Used UFO For Sale

A light-hearted sci-fi short story, set in the semi-near future.

 

USED UFO FOR SALE

 

By Dax

 

 

Ever since I was a kid I wanted to own a UFO. After Earth Contact in 2012, they became available but of course, they were not cheap. Unfortunately they were also not the finest examples of reliable technology available in the universe. It seemed that out there in the vast universe we were just discovering, owners of used UFOs saw Earthers as a sucker market and unloaded some real junk on us. Fortunately, by law they were all equipped with hyperspace radios, so if, (or more accurately, when) they broke down the passengers could always call the universe equivalent of the Auto Club, who would tow a damaged space ship to wherever for repairs. Expensive repairs.

The reason they were still called UFO’s is because the technology was, of course, unknown to Earth “mechanics,” and the point of origin was virtually no help in determining value or price. Basically buying a used UFO was a crapshoot.

Honest Moira’s Used UFO’s was one of two used UFO lots on Earth. Honest Moira admitted that she knew almost nothing of the workings of the craft she offered for sale – but she did have a license to sell them, and she read the (mandatory) owner’s manuals and could demonstrate how to operate most of them. This came as no small surprise to me when I first purchased mine. She had taken me on board, pushed a few buttons, and the craft had slid out of the atmosphere silently and achieved Earth orbit in about fifteen seconds. She then gave me the short course on how to astrogate (space navigating) taking me to the Orion Nebula and back in a little over an hour. I was more than impressed until she told me the price. It was my entire life-savings.

That was four years ago. That first used UFO had taken me to several inhabited planets. On each trip I took on passengers and I charged ‘em millions of dollars for the flight. After only six space voyages I had recouped most of my investment and things looked good for the future. Maybe buying a used UFO had been a crapshoot, but I was winning… until my little lovely developed a malfunction in the propulsion system somewhere the other side of a star named B-239. I reassured my passengers that there was no danger and picked up the H-radio, getting a message recorder.

“We’re sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again.”

This is not good. For a couple hours I dialed random numbers until I got hooked up with a being of some sort on a planet named (I think) SyteK. The voice had been kind enough to look up the number for a space towing service and I called it.

“We’re pretty busy right now so it’ll be a couple weeks before we can get to you. How do you intend to pay?”

Good question. I explained that I had quite a bit of money in an account on Earth, and the voice was totally unimpressed.

“We accept gold or gems only, unless you have an account at Universe S&L on Lanndew.”

I told them I’d never heard of Lanndew, nor the Universe S&L, but I could pay in gold.

“Fine, we have your location, and we’ll send a service craft soon.”

All used UFO’s are equipped with backup food generators and air refreshers, so we had food to eat and air to breathe, but not much more. My passengers seemed to be taking the temporary setback pretty well at first, but that changed on about day 15. Around day 23 they tried to take over the ship. I let them, then proceeded to whine about getting home myself. They gave me back control of the ship after only a few hours.

Long story short, the repair cost far more than I had on Earth, so they towed me to a place named Hytisee, where a salvage yard had the right replacement parts. I told them I couldn’t pay for the repairs and their reply was what they called “good news” – I could trade in the disabled UFO plus every penny of my account on Earth for a smaller one “in excellent condition.” What choice did I have?

My second UFO was pretty much just a space RV with a small kitchen, a bathroom, and a tiny 12” screen entertainment center. By law I could take on only one large or two small passengers at a time. My first outing was a disaster. The passenger was a drop-dead gorgeous female with two year old, and an attitude. I screwed up the astrogation and ended up taking her to the wrong planet. Her kid screamed while she bitched all the way back to our origin point, then insisted that I either refund her fare or take her to the right place PRONTO! I don’t like ultimatums but my cashflow was virtually nil so I took the b***h out. She insisted on watching only documentaries about fish. Boring. Six days of fish shows. I wanted to kill myself.

Profits from her trip allowed me to stash a few ounces of gold, the universal monetary unit. The only luxuries I allowed myself were a larger video screen and about two hundred classic movies on microdisk. I assumed this would make the long days in space transit go by faster – until I took on my second fare. A fat guy who wanted a ride way the other side of the universe, about ten Billion light years. Huge fare! Serious profits! Let’s go!

The craft made it all the way there with a flawless flight. I was rich! That’s the good news. My passenger was studying to be a taxidermist and brought his own learning tapes for viewing on the ride out. That’s the bad news. Three months of watching dead animals getting stuffed on my new larger viewing screen.

On the trip pack I stopped in on a recreation planet for a short vacation, with the hopes of picking up a paying passenger for the return. I got one! Once again, good news, bad news.

We left the rec. planet and headed back across the universe toward his destination, which was within a thousand light years of Earth. (Basically a close neighbor in universe terms.) He called himself “The most entertaining performer in twelve galaxies.” They must have been small galaxies. He insisted on entertaining me during the long voyage. His act, if you can call it that, was to cut off an arm (or leg, or whatever) then graphically illustrate to the audience (me, unfortunately) the gore of the cuts, before he would position it where it had been separated, then grow it back to perfect health. It took only a few minutes for each “act” but it seemed like hours. First he’d cut off his left arm clean with a laser cutter. It hardly even bled. Not much of an act, and apparently my face told him how I felt. After healing the arm back on (it took about two minutes) he said, “So cutting off an arm might not be sensational enough to excite this audience?” and promptly produced a guitar-sized case from which he pulled an old fashioned chain saw!

He pulled the start cord, revved it once, and chopped his legs off, then cut each in half, screaming at the top of his lungs all the while as blood spattered everywhere, including on my face! (Holy s**t!)

Long story short, The little craft took a s**t on me at about the half way point. I called the tow yard.

“We’re pretty busy right now so it’ll be a couple weeks before we can get to you. How do you intend to pay?”

“Gold.”

“Do you have an account at Universe S&L?”

Day after day I’d seen arms, legs, penis, butt-cheek, and any other knob on a body sawed off so many times it got boring. I mean really, really boring. My only salvation was that I insisted he wipe down all the walls and exposed surfaces after each show to get rid of the splattered blood. It took most of the day to clean up the mess, and I could watch a movie. Sad to say it actually turned into a routine. The service craft finally took me out of my misery when it pulled up outside an even three weeks after our problem developed. Two shows a day, three on weekends. That’s 16 shows a week, 48 performances total.

I couldn’t wait to show the service guy the problem. He pulled out a drawer full of circuit boards and yanked a small cylindrical object out of somewhere.

“Yep, just what I figured. Here.” He unplugged a small blower motor and blew on it, producing a tiny puff of dust. Then he plugged it back into the circuit from which it came. The UFO’s control panel lit up.

“Cheap cooling fan. Happens all the time on these models. It’ll take a few minutes for the systems to boot up, ‘nen you’ll be ready to go. The good news is that it’s an inexpensive repair, cost is half a credit for the repair.” (That’s about a quarter).

“What’s the bad news?” I asked, feeling the sheering nearing.

“That’ll be fifty gold units (about two million bucks worth) for the service call. I had to dump everything and ask “chainsaw boy” to front me half of his delivery fee to pay the b*****d. This left me with a grand total of an ounce of what gold I’d profited from the inbound trip.

Broke again.

I delivered “Splattered Blood Guy” to his next gig, collected what was left of his delivery fee, and proceeded back to Earth with barely enough funds to make the trip.

As I mentioned, all this happened four years ago. Since then I’ve put a lot of light years on various used UFOs, and made fortunes…

…And deposited them in my account at Universe S&L…

… ‘nen spent them on repairs or various used UFO swaps and purchases.

When dealing with used UFOs, you’re never more than a twist of the ignition key from an expensive repair. I doubt I’ll ever get rich, but I’m confident I can wheel & deal on used UFO’s well enough to stay in the pilot seat of one. Besides, I’m dating Honest Moira now.

My plan hasn’t changed, it’s just been set back a few years. I’ll wait until I’ve made a few successful trips, profited a few million, (assuming I don’t blow up somewhere between the stars), then buy a small resort somewhere and retire.

If everything goes well, maybe I’ll buy a used boat, too. How much can that cost?

Author's Note

thank you for your comments

Reviews

I like the story's humor quite a bit. It has a little bit of that "Hitchhiker's Guide" feel to it. Here are two items for consideration:

Describe the scenes more often. I get a very vivid picture when you are describing the performer near the end of the story, but the rest of the story is a bit flat overall. I don't really "see" what is happening. When writing, you should be trying to show and not tell. I struggle with this all the time as well. I wanted to see what the different UFOs looked like. What did the other beings look like as well. There is a lot that you could have done here, and a lot of it would lend itself to the style of this piece.

The second item for consideration is to get some more dialogue in the story. This would allow the story to expand as well. One thing that happens when there is not a lot of dialogue is that you get lost in the head of the story teller. It made some of the earlier parts less exciting than they could have with some good back and forth. Make the trip where the mutiny happened into a separate scene and actually show the break down of how the customers complained. There is a whole cast of characters that could have come out of that.

As a whole, I liked the general feel of this piece. It was enjoyable enough that the points I mention above did not kill the mood. With those additions, this would be phenomenal