Suggestions would be appreciated. As would pointing out any grevous spelling mistakes that I am usually known to miss. Also I was debating over the last alien segment. Should I just kill them off, or leave it as is? And for the record, I don't have *any* idea how stick shifts work.
+++
From the desk of esteemed high chancellor Harfenglafenflaven the 3rd, representative of planet Vrystlxin
To:
President Kraal of the planet Flangral
Dutchess Greg of the planet Yumon
Mrs. J who survives the late Prime Minster W of the planet 4
Ky Dy who survives his late roommate Te Re who was the second brother of the late president Go Bo of the planet Zyragaphas’d
The potted plant who survives the late population of Grahf Capital City of the planet Grahf
The planet Saun who survives the late population of the planet Saun
Subject:
Our bad.
==========
Maybe in the final analysis, your apocalypse is just a matter of perspective. Or something like that. Or not.
-James Finn Garner
Gary leaned back against his rolled up sleeping bag and looked at the concrete ceiling. It couldn't have been a week, they hadn't eaten enough of the canned food for it to be a week. Four or five days. That's how long it had been since everything Gary had known was wiped out in an otherwise average night. He could still remember that first day; hobbling along destroyed streets with Jen in tow, dodging sporatic gunfire from the lawless gangs, and finally happening upon the bomb shelter when the current inhabitants were finishing off the former inhabitants.
Gary let his gaze drop to his companions in the shelter, what was left of them anyways. Most of the ones with guns, the ones that had cleared out the original owners, had disappeared when they went out scouting on the second day. The only one left was a grizzled man in his fifties with grey hair and a hunting jacket packed with rations, ammo, handguns, and more ammo. He would only let other people refer to him as Seargent Irons. The other three weren't from his group of militia, they were just tagging along like Gary and Jen.
First was Alexa Sellicci. She had short black hair, wore a short black dress, and was the textbook definition of ice queen. She hadn't, at least visibly, been affected by anything that had happened. She claimed to be a child counseler, and Gary wouldn't have doubted it in the slightest.
The next was Bernard Stewart, a short, pudgy man with large glasses and a tattered business suit. He hadn't spoken much in the days they had been together, instead he just sat in a corner looking at the wall and occasionally scribbling something in his notebook.
Finally there was "Wally". Gary hadn't bothered to remember the ten-year-old kid's real name, and that one had just gotten stuck in his head. Wally had kept pretty quiet too, but he had spent his time looking out of the small corner of the glass window not covered by an overturned car. The one time Gary had looked up at him when he was doing this he had seen the kid smiling, and that scared Gary nearly as much as what was happening outside.
As for what had been happening outside, none of them knew very well. They all heard the gunfire and yelling on that first day, and the complete absence of any of it the next day. And the next day after that when the giant yellow monolith had appeared in the distance during the night, almost as if by magic. And then, less then half an hour ago, when that giant spacecraft had shot off into the sky. Gary wasn't sure why, but he felt as if there was something terrible on that ship, and that it was leaving the planet forever, and that maybe, just maybe, things would be getting better.
Irony is such a bitch.
"What's that thing?" Wally asked while pointing out the window. Alexa walked over and joined him at the window.
"It looks like a large crab. It is heading this way." She droned in her emotionless voice. This set Sergent Irons in action. He shoved both of them away from the window and loaded the handgun that had appeared in his hands.
"Enemy re-enforcements! Die you commie pigs!' he shouted as he fired through the window. The bullets bounced harmlessly off of the creature's hard shell and didn't even slow it down. With one smack of its claw the car was thrown clear of the window and with another there no longer was a window. Irons had ducked in time to avoid the initial attack, and was safe due to the crab's lack of articulation. "Base has been compromised. We need evac, now!"
"What evac?" Gary shouted back, "There's only one way in!"
Irons was silent for a moment before pulling a red stick out of his hunting jacket.
"Fire in the hole!"
-----
He's not here...
Chandra sighed. She had checked over the group twice and Gary wasn't there. Not that he was likely to be. She had said to meet in the shelter hours ago (if the sun was any indication), and Gary probably hadn't-
No! Don't think like that! Chandra shook the thought from her head and started to make her way though the awakening piles of bodies. She had almost made it out when a sudden dizzy spell overcame her and she was forced to lean against a wall for support. It's only noon, she tired to reason, I should have been okay for the rest of the day at least. But even wishfull thinking didn't keep away the cold, inevitable truth from crushing her. She was out of medication, and every twenty four hour pharmacy in the city had just taken an extented vacation.
"You okay lady? You come'n off a high or something?"
Chandra turned around and found herself looking down at a short latina of about fourteen years. She was wearing baggy clothing (probably designer labels) and was hefting a large kitchen knife in one hand. She had another knife strapped to her thigh and neither looked very clean.
"I... I just need to find a drugstore or something..." Chandra mumbled, her eyes locked on the knife.
"Ha ha!" the girl responded, "Ain't nothing left in any of the stores in town. Bill cleaned them the fuck out. You need something, you talk to Smuggler. I can set you up."
"Who?" Chandra was about to ask when her voice was droned out by the heavy *WHUMP* of a discharged plasma burst. She spun around to see a more or less normal investment banker standing on top of an SUV. The "less" would be attributed to his faux leopard skin cowboy hat and that he was holding in his hands the largest gun Chandra had ever seen in her life.
"Listen up varmints!" Bill projected while swinging around his newly aquired plasma rifle. "You're all now members of Buf... Blackbeard Bill's crew. Any objections?"
"Yo, fuck you muthafucker!" one member of a group of young men wearing similar colored bandanas and hefting Uzis responded, "Hand over the fancy shit unless you want to get fuck'n capped, bitch!"
The newly christened Blackbeard Bill swung his plasma rifle around to them and fired, turning the group of five men into a carbon stain on the concrete. He addressed his audience of two hundred again, "Any more?"
-----
Terref, second in command of the Quanzarian Scientific Forces, was not happy. In fact, he was really quite mad, but that was to be expected when every last page of every single scientific journal he had ever written was destroyed by... by...
"MILK!" Terref shouted as he threw open the doors to the command room. The group of assorted techs who had gathered in a circle in the room turned as one to face him. "MILK!" He again shouted, as if to justify the absurdness of it. "Would ANY of you care to explain WHAT IS GOING ON?!"
One of the techs slithered slightly closer to Terref while the rest of the group quickly hid a handfull of straws under a console. "Well, the autopilot worked fine, so no one bothered to check any of the other systems..." He mumbled while wringing his hands. Terref was about to open his mouth to unleash another verbal assault, but he hesitated.
"What are you talking about?"
The tech, suddenly on unfamiliar ground, looked to his companions for support. They slithered farther away from the two. "Ah, what you're talking about, sir."
"I'm talking about my computer, what are you talking about?"
The tech swallowed," Ah, well, when the auto pilot turned off we started to make the preperations for landing and, well... nothing worked."
Terref continued to stare a hole into the tech.
"So, so we sent someone down to check out the ship's mainframe and, well, the entire room was flooded."
"Flooded."
"With milk, sir."
"With milk."
"So the only systems that are still working are the autopilot and the security systems."
"Security... so we know who did this?"
The tech again looked to the other techs. They had moved even further away during the conversation. "Yes sir, it, ah... it was your son. And Lygn Far's boy too, they both, um, milked the ship..."
A sneer crossed Terref's face, which, due to Quanzarian physology, looked even more menacing then usual. "Lygn, that Vryslxinazian dog! It's just like him to put innocent innocent children up to this!"
"Well, actually they might have done it themselves," The tech interupted," See Kiffy and L, you know, that view screen show, well a few weeks back they started this gag where they'd just pour milk on people for no reason, and then all the kids started to copy-"
"How soon until the repairs are complete?"
"Just a few hours," the tech said as he quickly switched gears, "We just have to empty the computer room and let them dry. The autopilot dropped us in an orbit away from the moon, so there's nothing at all to worry about."
-----
The few molocules that existed this high up were pushed out of the way as the Vryslxinaz destroyer class dropped out of hyperspace. It would be a few minutes before the sensors could be reactivated, so they were limited to looking out the ship's portholes. It was then that Hruds Gassin, a mechanic third class, made the most, and last, astute observation of his life.
"Hey! Look at that thing!"
And then the Quanzarian starship smashed into the Vryslxinaz starship at several hundred miles per hour.
-----
It was times like this, Gary mused, that he most missed having functional legs. Well, not that he had ever had to flee down back allys supported by a teenage girl and delusonal militia man while keeping a watch out for a giant crab which could be dead or could be very very mad. Just situations like this. However, the farther that they got from the destroyed shelter, the more that Gary realised that they really weren't headed anywhere.
"Hey, hey wait a minute," Gary said. And, realizing he wasn't in control of his own movement, added," Where are we going?"
"Just up the block. There's a wearhouse ve can hide in," Bernard, who was in the lead, said.
"What?"
"A vearhouse. Ve vill be zafe in zere," He repeated, slipping further into a cheesy german accent.
"Um, okay," Gary relented, slightly creeped out by his Bernard's suddenly appearing accent. It wasn't enough to actually register, though, considering everthing else that had happened. And considering that, for the entire time they had been outdoors, Wally had been skipping.
-----
Smuggler was not, as it were, a pleasant person to look at. An even two hundred fifty pounts for his five foot two frame, long string like hair caked to the sides of his head with grease, a face covered with more acne than features, and clothed in a woman's fur coat, he was possibly the most vile person Chandra ever saw who was still alive. Unfortunaly, he was also the single most important person to Chandra's life at the moment.
"So, Ms. Sorana... it appears that you have need of my services," he said while steepling his fingers on top of a mahogany table. Smuggler was, as it turned out, second in command of the former Buffalo Bill current Blackbeard Bill's opperation. Currently all three (Chandra, Smuggler, and the girl who lead Chandra here and who's name, coincidentally enough, was Knife) were in Blackbeard Bill's temporary base of operations, an oddly untouched Bank of America.
"Yes. I don't know how to pay you, but-"
"You will find ways of paying me," Smuggler cut her off as he leaned back in his over-cusioned leather chair," Bill will be moving the enitre operation out of the city tomorrow and heading down the coast to find his 'Battleship' has he put it. He is a fool, and will probably get us all killed, but until then I can use him to build up an army and, when the time is right, I'll push him out of the picture and then-"
"Yes, yes," Chandra quickly cut in before he broke into diabolical laughter," But I might not be here by that time without my medication."
"You shall have your pills," he said through a wide sneer," Of all the people here, you are the only one who depends upon me for her very life. You are quite valuable to me."
-----
"Sure, let's use that experimental hyperdrive system, I'm sure it works fine," Lygn Far muttered while climbing through an airshaft. Miracuously the ship itself survived the collision with the other starship and the crash landing on the planet, but it seemed like Captain Lygn was the only that had lived through it.
"So what if the sensors have to be shut down. I'm sure nothing could happen..." he again muttered. He dropped off the rung ladder and landed next to a door helpfully labeled "Emergency Airlock" in seventy nine languages and two colors. He was about to open the door when the wind was knocked out of him by a heavy and blob like creature. Now on the floor, he twisted to one side to roll it off of him. When both had regained themselves they looked each other in the eyes, pointed at one another, and shouted:
"YOU!"
Terref steadied himself and dusted himself off," I hope you're happy. This all your fault."
"My fault?" Lygn near shouted," How is this my fault?"
"Your son destroyed the computers on my ship."
"It was probably just a prank."
"A prank?!"
"Yes! Nothing like when your son reprogramed the navigational computers for the entire Vrystlxinaz fleet."
"Well, that was just a joke."
"A joke that sent an entire armada into a block hole!"
"Well, that's nothing compared to when your son blew up the second planet in our solar system!"
"That... that was a science project..."
The argument might have theoretically lasted forever, except that both participants shut up when they noticed the air lock was opening seemingly of its own accord. After a few turns of the lock the door swung open and flooded the small chamber with midday light and a fresh spring breeze. Standing on the other side of the door were two small blond children, a boy wearing a white t-shirt and black pants and a girl wearing a white t-shirt and black skirt.
"Hewwo," They spoke together.
Lygn turned his gaze from the kids back to Terref, the the mediator of the conversation. He moved closer to the two, "Um, ah, Guten Morgen. Nehmen Sie mich Ihrem Fuhrer."
The girl giggled while the boy looked up at the alien and said," You talk funny."
Terref tried again," Bom dia. Faca exame de me a seu lider?"
The girl wispered something into the boy's ear and he said," You should talk to Matron. Fowwow me!" The two children then ran laughing into the street. Terref and Lygn carefully walked out of the ship and into a suburban street filled with identical houses that hadn't been damaged in the slightest by the impact of a kilometer long starship.
"So, what did they say?" Lygn asked
"I'm not sure, but this certainly looks like a peaceful city. I just have to infrom the leaders of the incoming meteor and then their planetary thrusters will move the planet away from the crash vector and we'll all be just fine.
"Planetary... thrusters?" Lygn cursed himself for neglecting to read the planet's fact sheet as the two captains followed the laughing children.
It should be noted, purely for academic reasons, that neither of their respective civilizations had ever invented horror movies.
-----
The dank and dusky interior of the warehouse was peirced by rays of afternoon sun. It revealed rows of bookcases filled with assault rifles and ammunition, jeeps, personel transports, and helecopters. The light had yet to completely reveal the floor, and larger machines lay hidden in the dark corners. Six people stepped through the doorway (Well, if you want to get technical about it, only five people actually stepped) and into the warehouse.
"I did not expect this," Alexa noted in her standard monotone.
"AWESOME!" Wally suddenly shouted out while running farther in. What he had responded to was, against all reason, a five story tall bipedal robot.
"Hey!" Seargent Irons suddenly called out while inspecting one of the jeeps. He held up as small flag that bore the unmistakable symbol of the German National Socialist Party. 'You some kinda commie pinko?"
"Vat? No, no," Bernard backpeddled," I bought zem ven the cold var ended. Zey ver on ze discount."
Jen and Gary, unlike the others, had stayed as close to the entrance as possible without actually leaving the entrance.
"Gary?" Jen asked.
"Yes?"
"I want to get out of here. Now."
-----
Dear planetary leaders or applicible replacements,
We are deeply pained by the precious loss of life your planet has recently endured. Please accept this decorative fruit bowl as a show of our sympathy. Also, you may be feeling like reparations are in order. Our council is one step ahead, and has already sent a war ship to the source of the attackers. It will determine the location of any more of them, and then wipe out the entire solar system with a bomb we have newly developed (Avalible to the public this fall. click this link for more information). Thank you, and look out for the Galaxy Aid concert being held for your benifit in the coming weeks.
Yours,
P. Harfenglafenflaven
-----
Below the surface of the city, under the remains of an out of the way record store, something stirred.
Flash back three months. The Twinkies, newly born, had only fleeting visions of civilization. Deciding to create their own, several twinkies were selected to go into hibernation and discover the meaning of civilization. Each had their own subject and all were packed in out of the way locations to safeguard them. However, after the discovery of interstellar travel, civilization was placed on the back burner, and all of the hibernating Twinkies were deemed too useless to wake up. And so they were all abandoned a full week before they had completed their research. In the time between they had been killed by various accedents; all of them, except one.
And so the last conscious Twinkie in the world crawled out of a pile of Beatles and Pat Benatar LPs. It knew it was the last one left. It knew it would have to lead a new civilization.
It knew... that red was the new black but backwards red caps were *so* two thousand one.
-----
"So all the way to the left and up is first gear?"
"No, that's reverse."
"Then what's left and down?"
"*That's* first."
Jen's crash course in stick shifts wasn't working out to well, but it was all Gary could manage considering his current condition. Even though, he was begining to reconsider leaving. Sure, Bernard was a complete psycho, and the others were going along with his plans to the letter, but that wasn't too much different from the shelter. And it was probably much safer in here than outside...
"Herr Hartcourte! Frauline Harland! You have forgotten your uniforms!" Bernard shouted as he ran towards them. He was now dressed in a blue-grey uniform decorated with plastic medals, and had a monocle stuck in one eye. In his hands were two skin tight leather outfits.
Jen slammed on the gas and both of them took off without the slightest hesitation.
Posted on Jul 13, 2003, 8:23 PM from IP address 216.175.95.220