A tiny Mr Swarm crept across the wall and was trying to reach Mr
Swarm's doorknob, stealthily making running leaps, scattering up
the door, and sliding down again. Hex and I tried to keep from
snickering, but finally he gained enough purchase to pull the
handle and swiftly slid into the room.
I'd been trying to convince Super Hex to let us use her tarot to
play poker without making any progress, something about "the
spirits not being a game" and "respecting traditions." So I began
an inventory of the contents of my pockets.
* the dusty remnants of some sort of cracker
* two rubber bands, one broken
* five smoke bombs
* one of Commodore Bob's miniature communicators (even connected to
the ship it received nothing but static, with the distorted
refrains of "Big Hunk o' Love" from Elvis "live via satellite")
* a button that doesn't match anything I'm wearing
* one silver dollar, of unknown origin, date 1967
Mr Swarm came out, acknowledged us and knocked on Cranium's door.
It opened a crack, he had his towel around his waist, they mumbled
to each other a bit, then Swarm joined us. A few lingering
miniature Mr Swarms joined him as he explained what his spy found.
Largely, nothing. The place was abandoned, but there were a few
locked doors he couldn't circumvent.
Commander Cranium walked out of his room waggling his pinkie in his
ear. "Cleanliness brings purity of mind, What have we discovered?"
Hex spoke her piece and told us about her readings. Mr Swarm,
having split and experienced all seven histories at once, had no
useful elaborations on her story except for his spy's reports. He
regaled us with the discoveries and advances in medicine and other
science, and lamented the lack of concise instructions. He touched
on a few major philosophers and their debates on the nature of
being and becoming, then becoming something else entirely. Stories
of monsters and gods. Religions worshiped the first invasion as
the return of the ur-creator or vindication for years of recounting
dozens of prophecies, others dreamed of the new knowledge they would
acquire would appease their ancestors curiosity through their eyes.
But they were soon subjugated, they had never considered their
gods would be so demanding, many said they were monsters - until
the resistance ships came, first with defenses, then with the cure,
a biological weapon of some sort. New gods had offered new
creations to fight the old gods.
While Swarm was delving into new mysteries, Cranium had learned
that the stone floor got too slippery to properly bathe in the sink
and there weren't enough towels. I found that none of them seemed
worried enough about mysterious beings dragging us out of space to
their dead planet.
"There isn't anything else to discuss, is there?" Cranium asked.
No sooner than I opened my mouth, he pushed the button.
gemini://cosmic.voyage/RSS Revenant/1628.txt