Cultivators

‘Your first aid leg pouch is made from beautiful timber. What kind?’

‘The yamala tree originated on the crabs' home planet. Its fibres have useful properties including being airtight and virtually fireproof and they release oily vapours that keep my scalpels, stapler and cauterizing gun rustproof. Very useful when we hunt. The crabs use metal and ceramics but I prefer the yamala. It's a very rare plant; rare mostly because they hunted their own biosphere bare.’

‘A pity to kill one, then.’

‘You know the ecosystem the crabs evolved to hunt in: either the yamala tree or I would survive.’

Adaptation

Bullets don’t work.

Your training won’t work: trusting the Chain of Command; the Table of Organisation; Command and Control; Intel won’t work because Command ordered Intel to interpret data in the old way: to defend against Earth’s erstwhile apex predator - Command’s peers. By the time undeniable proof arrived with Command and rejection proved futile, leadership was down to a single madman shrieking ancient truths over all remaining channels. But all of our ancestors survived the fledgling enemy so long ago - at least to the age of parenthood. Trust to Whom your ancestors prayed and follow Its Commandments.

Run.

Want to change

  “Now Daniel, do you still truly believe in vampires and that you’re one of them?”

   “Doctor, I’ve done it all for you; inkblots; word association; rebirthing; visualization; talking about my mother. Your collection of cigar advertisements. And yes; what’s true is true and it’s true there are vampires, including me.”

   “Don’t you know how intense and twitchy that sounds?”

   “Wouldn’t you after seven nights on this couch? The other vampires say I’m getting twitchier as the centuries pass.”

   “And what are they doing about that Daniel?”

   “Well, from time to time they feed me a psychiatrist. It seems to help.”

A sense of proportion

We parachuted laughing into the mouth of Hell, the lads and me. Our aircraft banked over Megiddo plain and we saw the Dragon crawling toward its foretold destination. The Beast's hosts swarmed below, overrunning Rapture-thinned Christian strongholds and fortified kibbutzim alike. The Damned lurched, moaning and feeding on anyone in their path while radioactive ash from the last of Mankind’s wars darkened the land. The replacement lieutenant, David something - James? Jones? - earned his pay and our gratitude with a few words as he lowered the tailgate for the jump. 'Cheer up boys - what's the worst that can happen?'

Extinction

   'Of course, our Donald's dinosaur mad. All day long it's 'dinosaurs this' and 'dinosaurs that' with Donald. He's got all the DVDs and even the old ones they don't show any more on VCR. And the books that boy has! The Big Book of Dinosaurs, The Dinosaur Pet Guide, Walking with Dinosaurs, The Dinosauria...He's just obsessed with the things. He puts his sandwiches in a dinosaur lunchbox and puts on dinosaur pyjamas and sleeps under a dinosaurs quilt. He just loves them.'

   'How old is he now?' 
'Just turned thirty-nine. There's still time to meet a nice girl, I'm sure.

Wistful Memories of Holiday Romance

You finished with that? Thanks. I'm starving and it's my fault; all of this is. It would have been a happier show and the Seventies might have spawned a saner, brighter world (one retaining some civilization - or at least agriculture) if I had stuck with the original light-hearted concept where each week the crew helps the guest stars recapture lost love or find someone new. But I desperately needed the work so I signed The Contract and the Big Guys play hardball. Before the Season Six Christmas special episode of The Love Craft I didn't eat anyone at all.

Shoot the messenger

‘Are you an angel?’ the President asked as I passed through the high balcony’s door. The religious ones are often swift to get the message, swift at drawing their conclusions and swifter still at departing from them. 

‘As a matter of fact sir, I am,’ I replied. ‘I am an angel in both the figurative sense of my mission and also in the literal sense: being the Greek for “messenger”. The world’s religions all tell of many kinds of angel.’

‘Well, which kind are you?’

‘I am the kind which in English is most commonly associated with the word “of”.’