The oldest man in the universe had the body of a twenty-six year old and the mind of a thirteen year old and no-one expected him to live and after a while no-one wanted him to. He was a relic – this pokeable curiousity – and should have been left behind the glass to be gawked at rather than played with.
The U.S.S. Rampage found him outside the Neopolitan Rift, halfway through its five year mission, star date 2307. A derelict ship was drifting in dead space, just another wreck to be checked, stripped and dismembered as was Star Fleet policy with anything they touched. Plant a flag, claim it as theirs and destroy it.
This one was a treasure trove of iconic memorabilia, probably the storage bin of a collector or trader from the before times. In amongst the junk horde there was a body, preserved by minimal life support. A real human being, a man, dating from the late twentieth century.
The relic was given to the junior science trainees as a special project. “Give them something to play with,” said Captain Horatio X. The machines had been overwanked recently and he needed to keep the crew constructively busy on useless tasks during the many times of boredom on the long haul.
THERE WAS SO MUCH THEY COULD LEARN ABOUT THE PAST FROM THIS HISTORICAL ARTIFACT
He was as surprised as anyone when the experiment actually worked. The life support was still functioning, the brain waves pulsed and slowly, over weeks, they woke the thing up. “Give them all a blue tick,” said the Captain.
He hurried down to the lower research decks to see the heirloom for himself, he didn’t want his chain pulled again like on Nebraska 6. They were telling the truth, the being was sitting upright. Incredible. It lived.
The Captain realised this was an opportunity to get gold ticked himself. This ugly deformed mutant could be spun into a major discovery. There was so much they could learn about the past from this historical artifact. There could even be a Schitzer Prize in it.
They leaned in to hear the first legendary words from this wise sage from another time. It drew breath and stared back at their expectant faces wide eyed.
“I smell cheese,” it said.
Disappointing.
HE WOULD NOT HAVE SURVIVED THE BIRTHING TESTS OF MODERN CIVILISATION
He was an ugly being. His muscles were in the wrong places, his eyes were weak, hair sprouted in weird fungal patterns. He had an unleasant odour that many hours of deep clean vacuuming could not erase.
At first they believed the unprecedented period of hypersleep was responsible for his impaired cognitive functions. On a tour of the ship the being could not understand how anything worked. The binary language of four dimensional symbology was completely alien to him. It had not existed in his primitive time. He would not have survived the birthing tests of modern civilisation, being more wheat than chaff.
He insisted his name was Mike but it was virtually unpronounceable and his recollection of his own time was deeply flawed. ‘Mike’ had all the continents and power structures of Earth completly mixed up. He made jokes and gee whiz sounds that were indecipherable and possibly unpleasant.
The crew were excited to meet this bizarre creature, but none could fathom his neolithic communications. All walked away scratching their arses and tutting their backs. After a while they concluded science was not to blame for flaws in the resuscitation.
He was just really frigging stupid.
Hove Press 