Posted By: James
More hard SF - 01/05/24 02:15 AM
This is the start of an unpublished novella I'm still tinkering with.
Jason hung from an arm-tentacle a good two-point-two meters above the ground, plenty high to break his neck if the alien let go. Scattered around the neglected, weed-grown baseball field, other aliens held other humans in similar manner. Around twenty-five or -six people lay about the field, unconscious and unmoving, while eleven more humans stood waiting along what had once been a players’ dugout for arriving aliens to accept their offerings and seize them.
The Cuttles were outnumbered by humans: people in make-work government jobs; students and teachers of obsolete disciplines; gamers and media junkies on the living wage; artists, musicians, and writers looking for inspiration; lawyers and accountants wearing suits for non-existent clients; and street people like Jason, who were mostly ex-somethings.
All there to consort with aliens.
The Cuttle holding him hesitated. Jason couldn’t let this one go. There might not be another for him.
So let the alien go, the voice in his head argued. Who needs this disgusting habit anyway?
Jason did. He needed it. He had seen the Hades of withdrawal, other users doubled over, puking, crapping themselves, writhing in the streets.
He tilted his head and flared his nostrils at the Cuttle’s twelve-eyed countenance. He had trouble holding the pose as revulsion and self-loathing tore at his guts. For a moment longer, his self-respect warred with his need—and lost.
The arm-tentacle, big around at the base as Jason’s waist, contained one of the Cuttle’s brains, a long node of nerve tissue connected to the central brain in its head. Six of these tentacle-like appendages served the alien as arms or legs, as needed. Two true tentacles, used for communication and reproduction, protruded from its neck below the mantle. The alien was a land animal, but resembled a cuttlefish in its true-tentacles, huge head and mantle, and the W-shaped pupils of its eyes. So people called them Cuttles. Few humans could pronounce the word the Cuttles used to name themselves. Jason wasn’t one of them.
He didn’t care for the scaly, snakeskin-like feel of the arm-tentacle, but it wouldn’t bother him in a moment. Another arm-tentacle gripped Jason’s carved artifact offering. Yet, the Cuttle hesitated. Was the artifact unsatisfactory? What if the alien figured out that Jason’s artifact was no good?
“These cephalopods sure can be finnicky, can’t they?” said a voice from the ground. A young well-dressed man stood there, looking up, holding his own carved wood offering. Made of some dark jungle hardwood, it looked like a much better offering than Jason’s, carved from river driftwood. The young man was shaking.
“Cephalopoids, you mean,” Jason said. “They’re not true cephalopods.”
The young man shrugged. He stood next to one of the alien’s leg-tentacles, twitching, flinching, almost doubling over. Wouldn’t meet Jason’s eyes. In withdrawal. Jason knew the signs. He was in withdrawal too.
“What are you doing?” Jason asked.
“The others are all taken. If this one doesn’t like you, maybe it’ll accept me.”
“Go away. This one is mine.”
The cephalopoid could have crushed them both easily. Jason feared more that it would lower him onto the long grass, unquelled. He didn’t know what he’d do if the Cuttle picked this other man over him.
But Jason and his offering proved acceptable. The Cuttle divided one of its true-tentacles into two thin tips and inserted them into Jason’s nostrils. He had to breathe through his mouth as he waited for the tips to separate into microfilaments that penetrated tissue and membrane to enter his brain, where they would connect with synapses in his cerebral cortex.
The Cuttles’ thoughts couldn’t be translated by human brains. Instead, the connection triggered a flood of endorphins that brought euphoria and quelled all pain: physical, mental, emotional.
Jason hung from an arm-tentacle a good two-point-two meters above the ground, plenty high to break his neck if the alien let go. Scattered around the neglected, weed-grown baseball field, other aliens held other humans in similar manner. Around twenty-five or -six people lay about the field, unconscious and unmoving, while eleven more humans stood waiting along what had once been a players’ dugout for arriving aliens to accept their offerings and seize them.
The Cuttles were outnumbered by humans: people in make-work government jobs; students and teachers of obsolete disciplines; gamers and media junkies on the living wage; artists, musicians, and writers looking for inspiration; lawyers and accountants wearing suits for non-existent clients; and street people like Jason, who were mostly ex-somethings.
All there to consort with aliens.
The Cuttle holding him hesitated. Jason couldn’t let this one go. There might not be another for him.
So let the alien go, the voice in his head argued. Who needs this disgusting habit anyway?
Jason did. He needed it. He had seen the Hades of withdrawal, other users doubled over, puking, crapping themselves, writhing in the streets.
He tilted his head and flared his nostrils at the Cuttle’s twelve-eyed countenance. He had trouble holding the pose as revulsion and self-loathing tore at his guts. For a moment longer, his self-respect warred with his need—and lost.
The arm-tentacle, big around at the base as Jason’s waist, contained one of the Cuttle’s brains, a long node of nerve tissue connected to the central brain in its head. Six of these tentacle-like appendages served the alien as arms or legs, as needed. Two true tentacles, used for communication and reproduction, protruded from its neck below the mantle. The alien was a land animal, but resembled a cuttlefish in its true-tentacles, huge head and mantle, and the W-shaped pupils of its eyes. So people called them Cuttles. Few humans could pronounce the word the Cuttles used to name themselves. Jason wasn’t one of them.
He didn’t care for the scaly, snakeskin-like feel of the arm-tentacle, but it wouldn’t bother him in a moment. Another arm-tentacle gripped Jason’s carved artifact offering. Yet, the Cuttle hesitated. Was the artifact unsatisfactory? What if the alien figured out that Jason’s artifact was no good?
“These cephalopods sure can be finnicky, can’t they?” said a voice from the ground. A young well-dressed man stood there, looking up, holding his own carved wood offering. Made of some dark jungle hardwood, it looked like a much better offering than Jason’s, carved from river driftwood. The young man was shaking.
“Cephalopoids, you mean,” Jason said. “They’re not true cephalopods.”
The young man shrugged. He stood next to one of the alien’s leg-tentacles, twitching, flinching, almost doubling over. Wouldn’t meet Jason’s eyes. In withdrawal. Jason knew the signs. He was in withdrawal too.
“What are you doing?” Jason asked.
“The others are all taken. If this one doesn’t like you, maybe it’ll accept me.”
“Go away. This one is mine.”
The cephalopoid could have crushed them both easily. Jason feared more that it would lower him onto the long grass, unquelled. He didn’t know what he’d do if the Cuttle picked this other man over him.
But Jason and his offering proved acceptable. The Cuttle divided one of its true-tentacles into two thin tips and inserted them into Jason’s nostrils. He had to breathe through his mouth as he waited for the tips to separate into microfilaments that penetrated tissue and membrane to enter his brain, where they would connect with synapses in his cerebral cortex.
The Cuttles’ thoughts couldn’t be translated by human brains. Instead, the connection triggered a flood of endorphins that brought euphoria and quelled all pain: physical, mental, emotional.