Writing Group: Short Story

So my prompt for this one was: You’re Earth’s 1st interplanetary ambassador on the way to meet the other planet representatives…  and go.

This pieces was 100% influenced by Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Treasure Planet. Is it perfect no, was it fun to write, yes.

The starwhales are laughing at me as I am stuck in my flying ocean. My dolphin support staff are space sick from the flight. And the krill that are bread for my meals have become sentient and are begging for their lives. If I was a human I would have buried my head in my hands, as a minke whale I can’t do that, so I flick my fins in agitation. 

Who would have thought that when life from space contacted earth it would be ocean species that made it to the stars? The head of the Interplanetary Senate is a great blue-ringed octopus. Humanity was really excited at first, thinking that they had met a great primordial god. And then he told them they were the lesser species on the planet, the lowest. They didn’t like that and tried to kill his squid ambassador.

The Interplanetary Senate took offence to that. They threatened to exterminate any and all harmful species to the true masters of the planet unless a proper representative was sent to speak for them. Several were considered, the blue whales while wise, were too big to get into space, the octopuses argued among themselves too much to even try to work with the humans, the Orcas threatened to eat the dolphin support staff, and the sharks kept almost dying during test flights. So I pulled the short straw by being the smallest of the whales.

Now I have months of flight confined to a flying ocean, being escorted by distant starwhale cousins to consider what to say to save humanity. They were doing a great job of cleaning the ocean when I left and replanting trees and using public transit instead of cars. Apparently the threat of extermination and a few deaths for attempted murders of a cuttlefish by a being they keep calling Cthulhu will whip them into gear. 

The ocean and land mammals had different opinions. Some think we should have the humans culled, some think we should keep them around as support staff, some think we should impose laws. I thought I knew what to do when I left my home ocean but months of moving through space changes a whale and I’m not sure what to do now. Most of the time I watch my cousins swim gracefully through space clouds, skirting the edges of supernovas on a dare. I want to swim with them, not be confined to my ocean ship. They tell me that if my species spends enough time in the vastness of space that we will at some point be able to leave our ships to romp among the moons of a gas giant. 

But not me, that will be my descendants. And that makes my decision clear, we kept humanity, they have thumbs we need to build more ships and my grand offspring or theirs deserve the chance to swim too close to a sun.   

Thank you KW Photography for allowing me to use your wonderful photos!

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