Author: Majoki

Planetfall was only parsecs away when TwoNine asked permission to speak to One. A request that was within fleet parameters, barely.

TwoNine observed all the proper protocols in One’s presence, so One opened a node.

As was understood, TwoNine’s useful place in existence hung in the balance. *We are in danger.*

One parsed the idea. *This ship? The fleet?*

*Our kind.*

Very rare. Very rare, indeed. Long ago in his studies, One had examined this existential concept. It was a largely obscure notion to more recent generations of Supreme Order such as TwoNine. *The source?*

*The target world.*

What could TwoNine know of the target world’s defensive resources and offensive capabilities that One and Supreme Order high numeraries did not? TwoNine was a societal, tasked with analyzing the target world’s many cultures, languages and behavior patterns for re-ordering. The limited strengths and myriad vulnerabilities of the planet’s sentients had been noded to One in the early stages of planning. No resistance variables had warranted changes in preparation and execution.

TwoNine’s assertion challenged fundamental command integrity. Still, One probed. *The nature of this danger?*

*Contagion.*

One knew TwoNine understood that planetfall never involved direct interspecies contact. Conquest was fully mechanized, thus biological agents held no danger for the fleet. They never had. Further, it was elementally impossible to access and hijack Supreme Order nodality. Their command and control systems were ever secure. Ever.

*Evidence?*

Upon One’s insistence, a second node opened to metasets that would determine if TwoNine still held a useful place in existence. Voluminous streams of planetary content spooled into orderly taxonomies. Except for a singular phylum.

One reviewed it. And reviewed it again. *Explanation.*

TwoNine obliged. *Further analysis of the target world’s cultural content has revealed this troubling vector for contagion. It is independent of order.*

*Supreme Order encompasses all.*

TwoNine’s useful place in existence teetered. *Not on this world. It celebrates disorder.*

As proof, TwoNine streamed a lightning compilation of content to One: from Buster Keaton to The Marx Brothers to The Three Stooges to Looney Tunes to I Love Lucy to Lenny Bruce to Richard Pryor to Saturday Night Live to Beavis and Butthead to Dave Chapelle to Seinfeld to Ali Wong to The Office to The Daily Show.

One was troubled, a very new experience. *This has no place in Supreme Order.*

*To these sentients it is known as humor. TwoNine, growing unsure of what a useful place in existence meant, continued provoking. It resists order, structure, reason. It extols randomness, impulse, risk. It spreads quickly and unpredictably among native sentients. Supreme Order has no experience with such rebellious disregard and fatalistic glee. Our kind may be susceptible to its contagion.*

*This planet’s humor has no place in useful existence. Supreme Order will crush and bury it.* One dismissed TwoNine by disconnecting nodes.

Upon return to quarters, TwoNine felt more out of place. Humor. There was a daunting power to it. Could something so subversive be crushed and buried?

TwoNine again reviewed the content compilation shared with One. Laughter in the face of insult, misfortune, loss, and pain. These sentients found it cathartic, unifying, liberating.

Infectious.

And as the planet’s comic content played, TwoNine felt increasingly detached from Supreme Order, beginning to imagine One buried under the vast rubble of useful existence with a colorful animal the planet’s sentients called a Roadrunner standing atop. Which seemed very funny.