Chapter 1 - Here we are
The Human
Clouds. That's what I didn't see when I opened my eyes from my sleep. Of all the things on Earth, that's what I missed the most. Apart, maybe, from the food and toiletry facilities. Eating nothing but the sack-full of nutrition bars that Matt had brought onto the ship had gotten old really fast, and trying to go to the toilet in a portable one Matthew had also brought would be hard enough - but I was doing it while being paranoid that a robot was watching me.
But, although I didn't see anything when I awoke, I certainly heard something.
"Rock!"
"Scissors!"
"Rock!"
"You lose", Frank told Carmen.
"Rock defeats scissors", added Rosetta.
"Yes, it does", agreed Carmen.
And then they played again.
That's what I've had to put up with for most of the trip. I mean, rock-paper-scissors was an alright game to pass a few minutes, but just imagine playing it for weeks. I don't know how those aliens did it, because it would've killed my brain to play for more than like ten minutes at a time.
It seemed that they had already been playing for a while today - as much as 'today' means anything in space. The ship had an arbitrary day/night cycle thing going on, but the night part only meant that the lights were slightly dimmed. And, speaking of lights, I had no idea where they were coming from. It was almost as if the light was seeping through the metal of the ship. Yeah, I know. Weird.
Matthew spent a great deal of time talking privately to Boy - and by talking privately, I mean touching each other to communicate - and I still had no idea what most of the information displayed on the view screen meant. Running around and up the inside of the cylindrical interstellar ship without falling due to the centrifugal effects of the ship's rotation can only entertain one for so long. So that left me with Phill to occupy my time, so I shambled over to him.
"So, Phill", I addressed him companionably.
"Yes?" he answered, in a why-do-you-keep-talking-to-me voice.
I paused for a few seconds to think of something to say. I had to settle with, "How are you?"
Phill looked at me. "The same I was when we first got into this ship. Not much has changed."
Well, he got that part right. "I mean", I pressed on, "how are you since leaving your race to join your enemy?"
"They are no longer my enemy."
"But they were when you joined our side."
"If they were, I wouldn't have joined 'your side'."
I sighed. "OK then, how does it feel to be with your race's enemy."
This time he paused for a second or two, before replying, "Enlightening."
"Oh", I answered. We didn't say anything else. I looked over to Matthew and Boy, and noticed that the former was absent-mindedly cycling his right index finger through Metal Slug and normal. Metal Slug was this totally awesome Slug technology thing where they could coat any part of their body, even the inside, with a layer of metal. I know that it sounds really cool, but believe me, seeing it is actually cooler than hearing it.
From what I understood, it worked by the Slugs having a bunch of specialised nano-particles inside their bodies. Matt had explained that there were two types of these, I forget the specific differences. But basically, when the Slug wants to activate Metal Slug, they send a signal to these particles, and a strand of metallic wire shoots from one to another. Because nano-particles are, well, small, there are lots of them at the one spot, so there's a whole bunch of these wires joining two particles at the chosen spot. So to us, it looks as if a solid sheet of metal has replaced the Slug's flesh at that spot.
After a minute or two of awkward silence (while I was thinking about that), and possibly due to the annoyance of hearing another rock-paper-scissors game, I called out, "Can we have another group meeting now?"
Everyone went silent - that is, Frank, Carmen and Rosetta went silent, because no one else was talking. Boy and Matthew opened their eyes, as they were previously closed, and Phill continued to stare at me, although he hadn't really stopped since we began talking.
"Sounds good to me", Boy replied after a few more seconds. Perhaps my outburst was a bit too random? We all assembled into a circle, although the contours of the cylinder made some of us higher than the others. Matt had explained to me that it worked the same as one of the rapidly-spinning circular amusement park rides where you stuck to the walls, but as I'd never been to an amusement park, I've still got no idea what he was talking about. It sounded a bit like a torture device to me.
"OK, so I think Boy and I have finally got everything figured out", Matthew announced to us. "How the whole chain of events transpired."
"Let's hear it", I told him, although I wasn't aware that there was anything to figure out.
"Alright then", he began. "This is what we think happened. At first, Phill was scouting Earth to assess it for mining."
"Wait, you were?" I interrupted.
"Yes", Phill calmly replied. I never remembered him saying anything about that, so he must've told Matt some time when I wasn't around.
"Continue on, then", I told my friend.
"Thank you. Anyway, Phill scouted Earth. While doing this, however, he found a Slug ship exploring new planets and looking for more resources. This ship happened to have me in it at the time. Phill attacked me, blew up my ship and everyone but me onboard, and was then boarded by me. I defeated him, crash-landed on the planet, and tied him up out of spite. You know this story."
"Indeed I do", Phill remarked gloomily.
Matthew continued. "I then turned into a human - at least, I appeared to - and I lived out my life there, eventually meeting you, Ethan."
"Meanwhile", Boy picked up from him, "back at the empire, we stopped receiving signals from Matthew's ship. I quickly assembled a small team of Slugs, and we took off to investigate, hoping that he was still alive somewhere."
"How did you guys know each other?" I interrupted.
Boy and Matt briefly looked at each other. "We've fought in many battles together", Matthew told me simply. It looked like he wouldn't elaborate. "Anyway, by the time Boy and his team arrived at Earth, twenty years had passed - "
"The entirety of which I was trapped in a cave", Phill inserted.
"But before they could get to me, I was attacked by yet another Cyborg", Matthew continued. "That sword-wielding one", he clarified, as if I would ever forget that fateful Sunday.
"Now, what was that Cyborg doing here on Earth, you may ask yourself", he went on.
"I thought that you said it was also a Cyborg miner", I asked, slowly remembering.
"Oh", he said. "I guess you didn't ask yourself that at all, since you already knew. Well then. We've determined that that Cyborg must've been here to scout Earth for mining, before it somehow found and attacked me.
"This is where the new stuff comes in. Phill, you say that all Cyborgs constantly send updates to the Cyborg Archives through their network connection, yes?" Phill nodded. "So, that Cyborg was sending its attack of me through the network, via its ship which it must have left orbiting the planet. Now, the assassin ship that came to get us got here way too fast to have come from another solar system. As the Slug King explained to me in his message, that ship followed Boy's to come here. It was already ready to leave because it must've been about to anyway. That means that it was probably an initial miner, the second stage of their mining process.
"In either case, it intercepted the network signal the first miner sent out, found out what the deal was, and came straight over there to attack. That's why it only took it a few weeks to get there."
Boy carried on for him. "That's also why they were so easy to defeat. It was not particularly difficult for what Matthew calls an 'assassin ship', and those Cyborgs were not very tough; if it were, we would have sustained far greater casualties."
"I would consider both William and Jason as great casualties", I muttered, looking down. As soon as the action and excitem
ent had stopped, I was left with not much to do but brood on the Slugs' untimely deaths.
Matthew looked at me sympathetically. "The average Cyborg is stronger than the average Slug. In an encounter with competent enemies, we expect to lose in excess of half our troops." Far from cheering me up, that just made me somewhat more momentarily depressed that everyone had gone into this expecting most of them would die.
"Anyway", Matt continued, putting a stop to everyone looking uncomfortably at me, "that ship happened to contain Rabadootime as well, which was just bad luck for us. They deduced, incorrectly, that I was trying to make an alliance with Earth, and so came and tried to kill me. Before that, however, Boy and his gang got here, and we fended them off. They ran back to their ships, picked up that first Cyborg's ship that it left orbiting Earth, and fled. Boo-yah!"
All of the Slugs looked at him strangely after that last proclamation, especially since he held up his fist to fist-bump with Boy. Boy looked at his fist for a few seconds, then grasped it and shook his hand. Matt and I both laughed.
The Cyborg
After listening to Matthew's version of recent events, I compared his accounting to my own observations and drew my own conclusions. There were still many inconsistencies that remained unexplained by the Slug's theory, and I dedicated my processes to examining these.
1st, if the original Cyborg that attacked Matthew was only a mining scouter, why did it acquire that native weapon? A normal Cyborg would attack a Slug as soon as contact is made; the fact that it was capable of using, and used, a magnetic insertion device means that it had attacked Matthew as soon as it could, as expected. That implied that the Cyborg had the sword before it discovered Matt's presence. The question is why?
2nd, the craft that received the signal from the mining scouter, the craft that contained Rabadootime, was not an initial miner. The process is clear here; the initial miner will only leave for a planet once it has received the resource report and level classification from the scouter. It would not have been ready to follow Boy's ship because it would not yet have prepared to travel to Earth. It was there for another, as yet unknown reason.
Also, once it was determined that the Slugs were headed to Earth, if it was simply a mining location the Cyborgs would have given the planet up to the Slugs. It would not be worth the effort to mine a relatively high level planet so far behind Slug territory when there were plenty of easier targets. No, there was something else about Earth that made it worth travelling to.
Finally, what was Rabadootime doing in that ship? A Cyborg leader does not go on ordinary missions, let alone routine mining ones. This furthered my conclusion that there was something about Earth that the Cyborgs found important enough to come for. Perhaps important enough to return for.
Once my conclusions were finalised, I realised that the discussion had stopped. This was not good; I needed more data to develop any kind of hypothesis. "So", I started, using the usual starting word that the organics tended to utilise, "What will we do now?"
"Well, we're going to Slugenis", Ethan told me, implying that our destination hadn't already been established some time ago.
"We're going to land on Slugenis", Matthew corrected him, "and hope that no one pulls anything shifty for what we've done."
"Pulls anything shifty?" the Slug called Frank asked in a puzzled voice. I tried to determine when that he began to use emotions and inflections in his speech patterns but couldn't detect a discernible moment. Did he even realise that he was doing it? Was I doing similar things without realising it?
"It means try to punish us somehow for us staying on Earth and bringing Phil with us", Boy explained.
Ethan bursted, "Wait, how would they punish you?"
"Who knows?" Matt answered for him. "I can't remember a Slug ever getting punished. We usually don't do anything against the Empire."
"How do you punish criminals then?" the Human eagerly continued. After all he'd experienced, he still tried to draw similarities between his culture and the Slugs'; he would eventually learn that two separate species developing in complete isolation seldom develop in similar ways. Given enough time, of course.
"We don't have this concept of 'criminals' ", Boy answered the question. "Remember, no Slug would murder another because that would grant them Honour." Ahh, Honour.
However, it appeared that Ethan still didn't comprehend the fact that crime was non-existent in the Slug Empire. "What about thieves then? I'm sure some of the poor Slugs turn to crime."
Every Slug in the ship turned to Ethan now, trying to determine what he had just said. It was Matthew that answered, uneasily, "Uhh, we actually don't have poor Slugs. Because we don't have poverty. Because we don't have a currency."
It took Ethan almost 3 seconds to respond to this, with, "What?"
"What is currency?" asked one of the female Slugs. Although I didn't look, as I had already invested a considerable amount of my processes in the conversation, I knew that it was Rosetta who spoke. Since when could I recognise the Slugs by their voice?
"It's a Human system", Matt began to explain, "which individual Humans use to acquire food, water, homes, and other luxuries for themselves."
"So their government does not provide for them?" Rosetta pressed on, confused as to how the ruling body of Humanity could not provide these fundamental items for their people. Had I not learned all of this through many years of listening to that radio, I would be likewise baffled.
"No", Matthew continued. "Each Human, or, well, most Humans, perform work for others. In exchange for this work, whoever they work for gives them currency, which happens to be called dollars in Australia. The Human then trades this currency, these dollars, with items that they wish to have. The person that they traded these dollars with then uses them to trade with the stuff they want, and to pay the people who work for them, and the process continues."
There was another pause as everyone mulled this new information over. "What is the value of these 'dollars'?" asked Boy.
"Absolutely nothing", Matthew replied cheerfully. "It is a completely abstract concept that has no value whatsoever. The only reason it works is because everybody wants dollars so that they can trade them with others, and the reason that they can trade them with others is because everybody wants them. To trade with others."
Carmen soon asked, "So you're saying that the only way for a system of 'currency' to work is if the entire population becomes obsessed with collecting and trading worthless items?"
Matt thought about this for a split-second, laughed, and then replied, "Actually, yes."
"Organics", I added to the conversation. "What do you expect?" I neglected to mention that this phenomenon only applied to Humans, and not organics in general, but I was reluctant to change the saying that I had grown accustomed to.
After all of the Slugs had gotten over this concept, Ethan continued with his original chain of inquiries. "So, how can an entire Empire function without money? Can you imagine us trying to do that?"
Matthew chuckled. "Humans can't do it because they don't need to. Slugs have to do it because we wouldn't be around if we didn't." The Human gave him a confused look at this, so he elaborated. "The currency system works fine for a bunch of independent countries made up of independent people. Earth uses it because it works; it's not perfect, but it works. Us, on the other hand, we can't afford to allow our members to think as individuals. Every Slug lives for the Empire, not for personal gain or satisfaction, but for the good of everyone. This is the origins of the Honour system. The life of an individual is nothing compared to the life of the entire race. An individual should be proud if they extend the life of their species, regardless of the cost to their personal life, which would be over in a relatively short time period anyway.
"But I digress. We - the Slugs, that is - need everyone to think collectively, to think not in terms of themselves, but of the greater good, because we are a race utterly and totally embroiled in war. Every individual that does anything for personal ga
in hampers the war effort. Believe you me, Ethan, that if Humanity was ever attacked by a superior alien race, the planet would quickly form into one nation. Living separately on your own is great, but when faced with an outside threat, the only way to win is unity. You will either band together or face extinction.
"Damn it, I think I just digressed again. So, to answer your question, the Empire provides every Slug with everything they need for free. Kind of like ultra-communists. Minus the evilness that everyone seems to think comes inbuilt with it."
Ethan pored over this for some time. "So does every Slug get the same amount of stuff then?"
"Yes", Boy answered for him.
"Well", Matt amended, "there's more to it than that, but I've talked enough about this. Let's discuss something else now."
I agreed, as this gave me much to think about. Unfortunately, however, the conversation continued on, and I currently lacked the time to consider what had just transpired.
The Slug
'Alright then', Ethan began, a pondering look on his face, 'tell me more about Slug life.'
'What about it?' I asked, trying to contain my excitement. I always enjoyed telling Ethan about my homeworld and observing his reactions.
He thought for a bit, not sure what to ask. 'What do you do when you're not fighting us?' Phill butted in.
I eyed him for a moment, but answered his question, addressing it to both him and Ethan. 'It depends. Slug life is split into cycles, as I've previously explained. As everyone here already knows that a cycle is the average length of a Slug life, there's no need to repeat it.' I thought for a second. 'Oh, wait, I just did. Oh well. Anyway, Slug duties are organised into half-cycles. Basically, we're born, trained to fight and live like a Slug, and then our cycle life begins.'
'So you don't officially start aging until you've been fully trained?' asked Ethan.
'Precisely', I confirmed. I wondered how strange this all must seem to him, but continued on regardless. 'In our first half-cycle of life, we perform some necessary, non-dangerous activity on Slugenis, or on whatever planet we're born on. Things such as growing food, transporting materials and resources around the planet, and, as Boy had it, helping to assemble equipment.'
My age-old friend replied, smiling, 'It was better than tending to the creation and birth of new Slugs.'
'Don't remind me about Slug birth', Ethan muttered with a disgusted look. Ahh, Boy must have already explained it to him. Or, at least part of it - it would be a long, complicated explanation, that was sure.
'Continuing on then', I continued on, 'once our first half-cycle of work is completed, we are rewarded. By going to war.' I got a funny look by Ethan at this, so I once again tried to get Slug Honour through his Human head. 'Once a Slug's cycle life begins, they have already been indoctrinated with our ways. Many of them see their first half-cycle of safe work as an injustice. However, if we allowed all newborn Slugs to go straight to war, most of them would die, and there'd be no one left to do those important jobs.'
If I'd said this to try and get the funny look off of Ethan's face, I failed miserably. 'Anyway', I pressed on, 'the Slugs fight for another half-cycle. By the end of this stage quite a lot of them are dead, as they're all one cycle old and therefore the average age of a Slug, keeping in mind that Slug cycle-lives are adjusted by travel time. But Slugs are born in great numbers, and there will always be many survivors. These survivors then perform another half-cycle of necessary but non-dangerous work on a Slug planet. After this, they go back to war for another half-cycle. At the end of this, any survivors are two cycles old, and go back to another half-cycle of work. And the process repeats itself until all the Slugs of that generation have died.'
'Wow', Ethan breathed. Now that I considered it, I did just spout out a lot of information. 'So you did that seven-and-a-half times then? Because you're seven-and-a-half cycles old?'
'No', I answered. 'I was six cycles when I came to Earth, so I've only done it six times. And my age of seven-and-a-half is just an estimate. We won't know until we get back to Slugenis.'
Ethan thought for another few seconds, but it was Phill who asked, 'Does your King go through the same process?'
'Ah, no', I responded. No doubt the Cyborg would call it cowardly of the Slug King, but we see things differently. Very differently. As in, not the same. Like, at all. 'The King does not work, and he does not fight. All he does is make decisions that affect the whole Empire. It is a very self...'
'Hold on', Ethan interrupted. 'If you're the Slug Empire, wouldn't that mean your leader is an emperor, not a King?'
I pondered this. 'I suppose you're right. But I made up the names, and I like the sound of "Empire" and "King".'
'Very well then', he said. 'Carry on.'
'Anyway', I carried on, 'As I was saying, the Slug King is a very selfless Slug. He - well, technically, it - makes the ultimate sacrifice by becoming the King.'
'Because it's hard to make such important decisions?' Ethan guessed.
It was Boy who answered him. 'Partly, but no. The Slug King makes the greatest sacrifice of all because he never goes to war and lives in a sheltered, hazard-free environment. There is very little chance of him dying from non-natural causes.'
'Oh', the Human said, struggling to see that as a sacrifice. 'That must... suck.'
'Indeed it does', I replied, nodding my head.
'How is a new King chosen when the old one dies?' asked Phill. Still trying to glean information out of me. It surprised me how little the Cyborgs knew of our culture. But, then again, we knew very little about theirs, or if they even had one.
'Simple', I started to answer his question, but Carmen cut in to answer instead.
'The oldest Slug in the Empire becomes the King.'
This simple explanation - despite the fact that I myself said that it was simple - seemed to confuse both Human and Cyborg. I elaborated on Carmen's description. 'Because a Slug's age is a measure of their ability, otherwise they wouldn't still be alive, the oldest Slugs are the wisest and strongest. The Slug King is therefore, in theory, the strongest and wisest Slug in the Empire, and therefore best suited to the job.'
'You just used two "therefores" ', Phill seemed to accuse me. If there was any point to this, I sure didn't get it.
'OK, so you don't have a royal family or anything like that', Ethan said, starting to get it.
'Bit hard to have a royal family when there's no such thing as a family', I joked. At the startled look I received from this, I continued, 'Slugs don't have families. I thought Boy already explained all this to you?'
'I did', Boy confirmed.
'Don't remind me', Ethan muttered again. 'We'll discuss it some other time.'
'Very well then', I announced. 'It looks like our meeting is done for now. Class, dismissed!'
This earned me a begrudging look from Phill and Ethan, who appeared to be the only ones to understand that I'd just acted like everyone's leader. Which I'd kinda been doing for the past several weeks. Oh well.
And, unbeknownst to all of our discussions, the ship continued to zoom through space.
The Cyborg
During the course of the next 9 days, not much aboard the Slug ship varied from what had come to be expected. 3 of the Slugs continued their pointless and irrelevant game, 2 of them stayed deep in silent conversation, the Human tried to nose into everything to ease his affliction of the organic weakness of boredom, and I dwelled in a corner, where the curvature of the cylinder of the ship met its flat back, contemplating.
What it was that I contemplated varied as widely as the strategies Ethan implemented to entertain himself. Sometimes I thought about my old life, and marvelled at the inner disgust I now feel when thinking about how I used to operate. At other times I considered the Slugs and Humans around me, and tried to analyse my thoughts regarding them. At yet other times I reprocessed my sensory inputs from certain events during our defence. While I could relive everything I had seen, heard and felt, I could not re-experien
ce my thoughts at the time; such a thing was not recorded into my memory.
However, while I couldn't exactly remember what I had thought, as it was not a sense and therefore not recorded into my hard memory, I did have a general knowledge of how I had felt. I remembered when Matthew entered my cave with Ethan for the first time, and how I had, not quite hatred or loathing, but extreme dislike towards him, and yet a glimmer of hope that perhaps he'd come to either free me or kill me. Reprocessing those events now, my interpretation of events was quite different. It was not a superior and confident Slug come to gloat to me, as I had originally perceived, but an unstable and desperate one come to beg for help from anyone who would provide it, even mortal enemies.
I also remembered when I had come to the incorrect conclusion that Matthew had been killed by the Cyborgs' crash-landing, due to the LOC. At the time, I had tried to remain logical and choose the best course of action for myself; looking back upon it now, however, I realised what a wrecked and mentally-fatigued state I must have been in at the time. In order to preserve myself, I shouldn't have tried to steal the Slug ship and return to the Cyborgs; the fact that I actually thought I could return to being who I was was an indicator of the state I was in. All I needed to do was approach the Human government, who'd already encountered me, and barter my technology and knowledge for protection. Such a thought had never occurred to me at the time.
Although I realised that reprocessing these past and unchangeable events made no improvement on the present or future, but that didn't stop me from doing it. It was an enlightening experience.
Eventually, at one particular time as I contemplated to myself, we were due to arrive at Slugenis shortly. Matthew had started the ship's deceleration long ago, meaning that we had been near the planet's system for some time. Boy had called out to everyone, "We are here!"
Ethan scrambled to get up and look at the view screen, but as I knew that it wouldn't change for a reasonable amount of time, I changed my position for a better viewing angle in a more leisurely fashion. Matthew and Rosetta were currently sleeping - due to the absence of a planetary day and night cycle, the organics slept whenever they became sufficiently tired - and Ethan was shaking them and yelling to try and awaken them.
"It's not use shouting", Boy told him in a loud voice. "They can't hear you while they're sleeping."
"Really?" the Human asked, astonished, once he'd thankfully stopped his unnecessary yelling.
"Yes", Boy replied simply, as the 2 previously inert Slugs slowly restored themselves to full consciousness.
Rosetta awoke normally, showing no side effects from her sleep except a lethargic movement. However, Matt appeared decidedly groggy and actually yawned, despite the fact that Slugs didn't usually breath and therefore had no biological or cultural inclination to yawn. "What's going on?" he asked in a sleepy and slurred voice, continuing to defy what Slugs look like and how they behave when waking up.
"We are here", Boy repeated, which broke Matthew out of his stupor. The fact that he transitioned so easily from his supposedly sleepy state to one of full alertness pointed to the conclusion that he did not have a requirement to act in such a manner upon waking up.
He trotted up to the forward view screen, alongside Ethan, Boy, Rosetta, Carmen and Frank. As I could see the screen perfectly from my vantage point, I saw no need to relocate myself. I also wondered why everyone else felt the need to be so close to the screen when it was obviously designed to be in visual sight from most areas of the ship.
"Sweet", Matthew said to Boy's statement, and the puzzled look the latter gave him led me to deduce that he had yet to hear a facet of Human taste used as an adjective of a situation.
I noticed that the primitive 2-dimensional map now showed an orange dot on its outer bounds, slowly moving in towards its centre. This familiar sight made me reprocess seeing the same thing, but in reverse, as we left the Human world of Earth. I analysed how I remembered feeling at the time, and realised that, although it was uncharacteristically sentimental, I still felt the same about the planet now. Soon, the orange dot had reached the centre and reset itself back to the outer edge in tandem with one of the 6 dashes above that section of the screen vanishing.
"Here we are", Matt said, in a strangely sad voice.
Before I could try to analyse why he used such a tone in his statement, Ethan spoke. "Yep. Here we are."
Before I could try to analyse why he had repeated the previous statement with only an extra unnecessary affirmative, Boy added, "Yes. Here we are."
I stopped my processes regarding this matter.
The orange dot reached the centre of the map, and reset back to the outer edge. The 5th dash stopped displaying.
"Will we go straight to the Slug king?" asked Rosetta.
"We'd better", Matthew replied. "What with Phil and all. It will take a long explanation."
"Yes. Yes it will", I said, hoping to annoy them with such a pointless statement as they had previously annoyed me.
The orange dot reached the centre, and reset back to the edge. The 4th dash disappeared.
"They won't, like, attack Phil will they?" asked Ethan anxiously. Based on my knowledge of Human speech patterns, he seemed to be concerned about me.
"They may", replied Boy, thinking. "But they won't kill him straight away. They'll figure that there must be some reason us Slugs brought a Cyborg to Slugenis." He looked at me. "So don't worry about that."
The dot reached the centre, and reset. The 3rd dash ceased to be.
"I am not worried", I said back to Boy. He appeared somewhat concerned about me too.
The dot arrived and reset. The 2nd dash flashed off the screen.
"Slugenis", Matthew announced to no one. "Here we come!"
The dot reset as the 1st dash evaporated into nothing.
It seemed to me that everyone on board the ship, excluding me of course, collectively held their breath, even those that technically didn't need to breathe, as the orange dot on the 2-dimensional map got slower and slower as it approached its centre and eventually stopped just short of it.
There was only silence inside the ship for several seconds. Matthew broke it by rubbing his hands together eagerly, and saying, "Right then. Let's go. We've got some explaining to do."
The Human
Over the next week and a bit, life aboard the ship continued as usual. And by 'as usual', I mean Carmen, Rosetta and Frank kept playing rock-paper-scissors nonstop, Matthew and Boy stayed together, silently discussing secret alien stuff, and Phill rarely moved from his corner, deep in his machine-musing. Of course, all of this left me with not much to do.
Running around the inside of the cylinder got tiring too fast, so I gave that up pretty early. I tried throwing one of the nutrition bars up into the air, and watched as it crossed the middle of the ship and fell onto the other side, the roof from my perspective. While that was pretty cool at first, it did get pretty old. If only I could jump high enough to cross the middle and fall to the other side... but I couldn't.
I tried to roll myself up the cylinder, and keep rolling until I reached my original location, but, obviously, all that did was get me extremely dizzy. I also tried handstands, thinking that some weird space physics would make it easier, but I sucked at it just as much as I did on Earth.
The only times when I wasn't energetically trying to make a fool of myself was when I was talking with someone, sleeping, going to the toilet, and eating and drinking. I preferred some privacy while I was using my portable toilet and drinking water, the first for obvious reasons (although I couldn't shake the feeling that Phill was so interested in my biology that he actually wanted to watch me), and the second for not so obvious reasons.
You see, Matt hadn't brought any water specifically for me, unlike the food he'd carried into the ship. The idea was that I'd just share the Slug's supply of water, and it seemed like a pretty good idea. Of course, there was a problem. Like, a big problem.
A number of the spikes were actually
hollow tubes, instead of solid spikes. And these tubes gave out a supply of water for the Slugs to use... so you can guess how I had to get the water from these tubes into my mouth. And let me tell you, let me emphasise to you, that you really, truly, utterly have no idea what it is like to have to suck on a metallic barb which would then squirt water into your mouth. It simply cannot be appropriately described. Which was why I preferred to do it with nobody around - or, at least, nobody looking.
So, after about a week of all of this, the feeling of gravity on the ship began to subtly change. There was now a slight pull towards the front of the ship, rather than the back as there had been when we first started to accelerate into space. I'd asked Matthew about this, and he told me that we had begun decelerating as we were approaching Slugenis. This got me excited; any change would be welcome now.
A few days (or so I assumed, as I had no way to tell when a day had passed) after that, while I was checking if push-ups were any easier in space (they weren't), Boy announced, "We are here!"
I quickly got up to look at the view screen, hoping to see something cool, although at this point, anything would be classified as 'cool'. Nothing happened yet, however, so I knew that I'd have to wait. That's when I saw that Matthew and Rosetta were still sleeping. I didn't want them to miss the arrival, so I went over to their prone bodies.
"Wake up!" I said loudly, while shaking both of their bodies vigorously. "Get up!"
"It's no use shouting", Boy told me, loud enough that I heard it over my own loudness. "They can't hear you while they're sleeping."
They couldn't? "Really?" I asked.
"Yes", was all he replied. He didn't look like he would elaborate, so I resolved that I'd have to ask Matt about this new development later.
Both of the Slugs got up then. Rosetta slowly stood, and made her way to the view screen. Matthew, however, was much slower in returning to full consciousness. His eyes had trouble staying open, he gave one of those little just-woken-up mumbles, and then he yawned. I swear, sometimes he looks and acts far too human to be an alien.
"Was' goin' on?" he asked after finishing his yawn.
"We are here", Boy told him, the same as he'd told the rest of us.
Matthew gave a slight shake of his head, stood up fully, and walked up to the view screen at this. He looked excited about our arrival, especially so when he said, "Sweet."
I followed Matt's gaze on the screen, and saw that he looked at the same small map in the bottom corner of the screen that I'd been staring at when we'd left Earth. I saw that this time, instead of the small orange dot moving away from the centre of the map, it was moving towards it. Six dashes adorned the top of the map, showing how far the map was zoomed out. The last time I'd focused on this, the dashes were slowly added as the dot reached the boundary of the map and reset back in the middle. This time, however, the dot reached the centre and reset to the boundary, and one of the dashes disappeared.
"Here we are", Matthew said, kind of sadly.
"Yep. Here we are", I repeated.
Boy had to add to that, "Yes. Here we are."
The dot reached the centre and reset to the boundary, and one of the dashes disappeared.
Rosetta asked, "Will we go straight to the Slug King?" I'd never considered what we'd actually do once we landed there. Maybe just strut out of the ship and yell 'Surprise!'
"We'd better", Matt told her. "What with Phill and all. It will take a long explanation."
I agreed that it would take a very long explanation (although I didn't agree with him referring to Phill as an 'it'), and apparently so did Phill when he said, "Yes. Yes it will."
The dot reached the centre and reset to the boundary, and one of the dashes disappeared.
Then a horrible thought occurred to me; the Slugs and Cyborgs were meant to be mortal enemies and everything. "They won't, like, attack Phill will they?" I quickly asked.
"They may", Boy said. That didn't bode very well. But he amended himself by adding, "But they won't kill him straight away. They'll figure that there must be some reason us Slugs brought a Cyborg to Slugenis. So don't worry about that."
The dot reached the centre and reset to the boundary, and one of the dashes disappeared.
"I am not worried", Phill said, as if Boy was speaking to him.
The dot reached the centre and reset to the boundary, and one of the dashes disappeared.
"Slugenis", Matt tried to say in a very cool and anticipatory voice. "Here we come!"
The dot reached the centre and reset to the boundary, and one of the dashes disappeared.
I held my breath, although I couldn't really figure out why, as I watched that orange dot get closer and closer to the centre, and slower and slower as it approached. It stopped moving just off-centre, and held there.
No one said anything, as everything to say had already been said. Except the thing that Matthew said right now. "Right then. Let's go. We've got some explaining to do."
The Slug
Nothing. That's what I felt and experienced while I slept; nothing at all. Then, something. Specifically, I felt my body being violently, and, quite rudely, shaken. I awoke from my slumber in time to hear Ethan yelling, 'Get up!' I gave a half-hearted groan and tried to resuscitate my inert brain.
For the past week and two days, nothing extraordinary had happened. Which was pretty boring. I had continued spending most of my time communicating with Boy; there was still a lot he didn't know about Earth and the Humans. I'd kind of felt sorry for Ethan, being on his own most of the time and trying to entertain himself with fun but short-lived games, but I'd justified it by realising that he'd be by no means - not even by his own means - bored once we got to Slugenis.
Eventually, the time had come when we were approaching Slugenis' solar system. I had begun the deceleration of the ship, causing a change in its illusion of gravity. Ethan asked me about it, and I'd tried to explain, but the look on his face told me that he didn't quite understand inertia. Oh well.
Now that I was done musing, I realised Boy and Ethan were talking. 'It's no use shouting', Boy was saying. 'They can't hear you while they're sleeping.'
'Really?' asked the Human. Ah, how much he didn't know. Come to think of it, how much everybody didn't know. I was the only one who knew everything about all the alien worlds. Excluding Phill and the Cyborgs, of course. Which means that I was the only one who knew everything about the Human and Slug worlds. Because Phill and the Cyborgs were excluded.
'Yes', Boy replied. As he didn't go on, I surmised that I'd be explaining this to Ethan sometime in the near future.
Rosetta, who had also been sleeping alongside me, stood up. I began to follow her lead as she walked across the ship to the large view screen at the front.
'Was' goin' on?' I asked sleepily. I had, after all, just been woken from a deep sleep.
'We are here', my age-old friend told me.
Aha then. Here we were. 'Sweet', I said, and looked expectantly at the screen.
I was looking at the small proximity map that gave a rudimentary relative indication of any nearby celestial objects. This was the same map I had noticed both Phill and Ethan intensely regarding when we'd left Earth. Back then, it had shown an orange dot, representing the planet, moving away from the centre, us. Each time the dot exceeded the scope of the map, it had reappeared back in the middle, followed by a dash which specified the level of zoom.
This time, however, the small dot was moving towards the centre - as we were approaching the planet rather than leaving it - and six dashes were already present, the map's maximum level of zoom. The dot reached the centre of the map and reappeared back at the boundary. The first of the six dashes disappeared, meaning that the map had just zoomed in.
We were close. 'Here we are', I said to everyone.
'Yep. Here we are', Ethan echoed.
'Yes. Here we are', Boy echoed the echo.
The dot reappeared at the boundary, and the second dash to wink off did just that; it winked off.
'Will we go straight to the Slug King?' asked Rosetta.
Obviously, we'd have to. I couldn't imagine the reaction if we'd turned up with a strange alien and a Cyborg and tried to act like it wasn't an extraordinary circumstance. 'We'd better', I said out loud. 'What with Phill and all.' All meaning Ethan, and the two missing Slugs from a non-hazardous "rescue" mission. 'It will take a long explanation.' Indeed it would.
Phill agreed, and proved it by saying, 'Yes. Yes it will.'
Crash went the dot into the middle of the map, and pop went the dot as it appeared back at the map's border. Without the sound effects. The third dash turned off. Also lacking a sound effect.
Ethan asked, 'They won't, like, attack Phill will they?'
'They may', Boy replied thoughtfully. 'But they won't kill him straight away. They'll figure that there must be some reason us Slugs brought a Cyborg to Slugenis.' He looked at Phill. 'So don't worry about that.'
Once again, the orange dot reached the representation of us, and teleported to the representation of "over there", along with the disappearing act of the fourth dash.
'I am not worried', Phill said in a classic machine "I have no fear" voice.
And again, with such regularity that it was starting to get boring, the dot on the map reappeared at the edge of the map. The fifth dash probably would've turned off, but I wasn't really watching it.
We were very close now, so I felt it necessary to announce, 'Slugenis. Here we come!'
Thankfully, for the last time, that blasted orange dot reached the centre of the proximity map and reset back to the outer edge, trying to steal attention away from the fact that the sixth and final dash was now gone.
Everyone seemed to collectively hold their breath - or perhaps I just imagined it - as the orange dot approached us, the centre, on the highest level of zoom. It stopped just before it reached the centre, as we obviously couldn't just straight up land on the planet, and stayed there.
I waited for someone to say something cool, but as no one did, I took the initiative. I rubbed my hands together excitably, and said, 'Right then. Let's go. We've got some explaining to do.' Although that didn't sound half as cool out loud as it did in my head. Even though I don't technically have a head.