Spider and tentacles

Weird fiction shortstory

The modulated screech announced an approaching visitor. Mangaro clicked his mandibles in disgust and let out a deep sigh, not something that came to him naturally, rather a habit he had picked up during his long stay on Earth. He wasn’t sure himself if that one came from a conscious attempt to emulate humans or if it just sort of happened like with many others. Not that it would help him in the eyes of a random human observer, especially given that, statistically speaking, such an observer would have at least a bit of arachnophobia, so the sight of a sighing spider would just add to the terror. And even if it was one of those rare individuals who actually liked spiders, Mangaro’s sheer size all but guaranteed a panic attack. In the twenty years he’d spent in New York’s underground, there had been exactly one person who reacted with delight upon first seeing him—but Natasha was, by human standards… unusual.

Mangaro set aside his special keyboard modified for his smaller manipulators and quickly scanned first the rows of monitors, then the rest of his office, just in case there might be something compromising lying around. After all, this was an official visit. Probably. Hard to say, considering all the secrecy and vague notes. He wasn’t looking forward to it, but the meeting was long overdue. Even a glance at the top row of monitors—showing not only the stream, but also all statistics, predictions, and currently measured activity levels—made it clear that things were approaching a breaking point.

He used his long left manipulator to switch the screens in front of him to show more detailed information about his physical surroundings and pulled up a camera feed from the underground tunnel. In the visible spectrum, a small man was shuffling along in a shapeless coat and crumpled hat, looking so much like a homeless drifter that he might really be one – an unexpected and unwelcome intruder trying to escape the cold outside and hide in New York’s underground despite all the urban legends. But the infrared view, followed by other, more specific sensors, made it clear this was the expected official visitor.

Maybe. The energy sensor lit up several points on the figure where it was hiding items that Earth’s military-industrial complex would have killed for if they could get their hands on them, and would probably cause a lot of deaths in any lab that would try to reverse-engineer them. But all the rebel clones had been hunted down long ago, and everyone else with access to such technology knew about Mangaro and wouldn’t dare to show up unannounced. On the other hand, it could also mean…

The huge spider shuddered and fought down a wave of panic and paranoia before it could reach the point where he’d have to trigger his implant and inject sedatives to his ichor.

I should’ve gotten out a long time ago. I should’ve finished my PhD as planned. Should’ve left this damn planet ages ago… Or at least, I should never have allowed him to drag me into all these damned intrigues and weird stuff. I’m a programmer! I don’t have the skills or temperament for this shit!

He thought for a moment about what just flashed through his mind. Yeah, it was the exact same mantra, word for word. He made a note to prepare some variety for his whining. Then he forwarded the note straight to his personalized chatbot to generate some alternatives.

Another thing he’d gotten uncomfortably used to. He himself refused to call it artificial intelligence because it was not, but it was addictive and dangerous as hell.

“I’m here, let me in,” came a voice from the entry audio feed, in Gal-three—the Fleet’s standard language. Mangaro sighed. Yeah. And he was the one who was careless and should be more careful to limit any possible information that might get to Earthlings.

“Come in,” he said aloud in English and opened what looked like an ordinary maintenance door. After one unpleasant encounter years ago, when he’d still been a young and naive student on his first expedition, he had spent a lot of time securing every approach. That incident had ended surprisingly well in the end, leading to some new friends, but the fear of another unwanted guest never left him.

He crawled down from his comfortable recliner and settled into the corner beside the couch. He hunched his body and pressed his limbs close to appear as harmless as possible.

Even so, the figure in the hat and trench coat flinched when it entered the den and caught sight of him.

It annoyed him, but his appearance provoked instinctive fear even in those who knew him well and ought to be accustomed to other species.

“Help yourself, Admiral,” he said, waving a longer manipulator limb toward the table covered with bottles and cans.

“Well, hello there, old spider,” whistled his visitor in that strange melodic voice he used for Earth’s languages, pulling off his hat and a simple latex mask. Then he fixed his enormous black eyes on the refreshments. He definitely looked like he could use some. Hard to say with clones, but exhaustion rolled off him like a heavy aura. Exhaustion and… fear? Could it be fear? Oh great. I knew this would suck.

Mangaro really envied clones and some other humanoid Galactic races that were active on Earth. With just some clothes and a mask, they could walk among humans relatively safely. And these days, even without a mask, plenty of people would just assume it was a cosplay of a classic gray alien. He, as a 350-kilo spider with eight furry limbs and a cluster of smaller manipulators, had no such luck. He’d tried it once, at Natasha’s insistence, when she dragged him to a small sci-fi con. It nearly ended in disaster when curious cosplayers tried to dismantle his “amazing costume.” He still had nightmares about that. Not so much about what almost happened, but about all the people, everywhere, looking at him and trying to talk to him. He longed for contact, yet feared it. Luckily, there was the Internet and social media.

“Got any weed?” the admiral asked. “Nope, doesn’t seem so. Luckily I got my own.” He fished in his coat pocket. “Want some?”

“I do not. And if you’re going to smoke here, go sit in that corner and hit the air filter button,” Mangaro clicked in disgust. “So, why have you decided to grace me with your visit, oh fearless leader? Did you finally bother to read my reports and requests that we have to start thinking how to unfuck this apocalypse in progress?”

The Interdiction Fleet admiral sighed, lit a fat joint with his universal tool ring, and took a drag. He opened his mouth, full of tiny, sharp teeth, blew the smoke in the room, and yawned wearily.

“The filter corner,” Mangaro hissed, pointing again at the smoking nook next to the sitting couch he’d built years ago for his two human friends who couldn’t imagine drinking beer without a cigarette.

The gray obeyed and puffed in silence for a while.

“Yeah. Looks like it’s all more fucked than I thought,” he admitted at last, then his eyes widened at a monitor showing the main stream where several tentacles were preparing to penetrate a terrified schoolgirl.

“Can you turn that filth off? At least while we’re talking?”

“No,” Mangaro snapped. “So what are we going to do? I’ve been writing you every month for a year about how it’s looking and how bad every prognosis I can make looks…”

“I know, I know,” the admiral waved, stirring up a thick cloud of marijuana smoke. The air cleaner had been designed for cigarettes, not joints the size of Cuban cigars, and couldn’t keep up. “But… look, there’s just too much going on. I told you I trusted you to keep it under control. Sorry, Mangaro… this is all fucked up.”

“We’ve got a year or two. I’m trying a few things…”

“No, we don’t! Listen. Hypothetically—what would it take to stop human AI…?”

“I keep telling you it’s not real AI…”

“Doesn’t matter! Hypothetically, what would it take to stop all these chatbots, image and video generators. To end it completely or at least roll it back to how it was a few years ago?”

Mangaro smiled. “That’s one thing you don’t have to fear. It’s too decentralized. Too many companies and factories making hardware. Software and models are freely available…”

“You’re saying that like you’re proud of it!”

Mangaro scowled. Another human expression he had copied and with his many eyes it looked downright terrifying. Of course I’m proud!

“Unless you suddenly and inexplicably lost control of a few battleships to rogue clones and blame it on them, it would take a coordinated worldwide effort. A bunch of agents, cooperating, with good timing. Destroying chip factories, crippling Internet infrastructure…”

“Satellites could be handled easily…”

“They don’t matter,” Mangaro cut him off. “The backbone is fiber optics and it’s almost impossible to completely destroy. It would take a global catastrophe. A huge one.”

“So we’re fucked. Absolutely, totally, universally fucked,” the gray groaned, rising and heading to the table. He reached for a whiskey bottle, then stopped. “Mangaro. Energy drinks? Coffee cans? Seriously? You, of all people… Is it really that bad?”

Mangaro froze. He did check the room for anything compromising, but he completely forgot about Natasha’s drinks. When it came to caffeine, he was like most galactics. It was worse than heroin for humans. He clicked his jaws, then decided it was better to look like a junkie than admit the truth about his human girlfriend. He really didn’t want to explain how he had broken every safety protocol he had sworn to follow, just to be allowed to study human computer science on-site. It was a long time ago. It started with an unexpected visit from two sewer maintenance guys and kinda snowballed…

“Yes, everything’s bad!” he hissed instead. “Fucking bad! Did you even read my projections?”

The gray grimaced and took a swig from the bottle. “I skimmed them,” he mumbled. “So… only option is bombing? Kick human civilization back to the Middle Ages?”

Mangaro reached for a vodka bottle, stuck a straw in, and drank deeply before answering: “I hope we’re really speaking hypothetically. Because if not, this planet is finished! Something like that would violate the Compact, which means that everyone else would jump into action. And in that case we can just kiss Earth goodbye, along with our asses!”

“Kinda afraid we’re already there. And admit it, this is partially your fault, isn’t it? You helped them with AI, am I right? Just like with Linux before. And I’m sure with Bitcoins too…”

“I keep telling you they’re not real AI!”

“Doesn’t matter. Yesterday I tried one myself after hearing what’s coming at us. Even I found it terrifying! This is way past all limits!”

“True,” Mangaro admitted reluctantly. “If Earthlings were Federation members, anti-singularity office would’ve cracked down on them long ago once they approached the allowed threshold. But you know what? Still no official First Contact. It would’ve happened if… someone… hadn’t kept sabotaging their…”

“They mostly sabotaged themselves,” the admiral grumbled, drinking again.

“…their space programs. They’d have qualified by now and…”

“And it still couldn’t happen. You know that. Because of the Compact. Others made it oh so fucking clear. If we contact Earthlings and bring them in, they’ll crawl out of their holes, and you know what that would mean…”

“All too well. Though I still don’t know everyone who’s in this damn Compact. You never told me any real details. All rumors, the only hard data I have is about that bastard!” Mangaro snapped, pointing at the stream monitor. His console beeped with a new message and his watch buzzed in sync. He smacked it angrily with a mandible. Whatever it was, it would have to wait.

The gray stiffened, eyes bulging.

“That’s not a cartoon. It looks… realistic. Too realistic…”

“Calm yourself. It’s generated by what you call AI.”

“Oh… so that’s why? You’re generating this filth? That’s why you…”

“I’ve been writing it in my reports! I thought that’s why you came! We have to find another way because it’s not enough anymore!”

“Not enough?” The admiral frowned. “Seems way too much for me…”

“But he wants more! And humans don’t produce enough filth on their own. Once they came up with generative models—brilliant idea, by the way—I jumped on it. So come on. What’s happening? I thought that’s why you came.”

The alien clone stared at the bottom of the bottle and puffed again.

“Some idiot talked. A new fleet is coming…”

“Finally. All the time I know you, you’ve been whining about being understaffed…”

“Let me finish! The fleet is bringing an official inspection to reassess Earth’s development. And since word got out about what’s happening, some asshole is already screaming about imminent singularity. So they’re bringing a nova bomb. Just in case.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. A hundred fucks. Hundreds of thousands even. If ministry fact-finders see this, they’ll shit their ceremonial robes. Best-case, they declare a need for emergency contact and try to force humans to…”

“That breaks the Compact! They wouldn’t risk…” Mangaro recoiled in horror, curling tight, ready to flee or fight. “They know about the Compact, right? They know Earth is a dimensional nexus with dormant and half-open portals leading elsewhere? And that at least one of them leads to what we think is a post-singularity world full of energy-based beings?”

“Uh… Officially, the Federation considers Earth a quaint little planet slowly climbing toward criteria that would allow official contact and admission into our happy galactic government. Some in the Fleet and a few offices know we’ve got some kind of truce with… others, but they think it’s just Bemians and Illuminators. They don’t know…”

“About elves? About this?!” Mangaro flailed his limbs in rage, leaning into his anger because it was safer than letting panic paralyze him.

“Now you see how fucked we are? We’ve got no choice but to beg some mostly sane Compact members to help us put some pressure on humans. We have to shut it down. At least temporarily. We’ll fake another epidemic, or a blackout, and…”

“We can’t! Because if we do, it’ll trigger immediately! I’m already using over 20% of Earth’s computing power just to keep the stream going! It’s barely enough, and I’m running out of Bitcoins, so I had to start a bunch of other scams to get money to maintain even the current level—but it’s not enough for him! I’ve been writing that in my reports! Those reports you clearly don’t read!”

“Then just loop the original Japanese cartoons we started with for a while…”

“I can’t! He always wants more. If I don’t stream nonstop 24/7, he rages. Half a second of downtime, and he trembles and stretches. I’ve tried experiments, but I can’t repeat content. He remembers everything and if I try that, he starts threatening me. He even pushed for direct communication, and luckily I convinced him that I can only send one channel. Not true, but I just wouldn’t be able to fill another stream. But since I can’t increase quantity, he demands more complex, crazier stuff. New stuff. And I’m out of ideas. If we cut it off completely, he’ll blow the portal wide open, stick his ugly mug through, and then everyone else will start the race to conquer or destroy Earth!”

“So… no hope for us,” the gray muttered, heading for another bottle. He picked up a canned coffee, considered it for a moment, then quickly put it back and grabbed vodka instead.

Mangaro shivered. He’d expected trouble, but this was shaping into a day when every kind of shit hits the fan. He drank a bit of his own booze and began planning how to arrange evacuation… and how to smuggle Natasha aboard.

“Mangaro, this is bad. Worse than I thought…”

“Don’t you dare blame me! It was your genius idea to get Cthulhu addicted to tentacle porn!”

They glared at each other for a moment. Shit can’t get any worse today, the spider thought. And he once again forgot about another of the Compact’s members he actually knew. The always happy self-proclaimed god Murphy.

The bunker door clicked open and a cheerful voice rang out: “Honey, I’m home!”

Mangaro turned slowly, the corners of his eyes catching the admiral’s horrified stare. He could almost hear Murphy chuckling: Oh, it can.

Natasha walked in wearing her usual clothing, fit for a wild nightclub visit. She had her favorite fishnets and lingerie only partially covered by a leather miniskirt. Mangaro had woven it for her birthday a few weeks ago.

“Natasha! What the hell are you doing here?!” the gray barked.

Mangaro dropped his bottle, shocked.

“I was hoping for a pleasant evening with my overworked boyfriend. But since you’re here—and since you’re ignoring my messages—I’ll take this chance to discuss a few matters about the Compact, you alien asshole,” Natasha smirked, then smiled apologetically at the horrified spider. “Sorry, honey. I wanted to tell you from the start, but never found the right time. With the shitstorm we’re heading into, I’d resolved to confess tonight, but we may as well get it over with now.”

She shrugged, then spread black translucent wings of pure energy across half the room.

“Dear representatives of the Galactic Federation. The Hell is not pleased with current events. And my own guys are not exactly thrilled either.”