“The happiest
place on Earth.”
John Hammond
,Jurassic Park* #quote
When a pirate
says “Shiver me timbers!” does that mean his wooden leg is cold?
Anyway onto the flash fiction!
Wormhole
Highway
In the movies
people who discover intelligent life have titles, are famous
scientists, or something like that. People know me as “James”
from my name tag. All I do is ship things. I get in my truck and
board the wormhole gate on Earth to ship things to the Mars colonies.
The “important people”, scientists, governments, and all that,
controlled wormholes so well that it became some sort of space
under-space(my high school teacher rambled about it some time, went
over my head) and resembled a highway that allowed faster-than-light
travel in some science-y way.
I did my job as
I always did. Driving along the highway to Mars. Passing the other
transport vehicles to the Red Planet. Sometimes those things housed
people, pretty much fancy buses. Most of the time they carried just
plain ol' stuff. I carried potatoes. Lots of em. Even with all the
ways people changed Mars to make it more like Earth and have farms
and things, potatoes were hard to grow. I'd wear over my years of
shipping I carried a billion potatoes to Mars.
I think they
overloaded my truck this time. Everything was off. I tried to take a
turn and the truck didn't move right. Driving is funny in the
wormhole highway. I get paid better than the normal driver for doing
it perfectly. And I veered off course. My truck, kinda like a semi,
but a bit shorter and not as long and with some strange wormholey
aerodynamic curves that made it look like a squeezed sausage, spun
out of control. The guard railings are nice and strong but when I
bashed into them I swear my truck wanted to swan dive right over.
The airbag
managed to keep me conscious as I saw my truck teetered on the safety
railings. When I asked my boss what happened if you fell off the side
off the highway he just shrugged. I found out pretty quick. The truck
fell over and went off into the strange borderline space around the
highway. It normally looked like a mix of coffee and milk swirling
about around you. Easy to ignore. Now it looked terrifying.
I found myself
on another highway I think. Kinda looked like someone built it out of
broken beer bottles melted together. A bunch of strange things
gathered around me. They had heads, I think, was that a head? Well,
if it's round, and got eight black things that look like eyes on it
I'll call it a head. They stood up, on two legs, but their bodies
kinda looked like they made themselves out of gray macaroni noodles
wrapped together. I started thinking were they copying me? I also
wondered why I wasn't more afraid. Eh, maybe I had a concussion from
the truck and it made me calmer.
The noodles of
one of the creatures vibrated.
“It's a
pleasure to meet you Sir. You're the first to survive falling
through. We've been watching your world for many years, learning
about your people. Hopefully by analyzing you and your vehicle we can
break through into your space and meet? What is your name?”
I answered
“James” almost stuttering. Yeah, I at least had something close
to a concussion.
“Wonderful to
meet you James. I hope I managed to introduce myself properly. Since
we can only speak with each other and learn through observation we
can only infer how speak in your languages and dialects and
mannerisms. Please, follow me, we have prepared greatly for a human's
arrival whenever it may happen.” Yeah, I suppose he did have some
sort of, noodle, accent from making the sounds with his body.
Sounds like I'm
going to be an ambassador or teacher or something...but if they
dissect me I'm in trouble. No probing, please no probing.
After breaking into normal space the Noodlians(I was allowed to name them as the one to first meet
them in their opinion.) formed peaceful bonds with humanity in a few years. The Noodlians also paid for the potato shipment I
lost when I crashed off the highway.
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