Among the Stars
It was horrible staring at them for years on end.
They’d been trained, prepared, and taught for months about what to do, yet when the time to freeze the flufffies came, every single one of them woke up in a panic and hoofed at the glass, leaving me to stare at their rictus of frozen terror for the six years it would take to get to where we were going. I deeply resented the little bastards for being able to sleep the whole way, but reminded myself that if I wasn’t a brain in a jar, I’d be frozen just like them too and probably with the same stupid look of terror on my face.
Every day, I scanned the cryo fluffy tubes and hated every single one of them for panicking just as the cryo solution got pumped in. I hadn’t been there when they’d been iced, but I’d been told their final shrieks of “COWD WAWA BAD FOW FWUF…” was repeated verbatim from every single frozen fluffy. And there were forty nine of them. One to a tube; Seven rows of seven. Seven unicorns, seven pegasi, and thirty five earthies. A perfect wall of stupid, startled fluffies staring back at me for six whole years. I was glad that this leg of the journey was almost over and that I would be the first human to see an exoplanet.
Human might be overstating what I was at the moment, given I was little more than a brain in a jar attached to the entirety of the Wang Mobile. It’d been called that because of its primary designers, JD and DJ Wang and because some idiot let the internet participate in naming the vessel. It was also very phallic though that was more of an accident of design rather than specific impulses of the brother sister design team. After all, if it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have the “Yeet Drive,” which could push the ship in a sudden shove to near light speed velocities.
I hated the drive name. I hated the Wang Mobile. I hated the Gen-Z assholes that designed and named the whole thing. I hated myself more for allowing those scientists to take me out of my wheelchair and put me in this jar. I should have stayed on Earth, being a happy little paraplegic scientist doing whatever shitty work came my way, but I had to want to be an astronaut. I had to want to explore the world. And people like me? I would never get another chance to leave Earth.
So they tore my brain out and stuck it in a jar. They’d done this surgery to plenty of people on earth, mostly rich assholes wanting to try to live forever, but it was insanely expensive. They’d only done it to me so that they could study the effects of long term “brain storage” that “real” astronauts would get to use on long term voyages. No harm if they killed the gal in the wheelchair, especially since no one else knew I was out here. This privately funded venture was supposed to be a reality show of Fluffies in Space, all shot remotely and as far away from Earth as possible. “Everything was AI”, they said. “No humans at risk at all!” And here I was, watching everything, expected to take care of everything and I wouldn’t even get my name in the history books for it.
My body was now a massive wang hurtling through the galaxy at .8c, with cameras covering everything at every angle. I could see outside the ship, which was boring and not at all like Star Trek. I could see every nook and facet of the ship, which was cramped and tiny, and I could control a tiny fleet of drones. And there were the fluffies. Stupid fucking comsonaut fluffies, each with their stupid faces frozen in terror. It was going to take ten years to get to HD40307-G, but it’d only seem like six to me. And the fluffies, but they weren’t awake, so they wouldn’t notice.
So I was here alone. There was a data stream coming from earth, but since it was almost a decade out of date at this point, I figured I’d been forgotten about by this point and that the only people who might care if I replied had already retired or found better jobs. Still, I dutifully sent my updates like a good little astronaut. Fluffy status nominal, ship status nominal, magnetic plasma shielding holding stable. It wasn’t until I’d begun slowing down that anything of interest happened at all.
It turns out that interstellar flight was super boring if you did everything correctly. With the massive supercomputers crunching data back on earth, they’d gotten the course correct on the first try. I’d be able to alter it if necessary, but since I wasn’t an astrophysicist when I left, it’d have been useless for me to do anything of the sort. Now, after six years of watching videos, doing math, and reading books, I felt confident in my abilities to plot a course home if it came to that. I’d also picked up more programming knowledge, more mechanical engineering skills, and French, which I’d never seemed to have time to learn on earth. Learning is easy when you physically can’t move and someone forgot to pack the media that you specifically requested. I did, however, have ten year old broadcasts of Fluff-TV still beaming to me from Earth and that was just awful.
Deceleration began at 1300 onboard time as the YEET drive kicked into gear. I don’t know how it worked, really, but I couldn’t tell that we were slowing down except for the instrumentation and the fluffies softly sloshing in their cryo tubes. It’d be a few million more miles before we were ready to insert into orbit around HD40307-G, but it was time to start waking up fluffies all the same.
As the cryo liquid drained off the first column of tubes, fluffies began coughing and sputtering in their tubes followed by cries of “cowd!” “Nu wike tube!” “Hewp!” and soft sobbing. It was the first (sort of) human voice I’d heard in the past six years and I already decided that I’d have been better off staying on earth. The tubes hissed open and the fluffies were free to float about the cabin. I was to let them frolic and play for a few hours while the cameras captured their glee and joy at near weightlessness.
They fuckin’ hated it.
Well, the earthies and the unicorn hated it. Cries of “Nu wike micwo gwavity!” and shrieks of “nuuuu!” echoed through the chamber as fluffies struggled to find ways to maneuver themselves in microgravity. Only Dove the pegasus seemed to be having any fun as she buzzed her tiny baby blue wings wings to propel herself forward. Were it not for their surgically altered behinds, I’m sure that fluffy cabin would have been filled to the brim with waste from panicked pooping as they caromed off the walls and into each other like useless, fluffy ping pong balls. As we approached orbit around the planet, I could finally relieve their suffering and inflate their habitat.
The fluffies quarters were a large inflatable cylinder that spun to simulate gravity. It had been stowed during the trip to eliminate solar wind drag and to avoid micro meteor strikes while moving at .8c. Also, I’m pretty sure the plasma shielding would have melted it. Regardless, as the habitat inflated with inert gas, I couldn’t help but think what a wonder this would have been for a human crew to see. Instead, the view was wasted on a bunch of complaining fuzzballs that “nu wike space.”
With the habitat up and spinning, I opened the door from the cryotube room into the padded walls of their habitat. On the “floor” were TVs, where the fluffies could stand and watch educational videos about what they were supposed to be doing, announcements for the ship, or anything else I chose to broadcast. Right now, they were watching my animated avatar deliver instructions to the fluffies as their 20 meter habitat rotated.
“Good morning fluffies!” I said. “You are awake and in orbit around the planet HD40307-G, also known as ‘Super Earth.’"
“Pwetty wady gif fwuffy nummies?” asked one of the earthies. She was brown, the color of chocolate with a grey mane and tale.
“Food will be distributed at scheduled meal times,” I said.
“When time fow foodies?” asked another of the fluffies, a green earthie with blue mane and tale named Dolly.
“Nutrient kibble will be delivered at 0800, 1300, and 1800,” I replied. “It is currently 1800. Kibble will be dispensed now.”
Small trays slid out from the walls, each with a perfectly measured amount of freeze dried kibble. Directly below them, dust collectors hummed to pick up any stray bits that fluffies would naturally leave behind. I’d have to control the cleaning robots to move all the stray fluff and dust they generated into the external walls for additional radiation shielding, but that would wait until meal time.
“Is same kibbew we haf in twaining?” asked an all grey unicorn. “Wawteh nu wike twaining kibble.”
“I will remind all fluffies that Space Kibble is one of the big sponsors of the Fluffies in Space Training so please show Space Kibble the proper respect when you eat. Look into the camera and say ‘I love space kibble.’” Remember that you will be on TV and will be famous little fluffies when you get home.”
That part was a lie. The seven fluffies that were active now had no chance of making it back to earth. In fact, I had fluffies in storage that were nearly identical to the seven that were awake. If something happened to them, I was to release another fluffy from containment until there were none of the copies left. They all shared a name and training, so the fluffies might not even notice their friend had been replaced. Viewers probably wouldn’t either.
The seven fluffies dutifully marched towards an open kibble receptacle and began to eat. They’d been trained for months prior and knew where and how to eat from the food bins. They still complained, despite having eaten the same thing for nearly six months beforehand. According to the records, the fluffies aboard the Wang had been selected from a pool of over a thousand carefully selected fluffies. Five hundred died in training, allowing the engineers to refine their fluffy proofing. Another hundred perished in the test flights, while the AI they developed went insane and killed two hundred more. Hence my presence out here, telling the fluffies to eat their damn kibble and like it. The white earthie stallion with a yellow mane and tail flopped on his rear as he chewed, his eyes filling with tears.
“How dis cwunchies eben wowse in space?” she asked.
“Say ‘I love Space Kibble’ right into the camera.” I admonished.
“Bu nu wuv,” she complained. “Nu eben wike. Nu wan wie.”
“Hitler, you will look into that camera right now and lie or you will get the sorry stick.” Yes, the fluffy’s name was Hitler. Someone had paid twelve thousand dollars to name him that. She sobbed as she ate, but looked directly into the camera and said “Hitwew wuv space kibbews.”
It was going to be a long flight, I could just tell.
Several hours after meal time, it was Blaze, a big yellow earthie with a red mane, tapping on the talk button that drew my attention back to the fluffies. I’d been busy checking the flight paths and trajectories for the fluffy’s landing. I wasn’t going down to Super Earth because there wasn’t any coming back from there. The gravity well was too strong and I quite frankly already wanted to go home. Blaze kept tapping at the talk button until I answered.
“What is it, Blaze?”
“Wheh wittew bawk?” she asked. “Nu wan make bad poopies.”
“Say ‘I have to make poopies,’ and your litter pal will come to help.”
“Nu wike space wietteh paww,” Blaze sobbed.
“Someone caww fow poopies?” asked a voice. Why they’d gotten a birthday clown to record the voice for the robo litter pal, I’ll never know, but I already hated him. “Why, just tuwn awound and we’ll take care of that waste wickity spwit! Pwease gif poopies.”
“Hu, hu, hu.”
Rather than trying to manage with some kind of vacuum litter system, the fluffies had all had their behinds sealed with a double iris valve that could only be opened by their robot litter pal. They all hated it since it literally stuck its nose up their ass and vacuumed out the contents. Since they were all mares, except Shadow and Walter, it was a trivial surgery to route all the waste a fluffy produced into the valve system, then into the Litter Pal. The waste would be reprocessed into fluffy food until there was no nutrients left, then it would be used as radiation shielding. I’m glad I was being fed from sealed nutrient bags.
The fluffies lined up and the cold steel snout of Roy the Robot Litter Pal siphoned off their waste with cries of “Wuv poopies!” as he finished each one. I couldn’t watch because one, it was demeaning and two, I suspected it was some kind of weird fetish for the guy who recorded the voice for this thing. He’d also paid to be included in this voyage, which made me wonder why there seemed to be so many well off deviants willing to throw money at naming doomed fluffies and recording themselves as a litter robot.
Things continued like this for a few days with the fluffies eating the kibble, getting their wastes sucked out, crying, and the cameras recording it all to send back home. As the fluffies acclimated to the environment, I slowly and methodically went over the deployment checklist.
Walter, Jenny, Dove, Blaze, Shadow, and Dolly would all remain aboard while their counterparts would head down to the surface, never to return. The atmosphere was compatible with fluffies, and there even seemed to be plant life on the surface. There was enough food for a month, but otherwise the fluffies were just going to go down to the surface and see if they survived. Other space agencies were horrified at the idea of releasing an invasive species on another planet, but since fluffies were mostly artificial, they didn’t have gut biomes to attempt to overthrow the local microbial population. It was still stupid, but I’m not a xenobiologist and they weren’t paying me to argue.
“Alright, Fluffies,” I said after a few days. “Go to your colored squares and get ready to work.”
“Nu wan wowk,” whined Shadow, a black and red earthie. “Wan no no’s back.”
“You volunteered for this mission,” I reminded him.
“Wha vowenteh?” asked Dolly.
“Never mind,” I said. “Go to your squares and tell me what colors are on your screens. Everyone remember your lines?”
“Yes, nice wady Commandeh.”
“Alright let’s do this,” I said. All the cameras were recording now as the launch sequence began, “Fluffy Impact Super Terra probe is go for launch.” Wait, was the acronym FIST? These fluffies were going to FIST the planet? God damn those people on Earth. I was looking forward to getting my robot body back on earth so I could choke the life out of those assholes.
“Wawtew, standin’ by.”
“Dowwy, weady fow waunch.”
“Dove on fwight contwows.”
“Bwaze weady.”
“Shadow wan nummies.”
“Hitwew am go.”
“Jenny weady fow waunch.”
Rather than put the frozen fluffies through the hell of reentry, the reentry vehicle pulled away from the mother ship, firing retro rockets in short puffs to pull away. Dove studiously tapped on her pad, correctly picking up the color sequences like a game of Simon. Really, it was all under my control with careful computer aiding, but why felt like they were contributing and that was people really wanted to see.
“Fwuffies am away,” said Walter, looking seriously at his screen. “De-owbitaw buwn in T minus fwee, two, wan.” Walter knew his numbers so his data was at least displayed on screen.
“Tempatuw weddings am gween,” said Blaze. She didn’t know numbers and they would have been meaningless anyway, so her square just showed colors from green to red.
“Fwight status am happy face.” Hitler didn’t know colors or numbers, so her read out was just a happy face or a frowning face.
For the next fifteen minutes, the fluffies relayed what was on their screens back to me as if I didn’t already know what was going on. Still, that’s what the people were paying for: watching fluffies pretend as if they were astronauts. I would have held my breath for the plasma blackout if I had lungs anymore, but the FIST emerged after a few moments and I was back in control. The first images started pour in through the cameras, and I was blown away.
I don’t know if I’d call it beautiful. Haunting maybe. The entire landscape was covered in thick black foliage that seemed to struggle off the ground and drew in the too close light of the giant red star that hung in the sky. Oceans of water followed green tinged coast lines, reflecting the patina of copper that oxidized in the sands. I’d aimed for a coastal region so the fluffies would be able to land safely, given how thick the vegetation was elsewhere, but I never expected to see a world so alien as this. Hills barely large enough to be called mountains whizzed underneath as the FIST streaked through the sky, and the fluffies babbled happily from their command posts.
“Begin main wanding sequins,” said Dolly.
“Nummies?” asked Shadow.
“Shu up bout nummies!” admonished Walter. “Haf wowk! Pay tension!”
“Dove fwy to wandin zone.”
“Wogew dat.” “Who Wogew?” “Huh?”
“Focus,” I chided them. They’d already paid attention for more than ten minutes, which was amazing, but I needed them sharp for the cameras for at least the next minute. They snapped back to their consoles, staring and ready to go.
“Engine tuwn on,” said Dolly.
“Tempatuwe gween, nu, yewoww.”
“Fwight status am nu happy, nu saddies.”
“Wan zewo zewo to wanding,”
“Um, why scween go dawk?”
A klaxon sounded from the fluffy habitat and the lights all shut off at the same time. My screens and controllers were awash with errors saying everything from pressure loss to total meltdown. There were so many errors in fact, I knew they couldn’t all be right. That was enough to prevent total panic until I realized I had absolutely no control over any of the robots anymore. A few more attempts to open the doors, vent the atmosphere, or activate the lights led me to the worst possible conclusion: I was stuck.
Not only was I stuck, I was trapped in a jar, ten light years from earth with no hope of rescue and no chance of survival. My brain jar system was on an isolated network and would keep going as long as the backup power held, but all I had was the speaker system and a series of emergency procedures I hoped I’d never have to use. Mostly because it relied on the fluffies and was meant as an absolute last ditch effort.
“Fluffies?” I asked. “I need help.”
“Nu can see!” said Dolly.
“Fwaid of dawk!” said Dove.
“Watew make hown gwow!”
“Oooh, pwetty!” said a chorus of fluffies.
“Alright, good, you’ve got light,” I said. “Now, I want you to go over to the big red door in the middle of the floor.”
“Bwaze see wed doow,” said Blaze. “Nu move.”
“Alright, I want two of you to put your hooves in the spots where they fit,”
“Otay,” said Jenny. “Dowwy stand dere.”
“On three I need you to stomp down as hard as you can,” I said. “Give it your biggest stompies. One. Two. Three!” There was a loud clong as the springs buckled and the panel pushed open against the fluffies weight. Dolly and Jenny bounced away with a terrified “Nuu!” leaving the other five fluffies to stare into the mass of wires beneath.
“Skettis!” shouted Shadow.
“What?” I demanded. “No, Shadow, not skettis!” I could hear him chewing on the wires for a moment before being replaced with a dull thud then sobbing.
“Wisten nice commandeh wady, dummeh!” shouted Walter.
“Alright, Walter and Blaze, I need you to crawl into the hole and move up the wall until you see a blue panel with red and green letters.”
“Otay,” said Blaze.
“What I do?” asked Dove.
“You stand there and make sure that Shadow doesn’t try to eat the wires,” I said. “Hitler, look at the door and tell me if there’s a happy face or a frowny face on the square.
“Nu see squawe,” she said.
“Look on the other side,” I asked.
“Fwowny face,” said Hitler.
“I want you to push down on the frowny face until it smiles, alright?”
What she was actually pushing on was a manual release spring to allow the fluffies into the next chamber that would allow them to hit the reset button, but it was designed to look like a face so that fluffies would recognize it. A moment later, I heard the dull thud of hooves on plastic, then a loud click.
“Fwowny face am smiwe now,” said Hitler
“Bwaze see bawk!” she cried.
“Wha do?” asked Walter.
“Alright, press the green button marked “Y,” I said.
“Wha why?” asked Walter.
If I’d had blood, here’s where it would have frozen in my veins. Walter was smart for a fluffy, but he didn’t know the alphabet. The only fluffy I’d ever seen that did was an alicorn that’d spent his life with a bunch of researchers trying to test the limits of fluffy intelligence. All I knew about the panel was that it had two buttons Y and N. N would core dump the system, then it would rebuild from backup images. That could take a day to get back to even partial functionality, and we wouldn’t be able to communicate with FIST for a week. I knew they’d already landed and that the automated sequence began, but it required a command to open their tubes. They’d starve long before I’d gotten anywhere near functional.
I could pull up the procedure and see that the panel was blue with green and red buttons, but there wasn’t enough light from Walter’s horn to tell colors down there.
“Wawteh gettin’ tiwed Commandeh wady,” he said, panting a bit. “Nu can keep on wight.”
“Push the top button?” I said, not sure if he understood top from bottom. “And let me know what happens.”
I waited for a moment, letting the long seconds pass as nothing happened. Almost thirty seconds had passed, with each second slowing more than the last.
“You mean Bwaze ow Wawteh push button?” asked Blaze.
“JUST PUSH THE DAMN BUTTON.”
It was about ten seconds later that the lights came on and everything started reporting in. In another minute I had robot support and slammed shut the emergency access panel on the floor. Shadow was busy sobbing about lost spaghetti while the other fluffies just wandered around and babbled at things.
“Good job, fluffies,” I said, my monitors coming back up. I could see. I could feel the ship encompassing my entire being. I could sense FIST down on the surface with fluffies scrabbling at the glass on their cryo-tubes. With a thought I release their bonds and fluffies spilled out onto a brave new world for the first time. They took their first steps, staring into the light of the red sun, and looking at the world they would call their home.
“Dis am smawties wand now!” shouted a red unicorn as soon as he hit the ground. The first words of a human language on an exoplanet, and that’s what we got?
Well, they were the landers’ problem now. We’d just relay data back to earth for the next year before heading back. I had some software to fix and other satellites to put into orbit, but I’d come through smelling like a rose. My fluffies had saved the mission and it was nice having something to talk to other than myself. I thought it appropriate to offer them a reward.
“Fluffies,“ I said. “In recognition of your hard work, I’d like to offer you a special meal time treat. Please gather around your food trays.”
I mentally flipped a switch from “kibble” to “spaghetti” and seven packets of spaghetti-like substance squeezed from pouches into the food trays. There weren’t many times I could give a spaghetti treat, but I felt like they earned it today. The fluffies cheered and clapped their hooves before digging in. I mentally sat back and relaxed for the first time since we’d left earth.
Things were going to be okay out here.