Kit BashirWhen humanity stumbled upon the ultrawave band that was full of other chatty civilisations, we dropped in and started up a conversation. How were we supposed to know that it was the dating frequency.
Look I’m sure they meant well. The pod of star whales that stranded on Pluto were clearly starving. Letting them eat a couple of the smaller moons seemed kind. No, scratch that, it was kind. But they’re wild animals, and expecting gratitude was inappropriate. Just, look…see to your fences before you start feeding the wildlife, okay. Losing Neptune has been a massive pain in the ass—all those resonance-locked KBOs are wandering everywhere now. That one! Eat that one next before it hits…oh damn.
“Hey void, don’t suppose you can spare a cup of sugar?”
「sure」
“Thanks, you’re a doll”
「awww, nice of you to say so」
“If you can’t appreciate the universe under the stairs, you don’t deserve a house, I say. You want a cookie when i’m done baking?”
「you’re darn toootin’, neighbour」
“Oh, you”
What do you mean they’re extinct? We’ve spent half a galactic rotation droving a thousand head of comet across the rift and you’re telling me your civilisation doesn’t even have a galactibank account? Look I don’t care if you lot evolved after the order was placed, your planet is not getting its deposit back and if you don’t like it you can have one of these comets for free.
Your breathing slows down, and you stop vibrating. Wait no, it’s me, I was in slowtime.
⌜Are we back?⌟
“Solar panels are being painted by a laser from a patrol vessel.” you say. “Just in time; there was barely enough juice in your battery to keep your clock running. I was seriously wondering if i could make a fuel cell out of the med kit and a unit of my blood.”
⌜Ew. You know how i feel about the sight of blood.⌟
“And yet, you fell in love with a human.”
⌜Not just any human, sweetness⌟
“Awww. Well, it looks like we’re gonna live. So which will it be?”
⌜Which what?⌟
“You were right about the fusion bottle, there’s not enough left of our old ship to fill a teacup. So you’ll need a new body. We talked once about what we’d do if we found the Big One. Well I transmitted a claim on that monopole source, before the grips failed and it ate our ship. We’re not fuck-off rich but I estimate the value of that poleroid will get us to ‘let’s do lunch in Barcelona well off’. Do you wanna be a ship, or a girl?”
⌜Time for something new.⌟
LAS VEGAS (AP): The annual convention of the American Alchemical Union has ended in chaos after a group of apprentices was found to have hit on the formula for the magnetic anti-counterfeiting ink used in hundred-dollar bills. The group was arrested leaving a casino having laundered their counterfeit bills over the roulette tables. A Treasury spokesperson has said
The hard part about rebooting society after the Interregnum was a whole generation had no exposure to computers. The first time around we bootstrapped our muscle memory with skeuomorphisms and interaction affordances. I think i have spent a thousand hours teaching youngsters how to resize windows and do swipe gestures on the preserved machines from Before. And there just aren’t enough coders to retrofit user-friendliness to old systems, let alone build new.
Newsgroups: net.slow.announce, soc.fraud
Subject: PSA scam alert
There is an Excessively Multi Posted fraud in progress where Slow Zone planets are advised that they will be reassigned to the Unthinking Depths unless they accept audit by a Beyond Intelligence. This is not true, the unthinking zone is a contiguous region originating in the galactic core, and it cannot be manipulated to envelop individual star systems.
Do not allow unverified intelligences access to your planetary or systemwide internet. Ensure that ports above 2¹⁰²⁴ are blocked at your heliopause.
CANBERRA (AAP): Parliament this week is to vote on the Protecting Astral Spaces Act, which would prohibit use of astral projection and the Other Space by under-sixteens. Since the Social Media ban and Queensland’s “causing anxiety” move-on powers, young people have increasingly turned to the spiritual realm for gathering and socialisation. The Otherspace Safety Commissioner has said that
“No Gran, I’ve changed that recipe, it works better with twice as much. No I’m not disrespecting you — I’m just adjusting to modern palates”
“Hi hon, are you on the phone? I thought you didn’t have any living grandparents?”
“I don’t. My g’gran haunts our family cookbook.”
“Oooh-kay…”
“Normally it’s fine; means I can also cook those secret recipes that are never to be written down. But she’s unreasonable about garlic. YES GRAN I SAID IT.”