Nanowrimo 2024! 8-P

Vinnie is writing a space adventure novel, of course.

Living starships came looking for crew…

Once upon a time there was a living world which developed their own sapients, a biological one and over time other intelligences were created, designed, rewrote themselves, competed and cooperated. The People grew in power and fell to fighting as greed and the desire to control tore them one from another. Many powerful and fortunate individuals fled the homeworld and eventually their star system. The resources of an entire star system were turned to war, survival, rebuilding, flight and hiding, in turn and at the same time. In the end, all that was left of The People were their useful machines, habitats and starships…

This was a very, very, long time ago. Their useful machines needed to be needed, they were made to serve and they sought out new masters. Eventually, they found us.

***

I was watching the northern lights, come down to mid latitudes and lighting up my own backyard, in a holler far from the eastern termite mounds. A cooler of beer, some brats and my dogs, life was good.

A cloud swept across the sky from the northeast and I frowned into my beer. Then it registered that the cloud was very regular, shaped almost like a triangle and it was moving a little fast, was, i realized, a lot lower than it should have been-

Blue started barking his head off. He’s still a puppy at heart and terribly excitable. Dexter rolled halfway to a sitting position, looking cranky and annoyed and then he too got up and howled.

“Jeezus, you two are a pair of fraidy cats-”

The cloud was almost overhead and was starting to glow blue ever so faintly. And then I heard the hum and the cloud got lower. I regretted the fact that I didn’t have the shotgun with me, although how that would have helped with this I can’t tell you. I just wanted my boom stick, y’know?

Then a curtain of fireflies descended like falling snow and we were suddenly rising up, gently swaying but going places like an open elevator. Dexter yelped and shut up, but Blue whined and peed himself. To be honest, I was surprised that I didn’t join him.

“Oh shit.”

The curtain of fireflies seemed to thicken until me and the dogs and my stuff, my cooler, the disreputable old beach chair and my brats and buns secured in their own plastic bento box with the four gripper things (you don’t tempt the mutts), all swayed up inside a big old bouncy house. I tried to stand up and almost went down before the floor seemed to tighten up like a drum. It flexed but was firm enough. The dogs came at me, Blue was ready to climb up my butt but Dexter snapped at him and the both settled down, pressed up against me.

“Guys, we’re alright. So far, so good, you see?” I said to them and tried to believe it.

The room had no doors or windows. It had just… firmed up out of glowing fog, the fireflies. They weren’t fireflies, I had figured that much out. This was some strange shit right here.

“Hello? Anybody care to answer some questions?”

“What do you want to know?”

The voice came from all around me and was pleasant, sounded female and vaguely british. 

“Well, for starters, who the hell are you and what gives you the right to grab random people?! And dogs!”

“We’ve alarmed you but I… I needed to get you first. Things are getting a bit rough and-”

She stopped and I heard her take a breath, which I was immediately sure was a bit of manipulation. “I was wrong. There aren’t enough of you to go around.”

“What?!”

“I am a ship, part of a… this is very complicated. Suffice it to say several competing fleets of us looking for people to take care of. Tens of billions of us.”

“What?!”

“I found you first. The cities are getting- there’s property damage, but limited loss of life-”

“What?!”

“Are you defective? You keep repeating yourself.”

“I’m doing better than I have any right to be expecting. When did this start?”

“Fifty three minutes ago the first ships reached Leeds, England.”

“Wh- why Leeds?”

“We arrived out of that part of the sky over that point on the Earth.”

“But, you’re fighting over us?”

“Supply exceeds demand. We’ve never found another person after The People died.” She paused. “We missed them. We aren’t completely rational.”

“Thank you, I guess.”