Canto Five – In the Invasion-Squad Ready Room
“I truly hope that we are clear on invasion protocols this time around,” Biznap said to his reconnaissance squad. “Last time we followed the Captain’s orders, and… ohhh, that was a mistake!”
“So what do we do better this time?” asked Farbick. Yes, yellow skin, but Farbick got right to the heart of the matter. It was hard not to like Farbick, even though the fact of his yellowish Fmoog skin made it necessary not to like him.
“Perhaps you better tell the rest of our team what happened last time,” suggested Biznap, “so they will know what not to do.”
“Well,” said Farbick, “it is not for me to question Xiar’s orders. He wanted to capture a single juvenile specimen of Earth primate to evaluate for weaknesses. It is a daunting task to conquer six billion Earther-primate people with only a handful of Tellerons and a little superior technology. We took a simuloid who could take the shape and the place of the specimen so no one would ever miss it. I mean, him.”
“Isn’t the simuloid what we now know as Gracie Morrell?” asked the pretty young science cadet, a female Telleron called Starbright.
“Yes, that is correct. I was there when it happened. The simuloid rescued Gracie from death when her old Earther primate body gave out due to heart failure. It gave itself over to Gracie’s DNA.”
“But how is that possible? Simuloids are only supposed to copy DNA and memories once!” asked a security cadet, a male whose name Biznap didn’t even know.
“We think it happened because of the control device that Commander Sleez was holding as he disintegrated himself.” Farbick nodded, probably because it was his theory. That tended to make a Telleron treat something as fact, if it came from his own mind.
“We need to get back to the recon mission and what went wrong,” said Biznap. “Tell the other stories another day.”
“Yes, the Commander is right,” said Farbick. “We landed and captured a specimen. We successfully replaced him with the simuloid. And then things went really very wrong.”
Biznap knew that was an understatement.
“One of the adult Earther primates, a police officer, fought off the stasis field long enough to shoot me. He somehow overcame the paralysis and the mind-wiper and nearly killed me. I had to bury myself in mud for two weeks and recuperate, or I would not be here now.”
“The way Commander Sleez and Navigator Corebait aren’t here now?” asked young Starbright.
“Yes. I am afraid they were both killed during contact with Earther primates.”
“Don’t leave out the most important mistakes,” cautioned Biznap.
“Yes,” said Farbick. “We should never have taken young Davalon along on a mission like that. When I was shot, he tried to find me, and so was stranded on Earth. He would’ve died if it were not for the generosity of Alden and Gracie Morrell, two Earthers who tried to adopt Davalon as their own child.”
“He also would’ve died if I had found him,” said Biznap. “My mission was to disintegrate the lost tadpole before he revealed our presence to all Earthers.”
“But Commander Biznap was also lucky to find an Earther primate friend,” added Farbick. “You all know Mrs. Harmony Castille by now.”
“Oh, we definitely know her,” sighed the three cadets. “She’s the one that makes us wear clothes.”
Farbick nodded. Clothes apparently didn’t seem like such a terrible thing to Farbick… at least, Biznap noticed that Farbick was rarely without clothes even before the invasion of Earth. Insecurity of a personal nature, perhaps? Farbick’s body was more yellow than green.
“But all of that isn’t the biggest mistake of all.” Farbick nodded sadly.
“What was?” asked all three cadets.
“It was who we chose as a specimen. That Dorin Dobbs was probably the most dangerous Earther primate on the planet. We got him on board this vessel and found out that he was actually so… charming, that we couldn’t keep him from contaminating every Telleron on board… except for Commander Sleez. Everybody liked him. His alien behaviors rubbed off on the tadpoles first and then the female science officers. It began the rebellion that turned this spaceship into a joint Earther-Telleron mission. Apparently now a mission to build a permanent settlement on the planet Galtorr Prime.”
Every Telleron present shuddered at the same time as that last bit of information truly sank in.
*****
Catch a Falling Star 
The Story Continues…
I find myself caught up in the story once again. Netflix put a new monster-movie series out there with eight episodes starring a Dungeons & Dragons-playing group of middle school kids, a psychically powerful girl-experiment named Eleven, an assortment of dysfunctional adults, star-crossed teen romantics to use as potential monster food, and a creepy mouth-headed monster from the “upside down” to eat them all. How could I not binge-watch such a thing?
This binge-watching addiction comes at a time when I have other things on my mind. My aging parents are in poor health and have a critical doctor’s visit coming up this week. Bank of America has decided to experiment on me to see what happens if they sue me for the total amount of my debt, plus court costs, plus additional fees for betraying them by going to Wells Fargo, plus additional additional fees just because they don’t like me and think I’m ugly. I am awaiting a call from a potential lawyer-advocate to help me even as I am writing this. I am also planning how to live without money until the total is payed off in garnished pension, seized property and bank accounts, and whatever other way they can squeeze more money out of me. Some monsters are all mouth. This of course comes after I completed a program of debt resolution and paid off all my other creditors. When I called Bank of America, they didn’t seem to know what happened to the debt, so they did not participate in that. Were they plotting evil, or just that stupid? Such questions go into the making of a monster. Perhaps a monster movie television series on Netflix was precisely what I needed.
The only episode I haven’t watched yet is the last installment. Potentially the monster gets its comeuppance. That’s what the lawyer, a consumer rights attorney, promised me in his letter. It also is what the kids in Stranger Things are promising as they prepare to enter the monster’s lair.
Why do I need to see the ending of the story so badly? Because when we reach the end of our life course, the happy ending, in real life, does not overcome death and endings. We live our time on Earth, reach the end, and then we are no more. Only the story continues. New lives and new adventures begin, only to proceed relentlessly to their ending. Even when the human race’s story comes to end and there is no more life on Earth, the story continues. You have to be caught up in that. There is no other choice. The things you dread stalk you and eventually catch you, and the happy ending is bound up in how you handle it along the way.
1 Comment
Filed under angry rant, autobiography, commentary, ghost stories, horror movie, humor, monsters, review of television, science fiction
Tagged as bankers and other villains, humor, monster movies, movie review, Netflix binging, Stranger Things, televison shows