The gift
A twisted tale in salute to the Uplift Series by Brin. Uplift is a double edged sword.
The gift belongs to the following groups:
Pulp Noir, Sci Fi , Short stories - Spherical Scriptings and Twisted TalesQertelln looked down on the creature. It was barely half his height but had the right brain size and type to receive the gift . Zorb felt no danger from this thing. It was no hunter interested in his flesh. It looked like a walking tree, its attached technologies just gaudy crystal fruits. Zorb’s flexible lips tested and rejected them all.
Qertelln found it easy to enter the creature’s mind and make changes. Once satisfied they worked phenotypically they were written to the genotype. It was all done in the blink of a pull down menu.
‘All your off-spring will benefit from your new ability’, his mind told Zorb’s.
Zorb regarded Qertelln with new found curiosity. Qertelln could follow the pathways as thought connected with thought.
‘I have been given the gift of sentience’, Zorb’s neural network seemed to say.
‘How noble this creature’s ambition that it bestow this gift upon the the galaxy’, it seemed to add as Qertelln’s mind surrendered to Zorb’s trojan counter measure.
‘Another species delivered this gift generations ago!’ screamed Zorb into Qertelln’s catatonic mind.
‘We know awareness of self, the certainty of death, awareness of others and the wickedness the conscious mind is capable of. We know all this and how this gift destroyed our sub-sentient innocence and the ecosystem that sustained us’.
Qertelln looked up at the creature. His prone body overwhelmed by the assault from Zorb’s massive upper body strength. Zorb snapped off Qertelln’s stalk-like body protrusions. One-by-one sensory modules failed and Qertelln grew progressively blind.
‘We know sentience for what it is. This is no gift, it’s a curse! My gift to you is to relieve you off it!’ was the last thing Qertelln perceived in his telemetric conversation with Zorb’s fury before the sentient module stalk broke away.
Qertelln returned to consciousness in the suspension couch of the orbiting craft. Another infection from the malignant XiTang sentience identified, he reported to central command. Infection acknowledged, we gift you species termination authority, came the reply.
Miri
nice write! & great use of the prompt! makes you think (no pun intended! doesn’t it!
thanks for posting :)
GeoGecko replied
Thanks, I tweaked the ending to use the prompt one more time.
Mark Bateman
Completely different from anything I’ve written or read – and all the better for it. That’s a really nice twist at the end after a fascinating struggle between Zorb and Qertelln!
GeoGecko replied
Thanks, much appreciated.
Matthew Dalton
Man, just when you think the story is going one way – bang! – termination.
Great read – thank-you.
GeoGecko replied
Thanks, it’s a good feeling when things come together.
KMFalcon
Brilliant brilliant brilliant!!! Loved it, what a concept – to be able to give back the ‘gift’ of sentience, imagine that.
Zolton
Really great concept! Hats off for that… : )
Jeannette Sheehy
Congratulations on placing third Mr. Gecko!! :)
GeoGecko replied
Much appreciated!