Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to 15 Minute Ficlets' Picture Challenge #14.

"Look at that!" Lynn said, and pointed at the clear open water ahead. That made me happy, to see Lynn happy like that, 'cause I knew what it looked like already, and man, it's a beaut. Eta Vulpeculae 2 is dry, drier than Earth, and it's got these red-rock canyons and sculpted stuff that the geology-heads say means EV2 used to have more water.

Now the water is just bare against the rock. There's no native grass or plants of any kind, and we don't have a reason to engineer something to survive there yet, not when there's plenty of other places to work in. But it can be pretty, when the sun hits it right and lights up the red-rock sandstone, and it's all fire against the stark blue of the sky, and both are reflected in the water when it's all still and quiet.

We're lucky this time, we're the first shuttle out here, so the place is all ours today. It's kinda nice. Lynn's goin' into military training tomorrow, so I wanted to bring us out here an' show off.

"It's like blood all over the rocks," Lynn says, with a big grin. See, I thought fire, but I guess that's because I deal more with it than with blood. Lynn's all into the weird stuff like hemorrhagic fevers and flesh-eating bacteria and virulent spores and the brain fungi, man, those are nasty, nastiest stuff I've ever seen in action. 'Course, maybe Lynn's got more reason to think of blood than I do.

"I know back on Earth," I say, "there's a park in North America, and they've got a place that's all holy-like, and one of the peaks is called the Altar of Sacrifice, 'cause of the red staining running down it."

Lynn looks at me sideways, kind of sly, like I already knew that, but ah, who cares? The breeze is fine and we've got some two-week-old beer, best we could get on short notice, icing down in the cooler. The day's just started, so the heat isn't pouring off the sandstone yet.

I see some of the dark stain on the red rocks, and I don't know what it's called or how it gets there – that wasn't my specialty on Earth – but I do know you can carve your name into it, if that floats your boat. So I steer the shuttle close to the wall, and offer Lynn the chance to put something down for the sort of eternity one hopes rocks will have.

See, maybe someday they'll get the repro thing fixed, and there'll be little Androsynths around, though God knows I can't picture it, but if so, then someday those descendants'll be wandering around and come across this place. And they might as well know we were here first. Why not? Hell, maybe some day I'll have some little gunner out there, and I can show him this place, say, I was here during the settlement, and me and my roommate, my best friend, we wanted to show that.

Lynn takes the emergency ax and manages to ding away enough of the stain to note name, clone series and date. I've got to do something different, then. Something easy enough to chip away with an ax blade, so no Sistine Chapel, har!

Name, clone series, yeah yeah, all that, and then I try to do a looped omega, which makes Lynn laugh like a hyena since I'm not using proper tools and it comes out looking like something the reproductive researchers are working on, if you get my meaning. So I say "Bite me!" but in a friendly kinda way, do my best to fix the thing, which doesn't work, and then Lynn opens one of the beers and we steer on across the water. It's a good day for it.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com