by Alan Black
“There,” he shouted. “Turn into that lot and hover a bit above the cars. Try not to hit that sign.”
Scooter looked at Larry. “Chill, Dude. This ain’t my first rodeo, you know.”
Larry wondered where he’d learned to talk like that.
Jughead pointed at Larry. “You’re on, Boss. Their phone is ringing.”
The phone rang twice at the other end and a young, but overly and overtly sexy voice said, “KFKS, your greatest Fredonia, Kansas television station. How may I direct your call?”
Larry didn’t laugh at the young woman. He was sure her instructions said to say such nonsense. Unless things had changed since he left, the station actually ran a distant second in a field of two television stations. The high school radio club ran the number one television station in town.
Larry said, “I would like to speak to Nancy, please.”
That the receptionist didn’t ask Nancy who or which Nancy was an indication of the station size. “She is in the recording studio, sir. I will transfer you right away.”
Larry put the call on speaker so all of his crew could listen, that was all of them except Dusty. He didn’t know where the scruffy, little Teumessian was. Dusty was more than happy to make the trip to Earth when Larry suggested that Dusty might be able to convince someone on Earth to kill him and perform an alien autopsy. Larry was joking when he suggested it, but Dusty took him seriously. Larry was concerned his joke had more truth to it than not and knew he’d better keep an eye on the crazy little guy.
“This is Nancy, your weekend anchor at KFKS. What’s news?”
“Nancy, this’s Larry, your husband. I mean your ex. What’s news to you?”
“Larry! Where are you? Where’ve you been? Your dad has been on the phone to me every week to see if I heard from you. He was almost in a panic looking for you around Christmas.”
“I’ve been busy,” he answered. He could see her through the glass front of the television station. Nancy was tapping her foot in that frustrating, irritating manner she used when she wanted him to get to the point.
Nancy said, “Get to the point, Larry. What do you want?”
Larry said, “I’m in Fredonia with some friends and I wanted to show them a television station.”
“Come on, Larry. We don’t do public tours. This is a working station.” He could see her looking at the cars in the lot. “Are you here? I don’t see you.”
“I’m here. Hey everybody, see the tall, skinny, aviation blonde in that building?”
Betty asked, “What is a blonde?” The ship’s communicator translated her voice clearly.
Larry said, “It means that she has hair that is a little lighter than your color, sweetie.”
Betty asked, “Then what means this aviation blonde?”
Larry laughed, “Well, aircraft have a device for when they crash that’s called a black box—and well it means that she — um … maybe I’ll explain it later.”
“That joke was old before I left you,” Nancy said. “It wasn’t funny then and it isn’t funny now.”
Larry shrugged. It always got laughs down at the Benny’s Been There Bar and Done That Grill on a Saturday night. “Sorry, Nancy. Actually, we’re here to make you famous. Are you ready to be famous?”
“I’m in no mood for joking around, Larry,” she snapped.
Larry didn’t miss that about his ex-wife. She was rarely in a mood to joke around. He spent all day with the cows. He needed more humor around the house than he could get from I Love Lucy reruns. Sure, Lucy could make him laugh hard enough to wet his pants, but live joking around with a real person was always preferable to watching a redhead in black and white.
“I’m serious, Nancy. We have a story that’ll go international quicker than a fart gets lost in a tornado. Just get a camera crew and get ready.”
“Give me something more to go on,” Nancy said.
Larry said, “Okay. I have a spaceship. A real, working interplanetary spaceship. I’m willing to talk to people about giving them access for reengineering possibilities. Governments need not apply. Only private companies will be considered.”
Nancy plastered her face against the glass and stared into the sky. “I don’t see anything. I’ll never forgive you if this is some kind of joke.”
“Get a camera crew and go to the parking lot.” He waited awhile, and in what was record time for Nancy, a man with a camera followed her into the lot. Both were bundled against the cold January wind.
He said, “Angle the camera up a bit more. Now to the left just a smidgen. Just a minute now.”
“Come on Larry,” Nancy said. “It’s freezing out here. Where is this spaceship?”
Larry opened the airlock hatch and leaned out. He stretched far enough to break the ship’s cloaking barrier. He smiled and waved at the cameraman.
The cameraman gave him a thumbs up.
Scooter took that as a signal to hit the button turning off the cloaking device. The ship popped into view.
Larry shouted, “Hello, Earthlings!”
Nancy became famous for the video of her head bouncing on pavement as she fainted.
The cameraman caught it all and chuckled.
So did the camera.
No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain their freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race. (Richard P. Feynman)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nancy climbed into the spaceship. Her skirt slipped up around her waist. She ignored the fact that her panty-clad backside was going to freeze quickly in the cold Kansas winter as she managed to keep her camera on and pointed at the Teumessians. Since the spaceship was now parked in its normal hovering position out behind Larry’s house, there weren’t any spectators around to ogle her practically naked bottom.
Larry helped pull her the rest of the way into the ship, allowing her hands to stay wrapped around the camera. He straightened her dress. She didn’t seem to care that it gave him a perfectly reasonable premise to slide his hands over her taut backside.
“Come on,” Larry said. “Let me show you around.”
“I don’t know who decorated the inside of this thing, but there’s too much green. Why is it all one color everywhere? What are these dots on the wall?” she asked.
“Those are my marks showing where the switches are.” He pushed a little button. “See? Human eyes can’t discern the color differences meant to mark the controls, so I put a little marker dot there.”
A hatch opened. Nancy raced into the open room. The small warehouse bay was jammed with dozens of odds and ends that Larry hoped to make a profit on by selling them as honest-to-goodness alien stuff. Nancy poked her camera into every nook and cranny of the bay.
She stopped filming.
“You know, Larry, if we clear this out and drag in some extra furniture from the house, this room will make a perfectly nice bedroom.”
“Bedroom? You plan on moving back in with me?”
“Of course, silly. I’m here aren’t I?”
“For me or my spaceship?”
Nancy shook her head, blushing. “Okay. You. Remember when I came out to the place looking for my red dress last summer? That I know you still have, you turd! Well, I was ready to make up and come back home then, but you were acting like such a jerk that I got scared and ran away again.”
Larry clearly remembered the day. Scooter was passed out drunk in his overstuffed guest chair. He was sure she’d have been more scared if she’d seen an alien in the living room.
“Yeah. I did know where the dress was. I don’t know if Gary or Marcy have moved it while I
was gone, but—”
“I don’t care about that old red dress, you goof. The dress was just an excuse to come and see you. I was hoping for a little afternoon delight.”
She raised the camera again, blushing at her own honesty. Larry was positive she was using the camera to cover her own embarrassment because the stuff in the room might interest an MIT engineer, but your average television viewer wouldn’t understand what they were looking at anymore than Larry did.
Nancy stopped filming again when Larry kissed her.
After a moment, she came up for air. With a thoughtful look, she glanced around. “Yes, I like this room. It doesn’t have any real closet space, but I’ll bet we could get a nice wardrobe until we can build a walk in closet over against that wall. Still, there isn’t an en suite bathroom—”
She shut up as he kissed her again.
After her first broadcast in the television station parking lot, Nancy had grabbed a handheld camera from the station. Larry wasn’t surprised she followed him for the story. However, he was surprised she was planning on staying with him. He was surprised she’d be sharing his bed every night, and from the looks and feel of it, without his usual begging or pleading. He was surprised the television station didn’t mind Nancy taking a camera without asking, but since she was documenting the Teumessians and transmitting the footage back to the station as live coverage, he shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
No one or nothing was more surprised than the little camera itself. It was now the instrument of a whole planet’s attention. Since its first full functioning day, the camera had been forced to watch and record everything from a third grade violin recital, to the annual Thanksgiving Day turkey farm visit, to a middle grade beauty pageant, to the tractor gathering at Jim G’s Burger Barn over on Third Street.
The news of alien first contact swept across the planet like a gasoline fed fire. It went from local to national to international faster than the anchors could say, “Now live from Kansas—.”
The little camera was speechless at having its recordings played and replayed on every television set on the planet. That was understandable for a little camera from a small town in the Midwest.
Larry originally thought Nancy was with him only for the story, but the way she was kissing him back was making him change his original thoughts. She didn’t even seem to mind that she had the camera off for a few moments while kissing him.
Not that the camera minded, because Betty soon slipped the camera out of Nancy’s hand. The little Teumessian pointed the lens at her own face and began yipping and yapping, the translator tugged along by Scooter, interpreting everything she said as she continued Nancy’s narration, telling the television viewers what they were already seeing with their own eyes.
Betty took the camera back into the corridor, leaving Larry and Nancy alone. She did so over Bob and Ginger’s protests as they wanted her to record what was going on between Larry and Nancy. Unknown to the Teumessians, Larry and Nancy, or even the little camera, stations all over the world were being flooded with requests to go back and watch Larry and Nancy in their new bedroom.
Betty, followed by Scooter, Bob, Ginger, and the translator trooped down the corridor, poking the camera lens into engineering. Even though there wasn’t anything to see except sealed metal boxes melted into the floor, the new pictures excited scientists all around the world. Hearing an honest-to-pete extraterrestrial describe the room as the engineering compartment sent those same scientists into a tizzy, all except one lone fellow in China who managed to trade his enthusiasm for space tech into a massive heart attack.
“Hey, Larry!” Gary’s voice bellowed from the open hatch.
Jughead and Dusty peeked around a corner at him. Both Gary and the Teumessians took a step back from each other.
“Um…” Gary hesitated.
“Um…” Jughead replied.
Or that was what the translator would have said if either party had one. The translator was really getting into the swing of things. The alien-to-alien communications gap was becoming quite delightful.
This was its original design by the builders; aliens he didn’t remember. Sitting around gathering dust on the Teumessian home world for a long time hadn’t been any fun at all, not even when it got close enough to the other spaceships to talk to its brothers and sisters on those vessels.
Larry had borrowed half a dozen of the translator units from the other ships when no one was looking. He had them scattered all over the ship, so he always had one nearby. Not that he forgot to lead his favorite machine wherever he went, but the extras were just in case.
The first translator was really pleased that it was the prime interpreter, although a female machine from another ship was in quite a snit about having to take second place.
Larry shouted back from his new bedroom. “Go away, Gary. Not now.”
“Hey, couz. You better get back in the house. PDQ. Your folks are here and things are heating up.”
“Things are heating up in here, too,” Larry shouted back. That got him a playful sock on the arm from Nancy, but it made Larry and Gary laugh.
After a brief moment, Larry appeared at the hatch with Nancy in tow instead of a translator. Nancy wasn’t on a leash like the translator, but she followed along quite nicely nonetheless. Straightening her dress and rebuttoning buttons didn’t appear to embarrass her in the least.
Larry asked Jughead, “Where did Betty go?”
Jughead, backing away from Larry with his usual caution, yipped and yapped a little bit.
Larry and the closest translator both sighed in frustration. This was exactly why Larry had the handful of extra translators. He dragged the closest translator over closer, but before he turned it on all of the Teumessians gathered near the door.
They all looked down at Gary standing in the hatch. Gary, prepared to sprint away at the slightest sign of a death ray, looked back.
Larry said, “Okay, people. Gary says things are starting to get exciting around here. So, Jughead, I want you to go up to the bridge.”
“I can’t go in your house?”
“Not now. Later.” Larry shook his head. “Close all of the hatches and stay locked up tight. Try to keep a lookout for unwanted visitors and don’t let anyone in except me and the Teumessians.”
Nancy, taking her camera back from Betty, poked Larry in the ribs with a sharp elbow.
Larry amended, “And Nancy, if she wants in.”
Nancy turned the camera and pointed it at her face. “Sorry for the interruption, folks. We are back live.”
Most of the audience was disappointed that Betty was no longer doing the narration, but only a few people called in to their stations to complain. The fascination over alien visitors had every television set on the planet tuned into her broadcast, making the last World Cup Soccer Championship Match audience seem puny by comparison.
Larry jumped down, turned to help Nancy, then wrapped an arm around Gary. “So, what’s up?”
Gary looked pointedly at Nancy’s camera as it was pointed right back at him.
Larry said, “Nancy, I’m sure your viewing audience would rather see the Teumessians than two Kansas farmers.”
She spun around and caught the Teumessians dropping from the hatch to the cold ground with little effort. Their thick alien muscles absorbed the drop with ease. The translator trailed along behind on its leash with two of its brothers in tow. Nancy, the television audience, and even Scooter held their breath just a tiny bit when Veronica dropped through the hatchway, juggling her two kits without any government approved safety harnesses or child protective carry-alls.
Once Nancy pointed the camera and its rabid audience away from them, Gary said, “It’s starting. Marcy is afraid to even answer your phone anymore, so I called your folks to come over and give us a hand.”
“Crap! You got Dad involved?”
“I know you called him and told him what’s what.” Gary flicked his eyes toward the little aliens, all trooping i
nto the house through the backdoor, clearly indicating which what was what. “Your dad is sharp.”
“Of course.” Larry looked around. Like all sons, he’d hoped Dad was close enough to hear when he was being complimented.
“Look, Larry, you and I can’t do this all alone. He’s got some good ideas.”
“He always does.”
“This is not like offering two-year-old steers to a cattle buyer from Emporia.”
“Thank you, Professor Obvious.” He followed his crew and Nancy into the house, passing by the chest style freezer on the back porch without even a sideways glance. The lack of attention pleased the freezer, it being a little perverse that way.
Larry gave a quick kiss to his mother and grandmother on his way through the kitchen, leaving Betty and Scooter to introduce themselves. Seeing something else perverse sitting in his living room caused his eyes to roll back in his head.
“Hello, Kenny.” He should have taken the warning that his cousin was in the house as the smell of lanolin was strong.
Kenny nodded, but didn’t look up from his laptop computer.
Dad said, “I needed Kenny’s help.” He tossed a small internet camera to Larry and one to Gary. “Put those up, boys. One there and one there.” He jabbed a work abused, stubby finger at the corners of the living room wall and into the kitchen.
“I don’t want to be a reality TV star,” Larry whined.
Gary nodded, “Marcy won’t much care for her privacy being invaded either.”
Dad waved a hand to shut them up. “Then you boys shouldn’t have brought home aliens to play with.” He pointed at Kenny’s laptop. “These things are here for protection. Do you think the government — ours or anyone else’s — is going to let you just sell the specs to a working spaceship to the highest bidder?”
Larry said, “That’s why I announced on television that I was selling to civilian companies only. I wanted to keep the government out of it.”
Dad snorted. “Like that matters. This is the biggest thing since Jonas Salk discovered a polio vaccine. He saved millions of lives, but did you know he died a poor man because the government took the cure from him?”