“Once We Were Meerkats” by Huskyteer

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You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.

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I’m Khaki, your faithful fireside companion,

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and Today’s story is

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“Once We Were Meerkats”

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by award-winning short story writer

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Huskyteer. You can find her at huskyteer.co.uk,

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or as @Huskyteer on Twitter.

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This story was first published in ROAR volume 10 from Bad Dog Books,

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which you can find at FurPlanet.com.

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“Once We Were Meerkats”

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by Huskyteer The suns were at their highest point when the alarm went off.

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Some of us were on sentry duty,

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some minding the children in the nursery.

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The ones lucky enough to have their rest period during the hottest part of the day were sleeping or sunbathing.

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Most of us were digging and building.

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We scrambled for the shelter of the underground complex,

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scooping up kids and the infirm as we went,

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while the sirens screeched.

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Our leader, Mo, quietened us down.

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She got hold of the sentry who’d raised the alarm

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and took him aside so he could give her a statement.

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The rest of us took stock of who had tagged in.

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There were two missing:

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a surveyor, out checking the area for the best place to extend our site,

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and one of the engineers, who’d been working on the irrigation system

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out near the fences.

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Mo made a statement to the effect that it was probably a false alarm,

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and the missing just hadn’t heard the siren.

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We were to carry on with our work,

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maintaining extra high vigilance just in case.

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But the rumours were already flying;

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it’s impossible to keep a lid on anything around here.

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Some kind of monster

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—vast, stealthy, unseen

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—stalking around the outside of our walls and fences.

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Plenty of us had heard it or smelled it,

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now we came to think of it

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(it smelled of meat and ice),

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but none of us could say what it looked like.

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We already had sandbugs,

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pricklemouths and jumping snakes to contend with.

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We didn’t need invisible monsters too.

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We were just trying to build a city.

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Once we were meerkats.

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We’ve seen pictures in the database.

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They made us human-sized,

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so we can build human-sized homes for them,

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and we lost our tails.

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We still have the fur that keeps us warm in the cold nights

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and cool in the heat of the day,

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with a dark mask to protect our eyes from the sun.

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We still have strong hands and nails designed for burrowing,

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even though we also have tools.

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We’re still tough enough to deal with predators,

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and immune to some types of venom.

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We need little water,

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and we can eat almost anything.

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Most of all, we still look out for each other.

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That’s how we survive.

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We used to be cute.

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Our missing two didn’t come back,

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and search parties headed out to look for them.

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We returned with nothing to report:

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no prints, no scent,

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no sign of a struggle.

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We concluded that our surveyor and engineer had run off together;

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it happens sometimes that one or two of us decide to leave and start a new life according to their own rules.

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It’s not exactly encouraged, but there’s nothing any of us can do to prevent it,

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and perhaps it’s best to be rid of any dissatisfied element.

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We wished them well

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and forgot about them.

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We were busy. The city was behind schedule.

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The terrain was tricky,

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and we were having problems setting up the water supply.

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It was the diggers’ fault. No! The engineers! No, the planners who’d picked the site!

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The human ships had already left Earth,

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bound for their new colony,

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and even if we’d been able to get a message to them,

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they could not have turned back without a great deal of trouble and expense.

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We would have thousands of souls incoming, and not enough space and food for them. Or for us.

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We worked extra shifts,

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and those of us usually assigned to other jobs pitched in with the building work.

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We often found ourselves working alone to put in extra time on a project,

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rather than sticking in the groups that kept us safe from attack.

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Ears and eyelids drooped.

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All of us were tired

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and all of us were preoccupied.

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We were not as vigilant as we should have been.

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Our nights were short,

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but black and cold.

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One cold, black night a group of our teenagers chose to sneak out beyond the fences,

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looking for a kind of cactus that some among us were always willing to swear got you high.

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When they didn’t find one

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they teased a sandbug out of its burrow

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and poked at it a while,

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trying to flip it over with sticks while avoiding the stingers.

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It was while they were dancing around their prey,

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giggling and shrieking,

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that they noticed the starlight fade and the night become blacker.

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They fell silent

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and looked up to see a patch of darkness blotting out the line

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between sky and desert.

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Still shrieking and giggling at the adventure,

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they fled for the safety of home,

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where they found an unamused sentry waiting at the exit point they’d cut in the fence.

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We thought they were just making up a story to slide out of the trouble they were in for breaking bounds.

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Then we noticed another of our number was missing.

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We’re designed to cope with hostile environments

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and predatory wildlife.

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Our whole purpose is to turn desert planets into human homes.

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But this was outside our scope and way beyond our skills.

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The building work fell ever further behind.

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More of us were assigned to guard detail, but even so we worked with one eye on our current job

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and the other glancing over our shoulders for danger.

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We got jumpy, and we made mistakes that cost us precious time and materials to fix.

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The kids who’d run away from the desert night and left their friend behind began to drift away from the rest of us.

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Arguments began between those of us who wanted to get on with the job

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and those who wanted to arm ourselves,

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the whole lot of us, and sweep the desert for monsters.

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Some of us wanted to pull out altogether.

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There’s a protocol for when a planet reveals a hidden danger missed by the initial surveys.

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We’d never needed to activate it,

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nor had we heard of any crew who had.

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It’s a serious matter.

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The rest of us asked,

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what were we so afraid of?

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Ghosts? Stories? Funny smells?

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Kid stuff. We were

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divided. That never happens.

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Unity is in our genes.

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Sure, we have our spats and squabbles, but they don’t last.

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In the worst case Mo has to knock a few heads together, or someone bops someone else on the nose, and it’s all sweet again.

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Because we have purpose.

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Together. We don’t just

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blindly follow instructions.

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We might have a vast bank of plans to work from,

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but every planet is different, so we often need to improvise and substitute.

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Each city we create is unique,

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built in response to the particular problems and advantages of the landscape and climate.

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Not all of us are solid muscle,

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built for labour and protection.

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We are architects, technicians and scientists.

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Some of us are record-keepers,

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adding to the sum of knowledge that our crew and others can draw from.

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Some of us describe ourselves as artists,

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or even visionaries.

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We scientists and visionaries set to work on this new problem.

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Our research and discussions

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led us to the conclusion that there was no such thing as the invisible.

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Just because we, ourselves, could not see something

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did not mean it couldn’t be seen.

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So we adapted the goggles we use for night work

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to help us see beyond our usual range.

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We argued over whether the aim of our exploration should be to investigate or to kill.

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Either way, we concluded,

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we would need to defend ourselves.

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Our sentries already had electrical weapons as well as firearms,

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and to these we added a type that used sound to disable and disorientate.

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Some of us secretly fashioned our own armaments:

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knives and clubs, crude but reassuring.

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One of us made a helmet of wires to protect his brain from what he described as alien mind-rays, and we teased him without mercy.

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Then we went hunting.

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Split into groups,

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weapons on our shoulders,

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we divided the desert surrounding our base into squares and we patrolled.

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Nothing. We tried at different hours of the day and night.

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We looked for tracks, and for burrows where a large creature might lie low if it heard us coming.

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We lost one of our fighters to a jumping snake, but this, at least, was the kind of loss we could understand.

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One of us had an idea.

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We had done our patrolling in groups, of course. The ones who were taken had been isolated,

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working remotely or left behind.

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What if someone tried going into the desert alone?

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One of us kept their idea a secret, so as not to be prevented,

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and executed it privately.

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One of us walked out into the night

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weaponless, without a word of goodbye to friends or family,

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and sat atop a dune

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with the cold wind ruffling their fur,

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and waited for the unknown. It came.

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It came as a rush of meat-scented air,

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and a distortion in the line of the horizon.

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The goggles showed a glowing blur,

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vast and wavering.

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A formless cloud without recognisable features like legs,

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eyes, or teeth. One of us spread furred hands out wide to demonstrate a lack of weapons, and looked at the monster,

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and did not faint or run away.

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The cloud moved forward

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and settled in the sand around the dune,

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filling each wind-carved hollow.

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One of us touched a soft nose to something less than solid,

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more than gas. Our little kids were first to figure out there was something going on,

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and cluster around the fence.

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Then our teenagers slunk out of the shadows, trying to look as if they were there by accident and found the whole thing boring.

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The rest of us came in pairs or groups,

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looking for our young or our friends.

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We huddled up to the fence and peered over each other,

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passing our pairs of goggles around.

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“I think you should come out here. All of you,”

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one of us called.

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We debated. Was it a trick?

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Had we lost another to a monster that was now puppeting one of us to lure the rest into its maw?

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We raised our voices, and some of us scuffled in the sand, pulling towards or away.

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Mo ended it. She stepped forward to do her leader’s duty,

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and we would not let her go alone.

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Our strongest and bravest went first,

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but the rest of us were not far behind.

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None of us intended the kids to come, of course,

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but they sneaked along anyway, dropping to all fours, skittering between our legs and racing through the fence before we could grab them.

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We would confront the unknown

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for ourselves, and for our lost,

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and for our human employers when they arrived.

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We swarmed the dune together

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and stood in a mass.

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Parents held children in their arms.

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Mo drew herself up tall, at the very front,

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as if she could shield us all.

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Nobody whispered or chattered.

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We were never this silent.

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Our silence, our stillness or our concentration allowed it in.

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We all took it in at once:

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the knowledge that the cloud creature was alone

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and dying on a world that no longer held life,

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and so could not sustain it by renewing its cells

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—until we came. Now we had questions, and we yelled them all at once.

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“One at a time,” Mo called,

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but we drowned her out.

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We became aware of shapes forming in the foggy cloud,

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and we craned forward.

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Those of us with goggles, and the youngest of us, could see most clearly.

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Our missing. They lay curled up,

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eyes closed and unresponsive,

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but none of them looked hurt,

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and they were breathing.

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Some of us broke away to run down and hold them.

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Eyes blinked open.

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These two are too old,

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and this one too young,

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we now knew. For what?

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we wondered. We’d seen movies. We’d scared each other, as kids, with stories of crews who’d ended up as

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exhibits in some alien zoo.

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The answer sent ripples through our minds,

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and raised the fur on our spines.

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We felt the strained gaps between atoms barely held together

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and we knew what would become of this planet when the force could no longer hold.

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I need one. I take one.

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“No deal,” Mo said. “We’re family. We stick together.”

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We heard her words,

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but we also felt them

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as the alien felt them,

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broken down into emotion and sensation.

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It was a new kind of togetherness.

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We considered the offer.

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We did not bicker or fight.

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Each of us turned the thought around silently,

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each in our own mind.

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This city we’re building with such care isn’t for us.

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It’s for them. Their eyes aren’t as good as ours, so there are lights all along the tunnel walls and in the subterranean spaces.

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Really they prefer to be above ground, in the sunshine,

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so as well as setting up the solar panels we have to pour a lot of time and resources into houses with air-conditioning for their elite,

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and into safely fenced parks and sports arenas.

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When it’s done at last, they arrive in ships

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and move in to their new world.

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Those ships then carry us to the next unclaimed planet, to start all over again.

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There’s no place that we can call home.

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It’s a life that most of us like,

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but it isn’t for everyone.

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One of us said: “I’ll do it.”

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One of us was scooped up into that cloud,

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and felt the planet fade away.

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One of us had our mind enveloped by another.

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Tell me, it said. So I began my story.

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------- This story was

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“Once We Were Meerkats” by Huskyteer,

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read for you by Khaki,

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your faithful fireside companion.

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Thank you for listening to the Voice of Dog