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Space Bastard - Deep Dark Secret
As it just-so happened to have been in the area, the OMS Space Bastard had been called upon to act in a diplomatic capacity vis a prospective species wanting to join the Commonwealth. This sort of thing happened from time to time, both the desire to join and the Space Bastard being the one to field the desire. Both these sorts of things happened from time to time.
Space was a big place, a lot of things happened a lot. And from time to time.
What this meant in a practical sense was fairly straightforward, the practise was practised. Senior crew were expected to hobnob and go on guided tours that showed off all that was great and good about the civilization and why they deserved to be part of the club and senior crew was expected to go ‘Gosh’ and ‘Wow’ and ‘Fancy that’ and, barring something horrendous, membership would progress a little further along.
Straightforward. Simple.
The particular planet in question this time was Glarbnarb Five, the fifth planet of the Glarbnarb System (the clue was in the name). The Glarbnarb civilization was a pretty good representation of the sort of applicant the Commonwealth commonly fielded. Advanced enough to have got on top of most of their obvious social problems - illness and poverty and all that to an apparent minimum, etcetera - technological enough to have extended their influence throughout their local system, and now eager to step out into the wider world of the galaxy. We’d all been there.
(The Glarbnarb people (aka Glarbnarbians aka Glarbs aka Glarbajons) were, for the benefit of those interested, a squirrely sort, the tallest of them reaching perhaps the chest of an average human being (whatever one of those is in these futuristic times), possessed of bushy tails, long fingers and two noses. None of this matters overmuch, what with the profusion and variety of life in the galaxy, but someone always wants to know what things look like, so there you go. You’re welcome, someone.)
All of which was why Captain Ipsum was at that moment shifting in his dress uniform, standing around holding a glass of something presumably expensive and luxurious and keeping a casual eye on the other members of the bridge crew as they did similarly in other parts of the crowded, chattering room. Captain Ipsum was not entirely comfortable with hobnobbing, but it was part of his job and so there wasn’t much he could do about it.
He held up the glass and peered at the bubbly, golden liquid. Expensive and luxurious were unusual concepts for someone born and bred in the heart of the Commonwealth. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of them, as concepts. They had a novelty, to be certain, but he couldn’t honestly say whether it was the positive kind or not. By their very nature they implied scarcity and exclusion, without which they simply wouldn’t be. He took a sip, but did so in the knowledge that some other Glarbnarbian somewhere likely couldn’t have afforded to do the same.
Did taste nice though. Sort of the point.
One of his hosts appeared at his elbow, bearing a tray.
“Flavoured gel-cube?” They asked, proffering said tray. On the tray were gel-cubes, presumably flavoured somehow. They wobbled enticingly. Captain Ipsum plucked up the wobbliest, feeling this was the best move.
“Don’t mind if I do. What flavour are these ones?” He asked.
“Gel flavoured.”
Into his mouth went the gel-cube, melting immediately on Captain Ipsum’s tongue. He endured the ramifications of this and then took a moment to collect his feelings on the event.
“Ah, yes. Now you say it it’s obvious. You can really taste the gel,” he said.
“It’s vivid,” his host said, nodding in agreement.
Trying new things was one of the benefits of getting to interact with new life and new civilizations, and was always interesting. Sometimes not very good, admittedly, but always interesting, which was the more important thing. Boredom was the doorway to complacency, and complacency was the end of all good things. Or so ran the line, at least. In practical terms it was generally just a good thing to find new stuff. It kept you occupied and out of mischief.
Mostly out of mischief.
A side door caught Captain Ipsum’s attention. It was so powerfully innocuous and low-key compared to everything else that he couldn’t help but notice it. Somewhere where everything was gussied up to the nines to look impressive sort of made the one unimpressive thing stick out a bit. He paused and pointed.
“What’s through there?” He asked.
His host, having come from a society that had never invented pointing at things, took a second to interpret this bizarre alien gesture. Only a second though, as it was pretty simple. Then they saw what Captain Ipsum was directing their attention towards.
“Oh, just some infrastructure, boring stuff,” they said.
“My science officer is a fan of infrastructure,” said Captain Ipsum, nodding over his host’s shoulder.
“We love it,” said Doctor Tarft, who was who Captain Ipsum had been nodding at. Not two seconds previously they had been wandering past only to divert on having heard infrastructure being mentioned, and being a lover of it. They were always alert to the mention of infrastructure, lest they miss discussion of it.
The host plainly hadn’t expected this development. They changed tack:
“Oh, well, it’s dangerous, I’m afraid.”
“My tactical officer is a fan of danger,” said Captain Ipsum, gesturing to the side where now stood his tactical officer having clanked in apparently from thin air at the mere mention of danger.
“I love it,” said Mr Krug.
How he’d appeared apparently out of thin air was something of an open question given Mr Krug’s enormous bulk and heft, but that was what had happened. The host was momentarily stunned (the sudden appearance of Mr Krug often had that effect on people) and so Captain Ipsum took the chance to continue:
“And he’s also more than capable of protecting my science officer from the danger.”
“Everyone wins,” said Doctor Tarft.
The host could see there wasn’t any way of getting out of this, or at least not any immediately diplomatic way.
“Very well, if you insist. If you’d like to follow me?” The host said, indicating and then leading the way, somehow attracting a small following of other, lesser hosts alongside their guests. Perhaps the other hosts assumed that since the guests were going this way it was important they did as well. Who could say?
Through the door the group went, and then down some stairs the group went. Things stopped being opulent very quickly and started being hard and industrial and infrastructural, much to the delight of Doctor Tarft. Pipes and ducts and all sorts were in evidence, which was great if you were into that sort of thing (if you were Doctor Tarft, for example) but were not perhaps compelling if you were not into that sort of thing. If you were, say, into danger you might have found it quite unedifying.
“This is quite unedifying,” said Mr Krug. “I was told there would be danger.”
“We may have simply yet to reach the danger,” Captain Ipsum said, levelly. Mr Krug just harrumphed.
And then they rounded a corner and found a sight that stopped the guests in their tracks, even as the hosts blithely continued. It was only when they noticed the guests were no longer accompanying them that they stopped, turned, and went back to see what had stopped them.
What had stopped them was this: a softplay of nightmares.
That is to say, what they’d initially (confusedly) taken as some sort of child’s play area incongruously placed in the bowels of the building’s service area but which was, on closer inspection, very much not. Colourful and padded though it might have been, the children packing the thing most certainly did not look as though they were having a good time. Instead, they appeared to be getting flattened and pressed by rollers as they were passed relentlessly alongside some garish conveyor belt, dumped down chutes, pressed again, and then rolled and tumbled along the way to some sort of squeezing apparatus. The whole affair was behind what was plainly rather thick, soundproofed transparent aluminium.
Looking at it, none of the guests could quite work out what it was they were looking at, or why it might exist, or whether or not they were simply imagining it. Stranger things had happened. One of them was apparently happening right in front of them.
“Is everything alright?” The primary host asked, sidling in.
“Presumably there’s a compelling reason for this?” Captain Ipsum asked, pointing. The host followed the line of his point - to make sure they were talking about the same thing, operating under the assumption that there was nothing obvious present to talk about - and saw the silently wailing children.
“They’re orphans,” said his host.
A sucking void in the conversation followed for a few seconds, as both sides were not operating on the same level and so saw this response as, by turns, wholly adequate and wholly in adequate. Captain Ipsum eventually realised this was what was happening and cleared his throat and said:
“That is what I might term a non-sequitur, at least from where I’m standing. It does not answer my question. Maybe you think it does, but I am not you. Is this normally what you do with orphans on this planet?”
The host looked aghast.
“My, no!”
“Okay then, that’s something. We can build on that. So what is happening to these orphans and why?” Captain Ipsum asked.
“We’re milking them for their sorrow,” the host said, in the tones of one having been asked a very obvious question and wondering what the trick is. Captain Ipsum nodded briefly, then shook his head.
“I’m sorry, I feel I must have misheard you. It sounded as though you said you were milking them for their sorrow,” he said.
“No no, that’s what I said, that’s what we do. We’re milking them for their sorrow. It’s very important.”
“Is it now?”
“Foundational to our civilization, completely vital. Everything else is built on it. The lights are kept on by orphan sorrow. Orphan sorrow is the lifeblood of our society. Everything else comes after the orphan sorrow, flows from it. Without orphan sorrow we wouldn’t have, well, anything. Society would collapse overnight.”
“I see.”
“The extraction process is highly efficient, if that’s what you’re worried about. We don’t waste a drop! And they’re very well prepared for it, too. They’re shown sad films, played sad music, reminded that they’re orphans every so often just in case they forgot - that sort of thing. It increases the yield. Of sadness. So we can milk more of it from them. More sorrow is better. We want these orphans as sad as possible.”
Captain Ipsum was rubbing his face.
“That would make sense, yes. In this situation. In this context. In very few others but here, yes. Here it makes perfect sense,” he stopped rubbing his face and took a deep, steadying breath before continuing: “I do feel I should ask - well, there are a few things I feel I should ask, but we have to take things one step at a time - so I must ask how it is you come by these orphans? Are they plucked from the orphanages by lottery or do you, ah, create orphans?”
He’d tried to put this delicately but really there was no delicate way of putting this. Given what he’d seen and what he’d been told, he felt he couldn’t take anything for granted at this point.
“We don’t make the orphans ourselves! We’re not barbarians. We use naturally-occuring orphans,” the host said, appalled at the very suggestion.
“Particularly those from the camps,” said another of the hosts, feeling this was the moment to butt in for whatever reason. Captain Ipsum raised a tactical eyebrow and glanced at this backup host before returning his attention to the main host.
“Camps?” He asked.
“The camps for the citizens who ask too many questions. Or who look a bit funny. Odd noses, some of them, really quite uncomfortable to look at. The camps are quite something, too: huge, huge camps. Just massive. We put them underground so we don’t have to look at them. What with their odd noses and odd opinions,” said the host, face wrinkling in mild and restrained disgust.
This putting underground would explain why such huge, huge camps hadn’t shown up on the cursory scans the Space Bastard had run on arrival in orbit. Normally those sorts of things leap out at you, sometimes without even having to scan, but being put underground hides a multitude of sins. Deeper scans of the kind that might have discovered these camps would have been rude, given the circumstances, though now, in hindsight, they might have been a good idea.
Captain Ipsum realised he’d started rubbing his face again and stopped, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“You should probably stop talking,” he said.
Really, they never should have started, but it was too late for that.
“Is something wrong?” The host asked, perplexed.
“A little bit, yes. Hiding this sort of thing is going to harm your chances of joining the Commonwealth,” said Captain Ipsum, gesturing to the children and the milking machinery and just generally the whole place and also, in a way, to the intangible concept of needing to milk children for sorrow in the first place. The Captain could incorporate a lot into a gesture. It was why he was good captain material.
The host bristled, as did the backup host nearby.
“We weren’t hiding it! We just didn’t think it was worth mentioning! It’s mundane, routine, ordinary, boring ! This is so normal for us it never crossed our minds to bring it up!” They said.
“Well, that you were doing it at all is also something of an issue,” said Ipsum.
“Why?”
A pause, as Captain Ipsum wondered how best to convey the obvious.
“Because it’s awful.”
“Bah! That’s culturally subjective!” The host scoffed.
This was not the first time Captain Ipsum had heard this argument, and he had a strong feeling it wouldn’t be the last. It had never done much to move him. He shrugged.
“That’s debatable. Importantly for you, however, you are attempting to join an entity that, culturally speaking, frowns on this sort of thing. So it’s relevant. And, frankly, it really is awful however you want to slice it. If you’ve spent years and years as a society teaching yourself to eat shit and like it - so to speak - you shouldn’t be surprised if everyone else thinks you’ve done something ludicrous. Frankly.”
“You could be more frank, Captain,” said Doctor Tarft.
“I could but I am choosing not to. This is a diplomatic mission and so I am choosing to be diplomatic.”
“ I could be more frank,” said Mr Krug with an obvious level of expectant relish.
“Not yet, Mr Krug, things continue to be diplomatic. For now.”
“You cannot simply barge in here and start telling us what we as a people can and cannot do!” Said the host, bristling now having given way to full-blown outrage. Behind them, the backup host nodded in (outraged) agreement. Captain Ipsum shrugged.
“In fairness you invited us. To the planet, I mean, we did sort of barge down here. But that’s by-the-by. I’ll admit that it’s often a tricky subject, but in this instance I would hazard a guess that the majority of other cultures you might encounter would probably consider this an aspect of your society that is best consigned to history, there to be regarded with a certain sense of shame and embarrassment. Just because you do something and have done something for a while doesn’t mean it is a good thing or is something you should continue to do. Mistakes also start,” he said.
“If anything you should be thankful that the hurdle your society has to overcome is so blatantly obvious and ridiculous. A lot of places have it a lot more complicated,” interjected Doctor Tarft, and Captain Ipsum wholeheartedly agreed, inside and out.
“Quite so, Doctor Tarft, quite so, it can get quite horrendously complex sometimes. Interwoven societal and economic interests, entrenched hegemony, hard-set ways of thinking - exhausting, I can tell you. By contrast this is refreshingly straightforward. You just need to stop milking orphans for their sorrow, which can’t be that hard. Most people we’ve met never even started doing that, so there’s precedent for life without it.,” he said.
Leaving aside the issue of the hidden camps for the time being. One thing at a time.
“But how will we power our Sorrow Engines?!” The host asked, flabbergasted, shocked, and scandalised. The other hosts looked much the same, to a range of greater or lesser degrees as suited them personally.
There was a noticeable pause. Even the hosts noticed it.
“Your what?” Captain Ipsum asked.
“The Sorrow Engines! The engines that run on the orphan sorrow and power our cities?” The host asked, gesturing to the lights as though Captain Ipsum might have forgotten the part about sorrow keeping the lights on. He hadn’t, he just hadn’t assumed it was literal. It was literal.
“And occasionally run on a whole orphan if it’s judged appropriate to do so?” A backup host added, to nods from the primary host. Looking between the two of them, Captain Ipsum could see no hint that this was all some extended joke leading towards some hilarious punchline. They both had every appearance of being completely serious.
“Have you ever considered, well, literally anything else?” He asked.
“Like what! What else could there possibly be?” The host scoffed (with backup scoff from the backup hosts).
Again, Captain Ipsum had to fight the rising impression that this had to be a joke. He looked to his officers, looking to see if maybe they’d spotted some clue or hint he’d missed that this was all one big joke. They looked just as baffled as he felt, with Doctor Tarft shrugging and Mr Krug giving him the quizzical look that Captain Ipsum knew was the wordless way of asking whether it was time for diplomacy to cease and missiles to start.
He gently shook his head at this security officer and returned his attention to his hosts, backup and primary.
“Oh, I don’t know, solar power? Windmills? Hooking up a bicycle to some sort of big battery and peddling very hard? Or - and here’s an idea, since we came here in a spaceship - how about shunt-fusion? You know? What just about every other spacefaring civilization you might encounter uses? The cheap and easy way everyone produces more than enough power for all of our wonderful things? Because it’s the future? And we can do that? And energy isn’t as big of a deal as you’re making it out to be? Because it is - again - the future?”
The host was pouting.
“You don’t have to be so patronising,” they said.
“I don’t know, it felt necessary. And I really must ask - why is this here?” Ipsum asked, spreading his arms to indicate the softplay-stroke-sorrow-extraction-engine. Orphans continued to pass through it as they had continued to pass through it the whole length of the conversation. They continued to look unhappy.
“I told you, we need the extracted sorrow to function as a society,” the host said, sourly.
“No, I got that part. I meant why is it here . As in, underneath this building which appears to have been built solely to host lavish diplomatic functions?” Captain Ipsum asked. This had been bothering him more and more the longer they’d been talking and he simply couldn’t contain himself anymore. It seemed to him rather like putting an antimatter production facility underneath a legislative assembly. It made no obvious sense.
From the look on the face of the hosts, this was an issue that had occurred to them, too.
“We didn’t think it’d be a problem…” One of them mumbled from the back.
“Right. Well. I think we’ll be heading back to the ship now. I’ll have you forward a list of suggestions to improve your odds of admittance on your next attempt. I can tell you this from the outset: lose the camps, stop milking orphans. Best of luck.”
At which point, with the tap of a badge, the guests all translocated back to the Space Bastard , leaving behind them stunned silence. The hosts looked at one another, stunned, silent. The primary host glared at the space the captain had been standing in mere moments before, then turned their glare to the orphan apparatus.
“I don’t get what the problem is! We’ve always done this!” They groused.