Fiction – Page 16

First Things First

Nobody will tell you that religion is simply an iteration of our innate human ability to question and ascribe meaning to the phenomena we encounter in our immediate surroundings. Being able to alter our environment with the level of skill we’ve come to develop over the past few millennia, how many of us ever stop to wonder about the first moment our species graduated from nature’s master class in manipulation? Let’s not forget, we were once as defenseless as all the other beings to inhabit this planet, but we took great measures to ensure survival at all costs, to the chagrin of the very globe that fostered our greedy development.

Now here we are, coughing up smog and trying to figure out how best to colonize our moon (Mars is still a pipe dream). Hopefully we can find a way to bring our religion to other regions of our solar system, and perhaps even to the rest of the universe. As chosen (not brainwashed) people of God (not a fictional authority figure fabricated to alleviate the guilt that forms when we commit genocide and snatch unsuspecting people’s land), it is our divine duty to carry out HIS WORD. The wool has been removed from over our eyes (with the rug soon to be pulled out from under our feet), and there’s a whole universe of sinners who need the salvation of the LORD!

Now first things first, does anybody here know how to build a rocket ship?

Pickle Man

Please do not panic whilst amongst the pines, the savory pigeon screams floating from bough to bough.
And we, all along (as it turns out) have the seat to a thrill of a cheap movie quote tucked neatly into a blender and rather liquefied, I’m afraid.
First, the lack of effort and segmented pinstripe suits are not a good combination at all. Pretend I didn’t tell you that was a good idea.
Oh, whose idea was it? Probably the Pickle Man’s. The Pickle Man has lots of ideas from time to time. Come to think of it, he was the fella who invented the ladder so I could get my cat out of that tree last Tuesday. Praise his ingenuity and impeccable timing–he surely [surely SURELY] must be a good and decent man.

And so, the Pickle Man jotted off in his notebook and came up with methods for legal gambling that no one would ever suspect. There’s no loser (aside from the mark), and I’ll never have to go paycheck to paycheck. Not once, certainly not again, you understand me? I sure hope you can recover your sense of decency while I’m lecturing you, young people. I have seventeen issues to share with you regarding class warfare from the Middle Ages. In this unit, you will learn to conquer your fear of dissection. Here’s how I was able to dissect my first frog, boys and girls–a spritz of balsamic vinegar to make the air more culinary. Isn’t this place just stale and offensive? Are there any windows down here at all? Are we in the basement? How far down are we? Pickle Man?!

Catalyst

Extraterrestrial nervous systems never had been my cup of tea (in fact, I never thought I could be privy to such a phenomenon) until I managed to get my mitts on a real live corpse. Yeah, you heard me right. One night as I was driving home from an average day of pushing papers around, I received a call from an unknown number. I’m not sure what possessed me to answer it. I rarely answer the phone while driving, let alone from strange numbers. I just recall having an inkling that the intention behind that attempted connection was more or less benevolent. Funny thing to hear myself say, but that’s definitely what it felt like. Anyway, I answered the call and put it on speaker, only to hear a sequence of hisses and beeps in an unpredictable pattern of multiple tones. As I attempted to speak with whomever had just contacted me, the call abruptly ended. Weird, I thought, but I didn’t think anything of it. As I was pulling into my garage (I always back in for the sake of convenience when I’m leaving in the morning) I looked over my shoulder and saw a limp body in my backseat, gray and slender. Not from here, you could say. Well, as a man of science, I was immediately overcome with more curiosity than anything. I immediately schlepped it to my house–it was much lighter than I thought it ought to have been–to get my bearings. While clearly not hosting a living being, it would seem that even after an extraplanetary individual has ditched their meat vessel from the previous life, there remains a kind of intact life force within the remains, as though awaiting a new passenger. I had that corpse under around-the-clock surveillance and never once saw a breath enter or leave. Nevertheless, I didn’t detect any of the decay one would find on Earth, and there were still trace electromagnetic signals that confirmed beyond a doubt that these… physical manifestations, for lack of a better term, are perpetuated by a force yet unknown by our primitive race. That anomaly was the catalyst for my lifelong study of the biology of such foreign bodies, to the chagrin of every person in my life who, up until that discovery, had held me in high esteem. Ah well, screw ’em. They’re just afraid of the things they can’t explain.

Irrational

If only the irrational beings on your planet could grasp the true necessity of bureaucracy… those poor, poor mammals with their heads in the clouds, constantly chasing pie-in-the-sky dreams and never settling for pragmatic compromises. The fools who believe in their deepest intellects that art is the greatest contribution to the history of the universe (or creation, whatever they’d happen to call it) are deeply flawed in their logic. With what logic would beauty correspond? There is no rational way to extol the virtues of well-placed paint daubs on a piece of stretched canvas; the beholder is the only source of validation. That kind of subjective viewership is much too volatile for any global civilization if it wishes to thrive in the greater cosmic community. This application must unfortunately be rejected at this juncture. If you would like to try again, you may wait 2,200 Earth years and submit new paperwork at that time. We very much appreciate your interest in becoming a member of Galaxion Gardens, have a nice millennium.

Consumer Product

Incentivized Dingle-Doos have long awaited their time in the sun, enduring hardships inconceivable to the average consumer product. The first problem presented itself when the naming committee notoriously skipped their meeting and all mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again. It’s odd when seven people all simultaneously vanish off the face of the planet–their only earthly connection a superficial marketing gig–as though they’d all played hooky to go out on a spontaneous committee-planned ice fishing trip, subsequently sinking beneath the ice due to the sheer quantity of seething boredom localized within a single shanty. But nah, they all individually had bizarre tragedies befall them just in time to miss the fateful meeting that would undoubtedly lead a promising product prospect down the road to obscurity. The money people, being the beancounters that they are, decided it would be best to stick the interns with the project while they frantically worked up ways to acquire new creatives as cheaply as possible. And thus they landed at Incentivized Dingle-Doos, apparently satisfied with the subpar effort. What did this poor amenity of modern life ever do to these people–these SCABS?! Nothing! That’s at least what the shareholders thought when their stock prices plummeted over the successive fiscal quarter.

Taking a Bath

You scuff up one iota of my shortbread icon brittlemaker and I swear to god I’ll puke all over the place with rage. That may seem a tad impassioned, but I’ve always been bad at hiding how I feel about futuristic kitchen appliances. Anyway, here’s the kicker on this thing: it makes all kinds of brittles! Myself, I enjoy the wellspring of nostalgic feelings that crop up with each new batch of shortbread icon brittle. Images of Lorna Doone and Shirley Temple flash across my personal confectionery concoction hatch when this baby gets whirring.

I really do get worked up about this marvel of modern technology, and perhaps I need to cool my jets a bit here. I mean, it cost me four grand to get the custom brittle module, so I’m entitled to a little rooftop-shouting, right? Pretty much any flavor combination imaginable can go into the preparation of your brittles. I found my favorite combo and stuck with it because I’m really not that creative. But I swear, you could have hours upon hours of entertainment just from thinking up unconventional themes. Once you’ve made your selection, the whisper-quiet mechanism takes care of all the rest. This thing is perfect for you and the family, your office, an open house, wedding, funeral, holiday party, National Phlebotomists Day… the list goes on.

Sorry, I’ll bet you think I’m coming off like a used car salesman. The god’s honest truth is I’ve been trying to unload it, but nobody’s biting. A mere $2,750 is all I’m asking for it. I mean, it’s a steal at that price! All the components are in pristine condition (I’ve only used it twice). Come on, you know you want to give it a whirl. I guarantee that if you’re not satisfied with your first five batches of custom brittle, I’ll refund all of your hard-earned dollars. Don’t you see I’m taking a bath here, people?! You’d be stupid NOT to take me up on this!

We Monkeys

Denominative integers willingly defy the overall forcefulness by which we enter life, that succulent foe of knowing all things on a benevolent basis–at least from our pseudointellectual standpoint here on earth. We monkeys, swept from trees to town squares in a seemingly-overnight fashion, gave nobody any time to appropriately enter our problematic pituitary case into the annals of the intergalactic community. Our brash attempt to circumvent the necessary bureaucratic process–filling out the appropriate paperwork, having it notarized, sending it to local legislators and mailing one of 13 official public access stations for broadcast–demonstrates the jury-rigging, bootstrapping mentality that may have endeared us to our own species, yet alienates everybody else. When you apply simple rules to us, we seem to be inclined toward throwing tantrums. You know as well as I that our current behavior won’t fly with the more-evolved entities out there. If conducted efficiently, the contact broadcast process would be complete within a business week. So now, the more time we waste without adhering to measured standards, the more likely we are to fall altogether as a global community. Our “home” planet will slough us off before too long, tired of the countless indignities suffered at the hands of fools.