by Matt Medlock
Harry crawled out of the escape pod, glad to be greeted by a breathable atmosphere. But all alien world atmospheres tend to be breathable unless required by the plot, and, in this case, it's better for the plot to just act like it's perfectly breathable. Let's just call it another one of those strokes of luck that Harry happens upon from time to time. So, down he crawled into the sugary sponginess of the nougat. Treading carefully (because his shoes were already sticky with gum), he moved off the enormous candybar and hopped down onto the planetoid's terra firma, which was composed primarily of unwieldy, extraordinarily tough rocks and minerals. This meant that the soil wasn't very fertile. It would not be easy to grow summer squash in this environment. The preceding message was a courtesy statement for the expanding branch of Gleebnob Farms, Willing to Grow Shit Anywhere Since the Year GTFO.
As Harry ventured out into the wilderness, he realized that the Diabeet-Yums' RFH (Really Freakin' Huge) Candybar was not entirely anomalous. Indeed, there were many gigantic things littering the landscape. Shoes so large that old ladies in nursery rhymes could find room for indoor pools, ballrooms, and in-laws. Acetaminophen pills bigger than a human being that could choke a Supersaurus (the genetically-engineered T. Rex that's covered in flaming spikes and has Gatling guns for arms). Giant belt buckles shaped like Whistler's far-lesser-known Father. Massive smashed pumpkins that were even bigger than the ego of the frontman of Smashing Pumpkins. Partially-crumpled posters of pin-up giantesses with all of their supple tonnage poured into clingy outfits.
Wandering among the odd ruins, Harry called out repeatedly to see if there was anyone else around. He couldn't begin to fathom why all these oversized objects were simply lying around. After a few hours of futile searching and calling, he resolved to wander to the nearest edible monstrosity so he could fill himself up. Well, second nearest, actually, because the nearest was a huge chunk of Saylent Aqua, which was marketed as tasting delicious like Charlene, but Harry always thought it had the bitter flavor of Fred. So, Harry bypassed the Saylent Aqua and went for a zeppelin-sized cheese puff. It was artificialicious!
Face stained yellow with the faux-cheese dust, Harry backed away from the huge puff. Panting and pulsing, his steps staggered around the uneven terrain behind him. And then he heard a curious noise. Like a mousy exclamation of discomfort. Harry froze and twisted his neck back and forth. He even bravely called out in case there was someone in the surrounding area. After all, he had no reason to be paranoid or worried. How could he have known he was being stalked by a hyper-assassin named Chuugik? And how could he have known that the Neptunian Yakuza was after him at all? That would have required at least two specks of sense, and Harry had only one (which can be verified by anyone who read Hopeless Harry: Cadet Second Class).
Harry shouted again. “Hello? Anyone there?”
“Oof,” came a stifled grunt.
“Huh? Who's there?”
“Urg,” came the same stifled grunt.
Harry shuffled his feet as he spun around in circles. “Where are—who are you? Hello?”
“Would you do me favor?” This time, the voice wasn't as stifled. Though it still sounded weary and harangued.
“What? Who's talking?”
“Could you please step off of my face? It's starting to really hurt.”
Alarmed, Harry stumbled back, nearly falling over. After catching himself on the ridge of a really, really, really big comb sticking out of the ground at an odd angle, Harry goggled bug-eyed at the ground he was just standing on. Flashing out of the crusty, pale-ochre ground was a pair of beady eyes. Eyes adjacent to one of Harry's footprints. Abruptly, the ground mushroomed upward, and a previously unseen figure emerged vertically. What previously looked to just be a pile of rocky soil now revealed itself to be a hidden creature that blended in amazingly well with what had been underfoot. The camouflage shimmered away as it changed color to a dark grey speckled with vermillion spots. It was a strange, little bipedal creature about half as tall as Harry, though the arms were at least as long as the entire body, head-to-toe. The head, meanwhile, was a perfect icosahedron, with the two eyes each on different triangular faces and a pinched-in mouth hanging low on a third.
“Great gas balloons of Gazfagloon!” exclaimed Harry. “Where did you come from?”
The lifeform replied, “I'd ask you the same thing. I was here first. So...where did you come from, interloper?”
“A spaceship,” shrugged Harry. “One of them cross-the-galaxy voyage thingies.”
“Right.”
“I mean, I originally hail from the Thirby Colony in the Sentarus System B. But, really, I'm a human being, so my ancestry can be traced back to the planet Earth. And, I guess, actually you could trace me back even further to the planet Mafafraf in the Olgurx Quadrant before the tyrant Lord Xenu brought all those billions of souls to Earth more than 75 million years ago.” He scratched his head and added, “And to think, a couple hundred years ago, that accurate and thoroughly proven reality was a complete laughing stock to people who weren't ingenuous psychotics or closeted-gay celebrities.”
“I didn't need your life story, thank you very much, Skunkqueef. Can I call you 'Skunkqueef?'”
“Uh, I'd rather you didn't.”
“Sorry, I heard that once in a sitcom. A human being was called that and there was a riotous burst of laughter. I thought that would be a gracious title.”
“It's not.”
“Well, pardon my Polish.”
“I think you mean 'French.'”
“I think you're talking about toast.”
“I think I'm just confused.”
“You would be, Frenchie.”
Harry shook his head sharply, like he was trying to reset his brain. “Look...uh, what's your name?”
“Je suis Brantmusberger.”
“Brantmusberger?”
“Yes, that is my name.”
“Okay. So, look, Brantmusberger, can you tell me where I am? How did you get here? How do I get out of here?”
Brantmusberger's expression was vaguely quizzical. His beady, little eyes sloshing around each of their triangular planes. His amorphous lips puckering to make his mouth look like the period at the end of a rather unexceptional sentence. His knuckles dragging through the pale-ochre ground in a circle around his hunched legs.
Finally, he said, “You probably know this place as Tripponima in the Tonydanza System...”
“Yes, yes, I am well aware of the Tonydanza System. Named for the renowned Earth thespian-turned-astronomer that discovered it.”
“...But the inhabitants of this planet—the ones that have a large enough brain, that is—generally just call it the land of biiig.”
“Why's that?”
“What, are you slow? Look around. Everything here is frickin' huge. Here's a clue as to why. The dominant species? The one that actually has a brain big enough to comprehend things like names of planets? They're giants. Like, I dunno, a hundred and a half flepps tall or something.” A flepp was a unit of measurement used by the Lihvoxian race. One flepp is approximately thirteen-point-two inches. Or, about thirty-three-point-five centimeters, if the metric system hadn't been vanquished almost a hundred years prior. A sensible turn of events, it was. No one can picture a “deciliter” like they can a hogshead, furlong or gill.
“For giants, they're remarkably well-hidden. All I can see around here is...well, I can only guess that all this stuff is their trash.”
“It's a big planetoid, man. Actually, consider yourself really lucky. I mean, really lucky. About ninety-nine-point-who-knows percent of this planet is just completely barren. You managed to actually land in the one spot in 180,000,000 square miles that actually has something. Isn't that amazing?”
“Yeah, it is,” Harry agreed. “Just like all those crappy science fiction stories where everyone always manages the same thing. No one ever lands and says, 'Well, we gotta hoof it for about five months to find something of interest.' It's always right at their feet or with
in sight of the horizon. I feel like I'm living in one of those crappy science fiction stories right now.”
“Thank goodness we're not,” said the alien creature with a noggin that looked like a twenty-sided die.
“Agreed,” said the human that was being hunted down by Yakuza from the planet Neptune II.
“Guess I'll leave you to it then.” Then Brantmusberger started to wander away.
“Hey, wait! What about my other questions? How did you get here and how do I get off this crazy world?”
“Well, before I was rudely stepped on, I was trying to remain inconspicuous. I don't really like talking to people. This is probably the longest conversation I've held in at least forty-nine seconds.” It didn't sound like much, but Brantmusberger hailed from a planet that was on a much wider orbit than Earth, and traveled that orbit far slower. Forty-nine seconds to Brantmusberger was about sixteen years to an Earthling. “But for some reason, I don't mind talking with you so much. You seem so...what's the word I'm looking for?”
Harry knew the one he meant. “Hopeless.” No doubt about it. His heart sank.
“Unassuming,” said Brantmusberger. “That's it, I think. You seem so unassuming.”
Harry smiled. That was much better than “hopeless.”
“Unassuming and...harmless.”
That was a little worse, but he'd take it.
“Harmless and simple. Simpleminded, that is.”
Harry frowned.
“Feeble and vacuous, even.”
“All right, that's enough!” Harry snapped. “Stop trying to classify me!”
“Anyway, that's why I'm not bothered by you. I crossed many a light year to find a little solitude. And I found it here. But now that you've interrupted it...I have no grave objection.”
“Solitude? I thought you said there were giants around here.”
“There are, but I just stay out of sight and they don't even notice me. I can change the color of my skin to blend into the surroundings, which is why you didn't realize you stepped on me. It comes in handy when you just want to be ignored, believe me. Plus, there's all this old food sitting around, so I can survive here for quite a while. I mean, this stuff is like eighty percent preservatives. It's not going bad anytime soon.”
“Where'd it all come from?”
“DUNCE,” said Brantmusberger. The Diplomatic Union of Nascent Cosmic Exploration. The organization to which Harry still (possibly) retained his Cadet Second Class rank. “They were trying to bargain with these giant, hairy ogres from Tripponima, so they brought them these enormous container ships full of oversized goods. Food, medicine, supplies, clothing, that sort of thing. But the big, dumb bastards saw the shipping fleet coming down and thought it was an attack. So they leaped up and swatted at the ships with their huge hands. And it all came crashing down. The Tripponimish giants observed the universal code known as the five-second rule. Anything they couldn't pick up in five seconds was left behind.” This, of course, made no sense to Brantmusberger; why wait about nineteen months? “So, it's all just been sitting here for like fourteen seconds.”
Harry couldn't do that sort of math in his head. So, for everyone's convenience, that translates to a little over four-and-a-half Earth years.
“DUNCE hasn't been back since. They're too afraid, thinking that they set off an intergalactic war. And since there's nothing valuable here...that anyone knows of, that is...there's no point in wasting the time and money and lives. Not like the giants are going to master interplanetary travel and bring the fight to DUNCE's doorstep.”
Harry didn't like the sound of that. “Then how am I supposed to get off this rock? If they don't have rockets and...wait! What about you? When you got here, what did you do with your ship?”
“I traveled by comet and detached myself as it passed around the planet. That comet ain't coming back for three thousand two hundred sixty-one seconds.” Harry didn't even bother pretending to try to do that math. It was a lot of years, 'nuff said.
“So how do I get out of here!?” Harry complained.
Looking around at some of the nearby pieces of trash, Brantmusberger asked, “Can you build a spaceship out of a giant nail, a twelve ton lollipop, and a 78 rpm gramophone record of 'Monster Mash' that's the size of a small lake?”
“No.”
“Then you're hosed, Harry. The situation is completely hopeless.”
Harry hated that word.
IV: An Apple a Day Keeps the Pear Council Cursing Their Quarterly Earnings
A shadow fell over Harry at that moment. As the light was blocked out by a swooping object.
A crackling voice boomed out from above. “Your doom awaits! Greet it and weep!”
The shadow suddenly broke into shards of orange light. As pulsing, flaming objects rained down toward Harry. Harry only stared and marveled at the curious light show. But Brantmusberger grabbed Harry and heaved him away. The plasma fluges and missiles struck the ground with a massive, loud crack.
A wave of heat lashed Harry's face, and he thought he was being immolated, for sure. So he squealed and writhed around until Brantmusberger yanked Harry to his feet and slapped him. “Knock it off!” the little alien shouted.
“Who is doing this!?” Harry whined. “Is it one of the giants? A rogue starkiller? God? Is it God? Oh, God, why you, God? Why you!?”
“Would you stop already?” Brantmusberger looked up and saw the shadow shrinking as the shape swung away following its attack run. “We're gonna have to seek shelter. This guy means business.”
“God always means business!” Harry cried hysterically. “That's why it's God! God doesn't wear a mullet! There's no party in the back! It's all business! Oh, crew cut God, why have you forsaken me!?”
“It's not God, you blathering idiot!” Brantmusberger growled. “It's someone in a spaceship trying to kill you. Now, run!”
As Harry and Brantmusberger galloped across the Tripponima expanse, winding through the scattered refuse monuments, the ship swooped down again. A voice roared, “Run and I will catch you, silly mongrel. Today is the day you die, Harry!”
After barely dodging another swelling series of flame bursts and explosions, Harry wailed to Brantmusberger, “Do you think God is trying to kill you?”
An exhausted Brantmusberger sighed heavily. “Look, you dope, it is not God!”
“How can you be sure? He's everywhere and in every thing. And his kid carries me on beaches!”
“Further, he said your name! You obviously pissed somebody off. Now shut up and keep running or I'm leaving you behind to fend for yourself, got it?”
“Save me!” Harry bawled. “You owe me!”
“Owe you? For what?”
“Curing your loneliness blues! Please, Brantmusberger!”
There was not point (or time) in arguing. So Brantmusberger grabbed Harry's arm and led him in a sprint towards a broken, overturned teacup.
The diving ship made another aggressive pass. As the weapons thundered around Harry and Brantmusberger, the voice roared, “The Neptunian Yakuza says 'hello,' Harry! Now, say 'goodbye!'”
The human and the alien charged through a wide crack on the huge cup and found shelter from overhead attack. The ship circled for a few minutes and then straggled away to plan a new strategy.
Panting, Harry bawled, “The Neptunian Yakuza? Why are they after me? I never upset the Nep—oh, crap, the Neptunian Yakuza. That's right!” He made a wincing face at Brantmusberger. “Yeah, I forgot. The Neptunian Yakuza is after me.”
Brantmusberger threw up his hands, which were attached to very long arms. “You forgot? How could you forget that you were being hunted down by the Neptunian Yakuza? The sixth most feared organization in the entire UAIC! Between the Neo-Dutch East India Company and the Legion of Doom...come on, man! How do you just overlook that?”
Harry started to explain how it was She'bok's fault and not his, but he was interrupted by a terrible rumbling noise. Then the high ceiling lifted away. Stunned, Harry and Bra
ntmusberger just stared up as they watched their shelter rise and slide away.
Rather than stare up at the hollow sky, though, they saw a huge figure hovering overhead. Hunched shoulders, ropey neck, brambly tufts of coarse hair, chin like a jutting promontory, uncaring eyes, and above all, monstrous size—there was little doubt in Harry's mind that this was one of those Tripponimish giants that Brantmusberger had spoken of.
It was holding the huge teacup in a hand that made it look like a normal-sized teacup. The giant glared down at the two insignificant creatures. Already squatted low and bent-backed, it leaned down even further, and sniffed them curiously. After pulling away, it grumbled, “Tigers 7, Barracudas 3.”
A terrified (and rather hopeless) Harry spluttered, “W-what?”
The giant rocked back and forth on its huge, crouched legs. “Fury 2, Crusaders 1.”
Harry blinked rapidly and then glared at Brantmusberger. “What the heck is he saying?”
Brantmusberger just scowled and rolled its eyes. “I probably should have mentioned. These big oafs...their language would sound to outsiders very much like they were just reading sports scores. I assure you, though, that they are not. Choose your words carefully, Harry. They could save or cost you your life.”
“Oh, come on!”
Confused, Brantmusberger pursed its lips. “What?”
“Their language sounds like someone reading sports scores!? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!”
Brantmusberger calmly told him, “In existence, randomness cannot be calculated within the measures of impossibility, only possibility. And as unlikely, as truly far-fetched as it might seem, we must recognize that it is possible for this circumstance to be recognizably real.”
“I'm not talking possibility and impossibility, Brantmusberger,” Harry complained. “I'm saying 'stupid!' This is stupid! Stupid! Incredibly stupid!”
With a shrug, Brantmusberger said, “Well, so is Twitter, but now nearly seventy percent of the known rulers in the galaxy address their subjects and constituents only in passages that contain one hundred forty characters or less. Hashtag vote4me.”