Pug-Monkey and the Alpha Male

“Damn it!” Janice slammed her hand against the wall of the cargo hold.

Cream and Bo held perfectly still. They were looking at the hole which used to hold Simix’s second backup jar.

“Scrambled sensor records, not enough crew to watch everything at once. We don’t have the resources to carry passengers. If they’re all like the last one, they’ll have the ship stripped in less than ten runs.” Janice was furious and a little scared.

“We have to carry passengers. Raw material runs are scarce and they don’t pay as well as passengers do.” Simix felt a strange uneasiness about having his backup jar stolen. He piped his feeling to a subroutine and continued. “We need to contain passengers instead of letting them loose in the ship. We need non-electronic surveillance. Bo needs help on the bridge.”

“I don’t know how we’ll put all that together.” Janice muttered. Her current crew was working for nothing more than banana-liver flavored cookies and nutri-gel. Why would anyone else sign up?

Two days later Janice and Cream stood at the internal airlock leading to the K-9 Corps section of Station One.

“Do we really want to do this?” Janice asked.

“We have to have non-electronic surveillance.” Cream licked his nose nervously.

They walked into the large assembly hall full of modified canines. All had zero g adaptations and some looked adapted for specific jobs. They calmly assessed the human and the pug-monkey as they walked between the various packs. Some pack leaders sniffed and turned away. Others simply stared.

Just as Janice cleared her throat to make a general announcement, Bo came bounding into the room.

*hey, hey, hey, alana found us a bunch of cookies and jerky for real cheap* he sent as he bounced this way and that.

Fur bristled and low warning growls started. Bo tucked his tail under and pressed up against Janice’s leg. Various dogs circled around to sniff Bo. One large black and white male with pointed ears cut through the crowd. He was followed by an almost identical female.

*you work on a ship?* he sent.

Bo peed on the floor, then moved over and crouched down.

“Yes, I’m the captain. Bo is our navigator and Cream is my first mate.”

*I am Kane, my mate is Tasha. we want work ship*

“We can only offer food for your services.”

*food and chance to run*

“Yes.”

Kane and Tasha gave Bo a polite sniff and followed Janice out of the hall.

Pug-Monkey and the Strange Passenger

Cream watched the thin, hairless man float across the cargo bay. He did not have a nose, but he had two sets of lips, one inner, one outer, both serrated. He had pale sensory organs where his eyes and ears should be. His skin was thick and dark green. He clamped a grip bar to one side of the bay and folded himself up around it.

*I can’t even smell him* sent Bo.

Cream licked his nose nervously. “Captain Janice said he paid in advance and he promised not to wander around the ship.”

“I have an adequate number of sensors trained on him. I will keep you informed if he moves.” Simix’s voice came from the nearest speaker. “Captain Janice is waiting for you on the bridge Bo.”

The trip was uneventful and Cream started to relax. As they approached the last planet of the system, the hairless man started putting on what looked like the inner layer of his space suit. Cream and Simix watched him closely.

As they made planet fall the Hermes station came into view. The habitation domes had been ripped open to the hard vacuum and the transmission towers had been damaged. They were so transfixed by the wreckage that they didn’t notice the hairless man enter the airlock.

After he cycled through the lock, they watched him on the external sensors. He was still wearing only the suit liner and was moving slowly in the low gravity.

“How long can he live in just that suit liner?” Cream was amazed.

“Almost one standard year.” Janice sounded sad. “That’s what his modifications are for; extreme cold and low oxygen use. He can even withstand hard vacuum for thirty minutes.”

“What does he want with that mess?”

“He’s supposed to salvage a receiver so that we can eavesdrop on earth.”

“Supposed to?”

“That’s the story.” Janice sighed. “Some of his modifications are psychological. He doesn’t need contact with other sentients. He’s meant to work in insolated conditions. He’ll feel better out here than he did on Station One.”

Pug-Monkey Sniffs a Rose

Cream wiggled a little closer and licked his nose. “I never knew you collected digital entertainment. You seem so practical.”
“Of course I collect, love. Everyone else is so busy running around building things. Our past must be preserved. These may be the only links we have to the cultures which sent us here.” Alana sounded happy.
She was hosting a tea party in the rose garden on Station One. At first Cream had felt slightly nauseous. He didn’t like eating in gravity and he didn’t enjoy the novelty of drinking out of a cup. Too messy.
“But, once we have thawed out and grown the potential colonists, won’t some of us try to make contact?” Cream had always assumed that even though Allied Interests had abandoned them, other sentients from the home planet would be interested in trade.
“What do you know of earth history?”
Cream shruggled.
“Rough business that. Ethnic groups trying to exterminate other groups. Competition over resources was often deadly while they were still planetlocked. They started behaving better in space because cooperation was a better survival tactic.” Alana waited a moment for that to sink in, her fine china teacup held delicately in her hairy paw. “Did you know that when this expedition was launched over 98% of all known sentients were still unaltered humans?”
Cream spilled his tea and almost dropped his cup. “I’ve never met an unaltered human. I thought they didn’t exist anymore.”
“They don’t exist here, and for the most part, we don’t exist there. Don’t be sure they want to talk to us.”
Bo chose that moment to start blowing bubbles in his tea. After the first three broken cups Alana had given up and found a small sturdy bucket for him. He was now using it to provide his own entertainment.
“I’m sorry” said Cream. “He’s not very sophisticated.”
“It’s quite alright. He’s just sophisticated in a different way than we are. Bo, dear, come here. I have something I’ve been meaning to share with you.” Alana produced a small transparent membrane and gently molded it over Bo’s nose.
Bo looked confused. *I liked smelling the tea.*
“Yes dear. Now you will be able to experience Vervohn’s Walk in the Park. It is a symphony like no other, created completely in an olfactory medium.”
As the symphony started Bo’s eyes glazed over. He began to drool. The big reddish brown canine rolled over on his back with his legs in the air and began making contented snuffly noises.
For just a moment Cream was jealous. Then Alana led him around the garden. She knew the name of each flower. She found the rootstock in cryogenic storage and convinced the station’s hydroponics crew to plant them.
“No thorns.” She said. “The originals on earth had thorns. These don’t.”
Cream stroked the silky petals with his pawgers. “The thorns were to protect them from herbivores?”
“Yes, and the flowers only became large after humans started breeding them.”
“What was it like back them?”
“Ahhh. I have just the thing.” Alana pulled out two more transparent membranes. “I like this one very much because it is interactive.”
Cream shivered a little as she molded the membrane over his whole face. The first thing he smelled was a rose, warmed by a sun.

Green Light Files: Blowout Betty

The service airlock cycles open and a bulky figure somersaults into the cargo hold. From my vantage point in the control booth she is just another hull tech happy to be back inside the space station. She breaks her momentum by touching her magnetic boot soles to a support spar. She pops open her dark outer faceplate, winks at me, then pops it shut again.

She struts down the spar. A dip here, a saucy hip bump there, she is moving to the rhythmic clank of the loading bots. She disappears from my line of sight for a moment. I could follow her on the monitors, but I know what she will do next.

She detaches herself from the spar and twirls gracefully in free fall. Her trajectory gives me an excellent view. She mimics dance moves and seductive poses. She never loses the beat.

When her back is toward me, there is an explosion at her elbow. There is no sound. The cargo hold is not pressurized. I see a small flash of air escape and burn red before the suit’s safety shuts off those lines. She pivots with her arms over her head as she pulls the glove off one finger at a time.

As she flings the glove away her other elbow explodes. She shimmies as she pulls the second glove off. Then poses and opens her faceplate again to wink at me. Her flesh looks lush and warm against the stark contrast of the white suit and dark grey walls.

For a moment I am acutely aware that this is all a fantasy. If it were real I would be hearing emergency sirens. The cargo hold is the same temperature as the void outside and even enhanced humans can only survive minutes of exposure.

She somersaults once, then twists and arches backward. A small line of explosions trail down her torso. As she loops around she wiggles out of the outer layer of the suit. I can see the outline of her lean, muscular body as she arches backward again.

She does not discard the outer layer of the suit immediately. She flips up her outer faceplate and gives me a sultry stare as she pretends to modestly hide behind the torn fabric. Rotating and gyrating, she lets me see a little bit of the inner layer here and there.

As she whirls the outer suit away one hip explodes. She anchors her other foot to a support spar. She slowly stretches her legs apart while pushing the torn inner suit layer up to her boot.

She has been moving closer to me since she left the first spar and I can see her clearly. My breath catches as she removes the boot. Losing a mag boot in zero g is a catastrophe. The look on her face is blissful as she tosses it away.

Then there is an explosion on her other hip. She pushes off the spar as she starts to remove the other leg of her suit. Watching the second boot spin away is almost anticlimactic.

No human would still be alive. She is vibrant and animated and still moving to the rhythm of the loader bots. As she moves closer to me I feel the excitement build. She appears to be unaltered homo sapiens without a trace of genetic modification or structural enhancements, which is so rare as to be impossible.

She summersaults again, slowly removing what is left of the inner suit. She looks deeply satisfied as she pops open her collar and slides the helmet over her head. Her dark, silky hair floats out around her. She is still wearing her breathing tubes and air tanks.

She is only meters away from me when she removes the tubes and gets rid of the tanks with a dismissive flick of her wrist. She is moving slowly as she glides up to the clear plastic of the booth. She should be suffocating but she is calm as she presses her naked body against the plastic. I watch in wonder as blue sparks race over her and the plastic conforms to her shape and then gives way.

Suddenly she is in the booth with me. No air has escaped. The plastic has sealed itself behind her. I feel her warm breath on my face.

This is where the interactive portion begins and I am slightly dizzy as I slip out of the digital reality. The invincible woman in the cargo hold is me, as I was decades ago.

I recorded the sequence piece by piece in my cabin on the space station where I worked as a communications officer. I spent hours splicing footage together to erase my modifications and create the illusion of the exploding space suit. Then I dubbed in the cargo hold as a background.

My sister worked on the same station as the medical tech. She did the neural scan that forms the basis of the interactive portion. We made some thoughtful alterations to the scan so that I could release it anonymously.

At the time, I thought I was merely creating a harmless fantasy, something to help lonely spacers pass the time. New technology is now allowing unaltered humans to establish settlements in deep space. They are competing with us for resources and disrupting our culture. The digital fantasy I created so long ago is now political.

I have advanced in my career from communications officer to general. I am working with a group of my peers and we are reviewing all communications which contain sensitive material. None of them know I created this fantasy. They consider it to be dangerous.

If the invaders realize we view them as exotic and desirable, they will have an advantage. That knowledge will encourage them to seduce us. My peers are fearful and favor puritanical repression. I do not agree but I remain quiet.