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 #11.

I stomped off while Dean and the other guy – Jake? – worked out how they were going to bag the relatively mammal-like small herbivores some pilot had seen in this area. I didn't care. Why should I? It's Dean's thing, not mine. I'm here along for the ride, in case I come across any plants I can use.

Mostly I just want to be left alone.

We're near a breathtaking canyon. If Dean or Jack, Jake, whatever his name is, if either of them ask then I'll say it's just a big hole in the ground. You can't let people get close to you. You get hurt that way.

Ooh, I know, now the big "Oh, so that's why Nick's so cranky!" You're wrong. I'm naturally cranky. I've heard enough anecdotes about KORB series to guess that we're all antisocial, get-the-hell-off-my-genetically-modified-lawn bastards. I don't like blaming it on my biology, though. Sounds like I'm making excuses.

The canyon looks sort of like a natural amphitheater, or an outdoor mosque or synagogue or church. The spires are the people. I can see them, standing, some of them with arms upraised. They're on different levels of the amphitheater, and in front of them – between them and me – is the speaker, whoever he is. I'm assuming it's male, because most religions on Earth were like that, and we don't have religion here on EV2 to give us anything back.

I wish I could believe in an afterlife, because I know I won't live forever. The most I can hope for, then, is to get reproduced. We can't clone, here, and the folks in repro research don't have anything yet for us to do things the old-fashioned low-tech way. So I'd better make sure I live long enough. But when we die, that's it. That's what I believe, because I know better. I saw what religion did on Earth. I know what the religious said, and did, about Androsynth. I have the scars to prove it.

At least the belief in an afterlife gives you something to hope for, if it looks like things are going badly. Here, if you walk off a cliff or drink poison or whatever, that's it. We can't even keep the body around all that well for cloning – long story there. Probably why we haven't had any suicides since we settled. Or maybe we're just built that way.

It's a cold wind. Actually, I don't mind it, once I'm prepared for it. I was in the Middle East of subequatorial Earth before the Exodus, so I'm used to heat. I don't like heat much either, but I'm used to it.

How's that saying go? "I don't like much, really, do I? But what I do like, I love passionately."

Something to be passionate about. That would be nice. I guess when they get repro solved, then I'll clean up my act and see about getting access to a woman. No sense changing myself before then.

Maybe it is a woman speaker, that rock in the canyon. Maybe I'm seeing things, but now it does look more like a woman talking to the assembled crowd. I wonder what she's saying. Have hope? Be of good cheer? God is Great? Next year in Jerusalem? None of the above?

We can't have religion. How can we believe in a higher power when we were Created by ordinary men and women playing God?

Dean calls. They're going to try hunting from the shuttle. Fine, at least I'll be warmer in there, if I just slouch in the back. As long as the pilot doesn't get us killed, that's fine with me. I can't afford to die just yet.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com