Star worm stirs from the wrecked enclosure and raises a head to the heavens.
The stars, unfiltered by any atmosphere, shine down on star worm, and it can see one of the binary suns peeking over the horizon. Star worm doesn't know those fancy words though. 'Atmosphere'. 'Binary'. 'Sun'. It knows cold and it knows warm, it knows pain and it knows tasty. And it knows space.
There's only so much tasty left on this rock. And it's too cold.
Star worm wants to go to space.
(text-style: "shadow")[
[[Space]] ]''Star worm cannot go to space. Rock is too big.''
Star worm requires more warm and more tasty to go to space. Otherwise star worm will not reach space and star worm will have pain. Pain is bad.
[[Warm?]]
[[Tasty Warm?]]
[[Tasty, Cold?]](if: $warmtasty is true and $coldtasty is true and $warm is true)[
[[Space? Space!]]]Warm. Warm is something star worm understands. Warm is how you tell tasty space from regular space when you're in space. Warm is what you give up when you need to return to space. It is a very important sense for worm to have.
Star worm finds warm on far side of rock. But warm is inside pain rock. What do?
[[Bite]]
[[Slam]]Star worm's favorite. Warm tasties make interesting noises and move around and make the best squishes and crackle when you eat them. And star worm can definitely smell a few under its sleeping bed.
Star worm roots through its bed and finds shiny rock underneath. It scrapes at it and listens. Sure enough, it can hear the squeaky sounds of tastynoises. A few strong bumps and it break into their hideyhole.
Star worm snags a tastie! The other tasties flee, some flinging pretty lights to try and distract it, but star worm snags two more. Suddenly, it feels something grabbing its tail. Oh, it's a painshiny! Moves like tasty, shaped like tasty, but made of pain. What do?
[[Breathe2<-Breathe]]
[[Bite2<-Bite]]Tasty is harder to smell when cold. Star worm thinks tasty try to hide. But star worm very hard to hide from.
There's a hole in the rock, where the cold tasty smells come from. Star worm knows holes. Star worm woke up in hole, cracking through blue shell into space. So down star worm goes.
Hole becomes small. Star worm cannot wriggle through small hole. What do?
[[Slam->Slam2]]
[[Breathe]]Star worm takes its massive teeth and bites the pain rock. Teeth are long enough to hurt rock without hurting star worm. Warm leaks out and star worm feeds.
(set: $warm = true)
[[Meanwhile...]]Star worm raises its bulk and slams it against pain rock. Pain rock bursts open. Warm bursts out. Very warm. Too warm.
Star worm has died of too much warm. It will not go to space today.
[[Start<-Retry?]]Star worm takes a deep breath and breathes stars. Stars hit the edge of the small hole and bounces back at star worm. Star worm cannot be hurt by stars, but the stars hit the hole walls and cause rocks to fall. Star worm can be hurt by rocks.
Star worm has died of too much warm. It will not go to space today.
[[Start<-Retry?]]Star worm backs up for a bit. Then star warm wriggles fast fast fastfastfast until star warm //slams//.
Star worm breaks into a space in the hole. Lots of tasties, long cold. Still, tasties are tasties, and star worm devours them all.
(set: $coldtasty = true)
[[Nearby, unnoticed...]]"Goddammit!" said the military liaison, slamming her fists against the desk as the main bunker lights started fading. Soon, only the lights of the essential machinery lit the underground chamber, lit by the emergency backup generator.
"It wasn't enough for this worm to wipe out the main compound," muttered the project manager, desperately puffing through his second-to-last cigarette. "Now it's taken out the power station? It's like the universe is punishing us for what we've done."
"Don't get sentimental," said the chief security officer. "This is the biggest windfall we've had since this fiasco started. Once help arrives, we'll blame everything on the worm and get off with five years for manslaughter at worst."
"Ah, good. //Only// five years," said the co-head research officer, rolling her eyes. "Some of us didn't go through five years of grad school to end up in prison, Mel!"
"Can we save this bickering for later?" hissed the other co-head research officer, still watching the scanners. "We may not know how this creature finds prey, but if it turns out it's sound, I don't want it finding us!" The rest of the head staff grudgingly fell silent.
[[Space<-((Back))]]Foreman Bailey stayed very still inside the disabled power loader as the beast snapped up the frozen corpses. They had no idea why they weren't swallowed up too. Perhaps the beast couldn't sense them through the airtight, insulated casing. Or perhaps it had already filled up on their former colleagues. They held back a wave of nausea, knowing that vomit would only make their predicament worse. Seeing their entire staff die to the uncaring bougeoisie is one thing. Seeing them get eaten by an urban legend is another.
One hears lots of tall tales when they grow up in the stellar boondocks, and none were taller than star worms. Strange beings that hadn't been discovered by the scientists near the core, known for incredible powers and insatiable appetites. Lost ships would be blamed on them. Adventurers would bring back dubious trophies, supposedly carved from their flesh. Children would tailor hide'n'seek to it, one star worm consuming all the others.
Bailey remembered shooting a mining laser through the roof, the first act of their worker's rebellion. Perhaps that drew the beast.
They shut down everything but life support and settled in for the long run.
[[Space<-((Back))]]Star worm breathes. Star worm breathes (text-style: "shudder")[//stars//]. Soon there is no more painshiny.
Star worm snaps up a few of the tasties before they crawl into smallholes, too small for star worm to reach. Still, it is enough for star worm to return to the surface.
(set: $warmtasty = true)
[[In its wake...]]Star worm reaches back to bite the painshiny, crushing it in its mighty jaws. The painshiny quickly becomes warm. Then the jaws become warm. Then star worm becomes too warm. Far too warm.
Star worm has died of too much warm. It will not go to space today.
[[Start<-Retry?]]In my writing I got so Interested in fakes that I finally came up with the concept of fake fakes. For example, in Disneyland there are fake birds worked by electric motors which emit caws and shrieks as you pass by them. Suppose some night all of us sneaked into the park with real birds and substituted them for the artificial ones. Imagine the horror the Disneyland officials would feet when they discovered the cruel hoax. Real birds! And perhaps someday even real hippos and lions. Consternation. The park being cunningly transmuted from the unreal to the real, by sinister forces. For instance, suppose the Matterhom turned into a genuine snow-covered mountain? What if the entire place, by a miracle of God’s power and wisdom, was changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, into something incorruptible? They would have to close down.
In Plato’s Timaeus, God does not create the universe, as does the Christian God; He simply finds it one day. It is in a state of total chaos. God sets to work to transform the chaos into order. That idea appeals to me, and I have adapted it to fit my own intellectual needs: What if our universe started out as not quite real, a sort of illusion, as the Hindu religion teaches, and God, out of love and kindness for us, is slowly transmuting it, slowly and secretly, into something real?
A friend of mine once published a book called Snakes of Hawaii. A number of libraries wrote him ordering copies. Well, there are no snakes in Hawaii. A11 the pages of his book were blank."There. Benny just got eaten by a goddamn space monster. You still going to pretend that everything's alright, Jared?" said Val, her scorn masking her panic. What remained of the site personnel cowered behind her, some crying, some catatonic, some still nursing wounds from the initial attack. Jared refused to look at her, his hands clutching his rifle as if it's the only thing keeping him alive.
"Fine," he said, his voice a shadow of the commanding bark Val was used to. "The higher-ups said that Bailey was causing an incident, and that they didn't want them to panic the rest of the staff. So I claimed there was a technical problem with the surface facilities and moved everyone to the sublevels. But that...that //thing//? They didn't tell me shit about that." Jared palpably shrinks as Val glares at him with disgust.
"I knew you were Mel's crony, but backing her against Bailey? Jesus Christ in space, the only reason she hasn't shot them yet was because they weren't willing to get caught. Without us, they..." Val pauses, the weight of the situation finally hitting her. "They're all dead, aren't they? If Mel didn't kill the lot of them, the monster probably did. And you, you kept your damn mouth //shut//!"
"At least we're alive!" Jared yelled back. "That thing took out everything above us to get down here. If I hadn't done this, who knows how many would have died? //Your// office is at surface level, Ms. Technical Manager." The two glared at each other, only the hum of the emergency life support and the moans of wounded survivors disturbing the contest of wills. Finally, Val broke off.
"Emergency signal should have triggered when the top levels went," she said, looking at the remaining staff. "Help'll be here in a week or two. We need to keep the tech in this area running, and we need to keep these people fed and safe. And you're gonna help me or I swear to space god, I'll toss you into the vacuum myself."
[[Space<-((Back))]]Star worm leaps up in one grand motion. The pull of the rock grows weaker and weaker until it is gone.
Star worm is...
[//in space//.]
Congratulations! You've won!
[[Credits]]
[[Start<-Retry?]]Writing - Yarrun
Bug Testing - Counterclock