Ocular polished his eye, twisted the nerves into his stamen and began his day’s work with a misting burp of inevitable. Monday. They had long adopted the human word for it; for the drudge of returning to the grind. It tasted so fittingly moribund when gassed and, once ears had been attached, they were amused by the glum sound of it as well; two dull thuds like the fall of dead seed pods.
The eye gave him vision and focused in. He tugged the spool and the Science Fictions began sputtering out. The first was some Steampunk derivative that he didn’t particularly rate, but it wasn’t his place to be a critic; just to fart and waft out the translations for the Bottlers. Apparently, the Godsac’s nestlings liked this sort of waffle so he made sure to get the pungency just right.
He parped through a Space Opera and a Cyberpunk, before clacking for some shorter stuff to tide him over to feastings. And then he stopped. All his gasses groaned as a short sheaf slipped out named The Science Fictions. It was the first line that froze him;
“Ocular polished his eye, twisted the nerves into his stamen and began his day’s work…”
He read on and on until the end and then let all his pores open in one implosion of putrid panic air. The Sapguards bustled over, tendrils raised.
‘I need to see the Godsac,’ bubbled Ocular.
They cloudstepped him there and rushed him into the crèche. The Godsac, all tight fronds and pulsing glands, smelt the text with rising belches of rage. He ordered the shelling over of Bud, and angled the leaves to Earth. Ocular squeezed out some calm but the Godsac wafted it away.
‘We are discovered,’ he mulched. ‘Ready your armour and fall in.’ He pointed a thorn, pricking the flesh of Ocular’s eye. ‘You lead the first massacre. Start with all the little fuckers that have written or read those gas-bastard words.’
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