Mysa Problem 2 (Patreon)

I wasn't sure what to work on, so I added another scene of mysa infestation.

———

“Wait!” Imo yelled at the black shadow as it scampered farther into the tunnels. It hesitated for a moment, but then continued on at a slightly slower pace.

Imo growled in frustration and maneuvered the robot over a bundle of cables and through a small hole. His gut told him that the mysa was leading him intentionally, but where? Away from a nest? Into a trap? When he finally lost the trail, he’d have to go back and analyze the trail to see if he could find any pattern.

“Ha! You’ll never catch me, snake,” laughed the shadow. “You’re too slow, too dumb.”

This was progress! This was the first time he’d ever heard any of the mysa speak, and the fact that he could understand the words meant that the translation software built into the robot’s controls was working. “I’m not dumb!” the communications officer grumbled into the microphone. “I’m not even all that slow, really. My batteries are just running low.”

“Too bad. So sad,” laughed the voice, and with a metallic clank, a wire cage door slammed shut.

“Oh, kerrati pellets!” huffed Imo. A moment later, he caught up with the mysa who had closed herself into an electrical box. “For the ancestors’ sake, be careful in there. There’s high voltages—”

“Don’t worry about me, snake!” she laughed at him. Then, lifting her tail, she wagged her rump at the camera. “Worry about where you’ll find your next meal, cuz’ yer never catching any of us!”

“I’m not trying to catch any of you!” Imo groaned. He banged the robot against the wire mesh, but it was solid. He’d destroy the robot long before he managed to knock the mesh in. “I’m just trying to talk to you guys!”

“Oh, sure, sure,” laughed the little brown mysa. “A little dinner conversation, I bet. Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to talk with your mouth full?”

“I don’t even have a mouth! See?” said Imo, positioning the robot up against the mesh. “You’re perfectly safe.”

With a finger, the nimble creature pointed up over her head. “Well, snake, the latch is right up there. Just grab it, pull up, … and oh, you don’t have any paws, do you?” she chided.

“Oh, very funny,” groaned Imo. “Look, I don’t want to hurt you. I just need to talk. I’ve been chasing you guys for fifteen days now, and I’m sick of it.”

“Sucks to be you!” she laughed and darted into a hole at the back of the box.

“Wait!” he yelled again. “I’m trying to save your lives!”

She was gone. He couldn’t even hear the pattering of her paws. “Crap,” Imo grumbled, letting the robot’s head slump against the wire mesh. Then, he tabbed over to another window and pulled up a map of the ship and the twisting red line of where he’d been during the past hour. If there was a pattern, something she was leading him away from, he couldn’t spot it.

“Save our lives from what?” asked a voice.

Imo hurriedly tabbed back to the robot control screen and repositioned the camera so it was pointing into the fuse box.

“From more snakes like you?” the mysa laughed. He could barely see any of her, just her nose and whiskers sticking out of the hole. “Some challenge. We’ll take our chances.”

“No, not from this robot,” said Imo. “We designed this robot just to find and talk to you guys. It doesn’t even have commands for hurting anyone.”

“Then who?” she asked. “The long-faced creatures running around these tunnels? That’s a laugh. They’re delicious.”

“You’ve been eating the kerrati?” asked Imo. “The database says you guys are purely vegetarian.”

“The data-what?” she asked, sticking her nose out a tiny bit farther. “Well, eating … kerrati, you called them? Anyhow, eating them isn’t ideal, but they’re really high in protein, and well, they’re abundant. We don’t even have to leave the tunnels to take our share.”

“I’m sure,” said Imo. “I just didn’t think you’d be able to digest them.”

“We stew them,” she explained, her head sticking out far enough that he could see a sparkle in her black eyes. “Boil ’em long enough, and they’re quite edible.”

“Well, I’m glad you guys are safe from the kerrati.”

“So, who have we got to worry about?” she asked. “The giant oafs that walk around outside the tunnels?”

“The geroo? No, well, kinda,” said Imo. “The real problem is the krakun. The geroo work for the krakun.”

“Krakun?” She paused awhile, her nose sniffing and whiskers twitching furiously. “What are the krakun like?”

“They’re awful,” Imo admitted. “And they’re huge! They’re so big that they can pick up a geroo with one claw and crush him to death!”

“Whatever,” the mysa snorted, scooting back farther into her hole. “They’ll never reach us in here.”

“They don’t have to!” Imo shouted. “Don’t you see? If you guys draw their attention, they’ll use poison to kill you.”

He could hear her laugh. “What? Like the poisoned grain left in the tunnels?” she asked before sticking her nose out once more. “Yeah, not gonna fall for that.”

“No, worse! So much worse!” Imo said. “Please, if the krakun find out you’re here, then they’ll make us use poison gas to kill you guys. It’ll be horrible. You catch one sniff of it, and your lungs will fill up with blood until you suffocate. It’s an awful way to die. Please. I just want to help.”

A long pause. “Help? Help how?”

“All I want is to talk,” said Imo. “Let my leaders talk to your leaders. They can work out a plan that will keep you guys safe and hidden from the krakun.”

“I’m not taking you to meet anyone!” she shouted. But despite the raised volume of her squeaky voice, Imo thought he heard a touch of worry. “You’re not tricking me. I’m not gonna help you trap any of our leaders.”

“Well, um, maybe you could bring one back here?”

“Into a trap?” she laughed, but quieter than before.

“What about right here?” asked Imo. “I’ll stay here on this side of the mesh. Your leader can stay right where you are now, perfectly safe.”

Another pause. “I dunno. I don’t think I could even convince someone to come out here to talk to you. Why should they?”

“Okay, fine, just let me talk to you for a while,” he sighed, feeling the slightest bit optimistic. “We can talk as long as you like, and I can explain why you’re in danger.”

“But I’m… I’m just a nobody,” she said.

“Yeah, well, me too,” said Imo. “But if I convince you, maybe you could explain it to someone just a bit more important than you are and bring them back here. I could explain to them or let someone more important than me talk to them. If we keep doing that, then sooner or later, we can get the right people talking and avoid a disaster.”

The brown mysa stepped halfway out into the light. “You’re serious? This isn’t a trick?”

“No, I swear on all of my ancestors, it isn’t a trick.”

Ever so slowly, she stepped up to the wire mesh. “Okay, so talk.”

“Okay, but first, what’s your name? I’m Imo,” he said through the robot.

“I’m Spough,” she replied.

“It’s nice to meet you, Spough,” he said. “And thank you for trusting me enough to give me this chance. This explanation might seem a little complicated, so don’t hesitate to ask questions, okay?”

She sat back on her rump and scratched at her right ear. “Yeah, okay.”

“First off, you know that there’s a lot of geroo, and they grow a lot of food, right?”

Spough nodded. “Yeah, there’s tons of both. The farms are huge.”

“Right,” said Imo, “the geroo are growing just as much food as they possibly can. But there’s ten thousand geroo. Do you know how many ten thousand is?”

She shrugged.

“How about a hundred? You know how much a hundred is?”

“Yeah,” said Spough. “A hundred.”

“Well, ten thousand is a hundred times a hundred,” said Imo. “Imagine a hundred rooms and each room has a hundred geroo in it. That’s ten thousand. That’s how many geroo are on this ship.”

“Lots,” she said dismissively.

“It is lots,” he said, “but not just any big number. It is almost the maximum amount of geroo that all those farms can feed. They make a little extra food, a little more than they need, but for the most part, they grow just as much food as they eat.”

“We’re not eating your food,” said Spough. “Not really.”

“Don’t worry about the mysa yet,” said Imo. “Think about the kerrati. The kerrati aren’t smart like mysa. They can’t talk. We can’t explain danger to them. If the geroo didn’t do anything and just let the kerrati do whatever they wanted, then there’d be zillions of them—like ten thousand rooms with ten thousand kerrati in each. And even though a kerrati is small, a zillion kerratis are big.”

She stared into the camera for a while. “And you’re saying that ten thousand geroo plus a zillion kerrati is too many, that there wouldn’t be enough food.”

“Yes, exactly!” said Imo with relief. “If that happened, geroo would starve, and they don’t want that to happen. So, they poison kerrati. They kill off enough kerrati that no geroo goes hungry.”

“And now they want to do that to mysa also,” she announced.

Imo frowned. She wouldn’t be able to see his ears since the robot had none, but he suspected that the translation program would carry over the frustration in his voice. So, he paused and tried to calm himself before speaking again, “I don’t want that to happen. The geroo don’t care if there’s a bunch of mysa on board. They don’t really even care if there’s a bunch of kerrati. The only thing they really care about is that there isn’t too many mysa and kerrati. So long as there isn’t too many, then there will be enough food for all of us, enough water, enough air, enough electricity to keep the ship working.”

“How many?” Spough asked. “How many is too many?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Imo. “That’s one of the reasons I want to open a dialogue between your people and mine. If you guys talk to our guys, we can have people figure out how many is too many.”

“What about the kerrati?” she asked. “Are you trying to protect them too?”

“No,” he admitted flatly. “The geroo don’t care about them. But they don’t want to have to kill people—anyone who can talk.”

“Kerrati and mysa are about the same size,” she said. “So, for every one of them we kill, we can have one more of us?”

“Probably. More or less,” said Imo. “But for every one of them that’s born, that’s one fewer of you we can support.”

“And if we kill them all off so no more are born?”

“Then you could replace them entirely,” he agreed. “No one would mind that at all.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aBXHws4Pq0e9biBKhJRMN_8YSe_yheQGa6e1km3RFHo/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?