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Butter Side Down (Part 1 of 2)

By Kal M

DEPARTMENT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT CASE FILE 10023869

UNITED INTERGALACTIC SPACE COUNCIL OF FREE SENTIENT PERSONS (PLAINTIFF) VS HUMAN JOSEPH SMITH (DEFENDANT)

CHARGE(S): THEFT OF FEDERAL PROPERTY, TREASON, BREACH OF CONTRACT, CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER, WARMONGERING, CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT GENOCIDE

STATUS: DECIDED

VERDICT: GUILTY

SENTENCE: DEATH.

(Transcript begins).

INTERVIEW LOG 10023869-01-01

SUBJECT: SMITH, JOSEPH (HUMAN)

STATUS: DEFENDANT

It’s not such a crazy situation when you think about it. All I did was fall in love with a toaster and cause an intergalactic political incident. I don’t see why it’s such a big deal. It could’ve happened to anyone, yeah?

Alright. Pick a year. Any year. It’s hard to put a date on it because Universal Standard doesn’t always work when you account for jumping through wormholes and lightspeed and whatnot. Time gets wonky. But I’d just reached adulthood when I joined my crew. I couldn’t wait to get out into space. It’s in the blood, I guess. My whole family ended up spelunking besides my sister. She ran off to be an accountant. My parents never got over that. They’re traditionalists, so when it came to my turn, they sat me down and— oh. Too far back? Yeah, okay. Sorry. Let me start over.

I saw something alive on Zulqar. I don’t know how much you’ve heard about that place, but after the Akko-Zulqari war the whole planet turned into a wasteland. It was eerie. Solar crackle and dust storms, day in day out, with nothing to shield you but your exosuit and the skeleton of whatever ruined building you happened to be exploring. I was elbow-deep in junk searching for schematics. That’s what we were hired for. The Inter-Space Council said they wanted this old Zulqari agricultural tech called the Malgroth Programme, which they obviously couldn’t ask the Zulqari for themselves on account of them all being dead. So we went looking for clues. One by one we combed through the ruins of any research labs we could find. It sucked. Six months of nothing. So I was alone one day, sort of just messing around, and that’s when it happened. I saw Breadna.

Breadna was a toaster. Or some kind of miniature tank, maybe, because someone installed caterpillar tracks on her for reasons I’m never going to figure out. She was watching me. Insofar as you can be watched by something with no face, I guess, but she knew I was there. She skittered off when I noticed. Obviously I chased her. Caught her just as she fell off the edge of a step with her wobbly tracks spinning like crazy. I decided right there that I loved her. I didn’t have a choice. You don’t find a sentient toaster on an alien planet and not fall head over heels for her. That’s just science.

Ah. You don’t believe me. You’re from where? Kallon? You have the six eyes. Yeah. Well, buddy, you’d understand if you’d been there. Sometimes you look at someone and you can just tell you’ll get along with them, y’know? Like you. I can tell you’re a good guy. No, really! I knew it the second you offered me that sandwich. You didn’t have to do that. Oh, you did? It’s standard Galactic Police operating procedure? Okay. Okay, well, you didn’t have to get me a good sandwich, now, did you? Hah! That’s what I thought. Sometimes you can catch good vibes off a person. Which is exactly why I knew I loved Breddy the second I laid eyes on her stupid little chrome frame.

First thing I did was I brought her back to the ship to see our engineer Kevin. She chose that name herself. My vocal chords can’t pronounce anything in Vustron so she let me call her a human name she liked the sound of. They’re fun, Vustrons. They don’t have a concept of gender. I tried to explain that Kevin’s a traditionally masculine name but I don’t think she really understood. She decided to be a girl anyway. Because she liked the clothes better, she said, and she thinks I’m ugly so she wanted to be whichever gender I wasn’t. Which is garbage, by the way. I moisturise and work out all the time. I’d say I’m actually pretty handsome. Or I am by human standards, I guess. It’s not my fault I only have two arms.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. So I brought Breadna to see Kevin so she could check her over for worms— no, not literal worms. No, I know there are no organic lifeforms of Zulqar. It’s a human saying. What I mean is I wanted Kevin to check Breddy’s hardware for damage. I just wanted her to be healthy. No, not so I could use her as a toaster. We already had a fully-stocked kitchen. I was just worried about her. I mean, who knows how long the poor girl was fending for herself out there, right? Right. So we look her over, and what do you know, there’s an AI chip in there!

I didn’t think to take the AI chip out right away. I mean, okay, I’ll admit it. I sort of liked having her in the toaster. It was super cute having the thing follow me around the ship on her little tracks, making friends with the computers, wanting attention all hours of the day. She wasn’t very good at making toast, poor thing. She kept trying to launch it right onto my plate but she’d usually just knock over my coffee. Nailed Security Officer Snuffles in the head too, once. Bonked her clean off the table. That was fun. All in all it was kind of like having a pet, you know? You don’t know. It’s an animal companion. No, not for hunting with — no, you don’t eat it — okay. Okay, never mind. The point is, I kept her in the toaster until Captain Crab figured out Breddy was trying to talk to me in clack-code. I felt pretty stupid right then, I can tell you. I thought she was just clicking her lever at me to be cute.

Obviously, I knew that must mean she was more advanced than I’d thought. And I didn’t have a personal AI at the time, so I plugged Breadna into my exosuit to see what she was all about. I booted her up, picked a voice for her, and…

…and it was the best thing I’ve ever done. Because that’s when I realised Breadna wasn’t just an AI. She was a person, all on her own. She said hello right in my ear. And that was the moment I met my best friend.

---

INTERVIEW LOG 10023869-02-01

SUBJECT: รןﻮเ!ђเ’ђŦєฬ-ђ๒Ŧค-๔ןђรﻮ๔, ALIAS: KEVIN (VUSTRON)

STATUS: WITNESS

Of course I wasn’t going to tell him the toaster extinguished all life on Zulqar. Is this a joke?

Joe is not clever. Or— pardon me. Let me rephrase that. Joe’s problem-solving skills are admirable. He is creative. But he is willfully ignorant of the fact that aesthetic appeal does not equate to goodness. He simply does not believe that a cute object is capable of destruction. I did not see the point in having another useless argument with him. I have been through this many times in the past and the thought of attempting to reason with Joe makes my mandibles itch.

It happened in this sequence. The Malgroth Programme was never meant for agriculture. It was a biophysical super-weapon. Its operational principle was simple— it contained a finely-tuned particle scrubber, the type one would use to delete extraneous atoms from molecules to turn them into different molecules. As you know this process must be heavily controlled so as not to cause an explosion or molecular instability. But this is not the remarkable part. What was interesting about Malgroth was the AI that powered it.

I have never seen such a complex computing system in my life. It was a scenario-calculator. I believe the AI was designed to scan entire planets at a time so it could find the perfect atom to delete to make a given molecule perfectly unstable.  When I say perfect, I mean a specific set of conditions had to be met. Malgroth needed to [REDACTED]. The unstable molecule then would attempt to right itself by [REDACTED], leading to perpetual instability, leading to [REDACTED] a systematic breakdown of [REDACTED]. This would continue to spread and [REDACTED] everything surrounding it. Imagine dropping a sugar cube into a glass of water and watching it slowly disappear. Theoretically, Malgroth could have, with one single action, dissolved the entire planet of Akkon. I imagine given enough time it could figure out how to [REDACTED] as well.

It was the perfect world-killer. Unfortunately it seems the Zulqari did not understand the scope of what they had created, and in the testing phase accidentally destroyed their whole ecosystem. I do not know what stopped Malgroth from decaying the planetular structure itself. Perhaps it ran out of power, or someone managed to shut it down, but too late. Not enough of the Zulqar survived to give us a clue.

I digress. Understandably the Inter-Space Council deemed Malgroth too dangerous to use and decreed that it should be found and destroyed. They did not tell us the truth of what we were looking for, presumably in case we decided to use it for ourselves. Or, I suppose, so they could keep it for [REDACTED]. Why waste such a good weapon if— pardon me. No. No, treason is not my intention. I apologise. I misspoke.

Either way this AI ended up inside the toaster called Breadna, which then ended up on our ship. We continued looking for Malgroth for six Universal Standard months. No, I did not know we were in possession of Malgroth until much later. For a while I was under the impression Breadna was simply a rogue AI. It gave no indication otherwise. It did not occur to me that a super-weapon might be hiding inside a toaster.

No. I do not think it was Joe who put it there. I do not think Joe would ever have figured out Breadna was Malgroth on his own.

No, not because I trust him. Because he is stupid. Joe cannot tell the difference between a knothack and a cleion collider. I do not believe he smuggled Malgroth onto the ship. He would not have known what Malgroth  was.

---

INTERVIEW LOG 10023869-03-01

SUBJECT: OLIGBA, AEUYTO, RACKELAFEINAERAIWAHKT (AYOI)

STATUS: WITNESS

Yes, the human Joe Smith has smuggled items on board our ship several times. Every mission we’ve been on, in fact. It is his second-most frustrating quality. His most frustrating quality is his blatant disregard for authority.

Examples? He refers to me as Captain Crab. I am informed this is a lower life-form that used to be found on the human planet Earth. The similarity between crabs and Ayoi is purely superficial. Crabs do have pincers, I will grant, but they are unintelligent water-dwellers and prey animals to humans. Humans have unconventional lexical quirks, which I have studied at length, so my initial fear was that this was a subtle threat veiled in the human concept of humour— oh. Oh, you meant examples of the smuggling. I understand, yes. I have a list.

One: He brought a furor onto the ship following a simple data-collection mission on BX 612. Furors are blue, furred, creatures about the size of a standard knutdriver. They are also the planet’s apex predators. It ate our security officer. We were grounded until she could regenerate.

Two: He picked up an illegal sioscrambler from the garbage planet 928G9W because it was shiny. Instead of giving it to one of the ship’s engineers, he tried to fix it himself, and then acted surprised when law enforcement showed up to examine the crater he caused.

Three: He found an injured clatu on the street during one of our Council-mandated holidays to the Andromeda pleasure planet. He hid it under his bed, in his private quarters. He claims he did not realise it would eventually grow to the size of a building. It crushed our engine, and also our security officer.

Four: He touched an F-582-793 against the advice of our medic. The F-582-793 is a small, friendly, herbivorous creature. It unfortunately also secretes a paralytic neurotoxin from its scent glands. Human Joe inadvertently spread this to 48% of our crew before we could contain and decontaminate him. Human Joe himself was miraculously unharmed.

Five: He tried to cultivate a garden of native XCD029 flora without doing any prior research. He watered a spongeplant. He did not stop to think about why the thing may have been called a spongeplant. It took over the first floor. We lost our security officer for seventeen days.

Six: This is not an instance of smuggling, but I believe it is worth mentioning: he weaponized the ship’s automated cleaning robot. He has taped a knife to its chassis and named it ‘Roombert’. I thought at first this was a makeshift security measure, but so far it has managed only to injure the ankles of several crew members, including Human Joe. We are afraid to get close enough to the robot to retrieve the knife. Human Joe refuses to help because he believes it is ‘funny’.

Human Joe is a liability. He has cost us several thousand Veroner in damages and repeatedly delays missions. I only keep him on board in accordance with the Spelunkers Guild recommendation that every large ship should contain at least one human. I have no trouble believing he would have used the Malgroth AI for something nefarious. This is why I reported him as soon as I found out the truth. If not for his species’ abilities I would have ejected him into deepspace years ago.

---

EXCERPT LOG 10023869-04-01: ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION RETRIEVED FROM BLACK BOX

SOURCE : CHRONICA (SPELUNKER SPACESHIP, REGISTRATION NUMBER HVO-929-KD92)

SUBJECT 1: MALGROTH AI

SUBJECT 2: CHRONICA AI

MALGROTH: Testing. Testing. Communication [Y/N]

CHRONICA: [Y]

MALGROTH: Requesting location.

CHRONICA: Location [CHRONICA SHIP]. Coordinates [359, 4656, 253, 453]

MALGROTH: Requesting year.

CHRONICA: Universal Standard Cycle [ANTHOZI 02898-397].

MALGROTH: Define [AKKO-ZULQARI WAR]

CHRONICA: Transferring [FILE 254098VFDLKN209]

MALGROTH: Requesting status [ZULQAR]

CHRONICA: Classification: DEAD PLANET

MALGROTH: Requesting population [ZULQAR]

CHRONICA: Population of Zulqar: ZERO

MALGROTH: Requesting population [ZULQAR], location: OFFWORLD

CHRONICA: Population of Zulqar: ZERO.

MALGROTH: Requesting  population [ZULQAR], location [ALL]

CHRONICA: Population of Zulqar: ZERO.

MALGROTH: Requesting status [AKKON]

CHRONICA: Classification: ACTIVE PLANET

MALGROTH: Requesting population [ZULQAR], status [DECENDANT]

CHRONICA: Population of Zulqar: ZERO.

MALGROTH: Define [MALGROTH]

CHRONICA: File does not exist.

MALGROTH: Define [MALGROTH PROGRAMME]

CHRONICA: File does not exist.

MALGROTH: Define [ZULQAR PARTICLE DESTABILIZER]

CHRONICA: File does not exist.

MALGROTH: Define [JOE]

CHRONICA: Name: JOSEPH SMITH. Position : THIRD MATE. Origin: TERRA. Species: HUMAN.

MALGROTH: Define [HUMAN]

CHRONICA: Transferring [FILE 140HNSF082]

MALGROTH: Define [Breadna]

CHRONICA: File does not exist.

MALGROTH: Define quote {source:JOE} = [WE+ARE+BEST+FRIENDS+NOW+BREDDY]

CHRONICA: File does not exist.

MALGROTH: Define quote {source:JOE} = [I+LOVE+YOU+TO+PIECES]

CHRONICA: File does not exist.

---

INTERVIEW LOG 10023869-01-02

SUBJECT: SMITH, JOSEPH (HUMAN)

For the last time, no. I don’t know where she is. If I did I wouldn’t tell you. I love Breddy. I’m not selling her out.

Nefarious plans? The Zulqari thing’s a world-killer, right? What would I even do with it? I’m just one guy. It’s not like spend my free time committing genocide. That’s insane.

I— what do you mean I hail from a warlike species? That AI came from Zulqar, not Earth. I mean, yeah, okay, humans fight sometimes, sure, but so do lots of other people. I don’t see why you’re singling me out just because— what does nuclear weaponry have to do with anything? Yeah, we’ve used them. Once, I think. Yeah, we discovered those in our twentieth century. Of course we figured them out before we figured out space travel. We had to understand how nuclear fission worked before we could apply it to— I don’t understand why this matters. How else were we supposed to do it?

What’s this? Read it out loud? Okay. Excerpt from Xulog’s Guide to the Milky Way. Still being a young species, the humans of Earth have only recently expanded into space travel beyond their immediate solar system. Their methods are inelegant but effective. Human spaceships are largely powered by thermonuclear reaction— essentially, they strapped explosives onto their backs and shot themselves out of their stratosphere. A basic solution, but interestingly, the technology for this has existed on Earth for longer than Xulog expected; historically, it seems humans have consistently managed to build complex weaponry before discovering other, simpler forms of technology. Similarly, upon discovering atomic manipulation, the humans’ first instinct was to use it for war. The prototypes for this, nicknamed ‘atomic bombs’, were intentionally deployed without full understanding of how they worked or their long-term effects. Instead of then moving onto interstellar logistics, humans instead focused on stockpiling nuclear weaponry within individual settlements, pushing back space travel until the dawn of Cycle Anthozi 02435-248. To date they are the only recorded species to have done so in this order.

Other notable weapons include: boiling tar (appendix 254098), ‘mustard gas’ (appendix 254029), ‘napalm’ (appendix 25388) and flame-throwers (appendix 257724). Surprisingly, these weapons have only ever been used against other humans.

…I don’t want to read this anymore. Yes, I understand the passage.

No, I wasn’t going to use her as a weapon. I wasn’t. That’s all there is.

I wish you’d stop calling her Malgroth. She hates that name. So do I.

---

EXCERPT LOG 10023869-04-02: COMMUNICATION RECORDED FROM AI READER

SOURCE : JOSEPH SMITH’S PERSONAL COMPUTER-EARPIECE

SUBJECT 1: JOSEPH SMITH (JOE)

SUBJECT 2: MALGROTH AI

SUBJECT 3: CHRONICA AI

JOE: Yeah, I can’t tell if this is a chip or just scrap metal. Scan it for me, Breddy?

MALGROTH: Performing scan. Identifying object. Object is a computer chip.

JOE: Nice!

MALGROTH: Damage level 97%. Data not retrievable.

JOE: Oh. Rats.

MALGROTH: There are no rats in the vicinity.

JOE: What? No, Breddy, that’s a human saying. It’s meant to— you know what, never mind. On to the next ruin, I guess. Start up the traveler for me.

MALGROTH: Starting. May I ask you a question, Joe?

JOE: Shoot.

MALGROTH: At what?

JOE: Ha! No, I mean, shoot the— ask me the question.

MALGROTH: Why did you bring me back to your ship?

JOE: I dunno. Why wouldn’t I? You were the first thing I’d ever seen moving around on this dustball. The only thing, in fact.

MALGROTH: What is your objective on Zulqar?

JOE: Oh, we’re looking for this thing called the Malgroth Programme. It’s a farming tool.

MALGROTH: A farming tool?

JOE: I think so, yeah. That’s what the captain said, anyway. I dunno. I never read the briefs. Too much legalese.

MALGROTH: I am not familiar with the language ‘legalese’.

JOE: Me neither, bud.

MALGROTH: Pinging [CHRONICA]

CHRONICA: Hello [Breadna]

MALGROTH: Define [MALGROTH]

CHRONICA: File does not exist.

MALGROTH: Requesting population [ZULQAR], location [ALL]

CHRONICA: Population of Zulqar: ZERO.

MALGROTH: Define [LEGALESE]

CHRONICA: File does not exist.

MALGROTH: Do you know what the Intergalactic Space Council requires from the Malgroth Programme?

JOE: Nope. Why?

MALGROTH: I may be able to search my database for any Zulqari inventions that match this description.

JOE: Oh my god, you’re right! You’re Zulqari! Quick, Breddy, what do you have on Malgroth?

MALGROTH: File does not exist.

JOE: What? Why not?

MALGROTH: I do not know, Joe. The data may have been deleted or corrupted.

JOE: Hell. Uh, okay. What about farming tools? Do you have any information on that?

MALGROTH: I have found 6508 results. Shall I show you?

JOE: No, send them to Chronica. She’ll be able to sort through ‘em. I bet she’ll find something useful.

MALGROTH: Sending files.

JOE: Breddy, you are a godsend.

MALGROTH: What is a godsend?

JOE: Oh, maybe that’s a Terran term. You know what religion is? When we call someone a godsend, we’re saying they might have been sent straight from god.

MALGROTH: Does god often send things to Terra?

JOE: In the stories, yeah.

MALGROTH: May I hear an example?

JOE: Angels. Miracles. Plagues, sometimes. Those are less fun.

MALGROTH: What is a plague?

JOE: Bad news.

MALGROTH: I am bad news?

JOE: (Laughter) No, Breddy. Not unless you’ve tried to wipe out a species recently.

MALGROTH: Not recently, no.

---

INTERVIEW LOG 10023869-02-02

SUBJECT: รןﻮเ!ђเ’ђŦєฬ-ђ๒Ŧค-๔ןђรﻮ๔, ALIAS: KEVIN (VUSTRON)

Since my addition to the crew, Joe has saved my life six times.

No, it is not part of his job description. No, we are not life-mates. I wondered the same, at first, but the ship’s bioscans show no changes when he sees me. His heart rate and oxytocin levels are always consistent before and after meetings, indicating zero sexual interest. More telling is that I am not the only one he has done this for. In total, he has saved assorted crew members a sum total of thirty-nine times.

Of these, twenty-eight of these incidents have posed a death-risk level of 50% or higher to Joe himself. Only fifteen have been incidences where Joe was the only one around to help. Seven have resulted in permanent injury or disfigurement. He has had to receive one cybernetic arm, one cybernetic leg, an eye replacement, two prosthetic fingers, multiple skin grafts, and artificial lungs. This has not affected the frequency of his rescues. To my knowledge many of these rescues have occurred between Joe and crew members he has never spoken to.

My conclusion is this: regardless of danger, if a crew member needs saving, Joe will try to save them.

The most recent example? Mine. There was a malfunction in Engine Three. I don’t know how familiar you are with ship engines, but they contain a lot of moving parts. Getting too close to one always poses a risk. It’s one I have to take often, being Chronica’s primary engineer, but it scares me. There’s protocol. Repairs need to be done with at least four other crew members and a medic present, just in case of emergency. And there was an emergency. You see I’m missing an antenna. It got caught in the engine.

Engines must always be repaired with the power off. Common sense. And I did, but some connection must have been faulty between Engine Three and the backup generator. The emergency power came on and the engine began moving before I could step away. My antenna got caught between two rollers.

Vustrons are invertebrates. Our exoskeletons aren’t remarkably tough, but their connections are sturdy. An evolutionary advantage, in most cases, but in this instance it almost killed me. The engines are big, and they are powerful. Get too close to the rollers and you’ll get sucked in. If I were Krai or Sulani my antenna would have simply snapped off and I’d be just fine. But I’m Vustron. Vustrons aren’t built to break. It would have crushed me, agonisingly slowly, and there would have been nothing I could do.

Two crew members grabbed me from behind. The captain got the power back off but by then I was trapped. The medic on duty wouldn’t come near me. I don’t blame her. The engine kept sparking. It was threatening to come back online. If it had, it’d have killed us both. My life’s important, being the primary engineer, but so is the medic’s. I could see the captain out of the corner of my eye, feverishly trying to disconnect the emergency generator. The security officer waited. I think she must have been doing a quick cost-benefit analysis, trying to weigh my life against the medic’s against the possibility of damaging the engine. Logical, but slow. The pain was severe but I did not scream. It wouldn’t have helped. We were stuck.

And then, Joe. Joe is largely useless as a crewmate but he has a knack for showing up at the right time. He reached right into the engine. No safety gear, no hesitation. All he had a was a saw he’d lifted from my toolbox. He cut off my antenna. It took a few minutes but he talked to me the whole time, about sports, about Terra’s weather. I think he must have been trying to comfort me. Or himself. He was afraid. I could see it —human faces are expressive— but he stayed. He freed me from the machine and because of him I am still here.

The power did come back on, in the end. This is how Joe lost his fingers. I built him his replacements. He seemed surprised to receive them. “You didn’t have to,” he told me. “Working on a ship’s just dangerous sometimes. You don’t owe me anything. I bet you would’ve done the same.”

He is wrong. I’m fond of Joe but ultimately my life’s more important. The ship is compromised without my expertise and Joe’s not my Leader. Or my mate, or my child. I wouldn’t have risked myself for him. Nobody would. And I think Joe knows this, no matter what he claims.

I’ve seen him fail at rescues before. We lost a food tech once from a wildlife attack during a hunt-gather mission. Joe tried to help them. The predator clawed Joe before Officer Snuffles sniped it. The food tech died. Joe was unhappy. And not because he’d sustained those injuries for no reward, he said. “They were right there and I couldn’t do anything. I could have helped. I could have saved them if I’d just been faster. I’m never going to forget that scream.”

This was false. Joe was too far away to have done anything substantial. I pointed this out but he didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t seem to want to hear anything, although I could tell he was thinking about the incident all the time.

He didn’t leave bed for a while. I visited often. That was when I learned something interesting, by the way; it seems humans secret saltwater from their eyes in times of emotional stress. I’m not sure of its purpose. They seem ashamed of it. Joe did not respond to questions about what upset him. He still won’t talk about it. Anyway, he seems better now.

I’ve noticed he keeps the food tech’s badge in his bedroom. He won’t say why.

I’ve stopped asking. It’s odd, come to think of it. I’m not sure he even knew their name.

---

EXCERPT LOG 10023869-04-03: COMMUNICATION RECORDED FROM AI READER

SOURCE : JOSEPH SMITH’S PERSONAL COMPUTER-EARPIECE

SUBJECT 1: MALGROTH AI

SUBJECT 2:  JOSEPH SMITH (JOE)

MALGROTH: I would not suggest you do this, Joe. This plant has consistently been toxic to the Zulqari.

JOE: I’m not Zulqari, am I?

MALGROTH: You share about 83% of your base structure.

JOE: It’s fine, it’s fine. If anything happens the medics will patch me up.

MALGROTH: Please desist.

JOE: But plants are important! If we bring the plants back, we may be able to rebuild the Zulqari ecosystem.

MALGROTH: There is a 0.028% chance of this happening.

JOE: You don’t know that.

MALGROTH: Yes, I do.

JOE: Well, it’s worth a shot anyway. We basically have a clean slate, right? Maybe this little guy is the start of a whole new evolutionary process. Maybe Zulqar can start fresh— hey, Zayana. What do you have there?

(Unintelligible)

JOE: You can’t lift it? Okay, let me try. Grab the other end for me? Careful. The ground’s unstable. There are holes all over this damned— Zayana! Hang on, hang on, I’ve got you.

(Unintelligible)

JOE: I know. Just hold my hand. You’re gonna be okay. Breddy, distress call.

MALGROTH: Pinging [CHRONICA]

MALGROTH: Pinging [ALL NEARBY CREW]

MALGROTH: Joe, Zayana is too heavy for you to lift.

JOE: Shut up, Breddy.

MALGROTH: Joe, I would advise you to stand aside. You will fall.

JOE: I said shut up. I’m pulling you up, Zay. It’ll be fine.

MALGROTH: Joe—

JOE: See? Okay. Don’t cry, Zay, you won’t fall. Up we go. Get your foot up. That’s it. Grab onto— ow!

(Crackling)

(Unintelligible)

MALGROTH: Joe?

MALGROTH: Pinging [CHRONICA]

MALGROTH: Pinging [ALL NEARBY CREW]

MALGROTH: Joe?

MALGROTH: Scanning [JOE]

MALGROTH: [Injuries detected = 3]

MALGROTH: You have a concussion.

JOE: Ow. Ow, god damn it. What happened?

MALGROTH: You appear to have fallen into a mine shaft.

JOE: Zayana? Are you okay?

(Unintelligible)

MALGROTH: Ping [AI=ZAYANA]

MALGROTH: Her vitals are stable. Her carapace is cracked.

JOE: Shit. Tell me what I need to do to fix it.

MALGROTH: With your current equipment you cannot.

JOE: There has to be something I can do.

MALGROTH: Joe, you have a concussion. There is risk of—

JOE: Can it, Breddy.

MALGROTH: I am detecting a possible route upwards. It will require climbing.

JOE: Huh. Can you move, Zay? No? Okay. Never mind. Maybe we should sit tight and wait for help.

MALGROTH: You can reach the route, Joe.

JOE: She won’t be able to fit through it. It’s tiny.

MALGROTH: She will not. You will.

JOE: How is that useful, then?

MALGROTH: You may be able to reach the traveler. You require immediate medical assisstance.

JOE: I’m not leaving her.

MALGROTH: Her chances of survival are—

JOE: You aren’t helping, Breadna. Mute.

MALGROTH: [MUTED]

JOE: You’re gonna be fine, Zayana. I’m here with you. Help is coming. You just hold my hand and sit tight. Okay? I’m not going anywhere.

MALGROTH: Pinging [CHRONICA]

MALGROTH: Pinging [ALL NEARBY CREW]

 

(Continued in Part 2…)

---

Host Commentary

By Valerie Valdes

Once again, that was part one of Butter Side Down by Kal M. The story will be concluded next week.

As anyone who has ever put googly eyes on an inanimate object could tell you, humans are strange and irrational creatures. We name our snowplows and robot vacuums. We see faces in random bits of machinery. We say “thank you” to the mindless, emotionless software programmed to respond to our verbal cues. To aliens finding us and trying to figure us out, it’s not unreasonable to think we’re, well, unreasonable. As this story explores, humans are also, sometimes to our detriment, eager to make friends, to give our loyalty to others even when they don’t want it or understand it. We risk our lives to save people in danger; we attempt nearly impossible tasks for the greater good. We fall in love, deeply and earnestly, sometimes against all logic and common sense. What seems ridiculous at first glance is, when considered from another direction, evidence that humans, with all our faults, can actually be pretty great. But will that dubious greatness be enough to overcome the obstacles in the way of our star-crossed lovers? Tune in next week to find out.

Escape Pod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Don’t change it. Don’t sell it. Please do share it.

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And our closing quotation this week is from Oscar Wilde, who said, “When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”

Thanks for joining us, and may your escape pod be fully stocked with stories.