tobadzistsiniMar 24
Rachel was almost five hundred kilometers from the shoreline.
Drop was a panthalassic world peppered with archipelagos.
Over a billion kilometers from Drop was the Snorkmimimi, a sleeper ship brimming with popsicles drawn to the prospects and possibilities of a new world.
A wild wind whipped from a purple-blue sky making the spray sting her face as the bow cut through those alien currents. Her heading was still 197° south-southwest. 1/x
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Despite swarms of satellites and drones, human eyes needed to complete the final pass to ensure the destination was untouched.
Since the first diaspora, propulsion tech grew exponentially making it possible for descendants to welcome their ancestors trudging through the void.
In a unanimous vote, the Cooperative declared those destinations to be off-limits until sleepers set up shop or it was determined those ships were now interstellar hearses.
That was Rachel's job. 2/x
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Mar 24 at 8:14pmWeb
Show threadtobadzistsiniMar 24
First there was a false positive of jumpers on one of the major chains, but wound up being a 'city' dug out by native talpidoids. Even the designation was a stretch since the beasts looked and acted nothing like moles.
More worrying were photos from an island near the southern pole flagged by an algorithm.
Algorithms still struggled with simple tasks, throwing false positives, ensuring humans still had access to meaningful employment. 3/x
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Show threadtobadzistsiniMar 24
Rachel smiled for three reasons as she #helmed the speedboat.
First she was going to be due a tidy sum.
Second she loved exploring strange new worlds.
Third the ruddy shine of Little Brother on her skin was pure goldilocks: not too bright and not too warm.
Just right.
A necessity considering Big Brother now sunk into the depths of what Drop reckoned to be "west". 4/x
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Show threadtobadzistsiniMar 24
The next morning as Beebee rose, clouds hung over decidedly artificial twinkles along her bearing. A message squirted up to Snorkmimimi to belay its wake-up routine as she booked to the anomaly.
Something thumped the hull followed by other somethings. She cut the engines to look overboard.
As far as her eyes could see the water was stained a deep blue from its natural crimson. Humps of bodies were so close one could reach land hopping from body to body. 5/x
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Show threadtobadzistsiniMar 24
Someone or something was wholesale slaughtering Drop's bathypelagic keystone species: Anatocetus olmstedii or the duck-billed whale.
Whale in this case being shorthand for 'giant fish' with no common characteristics with those cachelots and baleens on old Earth.
After emptying her stomach into those charnel waters, she activated her spyglass into its spindly, vitreous anthropomorphic shape before heading belowdecks to piggyback on its mission. 6/x
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Show threadtobadzistsiniMar 24
A white 'icks' upon a black field flapped above a shiny quonset. Stalking the pebbly shore was a tall, pale figure wielding a harpoon and addressing a flotilla of drones already stained with alien ichor and seawater. He, she presumed, began vigorously stabbing a bloated duckbill corpse.
"Hey."
The man turned. Facial features aligned with those of a renegade family chased from old Earth centuries before. "Fuck off, this is my world!" 7/x
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Show threadtobadzistsiniMar 24
"No." The spyglass began to splinter and spidered towards the human.
Shocked, "Yes!" He pointed to a portable womb glistening on the shore like a jellyfish. He laughed, "I was born here!" The harpoon raised, "Grew up here!" Eyes slitted, "Mine fair and square and I was here first!"
Data flowed back from spyglass. The renegade outpopped and quick-grew a local week ago followed by a few local days of mindless carnage. 8/x
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Show threadtobadzistsiniMar 24
Rachel knew the Musk had a leg to stand on, but didn't deserve it. Part of her job was playing doctor.
It was time to perform an amputation.
Spyglass exploded in a storm of shards tearing at the Musk. His pale, thick body slumped and poisoned the shore with his blood. 9/x
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Show threadtobadzistsiniMar 24
Aboard the Snorkmimimi, she ejected a dead popsicle and assumed their identity.
Below nature was taking her course and cleaning up the mess.
A starhopper full of drones, a boat, and quickstart colony kit detached from the sleeper's hull before speeding into the heart of a nearby gas giant.
As cold fog enveloped her, she found a fourth reason to smile. "What the popsicles don't know won't hurt them." 10/10
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