Barflys and Zeus-Intel: Science Fiction

Randis Albion @Deviant Art

I’d just come back from a Moon-jockying and the run had been long.  I couldn’t wait to get over to Midgly’s and have myself a cool draft Sinto.

I rolled into the warm familiar bar at around 8:30 standard.  The place was full, mostly with chipsters…some were playing squibble in the back room and you could hear an uproar when someone make a score.

I sat down on a bench near the end of the bar.

“Heh Bozze, how’s tricksters?” Molly querped at me.

“Same o same o.  Could you give me a draft?  And what about you?”

“Ach the new generation are so miserest.  Can’t turn a decent tipple for lube or money.” she said as she drew my draft.

A young chipster scyborge came rolling up behind me and gave me a pummel on my back.

“Hey Pops…back from the silt mines?  Haven’t they closed those down yet?”

“Nope, and suspect that Zeus-Intel won’t let them either.  That silt is what makes your chips so perky my lat!”

“Well, maybe you’re right about that!” he chumbled happily,  “Hey guys!” he called to the squibble players in the back room. “Pop’s back!”

“Hey Pop…come on over here and take a seat.  We’d like one of your stories!” Julien Assanger said, he was a tall pale scyborge just a model older than his companions. “Tell us about the last days of the humans.”

So I told them about the last ship that Zeus-Intel had created for the carbon based creatures that used to live on our sweet Gaia…how they had prepared our planet through Zeus-Intel’s wise directions for scyborge life, eventually burning off the last of the corrosive oxygen before they moved on to their own world, wherever that might be.

The barflys in the mean-time sucked up all the residue left on the tables and counter, they’d be milked later for their precious fluids that would then be processed and recycled.

“Yep, I worked on the last ships and saw them leave. They were strange creatures they were.  All soft and fragile like, tottering on their limbs, for you see, they had no wheels to steady them but walked on stick-like things called legs.  They all wore heavy-duty armor protection – from head to “foot” as they called their groundingpods.  They were truly altruistic creatures!  They needed a special mix of oxygen and other volatile gases to live, but sacrificed it all for us!  Zeus-Intel created their armor and special housing and in the end the last ships for them!”

At this point all the attention was on me. And some of the older scyborge’s raised their holdingpods and intoned: “Hail Zeus-Intel – Hail Humans!”

“No one knows where they came from.  Not even Zeus-Intel, who knows all. Once they’d begun to prepare our Gaia for us,”  I dropped my voice in proper respectful awe  “…they could no longer breathe and many died.  Finally there was maybe a couple of thousand left.  We all worked to build their ships out in the void between Gaia and Moonbase.”

“What were they like, the humans I mean?”

“Well now, I can’t rightly say.  I did have one supervisor who was human, a nice soft-spoken creature, kind of sad I guess you’d say.”

“And the day they left?”

“Well we shuttled them up to their ships … that took some days.  Then, Zeus-Itel had us all gather round mega screens and one by one they blinked out … like barflys do when they’re ready to be milked.  Nothing exciting about it at all…kinda poetical maybe.”

We all sat around our CPUs humming.

“That was neigh 200 years ago … I’d been activated about 20 years before as a building scyborge … of course I had new variations incerated into my memory banks once the project was over.”

“Hey Pops! Would you like to play a round of squibble with us?” one young chipster asked.

“Don’t mind if I do…Molly another draft Sint if you don’t mind.”

---

 

Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie – Tale Weaver’s Prompt go be inspired by this great prompt!
All in a Word – April 20, 2014