“I read about this in a book,” the behavioral scientist on loan from the Sao Paulo laboratory says. “It’s bringing us presents. Because it loves us.”
“We tried to shoot it,” Dr. Kim- Biochemistry double PHD- mutters to Dr. Carlos- on loan from the San Diego Zoo- as they stand together to your right. Everyone’s keeping their voices down in deference to your headache, which you appreciate.
“Dr. Yani tried to shoot it,” Dr. Bakari of Notre Dame- food scientist, war hero- drifts closer to you. “Thoughts, Doctor?”
You haven’t had a thought since the extra moon showed up orbiting the Earth three months ago. You don’t know what to make of this. You’re just a simple Doctor from the country with a migraine and a bit of sensory overload. You’re wearing sunglasses inside like an asshole.
The glyphs on the outside of the containment unit the expedition found “Spot” in had definitely mentioned something about ‘rending planets’ and ‘eater of worlds’ and like your idiot predecessors, you had assumed it was all metaphorical and opened pandora’s box.
“Spot is definitely capable of emotional attachment,” you confirm, because that’s the only explanation that fits. You played with it and it gave you a toy. You wrote a paper about how it played. It was cute. You liked Spot until it started making loud sounds that caused earthquakes, and its gravitational pull altered the tides.
“So a moon is like what, a tennis ball?” Dr. Kim is biting back her smile. “That’s fascinating.”
“Shut the hell your mouth,” Dr. Yani- Astrophysicist, NASA- elbows Dr. Kim. He might be in love with her. Hard to say if that’s the best idea since Dr. Kim’s first love is snowboarding and her second love is bio-chemistry. He’s already starting in third. She bats him away with her clipboard. Tough break.
“Bring Spot up on the monitors.” Dr. Carlos nods to Dr. Bakari, who nods to the tech in charge of being their button pushing monkey.
The screens light up, and in space, the satellites all turn toward Spot, the dishes rotating to face it. It looks like Earth has hundreds of big white glowing eyes. Dr. Carlos theorized that Spot imprinted, thinking of Earth as one of its own kind.
You may have reinforced that theory last night when you beamed a dog enrichment video at the anomaly. When you projected a dog-training video at it and it responded.
But to be fair, the ‘sounds’ Spot beams at Earth do sound like barking.
“So the tides are effed,” Dr. Jones- meteorology, physics, medicine, triple PHD- has two phones in his hands as he elbows through the throng. The case on one of them says “Ask me about the weather” and Dr. Yani wants to shoot him for it. Dr. Yani wants to shoot everything, to be fair.
There’s another ‘earthquake’ and you all crowd around the monitor. Spot is moving away through space dragging a trail of space debris and asteroids with it. For the next seventy two hours people will act like it’s all behind them and everything’s fine. Spot will probably bring them back some kind of space junk. Hopefully smaller space junk but you’re not hopeful.
“How many moons can Earth take before it breaks apart?” Dr. Carlos asks and Dr. Yani splutters indignantly about how that isn’t how it works. No one listens to him.
“The three we have now are wreaking havoc on the world,” Dr. Kona- PHD Oceanic Science- pushes an iPad under your nose. She won’t switch to the proprietary technology because she ‘likes the interface’ which you get but also wow, ballsy. “Spot can’t bring us more moons. Earth won’t survive.”
“Spot isn’t bringing us moons as gifts, it’s trying to play with us,” you do feel a little guilty about showing Spot videos of ‘fetch’ when you only had one moon. You’d thought maybe instead of bringing more moons it would pull the current moon away.
Science isn’t an exact science.
“We need to teach it a different game. Like-”
“We should shoot it-”
“Can we scare it off-”
“Doctor-”
“Doctor-”
“Doctor-”
Everyone is talking at once and you’ve been great at managing sensory overload through all this. You and Bakari and some guy from the Military went and smoked an entire gram of weed together the night before, watching Spot orbit the planet happily.
“If you don’t SHUT UP-” you’re yelling, and you never yell. Everyone goes quiet, surprised. You’re usually so professional.
You might be tired. You’ve done 20 hour days for the past three months. You half-giggle and Dr. Kona looks supremely concerned.
“If you don’t shut up,” you say at a normal volume, “I will teach Spot tug of war and take this planet out myself.”
There’s a silence where everyone takes you the most seriously you’ve ever been taken in your life.
“I think that counts as a threat to national security,” Dr. Yani whispers to Dr. Kim.
“I think we need to sleep.” Dr. Jones tentatively puts a hand (holding a phone) on your shoulder. “Let’s call it.”
“Let’s table this for the night,” you agree with a strange brutal serenity.
“Please don’t teach Spot how to rip planets apart,” Dr. Bakari mutters, and you smile.
“Let’s just sleep on it, and tomorrow we’ll come back quieter and more rational about it hm?” You smile smile smile and the other Doctors nod numbly to you. “How many of you had pets?”
Bakari, Jones and Kona raise their hands.
“Great,” you still sound about half a room away from your mouth. “Tomorrow let’s compare whose pets were trained best.”
“I had a cat?” Dr. Bakari makes it a question.
“Did your cat love you?” You look closely at each face in the circle.
“Yes?” Dr. Bakari grimaces, but he isn’t lying, he’s just not an animal person.
“You’re still invited to Planet Destroyer Training tomorrow.”
Everyone is sleep deprived and kind of scared of you and you’ve never felt simultaneously so alive and also like you want to die.
You turn around and walk out, hearing a small whispered ruckus of scientists and Doctors demanding to know if you’re serious, and also if a planet destroying space monster can be trained.
You’re so tired but you also trained three excellent dogs.
This is just a really really big dog.