Punishment

by Guerin Zand

  “Maria!” I really wished she’d at least try and be civil to Milly.

  “Listen, Maria. I get it. You don’t like me, but I do care about your father, more than you can know. I also know him well enough to know when he’s up to something. That smug look, his little wisecracks, and acting like none of this is bothering him, tells me he’s going to do something stupid. Instead of fighting with me, you might want to take my side on this and help me stop him.”

  “If you’re so worried, then why don’t you just stop him from going to the unaligned worlds?” Did Katie tell Roger what I was planning to do? Was he trying to help as well?

  “We said we wouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. You know there’s a price on his head out there, Roger. I think he’s just looking to provoke the Trogans. He’s going out there looking for trouble, looking for a fight.”

  “Then maybe you should just let him go and get it out of his system.”

  “And what if he gets killed, Roger?”

  “Then he’ll have gotten it out of his system.” Katie smiled.

  “Are you all in on this? Is that why you’re not trying to help me?”

  “No, Milly. We aren’t in on any plan with Guerin. He’s told us just what he’s telling you. He wants to see what’s out there and what’s really going on, without looking through the Collective’s filter.”

  “And find the best cheeseburger in the known universe. Don’t forget that part, Roger.”

  “See. That’s what I’m talking about. Do you really want me to believe he’s willing to risk his life for a cheeseburger?”

  “Well, it would be a lot safer if I had my own spaceship, with blasters and laser beams.”

  The whole table, except for Milly, laughed.

  “It’s not funny, and I think all this talk about a spaceship is just more of your bullshit, Guerin.”

  “I’m hurt, Milly.” I pouted as I lifted my glass for another sip.

  “Ok. Just what would you do with a spaceship, Guerin? You don’t know how to navigate or how to operate one?”

  “Well, I did ask you to include a complete owner’s manual, didn’t I?”

  “But still, you couldn’t operate the ship on your own. You have to know that at least?”

  “Sure, but I’d put out an ad in the galactic Craig’s List or something. I’m sure a lot of game players would be interested, since crewing with me has to be worth some major game credits.”

  “And then what? You’re just going to hop from one burger joint to the next until you find that perfect cheeseburger?”

  “Maybe we’d dabble a bit in piracy while we’re at it. A little raping and pillaging might help to break up the monotony. We’re going to have to come up with a way to pay for all those burgers. Seems like the perfect solution.”

  “That’s beyond stupid, Guerin. That’s how I know your full of shit.”

  “Wait, you think because it’s beyond stupid, that I’m not up to that?”

  “I don’t.” Katie chimed in.

  “ARGGGGHH!” Milly slammed down the rest of her drink and stood up. “I need another drink. What about you, Guerin?”

  I looked at my glass and nodded yes. I finished mine off and handed her the empty. Milly went to the bar and Steve finally decided to talk.

  “Maybe it’s none of my business, but I think your plan sounds like fun.” Everyone at the table broke out into laughter.

  Roger shook his head and gave me a rather serious look. “So, do you have a plan?”

  I smiled. “Always. A truly stupid plan, if I do say so myself. Don’t worry.”

  Milly returned with the drinks and sat back down. “So, what was so funny while I was at the bar?”

  “Steve wants to join my cheeseburger pirate expedition.” Milly handed me my drink and I gave her a big smile.

  “Well, he’s not getting a spaceship, Steve, so I guess you’ll have to forget your pirate career.”

  “Ok, but just in case I get killed out there because I didn’t have a decent spaceship, I just want to say it now, because I obviously won’t be able to say it later, ‘I told you so.’”

  The rest of the team found that very funny. Milly was not amused.

  Chapter 32

  The Movie

  Julie just had to bring up that damn movie over breakfast. I wasn’t going to mention it, and I had been trying my best to ignore the fact that such a movie even existed. I wasn’t pleased at all with what they did to my story. One time, when Milly and I talked about my book, she mentioned they had several Hollywood contacts who could help bring it to the big screen. At the time, we were joking about it, so I put that thought out of my mind. I’m only mentioning the movie now because Julie brought it up, and I want to finally set the record straight.

  Shortly after returning from the Lodge, I got a call from non-other than Joss Whedon. For those of you not familiar with Joss’ work, he was the genius behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV series, Firefly, and several of the Marvell comic movies. He told me he loved the book and wanted to work with me to make a movie based on it. Of course, I was excited, but I was also very naïve. The Hollywood crowd eats little shits like me for breakfast.

  My main concern was that they cast Julie and Milly properly. In my opinion, the wrong choices for these two roles could make or break the movie. Joss agreed. When I visited Hollywood he introduced me to several hopefuls. They were all more than willing to do what it took to get a part in Joss’ next big movie. The film had a 250-million-dollar budget. What I didn’t know at the time, this adventure in casting was a distraction to keep me from noticing what they were doing to my story.

  The two actresses, who did get the parts, of course, filed a sexual harassment suit against me. After a few months of depositions, the lawsuit was dropped, and we settled through mediation. During Joss’ deposition, it came out how the women were the ones who initiated the sexual encounters at his request. The lawsuit was just another distraction that kept me busy and allowed Joss’ and his team to totally ruin my story. As one of the stipulations reached in mediation, I agreed to never mention the two women in any of my future books. I can only say that their names rhyme with Angelina Jolie and Scarlett Johansson.

  I thought after meeting me, the casting for the role of Guerin Zand would be obvious. Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. We were roughly the same age, and I believed the choice would be simple, but I was wrong. They thought Guerin was more of the effeminate nerd type and the top three candidates were James Franco, Shia LaBeouf, and Tobey Maguire. Yes, you read that correctly, fucking Tobey Maguire if you can believe that. James Franco got the part. I guess when the decision was finally made, I was just so glad it wasn’t fucking Tobey Maguire that I agreed to it.

  It continued to go downhill with the title choice. The book did have a title, but everyone said it wasn’t compelling enough. We needed something to draw people to the theater. Stan Lee, a friend of Joss’ from his Marvell movies, had been brought in to work on the script. He’s the one who came up with the title “The Defiler”. Stan insisted the main character needed a title that would make him seem menacing. I seriously doubted that had anything to do with it.

  Stan Lee, of course, got a cameo. Being on death’s doorstep, it was shot in his hospital room. Six women, with breasts large enough to satisfy King Kong, surrounded the old man’s bed. In the scene, an old man had suffered cardiac arrest. These women were performing various deeds, including mouth to mouth, and if you look really close, it appears two of them had their hands under the covers giving the old perv a tug job. They said they were doing chest compressions. While the scene was being filmed, Stan’s heart actually stopped. Although filming never halted, real medical personnel had to enter the room to resuscitate him.

  The film version of the story started out with Guerin at a frat party. Julie, the virgin princess of the Bree, I know, it makes me throw up a little in my mouth just writing those words, decides to drop down to Earth for a little fun. She meets Guerin at the frat
party and they hit it off. Guerin gets her drunk and lures her back to an empty room. Guerin does things to this poor little space virgin, gag, gag, that most people can’t imagine. Hence, the new title. I’ll admit, in the book I did mention wanting to do sort of the same thing to Julie, but it never happened. My college daze may still be a bit fuzzy, even now, but I’m almost one hundred percent pretty sure that this never, ever, happened.

  Anywho, having been defiled by this Earth nerd, it drove the poor innocent princess over the edge and from that day on she could only think about getting her revenge. She built a fembot, Milly, who she sent to Earth to extract her revenge. I objected strongly to the portrayal of Milly as just some dumb fembot, but I should have read the contract closer. I lost that argument and most of the other ones over the script that are too numerous to mention. Anyways, this fembot performed all sorts of humiliating and degrading sexual acts on Guerin, basically making him her bitch, which Guerin thoroughly enjoyed.

  The Little Trogan Incident was also in the film, but in this version of the story Guerin was the villain. In the movie, the Trogans were a peaceful and loving people who the Collective had sent Guerin to meet. The hope was a friendship between the Trogan empire and Earth would result. The twins, in the movie version, were not slave girls. They were the Emperor’s pure and virtuous daughters.

  After dinner, a dinner the Trogans had thrown to honor Guerin’s visit, the twins invited Guerin for a walk to see the palace gardens. Guerin, who does what any good defiler would do, had the time of his life defiling the twins in a large fountain at the garden’s center. I’ll admit, it was a pretty hot scene, well except for the fact James Franco was in it. The actresses playing the twins were chosen by me as the result of one of my casting sessions, so of course, they were hot.

  Their father, the Emperor, finds them just in time to watch Guerin perform the money shot in a rather disgusting fashion on his two sweet daughters. Now, the filmmakers had to keep the movie from crossing the line, they barely got the R rating in the end, so just imagine the scene with the hair gel reference from the movie Something About Mary, but a lot messier, and you get the general idea. In the movie, Guerin looks over at the Emperor and says something totally stupid, I’d never say it, “Oops. My bad.” Then he pulls up his pants, assaults the Emperor, and runs away. Again, I’ll admit in the book I did make a reference to a money shot, but not in this context.

  The movie ends with the Bree banishing Guerin to Earth, and quarantining Earth for all eternity from the outside universe. In one of the last scenes of the movie, during a rather vile, and I would say physically impossible sex act, Milly short circuits and blows up. This leaves Guerin sexually dysfunctional for the rest of his eternal life. Fade to black!

  You may notice that throughout this movie description I refer to Guerin in the third person. That’s because this Guerin is not me, and the movie was most certainly meant to embarrass and humiliate me. The Julie character was the heroine of the movie and the subsequent sequels. I am absolutely sure that this rewrite was the result of Julie’s sick imagination and that she was behind the whole thing. It did give me a little insight as to how Julie might actually feel about me and why she had moved her daughter to the other side of the universe, which was literally as far away as possible. She wondered if we could ever be friends. Seriously? Her bringing the movie up in our conversations was just another cheap shot.

  The movie was a big smash hit though, and it did make me a good chunk of change. There were sequels, but I don’t even want to get started about them. The porn industry immediately produced several rather trashy rip-offs of the movie which, after extensive litigation, made me even richer. I just wrote off the whole Hollywood experience as a bad idea and tried to forget it. During the tensions with China, I had considered letting at least one nuke fly if we could have found one that targeted Hollywood. The biggest loser though was James Franco. I felt kind of sorry for him. Sure, he got rich off the movie just like the rest of us, but he never could get a part in any major motion picture after that Trogan garden ménage et trois.

  Epilogue

  I was heading down to the space dock with Maria to see her, Diane, Milly, and Sid off. They were leaving for the station where Milly was currently assigned. I’d been laying back for the last month or so, not doing much of anything but working on my book. Life aboard an alien spaceship was about the most boring thing I’d ever done. Ok, if you don’t count the occasional encounter with a couple of drop-dead gorgeous ex-slave girls.

  We arrived at Milly’s shuttle. Yes, the bitch got her own spaceship, but not me, NO! Anyways, I boarded the shuttle with Maria and we met up with the others in the galley. Yes, I have decided I like the term galley better than cafeteria or mess. As the first spaceman, I had the right to name things. It just took me a while to get around to properly naming this room.

  I hugged Maria and kissed her on the forehead. “Try and behave, please?”

  “Only if you will.” Maria kissed me on the cheek and hugged me tightly. She whispered in my ear. “Don’t do anything too stupid. I don’t want to lose you too.” When she backed away I could see the tear in her eye.

  “Don’t worry about me, Maria. You should be more worried about the universe.” I smiled and hugged her again.

  I went over to say goodbye to Sid. I shook his hand, he thought he was too grown-up now for me to be hugging him. “You better behave as well, lizard boy.”

  “I will, Guerin.”

  “You better, or you’ll learn just how stupid I can be. You take care of her.”

  Next, it was Diane. I went over to her and gave her a hug and a peck on the cheek. “Take as much time as you want out there. There’s no hurry anymore, is there?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “I promised you your dreams. Now go out there and enjoy yourself?”

  “I will, and thanks. You know, I thought you were crazy when we first met.”

  “You don’t anymore?”

  “No, now I’m sure of it.” Diane laughed.

  Milly pulled me to the side. She faced me and held my hands in hers. I didn’t pull away. “Please, Guerin, stop and think before you do anything stupid.”

  “But, Milly, we both know it’s the thinking part that gets me in trouble. It’s always best to do something stupid and think about it later.”

  “Do you always have to be such an asshole?”

  “I thought that’s what you liked about me? Maybe it’s my fantastically stupid plans? It’s not about game credits, is it?”

  “No, it’s not about game credits. You’re important to me, Guerin.”

  I kissed Milly gently on the lips. “Take care of my daughter. I’m trusting you to take care of the most important thing in my life. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “That you’re planning something stupid!”

  “Well, other than that?”

  “What?”

  “You’re a dumb little alien, aren’t you? I still love you, stupid.”

  Milly kissed me. “And you’re still my asshole.” She hugged me tightly and we both smiled as we broke apart.

  “Do you two need a room?”

  “No, my darling smartass daughter, we’re done.”

  I waved and said goodbye as I made my way out of the galley and off the shuttle. I watched them leave. I had never watched a shuttle depart before. I was totally unimpressed. I headed back up to the day side. It was time to put my incredibly stupid plan into action.

  As with most of my brilliantly stupid plans, it wasn’t really a plan at all. It was more of a wish list. Other than some basic preparation, the plan was based on a series of events unfolding in a way that would work in my favor. It wasn’t like any of the results I wished for weren’t a likely possibility, it was just that there were always other possibilities. I mean, shit happens. I did have some work to do to get ready and that involved getting a little information out of my favorite twins. I had a few days before I left on Bart’s shuttle for parts
unknown.

  I woke up the morning I was scheduled to leave in the company of the twins, Prima and Seca. It had taken some work to get back on their good side after I had robbed them of their game points at the gathering. We had reached a compromise. I would agree to sign a letter of “nolo contendere”.

  See, watching all those years of Law & Order finally paid off. For those of you who never watched Law & Order, what that meant was I would enter a plea of no contest. It was like the Judge asking, “How do you plea? Guilty or not guilty?” and you respond, “Whatever.” I’ve done that, said, “Whatever” to a judge. It did get a laugh from the pretty young court clerk, but not the judge. I’ve always been an asshole. It’s one of the few things I don’t blame the aliens for.

  I would not contest what the twins said happened, but I also wouldn’t confirm it. It was like saying I did it without having to say it. I had Nancy run it by the rules committee and it was agreed that it was acceptable. The twins could use this letter to claim game credits based on what events were listed in the letter.

  “Here, we need your signature.” Prima handed me the data pad with the letter for me to sign.

  I read over the letter and said, “Wait a minute, you're claiming things that haven’t happened. That wasn’t our agreement.”

  “They haven’t happened, yet, and they won’t happen if you don’t sign.”

  I looked at the little vixen, Prima, and I have to say, she had me. If you could’ve seen the items that were yet to happen, you would have signed as well.

  Needless to say, I quite enjoyed my bath that morning. The tub was a lot bigger than it appeared. After that, the ladies gave me a haircut, a shave, and did my nails. Then we enjoyed a nice breakfast together. I went back to my room and packed up my go bag. I wasn’t bringing much in the way of clothes, just a few days’ worth. Hopefully, there were places to get decent clothes as well as a decent cheeseburger where I was going. I stopped in the foyer of the residence to say goodbye to the twins.