Skulloctopus from Outer Space

Skul­loc­to­pus

The “Skul­loc­to­pus from Outer Space” is a men­ac­ing bio-mechanical crea­ture that was cre­ated by the on board com­puter of a space craft from a secret 1960’s Soviet manned Mars land­ing that lost com­mu­ni­ca­tion just before land­ing on the red planet. With no way back to Earth and a lim­ited amount of food and water, the on board com­puter seeks a way to sur­vive the death of the crew and gain mobility.

Using its robotic arms the com­puter builds the “Skul­loc­to­pus” by join­ing the skull and brain of one of the cos­mo­nauts with the ten­ta­cle legs of a crea­ture that the crew had col­lected from beneath the sur­face of Mars. Then by incor­po­rat­ing parts of the land­ing crafts sys­tems and down­load­ing all of its data and pro­grams, the on-board com­puter becomes the self suf­fi­cient solar pow­ered mobil brain called “Skul­loc­to­pus”. The prime direc­tive of this other world Franken­stein is to find a way to return to Earth.

Skul­loc­to­pus

The essence of the Skul­loc­to­pus is a skull full of com­puter dri­ven robotic sys­tems pow­ered by a solar bat­tery. As such, he is some­what like a Her­mit Crab, in that he is always look­ing for a new body form that might give him greater mobil­ity or an improved defense capa­bil­ity. When an oppor­tu­nity arrises he removes the head of any given life form and hooks him­self up to the new body.

After thirty-seven years of wan­der­ing the bar­ren red deserts of Mars in search of some form of intel­li­gence, Skul­loc­to­pus detects a sen­sory input on his scan­ner that is unlike any data he has yet received. Just as he deter­mines the ori­gin of this trans­mis­sion is 98 degrees above the sur­face, a group of dark saucer shaped space­crafts with red scan­ning lights silently descend from the black sky to thirty feet above him. There was a high pitched buzzing tone as a Doku­pus tele­ported to the sur­face from one of the hov­er­ing ships and mate­ri­al­ized in front of him. He looked at the white skull in the out­stretched hand of the Doku­pus and Skul­loc­to­pus saw this as a ges­ture of peace and friend­ship. It was love at first sight.