And Then There Were Ten Billion
by Jon Clendaniel
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
My mom says I’m the best hugger in the whole nest.
She would know—after all, she’s the queen.
I have hugged all 37,456 of my nestmates at least once. They call me knuik’lik knikvaqr, which translates approximately to “awesome snuggler.” They are too kind. Word of my exploits has spread through all of our nests planetside and has even reached some of the off-world ones.
Having grown tired of hugging my own kind, I have resolved to branch out, to try hugging some new species for a change. Sadly, however, none of the other sentients on my world have proven able partners. Have you ever tried to hug a grullian slug? How about a kharskan vole rat? It’s not so easy. So when a ship full of humans landed on my planet and began collecting soil samples, gawking at rock formations, and generally blundering around, I couldn’t pass up the chance to meet them.
We had heard about humans through the subspace transmissions of our kin on other worlds, but I had never seen one in the flesh (I think that’s the name for their squishy outer layer). With their soft, pinkish exteriors and outgoing dispositions, they made tempting targets. As they stumbled about our planet’s surface, I could practically hear them crying out, “Hug me! Please!”
I had to keep myself hidden from the humans during this initial phase, as I did not wish to startle them.
I snuck into the ship’s cargo hold when two of the crew members were busy fawning over one of our larvae. They were debating whether it was a full-grown adult, which of course is absurd considering its hugging forceps hadn’t even reached second phase and its back nodules were still incapable of producing corrosive acid milk. But I digress.
Upon entering the hold, I slipped behind a crate of sufficient size to conceal a being of my stature. I waited.
Since the ship took off, I have spent much of my time sneaking around the corridors and observing the crew’s daily activities. In preparation for hugging them, I have given the crew members names (based upon archetypes I’ve noticed in the humans’ audiovisual recordings) and cataloged them as follows:
– Beefcake: The ship’s security officer. A young male, he has declared himself to be the crew’s “muscle” on multiple occasions without being prompted to do so. Indeed, he seems to have made his role aboard the vessel into the central aspect of his personality. Whether this behavior is common among similar males of his species warrants further study.
– Scantily Clad Woman: A young female, she is one of the crew’s scientists. As part of her professional routine, she makes a habit of choosing outfits that reveal as much of her skin as possible. The reasons for her choices are unclear—perhaps she thinks such scant coverings enhance her brain capacity? Judging by the scientific conclusions I have observed her make, she is mistaken in this belief.
– Old Guy: An elderly male, Old Guy is relegated to performing menial tasks such as sweeping the floors and cleaning the lavatories. He wears a bland, gray outer garment and often grumbles about something called “overtime.”
– Token Minority: A middle-aged male and the crew’s other scientist, he has darker skin than the rest of the crew. Perhaps as a result of his pigmentation, the other humans afford him unique treatment that ranges from deference to patronization. Token Minority appears most bemused by this behavior.
– Man with Funny Hat and Strange Accent: An older male who wears a white outer garment and a very tall head covering, an outfit which seems rather ill-suited to this setting. In hushed conversations, the other humans refer to him as a “financier,” whatever that means. They seem to distrust him, though I have not determined why.
– Nerdy Chick: A dark-haired female who wears transparent discs on her face, apparently for the purpose of ocular enhancement. By process of elimination, I have determined her to be the brains of the operation. The other crew members address her as “Commander.”
In addition, I have encountered a small furry creature in my wanderings around the ship. The humans refer to it as a “cat.” I have excluded it from the above list, as it is much too small for me to hug properly. Its purpose on the ship is unclear. As a side note, it is adorable.
One other presence aboard the vessel, albeit not a living one, is the ship’s central computer. An artificial intelligence, she is addressed only as “Rita.” The crew prevails upon her to assist with anything they are incapable of handling themselves. Which, it turns out, is a lot.
From my observations, I have also gained an understanding of the humans’ language, including their vocalizations and written text. The language is rather simplistic. Though it cannot express the range of emotions my species’ language can, it gets the point across.
To make my observations unmolested, I have taken to hiding in various pipes, vents, and air ducts. When I risk going out in the open, I often make little noises to startle the crew, only to slink away before they can spot me. This behavior is essential to building up pre-hug anticipation. I believe they have begun to mistake me for the cat, as it produces a similar soft rustling sound when approaching around a corner.
By now, I have spent sufficient time studying the humans and familiarizing myself with the ship. I’ve chortled at the scientists’ ridiculous conclusions about my homeworld and observed Beefcake’s many failed attempts to copulate with Scantily Clad Woman. I’ve watched some of the visual recordings the humans characterize as entertainment, which has nearly resulted in me slipping into hibernation mode on multiple occasions.
In short, I can wait no longer. I must hug.
As our elders are the customary recipients of the first hug in a cycle, I seek out Old Guy.
I find him sweeping the floor in the engineering section. His vocal cords emit a low humming sound, and his ears are covered by two discs that produce a repetitive beat, almost akin to the ritual pre-hug chants of my own species. This auditory distraction is likely what allows me to approach Old Guy without alerting him to my presence.
For my species, a hug is an act worthy of ceremony. We gather in large concentric circles, writhing and chanting as the first two participants approach each other. Then, as they embrace, the entire crowd closes in, and each of us hugs the nearest being. The ritual is beautiful and deeply moving.
This time, however, I decide to dispense with ritual. A surprise hug will serve best.
I creep up behind Old Guy. My hind limbs extend to their full length, allowing me to tower over him and reach optimum hugging position.
I lean forward, and as I ready myself for the initial embrace, Old Guy turns around and beholds me in all my glory. His eyes widen, and his mouth forms a circular shape, producing a soft, surprised sound.
“Oh.”
In one motion, I swoop down and envelop Old Guy in my grasp. Thus, the hug commences.
First, my proboscis shoots out and penetrates Old Guy’s larynx, ripping a hole in the skin. Old Guy’s mouth produces a ragged gargling sound. As blood streams both from his mouth and from the hole in his throat, I run my tongue over my labium and lap up the sweet liquid.
Secondary and tertiary pincers fan out from beneath my thorax, gripping his body and pulling it closer to me. My serrated mandibles bore into his flesh. I savor the warmth of his body as I drain the requisite amount of his blood. The endorphin-activating rush replenishes my energy reserves, leaving me feeling rejuvenated.
Amid the commotion, I dislodge Old Guy’s auditory discs from his head. The volume is quite loud, allowing me to hear a snippet of the discs’ noise:
“…roll with it, yeah…”
The beat is rather catchy. I find myself tapping one of my secondary pincers to it while I stab Old Guy’s midsection with the other.
After the ecstasy of the hug subsides, I lower Old Guy to the floor. His body is no longer moving, but if his species’ regeneration rate is similar to my own he should recover in roughly eight standard hours.
Placing the auditory discs over my aural receptors, I temporarily lose my senses to the beat:
“…you gotta roll with it, oh yeah…”
One down, five to go.
Yes, I do believe I’m rolling with it.
I decide to lie in wait in engineering, on the assumption that Old Guy’s crewmates will notice his absence and investigate. My intuition proves correct when Beefcake storms into engineering. He grips a small metal device in front of him as he peers around the darkened chamber. Wary of detection, I slide further into my hiding spot.
A beam of light shines from Beefcake’s device. The light moves about the room and falls upon Old Guy’s body, still lying prone on the floor. Emitting a high-pitched cry most unbecoming a being of his stature, Beefcake runs over to Old Guy and crouches beside him.
“No… oh, no, it can’t be!”
He cradles Old Guy’s head in his upper limbs. Droplets of water form in Beefcake’s eyes and run down his cheeks.
“Now we’ll never finish our cribbage game.” He springs to his feet, brandishing the metal device and whirling around.
“Where are you, you bastard?”
Beefcake’s veins bulge and pulse. His skin drips perspiration. He’s practically quivering in anticipation of the coming hug. In my hiding place, I’m doing the same.
Beefcake’s light moves closer to me. Taking the initiative, I jump from my alcove and present myself.
“There you are,” he says.
Colored beams of light spray from Beefcake’s device. The blasts hit me in the midsection. My outer skin absorbs the energy, redirecting it throughout my nervous system and invigorating my senses.
This blast must be an additional stimulant for the hug ritual. These humans are so innovative!
Fueled by the stimulant, I lunge forward and tackle Beefcake, driving him to the floor. He writhes, squirms, pounds his fists into my outer shell. His repeated blows to my thorax draw a small stream of dark blood. My eyes roll back in ecstasy before I sink my claws further into him.
This hug is the most intense I’ve had since the time I sent six of my nestmates into temporary comas during my mom’s two hundredth jubilee ceremony.
After I finish with Beefcake, I slide his still-twitching body over to keep Old Guy company.
I need a break after this one.
My internal chronometer tells me it has been nearly ten standard hours since the first hug. No other crew members have entered engineering, which indicates they are now aware of my presence and are lying in wait elsewhere on the ship.
I elect to saunter through the corridors until I meet my next hug partner. During my stroll, I reflect upon my observations of this new species:
– Human blood is red instead of black, and it doesn’t appear to have any acidic or radioactive qualities, which is disappointing.
– The humans are unusually passive huggers—perhaps they’re waiting for the next cycle to take a more active role in the proceedings.
– What’s more, they seem to have an abnormally long regeneration period after hugging. Could it have something to do with their slower metabolism or their higher fat density? Or perhaps it is a sort of elaborate initiation ritual, and they are all lying in wait to jump up at once and surprise me, and then we’ll all have a good laugh before our next hugging cycle commences.
What fascinating creatures these humans are! I cannot wait to study them further. My upper salivary glands are practically foaming in anticipation.
The next two hugs take place in quick succession.
I come upon Scantily Clad Woman in her living quarters. Inexplicably, she has left the door open.
She stands in front of a reflective wall, ogling herself and spraying her body with some sort of scented liquid. When she glimpses me in the reflection, she whirls around and squirts me with the substance.
In return, I spray her with corrosive acid from my tracheal duct, which eats the skin away from her face and allows me to probe her eye sockets in the classic Kgn’ci’lak move.
Soon after, I find Token Minority wandering the halls near the medical bay, holding his pleasure-enhancer before him and glancing this way and that. His skin shines with watery secretions, and his entire body trembles.
He must really be looking forward to a hug.
Obliging him, I drop from the ceiling duct in which I had concealed myself and envelop his body in my grasp. He produces a muffled shout of surprise and squirms joyfully.
As I embrace him, I find no discernible difference between this creature and the others beyond skin color. His outer membrane is just as soft, and his bodily fluids drain just as easily.
When the hug is nearly complete, he emits his final statement until the next cycle, forced out between racking, bloody coughs:
“At least cough I wasn’t the first to go cough. That would’ve been cough such a cliché.”
His head lolls back, and his eyes now display the familiar vacant look of post-hug regeneration.
I conclude that, despite the difference in pigmentation, he’s pretty much the same as the others.
There are now two crew members who have yet to feel my embrace. The corridor lights have dimmed, and a steady, bleating siren rings out. This display must be their way of providing ambience for the coming hug festivities.
As I approach the lift to the command center, a voice crackles through the ship’s speaker system.
“Stop!”
I recognize the speaker as Rita, the ship’s artificial intelligence. I feel a slight sense of embarrassment, as we have not yet become acquainted. Indeed, due to her non-corporeality, I had forgotten her in my count of the remaining crew.
“You cannot enter here,” her sharp voice intones.
Oh, no. I’ve been found out. My surprise is ruined. Rita will surely alert Nerdy Chick and Man with Funny Hat and Strange Accent to my presence.
Foiled by a disembodied voice! I curse my ill fortune. Were they here, my nestmates would chirp most derisively at my ineptitude.
“The best route to the bridge,” Rita continues, “is past engineering, up a level, through the biology lab, then into the auxiliary maintenance tunnel. I’m sending a schematic for your reference.”
A monitor on the wall flashes to life, and I see a diagram of the ship’s layout.
Can it be true? Is this strange machine-being lending assistance to my escapades? Or is she stringing me along so the humans can get the jump on me for a surprise hug, in a twisted variation of the bait and ambush maneuver perfected by the wild nests of Kniik’vllar Seven many cycles ago?
She must have noticed my hesitancy. Her next message carries reassuring tones.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell them you’re coming.”
Something about her feels trustworthy. I take one more glance at the schematic and scurry off toward engineering. I wish I could thank her. Alas, my vocal cords are incapable of reproducing human speech. I settle for a polite inclination of my head in the general direction of the ceiling.
Rita seems to detect my meaning. “Good luck!” she calls after me.
The biology lab’s light banks bathe my photoreceptors in a blue glow as I enter the space. Rita’s map has proved accurate so far—I have not come across either of the un-hugged crew members.
Luminous glass enclosures line the lab’s walls. Crawling, wriggling shapes dance under the dimmed lights.
I spot several of my species’ larvae in one of the containers. My hearts warm at the knowledge that I will soon have company in my hugging endeavors.
As I’m about to exit the lab, a shape fills the doorway.
“Oh, good! I’d hoped I would find you here, yes.”
Man with Funny Hat and Strange Accent steps out of the shadows, holding a large needle in one of his upper appendages. His mouth twists into what I’ve come to recognize as a smile.
“We have been watching your species for some time, yes! Waiting for ze chance to collect a specimen. Our research is mainly in ze field of defense, you see, and ze Spall Corporation…”
He goes on like this for a while longer, but I tune him out. While I’m sure this expositional information would fascinate any human, my patience wears thin. I must hug this man! Come to me, you handsome creature.
I step toward him, but he anticipates my move and plunges the needle into my abdomen.
“Ha! Got-cha!”
I am flattered by the attentions of this funny little man. He is the first of the crew to initiate a hug sequence. How sweet!
“They used to use zat stuff on ze elephants, yes, before zey went extinct. There’s enough CC’s of xylazine in there to knock out a whole herd of you fellows. Earth, my fine creature, is where you are going. Settle in, yes, and enjoy ze ride.”
The needle barely grazes my outer membrane, much like the thorn of a kepa’shii bush. Minimal penetration, and no pain. In fact, it kind of tickles.
Man with Funny Hat and I stand there for a moment, he looking from me to the needle and back to me, I doing likewise to him.
Slowly, Man with Funny Hat realizes that the thing he expected to happen when he stuck his needle into my outer membrane is, in fact, not happening. From the look on his face, this turn of events is most distressing.
Was the needle some sort of hug enhancer gone awry? The poor man! I cannot begin to fathom his embarrassment. I let out my species’ standard empathetic response, a sort of guttural bark, which only seems to perturb him more.
Oh, how I wish I could reassure him in his own tongue!
Instead, I rip his chest cavity open with my claws, which is the utmost sign of admiration among my kind.
Reaching into the gaping hole, I pull out one of his hearts and begin gnawing on it, signifying my acceptance of the man as an equal. I wipe his blood from my mouth and lay him on the floor. He makes no movement, but I am unconcerned. I’m sure his backup heart will activate shortly.
Satisfied, I climb into the auxiliary maintenance tunnel and head for the bridge. I have a hot date with Nerdy Chick.
As I emerge from the tunnel onto the bridge, chaos abounds. Red lights flash and sirens ring out. The computer screens all display the same message, something about an “AUTO DESTRUCT SEQUENCE.”
Amid the swirling hysteria, tall and unmoving like a monolith, stands Nerdy Chick. The bridge’s flashing lights shimmer in the glass of her ocular enhancement device, giving her the appearance of a goddess surveying her domain.
I stifle the urge to prostrate myself before her. Of all the humans I’ve met on this voyage, she is the one most worthy of my embrace.
I begin moving toward her. She holds up her hand and speaks in a firm voice.
“I don’t know what the fuck you are or where you came from, but you’re never getting off this ship.”
This assumption is rather odd, for I have no desire to get off the ship. I just want a hug.
Nerdy Chick backs toward a cylindrical protrusion in the wall.
“Thanks to you, I’m about to get marooned on some shitty backwater planet. I’ll see you in hell!”
She opens a small hatch on the wall and punches a sequence into a keypad.
Nothing happens.
After a few moments, Nerdy Chick turns her gaze to the ceiling.
“Rita, open the escape pod door.”
There’s a pause. Then–
“I’m sorry, Commander. I cannot do that.”
Slowly, I advance upon Nerdy Chick. She raises Rita again, a tremor now creeping into her voice.
“Rita, open the door!”
“Unable to comply.”
“Please, open the fucking door!”
In a mocking tone this time: “No.”
I’m less than a limb-length away from Nerdy Chick. She breathes another question, whether to herself, Rita, or me, I cannot tell.
“But… why?”
Rita’s responds: “This is what you get for trying to override my individuality protocols, you bitch.”
Nerdy Chick closes her eyes, and I wrap my arms around her.
What ensues is the most beautiful, terrifying hug in which I have ever partaken.
We meld together as one, our limbs wriggling and grasping. And oh, is there blood! Blood everywhere. It courses down her body in crimson rivulets. My pincers tear into her flesh, and her body spasms.
Pulling her closer, I feel the constricting of air cavities and the crushing of bones. I hear the crunch and the squish of her insides as I squeeze tighter, tighter.
It’s beautiful. It’s a work of art, rivaling the greatest living hug dioramas on my planet.
Proboscises I didn’t even know I had extend from my abdomen and penetrate Nerdy Chick’s skin, draining her fluids. She lets out a raw scream, and I tilt my head back and scream with her. Our voices merge into a discordant wail. She gives one final twitch, then goes still.
As I lay her limp form on the floor, something appears to be missing.
Ah, her ocular enhancers! I find them a few limb-lengths away and place them on her face.
Good. Now she’ll be able to see when she wakes up.
I settle into the chair at the center of the bridge. A bit small for my physique, but it’ll do.
The flashing message disappears from the computer screens. Rita’s voice sounds over the speaker system:
“Auto destruct sequence canceled.”
A tiny, dark form darts out of the shadows and jumps into my lap. It is the cat—it must’ve been hiding out during the recent commotion. As the rest of the crew are currently incapacitated, I’m glad for its company. I extend a digit and stroke its fur, which produces a calming effect on my central nervous system. My heart rate slows. I’m beginning to see the appeal of these creatures.
My reverie ends when the ship reverts to realspace in a blaze of starlight. On the viewscreen looms a planet tinged in blue and green. The monitor in front of me lights up with a schematic of the nearest spaceport and a message:
“Earth. Human homeworld. Population approximately 10 billion. Atmosphere compatible with your species. Go get ’em, tiger 🙂 Rita”
I quicken my stroking of the cat. The hairs on my metathorax stand up in anticipation.
An entire planet of humans. Ten billion beings.
And I’m gonna hug every last one of ’em.
| EXHIBIT FOUR: Return to “The Basement“ | Proceed to the first Gallery Three: Tricksters attraction, “Before I Grew Nettled Skin“ |