Today’s story is “Once We Were Meerkats” by award-winning short story writer Huskyteer. 

You can find her at huskyteer.co.uk, or as @Huskyteer on Twitter. This story was first published in ROAR volume 10 from Bad Dog Books, which you can find at FurPlanet.com.

Read for you by Khaki, your faithful fireside companion.

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You’re listening to The Voice of Dog.

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I’m Khaki, your faithful fireside companion,

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and Today’s story is

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“Once We Were Meerkats”

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by award-winning short story writer

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Huskyteer. You can find her at huskyteer.co.uk,

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or as @Huskyteer on Twitter.

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This story was first published in ROAR volume 10 from Bad Dog Books,

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which you can find at FurPlanet.com.

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“Once We Were Meerkats”

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by Huskyteer The suns were at their highest point when the alarm went off.

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Some of us were on sentry duty,

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some minding the children in the nursery.

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The ones lucky enough to have their rest period during the hottest part of the day were sleeping or sunbathing.

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Most of us were digging and building.

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We scrambled for the shelter of the underground complex,

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scooping up kids and the infirm as we went,

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while the sirens screeched.

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Our leader, Mo, quietened us down.

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She got hold of the sentry who’d raised the alarm

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and took him aside so he could give her a statement.

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The rest of us took stock of who had tagged in.

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There were two missing:

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a surveyor, out checking the area for the best place to extend our site,

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and one of the engineers, who’d been working on the irrigation system

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out near the fences.

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Mo made a statement to the effect that it was probably a false alarm,

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and the missing just hadn’t heard the siren.

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We were to carry on with our work,

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maintaining extra high vigilance just in case.

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But the rumours were already flying;

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it’s impossible to keep a lid on anything around here.

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Some kind of monster

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—vast, stealthy, unseen

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—stalking around the outside of our walls and fences.

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Plenty of us had heard it or smelled it,

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now we came to think of it

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(it smelled of meat and ice),

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but none of us could say what it looked like.

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We already had sandbugs,

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pricklemouths and jumping snakes to contend with.

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We didn’t need invisible monsters too.

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We were just trying to build a city.

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Once we were meerkats.

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We’ve seen pictures in the database.

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They made us human-sized,

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so we can build human-sized homes for them,

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and we lost our tails.

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We still have the fur that keeps us warm in the cold nights

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and cool in the heat of the day,

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with a dark mask to protect our eyes from the sun.

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We still have strong hands and nails designed for burrowing,

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even though we also have tools.

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We’re still tough enough to deal with predators,

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and immune to some types of venom.

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We need little water,

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and we can eat almost anything.

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Most of all, we still look out for each other.

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That’s how we survive.

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We used to be cute.

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Our missing two didn’t come back,

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and search parties headed out to look for them.

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We returned with nothing to report:

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no prints, no scent,

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no sign of a struggle.

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We concluded that our surveyor and engineer had run off together;

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it happens sometimes that one or two of us decide to leave and start a new life according to their own rules.

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It’s not exactly encouraged, but there’s nothing any of us can do to prevent it,

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and perhaps it’s best to be rid of any dissatisfied element.

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We wished them well

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and forgot about them.

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We were busy. The city was behind schedule.

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The terrain was tricky,

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and we were having problems setting up the water supply.

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It was the diggers’ fault. No! The engineers! No, the planners who’d picked the site!

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The human ships had already left Earth,

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bound for their new colony,

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and even if we’d been able to get a message to them,

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they could not have turned back without a great deal of trouble and expense.

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We would have thousands of souls incoming, and not enough space and food for them. Or for us.

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We worked extra shifts,

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and those of us usually assigned to other jobs pitched in with the building work.

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We often found ourselves working alone to put in extra time on a project,

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rather than sticking in the groups that kept us safe from attack.

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Ears and eyelids drooped.

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All of us were tired

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and all of us were preoccupied.

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We were not as vigilant as we should have been.

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Our nights were short,

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but black and cold.

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One cold, black night a group of our teenagers chose to sneak out beyond the fences,

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looking for a kind of cactus that some among us were always willing to swear got you high.

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When they didn’t find one

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they teased a sandbug out of its burrow

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and poked at it a while,

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trying to flip it over with sticks while avoiding the stingers.

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It was while they were dancing around their prey,

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giggling and shrieking,

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that they noticed the starlight fade and the night become blacker.

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They fell silent

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and looked up to see a patch of darkness blotting out the line

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between sky and desert.

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Still shrieking and giggling at the adventure,

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they fled for the safety of home,

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where they found an unamused sentry waiting at the exit point they’d cut in the fence.

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We thought they were just making up a story to slide out of the trouble they were in for breaking bounds.

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Then we noticed another of our number was missing.

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We’re designed to cope with hostile environments

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and predatory wildlife.

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Our whole purpose is to turn desert planets into human homes.

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But this was outside our scope and way beyond our skills.

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The building work fell ever further behind.

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More of us were assigned to guard detail, but even so we worked with one eye on our current job

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and the other glancing over our shoulders for danger.

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We got jumpy, and we made mistakes that cost us precious time and materials to fix.

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The kids who’d run away from the desert night and left their friend behind began to drift away from the rest of us.

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Arguments began between those of us who wanted to get on with the job

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and those who wanted to arm ourselves,

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the whole lot of us, and sweep the desert for monsters.

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Some of us wanted to pull out altogether.

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There’s a protocol for when a planet reveals a hidden danger missed by the initial surveys.

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We’d never needed to activate it,

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nor had we heard of any crew who had.

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It’s a serious matter.

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The rest of us asked,

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what were we so afraid of?

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Ghosts? Stories? Funny smells?

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Kid stuff. We were

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divided. That never happens.

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Unity is in our genes.

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Sure, we have our spats and squabbles, but they don’t last.

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In the worst case Mo has to knock a few heads together, or someone bops someone else on the nose, and it’s all sweet again.

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Because we have purpose.

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Together. We don’t just

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blindly follow instructions.

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We might have a vast bank of plans to work from,

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but every planet is different, so we often need to improvise and substitute.

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Each city we create is unique,

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built in response to the particular problems and advantages of the landscape and climate.

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Not all of us are solid muscle,

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built for labour and protection.

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We are architects, technicians and scientists.

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Some of us are record-keepers,

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adding to the sum of knowledge that our crew and others can draw from.

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Some of us describe ourselves as artists,

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or even visionaries.

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We scientists and visionaries set to work on this new problem.

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Our research and discussions

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led us to the conclusion that there was no such thing as the invisible.

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Just because we, ourselves, could not see something

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did not mean it couldn’t be seen.

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So we adapted the goggles we use for night work

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to help us see beyond our usual range.

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We argued over whether the aim of our exploration should be to investigate or to kill.

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Either way, we concluded,

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we would need to defend ourselves.

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Our sentries already had electrical weapons as well as firearms,

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and to these we added a type that used sound to disable and disorientate.

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Some of us secretly fashioned our own armaments:

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knives and clubs, crude but reassuring.

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One of us made a helmet of wires to protect his brain from what he described as alien mind-rays, and we teased him without mercy.

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Then we went hunting.

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Split into groups,

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weapons on our shoulders,

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we divided the desert surrounding our base into squares and we patrolled.

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Nothing. We tried at different hours of the day and night.

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We looked for tracks, and for burrows where a large creature might lie low if it heard us coming.

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We lost one of our fighters to a jumping snake, but this, at least, was the kind of loss we could understand.

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One of us had an idea.

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We had done our patrolling in groups, of course. The ones who were taken had been isolated,

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working remotely or left behind.

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What if someone tried going into the desert alone?

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One of us kept their idea a secret, so as not to be prevented,

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and executed it privately.

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One of us walked out into the night

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weaponless, without a word of goodbye to friends or family,

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and sat atop a dune

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with the cold wind ruffling their fur,

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and waited for the unknown. It came.

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It came as a rush of meat-scented air,

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and a distortion in the line of the horizon.

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The goggles showed a glowing blur,

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vast and wavering.

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A formless cloud without recognisable features like legs,

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eyes, or teeth. One of us spread furred hands out wide to demonstrate a lack of weapons, and looked at the monster,

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and did not faint or run away.

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The cloud moved forward

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and settled in the sand around the dune,

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filling each wind-carved hollow.

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One of us touched a soft nose to something less than solid,

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more than gas. Our little kids were first to figure out there was something going on,

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and cluster around the fence.

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Then our teenagers slunk out of the shadows, trying to look as if they were there by accident and found the whole thing boring.

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The rest of us came in pairs or groups,

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looking for our young or our friends.

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We huddled up to the fence and peered over each other,

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passing our pairs of goggles around.

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“I think you should come out here. All of you,”

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one of us called.

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We debated. Was it a trick?

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Had we lost another to a monster that was now puppeting one of us to lure the rest into its maw?

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We raised our voices, and some of us scuffled in the sand, pulling towards or away.

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Mo ended it. She stepped forward to do her leader’s duty,

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and we would not let her go alone.

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Our strongest and bravest went first,

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but the rest of us were not far behind.

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None of us intended the kids to come, of course,

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but they sneaked along anyway, dropping to all fours, skittering between our legs and racing through the fence before we could grab them.

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We would confront the unknown

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for ourselves, and for our lost,

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and for our human employers when they arrived.

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We swarmed the dune together

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and stood in a mass.

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Parents held children in their arms.

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Mo drew herself up tall, at the very front,

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as if she could shield us all.

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Nobody whispered or chattered.

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We were never this silent.

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Our silence, our stillness or our concentration allowed it in.

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We all took it in at once:

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the knowledge that the cloud creature was alone

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and dying on a world that no longer held life,

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and so could not sustain it by renewing its cells

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—until we came. Now we had questions, and we yelled them all at once.

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“One at a time,” Mo called,

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but we drowned her out.

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We became aware of shapes forming in the foggy cloud,

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and we craned forward.

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Those of us with goggles, and the youngest of us, could see most clearly.

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Our missing. They lay curled up,

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eyes closed and unresponsive,

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but none of them looked hurt,

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and they were breathing.

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Some of us broke away to run down and hold them.

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Eyes blinked open.

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These two are too old,

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and this one too young,

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we now knew. For what?

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we wondered. We’d seen movies. We’d scared each other, as kids, with stories of crews who’d ended up as

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exhibits in some alien zoo.

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The answer sent ripples through our minds,

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and raised the fur on our spines.

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We felt the strained gaps between atoms barely held together

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and we knew what would become of this planet when the force could no longer hold.

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I need one. I take one.

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“No deal,” Mo said. “We’re family. We stick together.”

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We heard her words,

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but we also felt them

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as the alien felt them,

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broken down into emotion and sensation.

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It was a new kind of togetherness.

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We considered the offer.

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We did not bicker or fight.

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Each of us turned the thought around silently,

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each in our own mind.

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This city we’re building with such care isn’t for us.

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It’s for them. Their eyes aren’t as good as ours, so there are lights all along the tunnel walls and in the subterranean spaces.

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Really they prefer to be above ground, in the sunshine,

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so as well as setting up the solar panels we have to pour a lot of time and resources into houses with air-conditioning for their elite,

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and into safely fenced parks and sports arenas.

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When it’s done at last, they arrive in ships

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and move in to their new world.

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Those ships then carry us to the next unclaimed planet, to start all over again.

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There’s no place that we can call home.

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It’s a life that most of us like,

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but it isn’t for everyone.

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One of us said: “I’ll do it.”

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One of us was scooped up into that cloud,

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and felt the planet fade away.

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One of us had our mind enveloped by another.

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Tell me, it said. So I began my story.

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------- This story was

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“Once We Were Meerkats” by Huskyteer,

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read for you by Khaki,

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your faithful fireside companion.

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Thank you for listening to the Voice of Dog