The Agrinautica

   "I still can't believe I let you ultranerds talk me into this" complained Alfa, who is usually too busy hanging with the "cool" kids.
   "Whatever, by next decachron you'll be begging to bring your 'cool' friends to play Dungeons and Dragons with us," said Juliette, "and we're gonna say no." She made a sour face.
   "Okay let's get started," said Charlie, the somewhat overweight fellow at the head of the table, peering into a holoscreen that was only visible from his angle.
   "Our story will take place during the golden age of American civilization, during the presidency of, ummm, Bieber the First" Charlie was making some details up as he went, after all, none of them would really know or care if President Bieber the First had reigned in the year known as 1884, or 1984 or 2064 or 2124.
   "It's just a typical summer evening in the small suburban town of Crumpton, in the American state of West Concordia," continued Charlie, the Game Master. The three experienced players looked at eachother excitedly -- everyone knows that the most mundane day in pre-decline America is guaranteed to be more exciting than the dull life aboard space station LJI-9-B5.
   "West Concordia is currently at war with neighboring Kansas, but Crompton is far from the border and life goes on as normal. You are all in a bar called the Last Chance on a, uh, Tuesday night."
   "Okay what's a Tuesday and what's summer?" interrupted Alfa in an exasperated manner.
   "Summer is a period of Earth's rotation around the star," patiently explained Mike, whose brown hair was pulled tight in a ponytail. And "Tuesday" is one of the seven days of the earth-week, you know, like ten chrons in a decachron but they have seven and they all have names." he paused because it looked like Alfa was about to get up and leave "look, look, it doesn't really matter, Charlie is just throwing in details for the story but you don't need to know this stuff."
   "Fine, but man how did anyone keep track of time with such a complicated system?" asked Alfa.
   "Oh that's barely the half of it" said Victor, the skinny one, "there were 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour--"
   "Okay, okay. Can we continue?" broke in Charlie. "So you're all in the bar. There's television boxes on walls displaying the latest sportsing. You find yourselves sitting together at the bar. There's a level one lawyer named Elvis" here he nodded to Mike, "with a kevlar vest and a briefcase full of grenades; Victor is a cowboy from Cleveland named Barack. He has his trusty energy-blunderbuss as well as a lassoo. His horse is parked outside. Juliette is a barbarian soccer mom named Uma from the wild norths of uh 'Canada.' She has a proficiency in flame throwers but had to leave it in her minivan because of the bar's 'no flamethrowers' policy. The minivan is parked out front. She also has a soccer ball in her inventory.
   And Alfa you are a professional athlete named Ashton. That means you have really high strength attributes, but because professional athletes had a tendency towards domestic violence you'll have to do a saving roll every time you talk to a female, if you roll a one you randomly do something violent."
   Alfa was smiling about this, so Juliette jabbed at him with "oh I think that sounds like him anyway."
   "Hey!" objected Alfa, and Juliette jokingly put her arms up to shield her face defensively. Everyone laughed.
   "Hey if she's a soccer mom does that mean she has a kid?" asked Alfa.
   "No, uh, I did but he became a werewolf"
   "I'm going to assume this conversation is happening in game" commented Charlie irritably, drumming his fingers. "So Ashton the professional athlete is currently hitting on Uma at the bar" he narrated to make it official. Some snickering ensued.
   "In addition to you lot, there's a chimney sweep, a computer programmer, and two terrorists drinking at the bar to your right and to your left there's a reality television star and three pirates.
   "I'd like to look at the quest board" Mike informed Charlie. Everyone knows there's going to be a quest board in the bar.
   Charlie smiled, glad someone was going to move the story forward. "There's a note tacked to the board. It says 'WANTED: four bold adventurers to journey to Dreslin City to bring back the McGuffin Device. Will be rewarded with 1,000 gold and an artifact."
   "Sounds like a plan!" announced Victor, "Barack asks the chimney sweep if he'd like to go on the quest."
   "Barack hasn't looked at the posting, only Elvis has" chided Charlie.
   "Charlie is a such a stickler" Victor confided sulkily in Alfa.
   "Elvis tells Ashton, Uma and Barack," Mike said dutifully.
   "But on your way back you bump into one of the terrorists!" announced Charlie with relish. "They both brandish their AK-47s (a rapid firing mechanical projectile weapon) and begin shooting indiscriminently!!" Charlie gazed into his holoscreen, only the green glow against his face was visible to the others. "You all perform saving dodge rolls and hide under the tables except Ashton." Charlie paused but saw Alfa was looking completely at a loss so he punched some more things into his screen and then announced "...but you instinctively grab a barmaid and use her to shield yourself!"
   "I shoot one of them with my blunderbus!" said Victor quickly, as if quickness in real time was important.
   Charlie peered into the green holoscreen and then declared "you miss." Adding a moment later "your shot destroyed a manticore head mounted on the wall. You'll have to pay for that later
   "Ummmmm... Uma sneaks up to them under the bartop." offered Juliette, wishing she had her flamethrower.
   "I caste countersuit, transfer of liability to the pirates!" declared Mike excitedly.
   Charlie peered into the green and then declared "it works, the terrorists turn their attention to the pirates. One pirate is hit and receives 17 hitpoints of damage. The chimney sweep is killed in the crossfire. The reality television star is hiding behind a table in the middle of it, making hysterical commentary for the cameras. The camera crew are all attentively filming. The action"
   "I say we all get out of there!" declared Victor, sounding as panicked as if he were actually there.
   "Yeah, let's all run out the door right now" agreed Mike calmly.
   "The bouncer blocks your exit, you can't leave, you haven't paid your bar tab." said Charlie imperiously. "The pirates burn CDs and throw the burning CDs at the terrorists inflicting 12 and 15 hitpoints of damage respectively -- 'CDs' are thin metal disks which contain data for computers," Charlie added for Alfa's benefit. "The terrorists continue to fire with their AK-47s inflicting damage on all three pirates and killing one of them."
   "Pay tab!" exclaimed Victor.
   "You need twenty gold. You don't have it."
   "Oh for the love!" rejoined Victor.
   "Caste 'salvage rights' on the dead pirate." declared Mike on behalf of his lawyer character.
   "You gain thirty gold, a pirate hat, a 'Starbucks' coffee card, and a turkey" announced Charlie, who had forgotten the name of the kind of bird pirates were supposed to have.
   "Pay tab" said Mike, calmly as ever.
   "And now we all run out the door!" said Alfa, momentarily forgetting he was to cool to look excited about things like this.
   Charlie tried to hide a smile. "Okay you're outside. As you leave you hear the bartender yell 'you owe me a manticore head!' over the gunfire. Where do you go now?"
   "Juliette, I mean Uma, has a minivan right?" asked Alfa, still immersed in the scene.
   Everyone looked to Alfa as he enthusiastically directed the action.

[To be continued??]

***

   As I mentioned in my brainstorming post, I haven't actually played D&D ... so I blame any inaccuracy on developments over the next few hundred years. ;) anyway, the point of this bizarre little story is just how bizarre it would look to us if our current life was seen as a fantasy setting, and some day, it will be just that remote.

   In the blackness of space, it would have looked like a golden comet hurtling through the starry background. For weeks it would be visible approaching the planet. First a distant speck the very existence of which astronomers would argue about. Day by day it would grow brighter, larger, closer. A comet? Is it on a collision course with us?
   But comets appear to fly sideways, the “tail” off to the side. This one would appear to have the tail right in front of it. That would probably be the first sign something was amiss. That and it’s decelerating rapidly.

   Up close, if this were a movie, the spaceship would appear to roar past … flying backwards. Enormous engines blasting a straight and steady stream of fire forward into the direction it’s heading. But this is not a movie, so it wouldn’t roar (there’s no sound in space), and without a point of reference who’s to say the ship is moving one way or the camera position is moving the other?
    Nevertheless, engines first, the ship speeds past our arbitrary vantage point. Cylindrical modules, spherical nodes, tubes and girders, all painted a chalky white. Perhaps a little darkened on the faces currently facing backwards. Near the front (current back) end, emblazoned in big red letters on the hull is Ex Animo.
   If this were a movie of course, this would also be accompanied by some dramatic music.

   And this music is in fact playing. In the control room, because Captain Garrey has a soft spot for the dramatic. But, after all, this was a pretty dramatic moment for the entire crew. Other solar systems had been explored in the several years since propulsion breakthroughs made interstellar travel possible, but that didn’t mean being on the first expedition to a new solar system was anything short of a lifetime experience. After months in transit (five accelerating, five decelerating), the Ex Animo was approaching its destination, the star Alpha Piscis Austrini. So it felt appropriate that Garrey pipe some suitably intrepid music through the ship – but certainly not so loud to distract from everyone being on top of their game monitoring the sensors.

    “Twenty minutes until arrival in orbit” called out Helmsman Trogyev, trying to sound clinical and matter-of-fact. All eyes were on the large viewscreen covering the front wall of the bridge. On it the planet Fomalhaut could not yet be seen but the star was becoming visibly larger by the minute.
This wasn’t, of course, the view out a window. The bridge is located in the most logical position on the ship – in the very centre. Views from the wide array of cameras and sensors projecting from the outside of the ship could be used to project a variety of images onto the main bridge screen. And so, as the ship blasted backwards decelerating into the system, the view on the screen in the bridge is still the direction the ship is traveling, as if they were facing that direction.

   “Fifteen minutes.” Everyone on the bridge had their own sensor display to be monitoring but no one was about to blame anyone for only glancing at that from time to time while watching the main screen as the planet became visible – a green orb hanging in space like an emerald.

   “Ten minutes.” The image zoomed in, the planet filled the main screen. Beautiful and green, white clouds draped in long swirls around it..
   “I’m picking up an incoming object sir!!” called out Stephens, one of the sensor operators, with alarm. “About three hundred meters wide, metallic, accelerating towards us out of orbit from the planet!”
   All eyes stared at the screen in disbelief.

   “Can you bring it onscreen?” asked Garrey. Seconds later a blurry grey blob appeared on the screen. It slowly materialized into a grey oval shape as it rapidly closed distance with the Ex Animo. “It appears to be saucer shaped” reported Stephens.
   “Shall I attempt to contact them?” asked communications officer Callista urgently. Garrey gave her the go-ahead and she initiated the pre-planned communications sequence prepared for the event of extra-terrestrial contact.

   Not a person dared to breath as they awaited a response to the incomprehensible (but assuredly genius) message which had been written by a team of mathematicians and experts back on Earth. The alien craft silently closed the distance.

   “It appears to be energizing one of its arrays!” reported another sensor operator. The ships were now less than a minute from intersecting one another and the incoming saucer was slowing its approach. “Lets hope this is a communications device and not a weapon!!” thought Mark, looking back at the Captain nervously. Notwithstanding the “What Would Picard Do?” sticker Garrey had humorously slapped on the front of his desk, this ship carried no science fiction shields or weapons.
   Suddenly there was a loud humming noise and everything went blurry. And then things went black.


   Liiiick. Mark awoke to his face being licked. It was slobbery, and disconcerting.
   He opened his eyes and saw the branches of trees above him, and blue sky beyond that. Earth trees. And a dachshund was licking his face.
   Deeply confused, Mark sat up. He appeared to be sitting in a city park. There was grass, trees, a park bench or two, lamp-posts, a mailbox, and bounding all four sides an unbroken white fence. He could have sworn he’d been cooped up in an interstellar starship for the last several months. He was, after all, still wearing his blue uniform coveralls with UNOOSA patch.
   The grass seemed… odd. Then he realized. The grass was plastic. It was just realistic looking astro-turf! And in fact.. The trees were plastic! He ran over to the mailbox – not only was it plastic, but it didn’t actually open. And why would there be a mailbox here anyway? … and then Mark realized – aliens had placed him in a terrarium!
   Mark regarded the dog. He quickly realized he knew this dog. It belonged to one of the chemists, and was named Watson. The aliens must not have known who to put him with.

   Presently, as Mark regarded his strange surroundings, a door opened up in the “sky” --actually just an illuminated blue ceiling-- and a ramp came down to the ground. Bright golden light glowed through the doorway.
   Two alien creatures emerged and made their way down the ramp. Their bodies looked round and bulbous, and they walked upon a number of tentacles. They each had two eyes upon stalks and a short proboscis with a mouth on it.
   They approached Mark, who could think of no better course of action then to stand there and see what happened. Standing in front of him, the alien being pointed at itself with its noodly appendage and said “Gavagai.” It then pointed at Mark. “Uh, Mark?” Mark responded. The other alien being jotted something down on what appeared to be a notepad. It then held up a picture of the Earth. “Earth?” ventured Mark, and the other alien jotted down on the notepad.
    Mark observed that two more aliens had come down and were a little ways off attempting to communicate with the dog. They were surprisingly proficient at making barking noises.

   Weeks passed with the aliens making regular visits to attempt to communicate, and gradually becoming more proficient at it. Mark gathered that the rest of the crew was similarly in other terrariums. Eventually the aliens transferred communications officer Callista into his terrarium. At first he thought the aliens had thought to give him a friend, and though he had never been particularly close with Callista, he appreciated it. But then he learned their true motives.

   “Why you do not mate with her?” Gavagai asked impatiently.
   “What?!”
   “Why do you not breed with the female?”
   “I do not WANT to breed with the female!”
   “Not-of-sense! You humans love to breed. Is she not nubile?”
   “She’s plenty nubile, I just love someone else.”
   “What is this love? You wish to copulate with someone else?”
   “No one here.” Mark thought of his wife back home.
   “So love is… desire to spawn with someone?”
   “No, no.. it’s… more than that.”
   “Other crew members we bred did not have this love problem”
   Mark wondered who had been “bred” among the crew. He and Gavagai were walking among the fake trees. Mark poked tentatively at a fake apple hanging from the wrong kind of fake tree.
   “So what is ‘love’ and why does it prevent you from copulating?” Gavagai returned to the question.
   “Love is … not having to explain to your wife you were forced by aliens to breed with a coworker!!” exclaimed Mark in exasperation. “Why are you so interested anyway?”
   “We are concerned about your breeding habits”
   “MY breeding habits?”
   “Human breeding habits. Humans breed out of control. Most creatures adapt to their environment. Humans adapt their environment to support their own ever increasing numbers.”
    “We were looking on wikipedia—“ Gavagai continued, referring to the copy of wikipedia stored on their starship. Evidently someone had taught them to access it. “There is an Earth creature that treats its environment like humans”
   “What’s that?”
   “Locusts”
   “Locusts?!”
   “A plague of locusts. This is what humans do too.”

   Mark wondered if he’d ever see his wife again.