The aliens had studied us long enough to be able to use what we perceived as a woebegone appearance to their advantage, preying on our sympathies and our desire to help. It was far too late when we discovered how our better natures had doomed us all.
MicroBlogVember
Her favorite place on the ship was at the end of a little-traveled corridor one deck above Engineering. There was a notch in the corridor wall she just fit into, where she could close her eyes and feel the hum of the ship’s engines vibrating through her.
Every scan they had run on the canister since they’d unearthed it had shown it to be hollow. It was only after they cracked the seal that they understood that hollow and empty were two very different things.
She’d heard all the comments: Everyone only remembers the first person to do something. Once it’s done once, it’s not exciting. Who was the second person on the moon, after all?
But really—being the second person on Mars was still pretty damn exciting.
The ship drifted in space, sensors active, waiting for the radiation surge to abate so the crew could be revived. But the stasis pods weren’t shielded against this type of radiation, and what emerged would be very different from what had gone in.
The parts arrived in the mail, each one with just enough instructions to allow him to attach it to what had come before. Who sent them or what they would build were the mystery that kept him working, but the quantity of needles was starting to worry him.
“Truly,” thought the commander, overlooking the fleet of ships before their eyes, “this is magnificent. Surely, no fleet as superb as this one had been seen since—“
“Alex!”
“What, mom?”
“Turn off the holoprojector and get in bed! Now!”
They sighed.
One nice thing about the aliens being so selective about who they accepted, even if the reasons were unknown, was that anyone who wasn’t an economically privileged cis straight white male could just get on with their lives. Things improved quickly.
Only after she let her fingers slip over the side of the boat to drift through the water did she realize that the lake was more clear than she thought. Or at least, the murky substance wasn’t part of the water, as it flowed over her hand and up her arm.
“Ready for your upgrade?”
“You know it! Even made sure to shave the back of my neck this morning for the port installation.”
“Seriously? Do you have any idea what hacking into your spine like that would do to you? You’ve seen The Matrix too many times.”