THE HAIRY TONGUE THINGIES

Moon colony Firenzuola 44f (named after the famed Firenzuola intergalactic telescope) was established as a terraforming colony for Firenzuola 134c—the Super-Earth exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of Firenzuola 134a, a distant sun in a distant system approximately 1,007 billion light-years from Earth. 
Regular-sized Earth. 
Original formula. 
As a boy, Scott Castelan often cracked open the solitary window to his seventeenth-floor NeuTen Cribs™, by SingleCorp, apartment, crawled out to the kiddie cage his parents used to store him in as a toddler “for fresh air” and, laying on his back, head resting in his open palms, gazed up at the stars, wondering about such a moon orbiting such a planet and trying not to think about what would happen if the rusty bolts anchoring the cage into the century-old bricks snapped in half.
It happened before.
Not to him, of course, but the Morton twins.
The Morton twins were Scott’s best friends. They did everything together. Frolicked in the gutters, prowled the alleys, stole apples from fruit carts, terrorized the codgers on the front stoop, threw rocks at the PEECCorp™ corps. 
Unfortunately, the Morton twins lived in apartment 1313. On the 13th floor. The fact that their parents chose that particular apartment alone should have disqualified them from obtaining a reproductive license in the first place, but the government, having eradicated the evils of both religiosity and public education, had no time for superstition or building codes as it was too busy fighting off the hordes of refugees paddling to the interminable shores of the east, west, and, thanks to the War of Texan Independence, newly formed southern coast.
What happened to the Morton twins was a tragedy, of course, but the tenement didn’t have a functioning HVAC system, as was the case with nearly all NeuTen Cribs™, and it was difficult to cool off. The systems had been constructed with brand-new vents and electronics and solar panels installed on the roof and all of the windows, but those systems had fritzed out years before Scott’s generation was born, the electronics plundered for copper, the wires recycled into makeshift hotplates, the corrugated metal vents ripped out and used to reinforce the shoddy pine doors against intruders, or as makeshift window shields against the periodic Molotov cocktail parades hosted by the local gangs and the mostly accidental stray bullets fired by PEECCorp™ corps sent to deal with those local gangs or evict a tenant or demand tribute from the bodega owners or harass the codgers sitting on the front stoop. 
During the winter, the only way for the residents to stay warm was to burn a hot fire in the cast-iron stove. During the summer, the only way to escape the heat was to find a way not to be in the apartment itself, hence, Scott’s habit of crawling out onto the kiddie cages, a habit that was shared by nearly all the children in his building and all the other NeuTen Cribs™ on the block, at least the ones that were too young to work in one of the many neighborhood sweatshops that populated the city or whose parents barred them from doing so.
When the thrill of imminent death wore off, the children often played a game they called “Airplane and Submarine.” The rules were simple if predictable. The children in the higher cages dropped things on the children in the lower cages, and the children in the lower cages tried to dodge them. As the alley separating the buildings extended approximately fifty meters brick to brick, the game could be played laterally as well. 
There weren’t any rules. There weren’t any winners. The game was the goal. That and trying to find something as non-lethally painful (or which splattered well) to toss, lob, or chuck at the enemy.
Rotten fruit topped the list, settling in right under “various garbage.” Those with younger siblings dumped diapers. Now and then, one of them lobbed a brick or a pipe or a sharp hunk of wood—intending, of course, not to kill, but terrorize. Or lightly maim.
Living as he did on the top floor, and because the building across the alley was only twelve stories high, Scott enjoyed both a reviled and coveted spot. Before his friends plunged thirteen stories into the metal recycling dumpster below, he took full advantage. After the tragedy, he just crawled out there to stare up at the polluted sky and dream. 
Dream about the moon colonies.
One day, he thought. One day he was going to escape the tenements and sign up with Space Force. His goal? Interstellar exploration. By any means. He would take any class, complete any training, withstand any experiment to achieve it. He envisioned communing with aliens—humanoids, of course, but humanoid fish creatures, or humanoid ram creatures, or humanoid squid creatures. He composed epic space battles in his mind, starfighters streaking around the black terror of the void, zipping lasers, smashing asteroids.
Twenty-five years later, as an adult stationed on one of the very same moon colonies he imagined as a child, he found his duties to be vastly more disappointing than he could ever have imagined. Not only did he not once encounter any kind of intelligent humanoid alien life—fish, tentacled, or otherwise—but he found his responsibilities to consist mostly of the same kind of rote lever pulling and button pushing he executed as a teenage mush and slush puller at Lee’s Mush ‘n Slush, only with slightly higher implications when he screwed up. Lee only yelled at him when he spilled some mush or slush. The result of any error of any kind on Firenzuola 44f, from spilled mush to miscalculating the NPK solution the flying nimrods used to condition the soil, was death, either starvation or fever and hair loss followed by violent interminable gastro-intestinal evacuation.
At least the health care was free.

The morning of the attack, Scott was sitting in the control room, eating his customary bowl of Oh Wee Ohs™ (100% of the vitamins a good citizen needs to citizen good!), and watching the rerun of Super Bowl XXIII on the ancient Sony Trinitron nestled in the middle of a wall crammed with other more important electronics. Tube monitors. Frequency spectrums. Compressors. Telescopes. Heliscopes. Periscopes. Gyroscopes. Spiroscropes. Oscilloscopes. Electroscopes. Seismographs. Spectrographs. Virographs. Tachometers. Odometers. Telemeters. Venturimeters. Sextants. Rain Gauges. As a joke, Scott had fashioned a pair of rabbit ears out of some old tin foil he saved from one of the MREs they had to eat during the early days and placed it on the top rack next to the red bobble alarm.
Ah, the early days! Before Minerva was online, before the domes had been constructed, when he and his partner, Chief Science Officer EG Betterworth, slept in capsules and worked in a SpyGy Gravity Wheel™ waiting for the bots to build what eventually became a fully functional terraforming operation. Oh, the amount of money, time, and effort it took to conjure up something of that magnitude! Oh, the sacrifices made in the name of human exploration! The eighty-hour weeks, the nicotine habits, the heart attacks, the divorces, the traumatized children! Oh, the pure, amazing, rambunctious, unadulterated genius! It was all Scott could think about during the long trip to the alien moon.
Firenzuola 44f! A testament to human skill, knowledge, and absolute gobsmacking hubris. 
It only took a year of eating MREs, protein paste, and Oh-we-Oh’s for Scott and EG to re-Christian it The Dump.
So Scott was watching the Superbowl and eating cereal, and EG shuffled into the galley, hair akimbo, one hand covering her mouth.
“Morning,” she yawned. “What’s new in moon land?”
Scott gestured at the Trinitron.
“Three ten to go,” he said. “49er’s down 16-13. Montana is struggling. Oh, here it is!”
EG mouthed the words as he spoke.
“Did you know that when he got in the huddle he pointed to the stands and said ‘Hey, isn’t that John Candy?’.”
“Who is John Candy, anyway?” EG asked.
“Dunno.”
“You’ve watched this how many times?”
“Dunno.”
EG tapped her temple, and she blanked for a moment as her CornealNet™ searched for the information.
“John Candy was a mid-20th Century comedian,” she said. She tapped her temple again and rejoined reality. “Best known for family-friendly comedies like Trains, Planes, & Automobiles, Uncle Buck, and Space Balls.”
Scott grunted.
EG pulled a packet of powdered orange juice out of the pantry, ripped it open, and jammed it under the filter spigot. Nothing came out.
“Come on, dammit,” she said, banging it with her palm.
“Oh, watch this catch and run! Jerry Rice twenty-seven yards!”
“Filter’s clogged.”
“Filter? I just changed that.”
“Well, you’re going to have to change it again.”
“Can’t you do it?”
“Not my job.”
“I’m in the middle of the game!”
“You’re always in the middle of a game.”
“Not true. Sometimes I watch movies.”
“Scott!”
“What?”
“I need you to fix this.”
“You can do it yourself.”
“That’s not the point. It’s your turn.”
“I’ve done stuff for you before. This is important.”
“A 20th century sportsball game is not as important as our drinking water.”
Scott twisted around.
“You would say that.”
An image appeared on the Trinitron. It was a face, a large round face, male, with a strong thatch of neckbeard and pockmarked skin. His long hair was tied up in a ponytail, and his spectacles were so thick that they made his eyes look unusually large and round, as if he were in a constant state of surprise or anger. 
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Everything I like is trivial to you.”
“Oh, come on.”
“The games I like to watch, my choice of footwear…”
“We need water to live, Scott!”
Scott turned back to the television, and the image flicked away, replaced by Jerry Rice catching a pass on a slant route.
“Oh, now you’re the morality po—YES! GO!”
Rice broke a tackle and pummeled his way to the Bengals’ twenty-yard line. Scott leaped to his feet, bowl in hand, ignoring the powdered milk that slopped out over his wrist.
“GO! GO! GO!”
The lights dimmed, the red bobble alarm lit up, and the Trinitron cut out.
“NO!” Scott yelled.
The flat monitors switched on, displaying a screen-separated panoramic view of the dome. 
“Oh, shit,” Scott said. He put the bowl down on the table.
EG joined him.
“What is it?”
“Dunno yet.”
He squinted at each screen. Sector 1. Clear. Sector 2. Clear. Sector 3…
“There,” he said, pointing at the screen.
He pinched out to zoom in. An oblong wad of pale flesh had flattened itself against the dome. A pair of beady eyes over a slitted nose. Two fat folds Scott assumed were lips.
“Oh, man,” EG said. “Is it the gooey tentacle thingies or the hairy tongue thingies?”
Scott zoomed in closer. While they watched, a hairy tongue popped out of the folds and pulsed against the ClearSteel™. It throbbed once, ejaculating a viscid, milky white substance that oozed down the side.
EG winced. Scott grimaced.
“Gross,” he said.


Scott hunched involuntarily as he stepped out of the habitat and into the dome. The heat and humidity engulfed him, beat down on him, weighed him down. He’d only experienced heat like that twice in his life: when his family lived in the NeuTen™ tenements in SingleCity and during the Swamp Wars on the Outer Rim. In both cases, the only way he escaped was by running away.
At least on Firenzuola 44f, there was a valid reason for the discomfort. It was imperative to the mission that the dome remained at constant equatorial humidity. Any temperature lower than ninety degrees Fahrenheit, any heat index lower than 103, and the NanoNutris™ lost optimum motility, and if the NanoNutris™ lost optimum motility, the crops withered and died, and if the crops withered and died, the whole enterprise, the billion bullet (bullets being the official currency of the SingleCorpocro Confederacy) space flight, the trillion bullet terraforming gear, the quadrillion bullet supply runs, failed. Also, he and EG would starve.
So sweating was inevitable.
Their 130-pound armored space suits did not make it any more comfortable. 
Scott squinted up at the enterprise as they trudged along. Though he and EG had long grown weary of their jobs, now and then the magnificence of the enterprise they served stunned him. Drones zipped across the green fields in square vectors, dropping seeds, NanoNutris™, and VitaminS™. A permanent sunny blue sky was broadcast digitally on the underside of the dome. Crops, trees, grass, and non-edibles grew in quadrants specially tended by robotic RanchRover™ rovers. It was precisely the images he conjured up in his childhood as he lay on his back, gazing at the stars. Minus the humanoids.
“This is the third time in a month those things have showed up,” EG said.
“A bit disconcerting, isn’t it?”
“A bit? Scott, they’re organic.” She gestured around her. “We’re in space. How are they alive? We need to—”
“No.”
“But if we don’t study one—”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Just one. Who’s to say anything will happen at all?”
“Other than the complete contamination of the dome and the habitat?”
“We’re contaminating the dome every time we have to come back from scraping them off.”
“Command specifically said—”
“Oh, come on, Scott. You watch century’s old sports half of the time. The other half, you’re futzing around with hybrids. You’re in no position to lecture me about protocol.”
“Do you know how much money this mission costs?”
EG mouthed along as he spoke.
“Ten billion bullets a year. That’s one-eighth of the company’s yearly revenue.”
“Aren’t you the least bit curious?” 
“Not ten billion bullets worth.”

Space being space—the negative 455-degree temperatures, the radiation, the speeding celestial bodies and all—traveling through it had, historically at least, always proved fiddly. While the satellites, probes, rockets, and ramjets used superconducting magnetic shields to protect cosmonauts from the former, the endless barrage of micrometeorites and other cosmic debris posed an entirely different problem. This problem was eventually solved, of course, by kevlar-infused AlumiThin™.
But as much protection as AlumiThin™ added, space-walking presented another challenge. From the early years of tether and pull to the more modern (if still somewhat antiquated) cold-fuel propulsion blaster packs, subjecting a human being to the icy void wearing little more than an armored space suit and helmet was as safe as throwing a toddler into the ocean. 
Fortunately for Scott and EG, cosmic adventuring had improved significantly since those early days. While they were still technically exposing themselves to the whims of the universe when they left the safety of the habitat dome (Firenzuola 44f barely had an exosphere let alone a fully developed atmosphere), they were still connected (yes, by tether) to the moon base itself.
AND they had their Metalhead Moon Boots™. 
A marvel of design, fashion, and function, Metalhead Moon Boots™ used the latest in plasti-steel morpho-magneticism and the patented nanobot dendrite pneumato-suction technology to allow cosmonauts the universe wide the pleasure of walking on any surface in zero-gravity conditions, be it rock, plastic, metal, even organic material, almost like they were on terra firma itself. Initially, for some reason, SingleCorp decided to market them to kids.
The first commercials for it were hilarious.

EXT. TENEMENT - DAY

OUR BOY (10) squats on a kiddie cage. He’s about to drop a rotten watermelon off the edge when a dictionary hits him in the face. 

ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Hey kids! Tired of losing Airplane 
  and Submarine?

EXT. STREET - NIGHT

Our Boy runs down a city street, a policeman in hot pursuit. The cop corners him in an alley and falls upon him, billy club flailing. 

 ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Can’t quite outrun the PEECCorps™?

INT. TENEMENT - NIGHT

Our Boy sneaks into an apartment with a mask on. The hinges creak. His startled eyes light up, and someone off-camera shucks loads a shotgun.


 ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Squeaky doors giving you away?

A shotgun blast. Our Boy screams.

INSERT IMAGE: Metalhead Moon Boots™ on a pedestal.

 ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
What you need is Metalhead Moon 
  Boots™, by SingleCorp!

AS THE ANNOUNCER SPEAKS, A MONTAGE SHOWS:

... Our Boy clomps up the side of the building in his Metalhead 
  Moon Boots™, grabbing a kid holding a dictionary, and throwing 
  him to his death.
... Our Boy (still wearing the boots) chased by the PEECCorps™. He
  performs a karate move by running up the side of a dumpster, 
  down the side of an alley, and back out onto the street. 
... Our Boy creeps through an open window and pockets a 
  wallet.

 ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Crush your enemies! Evade the authorities! 
  Steal from your neighbors with... 

INSERT IMAGE: Metalhead Moon Boots™.

 ANNOUNCER (V.O)
Metalhead Moon Boots™, by SingleCorp!

 Scott and EG clomped around on the dome, their Metalhead Moon Boots™ affixed to the dome as magnets and metal were wont. Above them, the universe spun and expanded, spun and expanded. Comets zipped past the distant yellow dwarf sun. Clusters of debris sparkled in the ink. Firenzuola Prime rose behind them, a rocky Super-Earth with a beautiful red atmosphere threaded through with creamy white clouds. Scott came to a halt.
“Crap,” he said. 
Fifty meters away, the single hairy tongue thingy had transformed into a mound of hairy tongue thingies, seething and pulsing. Scott held out his hand, and a drone zipped in out of nowhere and shot what appeared to be a large metal squeegee at him. Scott slow-snatched it and brought it down before him. His voice crackled into EG’s earpiece.
“Did I ever tell you my dad was a professional window washer?”  
“Window washer? Didn’t they have drones for that?”
“Professional window washer.” 
“Sorry.”
“I grew up in a NeuTen™, remember? The closest thing we had to drones was… us. So dad took it on.”
“Professionally?”
“You can joke all you want, but it kept us fed.”
“I doubt SingleCorp would pay him for—”
“Not SingleCorp. The other tenants. And it was more like barter.”
“I guess I get it. But it was still just washing a window.”
“It’s harder than it looks.”
“Really?”
EG placed her squeegee down on the ClearSteel™ and, with a feral yawp, low-hopped toward the alien pile. Her squeegee struck the top layer, dislodging a trio of the beasts. They tumbled out into the nothingness, flapping uselessly. EG turned, put her squeegee on the dome, and leaned on it.
“Man,” she said. “That was really hard.”
Then the trio, as one, extended their hairy tongues and spurted their milky fluid into space, shooting in short bursts like a rocket. They stabilized, turned and, with more bursts, glided back to the dome, wings flapping, lazily, stupidly, unswervingly. EG followed their path, and when they reattached themselves to the pile, she looked over at Scott.
“Shit,” she said. “We need something stronger.”

EXT. BEACH - DAY

Our Boy (20s) sits on a blanket next to an ATTRACTIVE GIRL (20s). Attractive Girl wears a skimpy bikini. The boy’s concave chest is decorated with a little triangle sprig of hair. Nonetheless, they smile and laugh and enjoy a day at the beach. 

 ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Do you have the physical build of a 
  five-year-old invalid?

 OUR BOY
(looks at the camera)
Huh?

A massive spray of sand assaults his face.

 OUR BOY
(sputtering)
Hey!

Our Boy’s POV

Standing before him, gigantic head blocking the sun, is a BULLY.
 BULLY
Out of my way, shrimp!

The Bully kicks Our Boy so hard that he sinks a foot deep into the sand.

 ANNOUNCER
Need to build some muscle fast?

Our Boy’s POV.

The Bully walks away with the girl hanging on his arm.

 OUR BOY
Boy, do I ever!

INT. GYM - DAY

Our Boy tries to do a single curl but can’t.

 ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Tired of workout plans that don’t work out?

OUR BOY
I can’t feel my arms!


INT. KITCHEN - DAY

Our Boy slugs down an Oh-wee-O’s shake, then runs for the bathroom.

 ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Or diet plans that leave your intestines 
  shredded with diarrhea?

 OUR BOY
(moaning from behind a closed bathroom door)
My intestines are shredded with diarrhea!

INT. HOUSE - DAY

Our Boy stands pale and defeated before the camera. His sunken chest eclipsed in concavity only by the stark relief of his ribs, making him look like a malnourished virgin.

OUR BOY
I look like a malnourished virgin?

Or a bone-xylophone.

OUR BOY
BONE XYLOPHONE?!

 ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
What you need is Barrel Arm Biceps™, 
  by SingleCorp!

With a BING!, the boy transforms from a malnourished virgin into a malnourished virgin with a large metal contraption clamped onto his right arm. He falls to the side with a groan. The contraption clunks to the floor.

 OUR BOY
My arm!

Zoom in on the details of the piece: The design is an exercise in surgical brutalism. Tubes plug into the boy’s bruised and swollen flesh. The entry wounds, shiny with petroleum jelly, plug the crevices where meat meets metal. Sharp steel pegs shoot into his shoulder, elbow, and wrist with a metallic “shink!” and anchor into his bones. 

OUR BOY
My bones!

A FlexiSteel™ glove melds onto his hand, and minute wires pierce his digits and tender webbing, tapping into his nervous system.

OUR BOY
My tender webbing!

ANNOUNCER
Made from the metals plundered from 
  the mines of our weakest third-world 
  nations, Barrel Arm Biceps™, by 
  SingleCorp, is a marvel of modern industrial 
brutalism and invasive surgery!

OUR BOY
Someone please help me!

 ANNOUNCER
Just look at that baby. The shiny chrome 
  titanium alloy chassis. The FlexiSteel™ glove. 
  The petroleum jelly puncture plugs.

 OUR BOY
I can feel it pumping some kind of fluid 
  into my body!

 ANNOUNCER
Hahaha. That’s right, Jonathan.

 OUR BOY
My name’s not Jonathan.

 ANNOUNCER
What you’re feeling is the effects of 21st
  Century body modification chemistry horror, 
  brought straight to you by SingleCorp!

 OUR BOY
Make it stop!

 ANNOUNCER
Let’s just ramp up the power.

 OUR BOY
Wait!

With an electric buzz, the device whirs to life. Our Boy jolts erect. Bones crack. He screams.

 OUR BOY
It’s standing me up!

ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
Run the stress diagnosticator...

Our Boy’s body twists in various limb-snapping positions.

 OUR BOY
My skeleton and nervous system!

 ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
And then...

The electric whirring sound ramps up like a rocket readying for takeoff.

 OUR BOY
(suddenly excited)
The power is coursing through my muscles!

With a mighty BING!, the process is complete.

 ANNOUNCER (V.O.)
NOW YOU ARE A GOD ON EARTH! 
  ACHILLES REBORN! COMMANDER 
  AGAMEMNON! AJAX THE GREATER! 
  ALL WILL LOVE YOU AND QUAKE IN 
  YOUR PRESENCE!

 OUR BOY
I’m gonna grab this dump truck and crush 
  it with my bare hands!

EXT. BEACH - LATER

The Bully reclines on a towel. He is surrounded by women. They pet his chest and feed him grapes. An ominous shadow blocks the sun.

BULLY’S POV

Our Boy looms over him, red eyes glowing. With a powerful mechanical whine, he flexes his Barrel Arm Biceps™.

OUR BOY
Who’s the shrimp now, twerp?

Fade out to the horrific sounds of cracking bones, pummeled flesh, and women screaming.