Interview: Allan Part 1

Edgar: hello my lovelies, Edgar here ready to interview Allan.  He on the other hand is not here yet, probably in the basement tinkering on something more important.

Jacob: (from the door way) aren’t you supposed to interview Allan?

E: yes but his is working.

J: hmm well, you want a drink. I can wait with you while he comes up.

E: thank you, I’d love one.

J: (fixing two drinks) you know, I don’t think you even need him for the interview since you already know him so well. I thought we were going to have to re-draw when you got his name.

E: I had all these lovely questions for him and now the twat isn’t here.

J: (taking the notes) here let me ask you and you answer for him. Ok, where were you born?

E: oh, it was on a dark and dingy space station in the year 2468 that circled Mars. It was to be my home for the next twenty years, and a marvelous home it was with its multi-colored foliage and lakes of rose tinted water.

J: that’s a good impression, you even get the face right. (Reads the card) that sounds beautiful, what kind of childhood did you have on Mars?

E: oh I had a very fortunate childhood. I was in the Lab since I was one year old, and loved every minute. My father, Henry Cathose, was a biomechanical engineer who revolutionized the creation of an atmosphere. For hundreds of years we would drop machines on planets and asteroids, wait a decade for them to work their magic and then go in and plant trees. What he devised was the Terrestrial Roving Electric Environments…. This is where I would have interrupted.

J: (looking at the cards) oh sorry… you mean Tree?

E: yes, my father was an oddball, but he did create plants that started life as machines and would then evolve into a more biological state as the atmosphere thickened.

Allan: it was a little more complicated than that, but you have the idea.

J: (jumping) holly shit man, knock or something.

A: sorry. (Looking at Edgar) and sorry I’m late.

J: (looks on uncomfortably as he makes it up to Edgar) well… I’ll be going now. What’s that, oh I’ll be there in a bit… Pat is calling… so, yeah.

E: if I did such a bad job explaining it why don’t you.

A: the Terrestrial Roving Electrical Environment didn’t evolve, it starts as an atmosphere inducer while doubling as a hermetically sealed womb for the plant seed inside. The mechanical part of it, which is called a Lifebot, takes readings of the environment every month and only releases the seeds when it is safe. The whole process of planting that took fifteen years now took two. By the fifth the planet or asteroid would be habitable, and by the eighth it would even begin to produce its own unique vegetation.

E: you make it sound so boring though.

A: Ed it’s not science fiction.

E: in your time no, but right now it is. Hell and for my time its fucking magic.

A: I suppose.

E: what about your mother? What did she do?

A: before she died as a result of my birth, Hilda Cathose was a member of the Galactic Parliament, Universal Peace Bureau. A century before, we had the very first communication with life in other galaxies, and the UPB was created to try and understand each other. When she started we were already fluent in four ‘alien’ languages; Fedrochy, Dromnidor, Senvi and Sedali. As a collective we tried to devise a way to create intergalactic travel that wouldn’t take a millennia. While I was there we still had not.

E: what kind of ways?

A: we had a method that would use the gravitational push and pull of planets and other masses to leap frog around our own galaxy, but even using the immense power of the black hole in the center of ours wouldn’t give us the velocity needed.  The fastest we ever went was four Hylin, which is twelve times the speed of light. Fun fact, Dr. Elmer Hylin was the creator of the Planetary Gravitational Jump Maneuver.

E: how perfectly wonderful, love. And what did my little Allan take as a career path?

A: engineer.

E: (bites lip, frustrated) yes dear but what did you engineer.

A: oh, why didn’t you just ask that? I and a few friends started a company that created weather simulators for the newly habitable asteroids. Before we came along they were all very boring, since they were so small they really only had one weather. Now the southern hemisphere could have snow while the northern had balmy days. We had trouble with simulating some of the planets in our Galaxy though, Traborne seven was high in Sulfur and would damage our machines hallway through the job.

E: I love how blasé you are about mentioning life outside of earth.

A: spoiler alert I guess.

E: why haven’t they contacted us yet?

A: we bicker too much, have little respect for our planet, and have an infantile sense of the unknown.

E: not all of us.

A: that’s all very well but they don’t see us as individuals they see us as a collective. If an alien ship landed and started killing off humans we would judge all alien life by the example of the first to make contact. One day we will be able to rid ourselves of that. And they will embrace us with open arms, tendrils and suction cups. (Watch beeps) can we stop here I need to pull out a gamma transducer.

E: of course, do you want to end the… and he is gone. Well lovely readers, till next time (insert sign off here)