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.”