Aliens Eunt Domus 1

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Gotta build. Gotta build. Such invasion. Much build. Wow.

After a few days working with barely any sleep, I realized I couldn’t remember the date or what I’d put together so far. I tried to check over what I’d assembled, but I couldn’t go through that before my brain got kinda numb. And since I need brain for smart making, I threw myself into bed. Pretty easy to tell I’ve been out of it when I didn’t realize there was another person in there. Wildflower ran her nails over my back and kissed the back of my head, but otherwise didn’t try to disturb me. See? That’s how you know you have a relationship based on being a strong alpha male protector. It’d be enough to make me scratch my balls, if I still had them.

I actually muttered something about that while I was fading. “Mfup wimmy.”

She patted me on the head and left, not even answering my real question, “Why the fuck are you with me?”

Ah well. She’s got amnesia. How would she be able to remember what a good girlfriend is like? Besides, she gets to spend time in a penthouse with someone who throws money around like it didn’t make her dinner well enough, who will murder anyone who wrongs you. I suppose there are advantages to this scenario. But I only thought about those after a good rest and the shoving of much food into my meal hole. Just a tip, dear readers, never confuse your meal hole with any of your other holes. While the meal hole does have some uses that cross over with other bodily holes, this is not to be relied on. Misuse of the meal hole can lead to symptoms such as: dry mouth, oral herpes, drool-covered telephones, and a tendency to talk a lot of shit. For further hole-related knowledge, refer to the classic 1950s educational film “Your Body Holes And You”.

After that, I began to feel a bit more, well, fuck it; can’t say “sane.”

So, let’s recap: while causing mischief around the world, a clairvoyant named Fortune Cookie recruited me to help her on a mission to save the world from being frozen in time, which caused various temporal distortions the closer someone got to the area it was all mean to happen in. In one of these distortions, I saw the earth was dealing with an alien invasion and that I was reported to have been killed in it. So after saving the world, I determined I needed to prepare for the alien invasion to protect my ass. I tried to steal the world’s biggest telescope, but failed and blew it up. I did steal the building capable of freezing time, but failed to get it fixed and then was nearly blown up. I worked as part of a team of villains, but blew up the leader and used it to create a villain social network to, theoretically, help organize and fight off an invasion. I also prevented the blowing up of the heroes, too. I created a company, but that has yet to explode. Fingers crossed, there’s still time!

All that was so last year, though. This year, I attack Washington D.C., impersonated a sitting U.S. Senator, impersonated the President of the United States, broke someone out of prison, defaced various monuments, partially blew up a submarine, blackmailed some Congressmen, bribed some bureaucrats, kidnapped someone, performed illegal human experiments, and burned down a house. This last month’s been mostly a blur, but I may be an accessory to tampering with evidence, and a bit of light treason. Not a very productive time for me.

And I did it all to prepare for the shit storm that now hangs over the earth. Well, hangs would be a strong word. More like chilling. They’re chilling near earth. I can still see the image in my head, clear as day, thanks to my brain’s wifi connection. Not that clear, actually. They’re using something to disrupt any clear views of their flotilla. Or maybe it’s a fleet. To me, a flotilla indicates a lot of floating things. Either way, the exact numbers and conditions are unknown. Could be a bunch of miniature Death Stars, could be space winnebagos. They stopped near the moon, though.

Everyone’s supposed to avoid spying on them until the diplomats have their say. After previous First Contacts led to all sorts of shenanigans, including a Star Trek movie, it was decided that alien diplomats should probably head to the United Nations first. From what I gather, they didn’t bother trying to inform the small ship that detached from the fleet until it spent a day in near Earth orbit. Probably infighting. They’re all nice and polite about that sort of thing in public. Deliberations on how to proceed, they call it. In reality, it’s the American President saying “Fuck you, the UN is in our territory, so get them down here!” But with more tact. That’s one of the great thing about having to speak through interpreters: you can cuss up a storm and let the translators work it out. So, in the end, broadcast a bunch of radio messages up at the ship telling them where to land in various languages, only stopping once the ship began to descend. Good thing. They might have to resort to the universal languages of math and interpretive dance.

That’s one way to force First Contact. Annoy the aliens until they show up and have to speak to you. Oh my science. That explains so much about the existence of reality TV.

The news has been obsessed. It’s not every day that Earth deals with aliens. It’s like a royal wedding or something, though I’m sure the other aliens around are busy snorting derisively at the newbies getting all the attention. But I don’t think many of those types brought a fleet with them, especially not one that looks like a blurry photo of Bigfoot. Completely fictional, by the way. I felt I needed to point that out.

If anything, the caution exhibited by the aliens led to some in the news deride Man-Opener for his alarmism. Even if he knew they were really there, they reasoned, he clearly used it for an excuse to do whatever he wanted. Plenty of others did the same thing. Some people quit their jobs to party. Others fled to survivalist communes. There’s even a few preachers advising their followers to give up their worldly possessions in anticipation of the coming Rapture. Then again, they say that about any major event. That’s what happens when you decide everything is a prophetic sign the same way other people decide any toy is a sex toy.

I tried to watch the ship’s first descent on the news, along with everybody else, but the distortion effect held and kept me from making out any hard edges. It was about the size of a doubledecker bus, I could tell that much. I couldn’t give an estimate on the speed, but it sounded pretty loud. That, or the boom operators got right up its ass. Like that was going to happen. They practically locked down all traffic in the city to keep absolutely everyone away from the United Nations.

I should have been there. If I had been, maybe I could have gotten a good look at what was going on.

While I thought this, Wildflower pounced on the bed next to me. I caught it out of the corner of my eye, so I didn’t really startle at the surprise. I just blinked and shut off the feed in my head. She grinned as she watched me turn to look at her. “You’re weird like that.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Nothing surprises you. It’s like you have eyes in the back of your head.”

I shrugged. “That’s not too fair to say. People catch me with my pants down all the time, sometimes metaphorically.”

She laughed at that, showing a lot of teeth before bringing her hand up in front of her mouth to hide her unusual teeth.

“Don’t you ever spend any time at that school you’re supposed to be going to?” I asked. Then I started checking for any urgent notices. “Don’t tell me they decided to relocate to my building. I wouldn’t put it past someone to try…” Nope, nothing there. Lots of people asking for time off work all of a sudden, though our looting and theft revenues are spiking like vampire dick at a blood bank. It got so bad, my car had to activate its antitheft measures. The bad thing about those things is the cleanup. Most car washes are ill-equipped to remove all the blood and viscera from the deepest nooks and crannies. You know how annoying it is to turn on the windshield wipers and spot a tooth still lodged in them months after you last ran someone down? Ugh.

Back with Wildflower, she shook her head. “Venus had to go back to meet with the main Academy. We’ve been wondering if they’ll send more alumni here now that this is all going on. Hey, want to watch it with me?”

I jumped up. “To the viewing machine!”

Wildflower grabbed the remote off the nightstand and pushed it, causing a TV to lower from the ceiling on a mechanical arm that angled it down at us. It didn’t matter what channel we went to. Most found some excuse or another to cut into their regularly-scheduled programming to show this little happening. We were on ESPN, for some reason, and this bar down at the bottom read, “Alien Arrival: Have The Harlem Globetrotters Come Home?”

We got out first glimpse of the diplomat. He stepped out wearing a robe that hung loosely around him. It appeared to be a he, anyway, because it appeared to be human teenager. He was pale, with a slightly sheen to his skin, like he’d been coated with something mostly transparent. His severely short hair was so blond that his eyebrows looked funny above his bright blue eyes. Somehow, they had a human, or something that looked very close to a human. Perhaps it was the best surgery possible to transform one of their own into a humanoid on the fly. The better to address us.

A pair of bodyguards moved out behind this kid they picked to represent them. They weren’t in robes, but in suits that would be skintight on most people. They were a little taller and thinner than the average person, though. While I first assumed they were robots, there was something about the way they moved. It’s like they were full of fluid that made their movements flow. It’s hard to describe, but clearly unnatural. It’s like the leg became less full in order to lift up, then grew slightly bulkier on its way down. Maybe I read too much into it. Maybe I need to perform a little alien autopsy.

Blondie looked out over the crowd and, as if it was an afterthought, smiled a wide, toothy grin. Like he just remembered he needed to smile and put it on all at once, instead of going into it gradually. After that, someone stepped up to lead him and his guards into the United Nations itself.

“Gecko, have you ever read about Oedipus?” Wildflower asked me as we watched. ESPN’s headline bar changed to “Aliens: Do They Ball?”

“A little bit. Didn’t have an Oedipal Complex, I know that one.”

“Maybe what you saw could lead you to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’re thinking of doing something. You do this thing with your eyes when you’re looking at things you want to fight. In the future you saw, do you know if you did something that caused them to kill you?”

“I don’t. But I seriously doubt they’re here for peaceful reasons. It’s always just a matter of time.”

I knew what she was worried about. But at the same time, I suspected that Technolutionary, Moai, and I could get in there, disable that trio, smuggle the Dimension Bomb aboard that craft, and blow the entire fleet out of the sky before anyone was the wiser.

I even had an idea on how to get in. I fired off an email to the secure address of El Presidente, the “democratically elected” leader of the Caribbean archipelago island nation of Isla Tropica. He’s not afraid to work with someone like myself, and the islands are a fun place to hang out. To him, the email read as coming from Axolotl Xolotl, which is what Spanish-speakers often call me. “Does your ambassador to the United Nations have any openings on his staff? I have a perfect candidate for any job. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more, say no more.”

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