  "Impossible to know," the computer said unhelpfully for the millionth time.

  "Okay, send this. Central, when the colonists arrive, please add in some goodies for me. I think I've earned an extra crate. I want some vodka, the good stuff. A feather pillow. Um... What else. Oh, some porn. Yeah, anything is fine, really. Even granny porn, I could wank off to a granny knitting a scarf the way I am now... But don't send me the granny porn. That's not what I'm asking, I want big-breasted blondes, in gel-o, catfighting. Or washing cars, I always liked that. Perhaps if you can find some that are washing quads, that would be great. Jay out."

  A year passed.

  "Okay, I give up," Jay said, plopping his ass down. "Teach me."

  "Programming?" the computer said, showing the ebook about the subject. It was 'For Dummies,' of course.

  "Yeah. Hit me. I need to learn to work those damn drones. I wanna expand to the east at that clearing, and I can't do it without their help."

  "I'm glad you came to your senses, Colonist," the computer said.

  "Bite me," Jay said.

  Jay expanded to the east, then a bit to the south. It took him months but he finally learned how to program the remote farming drones. It took some trial and error and a forest fire, but he figured it out. When he got up to his hill for his daily masturbation he could see his crops all the way to the horizon. That was nice. He'd smoke some of his weed and rub one out, just him and the farm and the rest of nature.

  God, he was so lonely. He'd give anything for some company right now. A woman, definitely. Even a dude so he could hang out. Heck, after another year of this, he wouldn't really mind getting busy with a dude. Who'd give a shit, all the way out here?

  All he craved for was some human touch.

  He pressed the record button. "Is anyone out there? Jay out." He sent the message. He had no clue if anyone was there to listen to him. Space was big, even a farm-hand like Jay knew that. Sometimes things took a lot of time. And humans hadn't actually expanded properly. They had just rushed out to claim every bit of usable land they could find. Like this one, Jay's planet. Yes, this was Jay's planet now, that's what he had decided. Who would protest anyway?

  Well, the computer protested, but it could bite him.

  Jay tended to his plants, they had expanded all the way over the horizon now. He couldn't personally tend to everything, but the farming drones did a good job, and the weed had nothing to eat it, no large grazing animals. Eventually, he knew, they'd cover the entire planet. It was a small planet, not like Earth, but it was a frickin' planet! Jay found the idea of covering up the entire planet with his garden very funny, and he laughed all alone, smoking his weed.

  He got bored one day, so he touched his junk on every single surface he could reach. That became an obsession, and he got ladders and ropes and his junk started to feel a little itchy but he couldn't stop now. He climbed everywhere, rubbed his junk on everything, the stairs, the vents, the roof, even the satellite dish. "It's all mine!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. Then he fell from the roof and broke his leg.

  It took him a few months of recovery. He couldn't tend to the garden, but he kept a close eye on the farming drones and their reports. There was nothing else to do anyway. He jerked off like five times per day and at some point it hurt so he stopped that. He gained some weight, read up on more programming and went on to some irrigation systems.

  The day he could walk properly he immediately went up to his hill and stripped naked, his garden below, his arms open.

  This was paradise.

  When the First Colonial War ended, the company fixed her trade routes and reestabli
shed communications with the remote colonies. Jay's planet, for it was now its legal name since he was the sole occupant for decades, became one of the biggest trade spots in the outer colonies.

  Sadly, Jay died before the company could send the colonists there. They found him an old man, dead, still warm, embraced in his bed with a farming bot turned into a curvaceous gynoid with blonde hair.

  The gynoid informed them that they had missed him for a mere eight hours. He died never knowing that others had come.

  The gynoid demanded that they respect Jay's legacy and the colonists indeed didn't touch his quad nor the original hub. It became a place of quiet contemplation, something like an ashram of old.

  The equipment they'd brought with them was decades ahead anyway, so they colonised the planet and tended to the garden.

  Jay's planet, with the biggest garden in the colonies, became a place where negotiations happened, where diplomats walked barefoot, enjoyed nature and smoked weed.

  The colonies were much more utopian after that.

  The End.

  Don't Sleep

  Sleep and you're dead. It's that simple.

  Or, even worse, you join the ranks of undead.

  As I never was a sci-fi fan before it all went to shit, I had never considered what I'd do in a zombie apocalypse. I was surprised to find out when it actually came that there were people who had put in real thought behind it, even going as far as to stock up rations and train in weapons.

  Of course, just like Sun Tzu says, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Let alone when that enemy is that sweet grandma from across the street now gnawing on your leg with only her gums, or that shitty little girl that screamed all day during summer but is now sneaking up on you to bite your nose off and you're hoping she went back to screaming.

  I'm rambling, aren't I? It's the lack of sleep.

  People think that the edge humans have over the animal kingdom is our smarts and our logic. Sure, there's that, but it's not what actually helped us survive. Every animal in the wild has some edge, some breed like there's no tomorrow despite being fluffy and so, so delicious, like the bunnies. Others have carapace, others have spikes on their backs, other can bite you with venom, and others are so powerful they can smash you to pulp. Some, more graceful ones like the antelopes, simply dash away from danger.

  But the humans survived by hunting these herds. How did we do that?

  Simple. Not many people realise that yes, that lion is a motherfucking killing machine for like ten minutes or so. If you manage to outlast that by any means, by setting traps, running away or by using crude tools, then it simply drops to the ground, exhausted. You can practically walk up to it and punch it to death, it will probably already have had a heart attack.

  Or the antelopes. Sure, they can outrun any human. But the human simply keeps walking behind the animal, following the tracks, keeping up the pursuit. The antelope, terrified, constantly glances back at that bipedal that just. Won't. Give. Up.

  Imagine what goes through that poor antelope's mind at that moment. There she was, proud and majestic with her trusty and swift legs, running away from danger. She reaches a clearing, panting, feels safe. Then she hears a rustling of the leaves. She looks back, and there it is again, the bipedal danger with the rock and the pointy stick. So she runs away again, this time slower, but still fast enough to let the stupid bipedal eat her dust. And she reaches a river, and takes a sip because she's so damn thirsty, and she feels safe again. She hears rocks falling, and it's those stupid bipedals again, waving their pointy sticks, stumbling down the ravine, so clumsy they are.

  So she runs away through the river. This time, much, much slower. She's exhausted. She wants to sleep, but she knows that if she closes her eyes, if she sleeps, she's as good as dead. So she runs up a hill, finding her second wind. Those bipedals couldn't possibly still be on her tail, can they? That's impossible, it's unnatural. Even the biggest and growliest predator in this jungle can't keep up the pursuit for so long. She's tired, so tired, but somehow she manages to get up that hill, that final place of safety where she can rest, get some sleep.

  And as she's about ready to pass out, she hears the bipedals again. They're coming up the hill, their pace slow but steady. Nothing seems to stop them, they walk around the rocks, they push through the bushes, they break twigs that are in their way. They make sounds to one another, looking as if they're bored and needing something to communicate about.

  And the antelope's legs give in and she falls on the ground, and finally, blissfully, shuts her eyes to sleep.

  The bipedals surround her and wave their pointy sticks around. They give the task to the smallest one, who cries that he doesn't wanna do it, daddy!

  But he has to learn.

  So the young one kills the antelope, and she finally gets some much needed rest.

  This is how every single animal in the entire animal kingdom sees us. Not as apex predators, but as zombies. Relentless, hungry, moaning, never-tiring zombies. We just keep up the pursuit for days until the biggest of preys simply falls dead from exhaustion.

  And this time, for the first time in human history, we got a taste of our own medicine.

  Because nothing works against zombies. Sure, some planned it out, tried to take them out, kill them, trap them, blow their brains out.

  Oh it works, for a while.

  Then your ammo runs out or your guns jam or your barricade breaks down and they crawl through, hungry, gnawing, decomposing.

  They just keep on coming and coming and coming. They enter your nightmares, that's all you ever see from that point on. Your loved ones, eaten. Your friends, eaten. Your wife, coming to eat your arm. Yourself, smashing her rotten brains beneath the fridge.

  And all you can do is to utilise that one advantage we humans have over the animal kingdom, to keep walking.

  Nothing else works. We just roam the lands in big packs, setting up camp for a few hours of rest and then carrying on, like nomads. We try to stay away from the main concentrations of zombies, and we've had a few close calls where we were almost wiped out. But now it's getting easier. We don't sleep much, we don't eat much. Like marathoners, we've all become thin and bony, withered down to a husk. We walk, sleep only for a few minutes, then someone wakes us all up and we walk again. Some people just want to give up and sleep. We prod them to wake up a few times, and if they still don't want to come, if they bitch and moan and shoo us away, we bitterly say 'alright' and then smash their skulls in when the sweet sleep takes them away. Because, we can't leave them, we know that. Every one who is left behind will inevitably become another zombie, another one to run away from, to fight, to get eaten by.

  So, why am I telling you all this, young man? Because you need to wake your mother up. There's no time left, I'm sorry. And if you can't wake her up, if you can't get her to come with the pack and keep walking, you need to learn to kill.

  Here's a hammer, kid.

  The End.

  Pagophilic

  "Pago-what now?" the Sergeant spat out, making a face.

  "Love of ice, in plain terms," the scientist explained.

  "So, just add water? In the form of ice?" the Sergeant asked, looking at the rectangular thing. He shivered in the icy mountains, even though he wore like three layers plus his pyjamas underneath. He couldn't reach his cock even if a dozen whores had suddenly showed up on shore-leave.

  "Yeah. Basically," the scientist said, frowning deeply.

  Sergeant Veller was worried about the scientist's reaction, or lack thereof. He was used to pissing scientists off with his inane questions and seeing them seethe as they tried to boil down concepts and theories into something his simple mind could comprehend. He was the science-liaison, after all of the military. And he took his job seriously, making it as hard as possible for those brainiacs that drew the shortest straw and had to deal with him.

  But this guy, Dr. Yun, wasn't getting pissed off. He simply answered Veller's stupid questions, lost in thought.<
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  That got Veller worried. Very worried.

  If a scientist wasn't getting angry at explaining this alien artifact to a mere soldier, then there were some serious issues worrying him.

  "Okay. So, do we nuke it?" Veller deadpanned, his hand reaching for his rifle instinctively.

  "What?" Dr. Yun started and turned to him.

  Finally, a reaction.

  "No! Never. This is in all probability a seed arc from an alien civilization. We can't possibly destroy it, that would be-be," he stuttered, looking for the right words, "sacrilege. Genocide."

  "All right," Veller calmed him down. "We won't nuke it, fine. You tell me then, doctor, what do we do with it?"

  "We bring it back to Earth for study," the scientist said and realised then stupidity of his words as soon as they left his mouth, it was obvious.

  Veller opened his mouth to object.

  "Yes, I spoke too soon, I know. We cannot endanger Earth with alien organisms. Nor can we risk contamination of our biosphere..."

  Veller opened his mouth, then shut it. "Yeah. Exactly what you just said. We can't." He was gonna say that the damn thing was too big to fit on the spaceship, but of course, the brainiac's argument was better.

  He looked up, snow forming in his goggles. He rubbed them with his gloves as best as he could and tried to guesstimate how big it was. "How big would you say it is, doc? Thirty feet?"

  Yun pointed a gloved finger beneath them. "At least, and there should be about ten more feet buried beneath us, the way it's dug in."

  "Well, damn," Veller said unhelpfully. He always said that when he needed to think. The two men watched the alien artifact for a while.

  It didn't do much.

  Yun scanned something on the surface with his scanner and jotted down readings.

  "How do we open it?" Veller asked, opening his arms wide.