• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

JohnSmith

The creature -- the ALIEN -- didn't have a name that anyone human could even remotely pronounce or even hear properly, given that the audible portion was accompanied by infrasound subharmonics and ultrasonics that a human ear wasn't capable of perceiving, so it simply referred to itself as "John Smith," for the sake of simplicity for its audience.

John Smith was humanoid, in the sense that it was bilaterally symmetrical, with a central torso, complete with arms with prehensile grasping appendages at the ends, two legs that it stood upon, and a head on a flexible neck at the top section where its primary sensory organs were clustered. In fact, if one ignored the pinkish-gray, translucent pebbled skin, the seemingly-random clusters of tiny sensory pits and stiff white bristles, and the occasional squirming wormlike THINGS that moved beneath the skin like maggots -- tiny chemical messengers carrying a biochemical payload to one organ or another that needed it -- and looked ONLY at the central torso, it actually didn't look too terribly inhuman. Segmentation and the need for a flexible central torso meant that the musculature there was at least broadly similar to its terrestrial counterpart, and, fortunately, the being was wearing a tight-fitting black tee-shirt with white lettering that read "FUCK YOU, SCIENCE" which did a decent job of covering up some of the unfortunate reminders of its basic dissimilarity to earth-life.

But there the resemblance ended. Each of Smith's legs (clad in faded blue jean shorts) had four joints, and the lowest segment of the leg split into three tripod-like appendages, each ending in claws and a tough pad for traction. Each incredibly long, muscled arm had six elbow-joints that bent in ways that made one cringe slightly or gag to see, and was split into two separate appendages at the second joint; each ended in a handlike structure with ten spidery, impossibly delicate-looking clawed digits that for all of their seeming delicacy had the strength to bend steel. Each of the hands was fully capable of twisting about so that their palms faced each other, and the outer digit on all four of its hands was completely opposable.

And the face...the less said about it, the better. Smith's head had clusters of visual sensors like grapes, six per cluster surrounding a larger infrared-capable optic, each with a tiny pupil and bright gold irises, three clusters in front and three behind. Over each eye-cluster waved fernlike antennae that were not dissimilar to a moth's, moving and swaying in the tiniest air-current -- these served it in lieu of a nose, granting it a sense of smell far, far sharper than even the average dog's. Beneath them was a peculiarly-arranged three-cornered jaw, lined with rows of shearing, sharklike teeth.

And John Smith stank horribly. No, the Coordinator knew, the alien-SMITH, he mentally corrected himself -- showered several times daily, washed, used cleansers. It attended to its own version of basic hygiene meticulously, and the Coordinator reminded himself that, to John Smith, humans were just as physically repellent and smelled as terribly as the monkey house at any poorly-maintained zoo. But its own scent was nothing it could help; its species' cooling system was associated with the system its body used to dispose of ammoniacal wastes, and its kind, it had said, used an elaborate system of chemical pheromone agents to communicate important information such as emotional state, age, health, sexual arousal, and even as a sort of punctuation for emphasis for the auditory version of their language. It found human languages incredibly constricting as a result, even though it fluently spoke at least 17 with perfect accent and grasp of idiom. When it met with humans, it typically kept the temperature in its living quarters lowered, well-ventilated, and it even burned scented candles to ward off its own natural scent out of basic courtesy to its hosts. It was partial to the odor of cinnamon and oranges.

Today, though, John Smith positively reeked. It smelled like a combination of fermenting piss, spoiled cabbage, and burning wool socks, all of which were clues to its inner emotional state, the Coordinator knew. Smith's living quarters were still at the temperature it preferred, which was slightly higher than normal human body temperature, and it hadn't bothered to take any measures to accommodate a human guest. And the three eye-clusters on the front of its head were locked on the Coordinator's face, their irises dilated in cold fury. Its jaws ground together, glassy teeth making an atrocious noise as they scraped against each other.

The Coordinator understood that he was the cause of that rage and didn't blame it in the slightest, since, if the situation were reversed, he probably wouldn't be taking it nearly as well as Smith seemed to be. But he couldn't bring himself to feel any sort of regret or pity, either. At the end of the day, he did what he had to do to ensure the survival of the human species as a whole, and that meant using every asset at their disposal. And if that meant inconveniencing an interloping alien (if Smith actually truly was what he claimed to be), a liminal being, or even any individual human...well, in his time, he had done far, far worse. And after facing off against a former boss with nearly godlike supernatural power, at least one honest-to-god (pardon the pun) deity, and more horrors -- both supernatural and human -- than one could easily shake a stick at, one nonhuman being's fury was something barely noteworthy.

(Wrote a little more; should probably have asked about permission to use the Coordinator. or anyone else This is written as much to amuse myself as anything, I guess, since I don't know how it all works or who does what. I'm not trying to ramrod anyone else in any kind of direction. For some reason, I keep imagining John Smith sounds something like Lewis Black. )

"First," said Smith, its voice carefully modulated and controlled, "I want to know exactly why my Tier-Five lab access has been revoked. And once you've answered that question, you're going to reinstate it immediately -- "

"You know why," said the Coordinator. "And that's not going to happen."

" -- and then you're going to explain to me exactly why you stole two of my three remaining fluxors," said the alien, as if the Coordinator hadn't spoken. Its words came fast and clipped now. "And you're going to return THEM, because they are utterly irreplaceable. They are MY property, not YOURS. And you're going to return the MindFrame, and you're going to explain why I am now under constant guard, and can't leave my quarters without an armed escort and your personal PERMISSION."

"Okay, is that all?" asked the Coordinator.

"It's a start," it snapped. "Now...TALK."

"Okay. Talking. First...don't EVER...take that tone with me. Second...don't EVER TAKE that tone with me," said the Coordinator, his voice low and calm and dangerously even. "I do not tolerate that from my own people. I didn't tolerate it from the two creatures who tried to end my world, or anyone or anything else. And I won't tolerate it from the likes of you. You have been useful, you have been invaluable, and believe me, we are grateful, but you are also our guest and you exist here at my suffrage and mine alone."

"I promise you, your gratitude means nothing to me. A guest is free to leave, to come and go on his own recognizance," snapped Smith. "My freedom has been steadily reduced until I am a virtual prisoner..."

"It's as much for your own safety as ours," said the Coordinator. "I am not at liberty to discuss all of the reasons with you. Your gear was taken because we needed the fluxor devices for our own use, there was no substitute and we didn't have time to ask, so we didn't. the rest of your gear may or may not be returned to you, pending investigation by our own experts. But part of the reason why your freedom of movement has been curtailed is because we discovered the little side experiment you were working on in the Tier-5 labs. And that's why your lab clearance has been revoked. When were you planning to explain that to us?"

It stared down at him for several long, tense seconds. "I wasn't going to. It would not have endangered you OR the Project." Its voice was completely flat.

"And I wish I could believe that, but I don't. Not after Professors Zakharov and Forrester explained exactly what an uncontrolled morphic resonance field cascade could have done. 'A stunningly brilliant piece of work, or stunningly mad,' I believe Zakharov called it. Forrester thinks you could have accidentally blasted a hole in the planet's surface big enough to drop Mars into, I think he's actually jealous, bless his little black heart..."

"It wouldn't have come to that," snapped Smith. "The reaction would have been completely controlled. You want to dispose of that..._thing_ you snared? Or it's controlling half, in whatever dimension it lies in? You're going to have to start taking some risks. Given enough time, it's going to escape. You can't keep it in containment forever."

"We've kept him penned up for 20 years now," said the Coordinator. "No reason we can't keep him in containment for another two hundred. Or two hundred thousand."

"Whatever. Inevitably, there will be an accident, given enough time. Incompetence or something natural. One of its zealots will succeed in freeing it. Or it will figure out Flipside2a way to escape on its own?. And when it does, all of us are going to burn." Its multiple eyes narrowed. "I am not going to die at the hands of a human demiurge. I am not going to die here, on this stone-age mudball, or here in this pocket-hell. You need a better solution, and I was attempting to give you one -- the ultimate safe disposal method. You can send the bastard to another universe."

The Coordinator nodded, smiling thinly. That was confirmation enough. "Which brings me to my next point. Zakharov also told me something else," said the Coordinator. "He carefully explained to me that, in the event of an uncontrolled Cascade release, there was a very good chance that a stable Einstein-Rosen Bridge would form, centered on the Lab itself. The eye of the storm, as it were -- a tiny piece of this universe would instantly be able to trade places with a piece of a universe next door, safely...at least for whoever or whatever happened to be in the lab. But when the Bridge collapsed a second later, the energy would need to go somewhere. He gave me a figure in watts, and it had a whole lot of zeroes behind it. It would have been the single largest catastrophe on this planet since the event that formed our moon. I wasn't talking out of my ass when I said the hole would be big enough to drop the planet Mars in...but you knew that already, didn't you?"

The alien said nothing. The Coordinator could still read the signs of anger in that alien visage, but Smith's scent had changed slightly, and he had dealt with the thing long enough to understand that he was smelling its apprehension. I caught you, you lying sack of shit he thought to himself.

"I think it's entirely possible that you were merely looking for a safe way to drop-kick ol' OneGod out of this universe entirely," he said. "But I've also got twenty years' worth of personal experience dealing with you. And that tells me that you'd be perfectly willing to cut all of our throats, if it meant a shot at you getting home." He leaned in closer. Smith stared back, impassively. "So I think it's equally possible you were planning to throw our entire world under the bus, just to get a chance to save your own hide."

Smith was silent for a long time, and the Coordinator had almost opened his mouth to continue before it finally spoke. "Do you actually blame me?" it said, its voice soft. "For over twenty years, I have been trapped in this...hellscape. The laws of reality in this place are insane, the inhabitants equally so, so much so that I actually doubt that any of this is...truly real."

Its voice began to rise. "With the exceptions of Zakharov and Forrester, most of you are barely more than feral animals to me. I feel as if I'm trying to explain quantum resonance theory to a pen full of livestock that only understands nouns, every...single...day. None of the cybersystems in my body work quite right here -- I am in constant pain, human, do you understand that? Do you comprehend that? The food is only barely edible. Last night, I saw the stars, and I saw the EXACT same starscape I saw when I arrived here that night, parallax change of zero on all axes. Do you know how INSANE that is, human? We're only days away from yet another wave of extradimensional creatures attacking, for no reason anyone can fathom save for the anniversary date. My dreams when I sleep are positively unspeakable. There are things here that should...not...BE. And every night, I sleep with the knowledge that, eventually, the thing in its vacuum tank will escape, and then I will burn along with the rest of you for the rest of eternity, and worse. Worse, I say, because I am an Outsider. It will make a special and unique Hell, just for me, and do you know WHY? Do you know HOW I know?"

Behind it was a small, heavy wooden table. With an eldritch scream, it turned and slammed its fists into the table, shattering it into a hundred pieces. 'BECAUSE IT !G'RRKKT'LLRR CAN!" it screamed, all traces of human tone and inflection completely gone from its voice, which now warbled and cracked with metallic sounds, whistling and strange harmonics. The Coordinator's skin crawled. "It tells me, IN MY FUCKING SLEEP! **EVERY GKKLLK'KRTTKK NIGHT!**"

The Coordinator's mouth opened slightly. "You've...been in contact with Him?"

Smith ignored him. "I don't belong here," it hissed. "And it knows that. I soil this world with my presence, it said. And it won't forgive me for that. A demiurge that tried to murder an entire world wants me to suffer until time itself rots away," it said. "And it wants to personally create an entire universe of personalized suffering, just for me. How...flattering. So do you actually BLAME me for wanting to escape this place, this madhouse, human? Do you blame me for caring less about you than I do about my own hide, my own SOUL?" It whirled around and brought its horrific face down to within an inch of his, staring into his eyes with its own, wild with rage and fear and despair, and the Coordinator knew then that, whatever else Smith was, it was utterly, completely mad. He refused to back down, to give an inch, to recoil from or react to the foul fear-stench and the stink of its breath. "I! WANT!! OUT!!!" it screamed.

Throughout the entire affair, the two sentries outside the door had had their guns out and not-quite-pointed at Smith; both had been carefully instructed beforehand not to do anything, unless the Coordinator specifically told them to do so, or the alien was foolish enough to make physical contact. His eyes remaining locked on Smith's, he put his hand out and waved at them to lower their rifles.

Finally, Smith broke eye contact and sagged, its hands on its uppermost set of knees, breathing like a bellows. It looked down at the floor for several long seconds before it finally straightened up to its full eight foot height, still panting. They stood there staring at each other.

"You can burn, human. I don't care if you all burn." It turned around, dismissing all of them, even though it could still see them all perfectly well with its back turned. "You made it, it's your hell. YOU burn in it."

The Coordinator stared at its retreating back impassively, his face inscrutable, before turning and leaving the apartment with the guards. The sound of the door locking from the outside made it pause for a moment, before it began cleaning up pieces of the table it had shattered.

2: Do Aliens Dream of Electric Gods?

(As written by RB)