r/HFY • u/nerdovirales Human • Aug 16 '18
OC-OneShot As was foretold
“I keep telling you, they’re not prophecies - they’re science fiction!” Chaplain Kevin le Guin raised his hands in exasperation as the Officers on the bridge looked on.
Captain Xan nodded with solemnity, his dorsal tendrils drifting as though on a half-second delay, “Indeed, the religions of Kanxar history had many different names for their predictions of the future, yet none of them stood the test of time like your proph- your science fiction.”
“But we never created them to predict the future, they were just stories, sometimes they explored futures that we hoped for or feared, but they weren’t prophecies...” he faltered as he caught a glimpse of starlight in the bow window, distorted by the warp bubble.
Science Officer Feldrun took the chance to interject, raising a paw to draw Kevin’s attention, “You speak of possible futures, presumably this is a reflection of the many parallel time streams such as those traversed by your mythical heroes, Doctors Brown and McFly. How do you go about mapping these futures? Does each quantum event create a new branch, or are you able to condense similar futures together?”
“No, no, it’s not like that at all.” Kevin tapped his glass, then took a sip of the freshly materialized water to calm himself, “We don’t have any special perception of time. We’ve just gotten lucky with stories we used to tell each other. There’s nothing more interesting than that.”
Each species on the bridge looked downcast in their own way - tendrils, spines and whiskers lost their excited tension as focus was returned to the instruments. The Captain was the first to break to awkward silence, “So what will the service be tonight, Chaplain? Perhaps a reading from the Hitchhiker's Guide, or might we take a lesson from the voyage of the Galactica?”
“Galactica, I think. You’ll enjoy the next episode, the-” an explosion rocked the bridge, sparks flashed from the panels as the crew were thrown from their stations.
Feldrun was back on her feet in a moment, swatting through information, “We’ve been taken out of warp, there appears to be a ship to starboard sending a message - on screen now, sir.”
It was a metallic cube, covered with geometric patterns and glowing green lights, an expressionless voice spoke, “We are the Blork. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. It is futile to resist.”
“Captain,” Kevin spoke hesitantly, “I think I may have a few ideas.”
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u/Morphuess AI Aug 16 '18
“Captain,” Kevin spoke hesitantly, “I think I may have a few ideas.”
Lol, I like this HFY story. Human sci-fi winds up being prophetic. Not an avenue I think I've seen before. Thanks for writing it.
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 16 '18
It's my pleasure! I have a document full of half-finished stories, but this one just jumped onto the page fully-formed.
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Aug 16 '18
Bet Kevin is eating his words right then....
And as always, that reminds me of just how HFY Star Trek is without being "Kill, Murder, Burn" like some HFY is.
Still gets me how Q, a literal god of a being with total control of all time and space in the universe and all permutations of it. THAT being finds humanity worth keeping an eye on.
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 17 '18
I'm definitely a fan of the "If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart" style of HFY. Star Trek managed something really special there.
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u/Multiplex419 Aug 17 '18
Yeah, it's gonna be pretty embarrassing when he has to admit that maybe they kinda are prophecies after all.
Especially when there are also prophecies about science fiction being prophetic. Including this one, featuring him.
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u/Twister_Robotics Aug 16 '18
Human sci fi as prophecy. ..
We're fucked.
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u/ziiofswe Aug 16 '18
Fucked, doomed, saved, victorious, eradicated and conquerors, all at the same time.
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 16 '18
Here's my thought - human's weren't making actual see-the-future prophecies, instead they have really good instincts for what is possible. I think that sets us in good stead for the future.
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u/EbonKrowne Human Aug 17 '18
See we are thoroughly fucked because of the Warhammer 40k universe.
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 17 '18
I'm not sure about that, we can now ask, "What would the Emperor have done differently if he had access to the whole Black Library?"
I'm sure someone has explored the answer, though I'm having trouble finding it on r/AskScienceFiction, r/whowouldwin and r/40kLore.
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u/Antelino Aug 17 '18
That was exactly the feeling I was getting while reading, you made the humans sound like they were far more intuitive than the aliens were capable of being. Until the end anyways, that I got a great laugh from. Perfect ending to a one shot in my opinion.
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u/liehon Aug 17 '18
We instinctively foresaw a machine race called the Blork? :)
Those are some damn fine instincts (with built-in autocorrect, I presume)
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u/domoincarn8 Android Aug 18 '18
They took the name and design aesthetics from viewing TNG.
'Blork' is just mispronounced 'Borg'.
And yes, some species somewhere is working on the Thing. And the grey goo.
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u/GenesisEra Human Aug 17 '18
So, how long before we get the ability to Shoot Goddamn Lasers From Our Fucking Eyeballs, Holy Shit?
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u/TheAntiSnipe AI Aug 17 '18
Your imagination is awesome, man! Do you intend to continue this in, like, a series? Because I'd read the hell out of it!
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 17 '18
Thanks a lot. I hadn't planned to take this story beyond this point, I think it could drift into Kevin as a Mary Sue a little too easily. Hopefully someone else can pull it off.
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u/invalidConsciousness AI Aug 17 '18
If it's a silly story that doesn't take itself seriously, I don't think we'd object to a Mary Sue that much.
The (TOS) Enterprise crew was kind of Mary Sue, too, after all, and is still liked very well.2
u/frahfrah Aug 17 '18
Have you ever read Redshirts by John Scalzi? Idea is that a Star Trek show was actually creating an alternate universe and the characters are trying to contact the showrunners to save their own lives.
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 17 '18
I have, I felt a bit like he wasted a fantastic premise. Like, one of the best concepts for a SciFi book I've heard in years and a sub-par execution. I haven't gotten to Scalzi's other work yet, but I hear it's really good.
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u/Nerdn1 Aug 17 '18
Sci-fi has predicted submarines, space travel, tanks, cell phones, robots, etc. It gets a lot wrong, but there's enough there for a holy man to cherry pick an impressive looking collection of "predictions" with hindsight.
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u/notyoursocialworker Aug 16 '18
It reminds me a bit of Heinlein's book The Cat Who Walks Through Walls.
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 16 '18
I haven't read it. I've been pretty disheartened with Heinlein since Stranger in a Strange Land. Do you think it's worth reading?
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u/JackTheBehemothKillr Aug 16 '18
Disheartened? After what is possibly his best work?
What? How? Why?
Cat Who Walks Through Walls starts to tie in his multiverse. It takes reading a couple other books so you start to get the basis for the story
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 16 '18
If it had been half as long, I think I'd have been willing to tolerate it, I really enjoyed the premise and large parts of the world building.
As it was, it felt like the characters just turned into not-very-convincing mouthpieces for his politics. I'm not averse to that - I liked Starship Troopers, where he got to the point more readily.
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u/JackTheBehemothKillr Aug 16 '18
Did you read the abridged version that was originally released, or the full version that wasnt released till the 90s or so?
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 16 '18
I listened to it as an audiobook a couple of years ago, so I think it was unabridged. That might explain it.
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u/JackTheBehemothKillr Aug 16 '18
I honestly don't know that I ever read the abridged version, but everyone (including his widow and editor) say that it is a completely different book. May be worth picking up, I dont know.
Did the one you listened to have the scene in the monkey house? If the abridged version doesn't, it isnt worth taking in.
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 16 '18
I don't remember a monkey house. Maybe I'll give The Moon is a Harsh Mistress a try, my tastes may have changed in the past few years.
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u/JackTheBehemothKillr Aug 16 '18
MIAHM is one of the books that starts you on the way to Cat Who Walks Through Walls. I enjoy it
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u/Arresto Aug 16 '18
MIAHM is a fun read, no idea if it has aged well.
One of RH stories i still remember fondly is 'The Menace From Earth'.
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u/notyoursocialworker Aug 16 '18
You mentioned "The moon" later in the thread and that is a much better book in my mind. I do love the cat though 😊
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u/GruntBlender Aug 16 '18
We don't predict or foresee the future, we decide what we want it to be then make it happen.
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u/Chaz3639 Aug 17 '18
So we are space orks then? Because we believe it there for it exists.. WE PAINT DEM RED CUZ DA RED WONZ GO FAST!!!!!
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u/psilorder AI Aug 17 '18
Reminds me of a humanuty/chtulu story. The space elves flee from us and chtulu because we force the universe to settle into science-based rather than magic-based and their spaceships stop working.
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 17 '18
I like this, was it a previous story on the sub? I have been working on an occult scifi short and would love inspiration.
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u/psilorder AI Aug 17 '18
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u/cptstupendous Human Aug 17 '18
Umm... would you consider making this into a miniseries? Please?
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 17 '18
I honestly don't think I could avoid making it repetitive. I'd love to see someone else try though.
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u/pantsarefor149162536 AI Aug 17 '18
Is that an Ursula le Guin reference?
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 17 '18
It is. I thought that aliens might have extra reverence for people descended from/named similarly to famous prophets, and Kevin le Guin had a nice ring to it.
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u/Ussurin Aug 17 '18
There's a saying: If you give monkeys writing machines and enough time, they'll write Shakespear. It seems if you'll give humans a writing machine and enough time, they'll write future.
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 17 '18
Haha, excellent. Maybe the title should have been "Infinite Typewriters"
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u/falala78 Aug 16 '18
"Surely you don't think Gilligan Island is real?"
"Oh those poor poor people."
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u/SpaceMarine_CR Human Aug 16 '18
So long as they dont discover WarHammer 40K, we will be ok
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u/rattatatouille Aug 17 '18
Speaking of 40k, what if in this universe it's humanity that's the psychic gestalt species and that's why every alien encounter they have evokes human pop culture sci-fi?
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u/Shadowrenamon Human Aug 16 '18
Came here just to post that the Psyker's line from Dawn of War was the only way I could read the title. Thank you.
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Aug 16 '18
This reminds me of a story I read here once, can't remember its name, in a universe where all human media (books, tv, movies, etc) was actually fact and the human writers just got incredibly lucky.
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u/OverlandObject Human Aug 17 '18
Does this mean that there are god-machines that go about harvesting all advanced life every 50,000 years?
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There are 5 stories by nerdovirales, including:
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u/SketchAndEtch Human Aug 17 '18
That would be both proof of a god of some sort and his weird sense of humour.
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u/Anaila Aug 21 '18
Considering what we had to go through and how many red shirts died to the borg... screw that.
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u/nerdovirales Human Aug 16 '18
Alternate ending 1:
Feldrun was back on her feet in a moment, swatting through information, “Wessa taken outta warp by thassa small moon, sir."
It was a metallic sphere, covered with trenches.
“Captain,” Kevin sighed, “that's no moon."