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' Challenge #43.

The funny thing about us – we Androsynth – is that despite being GM, genetically modified, we are not as a rule 'beautiful people'. We were designed using donated materials requested from hardworking, long-lived, intelligent individuals, mostly of Caucasian and Asian stock. We enjoy our work to the extent that we'll gladly do it for sixteen hours a day without complaint. We're smart – maybe too much for our own good – and we're healthy – we don't senesce like Earthlings do. None of us had much of a childhood, either, given that we were grown in tanks to teenage size and got to learn from there how to control our bodies.

Some Androsynth are very bitter about that. It's a bit shameful to discover you were considered a profoundly retarded adolescent until you learned how to think and talk and move properly.

We've got high disease and cancer resistance. I think the Creator may originally have considered us as testing grounds to GM already-existing Earthlings, rather than creating a master race. And once he realized what he had on his hands – super-smart, long-lived folk – he made sure we could never interbreed with humans or each other. And then made extra sure by stopping production on females. (At least he made a few. Like Dina.) And then made triple extra sure by re-routing our libidos into our work ethic. Which probably means our research and production will collapse whenever we figure out how to reproduce.

But we're not, I think, all that beautiful.

One of the "beta Androsynth," from the first batch, told me long ago that the Creator didn't consider looks to be all that important, although good looks evolutionarily meant good health. And I suppose we're all right. If we'd been more physically attractive, the Creator might truly have been accused of trying to create a master race under cover of genetic research.

Oh, we're all right. We're not ugly, just average. Model series tend to look alike, but we don't have endless numbers of Dinas or Grifs about. I think it still spooked the Earthlings, though, to see a lab full of nearly identical people working away. And we don't share the same thoughts or ideas. One of my model series 'brothers' is a fanatic anti-Earthling; he volunteered for gunner duty as soon as the Exodus was planned, so he could blow away as many Earthlings and Earthling ships as he could. But myself, although I bear them no love, I just wanted to get away. Get away from Earth and try to figure out what sort of life I could live.

There were a few Earthlings who sympathized with us, but I could never tell if they truly felt our pain – I don't know if any Earthling could – or if they pitied us, and hid their pity under the veil of helping. They probably stopped sympathizing after we joined the Ur-Quan Hierarchy, though. At least the Ur-Quan don't care where we came from.

~Personal journal of CRC-16 "Grif" Reproductive Researcher

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com