To Serve Man: An Interim Report

ABSTRACT:  A report on recent developments in the feeding, care, and harvesting of human beings (hereafter, ‘cattle’).

HISTORY: Approximately 5,000 SPO (Standard Planetary Orbits) ago, an agent of our corporation discovered that the third planet orbiting Yellow Star 57429 was infested with a more or less intelligent mammalian primate species. Being rather hungry after a long period of induced hibernation, the agent harvested and consumed a member of this species. The agent thereby discovered the delicacy which is the primary product of our boutique corporation, with a niche market of five amphibian or reptilian customer species, including our own.

Nightmare

It started very suddenly. First, the computers stopped working, those that drove the screen that I tapped at, and those that ran the household appliances. Then the electricity stopped.

Then the nearby refineries started blowing up. The fires of their burning went up forever, veiled in the pillars of dark black smoke that thrust through the sky.

‘Rescue Kitten’, a short story

“…A little cat ghost, padding patiently around in limbo, trying to find that familiar, friendly lap…”

–Story idea given by Robert A. Heinlein to Theodore Sturgeon in a letter dated 11 Feb ’55

“More precisely, the person who performs a mitzvah, who prays or directs his mind toward the Divine, in so doing creates an angel, which is a sort of reaching out on the part of man to the higher worlds. Such an angel, however, connected in its essence to the man who created it, still lives, on the whole, in a different dimension of being, namely in the world of formation. And it is in this world of formation that the mitzvah acquires substance. This is the process by which the specific message or offering to God that is intrinsic to the mitzvah rises upward and introduces changes in the system of the higher worlds–foremost in the world of formation. From here, in turn, they influence the worlds above them. So we see that a supreme act is performed when what is done below becomes detached from particular physical place, time, and person and becomes an angel.”

–The Thirteen Petaled Rose, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

–In memory of Theodore Sturgeon.

Rescue Kitten

A Short Story by

Bernard Brandt

 

The kitten walked through the door, and then turned to sniff at the closed door that it had passed through. It was a very small creature, perhaps a few weeks old by its size, though it had remained at that size for ages. It was a gray, tiger striped tabby, a wisp of a thing, that could barely be seen at all, except perhaps in the full light of a noon sun.