creepy stories, These Fantastic Worlds, sf and fantasy podcast, jakejackson451, Collector, tragic beauty, The Code, Tear, Infinity Trap, Dimensions, Lapis Lazuli, I Am What I Am, The Strong, Rescue

Micro-fiction 064 – Collector (Echoes series)

The Collector awaits inspection of his floating museum by members of the Galactic Council. Will they be happy with his latest exhibits?


Collector

Today is a special day, for them at least. For me it’s just another irritation, a visit by the bureaucrats of the Galactic Council, on one of the inspection tours of their investments. My team and I, a mix of forty souls and bio-mech robots, wait by the main airlock of our vast museum in space, lined up for the incoming dignitaries, rehearsing our translation of the Council’s patterns of speech, and their archaic methods of counting time.

“We should be honoured, sir.” My personal AI, Mpenda, is prone to sarcasm. I wish I could reprogram him, but in every other way he is perfect.

“Just because they fund the research doesn’t mean they deserve respect for their idle interest.” I check sideways to see if he looks wounded, some of my staff seem unable to suffer my withering comments, perhaps too aware of their lowly status. He just smirks, he never seems worried. That’s a relief, he’s my rock, without him I’d be nothing more than an ambitious collector of souls, gazing out while others map the species of the universe.

“We could always re-locate to another Galaxy.” Mpenda stares forward, as everyone does, waiting for the glow of green to indicate breathable air in the airlock.

“We’d have to find another sponsor.” I hiss, “anyway there are so many species relics in this sector, we still have several years of work here.”

“Years?”

“Oh, do I mean weeks, I always mix up that universal time thing.”

“You could leave an expeditionary force, one of the of smaller craft. They could join us later.”

“You seem anxious for us to leave.”

“Not at all, I merely note your frustration with these visits.”

“Well, it’s a thought. Let’s get through this one and see how we feel afterwards.”

I watch a burst of activity by the airlock portal, then a crew member, I think she’s called Makena, I don’t remember everyone’s names, or where they come from. “Sir, there’s a problem with the heat signature.”

“What? Well, sort it out, it’s taking too long to get them through, we need them off this ship as fast as possible.”

“Sir, I mean they don’t all pass the contamination metrics.”

“The readings must be wrong, this delegation has been here before.”

“Yes, but our bio-scanners have been upgraded.”

“So the problem is––?”

“Hard to tell, but if it was anyone else we wouldn’t let them in.”

“Well, we can’t turn them away, we’d be kicked out of this galaxy and the ship commandeered. My entire collection of species! We can’t have that, it’s too valuable for the preservation of the past.”

“I’ve seen the result Sir.” Mpenda speaks quietly. “There is a problem, there’s a mixup on the DNA match in our system.”

“Oh for goodness sake, what are they going to do? Infect us with their regulatory paperwork? We know who they are, just let them in.”

“Okay sir, we need your override code.” Makena lifts a holographic sphere.

“Very well.” I plunge in my hand, then my arm up to my elbow into the floating sphere.

“Thank you sir.” Makena rushes away, gesticulating at the other crew by the control cluster.

“So, here we go, the airlock’s green.” Mpenda stiffens his back. The air shifts in tone, my sensitive nostrils detect a new fragrance.

“Here they come, smile everyone!” I say loudly enough for the instruction to passed along the lines.

“Oh,” I recognise the loud declamatory notes of the lead council member, “that took an awfully long time. Having problems are you Mr Collector?”

I smile back, this particular creature, a gurgling simpleton bearing the ornate clothes of an Elector, without much of the authority, always manages to annoy me within seconds of his arrival, and he knows it.

“Not at all, just extra precautions we installed since some recent visitors brought a virus on their clothing and decimated half of my cabin crew.”

“Most unfortunate.” An oleaginous grin slithers along the folds of his cheeks. “No time to waste though, let’s have a look at your latest acquisitions.” The Elector looks back at the companions in his monitoring team, twelve of them, and nods them to follow.

“Would you like a quick tour of the entire collection, or just venture the new species?”

“Oh, I would have loved to seen them all again, but I remember it taking a few days to traverse all the floors of your floating museum. We don’t have so much time, so just the new ones I think.” We walk away from the airlock, with some of my own crew, the main curators and Mpenda, accompanying the Council Monitors, towards the atrium with its magnificent views of each gallery.

“Let’s go up to the new wing.” In spite of myself I feel proud to show off our latest exhibits. “It’s truly a rare thing to see these species all gathered together.” We step onto a wide platform of light which, as we still our movement, lifts us up to the highest gallery.

Mpenda chats away with the Elector, telling him about the new acquisitions, the planets we excavated recently, how we brought the DNA samples on board, and re-engineered them as necessary. He’s so good with these people, thank the gods for Mpenda!

As we arrive at the gallery, walking from the platform into the first wing I notice that the Monitors seem a little tense. My eyes flicker to Mpenda who seems unperturbed, so I shrug off the sensation. “Here then is the collection of life from the Quadrant around Wolf 359.” I gesture toward the long line of pods, each separated by shimmering beams of light. “As you see the light spectrums are different for each pod, and some of these represent the last evidence of their species, even the spores in this pod,” I motion to a single fluff of light suspended in a blue-hued pod, where it pulses erratically, like a beating heart. Some of the Monitors use old-fashioned laser pens to make notes on their own floating holopads, it makes me laugh to think such old technology is still being used in this Galaxy, perhaps they would be more at home with the exhibits!

“And, here we found this creature, across a large area of volcanic rock on Pittacus. We pieced it together, but haven’t managed to animate it yet.” I gesture to the gruesome beast that leers through twin horns thrusting up from its jaws, its four arms hanging by its side.

“Perhaps that was wise.” The Elector looks distastefully at the imprisoned exhibit.

“We will breath some life into it, but there is no danger here, for many of our exhibits live in a world of their own, provided by the sensory tech built into their pods. They don’t know where they are, and are sedated by the air trapped within.

“Oh, and I have a special surprise for you.” I know they’ll love this, I was amused when we found it on a moon near Barnards Star. “We reconstructed it from a crash site, dating it back at least 1000 years.” We turn a corner, and there it is. “It can talk now, I think you call it, human!”

“Oh my!” The Monitors stop.

“Yes, I know,” I laugh, “It looks just like you. Except it has no clothes! Your species hasn’t changed much in all that time.” I watch the foolish Elector walk towards the pod where the naked human’s back is turned. The floor area within is filthy, with fake grass and mud smeared across the floor. And the creature inside wears a headset, but seems to notice the attention, and brings its eyes to those who gaze upon it. Curiously, it seems shocked.

“Michael?” The Elector’s mouth is open.

“Elector George?” The creature leaps up. I’m not sure who is more bemused, the creature, the Elector, or, frankly, myself!

Suddenly the Monitors surround me, shouting commands, in my own ship! And my own personal AI, Mpenda, stands apart, not protecting me, a rueful smile on his plastic lips.

“You have violated the most basic of your tasks,” the Elector bellowed at me, “of meticulous accuracy, careful research. To put one of us, a species still alive, and funding your museum, in your cages is an absolute dereliction of duty.” I barely knew what to say, a victim of my own incompetence, my inability to understand universal time: the data on the human must have been weeks, not hundreds of years. How can I tell them, it’s such an easy mistake for one of my own species, one that lives for thousands of years unlike the puny time-span of the Elector and his human friends.

I sigh. And surrender. They will investigate of course, gather the facts, they will sequester the ship, its data and its vast collection of species. I await the end of their long list of demands and commands, but soon they place me in one of my own pods, an exhibit in my own museum. I fold my four legs, flare my special nostril hairs and stare fiercely, but if my crew were ever really scared, they were no longer.

Today is a special day, for them at least.

[End]

Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher, Vurbl and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.

Text, image, audio © 2021 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells,  Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, and Scrivener.


More Tales, More Audio

Here some of the many other stories available:

And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast with information about submissions.

Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.