Higher Beings

Looking for some brutally honest feedback. I know there is a lot wrong with this, but after three edits I'm not sure how I can improve it further.

Young Prince Umek stomped his foot three times on the wooden dais before resuming his pacing. The prince was in a sulk because his pet tiger was dead. The tiger had not fallen to illness, nor had it suffered some tragic accident. Instead, the prince had ripped it’s head off in a fit of rage. This was not an unusual feat of strength for an Ortian adolescent, since they stood nearly seventeen feet tall and possessed the strength of twenty humans. The strength of humans, however, was not common Ortian knowledge. In fact, Ortians did not even know humans existed, at least not yet. Earth was, after all, beyond the edge of Ortian explored space, and this was not saying much because Ortians had only ever ventured as far out into space as their first moon, Osk, a celestial body with an orbit 750,000 miles above the planet. That had been seven hundred years before the Pingu dynasty, of which Prince Umek was soon to be the nine hundred and fiftieth ruler.

“We’ll get you a new tiger, darling,” said his mother, the eighteenth wife of Emperor Furzak IV.

To clarify, she was not number eighteen in a succession of wives, but rather one of eighteen currently married to the emperor. The designation of eighteenth wife was completely arbitrary because all eighteen women had married Furzak IV on the same day. The eighteenth wife did, however, have the distinction of being the hairiest of the lot. Ortians were covered in hair from head to toe, but the volume of hair differed from Ortian to Ortian. The fifth wife, for instance, had such short hair that she appeared not to have any hair at all. She was considered to be very exotic, but was not ranked as the most beautiful of the eighteen wives. That honor was given to Prince Umek’s mother, who incidentally enough was the only wife to have produced a male heir. Well, that isn’t entirely the case. One of the other wives had given birth to a boy, but the failure to separate mother from child immediately after birth had resulted in her eating the child. Ortian mothers often ate at least one of their children, and in one particularly odd incident, her entire litter. An Ortian female produced litters of between two and ten offspring. If they produced more than four offspring, the excess children ran the risk of starving to death. Ortian females only have four breasts and are only capable of feeding one time per day. The offspring that miss the teat are sent to the Ministry for Excessive Progeny. Excessive progeny are trained for industrial or domestic work, so it was possible for someone like Prince Umek to have actual siblings working as his servants, and he did. His chief concubine – Ortians start early – was his own sister Umel – Ortians also have no objections to incestuous relationships.

The Ortians are, to put it bluntly, the worst creatures in the universe. Worse even than the Yeezies of Bellaxar 6, who through some strange twist of fate, have come to model themselves after a terrestrial pop star named Kanye West. At least the Yeezies have no concept of how terrible they are. Ortians, on the other hand, revel in their selfish amorality. But do not fret. You will not have to lament their unfortunate existence for very long, as the Ortians are about to suffer the worst fate that can befall a civilization.

“I don’t want another tiger,” Prince Umek huffed.

He then blew tendrils of orange snot out of his vestigial gills. Blowing bodily fluids out of their gills is a common gesture of discontent among Ortians. This made their arguments some of the most disgusting arguments in existence. Diplomatic congress between Ortians often resulted in the congregants emerging from royal meeting halls covered in all manner of filth.

“I didn’t even want that tiger,” he continued. “That is precisely why I ripped his head off.”

“Then what is it you want, my darling? What would make you smile again?”

Ortians do not smile, not in the way that humans smile. Ortian smiles appear as grimaces, like the face you might make after decades of chronic constipation. Their smiles also do not represent feelings of happiness or contentment, for Ortians are never happy or content. Happiness is, in fact, an illness among the Ortians, often treated with severe shock therapy.

“I want—“

Prince Umek was unable to finish his sentence. It wasn’t that he could not decide what he wanted, and he certainly had not been interrupted. He simply ceased to exist, along with the entire planet of Orta and the entire solar system it had once inhabited.

Ursa Paju sprang from her chair at the observation terminal. The entire sector of space she had just been checking in on had, without warning, vanished from her monitor. She might have dismissed the sudden disappearance as a glitch in the system, but the system was designed to never glitch. This was not the vacant claim of arrogant engineers, because the system had been created by infallible beings who had existed at the beginning of time, and would probably exist at the end of time, as well. Those beings had been suspiciously absent since approximately eleven seconds after the big bang, but eleven seconds had been all they needed to create the UBM, or Universal Balance Machine, often referred to by those attending the machine as the Universal Baby Monitor.

Those tasked with monitoring the universe and tracking the multitude of changes were a race of beings often referred to in biblical documents as angels, alephs, seraphim, etc. Those were all delightful designations that these beings did not mind at all, but the actual name of their species is Woops, not to be confused with Whoops, which we all know is the universal designation for blunders both large and small. Even though it seems the two words have similar etymology, they are in fact extremely different words. Whoops is actually derived from the phrase whoopsy daisy, the coining of which has been attributed to both William Shakespeare and Howdy Doody. The word was actually coined by a tenth century midwife with a tendency toward dropping newborns. The species designation Woops, on the other hand, was coined by The Auspice, a supreme being responsible for naming all things. Yes, there are several supreme beings. Six, in fact. God aka Allah being one of them. There used to be seven, but Vishnu was downgraded from a supreme being to superior being around the same time Pluto received its own downgrade. There was a lot of downgrading going on in those days, but that’s a story for another time.

Ursa Paju, in the midst of springing from her chair, also banged her elbow on the side of the desk where the UBM was situated. This was not the only UBM terminal in the universe, but one of many, each assigned to a different quadrant of the universe. Ursa Paju was one of a thousand Woops assigned to this particular terminal, each shift lasting approximately twenty-seven Earth years.

Not only did Ursa Paju bang her elbow, she quickly discovered that her entire leg had fallen asleep, and so collapsed to the ground when she tried to put weight on it.

“Unifark,” she shouted.

Unifark is the cosmic equivalent of the word shit.

She shook her leg, willing it to come alive again. Once the pins and needles subside, she scrambled to her feet and pressed the red button on the wall. There was nothing else in the room apart from the desk, the chair, the UBM, and that big red button. There wasn’t even a door to enter. Entrance and egress were achieved through quantum teleportation. At the exact same instant she pushed the red button, a being took form in front of her. Woops are one of the few species in the universe that resemble humans, except they lack genitalia and possess a sturdy set of wings. Some wings were covered in feathers, like those of Ursa Pajor, some were leathery bat-like wings, and some, particularly the wings belonging to warrior Woops, were covered in metal armor. The angel that appeared before Ursa Pajor had metal armor covering his wings, but the armor was more decoration than protection. Seego Assan had never fought in any cosmic wars, at least none on record, but he considered himself to be a Woop of the highest caliber. And he was, as far as Ursa Pajor knew.

“Report!” he said, a little louder than necessary.

He held up his finger, indicating he needed a moment.

He cleared his and then said, “Apologies, Ursa. A new black hole appeared in Tesla Quadrant and I had to see it for myself. You know how loud an event horizon can be.”

Tesla Quadrant was the newest region of space, having been expelled from the singularity a mere eighty years earlier. It was Seego who had decided to name the quadrant after an Earth scientist named Nikola Tesla. He had called a much needed consolation. Some had argued that it should have been called the Einstein Quadrant, but Seego and his supporters were uniformly against naming an entire quadrant after an incestuous hack.

“Was there another galactic collision?” Seego asked.

“No, sir, something more serious,” she replied. “The Shamian System is gone.”

“Oh dear,” Seego said. “Supernova?”

“No, sir,” she said. “I mean it simply vanished.”

Seego gave her a bemused look. He crossed to the terminal and sat down in the chair, his wings grinding into the wing slot. There was no means of entering information into the UBM. It simply responded to the desires of the user. Seego tried to call up the Shamian system, but the terminal blared at him, flashing a harsh red screen. The alarm went silent and the screen stopped flashing as Seego went into the monitoring archive. He accessed the Shamian system log and grew even more perplexed.

“It’s gone,” he muttered.

“Sir?” Ursa Pajor leaned in to hear him better.

Seego sprang from the chair in a fluid motion, but instead of his wings sliding out of the slot, the entire chair came up with him. Ursa Pajor lurched forward to help him. Seego flapped his wings before she could reach him, ripping the chair in half and sending both halves spinning dangerously across the room. Ursa Pajor was awed by this feat of wing strength, and more than a little turned on. Woops do not have genitalia, so the form of arousal she felt was more spiritual than sexual. Woops also choose a gender when they are created, so it was not unusual for two Woops to engage in an angelic form of sexual congress.