KATACLYSM: A Space-Time Comedy (10 page)

The alien gestured to the red flashing box visible through Jude’s pants-pocket.

He produced the box, handing it back to Paroophoron who swiftly pocketed it.

“I regret that I’ve had to leave the two of you for so long.  I must say, though, I am a bit surprised to find you having such a miserable time.  I tend to think we have a pretty nice place here,” the alien said surveying the square.  His eyes came to the San Petronio.

“You didn’t go in there, did you?” he said nodding towards the towering building.

“That’s not the point, ok?” Flower interjected hotly.  “I don’t want to be here.  Just take us home.”

“Alright,” replied Paroophoron. “But if you don’t mind my asking, what’s the matter?”

“If you don’t mind…?  What’s the matter?” a livid Flower shouted at the alien.  “Is it customary for kidnapers to ask that question on this planet?  ‘Oh, pardon me for bringing you a trillion miles from your home for no reason.  By the way, what’s the matter?”

Jude raised his hand to indicate that Paroophoron shouldn’t push Flower.

“Listen, Paroophoron, we appreciate your concern, but if you could just take us back, we have a lot of problems to deal with,” said Jude.

“Oh, really, what sort of problems?”

Flower threw her arms up in the air.  Jude sighed.  Realizing that the alien’s inquisitiveness was not meant to be malicious, he decided to level with him.

“Well, since yesterday morning, all kinds of bizarre things have been going on at home.  It’s as though the world changed on Sunday morning.  Everything was suddenly different.  Then Flower’s psychic told her that by tomorrow night, three more weird things are going to happen on Earth and one of them is that she’ll just stop existing.  It’s probably silly, but…”

“No,” the alien said hastily, his forehead moving as though to raise an eyebrow he didn’t have.  “Not silly at all…quite possible…hmm…quite possible…you know, I wonder if I…?”

Paroophoron seemed lost in thought.

“Excuse me,” Flower barked.  “Hello?  I’ve had just about enough of this.  Can we please leave now?”

“Tomorrow night on Earth, eh?”  Paroophoron scratched the point at the top of his head.  “We ought to be able to make it.”

“Of course we can make it back home for tomorrow night,” Flower snapped.  “Even I know that.  It only took us seven hours to get here.  Trust me, I was looking at my watch the whole way.  And besides, what are you so eager about?  What kind of food will you be taking out this time?  Pakoras?  Oh, who cares?  What good does it do me to go back to Earth anyway if I’m really going to die?”

Flower began to cry again.  Paroophoron patted her gently on the arm.

“I think you misunderstood me,” he beeped in a soothing tone.  “I feel terribly sorry to have troubled the two of you by bringing you all this way.  The least I can do is to see if I can help you fix the situation.”

Paroophoron gently took a thin finger and brought Flower’s chin up so that she was looking directly into his swirling green eyes.

“What I meant…was that I think we still have enough time to make a detour that might help you solve your problem before tomorrow night.”

“Oh no,” said Flower who was not even sure she believed Madame Sfortunata’s prediction and was even less keen to place her trust in Paroophoron.  “I’ve had enough space travel for one lifetime.  Don’t you have some kind of ray gun that can erase my memory or something?  I could go for that right now.”

“I’m afraid not.” The alien frowned.

“Well what good are you then?  What kind of an alien are you?”

She looked around and felt a renewed helplessness in this alien Bologna.

“On second thought, I’d rather you just took us straight home,” said Flower resigned.

“I promise,” Paroophoron lingered on the word for effect, “that I will take you home quite shortly and with no significant further inconvenience, but first I really think we should stop by DSM V.”

“What’s DSM V?” piped in Jude.

Paroophoron seemed briefly startled at the notion that anyone might not have heard of DSM V.

“Why…it’s where all the answers are.”

Taking slow, deliberate steps, the three men dressed in black wound their way in a solemn procession up the long, stone staircase towards the top of the obelisk.  The man in front hummed softly as he ascended, while the pair behind him struggled to lug up the delicate cylinder that lay precariously in their arms.

“How many more steps are there to the top?” one of the men carrying the cylinder shouted ahead.

“It doesn’t matter, Carl.  Don’t think about it,” replied Terry from the front.

“Well, how many steps are there in total?” Carl shouted back.

Terry could hardly bear this insolence.  After the argument with Greg at Max the physicist’s house, he had vowed to punish his followers for such outbursts.  On meeting with the rest of the cult members afterwards, however, he was disappointed to find that they were no better than Greg.  No one appeared excited by the fact that they had finally obtained the weapon.  It seemed that they had been perfectly happy to enjoy the endless rhetoric and camaraderie that came with being a follower.  But when real action was called for, they became lame and skeptical.  At any rate, Terry was starting to feel fortunate that Greg and Carl had agreed to help him at all.

“I’ve told you already.  There are 294 steps.  We can’t be very far now.”

Terry shivered.  The stone blocks that comprised the Bunker Hill Monument retained a bitter cold.  None of the three had dressed appropriately.

“It’s freezing in here,” said Greg, “and…and it smells like pee.”

“Enough!” yelled Terry.

“Hey, that’s…that’s exactly how I feel,” replied Greg who cradled half of the nuclear bomb in his arms.  He had the overwhelming urge to speak out against the leader.  “I’m just helping you do this so…so that I can keep an eye on you…to make sure you don’t do anything st…stupid.  After this, I’m out of here.”

“Fine,” replied Terry who was really beginning to feel deflated.  “It will be your loss when Adam Outerspace arrives and sees your shameful non-belief.”

Presently, the trio arrived at the tiny room at the top of the monument.  Greg and Carl busied themselves with setting the device down safely while Terry stared out at Boston through a small, translucent Plexiglas window.

“Why did we need to take this thing up here anyway?” asked Carl who was breathing heavily.

“I told you,” said Terry in a resigned tone. “It was dangerous enough keeping the bomb with us for the last twenty four hours.  We needed a spot to store it until it goes off tomorrow evening at seven forty-two, the time expressly mandated by Adam.  And then there’s the added benefit of having the device detonate in the air, making it easier for our Lord to see the explosion as he arrives from space.”

The leader turned back to his men and, just then, noticed that Greg didn’t look right. Despite the cold, Greg was flushed and waves of sweat were streaming down the sides of the phony cat massage therapist’s face.  He was having a panic attack. 

“I have to leave now,” said Greg who began to hurry down the stairs, leaving Terry and Carl alone.  The silence was heavy and uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry,” Terry said to Carl after a moment.  “This has been hard on all of us.  But Adam opened himself up and allowed me to see his divine purpose.  He said that ‘everything must go’.”

The cult leader turned and looked back out the window.

“And, by God, everything will.”

The now familiar silver spaceship carrying Jude, Flower and Paroophoron hurtled toward the planet DSM-V at tremendous speed.  The two humans were taking turns shouting at the alien to slow down.  Paroophoron was ignoring them.  As the planet drew closer and loomed larger on the view screen, it became clear that it was unlike any planet Jude and Flower could ever have imagined.  The colossal mountain structures festooning the surface gave it an almost anthropomorphic quality.  In fact, if he hadn’t known better, Jude would have sworn that they were headed straight for the planet’s nose.

“Slow down!” squealed Flower whose nails were now digging into Jude’s arm.

“For the last time, no,” said the alien.  “We have to go faster.  Much faster.”

The craft began to accelerate so that the surrounding stars distorted into long shards of light.

“If we don’t go faster, we’ll never be able to make it through.”

“Through what?  The planet?” said Flower.  “You see Jude, it’s true. I am going to die.”

“Settle down, everything will be explained shortly.”

Paroophoron consulted his controls once more and then, giving the throttle one last push, sent the spaceship into the planet’s nose and directly towards what appeared to be a wall of solid earthy rock.  Flower screamed.  In an instant, the spaceship smashed through the wall which turned out to be much spongier than its harsh façade suggested.  The spaceship squeezed its way through the last bit of the wall and into a massive vault that, itself, must have been larger than the whole planet Earth.  The entire inner surface of the cavity was swathed in lights.  It was one massive metropolis with buildings hanging sideways and upside down overhead.  The ship’s intercom engaged and the trio heard a pleasant sounding female voice.

“Welcome to DSM V,” it beeped.  “Visitors are asked to head to landing strip Omega 3.  Please be advised that we are currently in the process of upgrading DSM V to DSM VI so that we may serve you better.  Expect delays.  Peace to you and a refined mind.”

The trio stepped out onto platform Omega 3 to find scores of spacecrafts whizzing by their heads in all directions.  Jude and Flower were much more preoccupied, however, with the way that they were standing or, depending on how one viewed the circumstances, not standing next to the ship.  The landing strip was situated on the sheer face of one of the thousands of massive buildings adorning the walls of DSM V’s interior surface.  Paroophoron and his human companions stood erect, that is to say, completely horizontal on the face of the building.  When they peered behind them, Jude and Flower were startled by the massive chasm of glowing lights into which, by all rights, they should have fallen.  Yet, as a result of some bizarre gravity, their feet cleaved to the side of the building and they showed no evidence of letting go.

As the two humans struggled to overcome the most intense vertigo that any member of their species had ever experienced, Paroophoron effortlessly scaled the side of the tower.  When he had nearly reached the apex, the alien turned around and spotted the other two loitering a full football field’s length below him.

“Come along folks,” he shouted down at them.  “The faster we put our names in line, the faster we get seen.”

Flower, who was becoming accustomed to the pervading sensation of utter exasperation and helplessness, meekly ascended along with Jude.  The two walked cautiously at first, but found that the journey required surprisingly little effort.  Within two minutes they had joined Paroophoron.

“Right, now follow me in please,” beckoned the alien.

“In where?” asked Jude but before Paroophoron could respond, Jude’s question was answered for him as a small square panel in the building wall began to retract and pulled the little green man out of view.  A moment later, the panel replaced itself and the alien had disappeared.  One at a time, Jude and Flower retraced Paroophoron’s steps and the building enveloped both of them in turn.

Paroophoron, Jude and Flower were all three deposited into a large room with walls coloured in a soothing shade of peach.  Looking around, Jude estimated that the room contained about two hundred empty plush chairs lined up in rows and spaced out by small tables. Each table held an enormous stack of magazines.  He walked over to the nearest one, picked up a magazine at random and looked at the cover.  It showed a picture of a handsome little green alien who sported an uncomfortable looking smile while flanked by two menacing, larger little green aliens who each clutched what Jude could only guess was some kind of raygun.  The banner headline read:

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH TRANSGALACTIC PRESIDENT, STRAIGHT FROM HIS JAIL CELL DEEP BENEATH THE SALT MINES OF THE PENAL PLANET SCARBOTRON III

‘Everything is fine.  I’m doing fine,’ says Supreme Commander through his Captor’s Spokesman

Paroophoron peered at the magazine over Jude’s shoulder.

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother reading that,” said the alien.  “It must be at least two years old.  They should really update those magazines.”

Paroophoron pointed to the picture of the half-smiling alien president who, in Jude’s estimation, looked too frail to be supreme commander of anything.

“He died, poor fellow.  They never did figure out what happened to him.  Actually, it was looking bad there for a while, what with no one to lead the whole transgalactic political process.  But luckily the Grand Scarbotron Emperor stepped in and offered to be president on an interim basis.  I’ll be the last one to deny that he can be a bit rough at times, but I will say this for him, he sure keeps the beta quadrant quiet.”

Jude rolled his eyes and flipped open the second page of the magazine.  The first item on the table of contents read thus:

Take our weekly relationship quiz.  This week: ‘Do You Know What’s on the other Side of that Wormhole?’: Seven Questions that will tell you if your Man, Woman or Other is Being Unfaithful

Flower cleared her throat impatiently.  Dropping the magazine, Jude noticed something else that seemed odd.  Despite the fact that the room was clearly intended to accommodate a great multitude, other than his companions, there were only two other people in it.

One obviously female alien sat at a desk at the far end of the room next to an imposing, gigantic metallic door.  She was chewing some sort of gum while twirling her noodle-like hair, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a large mechanical man was hunched in a nearby chair weeping.  Although Jude and Flower had never seen an android before, as they walked towards it, both of them had the distinct impression that this was a particularly pathetic specimen.

“It’s been days!” he cried as the three visitors approached.  “I’ve been waiting here for days and no one cares.  No one wants to help me.  Days!”

The last word took the form of a pained whine.  The machine buried his face in his hands.

“Days?” said Flower anxiously.  “But I can’t wait that long.  I told you this was a stupid idea,” she said to no one in particular.

“Relax, luv” said the alien seated at the desk who snapped her charcoal black gum in Flower’s direction.  “That’s just Dennis.  He’s always like that.  Nothing to be done for him.  Just sits there, poor thing.”

As if on cue, the distraught robot rose and slinked over to the far end of the room, giving what seemed to be intended as heart-wrenching glances back at the others every few seconds.

“Nobody cares,” he muttered to himself at last.  “Nobody cares.”

“Nice to see you again,” said the alien secretary, turning her focus onto Paroophoron.  “You can go right in.  She’ll be along in a minute.  She’s been expecting you.”

“Who is ‘she’?” asked Jude.

“Who’s ‘she’?” the secretary repeated incredulously.  “She happens to be none other than Amaurosis Fugax.”

“Ama what?” said Jude.

“You’ll see,” said Paroophoron.  “Come along.”

The massive metallic door next to the secretary opened revealing what seemed to be a pitch black chamber.  A white mist spewed out from inside.

“How could she be expecting us?” said Flower.  “Even we didn’t know we were coming.”

“I told you,” replied Paroophoron.  “She knows more than any being in all of the known universe.  That’s why I’ve brought you here.  I suspect she’ll already know all about your predicament and, hopefully, how we can solve it.  Though, I must admit I have a hunch that I already know who caused the whole problem.”

“You know who caused this problem?...This ridiculous fiasco that’s driving me absolutely mental?” said Flower.  “Well spit it out then.  Who the hell is it?”

“Me,” said the alien simply as he strode into the darkness.

All good stories need a ‘why’.  Sure, some of them tend to pussyfoot around for a bit at the beginning before getting around to it, but ultimately we all need to understand why things happen to feel satisfied.  Of course, this is not always realistic.  Not all stories are satisfying.  And that’s really where religion steps in.  Religions and their spokespeople are exceedingly clever at explaining why things happen where others have failed.  Take Pierre Levi for example.  Despite ministering to a small, inconspicuous Jewish congregation in Paris, France, Rabbi Levi has been at the forefront of explaining ‘why’ for more than half a century.  He managed to explain why David Rosenberg’s butcher shop burned to the ground on Bastille Day in 2004.  He was able to explain why Maurice Cohen’s erectile dysfunction wasn’t going away.  He even explained why Hannah Klein’s Bichon Frise Angelica just stopped eating its food one morning.  And all this in a day’s work.

After he finished unraveling the mysteries of the world for his select clientele, the Rabbi would usually lock up his tiny synagogue in the old Jewish quarter and, if it was a nice summer’s day, buy a fresh fig and stroll over to the Place des Voges where he would sit, admire the scenery and contemplate his people and their place in the scheme of creation.  Then, after watching a magnificent Parisian sunset, he would make his way home, prepare himself a glass of Chateau De Chasseloir and a plate of schmaltz herring, and sit down to watch ladies’ professional wrestling on television.  Now, Rabbi Levi enjoyed watching all kinds of wrestling and ultimate fighting regardless of the gender of the participants, yet somehow on most nights, the dial seemed to finds its way to ladies’ wrestling, except of course for on Shabbas.