Mystery Task
Flash Fiction by Susan Cornford
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Once upon a time, there was a story that our people came here from another world, but now everyone knows that this is just a children’s tale that no fully-grown Umpha would believe with either of their partially-conjoined heads. I mean, our shamans have explained to us that we evolved out of the bedrock of our planet seventy million years ago. End of story!
I can understand that people find it hard to grasp that the small, metallic capsules that litter our countryside are not, in fact, remnants of so-called “space ships” which had travelled tens of thousands of miles through space to bring us here from some other, now-forgotten place. They do, in fact, look like they would be “space ships,” but thankfully, that’s just a horror story we use to scare our children, so they stay away from what could be dangerously radioactive objects.
My job is to record all the findings about these mythological things and, for some reason which I do not fully understand, transmit them via an apparatus that sprang up yesterday in the middle of a nearby farmer’s field. I am not usually prey to compulsions of this kind, but I’ve learned that whenever both my heads agree on something from the outset without a lengthy discussion of pros and cons, it is something I must go ahead and do.
Taking my life in all four of my hands, I opened the locking seal that the local government agency had placed on the nearest abandoned capsule. I must admit that the doorway I uncovered was, in fact, large enough to accommodate me from my cloven-hoofed feet to both my now wildly-agog heads. Each of the latter took a deep breath of our marvellously methane-rich air, and I stepped through. Resolutely, I fought down memories of all the scary tales my mother had put me to sleep with as I grew up.
It was a bit dim and dusty, but nothing even vaguely monstrous leaped out at me from the interior. Heaving a dual sigh of relief, I made my way around the small space which did seem to remind me of something that I couldn’t quite put any of my sixteen fingers on. There were compartments with markings embossed into the odd, semi-pliant material, which clearly were labels; I opened and closed them, but none had anything inside. Putting one of my noses as far as I could manage into the depths of a container chosen at random, I sniffed deeply. I thought I could smell a familiar scent. It was something like the decorations that we put around our outer branches when we celebrated a new cycle of the six moons. Now, history is very clear that this ritual originated from the Goddess bringing forth the first decorations from her own body and graciously bestowing them upon her chosen people. So, how could such an odour even exist in what no one could deny was, well, okay, a completely alien craft. I quickly closed the compartment.
Prompted by the urgings at the back of both of my poor, spinning heads, I made my way to the strange apparatus located amid the farmer’s field of ripening latex plants. Ignoring the delicious smell that the crop gave off, I prepared to make my “report.” As all of my sixteen fingers moved of their own accord over the symbols of the apparatus, written words that were recognisable to me appeared on a flat plate near the top. Imagine my unbounded and uncomprehending surprise when they said, “This is ET phoning home.”
Susan Cornford is a retired public servant, living in Perth, Western Australia. She/her has pieces published or forthcoming in 2024 Anthology Invasion of the Saucer-Men from Mars! Ab Terra Flash Fiction 2022, Arzono Publishing Presents The 2023 Annual, Metastellar, Stupefying Stories, Written Tales, Wyldblood Magazine and others.