Story Beginnings...?

[Pyrotex]

Hello peers and peerettes,


Maybe some of you science fiction or literary fans will find this interesting.
I am going to post (here) the beginning of a science fiction short story. Notice the emphasis on "short". The story is built around a mystery.

This one types out to about a page. That should be the limit of other entries.

Now--you're job is to propose an ending for the story that explains the mystery. The tone may be comic or horror or tragic. Parenthetical remarks, if necessary, should be inserted {between braces}.

Continue to the next post...

[Pyrotex]

{Notice the pun in the title. That is part of the mystery.}

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What Do You Do With a Drunken Say-Loar?


The Loars are not an ugly race, nor are they threatening in any outrageous way, as were the various Hollywood aliens that featured in two century's worth of space-horror flicks. Except for the yellowish skin, the large brown warts, and the stiff, bristly hair, they are a most humanoid race of beings. Their lovely eyes, and their propensity for wearing Earth-style three piece suits and silk ties, render them to Humanity as probably the favorite extra-terrestial species that have ever visited our fair planet.

Most people do not know that there are actually two separate species of Loars. Of course, we might have to redefine the word "species" here, for these two distinct groups of aliens can interbreed. So we are told. However, this is an act that all Loars find extremely loathsome. The laws of both Loar planets proscribe such acts as criminal in the extreme. But they will not discuss with us exactly why. All our attempts to inquire into the matter have been politely but firmly rebuffed.

The two Loars come from planets around two stars a mere two light-months apart. Their mythology says that they had a common origin, probably somewhere beyond the star Betelgeuse, which dominates their common skies. This origin is said to have been over 300,000 (Earth) years ago, and to basically have been an act of colonization. Civilization on the two planets flourished -- then collapsed. Both societies degenerated to the point where they forgot each other's existence, and took to throwing rocks as their highest expression of technology.

Eventually, civilization -- and FTL space flight -- returned to the Loars, but their separation on two worlds, had led of course to genetic drift. The two planets were named (as close as we Humans can pronounce them), Jess and Trow.

This is not to say that the Jess-Loars and the Trow-Loars were enemies. Quite the opposite. The two cultures were delighted to re-discover each other, set up embassies on each other's planets, and begin a booming business in the trade of ideas, philosophies, art, and hand-made grezle fabrics. There has, to our knowledge, never been a cross word between their two governments, though one is a loose confederation of republics and the other is a tightly structured benign dictatorship ruled over by the CEO of their one and only inter-continental corporation.

Toward the end of our Twenty-First Century, delegates from the United Planets of Sphthgloor (which loosely translates to the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy) showed up in our skies and asked if we would like to join, as we had just test-flown our first FTL spacecraft. We said yes, and that was that. No muss, no fuss, no interstellar battles with laser cannons and all that. We got diplomats. We got updated star maps. We got useful tips on how to break the 2Pi*C speed limit without creating dangerous graviton wakes. We got samples of grezle fabrics in a variety of exciting colors.

We got to choose a "buddy" civilization with whom we could work out the details of our advancement into polite galactic society. Given their Humanoid qualities, and the huge profits we were making selling silk neckties, we chose the Loars. We built a huge spaceport, convention center, and residential high-rise for the Loars halfway between Oklahoma City and St. Louis. Their sleek and sharp-looking space ships descended like snow flakes and settled into their landing cribs with nary a sound.

People noticed that the Loar space ships consisted of two massive, cylindrical hulls connected by stantions and cables. The hulls were identical except for the sole difference of a single painted symbol. As it turned out, one ship was marked Jess-Loar and the other Trow-Loar, for the crew was segregated by planet of origin.

People noticed this and wondered why two peoples who were nearly indistinguishable (except for a tendency for the Jess-Loar to prefer striped ties, and the Trow-Loars to prefer paisley), and who got along so well with each other, should keep themselves so strictly divided from each other. Soon after that, it was noticed that at conferences and cultural exchanges, only representatives from one or the other of the Loars showed up--never a mix of the two.

It was quite a puzzle, and not a few Humans wondered at the reason (or reasons) behind this odd behavior. /////

{Okay, now it's your turn. Notice, that I have subtly identified three kinds or species of Loars: Jess-Loars, Trow-Loars and Say-Loars! Your plot solutions must take all three into consideration.}