“‘No’?” echoed the space emperor. “‘No’?! No one. Ever. Tells me. ‘No’.”
He advanced, close enough that the threads on his rich robes could be counted by the naked eye. After a furtive glance over his shoulder, he dropped his voice to a desperate whisper and said, “Could you… could you do it again? Please?”
“No.”
The space emperor’s eyes shone like embers as he leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of his face. “So this… this ‘democracy’ you speak of. You’re telling me that people might… disobey me? They wouldn’t have to do everything I tell them to?”
“Not if they disagree with you.”
“They can do that?!” He licked his lips, trembling with excitement. “And voting! You say I… you say I could lose?!”
“Yeah, uh. And you probably would.”
“Incredible,” he breathed. “Why, I could kiss you!” With a surprised laugh, he stopped himself mid-step. “But—you wouldn’t like that! Right? You’d have an ‘opinion’? Gosh… do you think other people have those?!”
The space emperor let out a long, melancholy sigh and turned to the hero, his lip trembling with delicate misery. “I’m going to miss you,” he sniffed. “I don’t think I’ll watch, you know, when they… when they do it.” The tear that had been clinging valiantly to his eyelashes finally broke free and rolled down his cheek. “Oh!” he cried, and threw his arms around the hero’s neck with a great, shuddering sob. “Yours will be the only skull I drink from ever again—I promise! I will think of you every time, and I’ll pretend you’re still here with me!”
“Or you could just… not have me executed.”
The space emperor inhaled sharply and took a step back, his face red and puffy from crying. “That’s an option?!”
The serving-woman stood with her back ramrod straight and her eyes fixed firmly on the floor. Every muscle in her body looked tense, and only the rapid rise and fall of her shoulders betrayed her terror.
“You’ve ruined my gown,” said the space emperor, regarding the growing purple stain on his sleeve. “These fibers were harvested on Lutoya-29, a planet that was demolished six units ago. There is no other like it in the galaxy. I could have you harvested for washing-water for this.” He looked up and met the hero’s eyes, his thoughtful expression melting into a delighted grin. “But I don’t have to, do I?”
“No, Your Incandecense,” whispered the woman. Her sweat-beaded skin had grown translucent with fear.
“I don’t even have to have you killed at all!” he exclaimed. “I could… I could…” he cast around the chamber, as though searching for inspiration in the lavish furnishings.
“Please, Your Incandecense.” The woman’s voice was low and unsteady, but her gaze remained fixed on the floor. “I’ll do anything, please, forgive—”
“Anything! You’re right!” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together, stamping his feet in a little dance. “I could do anything! In fact—” he reached over the table and clasped the hero’s hand in his own. “Nothing is anything! I could do nothing! Nothing at all!” He giggled merrily and then froze, gingerly releasing the hero’s hand and leaning back. He tapped one bejeweled finger against his temple and gave an exaggerated wink. “Oh, right. Consent.”
The serving-woman’s eyes flickered to the hero’s for a moment, nervous questions burning in them. The hero gave a barely-imperceptible shrug and a very tiny, reassuring smile. The emperor did not seem to notice.
“Is there more wine?” he asked. “Splendid. Please. Do it again.”
“What…?” The woman’s skin flashed an alarming yellow.
The emperor gestured enthusiastically between himself and the crystal pitcher. “The wine. My gown. I think you should reacquaint them.”
“He wants you to spill the wine on him again,” explained the hero. “No, really. He’s, uh… he’s having an interesting day.”
“I am learning so many things,” said the emperor. “Did you know that you have feelings, too? It’s not just me! My new friend has feelings, that man over there has feelings, that… whatever that thing is has feelings!” He stood up and threw his arms wide in a sudden, emphatic motion, flinging droplets of purple liquid from his soiled sleeve. “Maybe everyone has feelings! Maybe robots! Maybe my enemies! Maybe—” he stopped, and the delirious grin vanished from his face. “Maybe the Lutoyans have feelings…” His voice dropped to a whisper, and he stared at the hero with a strange expression. “But… there aren’t any more Lutoyans…”
The space emperor took his breakfast in bed, bathed in sweet oils, allowed his hair to be combed and coiffed and his face painted with rare minerals, and then sighed in delicate frustration.
“None of this seems right,” he confessed to his wardrober, after rejecting the seventh gown he was presented with. It was deep blue silk, studded all over with crystals that glinted and sparkled like a night sky. “It’s just not working for me today.”
“That is one of the finest gowns in the galaxy, Your Incandescence,” said the wardrober. “It is an accurate starmap of the constellations as seen from your boyhood home, rivaled in beauty and quality only by your other raiments. But perhaps this is more to your impeccable tastes–” It offered an eighth gown, a trailing cascade of iridescent blue-green fabric layered with shimmering, diaphanous beetle wings. “A species of rare insect went extinct for the construction of this one,” it said. “It was considered sacred to the inhabitants of that world. Wearing this gown declares your might and majesty to the galaxy.”
The space emperor pursed his lips. “Hmm,” he said. “Not that one, I think.” There was an unfamiliar twisting sensation in his gut when he looked at the gown.
“I hope the feast is to your pleasure, Your Incandescence. We did not have much time to prepare before–”
“It is not to my pleasure!” cried the space emperor, lashing out and knocking the platter to the floor. The attendant winced as the tureen shattered and bent to clean it up. “I want to go back!”
“That would be inadvisable,” said the war magnate, rolling her eyes. “It is not yet safe for you to return planetside; there may be traps or other assassins lying in wait. I’m sure your friend is fine.”
The entire palace was climate-controlled, including the military wing, so there was no reason for the space emperor to feel so cold as he walked through the halls. It was just another concern to bring up with his doctor later that evening, along with the pain in his chest and difficulty swallowing around the tightness in his throat. He so rarely fell ill–even as a child, the diseases of the common rabble had never touched him.
The doctor would have to wait. He had more important business to attend to.
He ran his thumb along the special weapon the General had given him. It was simple in design, as unlike the ornate ceremonial laser he always wore at his hip as it was possible to be. He didn’t understand exactly how it functioned, but he didn’t need to; all that mattered was that it worked. The General assured him that it would be a most fitting punishment.
“What?” said the space emperor. “What just… happened?”
The General bowed his head and held out his arm. The space emperor took it numbly and allowed himself to be led from the room, away from the acrid smoke rising from the dead robot. “You must forgive me, Your Incandescence. I will bear the blame for this… unfortunate oversight. Walk with me, if you please, and I will explain.”
The sprawling facility seemed to become oppressively small. The space emperor sucked in an unsteady breath and discovered that oxygen had suddenly stopped working while he was distracted by the screen. “Air,” he wheezed, stumbling toward the turbolift. “I need air.”
Indigenous to Australia [of course]
they belong to the Araneida family of orb-weavers, which do wield venom, but it’s not particularly dangerous to humans.
The genus contains 17 species known for their abilities to blend
seamlessly into their surroundings. During the day they wrap themselves
around twigs or flatten themselves against tree bark.
At night they become active, spinning webs between trees.
So my friend’s kid has celiac and dyslexia and reading labels is difficult for them (also they’re like 7) so he’s teaching their pigeon, Grey Boy, to read the labels and identify ingredients with gluten. It’s going well, other than Nick thought it would be a good idea to make the behavior when the pigeon does find a bad ingredient to just fucking…wing slap the box. Just beat the shit out of it like, “no! BAD gluten! BAD!”
I see a lot of “they taught a pigeon to read?” comments and thought I’d explain a bit more.
So it’s not really like their friend’s pigeon now knows how to read. He’s not going to be terribly interested in a novel you hand him (unless he decides it looks like a good nest.) However pigeons are remarkably good at pattern recognition, especially visual patterns. They out-perform humans when it comes to things like identifying artwork/distinguishing between different artist’s works. So it is pretty easy for them to recognize a visual arrangement of ink, such as a printed word, and be taught to respond to that particular pattern. So when looking at an ingredient list the pigeon learns to pick out the specific pattern(s) he’s been taught to react to among the other patterns (words.)
So he sees “wheat” and doesn’t read it the way humans do (w-h-e-a-t spells wheat), but rather sees the arrangement of pigment that he has been trained to slap. So he slaps it.
He will have to be taught every single gluten containing ingredient for it to be super useful, but it is definitely possible, which is super cool! Plus it makes a little kid’s life easier, and enriches Gray Boy.
Skinner did experiments with pigeons that showed how a pigeon can learn to respond to a visual pattern cue, if your interested more in the science behind it.
A Star Trek idea: A comedy sitcom where instead of a Vulcan on a mostly human ship it is a human on a mostly Vulcan ship
All the Vulcans are fiercely protective of the ‘fragile, illogical, prone-to-danger, smart, reckless little human’.
To make the human feel more accepted (as it is only logical) the Vulcans try to include aspects of terran culture in the ship’s day-to-day life, failing spectacularly at it.
The human loves them even more for it.
They’ll get better at celebrating the human’s birthday next year. It’s the thought that counts.
@jvlianbashir THAT’S A GOOD END TO THAT EPISODE THOUGH…
the vulcans put together awful, bland decorations. they make a cake because it’s of “significant importance”. they go through the process of putting together this party and Studying this Human Ritual and the entire episode is setting up to what you KNOW will be a horrible result. they do a bad job!!
then when the human’s birthday comes, and they reveal the off-the-mark, underwhelming looking birthday bash, the human just. starts crying. because they had no idea their crew would go through all this trouble to celebrate their birthday, and even put up DECORATIONS, or make a CAKE, and there’s a birthday card with extremely polite impersonal messages written and a hundred perfectly tidy signatures.
and the vulcans are just standing around like “you appear upset. the Birthday Party was unsatisfactory”.
Oppy came into the office while I was working, and while she has on occasion bumped into my chair and moved me a whole half inch to the left (wtf, why is it so strong), she’s always given up after a moment of realizing that headbutting the immovable object isn’t a good idea, and goes off under the guest bed in search of dust to consume. Except for right now when she apparently recognized my feet as an obstacle, but rather than go round them like she normally does, she engaged her “I’m stuck and need to hop” function, and quite literally hopped onto my foot.
If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to have an 10lb robot roll over your toes, let me tell you, not good.
So yea, note to self, keep my feet out the way and not assume her sensor will know the difference between “an obstacle I should go around” and “I bet I can climb that”.
She was trying to get on your lap!
We gave the robot too much sentient power when we gave her googly eyes. God knows what the ribbon ETD bought for her is going to do when it arrives.
You guys with your earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes are all crazy. As much as I grumble about snow I’ll take the blizzards and occasional flooding of the northeast any day over that chaos.
Look sometimes the sky decides ‘you know what fuck this’ and tries to kill you, and that’s just how it is.
Oh boy, here we go. One of my all-time favorite stories. William and Ellen Craft were both born into slavery in Georgia in the 1820s. They looked like this. You’ll note, just by looking at her, that Ellen was very light skinned. That would be because her parents were an enslaved woman and her master…and Ellen’s mother was also the child of an enslaved woman and her master. You can only imagine what had happened. Slavery is disgusting. Anyway.
William and Ellen met, fell in love, and got married so far as they were allowed (enslaved people were forbidden by law to actually get married in any legally binding fashion; since being sold away from each other forever happened so often, slave marriage vows often included the phrase “til death or separation do you part”–again, slavery is disgusting). As you can imagine, William and Ellen didn’t want to have any children born into the system of slavery. In December of 1848, they decided to escape to the North. And that’s when the Crafts got crafty and came up with a brilliant plan to escape in style.
As we established, Ellen was white passing, and they decided to use this fact to their advantage. William was able to keep a small portion of his earnings from being contracted out as a carpenter, and he saved up that money to buy Ellen some really fancy clothes. Once disguised, Ellen looked like this:
Dashing, right? So Ellen was disguised as a wealthy, white man, someone nobody would think to question, and William would be playing the part of her enslaved manservant. Their story was that they were traveling north because Ellen was in poor health and wanted the expertise of northern doctors. This poor health story was for a few different reasons:
Ellen had been practicing masculine mannerisms and behaviors, but by claiming to be sick, she wouldn’t have to talk much and reveal that she still had a feminine voice.
Ellen had her right arm in a sling, pretending it was badly injured, so she could mark travel documents with an “X” and hide that she didn’t know how to write.
On racially segregated trains, she could keep William in the “white” compartments with her because she would need him to tend to her at all times, what with her “delicate health” and all. Staying together would prevent the two from getting separated accidentally.
It was still a nerve-wracking experience, to be sure, with the threat of discovery at every turn, but William and Ellen Craft managed to escape from slavery by riding first class trains and staying in the nicest hotels along the way. There was even one point where Ellen got to have dinner with the captain of the steamboat they were riding. They arrived in Philadelphia, safe and sound, on Christmas Day, 1848. The Crafts then settled in Boston, fitting in nicely with the free black community in the Beacon Hill neighborhood and making friends with prominent abolitionists. These abolitionist friends, which included the likes of Theodore Parker and Lewis Hayden among many others, encouraged William and Ellen to make their escape story public. They did, and soon the two were celebrities.
Their celebrity status turned out to not be such a good thing less than two years later, when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. Their master back in Georgia had, of course, read all about how the Crafts outwitted all the white people and made a home for themselves in Boston, so he hired two slave catchers to go up to Boston and retrieve his “property.” What the slave catchers didn’t bargain for was that Boston was ready for them.
Up in Boston, the Vigilance Committee consisting of both black and white abolitionists was hard at work coming up with a plan to prevent the Crafts from being captured. William Craft and Theodore Parker even thought of legal loopholes to get William arrested in Massachusetts, if it came to that, because he couldn’t be taken out of Massachusetts jail to be taken South. Loophole 1: since Ellen and William still hadn’t gotten married, a friend could report William for fornication and get him arrested for that. Loophole 2: William could carry various weapons on him, fight back against the slave catchers if they caught him, and get arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. They thought of everything.
When the slave catchers arrived, the Vigilance Committee sprang into action, getting the two slave catchers arrested like six separate times in quick succession, for petty crimes both real and imagined. They had Vigilance Committee member Samuel Gridley Howe doing his Sam thing and making very scary threats. All of this was done to make these slave catchers so sick of Boston that they’d give up and go home to Georgia. All the while, William and Ellen were being shuffled, often separately, between safe houses. Eventually it came to pass that Ellen was staying with Theodore Parker, while William stayed with Lewis Hayden. And that’s when yet another dramatic episode happened.
Lewis Hayden had himself been born into slavery in Kentucky, and he had made his escape up to Boston just a couple years before William and Ellen Craft did. Once William got to his house, Hayden put his own plan into action. One day, the slave catchers, who had already been put through hell by like the entire city of Boston, arrived at Lewis Hayden’s doorstep and demanded that he turn over the fugitive William Craft. Hayden calmly opened the door a little further, not to let them inside, but to reveal the two kegs of gunpowder he had waiting just inside. He told them that he would prefer to blow them all sky high if they took one more step, rather than see himself or William Craft return to slavery. The two slave catchers took the hint and left.
William and Ellen were reunited at Theodore Parker’s house shortly thereafter, and plans were made to smuggle the Crafts up to Canada and then across the Atlantic to England. Before they left, however, there was something Parker wanted to do for them. Since they were heading to safety at last and no longer needed to be able to go to jail for fornication, Parker offered to legally marry them. William and Ellen agreed, and Parker, their minister, did the honors right in his own living room, with a Bible in one hand and–I’m not kidding–a sword in the other. Parker escorted them as far as Maine himself, with a variety of swords and guns on his person so he was basically that trope where a character takes an absurd amount of weapons out of their clothes. When they parted, he gave William and Ellen the Bible and sword he had been holding as he officiated their marriage.
William and Ellen made a home for themselves in England for the next nineteen years. They got to go to school, and they fulfilled their goal of raising their children in freedom. They had five children, as a matter of fact. In 1859, they were paid a visit by their old friend, Theodore Parker, who got to meet their children and see that they still had the Bible he gave them. Parker was on his way to Italy, where he hoped the warm climate would improve his tuberculosis, but he would die in Florence the following spring, at just 49 years of age. After the Civil War, Ellen was miraculously able to figure out where her mother was in Georgia and have her brought over to England to stay with them. They hadn’t seen each other in almost twenty years, so you can only imagine the reunion. In 1868, once slavery was abolished, citizenship was granted to African Americans, and the right to vote was granted to African American men, the Crafts felt like they had work to do. Twenty years after they escaped from it, William and Ellen moved back to Georgia, back to where they began. William and Ellen tried to establish a school for freedmen as well as a farm, but white supremacist violence and laws led to the failure of both after Reconstruction ended.
William and Ellen Craft spent their twilight years living in Charleston, South Carolina with their daughter and son-in-law. Ellen Craft died in 1891, at the age of 65. William Craft died in 1900, at the age of 75.
