Upcoming Scene

Upcoming Scene:

Note: This is a prelude of things to come for Epoch: Omicron Chronicles, Chapter 14: See Who I Am. This is actually a scene where Xyston is reading in the mu Ara A library.

Message dated 24-JUNE-2078 from the Vaudeville exploration team to the Vaudeville commander, J. R. Ramsey:

He stood at least twelve feet high, grass coloured armour shining in our eyes. His eyes stood away from the rest of his furry face, looking this way and that, inspecting myself and my men as well as the scientific equipment we had brought along. One eye settled again on me, and I was startled to see that the circular orb of an eye at the end of the long shaft was completely red with only a darker orb of red for what I believed to be his pupil.

He searched my face as I searched his. I guess he had picked me out of the group as the leader as I had picked him out of his group. And staring down face to face, leader against leader, I saw similarities that couldn't be voiced. This creature was obscene; he looked like a walrus around the mouth (due to the two large tusks protruding downward from his upper muzzle), a snail around the eyes, and mimicked a feline by the way that he sat staring at us.

I felt rather odd, then, finally noticing that his body, while humanoid in nature, was far from human. The face was an orange coloured oval, drifting into tuffs of purple fur on either side of his cheeks. Setting atop his head was a band of blue (which I assumed meant some kind of hierarchy since the others behind him (who wore red armour instead of green) had no objects adorning their heads) separating his lower face from the longer half of the orange skull that was so top heavy that it curled under at the end. On his head were five purple spikes, the last of which was on the portion of his head that curled under.

I instantly thought poodle when I observed his arms, but then I thought differently. Poking out from under the grass green shoulder guards were lengthy strands of hair, then suddenly stopping into a bare orange upper arm. The arm wasn't shaved; it was physically devoid of the purple fur that coated (or appeared to coat) the rest of his body. Either these creatures had very good hair removal products or they just did not have fur there.

The fur on his forearms fluffed at the elbow before streaking down to his "hand" of four claws. The claws, however, looked more rounded for him, so I looked back to his face to compare, and indeed, the tusks on him also looked rounded at the tips. This was no ferocious creature. I hoped at least.

Then looking at his hind feet reminded me of a cow trying to wear shorts. The hooves in back were the same bare orange as the skin of the beast, shifting ever so slightly across the dirt as he reared up once more, taking several paces closer to me.

We weren't quite sure what he was yet, but I was reminded of instantly of Carroll's poem about the Jabberwock.

I tried a weak hello, but then I remembered the universal greeting taught to us by the Autobot Kup. "Bah weep granah weep ninni bong," I recited perfectly, watching as the creature tilted his head.

"Speaks nar kaw qen ner. Rar ne yawn," apparently he knew some of our language, and apparently he knew enough to say "yawn" when he...well...yawned. Then he turned back to me and began speaking fluent English. "You are a human, are you not?" he asked.

"Why, yes, we are."

The look he gave us almost made me want to take a step back, but this creature was more imposing when he wanted to be, because he shrank closer to the ground, red eyes not leaving me, until his tusks brushed the ground. Probably some sort of greeting gesture of theirs. "I am Mar'l, a Karnasian. This planet is ours, yet you have crashed here, have you not?"

"Well, yes," I tilted my head, taking a step towards the towering orange and purple fluff ball. "We crashed here yesterday."

"We know, har var ne," Mar'l burbled, mixing his own language with ours. He could speak fluent English, from what we had seen thus far, but he often made the same switch back to his own like most species did either by accident or purpose. "We saw you crash, that's why we came for you. We'll take you and your equipment var car nar ner, to our camp, to our shuttles. Get you on your way to your home world Earth."

"Earth was destroyed," one of my men said, and I flinched for him giving such a precious detail to a creature we didn't fully know yet."

"Yours was the one destroyed twer qa na. Come with us, human. We'll show you the way home for a price."

There's always a price, and if we were going to get back to the shuttles in orbit then we were going to have to work out a deal with these creatures. "You know of a planet where we can live, then?"

"Yes. The planet is not breathable to us cher re war, yet there is precious things under the planet's surface tar vee qra. We make a deal with you or who leads you, the planet in exchange for the precious things twer twerk req."

I noticed he didn't say what was precious enough for giving us the planet in exchange for it. "We'll see what we can make arrangements over," I stepped up to him, ushering my men along behind me. "Let's go on then to your camp and we'll get in contact with our ships and discuss it."

"Of course," Mar'l motioned to his troops and began leading the way, conversing among themselves in their own language. I only hoped this deal would be true and that we humans, no, Terrans now... that we Terrans could find a suitable home to replace Earth. Here's hoping.