A human introduces their friends to 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequel 2010: The year we make contact. -- Anon Guest
Humans love to share things. Food, games, experiences, and culturally significant milestones. One common way they do this is a phenomena known as Movie Night, where the Human in question shares entertainments from an astonishing store of media ranging from subtle to gross.
The CRC are still looking at how to handle Humanity's media made for their children. That stuff is weird.
Judging by the way the Human was singing Science Fiction, Double Feature, the crew of the Jolly Argonaut were not in for surrealism and nightmare fuel. Well. Perhaps not a lot of it. They were definitely due for some Weirdness In Space, likely as Humans imagined it before they developed the Gravy Drive[1].
"Not gonna lie, this one's a lot weird," announced Human Par. "Well. These two are a lot weird. Almost twenty years between sequels, an art-house scifi film and a sequel that tried to answer all of the questions of the first one without actually answering them, and trying to add weirdness to the whole thing. Some think it failed. I'll let you decide."
Companion Thresq raised a paw, "You have checked this for viewer compatibility, yes?"
"Oh yes. No blood, no gore, no jump-scares. Creeping horror elements resulting from liminal spaces and implied menace. Humans making dumb decisions. Interesting practical effects and I'm fully prepared to pause at any time and give you the nerd deets on How They Did That."
"Ah. Film analysis," Thresq settled down. "This is pre-Shattering Media, yes?"
"Pre-Shattering for sure. The first one, Two Thousand and One was filmed in Terran Common Era Nineteen Sixty-eight. The second one, Two Thousand and Ten was filmed in Nineteen Eighty-four. There's a lot of zeerust, and an awful lot of weirdly accurate predictions."
"Zeerust?"
"When extant technology surpasses the predictions of the past. Like... teleconferencing with cabled handsets and cathode ray tube monitors. Personal comms equipment that still needed dials to tune the frequency. That sort of thing."
"Ray guns and bug-eyed monsters?" guessed Thresq.
"That's next week. But this week we have classical music, surreal cinematography, and the least helpful AI ever created by fiction."
The opening bars of Also Sprach Zarathustra filled the ships' theatre. A Human and a bunch of Alien friends ate popcorn and laughed together at the predictions for thirty-three years hence, as viewed by those over five centuries ago.
Humans were definitely weird. That was what made them so much fun.
[1] The gravity drive works by creating a virtual gravity well that the ship 'falls' towards at ever-increasing speed until Close To Light travel is achieved. Its nickname has evolved from both the weaponisation of this and what happens during a fatal collapse of the drive.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / rolffimages]
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