July 22, 2003
-
How DeBeers saved the planet: A science fiction parable
The scout ship from the planet Zeta-Jones had completed its mission. It had observed the watery little planet for almost fifty of its years, translated the major language groups, tapped into relevant data banks, and all without breaking the Prime Directive. Okay, they bent the sucker a little, but nothing that a few mind-wipes and some Preparation H wouldn’t fix.
Their leader, Captain Slirk, had finished the written report and entered it into ships’ memory, but there were a few things he had left out. Things that could not be adequately quantified or digitized. Things that, if interpreted wrongly, could result in a planet’s being vaporized, more or less due to a clerical error. These things have happened.
Slirk therefore resolved to communicate with his high commander, the Supreme Springsteen, also known simply as the Boss.
He linked up with one of the ship’s quantum espers, specially bred telepaths who could send and receive data instantly, regardless of distance, time zones, or servers being down. This was not done routinely, however, as it tended to be hard on the telepaths. They were usually only good for a short time before expiring, not unlike pre-paid long distance cards.
After the usual routing errors, he linked up with the Boss.
“Greetings, boss,” he said.”A full belly and an empty mind to you.”
“And to you,” replied the Boss affably. “I assume you have a matter of great import to impart.”
“In part,” he imparted impartially. “The quantifiable digitizable data has been quantified and digitized, but there remains something which is, well, weird. Odd. Virtually inexplicable. It relates to mating rituals.”
At the reference to sex, three of the Bosses’ eyes widened slightly, and his left palp throbbed a bit.
“Weirder than the genital-exchange ritual among the Jaxonians?”
“Yep.”
“Dear me. Odder than the ritual implantation of explosives into the in-laws on the planet Kaboom, formerly known as Barsoom?”
“Yep.”
“Oh my. More inexplicable than the lemon-sucking we encountered on the planet Edselmouth?”
“Fer sher,” replied Slirk, lapsing briefly into an obscure sub-dialect he had become fond of.
“Well,” sighed the Boss,”you better tell me. And do get to the point. My esper is starting to twitch, and I don’t know how much longer she can hold out.”
“Okay, okay,” said Slirk, sounding strangely like Joe Pesche, or as much like Joe Pesche as a being can whose facial parts tend to slide and click when communicating.
“There are two dominant genders on the planet, and three to seven subdominant genders. Let me be frank, we’re not sure, and neither are they.”
“No, let ME be Frank,” interjected the Boss. “Sorry,” he added quickly. “I guess I was just born to run at the mandibles. Please continue.”
(Author’s note: The Boss interjected the punchline to a joke, variants of which are to be found in every galactic society which has subdominant genders; all of them, to be frank.)
“There is a pre-mating ritual in which the male gives an object of great value to the female.”
“So what,” said the Boss. “Nothing terribly unusual about that. We see food, land, weapons, slaves, and such being bestowed all the time. So what do they bestow? And don’t be slow, you know?”
“Well, the male gives a chip of crystallized carbon to the female.”
“Crystallized carbon? As in glorified soot?”
“Yep.”
“That IS odd.”
“Oh it gets worse. These are carbon-based lifeforms. Carbon is one of the most abundant elements on the planet.”
“WHAT? Are they crazy?”
“It gets better. These crystals are gathered by members of an underclass who can never own them. And even though these things are not particularly rare–almost every upper and even middle class female has one or more–the males are expected to exchange the mass-energy value equivalent to one/sixth of what they can generate in one of their years.”
“Okay, that tears it. You did well, Slirk. Had you attempted to quantify and digitize this business, we would have vaporized the suckers on general principles. I mean, this is dangerously nuts. Clearly we need much more study before we take action.
“”This is what I want you to do. Round up a bunch of examples of beings wearing the largest crystals, regardless of gender–I’m not taking any chances here. Get a banker’s dozen or so. Then subject them to the whole nine yards–brain scans, pentothal, organ probes,credit checks, whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this.
“Fuck the Prime Directive, we need answers and we need them soon–say in a few hundred of their years or so.”
And that is why two members of the British royal family, seven rap stars, the Pope, and Bill Gates’ wife disappeared.
Comments (6)
I am nominating this blog for ZangaZine! I’m just not sure whether it’s “Fun & Funny” or “Prose, Poems & Plays.”
Hysterical. Loved it.
Frankly speaking — you must have known I’d say that — it was so eeaassy, I think this is more factual than fictional. For instance, both my nieces can eat lemons – (I’ve seen them do it!) – only because they didn’t know better when they were little wee tots and were formulating their taste bud priorities. And I myself am in touch with a Head that can seldom be reached except with difficulty, as you can see by my words, so I suspect that under cover of a fictional status you are printing out before our eyes a history of our future, a task never done before, or even conceived. Also, I note that you are up-to-date on the planet of Mars, surnamed Barsoom by that greatest of all sci-fi historians: Edgar Rice Burroughs, much of whose once-thought-of-as- outlandish fictional histories have already come true. Your grasp of things is inexhaustible. Perhaps you, too, sometimes watch The 3rd Planet from the Sun, on TV.
OMG…ROFLMAO….I grok that!! Being a goldsmith, I did a happy dance when the Russian and Canadian Consortiums broke the DeBeers monopoly…this story is FABULOUS, combining two of my fav subjects…BRAVO!! *applause* ~Z
hehehe this was great. Thanks for the great reading and the laugh and the oh so true portrayal of our freaky society that holds too much stock in things like… well… rocks!
ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
EXCELLENT PUNCH LINE! BRAVO!