Author: Majoki

Some seven thousand years ago a micrometeorite winged a pine cone, clipped the ear of a very surprised marmot, skewered a large oyster mushroom, and buried itself in the thick duff of a mountainous forest in the north Cascades. Stan Clutterdam knew none of that when he unceremoniously peed on the ancient impact site.

Only a trace amount of his pee seeped to the buried micrometeorite. Enough, though, that remnants of Stan’s DNA triggered a reaction bio-coded in the thing which had travelled from the deeper cosmos so long ago. The reaction was somewhat clouded by the reluctant artifacts of the pine cone, marmot, and mushroom, but the embedded bio-code was nothing if not adaptable, and the process in the buried thing began.

About six hours later, tired but satisfied with the day’s rugged hike, Stan Clutterdam was looking forward to an elk burger and garlic fries at Zeke’s back in town. He wasn’t counting on the creature blocking his descent. Stan was used to back country critters, but he wasn’t prepared for a pine-marmot-mushroom doppelganger sitting in the trail. He had a whistle and bear spray, but neither seemed sufficient when confronting the furry, spongy thing that kinda looked like him and smelled like a car air freshener.

As if customary, Stan’s doppelganger stood and launched into song. “Do you see what I see? Way up in the sky. Do you see what I see? A star, a star, dancing in the night. With a tail as big as a kite.”

For some preternatural reason, Stan sung back, “Do you hear what I hear? Ringing through the sky. Do you hear what I hear? A song, a song, high above the trees. With a voice as big as the sea.”

A moment of silent communion passed and then Stan and his doppelganger harmonized, “Do you know what I know? Do you know what I know?”

And in that instant, they did. Stan Clutterdam experienced every warp and weft woven into the fabric of this ancient alien’s being. Stan’s deep space doppelganger got decidedly less material from Stan’s twenty-eight years of earthly existence, but the mind-meld did reveal a penchant for online poker and crypto trading.

Rocky but acceptable soil for a cosmic entrepreneur’s seed money.

Such was a galactic empire born. Not immaculately, nor drama-free, but over many decades, Stan with his clandestine doppelganger’s help amassed a great fortune that ultimately funded unimagined (unless you’d experienced alien mind-melding) technological breakthroughs leading to the rapid colonization of Earth’s planetary neighbors. And soon thereafter onto scads of favorable exo-systems.

On Stan’s deathbed at the age of 173, the truth came home to roost. Alone but for his demure doppelganger and sensing his last moments, Stan gave into a very cliche question, “Why me?”

Imbued with equal parts pine, marmot, mushroom, and Stan, his doppelganger shrugged. “Who knows. The seeds of tomorrow go where the solar winds blow.”

“Not very reaffirming, but at least you gave it a poetic spin,” Stan wheezed. “What happens from here?”

“Entropy.”

With that, Stan joined the Clutterdam family of little more than man. His doppelganger stood there for a few moments before the overwhelming compulsion came to venture deeper into the cosmos again via a very secret seed-ship. Enough time, though, to imagine a vague sense of agency, maybe even free will.

And for the very first time, Stan’s doppelganger really needed to pee.