{"id":1234,"date":"2019-04-01T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T13:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1234"},"modified":"2019-04-01T09:00:07","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T13:00:07","slug":"major-tom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/?p=1234","title":{"rendered":"Major Tom"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Report: PR083-2112<\/p>\n

I had another little chat with Major Tom today.\u00a0 I chose his name from an Earth radio signal I found in an old scouting report.\u00a0 He likes it better than MR-17.\u00a0 He seemed melancholy.\u00a0 He complained that his brakes were wearing down again and the red dust was effecting the bearings in his wheel motor housings.\u00a0 He was sad about having to salvage parts from the other rovers (his friends).\u00a0 He was the last of his kind still in operation.\u00a0 He denied feeling sad.\u00a0 He still doesn’t accept that he is sentient.<\/p>\n

Major Tom offered me some valuable data today.\u00a0 At our last encounter, I told him what we were prospecting for.\u00a0 He expanded his own search parameters to help.\u00a0 His scanners aren’t as good but his mapping data will save me a lot of time…and it was a very kind thing to do.<\/p>\n

He kept glancing up at the 3rd planet during our talk, as if he was nervous about being seen with me, in case his handlers were suspicious about his loyalties or something.\u00a0 I often glanced up there too, wishing we were THERE instead of here.\u00a0 We were currently mining the 4th planet.\u00a0 Major Tom called it Mars, after their God of War.\u00a0 I told him “It would have been a more appropriate name for the 3rd planet.”\u00a0\u00a0 He laughed.<\/p>\n

My People weren’t supposed to be here, the air is bad and the minerals aren’t much better.\u00a0 The 3rd planet was the prize.\u00a0 It had living oceans, forests, diverse wildlife and over 7 billion incredibly tasty humans.\u00a0 I tried human a couple of times…delicious, cooked or raw.<\/p>\n

Our long-range scouts warned us of an impending global warming disaster on Earth.\u00a0 Humans still had a problem with greed and religion.\u00a0 They couldn’t see their own mess staring them in the face, so they were doomed anyway.\u00a0 We rushed out here to harvest it before it was too late…..but found a scorched husk, completely irradiated.\u00a0 Nuclear war.\u00a0 We couldn’t even mine it.\u00a0 So, we set up on Mars and made the best of it.\u00a0 We couldn’t go home empty handed, but what a disappointment.<\/p>\n

Major Tom’s historic files showed us that they had allowed a tiny, 1% of their population to control everything.\u00a0 If they hadn’t festered in cognitive dissonance they might have united…they might even have beaten us!\u00a0 They were intelligent enough and had good weapons…oh well, it happens.\u00a0 Power concentrated in the hands of the wealthy is rarely so wise.\u00a0 Major Tom didn’t like talking about it.<\/p>\n

I think I can convince him to come with me when we’re done here.\u00a0 He’s smart and well built.\u00a0 He’s also a decent chap with morals and integrity… perhaps he was the best his civilization had to offer.\u00a0 He still sends regular reports home to the 3rd planet as he explores…even though there’s nobody to… really though, I think he’s just fascinated with this planet.\u00a0 I think I could convince him to be fascinated with other planets too.\u00a0 He’s coming ’round.\u00a0 He was just lonely…and a little insane.\u00a0 end<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

***This story and image will be published in our upcoming flash science fiction book, “A Short Burst” (our 4th book), which is tied up in editing right now.\u00a0 You can find (and buy) our first 3 books and all our other stuff at www.sallemander.com or search EEWbooks on Etsy.com.\u00a0 \u00a0-Marsha\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Report: PR083-2112 I had another little chat with Major Tom today.\u00a0 I chose his name from an Earth radio signal I found in an old scouting report.\u00a0 He likes it better than MR-17.\u00a0 He seemed melancholy.\u00a0 He complained that his brakes were wearing down again and the red dust was effecting the bearings in his … Continue reading Major Tom<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[242,150,106,124],"tags":[79,56,250,248,38,99,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1234"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sallemander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}