It was a fair and warm day in the afternoon hours, when the man was walking down the street. The city, small and homely, was not a buzz with people.
"Good day," another pedestrian said to the man. He nodded back at the friendly gesture. Suddenly, the fellow slapped him on the face. Not hard, not enough to concuss. But hard enough.
"Why did you do that?!" The man asked his assailant, surprised.
"Well", the other explained in a calm tone, "it is the end of the world." The man, the victim, steered his head and vision to encompass the large shape in the sky, sitting outside the atmosphere, yet very visible.
After all, it is a well known fact that a regular sized seeming object from far far away is actually vastly large, so much as to boggle the mind's grasp of perspective.
The fellow pedestrian tilted his head up and to the side as well, seeing the meteor that was slowly but surely approaching them. Them all. Quietly, they both stared, and said nothing more.
It is to the best of my knowledge, that the avid and infamous giant researcher - and hobbyist poet, Mikkel M. Handsome had noted down, in a chapter about the mating practices of Giants in general, this peculiarity of Stone Giants.
I do not have the original text with me, so I shall paraphrase in my own words, and through the vagueness of my own memory...
A hardy local population...
The Female Stone Giant will select a suitable place, where trees would not tend to forest, maybe in an elevation high enough - as trees are known to dislike the cold, and there she will stand. She will stand for as long as it takes, for a Male Stone Giant to incidentally, and without prior knowledge or intuition, ram his parts into... well... her parts.
End of misquotation.
As you can see, it is not a rumor beyond reason, that people say the Stone Giants have no libido, per se. It does not seem as if the Female is attractive to the Male, when viewed from our point of view. No ceremony of wooing seems to take place, but rather a metaphorical gamble.
This was my opinion in the matter as well, at least until I saw The Crevice of Zuperia, in New Russia, earlier this year. Oh, and what a crevice it was! Attached is a photograph.
Eingenberg Zumik, Doctor In Organic Gemology, Neptune Regional Academy.
I finished a short & fun reading of a short-story, in the "popular" section of Wattpad; a website for independent authors. Even though it is mostly filled with sub-par stories, there is the rare gem to be found!
Direl [DEE-REL] smiled at the guy, but he did not notice. It happens sometimes. Ever since she started hitting on guys, and feeling okay with them rejecting her, or worse - mocking her, she noticed these sort of different behaviors. Some guys were aloof. Oblivious. It was not that they were mean, or anything like that. They just did not notice what other people considered obvious.
Take this guy. He was looking at her, for that moment, but when she smiled, he just looked away. Talking with his friend there, at the bar.
Direl sipped her beer.
"You're staring," Jen said and smirked at her.
"So what?"
"It's rude."
"Who cares? I'm bored of being polite. Everyone's so fucking shitty polite, all the time."
"So you're just going to be rude?"
"To you?"
"Not to me," she laughed, "to the guy!" Jen looked over at the two guys over at the bar. Both were deep in conversation. "Wanna hit on them?"
"Yes." She smiled, and both girls stood up, and went to approach the guys.
"But, if it's not aliens, then what is it? Some secret society? I'm just saying...." Kevin paused mid-sentence, and turned to look at the girls, now standing over them. Clarke turned as well, looking at Jen first, making Direl angry with him.
"Hi," Direl said, and forced up a smile at Clarke. "I'm Direl, and this is my friend Jennifer. Mind if we join you?"
"Sure, go ahead," Kevin said smiling pleasantly.
The girls looked at each other in agreement, and each sat next to one of the guys, tactically surrounding them, and setting their drinks on the bar table.
"How old are you?" Direl asked, looking at Clarke, but then - wanting to be friendly, glanced at Kevin as well.
"Ah, I'm twenty seven, and Kevin just turned twenty eight. And you?"
"I am twenty eight," Direl said.
"And I am the same, twenty eight," Jen added.
The guys turned to look from one girl to the other.
"Good," Jen said and smiled, "we're a match!" And she laughed, sipping on her mug.
They were not actually a match, it turned out, but ever since that night, Jen stopped complaining about Direl being so forward with guys. Hey, it works.
"Mommy?" Asked a giant octopus, in a sound wave below human hearing.
"Yes, dear?" Answered an even bigger octopus, floating not quite mid-air, near the other.
"What is that?" It raised a tentacle at a near by tiny lizard.
"Do not point, Phefahphiou!" The angry mother warned. She would not have uneducated children making her look bad, in front of other creatures.
"I apologize, but what is it?" The child repeated, lowering its' tentacle.
"It is a dinosaur," she answered. "And it is an enemy of the Coalition."
We are already being eased into this future symbio.
"Can I eat it?" The child asked, ever so innocently. The lizard, a tiny thing in comparison, tilted its' head, and considered the transparent floating threats, above it. It began skittering away.
"No," the mother shuffled closer, towards the young one. "We do not eat those."
"Why?" The child asked, looking up at his mother.
"Because, they are our friends, and..." she lingered.
"And we do not eat our friends," finished the child, not satisfied with the conclusion.
In the material recycling department of SciGen Incorporated, Cyril hid in a dumpster. The dumpster was very clean, other than the accumulating dust, and so the array of rejected pills seemed safe enough to eat.
There were pills of many colors and shapes, and Cyril enjoyed all of them. But, most of all, he enjoyed the small red and white pills that tasted like sugar, and were not chewy.
"Ferring soft pills," he murmured, and spat out an odd purple pill that was unfamiliar to him. "Ferring facilities and their inventions. Can't they just make more tasty pills?" He asked no one in particular.
"Who's there?" The voice of an older man echoed.
"Shit," Cyril whispered to himself, and tried to hide in a corner. The container opened from its' top lid, and the old hairless man stared directly at Cyril.
"What are you," the old man began, but Cyril was already jumping through the open container, and back to the dumpster hall. Without pause, he ran to the back door, from whence he came, and disappeared into the streets, where only the night, cats, and the occasional deployment vehicle roamed.
These were not real public streets, but the streets within the SciGen industrial compound. A vast maze of transportation routes, between warehouses and ever-rumbling factories. As he shifted from a jog to a regular walk, trusting the night to mask his presence, he heard a far away explosion, followed by shouts.
He could not make out the words, and the noises came from many places at once, but all from the same direction. The entrance, the front entrance, of the factory building he just escaped. He paused and tried to make sense of the scene. Some windows reflected strong lights, as if a fire was loose. Was it a machine accident?
Cyril decided to go back and check things out. Maybe, if he was lucky, he could learn something that SciGen did not want anybody else to know. Maybe, if he was lucky, he had something to gain, here.
Reaching the factory building, Cyril jumped in surprise, as a figure burst out of the top floor window, and crashed into the ground. Under the ambience of light projectors, Cyril could make out a dark haired man, in a white lab coat. He was not on fire, so why did he jump?
Cyril entered the building from the side door - another opening that he knew was unlocked, most nights. He heard noises. As if something was pounding against the walls, from the inside. As sirens began screaming, the boy knew that he had only a few minutes, before the entire platoon of guard patrol cars arrived. He was not planning on being caught by anyone. The consequences would be dire.
He approached further into the factory, and went to open another door, just as the safety mechanism kicked-in. The door locked, and heavy glass shielding began lowering, from the hollow above the door.
"What are you doing here, boy?" Cyril turned, and saw a man in uniform behind him, holding a pistol. "Come on, we have to get out of here, now! They are coming!"
Who is coming? Cyril wanted to ask, but the guard grabbed his arm, and pulled him away. Instead of going outside, as expected, the guard pulled him beyond another door. As it closed, it locked, and began lowering its' glass shielding. Cyril tensed, and felt himself sweating, with the realization that something terrible, quite more than he had imagined, was taking place.
"What is with all the explosions?" Cyril asked the guard.
"There was an accident with the test subjects. The pills killed them, and then turned them into something else," the guard hesitated. "Not human."
"Like, undead?" The boy asked.
"No," the guard stopped, and turned to look at Cyril. "Like monsters," he said, showing surprise on his face.
As they approached the other end of a storage chamber, the door behind them burst open. Through the locking mechanism and the glass shielding, which Cyril knew was much more than just simple glass. The guard started running, pulling on Cyril to speed up. Cyril had to look back, and see what it was that followed them.
It was a person in a white lab coat. Just a person. Cyril saw him jogging slowly towards them, as if nonchalantly escaping the terrors behind.
"That's odd," he said, and wondered how come bursting through the door seemed to draw no impact on the person's body. The face seemed calm, even emotionless, and there were no signs of torn clothing or blood.
"Over here," a woman guard shouted from above a short ladder. "Quickly, come up here," she said, gesturing them to hurry.
As they entered the upper chamber, the glass seal locked behind with a hiss of air pressure. Cyril looked back, and wondered what happened to that other person. He approached the seal, and looked through.
Somebody else was hurrying through a side door, into the storage chamber they had just escaped. He approached the strange lagger. Suddenly, the other jumped several meters into the air, landing on top of the newcomer, flattening him against the cement floor.
Cyril inched his eyes closer into the glassy seal, trying to make sense out of this bizarre scene. After a moment of lingering, the lab coated figure stood up, and turned to stare at the upper seal.
Cyril would have sworn, had anybody asked him, that the strange person now had a completely different face.
The Dzed nest in forests, but they hunt wherever there is prey. Their gigantic arachnoid form, while intimidating, is also very adaptable. Reports of adult Dzed swimming the oceans, started early on, after the invasion of the alien race to Earth.
A recent record tells of a long-time hobby fisherman that fell into the water, while fishing in the ocean. "It was an accident," the man says, "but nothing that would scare a sealover, like me." It was, however, quite a surprise, when he realized that underneath the water, and attached to the bottom of his yacht, there lurked a giant Dzed.
The man was afraid that it might attack him, now that he fell into the water. When the Dzed moved to attack, he was certain that this was the end. When he felt nothing, but the movement of water around him, he opened his eyes again. To his astonishment, the Dzed had caught a shark. The shark, apparently, had been drawn to the swimming man, and thought it got lucky. "You can imagine its' surprise," the record goes on to say in the voice of the fisherman, "when it was snatched up by the spider!"
MikeAp shuts the record viewer off, and restores his normal vision. Tomorrow, he will be doing what had not been done before. He will be boarding a Dzedship. The irony was not lost on him. Hey, maybe he will get lucky, and the Dzed will just hunt-away any space monsters that came at him. Although, in all likelihood, the researchers insist, the Dzed will not be joining the trip.
They have reached the Dzed's nest, and are finally preparing to board. Well, board might be the wrong word. It feels like they are infiltrating the Dzed's privacy, really. Like some sort of insidious larvae, using its' host to find shelter, against the harsh environment. Two assistants start running the checks on MikeAp.
"Can you hear me?" One of the women asks.
"Yes," MikeAp answers.
"Can you feel this?" The other woman asks, as she jabs something against his suit.
"No," MikeAp answers, and both women nod approvingly.
MikeAp starts his approach, walking under the watchful eye of all space lovers. This first attempt at utilizing the remarkable balloon-shaped vessel of the Dzed is broadcast to the public. MikeAp doubts that more than a handful of hobbyists are actually watching the live feed.
Confronted by the giant woven ball, MikeAp shoves himself, slowly, into the sphere. The material is sticky, but it is not able to resist his invasion. He can already feel that sort of lightness that comes from being inside a magnetic field.
"I am alright," he reports over the voice.
"Roger that," he hears a barely audible response, through the loud static noise. The speaker is his counterpart and trusted engineer, KaliKi.
MikeAp bends down, spreads his arms wide, and jumps as hard as he can. The giant sphere responds, by increasing the tension of its' fabric, and thus begins a levitating motion upwards. MikeAp sits down, takes his helmet off, even though it is not advised to do so, and draws a salty snack from his side-pocket. As he slowly nibbles through the snack, MikeAp imagines the others looking at him. An unremarkable white ball, floating through the air.
"Biological space engineering, at its' best," he says aloud, after about half an hour. He lies back to enjoy the view, through the now transparent fibers of the vessel.
MikeAp is the first man to ever successfully reach space, using Dzed technology.
In a dark corner, beneath the edge of a mountain, lie a little Dzed. The alien, whose ancestors had arrived on Earth only a century ago, was hunting. He was hunting in the dark, as all his kind do. His vicious arachnid form, extremely suitable for trapping and the silencing of his prey, hung from the top branch of an oak tree.
The man, a native of the land, dark skinned and rough natured, walked over the trap, without hesitation. He was not aware of the trap being there, yet he was not afraid of such a possibility. He was a hunter, and for him, it meant that danger was a casual thing.
Giant alien spiders are our friends. That's the narrative, anyhow.
Just as the Dzed activated his trap, contracting the wires of his immense weave, the man jumped. As the man fell out of its' way, and rolled back on to his feet, a roar filled the night, behind him. Inside the Dzed's web, a large cat with pointed ears was wrestling with the arachnid's device. Needless to say, it was a futile attempt.
The man looked up the tree, where the trap connected to higher branches. A shadow loomed against the star-filled sky. The man knew it to be a Dzed. Shaming the hunter, the Dzed did not even consider him worthy prey. Real prey, for the mighty arachnoid, had to pose a real challenge.
Maghir's father died, shortly after the boy had reached his seventh birthday. The grief tore at his mother, who decided she would travel alone and see the world, so that healing would come faster. She left Maghir and his younger sister Pae to their aunt and uncle; her elder sister's family.
Turning and twisting in his sleep, Maghir dreamed of the morning his father died. He and his younger sister were playing with the lambs; those who had already grown enough wool to be fluffy to the touch. Two rams were wrestling under a big oak tree. His father did not appreciate having his rams injured or dead from fighting, so he moved in to kick one of the giant heavily-horned rams.
This was not an unusual day. Life at Maghir's family farm was a quiet and simple one. Mostly pleasant, and sometimes harsh. Just as life should be, or so Maghir imagined. Suddenly, he heard his father yell followed by a loud crunch. Pae turned to look and so did he. They both stared to see their father lying broken on the ground. One of the giant rams sniffed at the man curiously.
"Dad? Is he dead?" Pae asked without looking away. Maghir had the words dad and dead confused in his mind.
"Yes," he said sharply. "Of course he's dead, Pae. Just look at him." Their father was not twitching or moaning. The two children had seen many people and animals this way, before. A broken body, so badly twisted that it was a surprise to not see blood oozing from the corpse. "Stay here and make sure nothing comes to... eat him," he turned to look at Pae, his eyes worried and his lips pursed.
As he turned and walked back towards their wooden hut, beneath the trees further inside the forest, he was not surprised to see his sister only staring in disbelief, or was it shock, at the twisted corpse of their now ever-restful father...
