Category Archives: People

Pelagian History, Part 1

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Notes on the History of the Pelagian Peoples, Part 1

 

The Pelagian peoples are a rich and vibrant community of peoples that originate from the planet Pelagia, which lies in a red dwarf system located a few hundred parsecs northwest of the outer reaches of the Kingdom. Pelagia is covered in a massive contiguous aquatic zone that covers about 88% of the surface of the planet. However, while more of the surface of Pelagia is covered by water than on Earth, the mean depth of Pelagia’s oceans is far more shallow than that of Earth. While the mean depth of Earth’s oceans runs at about 3,700 meters, Pelagia’s oceans average a paltry 2,100 meters in depth. This means that a greater amount of Pelagia’s oceans run at depths more suited to producing life. It is small wonder that the Pelagians themselves never left the confines of aquatic life, and evolved entirely as an aquatic species.

 

Basic anatomy

Pelagians have no skeletal structure, as we would know it. They are often called squids in common parlance, but they are actually more akin to a jellyfish in basic structure (albeit with a thicker outer “skin”, rather than a gelatinous membrane). On Earth, most jellyfish have a minimal muscular structure, and consequently are only capable of producing small amounts of kinetic energy, really only enough to help the jellyfish move itself from point A to point B at a relatively slow pace. Pelagians, while not containing a series of muscles as we might know them on Earth, do have a system of cellular structures that are capable of imposing great feats of strength to not only transport their own bodies, but also impose their will upon objects around them. These kinetic cellular structures are primarily located around an array of six highly flexible limbs (erroneously called “tentacles” by many) and lining a bell-like organ that provides the pelagians with their primary means of self-propulsion.

In addition, an Earth jellyfish carries a fairly basic nervous system that generally does not coalesce around a central nervous system or brain. Pelagians likewise do not have a central “brain” per se, but their nervous system is highly complex in comparison and capable of cognitive discourse at least as complex as that of the human brain, albeit not as centralized as a brain. Some observers have likened their cognitive system as less like a hand controlling a puppet (as one might describe the brain) and more like a highly synchronized team working together to operate the overall body. As early human military observers noted not long after first contact with the pelagians, this means that there is no “one-shot kill” spot on the pelagian body, as cognitive and neurological command ability is spread evenly throughout the body. However, later observers noted that wounding a pelagian almost anywhere on its body not only wounds that particular part of the body, but also reduces its cognitive abilities at the same time.

 

Notes on Early Pelagian History

As one might expect, Pelagian history is very different from Human history, and this becomes abundantly clear quite early in Pelagian history. One easy illustration of this comes from examining early inventions by each culture. In Human history, the earliest and most fundamental inventions were arguably the control of fire, the wheel, the control of electricity, the printing press, and the steam engine (among others and in no particular order). Of these five inventions, only the control of electricity even took place in early Pelagian history. Pelagians, living their entire lives under water, had no concept or understanding of fire until they attempted to leave their oceans and explore dry land. Even then, they did not think of fire as a potential source of power or danger until much later in their history. Steam was known to Pelagians at an early stage, but was seen more as a source of lift than a way of turning a turbine to create electricity. In fact, the Pelagians first learned to harness electricity more through electro-chemical reactions than from electromagnetic induction. Some suggest that this experience is a primary reason for Pelagian battery technology being so much more advanced than that of any other race.

 

Migration and early challenges

As in most other species, early Pelagian expansion was hindered primarily by climate, and specifically temperature. Being an aquatic species, however, Pelagians found that they could overcome these temperature and climate challenges by simply reaching different depths of the oceans. For example, if a particular Pelagian group wished to migrate farther south, but found the temperatures too hot nearer the equator, they could simultaneously search for settlement grounds at greater depth, which would be cooler in temperature. However, greater depth also meant greater pressure, and Pelagian anatomy could handle only so much pressure. As a result, early Pelagian inventions concentrated far more on mitigating the effect of water pressure than Humans ever cared to explore. Some say that this has led to a different perspective on gravitational force than the humans have. Most lay-humans visualize gravity as a primarily vertical force (e.g., the apple falls vertically from the tree). Pelagians, however, tend to see gravity more as an external effect that applies force inward from all angles.

Nonetheless, this ability to change depth to better suit their living conditions lead to a different perspective on city building as well. To this day, Pelagian cities are organized far more vertically than those of their gas-breathing equivalents. This was also due in no small part to the lessened gravitational challenges the pelagians faced under water. Early pelagians had little difficulty transporting themselves or heavy materials vertically, foregoing the need for massive cranes or other means of lift during construction or even within the design of the buildings. Pelagian architects tended to treat vertical passageways no differently than horizontal passageways in their building designs, assuming that all denizens would be able to travel equally well vertically as horizontally. This means that pelagian buildings are not organized floor by floor, as in human constructions, but actually in more pod-like inner structures organized spherically. Think of the way fish eggs are held together and one can begin to visualize standard pelagian architecture.

This theme of a lessened gravitational challenge for early pelagians is an advantage[1] that would come to haunt later pelagian scientists when it came time to take on the challenge of leaving the oceans and, eventually, leaving the atmosphere. However, once the pelagians overcame the monumental task of reaching beyond their own atmosphere, they found their early history and development made them far more suited to life among the stars than other species. More on that and other notes in Part 2.

 

 

 

[1] While having a lower gravitational pull with which to contend provided early pelagians with many advantages over their land-based counterparts, there were certain aspects of this environment that provided greater challenges as well. For example, early humans could use the power of heavy objects to assist them with things like hammering or shaping objects, early pelagians enjoyed no such assistance.

Nothin’ Wrong

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Alisha was walking home late at night. She wasn’t drunk, although most people still awake at this hour were. She was coming home from work at the ER after a 24 hour shift that had tried her patience and made her more tired than she had ever thought possible before she took this job. She wore a sweater and carried a bag that many women carried, too big and full of crap she knew she didn’t need to carry around with her, but did anyway. She was lost in her thoughts as she walked, eyes half closed and staring at the ground a few feet in front of her. She yawned a couple of times, feeling the ache of her tired body drag her down, slowing her walk just slightly. She knew she was walking slower than her normal gate, and was vaguely annoyed that this meant she wasn’t going to get home as quickly. She just didn’t feel like mustering up the effort to push her legs to move faster.

She rounded the corner on her last block and pulled her bag in front of her to root around for her keys. As usual, she had trouble finding them, but that’s why she had started looking for them while she was still a good two thirds of a block away. She found her keys with about twenty feet to go before her front stoop. She looked up and then slowed to a stop a few feet from her house because she finally noticed him.

He was sitting on the steps leading up to Alisha’s front door, waiting. He wore a long black jacket with a vintage fedora that shadowed his face. As Alisha slowed to a stop he slowly and calmly stood up, took down the one step to the sidewalk and faced Alisha. He said nothing but crossed his hands in front of him, one of them was holding a knife.

“Am I gonna die?” asked Alisha softly.

“We all gotta die,” said the man.

“What have I done?” she asked, almost to herself, and genuinely confused.

“Nothin’ wrong,” he reassured her.

The front door to Alisha’s building was already open and left ajar. Sam took her by the arm, gently but firmly, and steadied her walking as he lead her inside. As she walked in, her breathing erratic and shallow, she saw her downstairs neighbors’ door left open. “Are my neighbors dead?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Why are you doing this?” Alisha asked, genuinely curious.

“Why are you letting me?” also genuinely curious.

Alisha thought for a moment as they ascended the stairs to her apartment, “I’m not sure. I mean, I’m definitely exhibiting all the symptoms of shock, so I could use that as an excuse.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

She frowned in irritation, “The shock is real. I can feel it, I can see my symptoms and know they are real and not imagined. But I don’t know, maybe I’m just… really, really tired.”

Sam nodded, gently saying, “Well, let’s get you in bed then.”

*  *  *

Several hours later, Sam and Harvey watched as the firefighters tried to put out the flames engulfing Alisha’s apartment building. Dojians were not capable of smiling, per se, but Sam had been with Harvey for long enough and knew his friend well enough that he was certain that Harvey was secreting a pheromone that was the Dojian equivalent of a smile. Sam was human, and therefore incapable of smelling the incredibly subtle smells that Dojian skin glands excreted to communicate a wide variety of emotional ques. Having said that, Sam was still certain the Harvey was very happy in part because he knew that Harvey enjoyed this kind of thing as much as he did, that’s what made them such great partners in all this, mutual interest in the ultimate taboo, and the thrill of the hunt.

“So,” said Sam to Harvey, “How would you grade this one?”

Harvey snorted, “Humans are such easy prey,” sang Harvey through his Dojian accent, over pronouncing the vowels in every word, “A Dojian would never have let you get close enough to use that little drug I gave you. We can, how you say, smell it a mile away. Someday I will teach you to hunt properly, and you will learn to catch a proper prey.”

Sam shook his head imperceptibly, “You just don’t appreciate the beauty of this approach. The artistry in leading someone willingly to their death. That woman was a nurse, she deals with death and delusion every day. She should have recognized the symptoms of her condition, and I even gave her the opportunity to diagnose it properly. Twice. She thought it was shock at first, a poor diagnosis. Fatigue was her second try, an even worse diagnosis. Thank God she was only a nurse, I would pity any patient of hers had she been a doctor.”

Harvey shook his head awkwardly, trying to effect the human mannerism, “Food tastes better when you have to catch it. A cow walks willingly into the slaughter house, the result is fatty and over-ripe. Take a deer on the run and you get meat full of energy, you can taste the fear. That is a true hunt. We are stuck here slaughtering cows when we could be in the wild, hunting prey that knows our scent and hears our approach. We could be living like true hunters.”

It was Sam’s turn to snort, and spit on the ground in front of him, awkwardly effecting a Dojian mannerism, “My dear Harvey, you are a barbarian. I will civilize you if it is the last thing I do with my great life. But come, it has been a long night, and we have all the time in the world to debate philosophy.”

 

Ben’s Back Story: The Making of a Monster

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It was an old story. He was a workaholic with a perfect wife who was perfectly bored. He came home early one day to find another man having sex with his wife. Even the resulting two murders, of the wife and the other man, were part of an old and tired story. It was there, however, that the old story took a bit of a turn. But before we get to the strange turn, we must drive through the familiar, for that is the only way we can hope to understand the strange…

 

Ben woke up in his comfortable bed with the familiar warmth of his wife next to him. It was morning, but a weekday. The alarm had not yet made its maddening noise, but Ben’s internal clock knew that it would go off at any m-

The alarm began blaring its annoying siren with child like insistence. “Alarm off,” Ben said, “I’m awake.” Claire stirred next to him.

“Are you sure you would like to turn the alarm off? Or would you like to snooze for seven minutes?” asked his alarm in the polite, slightly arrogant tone that all electronic brains seemed to adopt.

“I’m sure,” said Ben, sitting up to show the alarm he meant it. Ben left the warmth of his bed and wandered off to the bathroom. He relieved himself, then washed his hands and splashed some water in his face. He came back into the bedroom and Claire was getting up as well, instructing the curtains to pull back and let the budding sunlight in. Ben slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her, “Good morning.”

“Good morning. Did you sleep well?” she asked.

“Like a rock. I’m going to get in the shower first, is that cool?”

“That’s fine, I’m going to make the bed then I’ll come join you.”

“Can’t wait,” he said with a smile. He gave her another kiss then walked over to the shower, already running and beginning to steam. He stepped in and began washing. A few minutes later Claire came and got in with him. They made love briefly, not having the time to fully express themselves, but enjoying it nonetheless.

Once they were both clean they climbed out of the shower, hot air blasting through the bathroom to dry them off. They each finished cleaning and getting ready for the day, then each got dressed before going down to have breakfast. Breakfast was waiting for them in the kitchen when they came down, a sensible yet tasty assortment of fresh meats and vegetables, accompanied by juice and a cup of coffee. Over breakfast they made small talk about the day’s plans.

“I may have to work late again tonight, but I should be home in time for dinner,” Ben explained, “It’s that damn Aveonare shipping venture, they want things done so quickly, but they don’t get that the Kingdom has certain protocols that must be met. I swear, it’d be easier trying to get the Pelagians to take a deep breath than the Aveonares,” Ben complained. Claire just smiled and looked at her news feed. Ben stared at her for a moment, then smiled, “what’s your plan for the day?” he finally asked.

“I think I’m going to start research on what’s necessary for that DIY project I want to do.”

“The garden reading spot? That will be nice. I still think we should build a bar for the patio, though,” Ben said with a rye smile. Claire rolled her eyes with a smile.

“You just want that so you can live out your fantasy of owning your own bar,” she chided playfully.

“Pub,” he corrected, “and what’s wrong with that? I think it would be a lot of fun. It certainly wouldn’t be boring.”

“Go to work,” she said with a smile. He grumbled, but downed the last of his coffee and grabbed his jacket.

“Alright, have a good day, I’ll see you tonight,” he said as he kissed her one last time and walked out the door.

*   *   *

Work was tedious. More tedious than usual. It had been too long since Ben had a vacation and his burnout was in full bloom. He tried to look at the documents in front of him, tried to concentrate on the memo he was composing, but the more he looked at the words in front of him the less he actually saw those words and the more he just saw… well, anything else.

He made it to lunch, stood in line for a burrito. Ate his burrito and soda then went back to work, feeling thoroughly unsatisfied. He sat down at his desk and looked at the same documents at which he had been staring for the better part of four hours before lunch. He didn’t even make it past the first sentence before he stopped, looked at the entirety of the document for a few seconds, then looked up at his desk, taking in all of the work lying on it. “Fuck it,” he said out loud, putting a few things away, grabbing his jacket and walking over to his boss’s office.

He knocked on the door then peeked in. His boss was reading a similar looking document to the one that had been plaguing Ben all morning. “Hey Boss,” he said apologetically as his boss looked up at him, “my wife just called, apparently our maintenance system is on the fritz or something, I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but something about a pipe busting and flooding the basement. Anyway, is it alright if I take the afternoon and help her fix this?”

“Oh,” his boss said with surprise, “that sounds like a terrible time. Yeah go ahead, if I need anything from you here I’ll give you a call, but you should be fine.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate this,” Ben said sincerely.

“It’s fine, just let me know how it goes.”

“Will do,” Ben said, giving the wall a tap and getting out of there before more questions could be asked.

*  *  *

Ben walked up to his front door feeling great. It was so nice to not be at work, and when the sun was still up in the sky, no less. He couldn’t wait to grab Claire, give her a kiss and then jump in the car and go somewhere. He wasn’t sure where, yet, he had a few ideas, each just a little crazier than the last. Maybe they would go into the city and catch a show, maybe they would just wander around and do stupid touristy stuff and eat street food, maybe the city was too pedestrian, maybe they could hope a shuttle and head off to-

There was a noise. One, brief little noise like a wounded cat landing on the floor with a whimper. They didn’t own a cat though, and Ben’s heart thumped. One, brief little pump of his heart that felt like a punch to his throat. Somehow in that heart pump he knew that the noise was Claire, and the noise was wrong. It was wrong like a surprise new piece of furniture in your living room, like someone had stolen your pillow off your bed. Ben knew the noises in his home, the normal ones made by his wife or the house itself, and this noise was wrong.

Ben dropped his jacket and quietly came up to his front door, listening for more. He put his hand on the door handle, it immediately recognizing his hand print and unlocked the door. With the door half open he heard another, short gasp. It came from the kitchen. Ben quietly moved in that direction, his heart now pounding steady as he began to numbly recognize the sound of panting, and then another gasp for air. The gasp and the panting overlapped, and he realized there were two people in the kitchen. He recognized the gasping as his wife’s, he had heard it so many times before, memories poisonously, sickeningly sweet right now.

He rounded the corner to the kitchen and saw his greatest fear. They were facing away from Ben, her shirt still on but pants at her ankles, he dressed the same. She was bent over the kitchen table as his bare ass was pumping away. She was barely moving, forehead against the table top, he was pushing her down onto the table with one arm and holding onto the table for stability with the other. For a shockingly long time, what seemed like days, months, ages, Ben stood in the doorway and did nothing, watching them in pure shock.

Now pay attention because this is where things turn. The police didn’t see the turn for the strange because they were too shocked by the spectacle of the result. The judge didn’t see it either, nor did the reporters. They all saw the same thing, the familiar story mixed with the horror of the scene, and they clung to the familiar to help them deal with the horror. Ben didn’t even see it, not at first.

As Ben stood there, watching in shocked disbelief, his brain began to reject the horror of what his eyes were reporting. His vision began to blur, but he dared not blink. Instead, he began losing sight of the two half naked bodies pumping away in his kitchen, and instead began to see nothing but a clean, unblemished sheet of red descend over his vision. It didn’t drop from top to bottom like a stage curtain, but rather coalesced around the edges of his vision, and closed around the center of his sight, leaving the man’s naked ass as the last thing he saw.

It was a long time before Ben saw anything but that red sheet. He didn’t hear anything either. He didn’t hear himself give a low sickening howl, like a rabid wolf. He didn’t see himself walk quickly up to the man as he turned from Claire. Ben didn’t see the man crumble under his blows as he pounded mercilessly. He didn’t see Claire look up from the table top to see Ben on top of the half naked man, beating him. Ben didn’t see Claire look at him and smile, whispering “You seem so surprised.”

Ben didn’t see himself turn from the bloody hulk that used to be the half naked man and look at his half naked wife, standing there. He didn’t see her smile slowly disappear as she saw his rage-blind eyes. He didn’t see her own eyes turn to fear as he stood and began walking towards her. He couldn’t watch himself hit her, he couldn’t watch himself tear at her or hear her scream in fear and pain.

Ben saw and heard none of this. He came out of it all what must have been hours later, sitting in a sticky, bloody heap on the floor of his kitchen, congealed blood everywhere. In the end the bodies were barely recognizable as human, let alone as the individuals they used to be. Ben didn’t know what happened, so he let people fill in the blanks for him. It would not be for a long time that he learned the truth of it, and by then, well, it was too late.

The Peregeni, a Brief History

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The history of the Peregeni has been a long and bloody one, particularly around the time that a new species is discovered. The history of human interaction with foreign species has been one riddled with ignorance and tragedy. To this day, humans have not developed an adequate system of interaction with newly discovered peregeni, despite best efforts and laid plans of policy makers, and instead continue to fall into the same familiar cycle of ignorance, fear, and war, followed by peace and, eventually, a modicum of understanding.

The first foreign sentient species to come into contact with humans were the Heliophites, a species of super organisms that lived in the sunny systems of what is now outer Dojian space. When humans first encountered the heliophites, they were assumed to be a particularly aggressive disease, and treated as a dangerous potential pandemic. No effort to communicate was made because it was not apparent to these early humans that the Heliophites were any more intelligent than the common cold. The heliophites themselves communicated via a complicated array of ultraviolet displays undetectable to the human eye. As such, the humans went about employing their impressive command of nano technology to wipe out the heliophites in much the same manner as they had wiped out many other bacteria-based diseases in their own territory (e.g., the common cold).

It was in this manner that the human response to their first contact with a sentient foreign species was mass xenocide. The human nanomachines were so effective in their xenocide of the heliophites that the species became extinct within just a few short years of first contact. The extinction of the heliophites was originally celebrated by the humans as a triumph over yet another potential threat to their existence. It would not be until many years later that the truth of the heliophites was learned. This was learned, in fact, only after the humans came into contact with their second foreign sentient species, the Dojians.

First contact with the dojians was only marginally more successful than with the heliophites. Similar to their experience with the heliophites, humans were completely unable to communicate with the Dojians, although unlike with the Heliophites, this was not for lack of trying. First contact with the dojians occurred in space, and as such the humans had no choice but to admit that the Dojians were both undoubtedly alien, and undoubtedly intelligent. As such, the humans at least made an initial effort to contact them.

These efforts were hindered by a number of factors, first and foremost being a vast difference in the basic anatomy of the two species. Similar to how the heliophites communicated in a manner completely unfamiliar to humans (ultraviolet displays) so, too, did the dojians (via complicated emissions of pheromones and other scents). As such, the first human attempts at communication with the dojians quite literally fell on deaf ears.

In addition to this basic difference in anatomy, attempts at communication were further complicated by the fact that the Dojians were aware of the existence of humans prior to first contact, and were not excited by the prospect of meeting them. Unbeknownst to the humans, the Dojians had actually long been in contact with the heliophites, and were not only well aware of the species’ sentience, but had learned to communicate with them. As such, the Dojians learned of human existence through the heliophites, and were all too aware of the human campaign of xenocide against the heliophites, apparently without provocation or attempt at communication.

It was therefore with a great degree of suspicion that the Dojians came into contact with humans, and were unwilling to blindly accept human diplomatic promises of peaceful intentions. This, complicated by the inherent differences in anatomy, lead to a conflict borne of ignorance. It is said that a poor choice of perfume by one of the human diplomats upon their first meeting is what lead to the war between the species.

Other first contacts with the other peregeni were no better. Pelagians communicated via very subtle electrical impulses sent through the water. Humans pinged their ships with sonar to try and understand the inner shape of their ships. The pelagians thought this was some sort of weapon and returned fire.

The Aveonares boast a sense of sight far superior to that of humans, and most of their language is conducted via extremely subtle and complicated displays of body language. In their first meeting, a human diplomat grinned and opened his palms in a sign of peace and friendship. To the Aveonares, this was an insult to their ancestral heritage. War.

The Bisontines are extremely aggressive creatures evolved from a carnivorous herd animal. They arrived to their first contact meeting with over forty diplomats. The humans arrived with five. The Bisontines saw this as a sign of weakness and saw an opportunity. War.

The Pumarians are stealthy, subtle creatures of intense spirituality centered around religious devotion to nature and the free evolution of all creatures. A human science vessel unknowingly arrived on one of their colony worlds and began tranquilizing animals and capturing them for later study. War.

And so on and so forth. Granted, much of the difficulty for humans in this arena has stemmed from that first misunderstanding with the Heliophites. Humans gained a reputation with some of the other space faring creatures for aggression and xenocide. A reputation not helped by the continued habit of misunderstanding followed by war that comes with a first contact. Nonetheless, the cycle has continued on and on with every new species, and humans are clearly at a loss for how to prevent the cycle from repeating itself. It is no wonder that humans have come to fear and resent the introduction of a new species into their universe, and human societies often view the peregeni as bad luck and omens of bad tidings.

The Peregeni – Definition

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Peregenus – singular noun; Literally ‘foreign species’; any number of lifeforms not descended from Earth, especially those exhibiting sentience; aliens.

related forms: Peregenal adj; Peregeni plural noun; Peregene singular noun – colloquial, an individual of peregenal descent; Peregenist singular noun – someone exhibiting prejudice against the peregeni; Peregenism noun – the belief that peregeni are inherently inferior to humans;

Middle English: from Latin peregre ‘abroad’ + genus ‘species’. Originally saw use in the scientific and legal communities in the early Human empires as a more politically sensitive alternative to “alien”, which had become (and remains to this day) a peregenal epithet.

 

The Seal of the Confessional

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Jim was in the galley. It was late, most of the crew had gone to quarters for sleep, which is what Jim would do in just a few moments, he just needed to finish up cleaning. It had been a relatively quiet night. It was early in the week, and the crew hadn’t quite built up the steam to need to blow any of it off yet. Plus, the closer they got to Kingdom territory, the more solemn and on edge the crew became.

Jim was methodically scrubbing the flat top grill when he heard a light knock on the doorway to the galley. He turned to see a thin Dojian standing in the doorway, four padded feet and a tail dragging on the ground, shoulders slouched, and his eyes only half open, nestled between his elongated nostrils that ran along the side of his head. Jim could tell he hadn’t been sleeping. No matter the race, tired muscles all looked the same. “Bud, what are you doing up? We’re closer to morning muster than evening chow, you should be asleep,” Jim said, having a feeling he knew the answer.

“Well, that’s just the thing, Padre, I haven’t been able to sleep,” said Bud, coming into the galley with a few quiet steps (Dojians were always so quiet with their footsteps, it creeped out more than a few humans), “I was hoping you could help me out.”

“Well, I’ll do what I can, but I can’t prescribe you any sleeping meds if you’re due on duty any time soon,” said Jim, guiltily hoping this wasn’t a medical call.

“That won’t be necessary, this is more a matter of the mind than the body, I’m afraid,” explained Bud in his thick Dojani accent. Native Dojani relied very heavily on a wide variety of vowels, so Dojani accents on English tended to mutter through the consonants and over emphasize the vowels. Jim found the accent difficult to follow, but he had enough experience with it not to need repetition.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Bud, what can I do for you?”

Bud paused for a moment before continuing on, “Does that god of yours have anything to say about guilt?” he finally asked.

“Lots,” Jim confirmed. This was the part he always loved about his work, helping people to understand how faith in the Christian God could help them not just in the afterlife, but in this one. Now it was Jim’s turn to pause before continuing, “Most humans view guilt as a kind of weight upon the mind. In the Catholic faith we are taught that this weight comes from sin, and the only way to unburden yourself of that weight is through confession.”

“Confession? That is not an option for me,” said Bud, saddened at the news.

“Well, the confession of which I speak may be different than the one you imagine. You see, in the Catholic faith the most important confession you can make is not to any person but to God. This is done by performing a rite that involves sharing your sin with a priest such as myself. The priest listens to you and helps you to properly identify your sin, that is, identify exactly what it is that is making you feel guilty. Once this is done, the priest helps you to follow a path to absolution, whereby you will be forgiven your sins in the eyes of God.”

“But you see, what causes me to feel the way I do, my, uh… sin, you call it? I can not share it with anyone, for if it were to become known… I would not survive the repercussions,” said Bud, again descending into a tone of hopelessness.

“What I hear in a confessional I am bound by oath and faith to never divulge to anyone, under any circumstances.”

“To anyone? What if the police questioned you, or some gang tortured you?” asked Bud, not yet believing.

“St. John of Nepomuk allowed himself to be drowned in a river by his king rather than divulge the confession of the queen. We priests have been keeping the Seal of the Confessional above all manner of human interference for millennia.”

“You would die before you revealed someone else’s secret? Even someone who had done something terrible?” asked Bud, almost incredulous this time.

“Son, my faith saved my life, to violate that faith would be to ruin what life I have left anyway. Furthermore, to reveal someone’s confession might ruin their chance at absolution, and damn them to an eternity in Hell. There can be no greater sin against a person.”

Bud looked at the preacher as if he were staring at him from across the poker table. Jim did not blink. “How does your confession work?” Bud finally asked.

Jim smiled, “Not in the galley, and not this late at night. Come by my quarters tomorrow after lunch, we will sit and chat. I promise, by the time we are done talking, you will already begin to feel better.”

The Dojians

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The Dojians were the first peregenal race to encounter humans, and humans were woefully ill equipped for the encounter. Early human mining vessels first came upon Dojian drones. It was clear to the humans that the ships were of alien origin, but as drones they were not designed to communicate in any way other than via standard dojian forms of communication. As a result, the human miners were completely unable to open up any lines of communication with the dojian drones, which promptly ignored the presence of the human vessels.

Matters did not improve much once human diplomats and scientists were able to gain the attention of dojian officials. Most human forms of communication are based primarily around audio or visual sensory inputs. Dojians, however, view the universe around them primarily through sensory organs most akin to a sense of smell. This made for very difficult circumstances for communications between the two races, and early attempts at it met with considerable failures and misunderstanding. In hindsight, this challenge alone made conflict between the races almost inevitable.

Conflict did not happen right away, however. The races had only minimal contact in those early days, and remained respectful of each other’s territory early on. As territories grew, however, instances of contact between the races grew as well, which lead to greater levels and occurrences of misunderstanding between the races. Ultimately, that first war between the Dojians and Humans was based almost completely in misunderstanding, and could have been avoided if the races were better equipped, both technologically and intellectually, for communication between them.

Dojian perspective being based in one of smell changes more than just the manner in which they communicate, it means that their basic understanding of the world around them is fundamentally different from that of humans. Take each race’s viewpoint on the concept of time, for example. Humans, whose perspective is based in the perception of light, see time as a series of linear and fleeting moments. When a person takes a step, that foot is there one moment and then moves on to a different place the next, only leaving evidence of its presence behind under specific circumstances.

Dojians, however, view time as a series of small bursts that start a persistence which then slowly fades. They view footsteps as always leaving footprints, almost regardless of conditions. In their view, everything leaves a footprint, and nothing completely disappears, only the future is unknown. And because everything leaves a footprint, very little can be concealed to a dojian. In dojian societies, spouses simply do not cheat, petty theft does not exist, and fugitives almost never get away. Dojian criminals exist, but crimes of passion take on a much higher percentage of crime, not because they are necessarily a more passionate people, but because it is so difficult to get away with crimes in dojian worlds that the effort required to pull off a successful crime is rarely worth the reward.

Furthermore, Dojian people can often have difficult times immersing themselves into human societies. Human’s relatively dull sense of smell leads to a world of highly offensive smells to dojian sensibilities. Early dojian traders actually subsidized their sales of perfumes and other scent based goods to humans for the sole purpose of improving the way humans and human environments smell so that dojians could stand being in their presence. This effectively put the human perfume and soap industries out of business, despite the best efforts of local Earth politicians to delay the inevitable.

Ben

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Ben wiped down the bar in front of him, the bar was empty but he knew it was unlikely to stay that way, so what cleaning he could get done needed to happen right away. He worked with the mindless float of someone in the midst of familiar manual labor. His well practiced arms moved fast, doing their best to keep up with his sharp eyes catching the most minute smudges or crumbs. Only eyes that had looked at the same bar top countless times before could catch such small imperfections in its sheen, and at such a speed.

Ben liked tending bar. He had been doing it long enough (off and on) that only someone who loved it would have stuck with it this long. He liked the sense of accomplished exhaustion he felt after a busy night, similar to how a runner felt after a particularly long and tiring run, but with a greater sense of accomplishment. He liked bantering with people all night, honing his wit into a scalpel. He even liked dealing with asshole drunks, building his patience up to rival that of the saints themselves. He had long since found that a successful bartender was one part diplomat, two parts comedian and one part police officer.

Above all, however, Ben liked bartending because it gave him the opportunity to start over, anywhere and at a moment’s notice. It was this simple truth, in fact, that had brought him to his current place of employment: a small dive on Mars called La Oveja Negra (The Black Sheep). He had been here for a couple years now, longer than he had been in any of the last several spots he’d lived. He liked the Oveja because it was small, it was quiet, and it was his (more or less). He didn’t own the place, Xavi owned it (pronounced “Chavy” he learned his first day), but he worked there often enough (and Xavi was there so rarely) that it might as well have been his. He liked the regulars, mostly a bunch of old retired drunks that came in every day, no matter the weather, and drank the same drinks and told the same stories. One or two were younger women who lived in the area, came in and laughed at all his jokes, sometimes smiling at nothing and staring at him. Ben would smile back, but politely forget to follow up on promises of hanging out sometime when he wasn’t working (to be fair, he was always working).

The life was simple, he came in to work, worked it the way he wanted to, listened to bad jokes, cleaned up, and went home tired. Wake up, rinse and repeat. Every once in a while he would get a drink with a co-worker or just head down the street to another bar and drink by himself. No drama, no hassle, no responsibility, and the job tired him enough that he didn’t have to worry about staying awake too many nights staring at his ceiling and remembering… well, remembering anything. And if he did have trouble sleeping at night, then there was no harm in having a few drinks to help him pass out. It’s not like he needed to be anywhere early in the morning, nor did he have a boss who would give a shit if he was hungover when he walked in.

All in all, this was a pretty damn good way to hide from the world.

Bar Fly

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The bartender could see him coming from across the street, and had his double whiskey on the rocks ready for him by the time he sat down. He was old, and moving pretty slow these days, but he was still self sufficient enough to make it to the bar on his own. He would sit in the same corner of the bar at the same time every day. He would drink two double whiskeys on the rocks while he read from a book with a faded photo to mark his spot.

He would read through the first drink, then put the book down and chat with the bartender through the second. If the conversation was interesting enough, he would have a third, but never a fourth. Once he was done, he would drop too much cash underneath his empty glass and wave at the bartender with a simple “See ya tomorrow”.

The photo in his book was always the same. Faded and sun bleached, two young kids arm in arm and smiling. He handled the photo with the habitual yet burdened reverence of a cross borne for decades. He didn’t own a phone, there was no one left to call him anymore.

The books he read were always fiction. Non-fiction books were just as fictitious, he argued, at least fiction books were honest about it. Plus, fiction books wrapped up their stories into nice bows, with no loose ends or nagging open issues. Non-fiction just made him mad, the world was always the same story over and over again. Just… loss and sorrow repeated.

His doctor told him he needed to stop drinking. He just smiled and told the doctor that he was more likely to die with a drink in his hand. On that, both he and the doctor agreed. Truth is, he didn’t care, and didn’t even really know why he went to the doctor anymore. Just someone to talk to, he supposed.

One Wednesday afternoon, his book was down on the bar and he was chatting with the bartender, when the door opened behind him and he heard the sound of heals clicking on the floor coming up. “Hi, Bobby,” she said behind him.

His eyes closed for a minute as he relived decades of memories from a lifetime ago, then turned around. She was decades his younger but no longer young. She wore a red dress, a sun hat and large sunglasses with lipstick that matched the dress. She looked good, but none of that hid the grey hairs streaking through her blonde mane, or the wrinkles around her mouth from too many years smiling. “Hey, darlin’,” he said with the warm, sad reservation of someone glad to see you at a funeral, “been a while.”

“A long while,” she smiled and hugged him. The bartender gave her a nod and she pointed at a bottle of wine behind him. He dropped the glass and politely found something to clean on the other side of the bar.

“What brings you to my corner?” he asked, scared of the answer.

“Ben,” she said, knowing his fear, not wanting to hurt him but having no choice in the matter. His eyes closed and breath shuttered for a moment, “I found him,” she finished.

For the first time in 28 years, he dropped his glass of whiskey.

 

Preacher

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It was to a land of dark people he was sent… to baptize peoples perverse and steeped in darkness.                                                                      – Hymns of St. Ephrem The Syrian

Jim was a man of faith. He hadn’t always been so, he had come to his faith fairly late in life, but now it was such a deep part of his identity it was sometimes difficult to remember what he was like without it. Now, he was so comfortable with his faith that, while he did not push his faith upon others, people could just see it in his demeanor. That, and the priest robes he wore were kind of a giveaway.

He was in his twelfth year as a priest, and still loved it, despite his differences with the church hierarchy. He had been approached on multiple occasions for promotion up the ranks of the church, but had refused every one. He was far too interested in the field work of a preacher, preferring to dedicate himself to helping individuals in his life as opposed to helping the Church.

It was with this in mind that he had joined the crew of the Poor Dick (well, that and his assignment from the Levites). He had approached Captain Deborah Read with an offer to join her crew. At first she was reluctant (“I don’t plan on any of my crew dying, preacher, so no need for a priest,” she had arrogantly stated). But then she found out that not only was he a decent cook (he found her passed out at a bar two days later, took her home and made her an omelette), but he also had a working knowledge of medical first aid (he patched up a gash on her head she couldn’t remember getting). She didn’t have a doctor among the crew, and given the dangerous missions undertaken by the Dick, having someone on board who could dress wounds, remove bullets and set broken bones was necessary.

At first the crew treated him with a certain degree of suspicion. Christianity wasn’t the ubiquitous religion it had once been, and few believed in the Christian God anymore, let alone carry enough faith to preach the Gospel to others. Fewer still, were the number of Christians among the crew of the Dick. This was not Jim’s first rodeo, however, and he knew how to approach the situation. Being assigned as the ships cook was perfect for him, for there was no better way to ease suspicious minds than by making them good food. All it took was a few meals and suddenly the crew joked and chatted with the Preacher like he was one of them.

Even then Jim remained patient. He had been doing this a long time and knew that, paradoxically, the quickest way for a preacher to alienate the people around him was to begin preaching. Instead, Jim spoke not at all about his faith, offering no sermons or prayers, choosing instead to simply wear his priest’s cassock every day and in full view of the crew (admittedly sometimes underneath a cooking apron). With time, he knew that curiosity would get the better of them and eventually, one by one, they would come to him with questions. That is when the real work would begin.