Canto Six – The Tadpole Nesting Quarters
Unlike the other tadpoles, Davalon put on clothing all over his body as they returned to their sleeping chambers and assigned areas. Alden and Gracie Morrell also dressed, of course, but they weren’t Tellerons whose skin needed to stay moist and open to the mists. Drying out was bad for Telleron health. Still, when they saw Davalon put on his cadet uniform, Tanith, Brekka, Menolly, and George Jetson all found their Mickey Mouse Club jackets and put them on. Naked otherwise, but covered on their upper torsos.
“So, Dav,” asked Menolly, “What was it really like to live on the Planet Earth?”
“I don’t think I can tell you what it was really like. I was only there for a couple of weeks. That isn’t long enough to really know. You should ask my new mom and dad.”
The little green faces all turned to Alden and Gracie.
“Well, I only lived there for forty years,” said Alden. “I don’t think that is long enough, either, to really know.”
“Oh, you old fuddy-duddy!” said Gracie. “You kids can ask me. Go ahead, ask me anything.”
“Tell us about sunshine,” said Tanith. She was the prettiest of the Telleron girls, as far as Davalon was concerned, even though, as a nest-mate and daughter of Xiar, she was technically his sister. For Tellerons incest had never really been a “thing”.
“Ah, sunshine,” said Gracie with a twinkle in her eye, “it was yellow and warm and… gorgeous. You could bathe in it. It made you feel loved by God.”
“Until the UV rays cooked your skin and gave you bright red sunburn,” added Alden.
“Yes, well… there was that,” admitted Gracie. “But I always loved sunny days, and the bright blue of the Iowa sky. Oh, and sunsets… sunsets were beautiful in ways that are hard to describe.”
“And rainy days,” said Alden, “dark and overcast with thunder and lightning rumbling on the horizon.”
“Ah, you’re just being an old poop,” said Gracie with a frown.
“No, I mean it. I’m a farmer, remember? A farmer needs the rain. And it cools things off… and rainbows. You remember rainbows, Gracie?”
“Ah, yes.”
“But,” said Brekka sadly, “you both gave those things up to live in space with us.”
“Yes,” said Menolly. “Will you miss those things?”
Alden looked at Gracie, and they both nodded to each other. Davalon could feel the sadness. And that in itself was something new. Before they had met Earth people, Tellerons had not really known strong emotions. Tadpoles were programmed while still suspended in their gelatinous egg sacs with years’ worth of technical knowledge, math, and science. But nowhere in their training had they ever learned how to love, or laugh, or have empathy, or feel remorse. Those things had come from Earther TV broadcasts and actual contact with human beings. It was hard to be around human beings and not get a bit infected with human emotions.
“We’ll experience those things if we colonize a planet,” said George Jetson. “There could be sunshine and rainbows on Galtorr Prime.”
That brought smiles to every little green face, even Davalon’s.
“But we hear that Galtorr Prime is a very dangerous place,” said Gracie. The little-girl twinkle was gone from her eye, replaced by a sad longing, a remembered pain.
“Yes,” said Menolly, “I’m scared of Galtorrians. They eat meat, and would eat us if they catch us.”
“That would not be so nice,” said Brekka.
Gracie, in the frilly dress she had put on, moved to put an arm around each of the two female tadpoles. She looked like Shirley Temple to Davalon, the girl in that old black and white movie with the orphans that needed comforting. Was it Animal Crackers? Or was that a Marx Brothers’ movie? Dav didn’t remember.
“Maybe we should be brave explorers and go down there to find things out,” said George Jetson. “We could be like Davalon, and help out our entire race.”
“That’s not wise,” warned Davalon. “We could get into trouble we could not get out of.”
“You could be our leader, Dav,” said Tanith. “We have faith in you.”
Davalon didn’t like the fact that they were all warming to the idea so quickly. It was a scarier world than Earth. They stood to lose everything they had gained from the Earth adventure.
“None of us know how to pilot a Golden Wing,” warned Alden. “And we can’t all stow away on the adults’ missions.”
“I was programmed with pilot skills,” said George Jetson. “And you and Gracie are really adults, just in child bodies.”
“I think they may have a good idea here,” said Gracie to Alden. “If we are going to be star-explorers, we need to start somewhere.”
To Davalon’s utter horror, it was decided at that moment. There would be a secret tadpole mission to the surface of Galtorr Prime.
*****
There you have it, Canto Six of the extremely alien-based goofy sequel to Catch a Falling Star that I call Stardusters and Space Lizards. I would apologize for inflicting it upon you, but the truth is, I really like it. I did a good job of telling what really happened… um, errr… Well, I mean, telling it just as I once imagined it.
The Moaning Writer
I am not Charles Dickens. I wish I were. I want to be a writer of wry humor, social commentary, and have an effect on the soul of the world I live in. The way he was. Heck, Dickens invented Christmas the way we do it now (with considerable help from department stores like Macy’s) by writing A Christmas Carol. But the chances for that are growing ever dimmer.
The small publisher with which I was associated, and who gave me a contract to publish Snow Babies, has died. The business folded while my novel was still in the editorial phase. PDMI Publishing was a worthy group of writers and entrepreneurs who in a different time might’ve gone far. I know by reading some of their works that they had talent. But between the ferocious grip of the mega publishers and the waves upon waves of self-published stuff on Amazon, real writers with talent are drowning in a sea of mediocrity and media indifference. Writers who succeed are the ones with the most luck or the most direct connections to the gate keepers. Profit is far more important than literary merit. You don’t really have to have talent any more. You don’t have to know what a split infinitive is or how to compose a compound sentence properly or how to spell. Shoot, you barely have to know how to write. Just write about sparkly teenage vampires falling in love with high school girls or sexual perverts who are into torture devices, and you can be a millionaire… if you can somehow luck out over the millions of wannabes writing the same exact crap.
There was a time when writing teachers and published authors were telling me that sooner or later good writing gets published. It was supposed to be inevitable. But that was a different time than now. Different rules for the game. I will have two published books with two different publishers. I-Universe published Catch a Falling Star. And Page Publishing will publish Magical Miss Morgan. But I paid both of those publishers to turn my books into published paper books with ISBN numbers and access to customers of Barnes and Noble and other outlets. But I don’t expect to earn the money back that I invested. Not while I’m still alive at least.
My I-Universe publishing experience was worth it. I spent a lot of money to get Catch a Falling Star published, but I got to work with real editors and advisers who had experience working for Knopf and Random House. They gave me a real evaluation of my work and taught me how the business of promoting the book was supposed to work. And the help that they gave me ended there. No advertising budget beyond what I could afford myself. I learned a lot for my money. But I had to come to terms with the fact that marketing was going to take more time and effort than I was physically capable of doing. I have six incurable diseases and am a cancer survivor after all.
Page Publishing was a mistake. They were cheaper than I-Universe, but I am not getting anywhere near the value for my money. Instead of real editors reading and suggesting and modifying my work, I get nit-picky grammar Nazis who don’t even know as much about grammar as I do. They are only copy editing. And the last rewrite was me spending time changing all the incorrect changes they made back to the original text. They did not even tell me the name of the editor making the changes. I talked to the I-Universe editors over the phone and discussed changes in detail. Page gives me email copies to read over and fume about silently. They are no better than the vanity presses of old who were really no more than a re-typing and printing service.
So, from here on, I will only do the self-publishing options available through Amazon. I have no more money or energy to spend on the black hole of literary dreams.
I can’t help but be a writer, though. That part is genetic. I will continue to write and tell stories that I need to tell. I can’t help it. Not to do so will cause me to shrivel and die almost instantly. And I am only exaggerating just a little bit. Well, maybe a lot. But it is still true.
Whatever promises the future holds, I am not depending on them for my feelings of success, closure, and self-worth. The world as I have come to know it will always be a ridiculous stew-pot of ideas and ego and cow poop, and I am not so much giving up as stepping out of the stew. I wish to tell stories for the story’s sake. I have no delusions of becoming as wealthy as Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. I will never be Charles Dickens. And I am okay with that.
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