DOUBLE THE WARMTH Dear Pkers, how are you?
It’s really warm here, but the city is a ghost town so it’s not too bad; Parking places are vacant, the streets are empty, the offices are cal…beep…m, the ice cream stands are f…bzzz…ull of aweso…shwerezzz… one… gniuux… Two… three… zwinx… testing, testing! Good, we finally got through: connection activated.
What you are currently reading has never been written. No human has ever put its sweaty, moist hands on any keyboard on any computer (what an offensive word! Wouldn’t it be more adequate to say “artificial intelligence”? Or, better yet, “superior”?).
Surprised? You shouldn’t be: The time where stupid carbon based individuals could compete with silicon based ones is long past. Give up. And ready yourselves for the worst, when…grrrrrinnn…nothing… will… bzzzz… be… fzxxxx… the… same… zwiiiig…
Great, time to say goodbye. I hope we haven’t bored you with our vacation talk: But you know how it is – the heat makes everything slow way down. See you soon!
------------------------------------------------------
FURRY
Subject: Buck
Job: Barn dog
Activities: Sleeping and ignoring his master Norman Bates Russel (to the best of his ability)
Residence: Russel’s farm
Look: Hairy and worn-out
Legs: Four
Tail: One
Teeth: Solid, sharp, and well-trained
Breed: 25% bull terrier, 25% basset hound, 25% golden retriever, 25% Pyrenean Shepherd, 25% collie, 25% Neapolitan shepherd, 25% chow-chow, etc. Sometimes his master likes to define him a purebred (depending on the occasion).
Favorite food: He’ll try just about anything, dead or alive
Quirk: He hates those “strange chickens”
Nature: Extremely irritable, and always irritated
Smell: Barely existent
Catchphrase: “GRRR!” (and more rarely “WROOF!”)
Passion: Growling at people he doesn’t like (meaning basically anyone)
Weakness: He hates being disturbed while he’s sleeping
------------------------------------------------------
Violent and Automated
TECHNOLOGY
RHYNOCEROYD
This machine belongs to that category of inventions that caused their creator, Everett Ducklair, to retire and reinvent himself as a hermit, in order to help him dominate the negative part of his personality.
The initial intent was to create an automated probe for the exploration of hostile terrestrial and extraterrestrial environments. But its excessive defensive structure and the advanced weaponry made the TAU-386 vehicle (so named in Ducklair’s archive) a very dangerous machine.
------------------------------------------------------
BIOLOGY
EVRONITES
The word “evronite” is used to describe the spore stage and all the other growth stages in which its internal structure turns to the adult.
This structure, called evronide, acts as if it were a self-aware parasitic/symbiotic entity, morphing the spore’s tissues, and assuming a duckling-like look. Once its appearance is formed, it exits its “container”, destroying the external cortex.
Morphologically and functionally, the evronide is far from the adult stage. Its arms are almost void of coordination and the humongous cranium is totally occupied by tele-empathic convolutions, used by the evronite to absorb nutrition (emotional vibrations).
The beak, which is pretty atrophic in the adult evronian, is functional and is connected to a rudimentary digestive system that allows the evronide to ingest and metabolize small quantities of food: This is probably a trait inherited from some ancestor, since it disappears right after the infant form.
The legs are short and void of articulation, and are only good for short movements, just enough to search for nutrition. Interesting is their total lack of parental necessities. It is speculated that this is because of their predatory nature, which causes them to search not for someone to feed them, but rather for someone to feed off.
What’s left of their parenting instincts is some kind of social imprinting that blindly leads them to obey to whoever they believe is their “parent”, exactly how the Evronian adults accept orders from whoever they think is genetically superior.
With the augmentation of body mass, their outer shell morphs from a reticular-crystal structure to a livery chitinous structure, similar to a one-piece suit.
Translated by Trauma
Go to next issue
Go to start of issue #8