How To Save The World: An Alien Comedy Read online

  “Well, yes,” Eric agreed, “but with a good reason.”

  “Which is?”

  “Well … before I explain I just want to say that you probably won’t believe uz,” Eric replied, “so before you lose your raj wait until I’ve finished explaining everything cos I can prove what I’m going to say, right?”

  “Look, I’m not even interested,” Rachel shrugged, pretending not to be bothered, even though she was blatantly totally bothered. “If you didn’t want to see uz again I’d rather you were honest enough to admit it, rather than just making stories up.”

  “I was abducted by aliens,” Eric suddenly revealed.

  Rachel gave him a funny look for a few moments. “You’re not even funny,” she grunted.

  “Look, I don’t blame you for not believing uz, coz I didn’t even believe it at first … and it was actually happening to me, whereas you’re just hearing about it … but I can prove it.” Eric removed his intergalactic mobile phone from his pocket. It looked very much like any top of the range phone you would find on Earth. Well perhaps a little bit smaller, and a little bit cooler, but other than that very similar indeed.

  “A mobile phone?” Rachel quizzed, looking confused. “And that proves you were abducted by aliens, does it?” It has to be said, she didn’t look very convinced.

  “Aye, cos it’s got this feature on it called G.O.T., which means Gift Of Tongues, and that means I can understand any language.” Eric hoped that Rachel’s expression would become more curious but his hopes were in vain. “So if you speak something foreign to uz and then I’ll tell you what you said and that’ll prove that this phone can translate stuff and that’ll prove that it was given to uz by aliens.”

  “How about I try speaking common sense,” Rachel suggested, sarcastically, “cos that’s certainly foreign to you.”

  “Nar, howay man,” Eric persisted. “Just say something in a different language and I’ll translate it.”

  “You can get computer programmes on Earth that do that,” Rachel pointed out. “You don’t need alien technology to translate languages.”

  “Yes, but I mean, like … I’ll just know what you’re saying,” Eric explained. “I won’t have to type it into the phone for a translation or anything like that. I’ll just understand what you say straight away … just by listening to you.”

  Eric persisted but Rachel wasn’t willing to play along so he had to decide on a different strategy.

  “Right then. If you’re being awkward about it then I’ll put a DVD on and select a foreign language,” he proposed.

  As luck would have it there was already a disc in the DVD player, namely The Empire Strikes Back, so Eric selected Chinese and then pressed play.

  Chinese kanji appeared against a black background.

  “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” Eric translated.

  The kanji disappeared and the famous Star Wars theme tune began to blast out of the speakers. A few moments later more kanji began to scroll up the screen.

  “Episode Five - The Empire Strikes Back,” Eric translated, once again with one hundred percent accuracy.

  “You’re not even funny,” Rachel dismissed, but Eric detected the tiniest begrudged smile fighting to show itself at the sides of her lips.

  “Look, I can understand that you’re a bit sceptical,” Eric conceded, “cos admittedly that wasn’t G.O.T. It only translates spoken words, not written stuff. That was just me cos I know the introduction to Star Wars anyway even without G.O.T., so I tell you what … I’ll put on a daft women film and I’ll pick any scene at random and I’ll translate that.”

  So Eric quickly flicked through Rachel’s DVDs until he found Dirty Dancing, and inserted it into the DVD player. Then after choosing a scene at random he selected the Chinese language track and began translating.

  Rachel couldn’t help noticing that the characters were apparently speaking English and that Eric appeared to be simply repeating what they were saying. “That was English,” she remarked, after a few seconds. “All you’re doing is repeating what they’re saying.”

  “Ar, aye. I forgot. The G.O.T. will work on you as well so I won’t need to translate,” Eric realised. “But anyway, it only sounded English cos of the G.O.T. If I’d switched my G.O.T. off they would have been going ‘ang zang bashi’ or something. I mean … you saw uz select Chinese.”

  “Well the DVD’s probably just faulty,” Rachel surmised.

  “It’s not, man. It’s the G.O.T.,” Eric insisted.

  “Hmm … let uz think,” Rachel pondered. “Did that sound English cos the DVD player’s faulty or was it because Eric got abducted by aliens and they gave him a mobile phone which can translate foreign languages? Hmm … I’m not sure. In fact, yeah … actually, now that I come to think about it … maybe you were abducted by aliens.”

  “It’s a pity Azleev didn’t give uz his old Nukol 4460 instead of this Zegron GX25,” Eric reflected. “Cos the old 4460s don’t have lip synching imagery so you would have been able to see that I wasn’t lying.”[21]

  “What are you on about?” Rachel asked, looking completely baffled, not to mention slightly annoyed.

  Eric pressed ‘pause’ on the DVD. “That was how I realised they were really aliens,” Eric explained. “They were talking via G.O.T. so at first I thought they were just regular Earth people playing a trick on uz … but the old 4460s don’t have lip synching imagery, you see, so I noticed that their lips were moving out of synch with what they were saying, so that was when I realised they must be aliens.”

  Rachel stared blankly at Eric. By now the confusion/annoyance ratio had slid from fifty fifty to eighty twenty in favour of confusion. “You’ve been taking drugs, haven’t you?” she eventually asked. It was technically a question but it was actually delivered in the tone of voice you use when you’re making a statement rather than asking a question.

  “Nar, course not,” Eric protested. “I had a Red Bull earlier on before I hiked up Helvellyn, but that’s all.”

  “Then I think you’ve been spiked,” Rachel proposed.

  “I haven’t, man,” Eric insisted. “Look, it’s perfectly simple … I was abducted by aliens, but they were friendly aliens so it’s okay. They played a trick on uz at first by pretending to be scary but then after that they were totally sound. And they gave uz a phone which translates other languages so now I can understand what anyone says no matter what language they’re speaking.” Eric then had a quick afterthought. “Ar but, like, I’m not meant to show the phone to anyone, so don’t tell anyone I told you.”

  “You’ve definitely been spiked,” Rachel repeated. “Or maybe you’ve got altitude sickness.”

  “Altitude sickness from climbing Helvellyn?” Eric disputed. “It’s only nine hundred and fifty metres high, man. You don’t get altitude sickness until three thousand metres.”

  “Well you’re the exception,” Rachel remarked.

  “Look at the label, man,” Eric persisted, thrusting the mobile phone in Rachel’s face. “Zegron GX25!” He looked at Rachel as if he expected the Zegron label to suddenly convince her of his truthfulness but his expectations went unfulfilled. “There’s no such make as Zegron on Earth, is there? It’s obviously an alien make.”

  “Ar yeah, obviously,” Rachel replied, sarcastically.

  Eric spent the next few minutes continuing with his attempts at persuading Rachel of his alien adventures earlier that day before finally realising that his efforts were doomed to failure. And so he eventually switched off the Dirty Dancing DVD.

  But as he packed the DVD into its case he noticed that an episode of Jerry Springer was showing and by coincidence the subtitle for the episode was ‘I Was Abducted By Aliens And They’re Going To Destroy The World.’ Eric’s eyes lit up. He turned to Rachel and noticed that there was also curiosity in her eyes, although her curiosity was based on the coincidence of such a programme being shown just as Eric had gone delirious, whereas Eric’s curiosity was based on gen
uine interest and concern regarding what the studio guest might have to say.

  “And what did they look like, these aliens?” Jerry Springer asked, with his usual trademark cheeky grin on his face.

  “They looked just like you or me, Jerry. Just like regular humans,” the studio guest revealed. “And at first they pretended to be real friendly guys, so I let them take a sample of my blood. But then I figure one of the aliens must have felt kinda guilty cos then he admitted to me that they were planning to eliminate life from Earth.”

  “Flip!” Eric exclaimed. He glanced skywards. “The sly little gits.” He shook his head. “They did the same trick on me. They pretended to be friendly with me as well.” He slapped his palm against his forehead. “Ar … I can’t believe I fell for that. Ar, crap. They’re gonna kill everyone and it’ll be partly my fault cos I let them take my blood.”

  “And did you take any photos when you were on the spaceship?” Jerry inquired.

  “No,” the abductee admitted. “I didn’t happen to have a camera with me.”

  “So do you have any evidence of your abduction?” Jerry asked.

  “Yes,” the abductee replied. “This!” He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a faint small star-shaped red mark on his upper arm. “This is the scar they left when they took the blood sample. It was much brighter when I was first abducted but it’s faded a bit now.”

  “I don’t know how I ever doubted your story,” Jerry smirked, sarcastically.

  “Flip!” Eric exclaimed. “I wonder if I’ve got a scar as well.” He nervously rolled up his t-shirt and was shocked to discover an identical scar to the one worn by the abductee, the only difference being that Eric’s scar was considerably brighter. “Flip!” he exclaimed. “Ar, crap. Ar, man. They’re gonna kill everyone … and it’s my fault!”

  “Eric, I know you like your practical jokes but the lengths you’ve gone to this time is taking things a bit too far,” Rachel remarked.

  Eric didn’t seem to be listening. He had more important things on his mind.

  “Look, I’m sorry and all that but I need to go and see Monty and Garth,” he apologised. “They saw the spaceship as well. They weren’t abducted or nothing cos they ran away like bottlers … but I need to speak to them.” He put his coat on and made his way down the stairs.

  Rachel was initially going to tell him he couldn’t just make up a load of patter and then leave, but the truth was she was starting to think that Eric was a bit of a chump and wasn’t worth losing her cool over. “You’re a total fool, you, like, Eric,” she shouted after him. She decided that was the best thing to say. She didn’t want to let him think that she was bothered, but at the same time she wanted to establish that if he was trying to make her look like a fool then he had failed and it was in fact him which was the fool.

  “Sorry and all that,” Eric shrugged, “but, like, the world might be gonna end and all that, so I have to make that my priority.” He shrugged his shoulders once again. “Soz, like.”

  And so he left the house and made his way to Monty’s to discuss the recent developments.

  Chapter Seven – Double Standards

  From the moment Eric arrived at Monty’s house, Monty could immediately tell by the frantic expression on Eric’s face that he had important information to tell him, and given that he had spent the afternoon on an alien spacecraft he guessed that the important information would most likely be connected to Eric’s alien encounter.

  “Did you see Jerry Springer!?” Eric asked, with a wide-eyed excited face.

  It has to be said that Monty wasn’t expecting Eric’s excitement to be connected to the latest episode of Jerry Springer. “No, surprisingly enough I’ve been more concerned about your alien adventures this afternoon,” Monty replied, as they walked through into his living room where Garth was already sat. “Although I must admit it was a toss-up between that and watching Jerry Springer.”

  “No, man. It was on Jerry Springer about the aliens,” Eric revealed. “And it turns out that they’re not really friendly after all. That was just a bluff. They’re actually gonna kill everyone on the planet.”

  “Ar, no,” Monty remarked. “And if it was on Jerry Springer then it must be true.”

  “No, man. You don’t understand. There was this dude on who’d been abducted by aliens and everyone thought he was just some mental freak but he wasn’t,” Eric explained. “All the same stuff happened to him that happened to me. Except one of his aliens must have felt guilty cos he admitted that they were actually just pretending to be friendly when really they were planning on destroying the world.”

  “How do you know he wasn’t just a weird nutter?” Monty asked.

  “Cos the exact same stuff happened to him that happened to me, man!” Eric repeated.

  “Like I said, how do you know he wasn’t just a weird nutter?” Monty joked.

  “Here, man. Seriously, the exact same stuff happened to him that happened to me,” Eric re-repeated.

  “So he went to Everest as well, did he?” Garth inquired.

  “Well not the exact same stuff,” Eric admitted, “but basically it followed the same general pattern. The aliens pretended to be friendly and then they took a sample of his blood. Then the only difference is that at the end one of his aliens felt guilty and confessed why they were really here.”

  “What did your aliens say they were here for?” Garth inquired, taking the situation more seriously than Monty.

  “They said it was some alien festival where they fly to other planets and play tricks on people,” Eric answered. “But now that I think about it, it does seem a bit unrealistic that they would fly billions of miles across the galaxy just to play tricks on strange alien species.”

  “Strange?” Monty questioned. “Speak for yourself.”

  “Hey, man. It’s serious, you know,” Eric proclaimed. “They’re gonna kill everyone unless we can think of a way to stop them.”

  “And you’re certain?” Monty asked.

  “Yes, man! That’s definitely what their plan is,” Eric insisted. “That dude on Jerry Springer even had the same scar as me from where they took his blood.” Eric rolled his sleeve up to reveal his scar. “It’s definitely gonna happen.”

  “Ar, well it’s good to see you’re being so optimistic,” Monty remarked, sarcastically.

  “Well I’m just telling it the way it is,” Eric shrugged. “It’s definitely gonna happen so that’s all I’m saying.” He then took a moment to ponder upon his statement. “Well actually, I don’t mean it definitely will happen. But I mean, they’re definitely gonna try to make it happen. They definitely want to kill us all. But hopefully there might be a way for uz to stop them.”

  Garth wasn’t quite as optimistic as Eric. “I dunno, like,” he disagreed. “They’re gonna have advanced alien technology, light years ahead of the technology on Earth, so the chances probably don’t look that good.”

  “Ar, but I’ve just thought…” Eric exclaimed, his eyes suddenly lighting up with hope. The hope in his eyes in turn inspired hope in the eyes of Monty and Garth. “…they gave uz one of their mobile phones. Maybe that has some feature on it we can use.”

  Monty and Garth’s eyes suddenly returned to their previous gloomy appearance once again. “Hmm … I wouldn’t be too optimistic,” Monty suggested. “Your new mobile phone might have a decent mp3 player on it, and possibly a quality mega-pixel camera, but an mp3 player and a camera possibly aren’t the most effective weapons to have in an intergalactic war. Besides, they’re probably gonna have some powerful Death Star type contraption which can blow up planets … so in the battle between your mobile phone and the Death Star, my money’s on the Death Star.”

  “It’s got that G.O.T. feature though, that I was telling you about,” Eric persisted, clinging to his foolish optimism.

  “Ar, our worries our over then,” Monty replied, sarcastically. “When they’re about to blow us all up you can just say, ‘Stop! Or I’ll translate what you’re
saying into different languages!’ That’ll scare them.”

  “I might send them a text,” Eric shrugged, his face finally looking resigned and gutted.

  “What’re you gonna say?” Garth inquired.

  “You could say, ‘Don’t attack Earth cos we’ve all moved to Mars so you’d just be wasting your time if you attacked Earth. Honest,’” Monty joked.

  “Hmm, actually that’s not a bad idea,” Eric mused.

  “I don’t think it’s that great an idea, like,” Monty replied. “Somehow I don’t think they’d fall for it.”

  “No, I don’t mean literally tell them we’ve gone to Mars,” Eric explained. “I just mean we could use trickery and deception to mislead them. Sly deviousness is one of the best weapons you can have in a war.”

  “But possibly not quite as good as a big massive Death Star,” Monty maintained, carrying on with his Death Star fixation.

  “Yeah but look at the Ewoks,” Eric replied. “They defeated the Empire using sticks and stones.”

  “Well, yeah … but sticks and stones aren’t the same as sly deviousness,” Monty pointed out. “Sticks and stones are physical objects, whereas sly deviousness is a character trait.”

  “Yeah, but what I’m saying is that…” Eric realised that he wasn’t sure what he was saying. “Anyway, the point I’m making is that sly deviousness is probably the only weapon we’ve got, so we might as well use it.”

  “Fair enough,” Monty agreed. “So we send them a sneaky text which misleads them and buys us time. Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  “Yeah,” Eric confirmed.

  “Right, so what text message are you going to send then, to throw them off the scent?” Monty asked.

  Eric thought for a few seconds. Then a few more seconds. Then a few more. “Actually I might just send them a text saying, ‘You fucking sly little evil fucking twats. I know what your fucking snidey little fucking evil plan is, you fucking gits.’” He wasn’t too happy about the prospect of being killed and although his initial defence mechanism was to cling to false hope, the anger and emotion had finally built up to the point where he could keep it in no longer.