IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 542

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Octavia Butler said, “SF doesn’t really mean anything at all, except that if you use science, you should use it correctly, and if you use your imagination to extend it beyond what we already know, you should do that intelligently.”

SF Trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmusingAlien
Current Event: http://meninblack.wikia.com/wiki/Frank_the_Pug

qaPla, who looked like a puggle dog, glanced at his Human handlers and said, “What’dyou think this is, WHEN THE TRIPODS CAME?”

Aradhya Morais shook her head, “Of course not. You’re not funny.”

Heitor Saigal managed to choke back a guffaw as the alien inflated its side-of-body sacks, something they’d come to recognize as his look of indignation.

qaPla said, “I am very funny! Among my birth-moment peers, I am conisdered a real cut off!”

“You mean a ‘cut up’, don’t you?” said Aradhya after she snorted. Heitor was pretty sure she had no idea she did it. It had bugged him during their first months together, but as they’d been matched with qaPla by the command structures of both Humanity and its people.

“Humans have their metaphors, we have ours – only it’s not a metaphor.”

Heitor frowned, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What it says. I am a ‘cut off’. A Big Mistake.” With that, qaPla hurried ahead of them.

Aradhya had said “scuttle” more than once, because the aliens looked more like large crabs than anything else – though they looked like crabs as much as a chimpanzee looked like a Human. She leaned over to Heitor and said, “What do you suppose it means?”

Heitor shrugged, “Its an alien – we’ve only been hanging around each other for four weeks. What do you think it means?”

From around the corner, qaPla bent the tube it used to whistle through and more-or-less speak its oddly accented English-Portugeuse patois and said, “It means exactly what it sounds like. My people sent a wasted life to be the Contact team to you Earth people…”

Names: ♀ India, Brazil; ♂ Brazil, India, Klingon: “qaPla” which is roughly “success” – but this isn’t Star Trek, so it is barely spoken “ri” which means, in Alien language, “a grave mistake”...

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg/220px-Falcon_9_Demo-2_Launching_6_%283%29.jpg