Aphrodite

Aphrodite was in ruin.

…To her original inhabitants, anyways.

But to everything else, she was a world just like any other. A place to live.

Aphrodite was a planet just like all the others. She’d had her fair share of play, to be sure. Mass extinctions, explosions of life, ice ages, Pollution, global warming, more mass extinctions, more explosions of life…
Lots and lots of time was what she had. Aphrodite was all about time, and boy did she have it on her side. Her sun wasn’t even five billion years old, and her dominant species had already vanished…

Aphrodite was a planet to be jealous of, of that you could be sure. She had everything. Rolling deserts filled with honey amber sands flowing into dunes that were miles high. She had great rainforests where the emerald trees reached into the stratosphere, their topmost leaves dull and papery, existing out of sheer will. Rivers teeming with freshwater fishes and mammals with fur and skin that slipped through the leafy aquas searching for a meal or a mate. Grandiose mountains reaching high and wide, with snowcapped peaks and deep crevasses. Caves and caverns, but that was just the part of her that was above the water!
Her seas… Her seas were mentioned in tails throughout the entire galaxy, for they were undoubtedly her most impressive feature. They were relatively small in comparison to those of others, covering a mere 64.82% of her surface, but it wasn’t their size that was impressive, it was their saturation.
For you see, her seas were not regular seas, sure they were saltwater, and had many great currents and tides that ebbed and flowed all over, but her waters were something different… light and life penetrated them differently… That was what made her different from all the others, but it was not what the others saw. They saw the beaches. Aphrodite’s land and water seemed to be mixed together if viewed from on high (which they rarely were these days), and that was because her oceans ran through the continents just as her rivers did, giving an inland beach some thousands of miles away from her main bodies of water. Prime real estate some would say, and perhaps they would be right, but none of it mattered to Aphrodite, for her treasures lied deep beneath the seas, far away from prying eyes. But that was all about to change…



“Sir, there’s something here I think you should see…”

“Shit! What now Johnston?”

“Um, I’m sorry sir…”

The First official Lieutenant padded onto the main bridge in his tidy whiteys.
“I said, what is it Johnston?”

“I’m sorry sir, it’s just… a planet”

“Bullshit!”

“No sir”

“You’re fucking kidding me”

“What’s a planet?” Cheryl, the lunch lady twaddled in on her heels, looking surprised. “Breakfast on the bridge today? Is that the consensus?”

“Look in the viewfinder for yourself sir…”

Somewhat skeptical, he padded over to the tiny screen.
“it’s corned beef hash today, sirs” Cheryl chimed in, “Fix those rumblys in your tumblys nice and good!”
He looked.

It was blue.

He looked again. Still blue. Once more…
“I think our viewfinder is sad, Johnston, that’s the problem”
“No sir”
And that’s when he noticed it. The small lines of white, flashing in and out in the background… well maybe not flashing, more like bobbing…

“Can you put this up on the wall for me, Johnston?”
“Of course, Sir”
He pressed a button and a great white bed sheet flapped down from the ceiling and hung there, like a big wet sail.
An oval of blue, with the same white lines covered the wall and the sheet, filling the room with its hue.
“Hmm…” The First Official Lieutenant rubbed his earlobes, as he was known to do on occasion. “I can’t make it out, I still think it may be upset, maybe give it some rose colored glasses…”
“I don’t think that’s the problem, sir”

And then suddenly, without any warning, a gigantic creature, as tall as the bridge, began attacking the bed sheet!
“AAA!”
The Lieutenant screamed and fell backwards, bumping his bum on the polished acrylic composite.
The enormous creature had six legs, was a bluish grey, and had two humongous claws.
“Johnston, how did that get in here?!!?”
Then the enormous creature jumped, right at the Lieutenant.
“AAA!”
…and splashed into the ocean.

As a great wave came and splashed over the viewfinder, the ship tilted upwards, and there was the sun, shining above them.

“Sweet Jesus, there’s a hole in the viewfinder!”
“No sir, I think that a star”
“A star? You mean like Jesse Von Heiseing?”
“no sir, like a big ball of gas that a planet revolves around”
“Oh… Does that mean the viewfinder is happy again?”
“I think you better put some clothes on, sir”
“Don’t you tell me what to do, Johnston!” And with that, the First Official Lieutenant stomped off to his quarters to change.

“Corned beef hash today, Johnston?”
“Go away Cheryl.”

And there, in the middle of the middle of Aphrodite’s middle ocean, floated the spaceship CS1234. It bobbed up and down gingerly, as if waiting for permission, but for what, it did not know.
And the Harlequin Shrimp that had climbed over the viewfinder was now drifting back down in search of the coral it lived on before the great splash had kicked it into the air. It was frazzled, and quickly eaten by a passing octopus.
Sorry Harley.