Craig Chapter 5: The Advert

A white haired man in a short sleeve shirt walks toward the viewer across a golf course in what could be the Caribbean. He bends down to pick up a golf ball then looks up at the camera and smiles; his teeth are incredibly white, his accent mid-Atlantic.

Hi there! I’m Charles Benson, founder and majority owner of the Benson Group, but as an employee of one of the many companies in our great big family I’m sure you knew that already! You also know that we in Benson Group strive for excellence in all we do, from computing to mining, healthcare to construction, sanitation to space exploration! [Brightly lit images of handsome people performing these activities flash across the screen] But did you know than we are also the world’s largest producer of pork based products? That’s right! Pork is where this business started, why every time you eat a slice of bacon, or a mouth watering pork chop, or even a gelatine based sweet you are probably eating part of a Benson pig!

Why is he wearing a short sleeve shirt? The skin on his arms is like muslin and covered in tiny white hairs.

But there is always competition and we here at Benson are constantly trying to stay ahead of the game. That’s why I’m offering major rewards to any employees who come up with workable ways for us to corner the pork market once and for all, rewards including:

A new voice takes over, deeper, more American.

Bonuses, Pay Increases, Promotion, Extra Holiday! Eeexecutive Company Cars,

Craig Chapter 4: Preckselfflurt

The technology existed to make a computer’s speech entirely indistinguishable from that of humans but when tried this had generally had the effect of massively creeping people out, because it gave the impression that computers were just as intelligent as humans when in fact they were far, far more intelligent. All computers were now designed to speak in a slightly self satisfied way with a tinny robotic voice.

“Signs of sentience detected, do you wish to attempt interspecies communication?”

“Wait you mean the goo can think?”

“Affirmative, do you wish to attempt interspecies communication?”

Craig had decided to stick some sensor equipment into the goop to see what it actually was, but intelligence had been the furthest thing from his mind what with how basic a creature it looked. The ability to speak to other life forms had been invented several decades earlier, but after it was discovered that cats did actually want to kill and eat all humans and the slightly unsettling discovery that certain trees could think (and held an extremely superior attitude) the practice fell out of fashion outside of scientific circles.

“Well yes, affirmative, let’s hear what this thing thinks!”

“That thing looks horrible”

“x150?” (That was the computer’s name by the way)

“Yes Officer Henderson it’s so solid looking”

“You’re not making any sense x150”

“That was not I Officer Henderson that was the sample did it put me in this container?”

“Can you give it a different voice? I can’t tell the difference between you and it”

“This ship computer contains a free copy of my voice programme, on registering this product further voices can be acquired for the low price of Five Ninety Nine a month and…”

“Okay never mind just don’t talk while I’m communicating with the sample”

“Affirmative hello”

“Um hello, I’m… I’m… from earth?… do you have a name?”

Craig realised he should have probably read the manual on making first contact with new species.

“Greetings ‘from earth’ we are an aspect of that which is described as Preckselfflurt”

“No, no, I’m called Craig Henderson; the planet I come from is called earth”

“Ah we see Craig Henderson…”

“Call me Craig”

“We see Craig, why have you separated us and put us in a container?”

“Well I wanted to study you I didn’t realise you were intelligent”

“Preckselfflurt is incredibly intelligent and we contain an aspect of that”

“Wait, wait are you prekle… prekself… is that your name or something else’s?”

“Preckselfflurt is all and we are simply a part of it, we can feel we have been disconnected”

“Oh wow! Are you telepathic?”

“Of course not telepathy is tabloid nonsense. I don’t think you really get what we are saying here”

Craig had to admit that he didn’t and that talking to an alien species was a hell of a lot more difficult than he had anticipated. Not helped by the fact it was being done via the voice of a self satisfied computer. This was his big break though right? Validation of a life’s work? The thing that he would be

“Pig Slop”

The words hung for a few moments.

“Excuse me?”

“This is x150 Officer Henderson I have cut off the sample life form’s voice”

“That… pig slop?”

“An analysis of the materials comprising the sample showed that they would make an excellent dietary supplement for pigs I have already fed a sample to one of the ships pigs and –“

“YOU FED AN INTELLIGENT NEW LIFEFORM TO… we have a ships pig?”

“Several pigs, as well as cows, sheep, horses, newts…”

As x150 droned on providing a list of apparently every animal on earth Craig grew increasingly perturbed, not only because he was the ships biologist and no one had told him, not only because it seemed a computer was entirely capable of doing his job without him, not only because he despised his job, but because he had been serving on this ship for years and had never explored it enough to find the incredible menagerie that it apparently held.

“… and the pig rapidly showed increased production of the chemicals necessary for excellent bacon”

“I don’t care anymore x150! I am not going to let us harvest an intelligent, living, breathing” (actually he didn’t know if it breathed) “creature so we can make more delicious bacon!”

“There is a near 100% chance of promotion”

“What?”

Craig Chapter 3: Goop

Planet 2024XV871d was a disappointment for almost everyone on board because it was covered in water and that meant that getting at any of the minerals would be really fucking hard. Craig was in his element however. For the first time in his decade long career the call went out for “Exobiology Officer Henderson to come to the bridge” when they reached their destination. It was with some pleasure as he watched Captain Benson disgustedly tell him that preliminary scans had shown that 2024XV871d was absolutely swimming with organic material. Whilst all the geologists sat gloomily on the ship Craig was flying down to the planet practically every day. Even if most of it was cooped up a tiny submarine collecting samples the amount of time spent off the ship was liberating.

The only problem was that the underwater life was almost entirely gross. It might have been bias because he was one himself but Craig liked vertebrates. He especially liked frogs. Nothing on this planet had anything remotely similar to a backbone; instead the main form of life seemed to be sacks of goop. In fact saying they were sacks was quite frankly a misnomer because they were just formless lumps of goop and once he though that he had worked out which balls of goop were different animals they would just sort of flop into an entirely different type of goop. And then those balls would split off into different balls of goop.

At one point he found a thing that looked a bit like a tree but when he tried to take a sample it collapsed into a runny translucent slurry, full of flecks and veins like a cracked egg that hadn’t quite managed to become a bird, which slopped all over the submarine and into all the equipment. What had once been excitement about finding new life rapidly turned into a nightmare of constantly cleaning organic goo out of sensors, robotic joints, window seals, clothes, hair… everything. In the end he just started wiping what he could off the sub and into a bucket which he then poured into the sample chamber.

Craig Chapter 2: Space Travel is Time Travel

Most people who haven’t been on an interstellar journey assume that it is extremely exciting. I mean all the elements are there, you are going faster than the speed of light, and you get to go somewhere no-one has ever been before, and so on. This of course is a lie and space travel is in fact one of the most boring things that humankind has ever managed to come up with. I don’t understand physics and quite frankly the guys in engineering are so boring that I would never let them explain it to me, but the reason we can now go faster than light is something called “time dilation”. I don’t know what this means, I can explain what it does though.

When you get on the ship everything is normal, then the engine kicks in and all the stuff outside the window starts moving slower and slower until after about a day everything stops moving entirely. Also it all goes a bit blue for some reason. I can’t remember if time outside stops or time inside moves faster, but the second one is less terrifying to think about. The further you are going the longer you spend with time stopped (for this trip it was two months). After your time stuck like that there is a big red flash and you suddenly appear where you want to end up two months (or whatever) after you had first fired up the engine.

This means you spend two months with almost nothing to do, seeing only the same people who are on the ship with you and having to endure the same unmoving view out of the window. I would say that the window thing would make you go insane but apparently when they first started the ships didn’t have windows because they thought it would just be dull to look at (it is) and one year long trip ended up with everyone killing each other. I couldn’t do a year; the longest trip I ever took was five months. That was the time I found the slime mould. I’ll be honest it probably was just mud, in fact I know it was because I spent the entire five month journey back trying to make it do something to show it was alive. And it didn’t. I guess I just wanted to feel that I had managed to do something instead of wasting an entire year.

Some of the people on the ship spend most of the “journey” actually doing work, but most of us are scientists and we don’t really have anything to do when we are outbound. As the only biologist on a ship full of geologists and engineers I don’t have much in common with the rest of the crew and I spend most of my time reading or watching old movies. This next thing probably only confirms that Roxy was right and I am a loser, but the reason I went into space was that I used to love Star Trek, but after seeing about thirty dead rocks the “new life and new civilizations” bit pissed me off so much I ejected the lot of it into space.

Craig Chapter 1: Myxogastria

Craig hated parties because they always had a way of reminding him of the pointlessness of his existence. Okay perhaps existence was laying it on a bit thick, but at the very least they reminded him of how terribly unimportant his job was. The title “senior exobiological survey officer” made his position seem a bit interesting, or at the very least confusing enough to kick start a conversation, the problem was that they always went the same way:

“Wow… what does that mean?”

“Well I go to other planets to find aliens”

“Oh that’s impressive! Have you ever found any?”

“Err not really…”

“Not really?”

From there he would go onto explain how he’d once found something that was a bit like a slime mould but not really and it was generally at this point that the conversation trailed off and he started to doubt the relevance of his life’s work.

Tonight was the Blast Off party for the latest expedition. Blast Off parties were a bit of an anachronism, I mean people went into space every day right? But it was one of those traditions which didn’t die and which make life terrible for everyone. Craig had to admit he was feeling particularly maudlin about tonight’s party because Rosanna Clark was stood at the other end of the room. Craig and Rosanna had dated briefly for two years while they were at university, but had broken up when he decided that he wanted to go and look for mould on rocks in space and she had decided to go to the Amazon and actually find some interesting new animals. Which she had done repeatedly to the point that she was now actually quite famous and was apparently about to be the star of some new nature programme.

The other reason for their breakup was that he had accidently slept with her best friend.

The room was actually quite small, just some crappy conference room at the company headquarters with a bar at one end and a buffet table at the other, but through intense scowling Craig had managed to creating a patch of calm for him to get annoyed by the fact that no one was talking to him and instead were all crowding round her. Because of the tiny size of this cheap little room he could hear her telling stories about where she was flying off to film next, the cool and useful things she’d discovered, how hard it was to work with a holographic version of David Attenborough, talking frogs. It was making him too sick to drink so he just leant against the wall staring into and idly swirling the rum and coke with a straw. Just as he was deciding he could easily sneak out she suddenly materialised in front of him.

He was annoyed that he still found her attractive. Beautiful in fact. He thought about looking for imperfections, an out of place strand of her long curling black hair, but he knew it was a futile effort.

“Craig I didn’t see you there” (lies) “are you on this mission?”

“You know I am Roxy. Why are you even here?”

“Don’t call me Roxy darling. Ray Benson invited me if you must know”

Ray Benson was the son of Charles Benson head of Benson Interstellar. He was the ship’s captain as well. Craig’s boss. Well he assumed that was who she meant.

“Do you mean Ray Benson as in son of Charles Benson the head of Benson Interstellar, and the captain e.g. my boss?”

“You mean i.e. Craig” (did he?) “and yes of course that Ray Benson. We’re dating. Didn’t you know?”

Craig’s heart sank into his guts. I mean the fact that Rosanna was vastly more successful than him was already shitty enough but. Wait a second.

“Wait a second I thought we broke up because I was going to space and now you’re dating a man who works in space?”

“We broke up because you slept with my best friend Craig”

“I thought that happened after the space thing?”

“It didn’t.”

The pause that followed was so awkward that it was almost certainly pregnant.

Whatever that meant.

“Ray told me about the mud you found.” (Definitely the most venomous sentence one could say with the word mud in it)

“It wasn’t mud Rosanna; it was more like a slime mould.”

“It wasn’t alive. Mould is alive, mud isn’t.”

“It’s alien. It’s hard to tell if it’s alive or not, aliens work differently than us. I assume. It probably just lives very slowly, so it’s hard to notice if it’s alive.”

“You’re a loser Craig.”