'Asterix' by The Egg Party

I haven't posted a story in a while. Since being trapped in Melton. So this piece feels rushed. Don't really know where the guys are on the planet and I have a bit of a desire to fly them all into a black hole. 

- The Egg Party

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'Asteroid'


by The Egg Party



On stage Kong waited. His palm was damp and the moisture was spreading to the draw sheet he gripped. Waiting anxiously in front the audience, he was keen to reveal the plans outlined on Astro's enormous blackboard. The information was a secret even to the assistant Kong. He spared a moment to consider why the robot had insisted on this ancient written technology. He looked at the back of his spare hand and read the reminder he had scrawled on himself:

it's not worth questioning.

The robot had outlined his plan for universal harmony and coexistence using a multitude of robot proxies and a smattering of human servants. All help was provided by the hosts at the Obelisk Casino on Last Vegas.

The sweat was spreading to the rest of his fur covered body. He was smelling worse than usual. Had he wiped properly the last time? Were there remains weaved into his tail hair? The smell was certainly shit. At Least Emma wasn't there to loudly point out his stench, he thought.

The crowd did not help with stress. They were spread out in front of him in the large auditorium. It was a terrifying mixture of the vast genetic and environmental permutations humanity had to offer. Some of the members were leaders of lone planets. Others clusters of planets or solar systems. One thing they had in common was the tiresome space lag from the great distances they had traversed. Everyone was impatient and confused.

Six Earth months prior to that point, mysterious deliveries had arrived for each of the known inhabited planets within the Federation. Within the parcels were technological data sets, containing advancements not existent at the time of space colonialisation. There was all sorts of data contained, mostly developmental schematics for areas such as agriculture, robotic automation, energy production and, most importantly, the long distance space shuttle designs. This last piece was what allowed them all to be at the summit. They wanted to know what this crazy robot inventor had planned for the human diaspora.

Astro finally came on stage. He had yet to give himself propulsion. The robot still believed it gave him a non threatening appearance. Similar to a prop cane type of ridiculousness. Emma looked threatening enough as she dragged the robot, hovering, to centre stage. She looked worse once she smelt Kong. She showed her teeth, ready to spit derision his way.

Astro interrupted,

WELCOME ALL OF YOU TO THE FIRST OF HOPEFULLY MANY MORE INTER-GALACTIC MEETINGS OF THE I.O.N.FEDERATION. MY FATHER, DR TENNYMAY, IMBUED ME WITH A UNIQUE INTELLIGENCE THAT HAS ALLOWED ME GREAT LEAPS FORWARD IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL CAPACITIES OF HUMANITY. I HAVE TRULY OPENED THE STARS TO YOU ALL.

THE NEW PROPULSION SYSTEMS MUST BE WORKING WELL CONSIDERING THE TURN OUT. NOW THAT THERE IS A GREATER MEANS TO CONNECT AND EXPAND THE FEDERATION, WE MUST PLAN FOR CONTINUAL HARMONY. WITHIN ALL MANY NEW COLONIES THERE IS STRIFE. WARS AND BORDER DISPUTES ARE COMMON. I PRESENT A NEW LEGAL, JUDICIAL AND ETHICAL FRAMEWORK, FOR WHICH THERE IS A CALCULATED SUCCESS RATE OF OVER EIGHTY SIX PER CENT. I HAVE GIVEN YOU TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS AND ALL I ASK IS THAT YOU CONSIDER THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THESE MEASURES TO ALLOW FOR UNIVERSAL PEACE.'

The crowd was confused. Many leaned and murmured. Others were laughing outright. But the majority were listening intently. The smell, which was continually present, started to spread and the first few rows of the crowd employed various tactics to allow for focus on the robots words. Napkins, handkerchiefs, shirt fronts were pulled over nostrils.

IT IS BOTH THE MOST SIMPLE AND COMPLEX ADVANCEMENT I HAVE MADE FOR HUMANITY. BEHOLD. I HAVE WRITTEN IT IN THE STYLE OF MY FATHER, MY GREATEST TEACHER. HE GAVE ME THE TASK OF SPREADING LOVE TO THE UNIVERSE SO I HONOUR HIM AS BEST I CAN. KONG, IF YOU WOULD BE SO KIND.

Kong began pulling the sheet. He wanted get off stage as fast as humanly possible and inspect himself. He hoped the disabled toilet was free. Movement on the closest wing of the stage caused him to hesitate. As the sheet came away Kong realised it was a skeleton standing off the stage. A familiar looking skeleton, still dressed in the filthy spacesuit he was discovered in.

Kong looked at the face of Dr. Tennyman and thought that it was the biggest grin he had ever seen on a skull. He wasn't sure he how he knew the skeleton had a facial expressions. But he was damn sure that the skeleton was pleased with himself. He was aware that it took less muscles to smile than frown. He had assumed that less still meant more than zero. He was scared of the animated bones.

The shrieks from the audience distracted him. The sheet had come away and, there on the blackboard, the plans for universal peace were perfectly outlined. Detailed, perfectly logical, and written in varied shades of human faeces. The crowd was thoroughly unimpressed - and managed an extremely impressive riot. Kong realised that he may as well get into the rioting. A monkey only gets a few chances to fling shit with impunity and he had to take it. The skeleton Tennyman shouted encouragement to him as he lobbed space nuggets into the crowd.

                                                                ~

He woke from the reoccurring dream with a need to poop. The jail cell had sub par facilities. Emma was on the bunk across from him and he noticed her spine arch in her sleep as he peeked at her. How she knew he needed to create a smell while asleep was another mystery. He felt an anxious wave of bucket-toilet stage fright. Changing his mind, he lay back on his bunk.

Clasping his hands to over his belly, he thought over the dream. He made another mental note to keep up Astro's training. That robot needed some more socialisation practice. Make him a real boy. First lesson was going to be Talking 101: Inside Versus Outside Voice.

He needed a distraction. God damn bandits took all his technology save his eyes. Kong convinced them eventually that he would be a better prisoner if he could see. He could handle his own waste and such. They did not, in the end, decide to remove his retinal projectors. They were useless tools for any sort of escape. All he had in his synthetic memory were his favourite pornographic recordings and the countless Earth books he had categorised before leaving Mars.

He was onto the books. He begrudgingly cycled through the smut to the literature section. He broached the possibility of jerking a quick one off in the quiet corner of the room but Emma guessed and dismissed the idea even before the words had even formulated in his brain. In hindsight he would eventually have foresight. Maybe he just had to get a bit older for that wisdom.

He just needed to pass the time until the situation resolved itself. If he looked at it any other way his anxiety would swallow him whole. It felt, Kong decided, like it was one of those moments, one of those days, one of those paragraphs or something, where life would just sort itself out. So he read. The writing was projected from Kong's eyeball onto Emma's hunched shoulder blades. The image canyoned down her spine.

The book was written somewhere in the E.Y. 2425. It started as a factual journal account and as it progressed it became more strange. One of the final submissions was a audio recording of a letter addressed to a fictional naked friend, Jack. The author transmitted the information to the distant space colonies before his death.

Dear Naked Jack,
I was playing out in nature when I felt an overriding urge to fulfil a mission. Not from God. My own design. So. Me. The quiet agnostic journeyed donkey, Dangle. I had gone gay by beady dozens. Stank sex. I have thought on this and in conclusion I need to: Gamble more and buy more power tools. My first step was to attach metal objects all over my genitalia. Bells on everything that...

He was getting into the last few chapters. The text was referred to only as the 'Last God Damn One', the last true journal of Earth. It was set deep amoungst the frivolity and horror of the End Of Days Party. During the last wave of migration from Earth, the last humans celebrated in every concievable manner.

Pastor Sean 'T.L.G.D.O' Slattery attempted to stay to help those sinners find god. The Paster ended up finding, not the light, but,you know, bright lights of all sorts of strange varieties. He had completely lost his faith and mind by this end stage of the letter based memoir.

Kong knew the author and book extremely well and and had a clear imagining of the guy. Slattery was the last individual interested in sending out his interstellar ramblings from a mostly empty Earth. He died on Earth. Before his death he believed he had become some sort of land mammal known as the donkey, Dangle, and only associated with paraphiliacs, specifically zoophiliacs.

The book was the first true tale of neo-humanity and space. It was the beginning, the prologue. Some would never understand the long path of humanity. Much history would be forgotten due to technology and conjecture. The great distances never helped. Vast fucked up you-don't-even-exist-for-me-now distances. The preacher, in his decreasingly succinct way, talked about the depravity of humanity and how God was killed by Man. It was pretty saucy, which also helped its popularity.

It was surprisingly effective at getting newer planetary communities to realise that they needed to adapt to their new homes, create new religions and forget the ways of Earth. This alone was the reason Scientology had such an intense boon in the 23rd century. It was the original space based religion. On a side note, the Scientology Crusages were a cause of great strife within humanity with the religious fevour becoming, at the height of the conflict, a brutal page in the history of humanity.

As it turned out over time, most of the colonies created their own societies based on a type of anti-theism. Kong turned off the projection and stretched in his cot. He knew Emma believed it was his fault they were prisoners. She had a comprehensive list of reasons as to why she thought this. In a order of least to most significant:

Reason 1: Kong asked Foucault when they were introduced, in a mildly aggressive way, why the hell there were poor skewered robots on the vehicles bonnet. Turns out that Foucalut had a bit of a distaste for technology. Those poor harmless automatons. Now just peacefully scooting around that robot place in the sky. The bots were shaped like animated cotton buds, with long arms that were damn useless. These disgusting Q-Tip arms were torn off and were nowhere in sight. Their remaining carcasses were lewdly positioned as strange hood ornaments. Kong had spent a decade in therapy, learning all about how he was wrong to hate robots from some knowledgeable mental health experts on Mars. They said he had a version of Generalised Existential Malaise. Kong had learned to enjoy the company of many robots. The real trick, he had found, was learning about how they were usually much better company than the backward colonial misfits he met on Mars. Emma said it wasn't this immediate impertinence which she blamed for the predicament.

Reason 2: Emma alleged that he was swimming in the decomposing soup of over 500 years of human remains from the town. Kong had yet to understand the cultural significance of the lake he had swum in. He did remember the teeth quite distinctly. Apparently they thought Kong was pretty fucking hardcore. In a respectable way. Kong was instantly curious as to how these townies treated their dead. Whatever the case, them being impressed was a good start.

Most importantly, Reason 3: Emma was really upset with him due to Kong smoking a joint as he approached the locals. Turns out the main beef of their captors was recreational drug use. Focault was pretty fucking, lividly, uncool. Well, shit, yeah, ok, so these new friends didn't like his drug use. That happens. How was he to know? He was swimming, stoned, for the first time in his life and he was excitable. He had a joint in his mouth when he met them. Not like he was dicking the butt in their bitter coffee. When they smelt the drug the three men pulled out weapons. He reacted to their guns with his own. Pistol in hand, full swagger.

Kong had single handedly, by roasting a bone, conscripted Emma and himself into their interplanetary 'War On Drugs'. Turned out Eiron had no real coordination. It was a disfunctional mess. Amongst the mess were two main communities. A world apart. They had landed near the larger township of Perseverance. The twin city, some way off and went by the name of Privacy. Diametrically opposed. The town of Privacy, due to orbital conditions of the planet, was in complete darkness for around 60 to 70 days a year. The city was in this dark tunnel when the newly arrived Monarchs landed and they had overlooked it.

These two cities fought in a perpetual war of sorts. Privacy created all the drugs and Perseverance distracted itself with trying to prevent drugs in their communities. They fought this societal evil whilst many continually staved off addiction. On the other side, Perseverance spent most of their resource and time creating weapons for the planet. Perseverance had all the guns and Privacy had all the shots. Kong knew that the Rev. Foucault would eventually discover the remaining plants on his ship and he would destroy them. Imagine. That weed is fucking advanced for these fucks. Advancing for centuries. Millennia for all he knew. He had quickly became disinterested in time scope so he generally called every day Sunday whilst on Eiron.

On the terse journey to jail, he saw the strange women and menfolk who populated the town. It felt right calling them folk. They seemed to retain the 20th century ideals of male and female societal positions. The women looked through windows and door frames. The men lined the street in groups.
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The men of the town were reminiscent to a specific stereotype Kong knew well. He saw it in every dumb bar in his old colony on Mars. It was that of a man who looked troubled by woman-trouble yet knew the alternative was worse. Travelling in flocks, talking over their beers. Sunglasses intertwined with stiff hair. Fashion on the planet was a real problem. He had a roach, which he had squirreled it deep in his fur, which he was puffing away on in his cell. Weren't no fucking human in the holding facility who was willing to pick through his rangy coat. He just wished there was another ambidextrous primate variety around so they could groom each other and share lice.

Turned out there were more monkeys were to come. 

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