Damsel Causing Distress - Episode 10 (15) - No Seeding Talk At Dinner
Note: My (mis)adventures are part of a bigger series, but I wrote my tales in the format of an episodic T.V. show, where you can read an episode without the context of the others and still enjoy it. If anything, reading it out of order may be more fun. - A newly educated Theseus
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“That is so messed up.” Scout looked at me up and down, mildly disgusted, the racist. We were still hiding behind one of the large mausoleums, made out of some fancy stone, that was a bit too smooth for my liking.
“It is a bit odd for us culturally.” Ludus nodded, shifting her weight, trying not to look at anything in particular for longer than five seconds. Why? I don’t know, It was actually quite a nice cemetery, there were massive trees everywhere. The headstones themselves had lots of room in between them. So in death you didn’t have to get crushed in between people like public transit. You’re supposed to rest in peace after all.
It wasn’t creepy, the grass was cut, it smelt like flowers, and the trees were trimmed, it wasn’t just well taken care of, it was loved. So, even though it was the middle of the night, it was beautiful, a bit sad sure, but still pretty. I looked around.
“Well, what do Links do?”
“Literally anything else, cremation, burial at sea, burial in space. Just anything apart from shoving rotting corpses into the ground. What about the water supply?” She whispered and pointed to a gravestone.
“Water supply? How deep do you think we bury them? They’re only like six feet (1828 mm) deep.” I looked at one of the gravestones.
“What?!” Scout flung herself to the wall, before she covered her mouth. So, at least she knows she was being too loud. Ludus looked around and waited for them to pop out at any second. Also, Aliens zombies, oh my God, that would be awesome.
You know, speaking of Alien zombies it is easy to forget most times. Scout and Ludus are obviously Aliens, the whole dragon horns, tail and funny looking eyes thing, but personality and culture wise, it is not, well, that Alien to me. I mean the obvious thing is the fact they both have Human names, Scout and Ludus. Ludus being Latin or Greek, I think. Am I being racist now?
Anyways, my racism aside, culturally, we don’t seem too far off, even biologically the vast majority of aliens are bipedal, two arms, two legs. I mean, if anything, almost familiar, some look like angels, some succubi, Gruntas are just orcs, the lion guys are just dudes, but lions heads. I mean, at least Caelums are orange. But seriously what is up with-
“Theseus, where’d you go there buddy?” Scout snapped in front of my face, but only loud enough I could hear.
“Oh, sorry I was just thinking about something.” I narrowed my eyes at Scout, and slowly looked at her up and down.
Scout recoiled as though I just spat on her, slowly drifting her body away from me, while covering herself, feel free to guess which parts first. That’s right, her tail. “Dude.” She said more disappointed than disgusted.
“No, it’s obviously not that. I’m just confused is all.” I scratched my head.
“About what?” Ludus leaned in.
“Why we look so similar. I mean not just us, pretty much all of the Council species or whatever look similar right?” I looked down at my arms and legs, and then theirs.
Scout, just stared, sometimes she looks almost in awe of how large the rock I live under is. Like a Dwarven cave. “Oh my Gods, you really are a Himbo.” She whispered to herself. “Yeah, it’s a whole thing.”
“Wow, what a clear and useful explanation.” I said emotionless, so I didn’t otherwise call her any names.
“Oh, up yours.” She sighed. “Basically, it’s kinda like religion but on a more galactic, universal species wide scale.”
“?”
“Like, nobody can agree on whether or not the Gods are real, or which ones are real if they are real. But, species have different Gods. For the whole galaxy, the big question without a sure answer is Seeding.” She said slowly, assuming I was an idiot.
“What now?” I asked. She was correct.
“You do not know what seeding is?” Ludus looked at me as though I just told her I don’t eat my vegetables, which I also clearly don’t. So great, we’re all stupid, and I’m still malnourished.
I didn’t say anything else to Ludus lest I dig myself a bigger hole, and just opted to stare.
“Okay, basically, Links invented faster than light travel.” Scout and Ludus quietly high fived, Scout taught her in between this and the last episode. “And our species started to explore the stars, and we found that we all sort of looked the same, and we didn’t have any idea why for sure, but over the hundreds of years there are two popular theories.”
“Seeding or convergent evolution. So, Seeding is that some advanced species, long before us, went around habitable planets and added the same DNA or maybe some animal, that evolved to fit their planetary niche. Which is why we all look similar, because if we go far back enough, we are technically related.” Ludus whispered into my left ear.
“Convergent evolution is that it’s random. We’re all from similar planets, and so we evolved independently to look like this. I mean it works, obviously, some people say it’s just random, others say it’s because this form is the best one for survival, or it’s plain survivorship bias. There are hundreds of theories explaining convergent evolution.” Scout whispered into my right.
“And it is obviously Seeding.” Ludus continued to harass my left ear.
“And it’s obviously convergent evolution.” Scout harassed my right, at nearly the exact same time as Ludus.
“What?” They said, actually simultaneously, and way too loud directly into my ears.
“It is obviously seeding. The amount of coincidences it would take for dozens of species to all look the same as one another would be nearly impossible.” Ludus started the whisper fight, though thankfully not into my ear.
“What? Of course it’s convergent evolution. The fact we can stand on each other’s planets without needing a damn helmet means our planets are similar enough that having this type of configuration for the dominant species just makes sense. And in the first place, we have zero evidence of this advanced species, I mean if they’re so advanced, where did they go? Why do we have zero proof of them?” Scout’s tail waved frantically.
“Well, if they would not want to be found, if they are advanced enough to seed planets, light years away they would be able to hide from us quite easily. Who says they are still in our galaxy?” Ludus pointed at the sky, still with the whisper accent.
They looked at each other, helplessly. Totally shocked, that they’re different people, with different opinions. Wow. Must have been quite distressing. They turned to me, wide eyed.
“What do you think?” They said in one voice, the first time since I asked that dumb question they agreed on something. I paused and just looked at them. I could tell that they just knew I was going to agree with them. Both of them. Equally.
“Oh, so this is what Aliens argue about at Christmas.” I rolled my eyes, “I don’t care, like at all, and also-” I pointed, “The idiots are here.”
“Fine, we’re still talking about this later though.” Scout pointed at me, then turned to peek behind the mausoleums at the kidnappers.
“And, we would both like a definitive answer from you.” Ludus grabbed her shield.
I sighed.
There was an awkward cough behind us.
You know the type. You're standing in the middle of the aisle in the store, wondering why there are so many types of cereal, trying not to have a nervous breakdown at the choice paralysis you’ve suddenly gotten for the first time in your life.
Then in your spiral downwards, you hear a man politely cough to your side. You finally notice you’re being one of those people, say “Sorry.” weakly, and pick the first thing you see off the shelf, and run out the store. Well, it was one of those coughs.
I turned behind me, then looked up, then looked up more, and then finally even more. “Jesus Christ.” He was a Grunta, massive, green, and held a shovel that was proportional to his height in a way that made me extremely uncomfortable.
“Hello.” Scout waved.
“Hi.” The Grunta said and sounded an awful lot like God, as the Earth shook, well not Earth, as the planet shook at the bass in his voice, he casually looked over the mausoleum at the kidnappers searching for us. “Ah, I was wondering why you looked familiar. I am the grounds keeper.” He offered a hand shake.
“Hi, I’m Theseus.” I shook his massive hand, which was twice as big as mine in every dimension I could think of, and a few I’ve never even realized until that moment. Never seen cuticles that big before.
“And they are not welcome here.” He stared at the kidnappers who stomped along the graves, in the unlikable fashion you expect from idiots.
“Agreed.”
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Author’s Note: Behold the Watsonian/diegetic explanation on why my Sci-Fi world is mostly filled with fantasy races. Opposed to the Doylist/actual reason, which is because I think it’s cool.
Vaguely important second note: This series (for once), and bonus one shots are part of a writing challenge in which I write and post something every day until I finish writing the series. Thus being written like an episodic T.V. show.
Thanks for reading. :}
Day 15 / ?
Posted Aug 16, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC