hwango

There had been talk of putting a dome over the city, but no one really took it seriously. Kellen watched the streams of rainwater turn the view through the pub window into a writhing grey blur and imagined the effect filling the entire sky. It would certainly be something to see, he supposed.

“I’m going to miss this place,” he said to Mal, his companion across the table.

“Mm,” was the only reply, which might have been agreement. Mal was, he knew, not really paying him much attention. He was busy skimming the front page of a newspaper.

“What’s the latest?” Kellen asked.

“It says here that those wretched blob things have seized Australia.”

“Really?”

“Indeed.”

Both of them considered this for a moment.

“Whatever for, do you suppose?” Kellen asked.

Mal shrugged. “Tricky to reckon the motives of anything that can’t even be bothered to grow a spine.”

“I suppose there is that. Still, they do seem quite capable, particularly for a bunch still perambulating about the universe in actual vehicles. It would be sort of quaintly charming if it weren’t for the fact that they’re conquering the planet. How long do they reckon before they make it here?”

“There is a marked lack of agreement on that. A few days, anyway.”

“I’ll miss this place,” Kellen said again.

“As will I.”

“The rain, the fog, the tea…the opposable thumbs. Those really were a clever bit of innovation, don’t you think?” he said, waggling his thumbs appreciatively.

“I do,” said Mal. “The Earthers really were a clever folk. And so…tactile,” he said, rubbing his fingers on the newspaper. “Wasteful this might be, but the benefits to the overall sensory experience are astonishing.”

Kellen nodded is agreement and took a sip of his tea. “Truly, we got here just in time, before they’d managed to phase it all out in the name of progress. Which, to be fair, it would have been.”

“Yes, they were a remarkable race. If they had only spent a bit more time on shielding their minds against psychic invasion, who knows what they might have accomplished?”

Kellen gestured vaguely at the newspaper. “Anything in there about what kind of race we’re moving into this time? Any chance it will be able to drink tea?”

Mal frowned at him. “Kellen, whatever we end up subverting, their planet is going to be an almost unthinkable distance from this rock. It’s not going to _have_ tea.”

“I know that,” Kellen said irritably, “but I’ve developed quite a taste for it, so I memorized the molecular map for the plant and its biological requirements, and thought I might engineer some when we get wherever we’re going. Be a bit of a waste of time if I won’t be able to _drink_ the stuff though.”

“So sentimental already? We’ve been here, what, a few decades?” Mal said, raising an eyebrow, an act that secretly filled him with delight. They were such expressive creatures.

“I suppose I am. I mean, how many times have we jumped our race’s consciousness into the bodies of another species? And how much of their culture do we usually leave in place? This time, though…I feel like we became them, and not the other way around. I think this time, I’d like to take something with us.”

“Pfeh,” Mal said, but there was no real conviction in it. He was busy thinking which trees he’d have to replicate in order to reproduce the right kind of wood pulp for newspaper.

* * *

They held off leaving for another eleven days. It was cutting it a bit close, but there was a real reluctance among much of the population. A few radicals had even proposed some sort of violent resistance against the invaders, rather than flight. But that just wasn’t their way.

In the end, Kellen wished they’d left a bit sooner. Now his last memory of Earth was seeing some kind of huge armored vehicle level Canterbury Cathedral.

A moment of nothingness, then disorientation, and then perception. He could see, which pleased him. It was one of his favorite senses, to be sure. Ah, the infrared spectrum, an old friend back at last. He experimented with his limbs – ten, this time. That would take some adjustment.

Kellen took a moment to study his surroundings - a gleaming city of orange glass, all bubbles and domes, spirals and arches, and not a straight line to be seen. Dry, almost dusty air. Dozens of the crablike creatures of which he was now one himself. It was like no place on Earth, and certainly like no place in England. He tried to sigh, which turned out to be something the crab-things couldn’t do. A pity, that. He just hoped they could metabolize tea.