Episode 2: Humanity is Exhausting.

This is serial 2 of... I dunno, probably around 10 serials of a novella, The Colonizers. I'll try to do about one serial per week. PLEASE give me feedback, and post on your socials if you like it... Tag me if you think about it. My accounts are all @TropicalMoses (Insta, TT, BS, Sora, except Twitter, which is @TopicalMoses... Some psychic bastard took TropicalMoses several years before I got to it.)

THE COLONIZERS: Episode 2. Click here for Episode 1.

Mitra and Rondo spent the next day trying to untangle the various political systems of the humans, some of which bizarrely allowed these ignorant, easily swayed, tribal dummies to try and figure out who the least incompetent and most honest among the generally bad choices they were allowed by fundamentally dishonest group-think organizations they called “parties”, which is what Mitra assumed they were doing rather than studying. And somehow that was the best system these humans could come up with. 

“Good lord. It’s a miracle these morons have made it this far.” Mitra offered to Rondo. Just then, Bletchley chimed in to inform them he was beginning to launch the political campaign designed to put the leaders most likely to sabotage local economies and provoke strife abroad. Bletchley showed the biographies of the chosen leaders of the more powerful countries Bletchley would be promoting. “It must have been hard to decide which candidate is the most self-destructive. Looks to me like it’s the louder ones, generally… Not sure why the humans haven’t figured that one out. Seems like they periodically intentionally appoint the loudest, dumbest person who has read the fewest books… Maybe they have an evolutionary drive to implode?” Mitra was genuinely baffled. Rondo, whose mouth was hanging open with a confused look on his face looking at the same information Mitra was looking at, just shrugged his shoulders and shook his head incredulously.

“And it seems like they’re always looking at eachother thinking it’s the other guy who chose the dummy, when it’s very obvious who the objective dummy is… So weird. How are they still alive?” Rondo was dumbfounded. “Well, maybe this won’t be so hard anyhow.” He looked at Mitra and smiled broadly. 

Mitra and Rondo began a deep dive into Bletchley’s methodology as he was launching the campaign. 

“Hey Bletch, why do you tie so many of these humans to ‘The Jews’? What is that?” Rondo asked.

“The Jews are the least favored tribe. Devaluation by association.” Bletchley responded.

“Huh. Looks like they’ve been the most disfavored for over a millennium… They were blamed for a pandemic that killed half these jerks, and it was hundreds of years before they even understood germ theory… Every century or so someone has killed half the Jews and they keep coming back. Why are they so disfavored?”

“They keep coming back and succeeding.” Bletchley said flatly.

“Huh… They’re mad at that? Why don't they just make one of those guys their leader? Or like, any smart person?” Rondo was shaking his head and flexing his eyebrows to full sail.

“They’d rather lose than let their opponent win. However they perceive ‘win’.” Bletchley stated flatly.

“Bizarre.” Mitra said. “So they’d rather everyone die than let some human from another tribe be successful? And it’s not just the Jews… Looks like most of the pale people look down on the tan people, and the tan people don’t like the really tan people, and the really tan people don’t like… the Jews. Oh. And most of the genders don’t like the other ones. They only have two, huh. You’d think they’d be nicer to eachother. Then anyone from the autocratic countries doesn't like people from the choosy countries, and vice versa?”

“Democracies. Yes. And philosophies too. They kill eachother endlessly over that… I will be associating any competent leaders with disfavored tribes and philosophies, while ensuring the most destructive are slotted into the right classifications.” Bletchley offered.

“Man they spend a lot of their time being super mad at eachother about dumb stuff… Well, I guess if we only had one planet, maybe we’d be killing eachother over made up garbage too, just to justify population management, instead of just sending the annoying ones to a new planet.” Mitra responded. “Remember those guys who decided they weren’t going to talk to the non-harmonics for some reason? Like they said disharmony was, I dunno, bad for you or something? Where did we send those guys?” Mitra asked.

“Caldor Four. Miserable planet. Just rocks and crap. No plants at all… I think they’re trying to move somewhere else… Hope we don’t get assigned to find those loud jerks a new planet.” Rondo rolled his eyes.

Rondo stood and stretched out his back, which he found didn’t work very well and the constant vague pain caused him to be irrascible. He yawned, which surprised him, and he slapped his thighs and rubbed up and down.

“Well, I guess we’d better do some collection.” He said. “Let’s suit up, eh?”

“Ok. Honestly, I’m a bit scarred from the last collection outing.” Mitra said and bared her teeth.

“I don’t blame you, but these dummies won’t detect us. We’ll keep it very low contact. If they engage us, we’ll pretend we don’t speak their language.”

“Ugh. Fine.” Mitra said and rose from her chair, walked to the back and exited, returning moments later with two arms full of objects. “I’m supposed to carry all this stuff.” she said indicating a purse chock full of a makeup case, a wallet, several lipsticks, five packs of gum, two key chains filled with keys, a mobile phone, a pair of flip flops, a golf visor, twelve hair ties, a small bottle of hair spray, two dog bones, three sunglass cases, and a 32 ounce water bottle. “And this is yours.” Handing Rondo a wallet and a mobile phone. “Why do I have to carry all the equipment?” Mitra asked Bletchley as Rondo chuckled.

“Gender standard.” Bletchley responded. “You’ll be carrying most of the sensors in that bag.” Bletchley concluded. Mitra sighed.

“Well…” Rondo clapped his hands, rubbed them together and smiled. “Let’s go… Bletch, you have a path for us?”

“Loaded.” Bletchley responded and navigation information appeared on the inside of their corneas. Mitra sighed again and she and Rondo walked to the back room to descend to the surface.

“Why does every solid planet have sand?” Mitra asked while lifting and lowering her feet as if the sand was toxic. “It gets everywhere. After we destroyed the Keptar homeworld, they found sand in the Oglioplex gas giant 200 light years away!”

“Who did?” Rondo raised an eyebrow. “200 light years? Sand? I dunno.”

“I don’t know who. I can’t remember who even told me that. But I wouldn’t be surprised. Sand sucked by the black hole on the other side of Oglioplex probably. Or it was trailed in a wormhole… Good lord I hate this stuff.” She said and looked forlornly skyward as they began to follow the trail provided by Bletchley and displayed on the interior of their synthetic eyes. 

As they arrived at the Mesquite Municipal Airport abutting the Nevada-Arizona border, Looking none the worse for wear thanks to their robotic skeletons, Bletchley’s voice intruded on their hours long desert meditation via their generated cochlea in their inner ears.

“I have engaged transportation for you to get to the largest local metropolis. Geo information loaded.” And directional guidance entered their view. They walked a couple hundred meters toward a wheeled cuboid Bletchley tagged as being called a ‘tour bus’. There was a queue of white-haired slightly hunched over people very slowly boarding the cuboid.

“Jeez. These things don’t move fast. Easy to catch.” Rondo said.

“No kidding. I feel like I could take down a dozen myself… I guess I don't have to worry about my tail catching fire this time.” Mitra said and chuckled in a slightly traumatized kind of way.

Trundling across the barren desert along Route 15, the occupants of the bus began to socialize, passing about various medications and shouting in eachother’s hearing aids.

“Their auditory receptors…” Rondo began.

“Ears.” Bletchley’s voice interjected.

“Their ears” Rondo began again “don’t seem very sensitive. I wonder if they can even hear us at all.”

“We will eliminate you all!” Mitra said aloud, then looked about with no noticeable reaction. Mitra raised her eyebrows and pushed out her lower lip.

“C’mon Mitra. That’s the kind of thing that got us chased out of the Flavian homeworld. Be careful… Professionalism.” Rondo admonished. Mitra raised one eyebrow and cranked up half her mouth. “But man… Their ears suck.”

“And where’s all that water Bletchley said was here. This looks like goddamn Caldor Four.”

After an hour and a half, the bus slowed as they entered Las Vegas. The bus driver’s voice came over the speakers.

“Out the right side of the bus, you’ll see the Stratosphere hotel and casino.” The bus driver cleared his voice while the three old ladies at the front of the bus began harranging the driver about something.

“Is that the best they can do?” Rondo asked. “Pathetic.” The driver was driving with one hand and hurling his right arm at the ladies who were getting to a fever pitch with their finger wagging.

“We will get to your buffet just after the short tour of the Las Vegas Strip you’ve paid for… Repeat, we WILL get to your buffet very shortly.” The driver announced in a hurried and manic tone, while one could hear the ladies at the front barking something to the driver about running out of chocolate mousse. 

As they passed various shoddily reconstructed world monuments and mirrored buildings with gaudily ostentatious fountains blasting provocatively into the air, Mitra turned to Rondo.

“I didn’t realize all those monuments were all in one city. Is this planet super small?” She asked.

“I don’t think so. Maybe. I get all the planets mixed up… I guess there’s some water there. I dunno. It feels like they’re faking this whole place... Hey, I’m pretty sure that thing was on the other side of the planet and it looked way bigger.” He said indicating the miniature Eiffel Tower across the street. “You think they knew we were coming and they just threw this up in the desert to make us not want their planet?” Rondo’s head was on a swivel and his back straight and off the back of his chair looking out for telltale signs of a worker sneaking the finishing touch on this papier-mache city or maybe an ambush as they realized he wasn’t buying it. Seeing nothing, he relaxed about 30% but kept his eyes scanning subtly. 

The driver abandoned the tour about three blocks early in response to the cane-prodding he was receiving from the most physically robust and apparently most starving of the ladies at the front. As they arrived at the Busted Flush Hotel & Casino in old downtown miles away from The Strip, the ladies at the front began a cooperative effort to stand and gather their quilted overnight handbags before the bus came to a halt. They were at the front door, banging on the glass and cackling, before the bus driver could legally open it. As he came to an inelegant stop while castigating the ladies for being out of their seats, the bus driver opened the doors, and the ladies came spilling out like cold molasses uphill in the winter, while making sounds indicating they were moving much faster than a speedgun would confess. The slow drool of disembarkation had Mitra and Rondo rolling their eyes impatiently at the back of the line taking one step forward every thirty seconds.

Finally out of the bus and on the pavement, Mitra smiled at the lack of sand under her feet, and they began a random meander around the less elevated portion of Las Vegas. They walked through the “Shopping Experience” somewhat confused by the goings on in shops filled with trifles apparently designed to separate win-drunk simpletons from their currency via similar techniques Rondo used to attract fish on his homeworld. Occasionally Bletchley would direct them closer to a group of people or an interesting electronic signal, or direct them to an object of interest from the map, but Mitra and Rondo were generally free to explore how they saw fit. As the sun began to set and they had walked across Las Vegas from central to the southwest then back up north, they were guided by Bletchley to the Speedway and next door, Nellis Air Force Base.

“Internal combustion? Seriously? Don’t they know how to use magnetism, electricity, chemical fuel cells? What the hell is wrong with these people?” Rondo asked nobody, and coughed as a military jet flew by.

“Oh they have all those things.” Bletchley said.

“That’s even worse!” Rondo yelled. “They have those things, but they choose to burn crap in order to move like they still live in caves? Good God.”

“They’re transitioning.” Bletchley said, understandingly.

“They better do it fast.” Mitra said, fanning the exhaust from her face. “Maybe we should add a program to get them the information they’re destroying their own biosphere… I’d hate for them to destroy it before we even get a chance to take it over.”

“They know already.” Bletchley said flatly.

“These people are bizarre. They keep trying to destroy themselves, but their own incompetence saves them.”

“Well, we’ll fix their minds once we take over.” Rondo said with a smile. “Never fear.”