EIGHT HOUR FICTION
#1
By Travis Hill
Copyright 2013
A CAREER MOMENT
1
“…And that’s why we can’t have anything nice!” the emcee said, delivering the punchline to the audience’s delight. “Now, the creature you’ve all been waiting for, an alien that traveled four thousand light years just to get a laugh, give it up for Gxkxl the Txgl...Taxgl...Tirg...the Comedian!”
Gxkxl shuffled to the center of the stage. The audience that had been clapping and eager to see the alien they’d heard so much about on every form of media known to humans became quiet and apprehensive at the strange sight of him. He wasn’t like any insect on Earth, yet to human eyes he most definitely resembled an insect. A freakishly large, sentient insect that had traveled the stars.
The frightful-looking creature had four legs that somewhat resembled a spider’s legs, a hardened torso shell with four arms that each ended in four-bladed claws. The claw itself was creepy to humans…their minds weren’t too keen on the idea of a giant bug having ‘hands’ that ended in quad-jointed ‘fingers.’ All of this was topped by an elongated, four-eyed, insect-ish head with a rather evil looking spike jutting up from its ‘forehead.’
The first thought almost every human had upon seeing Gxkxl in person, a nightmare over three meters in height, two in width, and covered in hard plates of chitinous armor, was that he looked a lot bigger than he did in pictures. The second thought usually revolved around keeping control of their bowels.
The nightmare had come onstage with a human head impaled on its spike. The audience erupted with whispered questions to each other as to whether the human head was real or a prop.
“Hurk hurk!” the flat, shiny panel hanging from Gxkxl’s neck cried out, the voice not unlike that of a circus carny. “I am a human. I like to invade sentient worlds and destroy unique creatures found nowhere else in the universe!”
The alien was creepy enough, but the voice that emanated from the translation unit made the entire scene surreal for the calmer humans, and an exercise in terror for some of the more dainty types. Most of the audience was still in shock at the sight of the monster, but those that had regained their faculties weren’t impressed with the comedian’s opening line.
“Hey humans,” Gxkxl tried again, though his translator’s attempt at conveying excitement and humor made the word sound like hurmangs. “Hurk! Hurk! I just trans-extrapolated from deep space and my neutron field generator sure looks expelled.”
The audience’s grumblings soon drowned out the sounds of heads being scratched.
“I went to see this/a/some place called Washington D.C. Hurk! I heard it had great food but your government agents tried to make/create the/an autopsy! Hurk!” This time the translator’s humor filter made his words sound brutal, cruel, and evil.
The audience’s growing mix of fear and disgust drowned out Gxkxl’s fourth attempt at a joke. Some of the more delicate ladies let out little screams of fright, a few collapsing with a grace that would have made Scarlett O’Hara proud. By the time a third fragile woman cried out with an ‘oh my!’ and fell into her husband’s arms, panic had washed over the crowd. The emcee ran to the stage and unclipped the audio link from Gxkxl’s translation panel before turning to the audience.
“Folks, ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Gxkxl the Alien!” he exclaimed while gently prodding the alien to get off the stage. “Now for our next performer, a decidedly more human act…”
*****
“Listen pal,” Donovan said to the alien standing before him, “you’re terrible at comedy. Face it. You stink. And what’s with the human head on your spike there?”
“It is a prop for comedy,” Gxkxl said, his translator panel hinting at hurt feelings in its tone.
“‘It is a prop for comedy,’” Donovan mocked him. “See, this is how I know you stink at this. You almost caused a riot in the theater. Humans don’t want to see a weirdo giant bug with a human head stuck on its spike. And they damn sure don’t want to see crazy alien bugs with a human head impaled on its spike trying to do stand-up comedy.
“They don’t want to see you trying to sell cars. They don’t want to see you taking money from their children and handing back tokens at the arcade. You aren’t a good chef. You’re awful as a mechanic. Good Christ man, you couldn’t even be a good alien and crash into Earth with some useful information.”
“I think/know/infer the human head prop can work. I must deliver the comedy more carefully for it to be useful,” Gxkxl said, as if he hadn’t heard a single thing his caseworker had just said. Did the translation unit sound haughty and insulted? Donovan wondered if he was hearing things.
“Look, chum. Face it. You’re a worthless creature,” Donovan complained. “You be-bopped across thousands of light years in a spaceship that is maybe a five centuries ahead of our own technology, yet instead of you being a scientist, a fighter pilot, hell, even a school teacher, you are the equivalent of a human high school dropout.
“We took you in, didn’t mistreat you. We tried to learn from you. We wanted to know all about your kind, your home, your philosophies. All we got was a dunce that couldn’t even explain how the translator panel hanging from his neck functioned. You can’t even read a damn star map!”
“I am apologized that I am not educated/scientific,” Gxkxl replied. The translator unit definitely relayed that he felt insulted.
“Not educated? Not scientific? Gxkxl, you are less than useless! You can’t tell us where you live. ‘A planet four out from the sun’ is what you told us. Because there isn’t a Christing ten million suns that might fit that description. ‘I arrived in this spaceship’ was the only information you could give us about the ship that brought you here. Oh, and that it crashed into our planet, just in case we humans weren’t perceptive enough to understand that.” Donovan was beginning to rant. “’What did you do on your home planet?’ we asked you. ‘I ran through tall grass, ate food, and got high’ is what you told us, which caused the linguists a lot of black eyes as they fought about that ‘getting high’ bit. Do you know what the government thinks you are? Do you?”
“No,” Gxkxl said, the translator’s tone denying agreement of Donovan’s assessment.
“The Area 51 boys think you are the equivalent of a jobless stoner. The NSA thinks you are a mentally-retarded guinea pig that your people sent out to test a new propulsion system. NASA thinks you somehow stole the ship, took it for a joyride and crashed it after you mashed some buttons trying to figure out how to make it fly. The President…he thinks you are a joke. A joke, Gxkxl. You traveled billions, maybe trillions of miles, you are humanity’s first contact with a species that didn’t originate on our home planet, and you. Are. An. Idiot.” Donovan punctuated each of the last words with a poke in Gxkxl’s torso shell.
“I am not a joke. Or an idiot.” Gxkxl’s translator panel sounded glum.
“I think you are, buddy. I think you are. Question is, what are we going to do with you? We thought you were interesting at first. When we realized you weren’t, and had taken all the x-rays, MRI, CAT scans, and blood samples and such that we needed, we asked ourselves ‘how much harm could it be to let him out into the world to experience human culture?’ We knew after six years you were bored. And since you couldn’t tell us how anything on your ship worked, we knew you weren’t going home. So instead of cutting you into little bits and studying you under an electron microscope, we decided to send you out into the world.
“Well, America anyway. And all you’ve done since then is burn down three restaurants and anger the citizens of nine different cities to the point they came after you with torches and pitchforks and assault rifles. You killed some
little girl’s puppy accidentally, but in the most gruesome fashion possible, and while on a popular morning news show that was broadcasting live, by the way. And now you’ve almost caused a panicked riot with your ‘comedy.’”
“I will find an occupation, Mr. Donovan,” Gxkxl said, the translator voice now sounding determined.
“I think I’ve already found one for you,” Donovan said, transferring an address to the alien’s translator unit before walking away, letting the massive insect know their meeting was over.