If anyone in the room had a theory, they kept it to themselves. The being best qualified to answer this question would have been the fur ball alien, who was the sole occupant of the enormous vessel that had visited Earth.
At the moment, he was too busy to answer any questions. His ship was orbiting a planet in a nearby star system where he was peddling his wares to its inhabitants. Just then he was in the middle of pitching the unique, ecologically clean personal transportation devices that required no external energy source and were capable of traversing rough terrain. The medusa-like swamp dwellers of that world were very interested in such marvelous technology.
In fact, the Powers That Be did not need to look to the stars for the answer. The answer could be provided, just as easily, by a minor and entirely unremarkable bureaucrat and a citizen of the Russian Federation.
This particular individual took advantage of the opportunity to properly celebrate the arrival (and then the departure) of the aliens with his friends and colleagues. At that very moment he was walking into his apartment in a state of mild inebriation that was just beginning to wear off and turn inevitably into a hangover. There he saw his spouse, sitting on the couch in front of the television, dictating their home address into the phone.
Upon witnessing this, the citizen stated his opinions in a loud and slurry voice. His speech was short and fiery. The word “fool” was intermixed with other, less printable but equally hurtful nouns. He closed with “…and this, at the time when humanity stands on the brink of a new era!”
The insulted wife retreated into the bedroom, and the citizen plunked onto the couch she had vacated, in front of the television set.
“If you act right now,” said the voice on the screen, “we’ll include a potato cutter, a super dish-cleaning sponge, and a replacement handle with your order of the Wonder-Grinder. Call now!”
But the citizen was already fast asleep on the couch. And, for some strange reason, he dreamed about laughing dolphins.
NO SILVER LINING
Zach Shephard
Okay—listen. It’s not my fault. No one could have known the yeti was going to hit his stride at the end. I mean, who sends a yeti into the 110-meter woodland hurdles anyway? I thought for sure the mountain-folk were writing that event off as a loss from the get-go, but as it turns out, ol’ snow-britches had been doing some high-altitude training for the last twenty years and had brought his A-game. Or Y-game. Or whichever game it is that yetis use to take the gold.
Some say that I shouldn’t have lost. I say it’s not my fault that I did, because I shouldn’t have been running that race in the first place. Everyone knows werewolves are better suited for something a little more elegant. Like the balance beam. Or freestyle bunny-maiming.
I didn’t want to do hurdles. Especially not after my practice runs. In human form, I wasn’t fast enough. In wolf form, I wasn’t tall enough. In my halfway-between form, I forgot what I was doing and ate two of the judges. But Coach insisted I was the dog for the job anyway, and I didn’t want to let Team Forest-Creatures down, so here I am.
To be fair, Coach did try putting me into a handful of other events before settling on the hurdles. I took a shot at the 400-meter race around the lake, but it’s hard to advance beyond the trials when you take a detour to chase a squirrel up a tree. Boxing was no good either, because my claws kept poking through the gloves—apparently evisceration is illegal, even if you keep it above the belt. I took a stab at diving next, but the gnomes on our team were all better at it. (If you ask me, those hats are an unfair advantage when it comes to minimizing splash.) Swimming was no better, because even in human form, my body hair created enough drag to stop a tugboat.
So it was hurdles or nothing. I stretched, I practiced, I figured out a way to stay in wolf-man form without devouring the judges. (Eating a few brownies before the race can do wonders for your appetite, though I wish they wouldn’t scream so much on the way down.) I trained as hard as I could for the event, but in the end, I still wasn’t feeling great about it.
Thankfully, Coach can be one inspiring stump of a hobgoblin—his little speech on the morning of the big day made me start to believe I might actually do well. So when race time rolled around, I took a deep breath, tossed a few brownies down the hatch, and lined up on the woodland track under a full moon.
A few short seconds later, the yeti was raising his arms in victory. Not bad for an ape-man with feet the size of surfboards.
The mountain-folk won the Fairyland Games, which is good for them, because the losers are required to put someone up for sacrifice. The chosen creature is banished from reality and relegated to the Death-halls of Fable, which is why no one believes in the Andean crust weasel anymore.
Team Forest-Creatures did pretty well at the Fairyland Games, but not well enough. My loss ended up costing us our predetermined sacrifice. Ever heard of the krundlewat? Of course you haven’t. No one believes in him anymore, and it’s my fault. I came in third on the hurdles. If I’d come in second, the krundlewat would still be a part of your culture, sneaking into your room on summer nights to shove your socks up its nose and leave tuna sandwiches in your shoes. But now, thanks to my poor performance—oh, what the heck. As long as I’m telling the story, I might as well be honest.
The truth is, once I realized the yeti was going to beat me, I threw the race. I let a surprisingly nimble kraken slip-slap her way ahead of me and I took third place on purpose. I cost the world their beloved krundlewat. But really, can you blame me? I wanted to win the gold, sure. And if I’d thought I could get it, I would have fought for it. But it was out of reach, and the fact is, I’m a werewolf.
There’s no way I’m taking silver.
GO KARTS OF THE GODS
Michael Kurland
They’re here now!
Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. But it’s hard not to get excited when speaking of the greatest metaphysical revelation since herb tea. Let me start again—
They’re here now!
I guess I just can’t hold it in. Because it’s true! They are among us still. Some of us, anyway.
They never left!
The man peering over your shoulder right now as you read these words—or woman, if it happens to be a woman, and it can be a woman, whatever you may have been told—may be an alien from outer space! They’re here still, watching us, teaching us, learning from us, guiding us, eating—but that’s another part of the story.
It all started—well, I don’t know when it all started, but I first came to know of it in late July, 1982. Which we of ODISY refer to as The Day of Cosmic Revelation. (What is ODISY you ask? Aha! Good for you! You’re no fool.)
It was, I remember, a Thursday. I was staring at some obscure wall enhancements at one of the major archeological sites in the Eastern United States, the uptown platform of the West Side IRT 23rd Street station, when the curious, somehow almost obscene, words and illustrations formed a pattern in my mind and it all came together. I understood.
Why me? You may well ask. Perhaps just a chance alignment of space and time—which we now know are aspects of the same thing, except that one goes from side to side, and the other goes up and down and stops at the mezzanine even if you didn’t push the button for the mezzanine, which can be very annoying—perhaps it was predestination, perhaps it was a bubble in the Cosmic Goo, perhaps I’m just better than you are; who can say? But ours is not to reason why, ours is to Seek the Truth and prepare ourselves. And I and my fellow Seekers of the ODISY Society are here to help those of you who wish to Seek, who are willing to prepare yourselves for the journey toward the true light.
Hello Seekers!
Are you ready to accept the GREAT NEWS?
There are aliens amongst us!!!
If you know just how and where to look, you can find them, observe them, learn from them, emulate them. But you must seek them out. They won’t come to you. Not you.
We of the ODISY Society will aid you—you have but to ask. We are
here to guide you along the path to true understanding, which is found through the intense study of what we know as Outer Directed Inner Seeking Yearningness—Hence “ODISY,” a name which has been revealed to us by The Others. Well, by some of them. Other Others spend their time buying shoes, aluminum foil, and comic books, while yet other Others glare pityingly at you and ask, “Who the #^$*& do you think you’re talking to?” (They actually say “#^$*&,” which is the way they read it in the comic books. The Others are very literal beings.)
The clues, the hints, the milestones on this path to Alien Enlightenment will at first seem fragmentary, unclear, murky, contradictory, even idiotic—I know they did to me. But as you get deeper and deeper into the practice of Yearningness, and pass from stage to stage on the road to ODISY, it will all become clear and meaningful. Each chapter—each paragraph—each word of the ODISY Book of Outer Directed Inner Seeking Yearningness, which may have made no sense to you when you began, will lose its confusion and become clear and totally grabfig.
The key to understanding any sentence or word that you, with your primitive, pre-ODISY mind-plugs, fail to comprehend, is to stare at it and keep repeating over and over, “Niagara Falls, Niagara Falls, Niagara Falls,” until the words that once made no sense shimmer before your eyes and the plugs pop away, leaving your mind free and open to once untenable suggestions, and you attain a new height of clarity. And, in time, you will; I did. And now I am not only the founder of ODISY, but the Others have entrusted me with the position of Grand Mung.
In a short time you, yourself, may become a Mung, or a Mung among Mungs, or even an Übermung. With but a little application and expense you will soon be Yearning with the rest of us. Of course your old friends will have trouble comprehending you as you speak these new truths. They may say nasty things about your behavior, your new frabish, your sanity. They may urge you to come to your “senses.” Reply to them, “Ha, ha!” Say to them, “Ho, ho!” Tell them that it is their primitive senses that lack the ability to see the truth; their shortsighted unwillingness to pay for the instruction that would open their eyes. For enlightenment doesn’t come cheaply. But then neither do SUVs, or plasma TVs, or members of the opposite sex. Even members of the same sex can be pretty expensive, which seems somehow unfair. But I digress.
First of all you’ll want to verify for yourself that what I’m telling you is true is true is true is, er, true. Good for you. You’re no sap. After a while the practice of Yearningness will seem natural, and it’s the rest of the world that will seem queer and fuzzy. I’ll tell you just what to look for. Once you know the signs, it all becomes horribly, frighteningly, clear.
First: look for things that couldn’t have been built by people. If people couldn’t have built them, someone else must have! See? It really sticks out when it’s pointed out to you, doesn’t it?
Second: look for things that weren’t built for people. Things that human beings were never meant to wear, or use, or sit on, or lie on, or drive, or eat, or apply to various parts of their bodies. If the thing doesn’t fit you—who does it fit? Once you start looking, you’ll be surprised at how many objects you find that were clearly designed to be used by another race.
Consider the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Why is it leaning? Would you build a building that leans like that? Why doesn’t it fall over? Oh, I know scientists have answers to these questions, but who told them? Someone, or some thing, that doesn’t want them to know the truth? Yes, it’s good for dropping cannon balls off, but this is an urge that most humans manage to suppress.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa is not a tower at all. It is an intergalactic signpost. J.D. (Jimboy) Davisson, professor of Pre-Human Religion at Partial College and Academy of Autoerotics and Goal-Tending in Woodward, Oklahoma, has computed on the P.C.&.A. of A. & G.T. in W.O. billing machine that a line drawn along the center of the axis of the tower, and extending parabolically (according to the formula ) comes back to earth right in the middle of Paramus, New Jersey. Coincidence?
They are trying to tell us something. Are we wise enough to listen?
If ten men worked for a week, they couldn’t build the Great Pyramid at Giza, or the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Panama Canal, or Paris, France, or the Antarctic Ocean. Not even if they wore warm clothes.
Have you ever bounced on a go kart? Why is it spelled “kart”? Does the alien alphabet lack the letter “c”? Riding karts is so uncomfortable that it’s a sport. Could it be that for some alien creatures from somewhere else, they are a sensible means of transportation? Some creatures that like to bounce?
I have in my collection a pair of sandals with tire treads on the bottoms. Could they be for strange beings with wheels on their feet?
Who was meant to ride on bus seats? What sort of beings can bend in the right place to comfortably use the plastic chairs at airports? What creatures can sit for an extended length of time on airline seats in anything approaching comfort? Where are they from? Where are they going? And do they have special discount fares?
Who was meant to wear boxer shorts?
There is a stainless steel arch in St. Louis, Missouri, six hundred and thirty feet tall, which wasn’t there a hundred years ago. Can it be a coincidence that a line drawn perpendicular to this arch through its center will leave the Earth?
I have in my collection a can of soda with no nutrients useful to the human body.
The most popular children’s television program stars an eight-foot-tall chicken. Who wants our children to think that eight-foot-tall chickens are their friends?
If human beings get the Chicken Pox, what do chickens get? But I digress.
What about those ball point pens that write under butter but not on paper? Who lives under butter?
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Or, take the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. Why are they starting to build pyramids again? Did you know that a great circle line drawn to connect the Transamerica Pyramid and the Great Pyramid at Giza passes right through the Leaning Tower of Pisa? And yet it goes nowhere near Paramus, New Jersey. What does this mean?
I have in my collection a porcelain teacup with a handle too small to admit a human forefinger. Do eight-foot chickens drink tea?
Next time you’re in a restaurant, see if there is a third, unmarked, door between the men’s room and the women’s room. Who uses these unmarked doors? Do these restaurants serve chicken?
There is a library in Dayton, Ohio, which has no books on herpetology.
There is no one named Ambrose in the Berkeley, California telephone directory.
And what about Ogallala, Nebraska?
The Others have promised to reveal everything to those of us who are Ready to Receive the Wisdom of ODISY, who have shown that they can be Trusted to handle these Great Secrets wisely, who have paid the $669.45 initiation fee, who have memorized the Seven Sacred Secrets and the Two Dozen Trans-Temporal Talismans, who have attained at least the rank of Minor Master of the Ministrations of Mung, who are up to date with their dues, and who have signed the non-disclosure agreement, the risk waiver, and the promissory note.
So don’t wait! Don’t pause for a minute to think about it! Don’t send money through the mail — someone will be around to pick up your check or credit card. Or cash is nice. Soon you will find yourself enveloped by your new friends, your new sense of purpose, your new understanding, and Outer Directed Inner Seeking Yearningness will become as second nature to you. Or perhaps third. And your eyes will be opened, and you will cast aside the shell of your former self, which we will store for you at a nominal charge, and you will on your way to attaining total grabfig! Could anyone say better, finer, more redundant than that?
MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE
Stephen D. Rogers
Your Highness, sir, you came to the right place.
This fine steed standing before you was ridden by a little old lady. The only time she left her hovel was to attend the weekly joust. Those are the original shoes.
Not interes
ted? Don’t worry, you won’t be walking away from here on your own two feet. If you’ve got a kingdom, I’ve got the horse for you.
In this next stall is Prince.
No, he’s not a real prince. That’s just his name.
Yes, I can see how you would take titles seriously.
Did I say Prince? I mean Pincer. It’s Welsh.
Let us just pass on to the third stall.
Can I fetch you some mead? Mulled wine?
That’s a good idea to keep your wits about you. There are some used horse dealers who wouldn’t hesitate to take you for a ride. Get it? A ride?
You’re right.
Anyhow, take a look at this beauty.
I never noticed that before. It appears to be a minor skin condition which I’m sure will clear up in no time at all. If you’re otherwise satisfied with him, I’ll consider lowering the price. I’ll take the kingdom but you keep the queen.
No, I’m sure the court jester is doing a great job meeting your humor needs. I wouldn’t presume Your Majesty’s staffing decisions. And over here….
An udder? Some of these horses come with extras you wouldn’t believe.
A cow? No.
Seriously?
This is the kind of thing that happens when I delegate the simplest of tasks. I’m sure you know what I mean. Men like us, people take advantage. First thing tomorrow, I’m accusing that serf of witchcraft.
It is a handsome cow, though. Your bovines have a much wider foot base than your average horse. That could come in handy during a charge, especially with all the rain we’ve been having.
You’re right, of course.
Your Highness, this is my daughter, Esmerelda. Esmerelda, his Royal Highness.
I have a wide selection of quality horses in the next set of stalls that I’m sure will interest you.
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