One pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, mirrored and overlaid, and with the appropriate suggestions of eyes and a smile added
Galactic wedding gifts are an interesting situation in the Ghizizelli neck of the Milky Way. Since the starship Amanirenas had rescued one such gift, I as captain got pulled into a whole interstellar discussion about a more controversial one, and got out by saying “None of the planets involved are part of the human-led consortium I serve, so, the Prime Directive requires that I as a fleet captain not interfere with that whole process.”
“You did well on that, Captain Niece,” my uncle, Admiral Benjamin Banneker-Jackson said.
“I learned from the best, Uncle Admiral.”
It was about to be a whole situation, and we as humans just couldn't get involved even though we were close enough to know what was going to go down.
It is a bad day on Earth when someone describes your defeat in terms of handing you your head in a handbasket – it relates to old war practices that got so advanced that certain swords had baskets attached to catch heads after the severing had occurred. The swoop and the catch – that had to take some kind of skill I'm glad is more or less lost to history on Earth.
However, when someone hands you a gift in which the head is the handbasket, one might as well take caution also, for those are whole sentient beings telepathically communicating with the giver, and together they are running a spy ring … a symbiotic parasitic relationship on a galactic scale.
“But they look so cheerful, Captain!” Lt. Morimoto said to me.
“Marketing, Lieutenant,” I said. “Apparently, we're not the only creatures in this galactic neck of the woods that are susceptible to it to the point of not switching on our critical thinking.”
However, the Ghizizelli royalty, in general, were not the ones to play with. I knew there was a good chance that when this wedding gift was presented, it was going to backfire spectacularly on the presenter at some point. Yet it was not the Amanirenas's problem to solve. The Prime Directive essentially meant we could skip that whole situation. We were just re-entering the Solar System before the blow-up occurred.
“Well,” Lt. Cmdr. Almuz said to me, “we will not be going through that area of space again for a little while.”
“All over a cheerful-looking handbasket-resembling attempt to dominate somebody else – only for the offending group of beings to get handed their heads in a handbasket after all,” I said.
“Well,” Lt. Cmdr. Almuz said, “they weren't ready, but then again, they kinda were prepared.”
“In the worst possible way, Lieutenant Commander. But, another old saying: play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”