Olieusk

Back in my teenage years when I was talking smack about being a better writer than those guys writing the Star Wars novels of the day, my dad challenged me to write a Sci-Fi novel about alien technology that found its way to Earth. Unbeknownst to me that a few decades later that the show Warehouse 13 would be so popular, I shelved the idea and went on with my interests of dating and playing Nintendo. Some time later, in my college years, I remembered that conversation with my dad and was overtaken with a moment of creativity. I wrote out the concept for the alien race and how an asteroid collision with one of their ships sent some items tumbling through space. Some of those items survived to land on Earth. A young scientist happens across an item when visiting his parent's farm and is present when the secret government task force shows up to collect it. Proving his usefulness in determining the properties of the alien artifact, the scientist is recruited to work with the task force to find and retrieve the other items around the globe. Part of the task force team back at their base is a cooperating member of the alien race who aids in identifying items and their purposes.

My big idea to push for originality was to make the alien race a quasi-arachnid but with only four limbs named the Olieusk. They usually walk on all four legs and can stick to surfaces like arachnids. The skin is dark and wrinkly like a raisin, but oily. It cannot speak, but it can communicate through gestures, skin manipulation (like how your face changes smiling versus frowning), and coloration as the skin oils are heat sensitive. There are no apparent "eyes" to speak of, but the alien can see with heat sensitive glands occurring regularly in a circular pattern around the "crown" of the head. The mouth is small and is used to slurp liquids. It eats by spitting highly caustic (to humans) digestive fluid onto their food to dissolve it into something they can ingest. Omnivorous, they will digest most plant life and many types of insects. They do not care for meat. Waste always comes out as dry solids as liquids are 100% used to produce oils, sweat, digestive fluids, and blood. Being intelligent and civilized, the aliens have developed a type of tool belt that slings about their midsection to hold their gear. They are adept at using all four limbs equally to hold and manipulate tools in addition to movement. Unlike arachnids, however, they are not poisonous and do not possess spinnerets.

That is as far as I ever got with this concept. As time progressed, shows like The X-Files, Stargate, and Warehouse 13 came and went, suppressing my desire to write this novel due to my thinking it was not "original" enough. (See my entry on Originality for why I thought this way.) As I populate this site with all the ideas I have ever thought, this book is likely to be one of the items that I will be most likely to pick up and finish.

-7/10/13-