Bryan Fields entertains us today with a recording of an interview with a unicorn featured in his novel, "Life with a Fire-Breathing Girlfriend." If that title doesn't pique your interest, may I suggest you check if you're still breathing. More on the book following the interview.
* * *
Thank
you for taking the time to speak with us. Please introduce yourself
and tell us about your background. Your name, where you’re from,
what your childhood was like.
Why
do you people keep asking my name? I’m the only one of my kind on
your world. Call and I will hear you, rest assured. That point
being made, Mr. Fraser chose to call me Smith. Among my kind, the
concept which expresses my self-image is the squeaking made by river
otter kits at play. I am not from a ‘where’, nor am I ‘from’
it. I carry the moment of primal causation within me. Nor did I
have a childhood. In the first instant of my being, I was as I am
now.
I
do not like the word ‘Unicorn’; it lacks meaning. I am a
Caretaker. It is my nature and the definition of my purpose. I do
not defecate cookies, sparkling or otherwise, nor has any portion of
my anatomy ever emitted a rainbow. If I come across a virgin maiden
in the forest, I am no more likely to place my head in her lap than I
am to tear her heart from her chest and eat it. I might infect her
with a plague and send her to the nearest village if I needed to
create an epidemic, but as a rule her existence would not be of any
interest to me.
What
are your day-to-day duties as a Caretaker?
 |
| Smith's Favorite Portrait |
The
Tribe
was created to maintain the order and control required for the
correct operation of our world. We attend to the larger systems
required for life to exist. The survival or well-being of
individuals is not our concern. We do heal people and cure diseases,
but only as a matter of keeping things running smoothly and stopping
trouble before it starts.
In
my time I’ve relocated a colony of beavers for interfering with
water distribution over half a continent, administered fifty-one
plagues or epidemics, managed the evolution and emergence of three
distinct subspecies of the weasel family, and corrected the magma
flow to an undersea volcano to allow creation of an island chain. If
I may be said to hate anything, it would be entropy.
Why
do you want to destroy Earth?
I
do not wish to destroy your world at all; in fact, I promised Mr.
Fraser I would leave at least a few thousand of you alive to rebuild
your civilization. I find your world reasonably attractive, if a
trifle monochromatic at times. I simply cannot get used to green
grass. It’s a vulgar overuse of a fine color.
It
shames me to say it, but the Tribe committed a spiritual error when
we allowed the Humans to rebel against the Sky-Riders. Our passivity
allowed a war to devastate both races and plunge our world
into chaos. This miasma of error still clouds the minds of my
brethren. They would not accept the truth when I confronted them
with our failure. Their pride and willfulness has left me no option.
I will rectify the error and restore my world to the path it was
created to follow.
I
will need to collect the life-energy of several billion people before
I can restore my brethren to righteousness. At the same time, I must
render this world unusable to the Sky-riders. A global nuclear
exchange is an elegant solution to both problems.
Why
do you hate humans so much? Bad breath, politics, inferior quality
of virgin maidens?
I
love Humans, just as I love Elves, Dwarves, Northern Grey midden
rats, and pine ticks. I don’t love *you*, because you are not
Human. The only true Humans are the Humans of my world. You are an
alien species I was not created to value. Hate requires value, and
you have none to me.
Your
race does not have balance. You are erratic, and poorly designed.
You have no limits or satisfaction boundaries. The Humans of my
world are stable and predictable, as they should be.
My
world has many sentient races, all required to co-exist despite the
differences in culture, religion and biology. All of them have a
specific purpose in the overall design. Humans were created to be an
expendable labor force cared for by the more advanced races, with the
bulk of these duties falling to the Sky-Riders. In addition to
providing protection, the Sky-Riders were to be teachers and advisors
to the Human settlements assigned to them. Humans and Dragons were
intended to need each other, with the Sky-Riders gathering energy
from Human adoration and using it to make their own reproductive
process functional.
Sky-Riders
can live over a thousand centuries, and reproduce perhaps once in a
millennium if they are guarding a large town with very good energy
output. Humans – proper Humans – know their place and are
satisfied with it. They do not aspire, or innovate, or dream. It
takes a village of them a millennia to generate the energy for a
Dragoness to clutch once. That is balance and stability in design.
I
do not know why the Humans chose to reject the Sky-Riders as teachers
and defenders, but it scarcely matters now. On Earth, it takes only
three years
for a Dragoness to absorb enough energy to be able to reproduce, and
she gets it from one
of you. Not only that, her eggs will be stronger and more numerous
than normal. The situation is not acceptable. It will be rectified.
Is
there anything about Earth you do like, or will regret destroying?
Ice
cream. Naked mole rats – the absurdity of their design lifts my
spirits. Overnight package delivery. Fascinating process I would
enjoy studying in depth. I also regret being unable to find out how
your culture will progress. The sheer volume of changes your race
has made to this world since learning to make fire is astounding. I
would have enjoyed discovering if your species survived to maturity
or if you will be remembered only as a self-correcting error.
You’ve
mentioned yourself and your world being created. What can you tell
us about your creator, or creators?
Nothing.
Nor can I comment on your creator or creators. If you wish to know
something, ask them yourself. Next question.
Hey,
come on, we just…
Next
question.
It’s
just a question. There’s no need to be a dick about it. How
about… Can you tell us how your world was created? Did it just
spring into being, or was it produced through the gradual
accumulation of matter, according to current models of astrophysics?
I
said you would need to ask your creator such questions. Allow me to
make introduction.
SHI---
I
will add one more piece of information to this interview: my people
are omnivores, and I am ready for lunch. Take your equipment and go.
I prefer lean meat, and you weigh at least one hundred pounds less
than this fool.
Run.
Now.
* * *
LIFE WITH A FIRE-BREATHING GIRLFRIEND
If you can’t stand the heat, don’t tickle the Dragon.
Rose Drake is a Dragoness in Human form, come to Earth for three years to soak up the local energy and increase her chances of having happy, healthy, baby hatchlings when she goes home. In exchange for his time and energy, David’s body and love life both undergo extreme makeovers. It sounds like the deal of a lifetime.
Fate doesn’t let David and Rose off so easily. A friend of theirs is murdered, their homeowner’s association starts harassing them, and they have to complete a quest for an Elven sage in order to stop a genocidal Unicorn from turning Earth into a radioactive wasteland.
After all, when you’re dating a Dragon, you’re already a hero. It says so in the fine print.
Buy at:
I began writing professionally as a member of the content design team for the MMORPG Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted. My first published short stories appeared in the anthologies The Mystical Cat and Gears and Levers III in 2012.
I
live in Denver with my wife Noelle and daughter Alissa. The three of
us can often be found prowling around Istaria, Wizard City, and the
wilds of Azeroth. I also make occasional side jaunts to scavenge bits
of ancient technology in the radioactive ruins of the Grand Canyon
Province.
Learn more about me by following my FB page: https://www.facebook.com/BryanFieldsAuthor or my blog: http://laughingotterslair.blogspot.com/
