Back to FLAT EARTH

Losers in Space
6.1

Eddie Paradigm opened up to a blank page in his dog-eared Student Diary, collected his thoughts for a moment, and wrote:

This is the journal of Edward C. Paradigm, first-time space traveler. If anyone should find this record, it will probably mean that my friends and I are dead.

Bummer, eh?

It all began three days ago, when our new friend Barry took Lance, Helena and I to his home planet of Apathia to help them repel an invasion from the planet Obnoxia. After the attack was thwarted (long story) Barry offered to give us a ride back to Earth. And that’s when things went a bit pear-shaped.

You see, even though we’d destroyed most of the Obnoxian fleet, there were still a few of their ships scattered around the area. As we left Apathia, we were tracked by one of their long-range fighters. He opened fire on us just before we could make the jump into hypo-space, which frankly was something of a relief.

Barry did the best he could to shake the fighter off, but we had no weapons on board and (to be perfectly honest) Barry’s ship handles like a cow. Fortunately the Obnoxian never managed to lock his weapons onto us, but while Barry was trying to pull some flashy evasion move we ended up colliding with the fighter. Both ships spun out of control and got caught in the gravitational pull of a nearby planet. It was then that we realised that the ship had no seatbelts, airbags or air-sickness bags. Let’s just say it got pretty tense, especially since Lance had eaten a couple of burritos before we left.

We ended up crashing on this barren, uninhabited world on the outer edge of Apathia's solar system. We all somehow got out of the wreck in one piece, but Barry’s ship was a write-off. We’d never be able to get it flying again, and all the communication equipment was smashed beyond repair as well. Lance took this as undeniable proof that “Fords are crap.”

We soon spotted a plume of smoke on the horizon, and realised that the Obnoxian fighter had crashed a few kilometres away from us. We decided to head over there and find it, in the hope that it was in better shape than ours. It wasn’t, but we quickly discovered that the pilot had also survived. And that he had a blaster rifle on him.

He took us all prisoner and might even have killed us, but Barry decided to try to appeal to his better nature. He made an inspired and passionate speech to the Obnoxian about how meaningless and destructive the war between their peoples had been, how all sentient beings were brothers, how if we didn’t put aside our differences and help each other we’d never survive on this planet, and how THIS was the moment, this was the one turning point that could bridge the gap between Apathians and Obnoxians and end thousands of years of hatred.

By the time he’d finished the Obnoxian was a sobbing wreck, I was on my second hanky and Helena was blubbering on my shoulder. Even Lance was chewing his lower lip. It’s a shame none of us thought to write that speech down, actually, ‘cause it was bloody good.

And so it was that the Obnoxian put down his weapon, gave his hand and offered his friendship, saying that we all had to pull together in order to survive.

And survival was going to be tough on this planet. Barry says it's such a desolate little rock that his people never even bothered to make up a name for it. It’s a barren wasteland with no fauna and hardly any flora, precious little water and only a few little caves to use as shelter. After searching for what seemed like forever, we were unable to find anything that could provide us with food.

So we were all quite pleased to discover that Obnoxians taste like barbeque pork.

Eddie put his pen down for a moment, and fished a steaming slice of meat from the makeshift rack above the fire. “More nose, Helena?”

Helena smiled and accepted the offering. “Don’t mind if I do, Eddie.”

Eddie licked his fingers and started writing again.

We have to be careful about rationing, though. The Obnoxian’s nose can only keep us all fed for another two weeks or so. After that, we’ll all begin to starve unless we can find more food, or find a way out of this mess. We can’t afford to waste anything that can provide us with sustenance.

Barry waddled over and sat next to Eddie, holding out something that looked like a large, overcooked spare rib. “Fried nostril hair?”

Eddie looked it over. “Um… no thanks.”



DAY 9



Still no sign of rescue. Our rations are holding, but the strain is starting to show. Every time we dole out the food, Lance groans and says, "Aw, Obnoxian AGAIN?" It was funny the first seven or eight times, but it's starting to wear a bit thin.

I guess we have to make allowances, though. Lance is taking our situation pretty hard. He was especially disappointed that Helena didn't want to help him "populate this strange new world".

Eddie paused in his writing to look over at Lance, who was slumped against the cave wall trying to fix his glasses. The swelling on his lip had started to go down, but he’d have a nasty black eye for the next few days. Eddie’s gaze moved to Helena, hunched over with her arms folded around her, rocking slightly as she stared blankly into the fire. If Eddie listened carefully, he could hear her faintly whimpering to herself.

Helena’s in bad shape too. She's missed two whole episodes of "Sex & The City". If we don't get her home and in front of a TV by this time next week, she may suffer a breakdown. Lance and I tried to help out by getting into a lengthy and pointless discussion about orgasms, but she said it just wasn't the same.

It's nearly dinnertime again. God, I could murder a vindaloo.



DAY 12



Bit of an eventful day today. Helena shooed us out of the cave this morning, mumbling something about "feminine hygiene issues". The timing was unfortunate, because we experienced a particularly heavy meteor shower about five minutes later. It got pretty tense but we were forced to stand our ground, because being clobbered by a three-ton meteor was certainly preferable to going back into the cave.

We've been stranded on this barren planet for almost two weeks, and even with careful rationing our food is running out fast. We have had one ray of hope ~ Lance found another pool of fresh water yesterday. Unfortunately, the pool was home to a parasitic alien creature that burrowed into his head and took over his mind.

Of course, after seeing what was IN Lance's mind, the parasite got out of his head as quickly as possible and has been hiding under a rock ever since.

Things are pretty calm right now, but the tension's still there under the surface. We've only got enough food for another four or five days, and Lance reckons that if we're following the "last hired, first fired" policy, then Barry's next on the menu. I think Barry's gotten wind of this, too ~ he's moved out of the shelter and set himself up in another cave further up the hill, and only comes down twice a day to snatch his share of the food.

There's a bit of a "William Golding" vibe around here at the moment, to tell you the truth. I'm dead worried.



DAY 17



We're down to our last few scraps of food. Tomorrow, we'll have nothing to eat. We're hungry, dirty, sick and exhausted. Winter is starting to set in, and almost all our hope has been drained away. And that big black monolith up on the hill is giving EVERYBODY the creeps.

I think things are coming to a head on the food issue. This morning I caught Lance sharpening what looked like a spear-head out of a piece of flint. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was carving an effigy of Kim Cattral to give Helena something to cling to. We haven't seen Barry since yesterday, and Helena's been avoiding Lance as well. As least that's one thing that hasn't changed.

Our situation gets worse by the day. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever find a way home.

Eddie looked up with a start as Barry came waddling into the cave, his little blue face flushed with excitement.

“Hey guys!” he cried. “I’ve found a way home!”



They followed the Apathian up and around the hill, keeping an eye out for meteors. They passed Barry's cave - the entrance surrounded by snares in case of intrusion by hungry Earthmen - and kept on going, climbing almost to the summit. There Barry led them eagerly into another cave mouth, which wound through a craggy little tunnel until it opened out into a wide, circular chamber in the rock.

“There it is!” Barry announced, flourishing a little blue arm.

They all looked at it.

“Interesting,” Eddie commented.

“Unusual,” Lance noted.

“What the hell is it?” Helena inquired.

What it appeared to be was a huge metal ring, standing upright at the far end of the cave. There was a short flight of steps leading up to the ring, and what looked like Egyptian heiroglyphs engraved around it’s circumference.

“It’s a Fargate!” Barry enthused.

“Oh, right,” Eddie nodded slowly.

“I see,” Lance murmured.

“How silly of me,” Helena frowned.

“Don’t you guys get it?” Barry insisted. “This thing must have been sitting here for millions of years. If it still works, it can link up a wormhole through space and transport us off this rock in an instant!”

“Let’s see if it works, then,” Eddie decided.

He and Barry walked over to examine the pulpit-shaped control panel set into the cave floor in front of the gate. It was marked with the same symbols as the gate itself, with any number of possible combinations to try.

Barry studied the panel thoughtfully. “If only we can figure out the dialling code for your planet…”

“Not a problem.” Eddie pointed to the smaller row of buttons on one side of the panel, labelled:

Barry blinked. “Speed-dial?”

Eddie beamed. “You extraterrestrial types think of everything, don’t you?”



Barry was absolutely right. The Fargate started up without a hitch and transported us off the planet in a matter of seconds, and before we knew it we were standing in Fargate Command back on Mother Earth.

They didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat for us, of course. The moment we stepped through the gate we had about twenty assault rifles stuck in our faces, and next thing we knew we were in handcuffs and being marched off to separate cells. They interrogated us for hours and ran all kinds of medical tests to make sure we weren’t an invading alien army. Helena said later that her interrogation wasn’t so bad, but it was the strip-search that really annoyed her. She was even more annoyed when Lance and I told her that nobody had strip-searched US…

Finally we managed to convince them that we were humans of benign intent. They were actually quite grateful, in fact, since we’d helped them discover a new Fargate and introduced them to Barry, whose race they’d never encountered before. They even sprung for the airfare to get us home (with free peanuts and everything!).

All except Barry, that is. He got shipped off to Area 51 for “further study”. We all felt kinda bad about that, but free peanuts ease a lot of pain.

We finally got back to the house late this afternoon. Quentin was waiting on the doorstep, demanding to know where we’d been for the past three weeks and why this month’s rent hadn’t gone in yet.

We told him we’d been to a rock festival, inhaled a little too much “ambience” and forgotten where we lived.

He gave us an extension.

THE END


Back to FLAT EARTH