Tag Archives: alien planets

Creativity, Fiction

Makers of History

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 38:

“I’m Empress Rathoi!” Nili screeched from her dingy cubicle.
“Every two damn minutes,” Anned grunted, turning in her sleeping bag. Old Nili was getting worse.

Anned wasn’t much better off. She’d wind up a meaningless husk, like everyone else on Toreadis.
Yet something rebelled within her, coherent, alive, like the stars judging her from above the collapsed Toreadian skyline.

The following day she snuck onto an airship for Arctamam. First, the pirates welcomed her among their ranks; and when the constitution was abolished, the revolutionaries. After the war, she was crowned empress.

Nili never knew of her role in history.

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Scarecrow

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 34:

I was born with only two arms, and I grew into a scrawny, spindly lad, ridiculed for my grotesqueness. Nor would anyone give me a job—not with my face, not with my weak body.

So I did what I could to make ends meet—I started following space pirates. They knew what to do with my ugliness. They sent me out to scare gullible folks of distant planets into handing over their goods without fighting.

Soon, my reputation began to precede me. “Watch out, they are sending the Scarecrow!”
There is no acceptance for me in it. Only peace.

MQS

the scarecrow

Creativity, Fiction

An Age Without Titans

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 31:

When the last titan was felled, my people rejoiced and called me their leader. Long had been the battle, and full of grief.

I still see it. The great shape folding in half under our bombs, then lying down on its shadow like an unruly mountain. I was raised to my late mother’s throne, to rule over a peaceful planet.

But soon the unused valor of our warriors turned inward. Children started hating their parents. Siblings called each other enemies.

And I understood that to rule in an age without titans is to rule in an age of small people.

MQS

An age without titans
Creativity, Fiction

The Circumstances of Greatness

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 30:

Finding the draft card in my mail, I knew I had to flee. I had so much to live for. Not that I’d ever done anything with my life, but I wanted the option.

I stole a military pod and left Alpha-Fenoler. For months I survived on freeze-dried food in the great star-washed nothingness.

Then a ship appeared. My capsule was pulled in. I panicked. They’d call me a traitor! I’d be quartered!

But they were not Alpha-Fenolerians. They were from the Interstellar Reconstruction Forum. They hailed me as a hero for preserving Alpha-Fenolerian DNA to repopulate my war-consumed planet.

MQS

The circumstances of greatness
Creativity, Fiction

Eternal Life

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 25:

They called it the Hermit Planet, though no one existed who spoke its native tongue.

Lured by the promises of eternal life found in its electromagnetic field, travelers came to it from all over, meandering through its statue-rimmed roads, hunting the promised wondrous resin.

When they found it, they drank of it exclusively for three thousand days, waiting for the miracle.

Thus did vitality slowly dim in their stiffening limbs; thus did their minds drown in syrup, till life was evened out in their stilled nature, and fear merged with bliss, and flesh with bone and earth.
Pure, unobstructed presence.

The Planet of Eternal Life

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Love Dimension

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 23:

They approached the thing stretched out mutely on the table. Its nervous system unfolded like a web out of its brain, suspended on hooks. This was their forbidden gateway to the fullness of life.

“Lock the door,” one of them said apprehensively. The other obeyed.
Then each of them took a connector, forced one extremity of it inside the thing and the other into their temple socket.

Finally, one pushed a button, and the life latent in the thing unfurled. Their perception collapsed, absorbed into that of the thing.

Kids playing, dogs barking, the smell of meatloaf.
“I’m home, honey!”

The Love Dimension

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Sentinel at the End of Times

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 19:

The Moon was a lonely place, even after terraforming.
To allay the sense of separation, he would point his telescope earthward, like the omniscient narrator of a distant drama.

Thus he witnessed the world go under, swallowed by wars and famines and plagues, evaporated in a cloud of screams, till nothing but a barren desert was left.

Initially, he grieved.
Then it dawned on him. No longer separated from life, he was life. Filled with an ease that made his soul soar in billows of mirth, he stopped observing.
And, in the star-pinned silence of existence, he began to dance.

The Sentinel at the end of times

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Origins of Morality

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 15:

In my enthusiasm, I twirled the gun so quickly it flew off my hand and a laser shot hit my wristwatch. I retrieved it gingerly.
The doors opened, and I finally met my commissioner.

I consider myself unprincipled. You pay me, you get results. But before me was something not merely alien, but inhuman.
“Welcome, Mr. Long,” it said through countless foetid mouths, stretching scaly arms toward the gun.
Chink. Chink. My eyes fell on the dozens of wristwatches that were heaping on the floor.

I pointed the gun toward myself.
Shortly after, thousands of Mr. Longs left the spaceship.

The Origins of Morality

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Visionary

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 10:

Riddle me this. I’ll try to present my case as succinctly as possible, and you will be the judge.

You graduate top of your class. You win study grants. You travel the world. You lecture in crowded halls. Everyone praises you for your special vision and your daring challenge of academic conventions. You have something no one else has, they say, and they encourage you.

Then, finally, you land in the space program. They are sure you will discover something unbelievable.
And I did.

Why then, If I may ask, am I the one wasting away in a padded room?

The Visionary

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

Fighting the Vast Ones

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 7:

It was a galaxy teeming with life. Nations ranged from small islands to whole systems. Travelers were daring. Adventurers trafficked. Merchants brought their culture with them. Dissidents of all stripes were sure to find a more suitable place somewhere else.

Then the Vast Ones came from outer space, and no one was ready.
To face the emergency, the galaxy united under an emergency government headed by the Liberation Front.

Untold lives were lost.
But the invasion was staved off.

Yet, the Liberation Front is still there, and everything everywhere is uniform and gray, a vast oneness with nowhere to go.

Fighting the Vast Ones

MQS