Week 2 Story: "My Sci-Fi Origin Story for the Moon"
The Silver Sphere
Setting: The Mother Ship (Codename: The Silver Sphere), 10,077 light years from Earth
"Ahhhh! God dammit! Vindigo! When are we going to have enough fuel to make another jump!?"
Turek barked. "I don't know sir! Please stop repeating stupid questions!" the 7 foot Vindigo
barked back up at Turek's menacing 7 1/2 foot tall figure.
Turek: Well are the systems receiving any dark matter or not!?
Vindigo: You know they are, because if they weren't, we'd all be dead right now! The systems are
active but they're processing speeds are too slow.
*Turek shook his bushy gray tail while rubbing his furry snout in contemplation.
Turek: Lögda! (Turek barked at the wolf-man sitting next to Vindigo) What percentage are the
systems at!?
*The black fur-coated Lögda sat quietly for a couple seconds while opening the database on his cold
metal screen. Once he had the info in front of him, worry struck his warm-blooded heart. First, with
his ears folded back over his head, he looked at the brown fur-coated Vindigo. Then, he looked past
him, towards Turek. The snarling gray mass had his patience exhausted.
Turek: Well!? Give me your full report Lögda!!
Lögda: Ahem. (clears throat) Sir, our systems need to be processing the dark matter at an accelerated
rate in order for us to have the ability to make another jump. However... (looks back at his screen
to stall the bad news) our systems are not only not moving fast enough... they're actually slowing
down.
Turek: What!? You mean they're actually decelerating!?
Lögda: Yes sir. (Breaks eye contact with Turek and nervously looks down at the dark metal floor)
*Rather than becoming more aggressive, Turek actually stopped to contemplate their situation. He
may have been a frightening captain to his crew. However, when it came to situations of momentous
importance, Turek was so cool-headed that it's as if there were no errors to be tended to at all. He
paced around the cold dark room. Lit only by the soft blue glows of Vindigo's and Lögda's screens.
Then, he halted and looked up passed the slant of the large metal super-computer in front of where
Vindigo and Lögda sat. There was a large three-paned window up there. Turek looked up and out at
the vast sea of flickering stars and rubbed his snout once more.
Turek: Wait for me.
*Turek ran out of the room. His heavy gray paws pounded against the metal floor with each step.
Vindigo: Sir! Where are you going!?
Turek: I'm going to fix this problem myself! Just wait for me!
*20 minutes passed. Indigo and Lögda were starting to worry. It was evident because both of them
had their ears folded back over their heads.
Lögda: Do you think we should go check on the... (Lögda's words were interrupted by the familiar
sound of paw-pounded metal)
*Turek came pouncing out of the pitch black hallway back into the control room.
Turek: I went down to the engineering room at the center of the ship. I got the problem all taken care
of.
Lögda: But sir, the center of the ship is 1,079 miles away! Our on-board hovercraft don't move very
fast so even if you took one there, that means you only had 10 minutes in the engineering room.
How would you have gotten the dark matter processor up and running so fast!?
Turek: Lögda, (snarls) I'm losing my patience again. I don't care about the technicals of the situation.
Especially now that I've fixed it. Now, give me your updated report on the system.
*Lögda turns back around to his screen and types in a quick code. As soon as the database pulls up
the information, Lögda's yellow eyes go wide in amazement.
Lögda: Sir! How did you get it fixed so fast!?
Turek: (Lets out a deep rumbling laugh) I told you. Always trust your Captain. Now! Let's make this
jump! How far out are we from our final destination?
Vindigo: (Squints at his blue screen) It appears that we're approximately 10,077 light years out, sir.
Turek: No bigger than our first jump. Well! what are you waiting for boys! Charge the ship up and
get us there now!
*Vindigo and Lögda charged up the 2,100+ mile diameter Silver Sphere that was their ship. All from
the microcosm of their 50 x 50 foot control room. There were thousands of other Wolf-men on board
the ship besides the three looking up and out of the control room window as the ship warped through
folded space-time. The long trip only took 2.001 seconds according to Lögda's screen and not a single
passenger on-board needed to so much as take a seat.
Turek: Yes! We're finally here!!
*Turek said this while looking out the control room window to behold the new view. No longer was it the vast void of interstellar space. Before them now, was a true visual feast. A small planet when compared to the size of their home world, but much more vibrant and colorful. This planet was bright blue and green in color. The Wolf-men knew the blue was ocean and the green, land. Which, despite what you may think, is not common sense for them. For their home-world is dark gray in color. Almost as dark as coal. Their "oceans" are not filled with a blue H2O compound, but rather, a viscous fluid made of sulfur and other unknown elements. It's almost as dark as the land, and so, from outer space, the "oceans" just appear to be raised-up plateaus.
Turek: Send down some hovercraft! We need to check on our seed.
Lögda: Way ahead of you sir.
*Just then, multitudes of large silver and purple hovercraft could be seen outside the window, dispatching from the ship and headed down to the small beautiful world.
Turek: Zoom in on our seed. I want to see how they're faring.
*Vindigo typed in a code on his screen and a bird's eye view pulled up in place of what was there earlier. All three occupants could see four-legged wolves roaming through forests and along streams as they hunted in packs.
Turek: (Let's out a low deep chuckle) Perfect. They've already learned how to form packs just like us.
Lögda: Yes, it's amazing. The biologists back home, who are watching this video feed live right now,
just told me that our seed should evolve to our level in only 10,000 years.
Turek: (Smiles) That's not long at all.
*Just then, the whole ship jolted to a stop.
Vindigo: (Gathers himself) Well that's never happened before.
Lögda: No it hasn't... (pulls up info on his screen) Oh my.
Turek: What!? What is it!?
Lögda: It appears that our systems have stopped processing dark matter. We're no longer contained in
our own gravitational lens, so we've been captured by the planet's gravity.
Turek: You're saying that we're stuck in orbit!?
Lögda: Y-Yes sir.
Turek: Ahhh! What are we to do now!?
Lögda: I don't know! What did you do to the processor when you were down in the engineering
room!?
Turek: I short-circuited both routers! It seemed that was going to be the quickest and easiest fix to get
our system to speed up it's processing quantities!
Lögda: Sir! You can't do that! Yes, shortening the circuits allows for faster processing but you're just
feeding more fuel into the system than it can process! The problem wasn't how much dark matter
we were taking in! It was our systems ability to synthesize it! You've overloaded the system!
Turek: Oh bite me Lögda! How was I supposed to know that! I'm a captain, not an engineer!
Lögda: Then you shouldn't have been down there in the first place!
Turek: We had a quota to follow!
Vindigo: (Barks) Each of you, shut up!! Our aggressive nature is what got us into this problem! It
won't get us out! Now, let's cool down and discuss a way to fix this.
Turek: I say we split up. Lögda, go down to the engineering room and help the engineers figure
something out. You know as much about the system as any engineer we've got on-board. I'll go to
the top deck and inform the missionaries of our situation. Vindigo, you stay here.
*With that, Lögda and Turek pounced out of the control room and went their separate ways. Months
passed without a solution being resolved. The system's dark matter processor was simply broken.
Years went by, and still, nothing was fixed. The dark matter processor didn't only help with
accelerating the Silver Sphere, it also kept air flowing for the passengers on board. Now, the air
supply was no longer being recycled. It wasn't even able to be contained in the ship without the
system running. So, as the years went by, the air was wearing thinner and thinner. After about a
century, some of the passengers started dying of suffocation. Nobody could take any of the hovercraft
down to the planet because the hovercraft were fueled by dark matter as well. Without the ability to
re-fuel, none of the grounded hovercraft had any use in coming back up to the ship either, nor could
they. If they went back up to the ship, they would not have enough fuel to get back down. So,
everybody was stuck in their respective positions. The Wolf-men stuck on-board the ship would howl
towards the planet and their lost brethren in sadness. Each night, the Wolf-men on the ground would
look up at the large Silver Sphere and howl back. Eventually, their seed (the four-legged wolves)
started to do this with them. 10,000 years went by and their seed evolved no further because, with the
two groups separated, they could no longer carry experiments back and forth. Wolf-men back on the
home-world couldn't do anything about the situation either. The construction of the Silver Sphere had
exhausted too many of their resources to rectify space travel. The hope was that the Silver Sphere
would harbor resources from other planets in addition to the missionary experimentation of their
seed. They simply put too many of their eggs in one basket.
Setting: Down on the planet
5 million years later...
*The Wolf-men's relationship with their seed was cut-off by the intervention of a newly evolved
species. Homo sapiens. They found the Wolf-men's seed to be a particularly good hunting
companion. However, both the Wolf-men and homo sapiens felt threatened by one another. In the
eyes of the homosapiens, the Wolf-men were too aggressive and just... frightening. From the Wolf-
men's perspective, the humans were too greedy, too hungry for change, and too intervening. The
Wolf-men loved nature while the homo sapiens' survival pitted them against it. Eventually, they
became too incompatible for one another. So they separated. The homo sapiens won custody over the
Wolf-men's seed while the Wolf-men themselves took to the wilderness. The homo sapiens developed
civilizations cut back from nature while domesticating the Wolf-men's seed.
The Wolf-men would spy on the whereabouts of the homo sapiens and their seed while managing
to remain elusive in the forests. Eventually, they became the stuff of myths and legends. The homo
sapiens came up with their own name for them. Were-wolves.
Every night, the four-legged wolves would do as their ancestors had done. As their ancient
ancestors had learned from the Wolf-men. They would look up at the now mineral-encrusted Silver
Sphere and howl out to their lost brethren.
*Author's Note: This story obviously rears off in a much different direction than any myths in the anthology. However, my inspiration for this story came from Origin Stories: The Moon. There are so many mythical lunar origin stories, so I figured, why not make a Sci-Fi one? I've always heard conspiracy theories that our moon was once a massive spaceship. I thought that, whether or not that sort of stuff is to be believed, it still makes for great science fiction! I pictured the moon being this large silver spherical mother ship that somehow got stuck in Earth's orbit and accumulated an encrusted layer of minerals over time as meteors crashed into it. The fact that wolves always howl at the moon made me think, if this were a spaceship, why would they howl at it? Somehow, I immediately connected this to were-wolves since they're a more outlandish concept. Then, I connected the dots and thought, what if I made were-wolves aliens whose ship was a large silver sphere that eventually became the moon that animals of the same nature howl at? And wa-lah! This whacky and fantastical Sci-Fi story was born!
Bibliography. "Origin Stories: The Moon" from Eastern Shores and Legends by Marie L. Shedlock
and Laos Folk-Lore by Katherine Neville Fleeson. Web Source
Oh, I am glad you had time to do your Myth-Folklore story, Ethan! I don't know if you noticed as you were writing but this is way way way over 1000 words; I didn't do a word count myself, but I can tell just from looking that this must be over 1000 words. Since the idea is that other people are reading and commenting on a couple of stories each week, this is more than I can ask them to read, but I am glad you got into your story! For next time, keep an eye on the length as you write. Writing something shorter is actually harder than writing something that is long, but it's also a great writing skill to work on!
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