Sirius Business

I couldn’t believe that the planets in the Sirius system are called Dash, Buddy, Goldie, Rusty, and Max. Planets of the Dog Star with these names? When I asked my coworkers about this, they laughed like I was the silly one.

Turns out their thinking went something like this: Dash for the fastest revolving innermost planet, Buddy for the closest neighbor, Goldie for their home planet – the best planet, Rusty for their red planet, and Max for the large gas giant.

Neville called me a Dog Lover, which it turns out means something more literal in their culture than what I first thought. People here don’t have pronounceable names, so Neville is just something I made up. It seemed to fit him. The squirrely look, the nervous giggle, the blotchy skin. I don’t know, maybe I was just sore. But it was a good burn, and you have to appreciate that.

We didn’t even know if there were habitable planets in the Sirius system when I went into cryosleep on Earth and now I have this nickname. If you had asked me back then, I would’ve said that watching the binary sunrise would be the top thing in my mind. Such is life, I guess.

Laughing with them about the nickname seems to have gone shockingly well. Turns out being able to take a joke is big in their culture, and even so, apparently not a lot of them can do it. Arthur, Richard, Simon, and Edward invited me to happy hour. Once you name someone Neville, you naturally keep the theme going.

Walking into the pub, I don’t know what I expected, it wasn’t this. Loud shrieks and laughter. I looked around and there was an especially unhinged looking individual as a one-man band playing with some intensity.

The barman must have been born a strong silent baby that never once smiled. It takes a lifetime of scowling to get that look. He slid us our pints. He pushed a bowl of what looked like leather straps towards us. I picked one and he nodded. I nodded back with a scowl of my own and walked back to the table.

So here’s how their drinking game works. You put on the shock collar. You chug the pint. You get zapped, synchronized to music. Whoever spills the most pays for the round.

What a world. And it’s just been one day.

Here are some notes about writing this.