The Meat Reigns

Sir, my mission was to gather information, and I’m telling you, this is the information. No, don’t take my word for it, I brought plenty of footage. Not that it matters to me anymore. And bring more of that chicken, would you? God that’s good.

So anyway, yes. From all available records, First Contact occurred around three years after the Earth crossed the Bjurman Threshold—the point at which food production could no longer keep up with the mouths needing it and began to break down, just like your ancestors and mine all predicted it would. How? Oh, a collision of things. Mutant smartplagues gone rogue; radiation leftover from resource wars; oceans as lifeless and plasticky as bottled water. Pretty much all boxes ticked. Earth had turned out its pockets and found only lint. By the day my recon ship touched down, the population we abandoned had been cut in half.

The aliens landed in Europe first. Not the capitol of anything, just this cinder of a shanty-town in Normandy where the kids all sat around with toothpick limbs and bowling ball bellies just waiting to die. This visiting aid team happened to get the whole thing on camera. The ship came down in the middle of town, middle of day, with everyone looking on, and let out a dozen or so of these creatures at once. They don’t say anything, not so much as a we come in peace, just start carving half of their own into thighs and breasts and put them over a fire. You watch that video, now—it doesn’t take five minutes for all those hungry, spidery kids to make their choice. Us humans, we don’t have the brains we think we do. Just stomach accessories.

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Every surviving language has a name for them. The official taxonomization is Sus alienus funestus. In English, the suicidal porkduck.

I think it’s accurate, anyway. That picture there is typical. A claw-footed boar about yea high, potbelly that drags when it walks. Face like a duck, with fingers on its bills to hold stuff with. It can’t run fast, and its got dappled skin like velvet, which is convenient, I suppose, since it doesn’t mind humans slaughtering and eating it. I’ve seen porkducks disembowel themselves and live long enough to crawl onto a flaming barbeque. If you want to know the evolutionary logic behind that, I couldn’t tell you. Ask the bees and ants, I guess.

Their invasion incurred zero human casualties. Their technology is centuries ahead of ours up here in the Union, but their ships have no weapons anyone perceived. In the course of the war they tanked everything Earth threw at them and turned the other cheek. They employed only one tactic throughout, and it won them the planet in less than a year; those that resist do not eat.

For months they airdropped themselves over those nations that welcomed them. Thousands of alien bodies per day swamped the slum-cities of London and Beijing and Monaco in all the fatty meat and vitamin-rich entrails they could want. Those governments that fired on them got to watch the rest of the world gorge on a steady downpour of flesh. It didn’t take long for the willing to overthrow the stubborn. By the time those great food-dumping ships touched down and disgorged the first porkducks who didn’t happily die on impact, they were welcomed with open arms and empty plates.

They say Jesus Christ conjured loaves and fishes from nothing. They say he gave up his life for our sins. But what had he done for humanity lately? And the messiah couldn’t have tasted half as good as a rack of smoked porkduck ribs. Speaking of whom, I could use a top-off on my wine here. Just bring the bottle. And don’t give me that look, sir. You have no idea what I had to do to make it back here. Not a fucking clue.

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When I returned to our homeworld approximately ninety years into the porkduck occupation, there were more of them than there were humans. Had to be, to keep the population fed. Where we had come to be the planet’s apex predator, the porkduck instead established itself as its apex prey. Grass and flowers and trees had been replaced by machines that converted carbon dioxide into oxygen. Every creature more complex than an earthworm had been rendered extinct. No birds broke the blue of the sky. Shells had ceased to wash up on the shores. The Earth I found was stripped of every sustenance that was not porkduck.

No sir, you can’t understand. Up here in the stars, we’ve only a microcosm of a real ecosystem, the bare minimum biological diversity, but it’s not nothing. You can’t picture nothing.

I can.

Down there…

Down there, the cell membranes of all societies have dissolved; our species has at last become homogenous, if only out of need. The porkduck itself can subsist on particles and rays we haven’t discovered yet. What it wants instead is power, and comfort, and all human effort has been bent towards that purpose. Your typical John or Wang spends fourteen hours per day waiting on his dinner-to-be, grooming, massaging, shoveling waste, capering about for their entertainment. An individual may attend as many as a dozen in a day. No time for school, or leisure, no time to grow in different directions. The universities lie in ruins; alien palaces coil above all. Existence is binary; work and rest.

You can opt out, sure. They don’t force you to do anything. I met plenty who tried. They just don’t last long. You don’t work, you don’t eat. And you think maybe your neighbor will feed you, but they won’t. Because all of you are always being watched, and they know they won’t eat if they do.

It’s simple, like a guillotine. Blade plus gravity. Hunger plus time.

It’s what they did to me, when they found me out.

They didn’t bother to lock me up. They let me wander around like I’d been doing. But I figured out quick it didn’t matter how hard I worked—they wouldn’t feed me. There was only one thing they wanted, and I wouldn’t give it. They weren’t going to let me die though; not as long as I could be useful. Every time I thought I was getting close, somehow they’d know too, and they’d throw me a drumstick or something. Just enough to push me along to the next spot I’d drop.

But you know me, sir. I’m a good scout. I held out. I reconnoitered like I was told to do. I got a lot of good video of me getting thinner and thinner. 

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The oldest myth in our history is this: the strong rule the weak. It’s the amoeba from which all other stories evolved. The hero defeats the villain because he’s smart and tough, yadda yadda. Like all myths, it’s wrong. Totally backwards. When we fled to the stars, we took mankind’s best and brightest, the powerful and wealthy, and the first thing we did was build zero-g farms with asteroid dirt to grow corn and avocado. Look how quick we are to replace our agrimechs when they break down. We’ve come so far from our monkey days but we’re still only stomachs with accessories. Mouths to chew, hands to beg, minds to obey, knees to kneel.

To the meat.

Sir, I held out as long as I could. 

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I brought a tracking device back in my recon ship. It’s been pinging our coordinates ever since I got back. I’m sorry. Honestly. It was the only way they’d let me come home.

Maybe they won’t follow me. They’re happy as pigs in mud down there. But you never know. I expect the Earth-people will help, if they do. We’re the ones that fucked off to space and left them on that dying planet to starve, and besides, it’s that or go hungry. Even if they could, they’d never fight back. They’d have nothing else. I doubt you’ll so much as see a porkduck until you’re ready to eat its heart raw. At that point, they’ll have won.

Ah. Okay then. Saw that coming. Just let me finish up here before you lock me up. I really am sorry–I’ve got family here too. But I had no a choice. Up here, we don’t know what hunger is. You’ve never felt yourself begin to drag across that event horizon in your gut. Without food the belly starts to break down everything it can. Stomach lining. Fat reserves. Principles. Morals. Sanity.

No, they didn’t promise me anything. I never expected to be anyone special after they conquered us as well. I came back for this. Chicken, greens, mashed potatoes, gravy. You saw me—I wept when I smelled it coming. Even if it was just the once, I had to taste something other than porkduck before I die.

END

 

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

These three stories share a common character- an old man. He’s a typical old man that we’ve all known in our lives, except that he has a dark side.

Perfect Pair

The old man settled into his recliner, putting his slippered feet up.  He was bone tired and wanted to relax. He took a sip of wine, allowing his mind to drift back to that summer night filled with stars and a soft, warm breeze. The only sounds heard came from waves lapping against the shore and the whispering of the lovers, entwined in each other’s arms.

“We’re soul mates,” were the last words spoken before the swift sword released their heads from their bodies.

He chuckled to himself as he admired his new slippers. Indeed, they truly were sole mates.

The Recipe

The old man slowly stirred the pot simmering on the kitchen stove. It was potluck night at his lodge and he was making his special stew.

As a young man, his mother had been the first person to help him with the making of the stew. He figured, because of her age, the meat had been tough and stringy. His technique had improved with time and experience.

It was a favorite with his lodge brothers and always a highlight at potlucks. When queried about the ingredients, he would proudly reply that it was a secret recipe started by his mother.

The Decision

The old man had been to see his doctor. The news wasn’t good.

After some reflection, he decided to get his affairs in order.

He went to confession. The priest felt increasingly queasy as he listened to the gruesome details of the multiple slayings and subsequent cannibalism.

“By the way, Father, you know my special stew I brought for potlucks? You ate them too.”

The old man went home, collected the remaining frozen body parts and headed for the ocean.

He shouted, “Come and get it!” to the sharks as he flung the body parts and himself into the water.