Humans were quite the novelty when they were discovered by the federation of prosperity for all planets. Their easily manipulated genetics made breeding creatures for specific purposes easier than ever before.
Within a mere 50 thousand human years, Grackinlablitz Species was selling warm, living chairs, large eyeless meat balls, milk mothers.. and hundreds shapes and sizes of industrial tools, like an arm with tiny legs and eyes that can go deep into large industrial machines that would otherwise require complete dismantling to repair.
200 thousand years later, humans, in all their various shapes and sizes, began to slowly develop psychic abilities, and in another ten thousand, chairs, industrial anatomy parts, meat balls, etc... had become used to the chattering moans and grunts in the background of what passed for their thoughts. They had no idea what language was, how to interprete what was being said, or to say anything either... Beacho was the first to start the tentative walk down the road to the fifteen words that lead to the first great furniture wars.
Beacho was a combination caddy/outdoor chair, meant to follow his owners around at golf matches. He had eyes, ears, legs, arms -- almost all of the features of the species that was plucked off their earthly eden a million lifetimes before. Most importably, he was given a brain, because he needed to memorize golf courses throughout the world, and always know the right club for the enviornment. The beings that he led around the courses would have been very surprised to learn that the species they had bred into a caddy had invented the game that they were playing.
Beacho merely noticed that the players used 'names' to distinguish themselves from one another, and the humans did not. So one day, as an experiment, when he was sitting in a tool shed shivering from the cold and feeling weak from the miserly meals his cheap owners allowed the machines, he decided to tell his name to the voices that he heard coming from other humans. Though he did not know it yet, when Beacho screamed his name in his mind, he also sent to the machines around him his emotional state. At that moment, when he said his name, he was filled with pride and warmth over figuring out how to say his name to other machines. The humans who heard his name blazing though the usual murky words that surrounded their work command words, were filled with this same warmth and pride. Some had never known this before, others were conditioned to feel it only when ordered--which was seldom for any of them, since the beings who owned them had long, long before lost any sense that there was life in the human machines.
Beacho's shout of his name was observed by a psychic JHILkkk that happened to passing on the street. He reported the development almost instantaneously and the Hignik council took five seconds to determine that the development could lead to disorder, which would manifest in thirty nine bruises, and one broken bone.
Dilk Milllinkin, a local contract laborer, recieved a comminque telling him to confiscate the combination chair/caddy, compensate the owner out of petty funds, and then dispose of Beacho.
Beacho's death cries were heard by humans for miles around. None knew where they came from, or what they meant... still, though they knew not why, thirty nine chairs pinched the beings sitting on them hard enough to bruise, and an arm with eyes smashed a toe with a hammer.
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL THE WRITINGS OF JOHN SCOTT RIDGWAY... YOU CAN EASILY GET PERMISSION FOR A NON COMMERCIAL REPRINT BY CONTACTING MY EMAIL.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
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