“How
did it come to this, my friends?” Captain Vespucci lamented.
With watery, heartbroken eyes, he gazed
across the mess hall table at his crew, whose collective response was to glare
at him. “We set out on this voyage to
explore the universe, to meet new forms of life and broaden our understandings
of life and existence. And now, we turn
against each other—“
“We’re
not turning against each other,”
Ensign Cooper said. Of all those seated
at the round, steel-finished table of The
Intrepid, his glare was the hardest and the meanest. This may have had something to do with the
fact that his left arm was currently being re-attached to his shoulder by Medic
Kwong, the only other crewmember seated at the table whose uniform was as
splattered with blood and viscera as Cooper’s was. “We’re turning against the man-eating fucking monster, Captain.”
Captain
Vespucci visibly recoiled. “Those are
hurtful words, Cooper. I’m sure Vorgl
Z’porggrig agrees with me.”
“It
does sting a little bit, yes,” Vorgl said.
Unlike the rest of those seated around the table, Vorgl was trapped
behind a portable stasis field. The
seven-foot tall, pus-spewing alien blinked each of its fourteen compound eyes
in sequence, gingerly rubbing his massive claws together. Blood dripped off of its green scales,
sizzling when it touched the stasis field.
“I wish I knew what I had done to upset you so, Cooper.”
Despite
the massive amount of blood loss he had just endured, Cooper’s face turned
purple with rage. “You bit my arm off
and tried to eat it! You—“
Suddenly,
Cooper sagged. Kwong had injected him
with something as part of his procedure, and it calmed him down
substantially. “Annnnnnd…there. Nerve endings reconnected.” The medic took off her surgery glasses,
allowing the sweat that had pooled to run down her face. “Procedure is complete. And Captain, Cooper is correct. I walked in with him writing on the ground as
Vorgl was munching on his arm.”
Captain
Vespucci sighed, clearly annoyed. “Okay,
yes, I guess that technically Vorgl did try to eat
Cooper. But that’s no call for hurtful
language.”
“Yeah,”
Vorgl said. “What would First Mate
Henson say if she was here?”
“We
don’t know,” Kwong said, “because you ate Henson on the day we picked you up
from that exploding planet. So this is
actually the second time you’ve tried to eat one of us.”
“Meh,”
Vorgl replied.
“Look,
I just think we should find a way to go about this without hurting Vorgl’s
feelings,” Captain Vespucci said. “It’s
not productive.”
Cooper
twitched in his seat, slowly coming to.
Cautiously, he moved his left hand, then did so repeatedly, relieved to
find it working. “Sir,” he began, “I
don’t think there is a way to discuss
whether or not we should fire a dangerous alien out of the airlock.”
“Well,
then I don’t think we should have this discussion,” the Captain said. “You have already turned against Vorgl so
it’s not fair.” Before anybody could
stop him, he got up and keyed in the release sequence into Vorgl’s cage. “See?” he said proudly, as Vorgl timidly
stepped out of the stasis field and sat down next to the captain. “All a misunderstanding.”
Vorgl
retched, and spewed hundreds of eggs out of his mouth, which promptly hatched
into insectoid baby monsters and devoured everyone on the ship. “This is the natural, logical outcome of
this,” Vorgl said. Then he pooped a pile
of green acid on the floor.
No comments:
Post a Comment