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This is Rahul Kanakia's sixth appearance in Daily Science Fiction. He's published other stories, other places, including the young adult novel, Enter Title Here, and the young adult novel, We Are Totally Normal. due to be available in March of 2020.
We are tiny slugs the size of the tip of your pinkie, and we come in peace: all we want is to rent DVD copies of the final seasons of your fantastic historical documentary, Firefly, since the broadcast was interrupted when it reached us (and also the episodes were, we believe, aired out of order, though some of us think this was a deliberate artistic choice on your part).
We are a menage of monkey-like creatures--except that we've only got two heads to share between our three bodies--who are joined at the tails. And we've come to lay waste to your cities and perform crude sexual experiments on your women (and on your men, because we do not see gender. We didn't even know what it was, until you taught us, but now we cannot un-know the distinction. But it doesn't matter, because regardless of gender you are still worthless.)
We are silvery fish, about the size of your forearm, who have a second mouth on our bellies that we use to drain the streams of mercury that run beneath the dark oceans of our planet. We've heard that your seas are very cool, and also not full of mercury, and that sounded rather interesting to us so we booked a vacation tour. There are nine million of us on this ship (we got the group rate).
We are itty bitty worms who slither across the ground, eating sandals that we pluck from old women's feet, because the salts (and other less concrete nutrients) that have soaked into the leather thong that separates the overlord toe from its vassal toes is a delicacy that to us is, well, not indescribable, but rather, too exquisite to be laid out for your paltry imagination.
When our planet was young, we denuded it of trees and used them to build vast wooden spaceships that we sang into space with our powerful voices because--oh yeah, did I mention that we are whales? Not space-whales or some such nonsense; we are humpbacked whales. Very similar to the ones on your planet. Yes, you've been committing genocide all this time. Don't feel bad, though. The ones on your planet are terribly racist. Nazis, pretty much. Yes, if they had opposable thumbs, you'd have all been in concentration camps by now.
Nonetheless, we will make them your overlords.
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We have overlords, too. They are beings made of pure energy who ascended to the next plane aeons ago. Nowadays they're mostly occupied with the question of how to reverse entropy so that they can live forever, but sometimes they put on shiny metal suits and come to our planets and try to use their golden prongs to fuck hot babes.
It seems sad and desperate, but they tell us that it's very satisfying for them, on an emotional slash spiritual level, so we're now attempting the same.
(By now you're surely thinking: How can they be collective and yet so diverse? Surely the first-person plural pronoun cannot span such a massive gap in physiology and psychology. Well, you can keep on wondering, because the answer is very complicated and would surely bedevil your wrinkled little brain, Rahul.)
Every night for six years, tens of trillions of us would gather in your childhood bedroom and laugh at the faces you made while you masturbated. What I'm saying is that we are old friends, Rahul, and that we mean you no harm. I'm of course using "harm" in the spiritual sense, because in the physical sense there will actually be considerable torment.
We are here to impregnate you, Rahul.
Your stomach will swell with thirty gallons of green pus, and you will have to carry the tumescent mass in a sling. It will bubble and make strange noises, and when you pass gas the whole room will smell like sadness.
And then your torso will collapse in on itself, and a wormhole will form.
They won't even name the wormhole after you.
No one will remember your name. Not even us. Especially not us, actually, because we have no memory. Our past was taken from us a very long time ago, and although we've tried for infinity years to get it back, we still cannot find it, no matter where we look, and soon you will join us, Rahul, except by then you will be anonymous: instead of using your name, people will point and say "Hey, you." Yes, this practice is quite confusing, and no, it doesn't ever get easier.
Are you ready to join us, Rahul? Your answer doesn't matter, but we want to hear it anyway.
The End
This story was first published on Wednesday, January 15th, 2020
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