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 #36.

At first I thought it was a joke. I mean, this is what my series was made to do: work on plants. And failing that, work on other biomatter. But it seems that's no longer needed. The notification said that now all the foodstock and animals were well established, I should consider "rerouting my energies."

Don'cha love how we talk to each other?

I didn't even know what to do. Now, I'll admit, we've got a great little world to ourselves here. All our Earth stock is invasive, so it has no competition except itself; we hardly have to work to grow or raise anything. But when your job in that field is done, what do you do?

So I looked, and I found out something. It's even more perfect than I thought.

Not that I'll tell anyone, I mean, then people think "Oh, isn't that sweet" or "Wow, Nick finally came around!" or some crap like that. It's not completely perfect. But it's pretty close.

When we left, Earth I mean, we were mostly a bunch of enhanced intelligences. And when we landed on this planet, we had to become workers too – planting crops, dismantling the stations and ships to form temporary shelters, convert machinery to smelters and mining equipment, so that we could make more shelter and equipment. It wouldn't do to be super-smart and living in goatskin tents and wearing fig leaves, if you get my drift.

So we've got a weird world: everything's ridiculously easy to get, we've got loads of space, and we're high-tech about the lot of it. (Don't worry about the mining and smelting. We're using the oil transference technology an Earthling came up with back at the beginning of the century. And we're not dumb enough to pollute ourselves out of our new home.) If Earthlings came here, they'd say it was a paradise, a perfect world. And then they'd probably lock us up in labs again so they could enjoy our hard work.

Which was what I realized, and how I decided what I needed to do. This is our home now. We still can't agree on a name, we're kinda funny that way, but it's our home. My home. And I'll be damned if anyone's going to take it away from me.

So I volunteered for military training, which they recommend most Androsynth in nonessential fields do anyway. Turned out I'm best at being a grenadier. I suppose that's not too bad, although if we get as far as ground fighting, we're in a lot of trouble anyway. Our best bet is to keep the battles in the skies, in space, away from the surface. Having great brains doesn't help if someone nukes your cities. It just means you have more to lose.

A year of military training, and I have to admit even for an Androsynth I'm in good shape now. Now it's time to find something else to do.

You know what else is perfect about this place? It's quiet. I mean, we've got some music and stuff, but for the most part, we shed the useless parts of Earth culture: the massive entertainment culture, the "you must do this if you want to be popular" stuff. No advertisements, 'cause there's no companies. No videodecks, which is a bit strange, but then everything comes through our computers now. There's some folks making and selling different styles of clothing, and there's a thriving online culture, but lots of us – even me – like just wandering around our planet. Our home.

It's weird 'cause it sounds too close to a utopia for me, and utopias don't exist. They can't work. Sometimes I actually look for the snake in the garden, 'cause that would mean everything's all right. I did that on Earth, too, but that was sometimes 'cause it was my job and sometimes 'cause I wanted to cause trouble. Here, it's just something else to worry about. But better good and imperfect than perfect 'cause you're ignorant of what's wrong. 'S how I feel, anyway.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com