This is the beginning of an Idea I had pop into my head a while back and that keeps reworking itself over and over in my head. Once they get Off Planet, things keep going a bit strangly for our main man, "People seem to think they know him" and all of them think hes put on a Lot of weight. Hijinks ensue.
Intergalactic Discotheque
Five months ago everything was sane. My wife taught her college Zoology and Animal Behavior classes and I worked as a Patrolman for the union city police dept in union city TN. Yep five weeks ago everything was hunky dory at the old Dugan homestead.
And then They came along. Yep after years of waiting and speculating, of movies with horrid sequels and hoaxes of unrivaled complexity. Scientific arguments and game room debate it finally happened. First freaking Contact.
What brought it about and how did it go, you wonder.
Was it a cataclysmic battle raging rampant across the universe?
No.
A castaway with a touching and heartwarming story?
No.
What was it you ask? What brought it about.
It was that most horrid of things, something that we were all horrified to learn was running rampant throughout the universe.
What instigated our finally achieving first contact?
Capitalism!!
That most heinous creation of man was not created by him alone.
Space the final frontier, ha, More like Frontier-Land complete with tourist traps, casinos, stock markets and everything else that we live on but for some reason never thought any other race would.
Silly us.
Now don’t get me wrong, there was plenty of scientists and diplomats and all that other goings on, uh, going on but it was all funded by and for capitalistic gains. See science and diplomacy do not pay near as well as casinos and tourism. But I ramble on, let me start again at the beginning or at least how it began for me.
I had just gotten home, cracked open a beer and sat down to chat with my wife about the day as we cooked dinner, when the phone rang.
I answered with “Hello”, I’m original like that.
“Dutch, turn on your TV, you are not going to believe this”.
“Sure Jim? What channel?” I walked over to the TV and flipped it on.
“Doesn’t matter, talk at ya later” and he hung up.
The news was on, and boy was it ever news. First contact had been made and I am not talking about some New Guinea tribe thought to be extinct I am talking full blown, anal probing, trailer park abducting, First Freaking Contact.
I stared at the TV my mouth hanging open to do any Venus Flytrap proud as I listened to some newscaster inform us that talks had been initiated with world governmenst with beings from other planets (yes planets, plural) and that plans for a “face to face” were set and scheduled for some time within the next week.
They went in to details and all sorts of other scientific info but my mind was overwhelmed by the first contact part so all I heard after that was blah blah blah linguine problems blah blah blah traveling via spaghetti and other such things that I could not understand but to me sounded suspiciously like the aliens liked pasta.
I looked over at my wife who was paying such rapt attention to the TV that it was almost comical. She was the Uber science nerd and this had to have all of her synapses firing into over drive.
She turned to me with a look of awe on her face and said, “This is beyond incredible, since they discovered our planet, they have deciphered every language known to us, put it into a some kind of computer linguistics type program and communication is now possible with anyone on the planet. Do you realize the absolute magnitude of that?”
Considering her awe of what she said I was fairly certain, I did not.
She continued with,” The fact that they got here at all is amazing and their faster than light travel abilities and the suspicions about their use of spagetification are astronomical.”
I was starting to suspect that the aliens were not as found of pasta as I had originally surmised. It really hurts the old ego being married to someone with the letters D and R in front of their name.