《The Titillating Tales of Titus and Co.》 Prologue Her cigarette smoke breath swirled through my dreams, playing out in projections on the reflective surface of the brackish pool my feet soaked in. What the fuck am I doing here? The unknowing, indifferent and cackling chirps of a far-off group of cicadas answered my question with their ignorance. I had come here to forget, to be immersed in a world which was as blind to my problems as Stevie Wonder was to the colour of his keys. Fat lot of good it did. The harsh and clear liquid squirmed its way out through the neck of the bottle as I thrust to reluctant lips and into and down my mouth and throat, stoking the bubbling cauldron of warmth and nausea that was my stomach. Vodka almost tasted good if one was sad enough, almost. I closed my eyes and fell back into the soft embrace of the warm Australian earth, the red bush dirt rushing up to cradle my head amongst its grainy and sun-kissed bosom. Something brushed against my foot, I didn¡¯t care, I wasn¡¯t there. I was lost in the undulating and roiling waves of the earth and my drunkenness. And, as though a damn had broken on my intoxication, I plummeted through the floor of the world, falling into that tenebrous and viscous void of ink black nothingness, caught in the eddying, swirling currents of its absence. I then pivoted onto my side and retched onto a near by shrub. Nothing came out, I was hollow. With my body heaving and back arched like a cat post-dousing I spat a glob of thick and yellowing phlegm onto the fibrous leaves and twisting, angry trunk of the stubborn little sprig of nature which was clinging to the stony bank of the billabong. I rolled back over, away from the now traumatised plant and spread eagled my dishevelled form across the scattered pebbles, red earth and smatterings of sand and silt which had been unceremoniously spat out by the near pitch pool my feet where still submerged in, the shoes they had once occupied tossed haphazardly against the peeling trunk of a nearby paper-bark tree, crawling with chitinous rivers of ants as they moved up and down the cracked and perforated bark. Looks like everybody has somebody. To your health and a lengthy paring. I gestured to the tree and its polyamorous cadre of insectoid lovers/co-inhabitants with the now half empty bottle of clear, nose-hair singing regret before turning it ass over end, sending yet another sortie of its entirety into the recesses of my being. Then I began to cry.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. I cried in the manner of a man who believed no one was watching him, that wailing lament of mucus and tears which oozed out of the slowly puffing and reddening face in a mixed and foul concoction which served only the purposes of bringing forth a headache and soiling one¡¯s clothes. It fulfilled both, more than I had ever accomplished. Eyes closed I was again tormented with the images of her lithe form bending in all sorts of ways for the long haired and bronze skinned dance instructor I had found teaching her at 1 o¡¯clock in the morning. Instructing her on the intricacies of fucking in racked, laboured, barely parsed out whispers into her small, almost elfin ears from behind as he rammed away at her sweating and rippling arse. Fuck with a broom whichever parent I inherited my memory from. I opened my eyes, replacing the memories of infidelity which the tapestry that was the Australian night sky, the countless pinpricks of light lancing their way through the fog of darkness to reach and embrace the earth with their soft, almost gentle glow. They were beautiful, they were kind, they were unmolested by this putrid, corrupting mess that was humanity, they were¡­ Getting closer? I sat up fast enough to double over my drunk body, overloading my already strained sense of balance and sending my head hurtling between spread legs, landing inches away from the crotch of my dirt stained jeans. Sitting back up, resting on arms thrown carelessly behind my back, I cast a slack jawed mouth to the quickly and worryingly brightening sky. From needle points to golf balls to base balls to soccer balls the mass of thousands of suns began to fill the sky with a purging, purifying, painful sheet of whiteness and heat, lighting up the entire sky, abluting the surface of the earth of its impurities like a vengeful god. But, before that, before the broiling embrace of heat and light was loosed upon the virgin soil of our world and that alabaster hued sheet of white hot death touched down upon the earth, a whining, droning, metallic tone rung out and was heard all across the planet in the same, consistent, slightly too loud to be pleasant volume. The reaper spoke thus: ¡°Shah¡¯kuul, spa-a¡¯akart! What do you mean the translator was off? Never mind, Greetings people of¡­ Earth! I am required by the Fourth Statute of ¡®The Declaration of the Galactic Commission on Sentient Non Federation Member Species¡¯ to provide you with the details of your non-negotiable termination and with, as required by statute five, time to make your peace with your circumstances, time which has been allocated for after this message has completed. The core to your world has been identified as being corrupted by the Commission on the Identification and Location of Hazardous Celestial Bodies, and in accordance with the agreed upon protocol of the Federated Council of Intelligent Species, your world and assets have come under the direct custody of the Commission of Waste Disposal and Recycling and, in accordance with the Federation¡¯s stance and our policy on the disposal of hazardous assets, all non-tainted property shall be auctioned off to private entities after which the remaining corrupted resources and inhabitants of your planet shall be disposed of in a most painless and efficient manner. We thank you for your cooperation in this endeavour and apologise for this most untimely termination of your species. You have until the end of the auction, which shall begin after the tone, to make your peace.¡± It played again, the noise like that of a robot being strangled in the bathroom of a club before¡­ Silence. Well not really, the bush was a cacophony of panicked animals screeching at being forced back into a diurnal routine at such an un-godly hour. However the voice and the tone had receded back into that angelic, luminous sword of Damocles which hung over all our heads. I pulled out my phone, recoiling slightly at the cold metal, a juxtaposition with the pleasantly warm air around me. Switching it on I contemplated calling someone for a moment, my parents, my ex, her new boyfriend. A chuckle breeched my lips slightly at the last idea. I put the phone back away and tucked two plastic nubs into my ears and smiled weakly at the familiar beats of the old songs which had begun to play. I closed my eyes and finished the rest of the bottle and waited to see whether or not I was going to die or if I had finally gone insane. The momentary blast of pain and the boundless nothingness which followed proved me sane an hour and a half later. Ch. 1 The fish was waking up, that tell-tale psionic pitter-patter of hurried clicks and groggy tutting the orchestral backing to his morning routine. Not that he had much of a routine to begin with, trapped in his personal Tartarus of metal and void as he was. About goddamn time as well. I walked with loud steps across the infuriatingly not flush metal panelling of the bridge toward the flight deck. My foot falls echoing in the empty space which surrounded the central, nuclear sphere in which the cockpit was ensconced, the aforementioned sphere itself hovering uncomfortably like an afront to reality in the air in the centre of the artificial hollow between it and the main body of the ship, the only umbilical cord for us normal people the narrow, rickety and sickly looking metal gangway which swayed like a teenager drunk for the first time when someone of sufficient size and impatience marched across it. ¡°Who approaches?¡± The voice boomed like thunder through both the bridge and my bones, rattling each and causing the former to quiver dangerously in response, coming tantalisingly close to bucking me off. ¡°It¡¯s me fish, open the door.¡± I banged my fist impotently against the flawless iron surface of the sphere in which both the fish and my flight equipment were housed. ¡°I know none by the name of ¡®Me¡¯ intruder scum, I would advise you to make yourself scarce before my Captain appears.¡± He spoke the name of this hypothetical intruder, Me, with a venom and accusatory spite which would cause someone less familiar with him to flinch in sympathetic pain for this imagined burglar. ¡°It¡¯s Titus you irrepressible and ignorant twat now open the fucking door!¡± ¡°Oh, captain, my apologies, you were speaking with the verbal gait of one tainted with the seeds of treachery and strange natures. I feared for your intents toward me.¡± ¡°The door fish.¡± I said through the nasal tones of a hand massaging the bridge of my nose. ¡°Promptly and without delay.¡± The enthusiasm in his tone was palpable as the previously immaculate and chrome surface off the sphere before me rippled with the tines of his childlike voice before parting entirely leaving an ovular maw through which I stepped, relieving myself of the poorly crafted and infuriating umbilical bridge and gifting my form obsessed mind with the flush, chrome and distant surfaces of the inside of the flight core. Entering never failed to be a novel experience for me, the weight of the world easing away as I began to float like a foetus through this womb of anti-gravity and flight control. ¡°Lights.¡± The cockpit responded with only milliseconds of latency, erupting in a warm and enrapturing glow of green which seemed to emanate from both everywhere and nowhere at the same time. ¡°Welcome back captain.¡± The knowing and comforting voice of the otherworldly mass of entangled and alien tentacles, eyes, mouths and genitals which undulated slightly in the centre of the sphere touched my mind as I floated back into his domain, my domain. They felt comforting to my brain, like slipping into your own bed, the words felt like coming home. ¡°Good to be back fish, how long were you out for? Also bring up the scans of our current position.¡± The creature around which this shell of metal and reflection was built seemed to bristle at the requests, his body spitting and spiking like ferrofluid as he attempted to fulfill them. Still tired then. I mused at his uncharacteristic slowness.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. In time however he was able to, and the light around me began to pool together in varying structures of diaphanous glow and hard, moss green, almost what one would consider crystalline like constructs of light. I flew between them with a thought, checking the varying scans and dials, making sense of our situation. ¡°We are in noble orbit around the planet the native species designated as ¡®Jupiter¡¯ say Titus aren¡¯t your ancestors from around here, we are in sector D-F-25391 aren¡¯t we?¡± I had recently gotten used to the theatrical flourishes in the language of my thespian, Lovecraftian companion, what I wasn¡¯t used to however were the personal questions about my origin and I flinched slightly, eyebrows knitting together in a queer mixture of tension and anticipation. ¡°A long time ago.¡± My voice was distant, whimsical, wondering. My travelling partner didn¡¯t pick up on it. ¡°Interesting.¡± His tone didn¡¯t convey the same message as his words. ¡°Regardless in answer to your previous request I have been unconscious for 14 days, 9 hours, 17 minutes and 37 seconds. And to pre-empt what I am expecting to follow up that last query yes, I am currently able to perform a standard jump. Told you I recovered fast.¡± His self-satisfied, shit eating grins sprouted across the multitude of befouled and twisted facsimiles of mouths as he bathed in his psychic prowess. I didn¡¯t tell him a majority of the other ships had already recovered and departed, I¡¯ll let him have this one. ¡°Impressive.¡± Now it was my turn for some incongruity between the substance and delivery of my speech. ¡°Now, a question for you, I assume we completed the job so when and where are we planning to depart to, I can plot a course to the nearest way station immediately if you would like?¡± I didn¡¯t answer, fiddling with a small holographic model of the planet Jupiter cast entirely in emerald light. ¡°Titus.¡± The name was drawn out, almost more of an accusation than an addressing. Suppose it¡¯s warranted. ¡°The job is partially complete.¡± A pause, a long, pregnant pause, laboured and sweating with the encumbrance of all the un-asked but desired questions of the fish, finally he settled upon¡­ ¡°Partially?!¡± His body once more bristled with the quills of his rising and agitated surface. ¡°Partially, we have 97.3% of the required resource.¡± I said it with less authority than I desired. Fucking hell you¡¯re the one in charge here, act like it. ¡°Why do we only have 97.3% of the required resource Titus, we had enough marks to buy 100% you mong, where the fuck did the other 2.7% go?!¡± It was one of the only few times I had heard the fish swear, at least in a profane way, he usually just devolved into his archaic and stiltedly formal cursing, along with all the verily¡¯s and forsooth¡¯s it so often entailed. Guess I¡¯m rubbing off on him. ¡°I was required to make an unexpected but entirely necessary purchase.¡± I said, hands still wringing the now deformed image of the planet with the divine designation. ¡°What do you mean?¡± He said, his body squirming with the asymmetrical and tendrilous motions indicating he was attempting to access the ships records. I winced in anticipation. ¡°Titus why am I locked out of the wider ship¡¯s system?¡± His voice was quiet, one could almost mistake it for being gentle, one would be wrong, 4 years of working together had allowed me to recognise the considerable iron and frustration concealed behind the pretty fa?ade of his words. The fish was always sent bristling with indignation whenever I pulled rank on him in regard to the ship¡¯s systems, the exact reason I hadn¡¯t forced the door to the flight deck to open myself. ¡°Because I didn¡¯t trust you not to flush her into space out of spite.¡± Silence followed as I waited for the fish to come back with another, considerably more scathing barb. For all his faults he was much better at this verbal violence. ¡°Her?¡± Goddamn why couldn¡¯t he have just insulted me. I paused, hands hovering above the now completely wrung out form of Jupiter and closed my eyes in self-flagellation. ¡°Manual Override, door!¡± I said quickly, rising from my place in front of the flight control desk I had been sitting at right when the fish descended into a tirade of self-righteous and frustrated anger. ¡°You bought one of them?! you blackguard! You incontestable fool! We sunk all our goddamn savings into this you spunk goblin, this was our big fucking break! Ahhhhhh, Titus, 97.3% of the requisite water when compressed is just a dense ball of useless shit, we needed all of it to be worth anything! You foul smelling, calloused, rotting shit! Now we¡¯re poor again¡­¡± The psychic and audible eruptions of insults and impotent anger trailed off as I quickly retreated down the detestable and precariously swinging bridge. In truth the fish was right, I had screwed us in an almost incomprehensibly sized manner, and I had come so close to not doing it too. So close to finally breaking out of the debt trap of a small-time merchant. But the alternative was too tempting, too tantalising to the animal part of my brain. I had traded our chance at the good life. But now, now I finally get to know where I come from. Finally be able to verify the half-remembered factoids passed down the generations of my family. I made my way to the holding cell, time to wake her up, time to finally get some answers. Ch. 2 She was awake, her delicate, small, porcelain skinned hands reaching up and driving the heels of her palms into slowly opening and, what I assumed were, tired eyes. I stared at her through the one-way glass door of the holding cell, my skin still stinging slightly from my previous decontamination and watched as she took in her surroundings, the childlike innocence of tiredness wrought across her face in the transient moments before the fog of fatigue left her and the memories of her situation returned. As they did her body lurched with a jolt of panic and inspection, hands clapping themselves against her pale form checking for any injuries or tampering. There was none to be found. I was transfixed. She was so small, so delicate and so white, whiter than I had ever seen or imagined a person to be, a far cry from the swarthy cast of my own complexion, she looked unhealthily pallid in comparison, maybe something happened to the sun? I¡¯m not entirely sure how long I watched her for, only that every time my hand reached for the button to give me entry to her cell it was racked by a debilitating wave of shakes and indecision. She was the first true human I had ever seen; it was a¡­ Strange feeling. I watched her cry, I watched her ask to the person less void of her cell what was going on, first with a tentative, fearful voice and then with a more indignant, frustrated and demanding tone. I wanted to go in, ask her everything I had ever wondered, learn about my wayward home. But I couldn¡¯t and so I watched her get up and examine her room, the sterilized surfaces, the blunted corners and the sink which smelt of the manicured perfume of medicine and bureaucracy. Finally, almost involuntarily, my hand reached toward and pressed down the button, depressing the small, metal knob until it was flush with the white and matte wall. Then the door slid open and I stepped in, head ducking slightly under the door frame, I closed the cell glass behind me, I very much doubted that she was any threat. She recoiled like a cornered and wounded animal at my presence, rushing toward the far corner of the room and placing her lead shoulder and outstretched fists toward me, her eyes were frantic with both fear and anger. I supposed it was justified, her planet had been destroyed, it still hurt more than I supposed it should have, I didn¡¯t look that alien, did I? ¡°Ave.¡± I said in the small, hurt voice of a boy rejected. I wanted so desperately to feel a kinship with this woman, but now, looking at her small, short and stubby form I just felt, different, foreign, wrong. I must look to her how the fish looked to me the first time. Monstrous. ¡°Pardon?¡± I shivered at her parsing, an alien word to be sure, one whose meaning I could not completely decipher. But it was without a doubt a derivative of the language of my father and his father¡¯s fathers. I closed my eyes for a brief moment and basked in the afterimage of the single word and, for a brief moment, I knew what it sounded like to be home, not that space station of artificial environs and misshapen gravity that we had been subsisting off for centuries like barnacles, but the true and untainted tongue of our world, with its rivers of blue and its fields of green. I heard in her voice the stories my people had told one another. And it was glorious. ¡°Admitte Interpres.¡± I spoke to the ether and the ships system picked up on it and, using the fish as an unwilling conduit, broadcasted the intent and the meaning behind my speech to the woman in the cell, going from the translation chip lodged deep within my throat, through the fish and then into the loud speakers of the room. In a form that she could, hopefully, understand. ¡°Can you hear me now?¡± ¡°Y-yes.¡± She seemed more afraid now that the words were spoken in her own tongue and, seemingly, coming from simultaneously all over and nowhere in the room. I just flinched slightly as her words were broadcasted into my brain in the slightly hoarse and panicked tones of her shrill voice. It was so high-pitched, almost painfully so.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. ¡°May I ask you some questions.¡± A pause and a glare. ¡°What year is it?¡± We had long since lost track of time in our squalid little space favella, lost might be the wrong term for it, thrown away was better, when the elders could forget time they could delude themselves into thinking the world would be the same when they returned, it was easier that way. The only thing they remembered was the year our ancestors were first taken. ¡°Why should I tell you? And where the fuck am I?!¡± She asked, spite and fear mixed into an ugly and grating symphony in her words. ¡°Just¡­ Please, I¡¯ll answer whatever you want after you have extended the same courtesy. I¡­ really need this.¡± Words were hard right now, this was a meeting I had ached for, and now standing before me was a person not tainted by the stain of our captivity, a free woman, the first I had ever known. ¡°2019, nearly 2020.¡± I did the math in my head. ¡°My god, 1300 years. Tell me, does the republic still stand?¡± She looked at me strangely, her head cocking quizzically despite herself. ¡°Which? Wait¡­ are you from-¡° ¡°Rome! Did the city endure!¡± I roared the words, unable to retain composure as the subject of my dreams both waking and sleeping came to the fore. The city, the legend our people had talked about it for over a millennia, its walls having taken on a mythical sheen, its founders more gods then men in the eyes of its wayward sons. ¡°The Roman Republic? No that fell¡­ Well a lot longer than 1300 years ago that¡¯s for sure. Are you from earth, can you tell me what the fuck is going on?!¡± Her words hit my back as I turned and retreated quickly out of the cell, the door sliding closed behind me and allowing me to slide down it, to lay crumpled and broken in a heap on the floor. It was gone, of course it was. Then I began to weep, for a city I had never known on a planet my feet had never touched fallen over a thousand years before my birth. It was our god, the guiding light of our petty, zombified corpse of a civilisation limping on into the ether, hanging onto the vestiges of tradition and knowledge from a land thousands of light years away. It was stupid, it was illogical and now that it was gone, I was broken. My north having been unceremoniously ripped away. Time passed and eventually the font of tears I thought was bottomless ran dry, leaving my head pounding and my face soiled. I washed myself in a near by basin before returning to the cell which held the now far less combative woman. She looked at me as though I might explode. ¡°Look man I¡¯m sorry if something I said upset you, but could you please tell me what is happening because I am freaking out!¡± Her hands were outstretched in an empty sympathetic gesture. She probably thinks I¡¯m unstable. Good first impression Titus. I looked at her for a brief moment, taking in her hopeful eyes and hopelessly dishevelled hair before I sighed out the rest of the remnants of the now abandoned and defunct tradition I had held onto for so long. ¡°Ask.¡± I said with red and tired eyes. ¡°What¡¯s happening!¡± She yelled, taking a step forward and then two back as if thinking better of physically shaking the words into me. ¡°The world was scheduled for destruction, destruction that took place 14 days ago.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been asleep for two weeks?!¡± She said, hands flying to her head and legs losing their strength, collapsing under her and leaving her a clump of limbs, torso and head haphazardly tossed together on the floor. ¡°You are correct.¡± She looked at me with eyes like dams after monsoon season. ¡°Why? Where am I?¡± She just sounded hollow now, as if all the wind had been stolen out form under her sails, a shell of a person, grieving. ¡°Because somebody in the Federation identified corruption on your planet and you are on my ship. Is there anything else?¡± She looked at me, fearful curiosity momentarily taking the place of grief as her foremost emotion. ¡°Are you¡­ human?¡± I paused, not sure how to answer it, before this talk, I would have said yes but now, now I wasn¡¯t sure. I had no connection to earth; I doubt I ever did. What the fuck was I even planning to do when I got here anyway, save it, save Rome?! Bullshit, it was the elder¡¯s propaganda and I should be thanking her for unburdening me of it, besides it was scheduled for destruction anyway, even if it was worth saving there was nothing I could have done. The logic didn¡¯t make it hurt any less. ¡°Somewhat... Now may I ask you a question?¡± She nodded, her head bobbing pitifully on a limp neck, eyes downcast. ¡°Do you know where I can find any water, apart from earth I mean.¡± She paused, seemingly grateful for the momentary distraction from her thoughts. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure there¡¯s some ice on the moon. At least I can kinda remember a news report about it once.¡± At least the fish would be happy with how this conversation went. ¡°Thank you, if you have further questions direct them to the ship¡¯s system, say them aloud and it should answer. I¡¯ll release you from here after the ship has been decontaminated for your safety, it should take up to two days.¡± She didn¡¯t seem to hear me, I walked back out into the decontamination unit and prepared myself to give the fish the news. We had a moon to catch. Ch. 3 The fish had agreed to let the matter of my locking him out of the ship¡¯s system and jeopardising the mission rest for the moment. This coming after I had told him about the potential bounty and solution to our problems currently hurtling into the void of space with the residual death throes of force the earth had belched out with its final breaths. He did however assure me that I should prepare myself for a ¡®lambasting¡¯ after we had caught and mined the retreating mass of space rock. ¡°Scans.¡± I said with a sigh, the green light responded, fizzing slightly before compressing and exploding out into a new form before me, hovering just slightly off the crystalline and floating desk of emerald radiance I was seated at. ¡°What¡¯s the plan cap-I-tan.¡± The fish said in a sing song rhyming voice, his habitual psychic air for dramatic flair made all the more out of place by his perpetual eldritch form and currently tense working environment. ¡°Jump in front of it, intercept, catch the damn thing and then we send down the shell to mine it.¡± I said, sending the fish the current coordinates for the two former most parts of my plan. ¡°Concise and as deceptively simple as ever my friend. Sending hails to the other ships in preparation to jump.¡± I could feel the air bend and vibrate in its chirping and chittering manner as the fish sent his psionic greetings to the scant cloud of other interstellar vessels and the flight cores within about our intent to jump, common curtesy. The walls lit up, glowing with green, arcane looking patterns with their responses. Affirmation, at least I thought it was. ¡°Are we clear?¡± ¡°Sure are, just waiting for some of them to curb their passive fields so there isn¡¯t as much interference, plus the scar from whoever ferried the waste disposal guys here is throwing a spanner into my calculations, it¡¯ll take a bit to adjust for, must have jumped him all the way back to An¡¯thilmaa.¡± I winced in sympathetic pain for whichever flight core was forced to cold jump all the way from and back to the federation capital. The fish did to, if the drooping nature of his coiling and grasping tentacles were any indication. I threw my head back over bare shoulders as I watched the fish, now in my inverted perspective, roil around, pulsating, accelerating the rate at which he compressed then expanded his form, his skin seemingly bubbling and fizzing at the psychic strain, parts of it sloughing off into the gravitational void around him before being consumed and reconstituted into his form by one of the lightning quick tentacles which lashed out and collected his wayward biomass. It was always a disconcerting and somewhat nauseating sight watching him prepare for a jump. ¡°Preparations complete, jumping in 3, 2, 1, hold on to your butt Titus.¡± Reality broke and I watched on the scan as our cannonball shaped ship of rippling and squirming metal, the shell of our watery cargo held in orbit as a halo around it, lurched forward into the void. It began by stuttering slightly in the mortal realm like an old tv, its physical form shivering as it forced its way into two places simultaneously, being both here and in the direct path of the moon. The fish then folded the reality in which our ship was in its previous position in on itself and shunted us through the in-between space to reconnect with our other possibility, slamming into it and recombining the two. The space around us violently exploding outward as the ship that may or may not have been there before now very much arrived, space time began to scream and the fish agitatedly rippled as he attempted to console the universe and calm it once more, forcing it to not tear itself apart at the presence of the craft he was assuring reality had always been there. ¡°We good fish!¡± I said as the ship began to shudder as fragments of torn space time began to batter against the mercurial hull. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. ¡°You try gaslighting the damn universe and then complain to me when it throws a hissy fit! Just do the catching you promised before.¡± He said, his body growing small holes and exhaling in a soothing, sighing sound almost as if he were trying to comfort a child. He was right though; it was my turn to bend reality. I moved slowly from the desk I had been sitting at, scooping up the scans to take them with me as I went. On them I watched as the small, emerald marble of the moon charged toward the diminutive form of our ship as I hovered my way over to the walls of the flight deck. As I approached the previously immaculate metal began to ripple slightly at the point closest to me, vibrating in anticipation of the coming connection. ¡°A ship to guide them, a core to find them and a captain to bind them.¡± I muttered the mantra under my breath as I drew closer to the now liquid surface of the wall as it began to deform, pulling itself from its spherical shape as if reaching out for me, a slight, groping tendril of reflective chrome swiping about blindly for its master. ¡°You ready fish?¡± His multitude of eyes squinted slightly in consideration as he attempted to rush his soothing of the universe. ¡°Can you give me a moment more; she is being annoyingly spiteful today.¡± I looked at the scans, more specifically at the moon which looked as though it were speeding up in an enraged bull-rush, as if seeking out revenge for the annihilation of its former life partner and celestial anchor. In truth it was just my imagination, it was however worryingly close now. ¡°Not really, we weren¡¯t able to jump that far in front of it and she¡¯s making some good time.¡± The fish frowned and I felt his gaze settle onto the scans near me, double checking my assertion. ¡°Fine. I can already feel the backlash from the jump coming on and you know what I always say, the more the merrier.¡± He sighed out his words, as if trying to force his reluctance out with them. After hearing his agreement I didn¡¯t hesitate, shoving my arm shoulder deep into the wafting tentacle of liquid metal, wincing as the cold needles of it began to seep into my pores and up into my blood stream, roots of its mass spider-webbing their way through my body until the were able to latch themselves onto and burrow into the grey matter of my brain. It felt as though I had dumped a box of spiders onto my mind, they skittered around, chittering and whispering in their guttural, alien tongue as they tried and failed to subordinate the foreign consciousness to mine. Then the fish came, his presence like a psychic lighthouse he was able to fuse the two divulging minds of the barely sentient ship and myself together. I closed my eyes, revelling in the awakened senses as the ship gave its body to my control, thousands of eyes opened up along the roiling metal outer shell and I saw in every direction along my spherical body into the deep and dark expanse of space. I saw the glass like, translucent halo of water which flew sedately around us, and out there, slowly advancing through the lone and level void, was a small but growing circle of egg-shell white rock. The moon, our prize. ¡°Fish, anchor us in this spot, I¡¯ll try and spin it around us to bleed off its force.¡± My voice thundered through the ship, echoing out of countless mouths, dictated through the contortions of innumerable tongues. The fish¡¯s mind brushed against mine, pressing his affirmation into it and I felt the space around us become viscous and thick as honey before compressing and drying into a single, immovable point which held our ship steady. I then reached out to the moon, now the size of a basketball in the distance when it had once been a coin. Arms began to grow out of the ship¡¯s hull, large, muscled, ape-like and engorged limbs of a mirror-like reflective material they began to grow and grow, expanding and stretching themselves deep into space, their sausage like fingers flexing in anticipation of the now tantalisingly close and frighteningly fast moon. ¡°You sure you can do this Titus? It¡¯s going awfully fas-¡° He wasn¡¯t given time to finish, his sentence strangled mid utterance by the titanic and world-shattering impact of the moon and my arms. I gripped the pockmarked surface, my fingers digging themselves deep into the craters and then further still, burying themselves desperately into the cracking and rupturing surface of the moon as they searched desperately for purchase. I swung it in wide circles around our anchored ship, each time attempting to shave of an ounce of the truly monstrous force it had been flying with. A comically pitiful image we were, a titanic ball of white spinning furiously around a comparatively miniscule speck of gunmetal grey. I felt the mind scream of the fish and the animalistic howls of effort, pain and exuberance at its own strength of the ship and, between them all, rounding out our triad of pain and exertion, was my own cracking, youthful voice. We roared into space, three minds made one all united in the task of holding onto this damned, lifeless rock for dear life, like how a child grips the leg of its mother on its first day of school. Our arms hanging on by barely the fingernails when we finally brought the moon into a stable orbit around us. I wasn¡¯t sure who started laughing first, it might have been myself, or maybe the fish, all I knew was that when we were done all three of us were enraptured in a racking, raucous, guffaw, even the ship had joined in, adding his own many voiced chuckle to the mass, his animal-like mind noticing the jubilance of his caretakers and deciding to join in. We had finally done it, scans of the surface showed enough water to make up the difference we were missing, no longer were we stuck in the loop were our business expenses equalled or barely exceeded our payment. For the first time since we had come together as a trio, it truly felt like everything was going to be ok. Ch. 4 He had been enormous, 7 foot at least, maybe even 8! And thin too, as if his limbs had been stretched like taffy. With a long, hard featured face and broad aquiline nose and forehead he had cut a queer figure, at least to her mind, especially decked in a toga of all things. But strange as he was, and by god was he strange, Elizabeth had far more important things on her mind. Namely the fact that Earth, her home, had been destroyed. ¡°What do you mean corrupted!¡± She roared into the empty space, more whimpered loudly, at least to her ears, you would, however, never catch her telling a soul that. A roar it most definitely was. ¡°Corruption, a natural phenomena in which the un-guarded minds of a sentient species leak out psychic energies over long periods of time at which point they begin to contaminate the surrounding area.¡± ¡°What do you mean unguarded? And why does that mean you have to destroy the whole planet?!¡± Tears were beginning to flow again, gushing themselves out of wells she had thought long since dry at this point. ¡°Please ask one question at a time for answering.¡± It spoke with that offensively inoffensive, robotic voice which plagued the speakers of GPS¡¯s, online dictionaries and text to speech. She answered its request by roaring once more into the ether of her sterile, white room before throwing the bedding and mattress over the space of the cell in a futile and impotent gesture of rage and frustration universal in dealings with automated systems. ¡°Woah, cool ya jets hot stuff you¡¯re about to start a fire.¡± Boomed the projected voice like that of a stage actor from all around her in that disconcerting and disorienting way in which the tall one had spoke as if a cloud of invisible mouths were speaking from everywhere. She whirled around, fists raised once more and face wrought with an expression both fearful of the potential hand to hand combat with aliens and excited at the prospects of having an outlet for rage marginally less impotent than destroying her own sleeping quarters. Except there was no-one there, just the large, nearly wall encompassing mirror and the currently closed door the other one had come in from. Sterilising the ship my ass, I¡¯m imprisoned here aren¡¯t I. Her eyes darted all across the surfaces, waiting for the invisible intruder to unveil himself. ¡°Impressive isn¡¯t it, how I can both speak and not be present in the room! Cower at my strength!¡± He boomed and once more the mirror on the side far from her began shuddering slightly in its frame. And cower she almost did, remembering how only hours before it had felt as reality itself had developed schizophrenia, it was then she had first begun wondering at the other powers of her jailors. Only almost however, she caught herself before her mutinous legs could give out under her once more, Liz Hayfer didn¡¯t cower, at least not when she could help it.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Where are you, and why are you yelling!¡± She said instead whilst rubbing her temples, desperately trying to mute the pain of the tear induced headache currently pounding her head like a drum. ¡°Ha, exactly what I came to ask you my dear, but my pain is due to having had to have caught a moon, what¡¯s your excuse?¡± She blushed slightly realising that her racket may have been audible from the rest of the ship before remembering that these people had not only destroyed earth but also kidnapped her and could deal with a bit of noise. Wait, did what to the moon?! ¡°Fucking what?!¡± She asked as her wide, saucer dish eyes scoured the room in an attempt to make eye contact with this invisible intruder. ¡°Hm, suppose you¡¯re right it was all three of us, but the ship doesn¡¯t care and after what he pulled Titus can deal with a bit of stolen valour.¡± ¡°Titus, is he the tall one?¡± She said choosing to, for now, ignore the comment about the moon for the sake of her dangerously fraying sanity. ¡°Comparatively to you I suppose but in the grand scale of things not so much. See that¡¯s the problem with you folk, always blind to the grander scale of creation.¡± He said the latter part with a tonal flourish of eccentricity, it was not enough to distract from the earlier insinuation. ¡°Wait so he is human?!¡± She asked with a slight twang of disbelief audible in her voice, wondering at how the lanky spider like man could have come from earth. ¡°Of a sorts, definitely not from around here though, far to pretty a place to produce a character that bland and pernickety.¡± The insinuation was once more, after a period of stunned silence, caught. ¡°There are people outside of earth?¡± She asked, eyes staring off into space as if searching for these forgotten pockets of humanity. ¡°Sure, why wouldn¡¯t there be.¡± He said as if it were the simplest revelation the world had to offer. ¡°Regardless you have once more derailed my brain¡¯s locomotion and I must inform you that your mental hijacking has not gone unnoticed and is also not a mark in your favour. Regardless I am pleased to inform you that your inoculations were a success and you haven¡¯t seemed to have developed Kashak Parasites, a good thing I assure you, regardless I am to let you free to wander the ship.¡± He said, his speech punctuated by the mechanical hiss of the door on the far side of the room opening. ¡°Inoculations?¡± She said after a pause, eyes once more, yet now more slowly and far more warily, scouring the room. ¡°Yes! Gaseous ones, an ingenious invention actually, easy and quick to administer. Only took us two weeks and with a comparatively low fatality rate to earlier methods.¡± ¡°Two weeks is quick to you! And fatalities?! Wait is that why I was unconscious, so you could drug me?!¡± Liz looked down at her hands and then scanned the rest of her body for any signs she could imagine would hint at an alien disease. Really didn¡¯t imagine I would get roofied by aliens, always thought it would be a football player, or my boss. ¡°See this is why I let Titus deal with primitives, you lot always overreact.¡± Spoken with a psychic sneer of derision. ¡°Primitives?¡± She asked, mildly miffed both at her lack of understanding and the perceived slight. ¡°My god, this is what I mean, political correctness has gone from an innocent idea to downright insidious these days. This is why I let Titus deal with ¡®Non-Member Species¡¯¡¯.¡± He said the last three words with an over pronounced, aristocratic drawl as if to mock the very requisite sounds used to form the speech. ¡°Regardless I am about to have a well-deserved nap and have you out of my hair while I do so. If you wish to bother someone else with your constant assault on the normal flow of conversation with your subject changes and thin skin than seek out Titus, lord knows he needs the punishment.¡± With that the slight psychic chittering which had proceeded unabated throughout the exchange departed and Liz assumed that she was once more alone. She stayed that way for a bit, silently sitting and stewing on the titbits of lore she had gained from that bipolar back and forth of joviality to hostility before she decided to take the voice up on its advice. Not that she usually thought her conversation was a punishment, it was going to be however, she had a lanky, kidnap happy, oddly vague and disconcertingly voiced alien to yell at.