Space Invaders

Space Invaders

A Story by Brett Hernan
"

Currently, it's impossible to define using traditional Earth languages. (Including pictographs).

"



   A long black limousine, one of the ones with six windows (so all kinds of weirdness can go on in the back seat play area while they're driving around), floated ominously as it rounded a 3.55 am Wednesday night corner.
Here, in this incredibly small town where nothing happened of note, at the best of times, these sorts of vehicles were rarely ever seen.
He had never ever seen one before outside of a TV set, and from the deliberately stealthy quiet of its engine as it sharked the corner ahead of him, he received the distinct impression from the predatorily languorous, slow prowling animal movement of it, that someone, (or something), was inside, estimating and evaluating, taking in stock of the potential redevelopment value of the properties in town should anything as unlikely as a property value boom occur.
"Good luck!" he thought to himself.
   There had been reports on the local radio of strange lights floating above the city in the months previous. Little did the citizenry know that this involved the man and his friend catching the late night bus to the top of the mountain, under which the city sat.
   Whilst they were up there, they commenced releasing, over the canopy of the city, (and surrounding suburbs) below, a number of helium-filled gas balloons to which, by long, thin steel wires had been affixed, clear, epoxy-reinforced, glass jam jars, filled with masses of crumbled firelighters, a burning cigarette tucked into the rows of match-heads to create a slow burning matchbook-timer igniter, surrounded on all sides by shredded coils of magnesium.
Some had also been peppered with powdered copper to give an eerie, ultramarine, space alienish, Mars man's eye flash, emerald aurora green glowing effect to these lights.
   They were clearly visible at great distances, and when the magnesium petered out, it looked as if whatever this potential fleet of alien space-ships had been doing, it certainly had finished and they had then decided to depart from, appearing to take off from the scene above the city, incredibly quickly as it might seem, given that the visual effect, to the casual observer, was that whatever it was, it was right there in the sky, amongst the clouds, and then, it was not! It was gone in a split second! Indicating a sudden speedy departure and the possession of superior mechanical capabilities by the pilots of these machines, which obviously could reach speeds that we, as human beings, could not hope to attain, as the scrambled jets from the nearby airbase had included in their commander's report, to his superiors, regarding the matter,
 '...subject as we were and trapped with the comparatively archaic, jet engine, our jets seriously had no hope of competitively emulating, in any way, (at least not for a couple of hundred years!)...'
   These fake alien space ship replica facsimiles were always released on nights when the weather forecast had predicted that the winds would slowly carry these oblique and very strange orbs across the vista of the valley city at a rate designated to capture the attention of the greatest number of local citizens, (those unsuspecting of the hoax).
   As this was 1987, in order to find out the critical weather conditions information, the man's friend had had to approach his cousin who worked at the local government TV and radio center, and in doing so, was privy to inside information of a detailed nature, in regard to the future five day forecast of weather, and particularly in relation to both the speed and direction of the prevailing winds.
   To co-ordinate the 'attack' precisely, both these men went to synchronise watches, of which neither had one, and one of the two of them remained at the summit peak of the mountain to release these faux alien vessels into the upper atmosphere. Whilst simultaneously the other walked the eight kilometers down the mountain road to use the nearest public pay telephone box.
Dialed in the message to the live, waiting to be sucked, completely in, to a belief of this exciting mystery, audience, caught in the spell of his fevered proclamations that,
 "There's somethin'... super weird that's goin' on up in the sky above town tonight, man! Go on, and take a look if ya don't believe me, man! It's completely off the show! I think it's the space aliens, man! Maybe, could it be an invasion fleet of alien space ships, d'ya reckon?"
   All the while, doing his best impression of a tone of voice concocted to convincingly appeal, (innocently), to the semi-literate, diametric population slice that composed the regular and keen after-dinner listeners to the top 40 request line of radio station, 'Seventy Seven BOHO' radio.
   Those listening in tonight were mainly those who'd only tuned in to try to attempt to have transmitted a message of love or of reconciliation to a recently two-timed on or for some other reason recently broken romance which through the public declaration of the medium of their favorite love song's content in public, here on the local request-line FM stereo station, and they hoped to somehow, if it were at all possible, to win back the love of their lost romance.
   That is, until the next Friday or Saturday night pub love-triangle occurred yet again, bringing them all right back to this very point again, to the local requests line FM radio station to communicate their relationships publicly.
This would go on, until they'd had it off with each and everyone else's boyfriend and/or girlfriend. Such was the dislike of one's self in that town, as it is so much in many far-slung cities.
  After much bad quality copulation, the exhaustion of the gene pool having been achieved in overkill, often, then possibly came the big one, the ultimate social commitment- the big, old-fashioned marriage!
After marriage, however, this ritual public declaration of romantic love by radio station had been killed and was effectively dead as a means of regaining a lost lover.
Only a total loser would try it again after the exchange of the 18 karat gold bands, (not that a few didn't). 
   Never could it suffice, in the context of it's previous lowly status of catalytic returner of soul-mates to one another after uncontrolled alcohol, energy drink mixer, (and more often than not, ecstasy, ice and pot) fueled dalliances.
No, this was now the big league.  It was just messy divorces only allowed after that.
   Having heard in the dashboard console of their orbiting observation spaceship, the real space aliens were impressed with these amateurish social-engineering efforts of both these two men and so, they decided to land their vehicle, under force of invisibility cloak, (of course), on the roof of their home, and to observe, by watching them both partaking of their daily chores of both sleeping, bonging on, pigging out, and rocking out, as in their invisibility suits, the antics that went on in the place, were secretly observed with the intention of returning a report on this strange social phenomenon to the leaders of the Galactic Federation.
   However, their plan to remain undetected was destined to fail.
This was in order to ascertain exactly what it was that would drive these life-forms to attempt to disrupt the mating ritual function of an integral societal practice in their community.  
The dispatched radio waves reinterpreted every word for months after that whatever it was that was exchanged between these men in speech.
These decoded messages were then automatically translated by the aliens into their own, 'SPQQQQL', (don't even try to speak that one out loud), dialect of the infamously difficult to translate, 'Prefoon' language, which everyone on their home planet of 'Kuxribg' regularly used to communicate.
   It consisted of beeps, groans, bubbling sounds, sudden quick sucking sounds and the occasional squirting noises as though at an extreme scale spilt droplets of moisture were evaporating from the surface of  an extremely hot barbecue hotplate.

© 2017 Brett Hernan


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Added on December 12, 2016
Last Updated on July 15, 2017
Tags: why?, carrot, month, moth, trilobyte, luncheon, twelfth, deep sea, mars, aliens, space, brett hernan, tasmanian writer, australian writer, space invaders, scifi, open grilled cheese, please

Author

Brett Hernan
Brett Hernan

Hobart, Tasmania, Australia



About
Low-resolution sample only. Born 1968. All of the images accompanying each of these written works are my own. (Except that one of the guy putting a flower into a soldier's rifle barrel!) more..

Writing