Dirty Tricks

 I'm in real trouble. C.W. stayed up late and created this meme that he posted on the internet so my wife could see it first thing. I'm hiding from her and he is hiding from me.

Have A Good Week

 He walked through this morning while I was half asleep. I think he intended to be a newscaster but I wasn't sure.

"What kind of week do you plan for this week," he said. "Inquiring minds want to know."

I tried to ignore him.

"Shall I report, 'No comment?'"

"What the godalmighty hell are you talking about?"

"Well," he said, "Week before last you were saying that they may have hit bottom."

"And?"

"Last week you said you didn't think there was a bottom."

"Coffee," I said.

DAILY NEWS

 C.W. came by this morning. I hadn't seen him in ages. He had worried about Covid and hasn't been around much. Anyway, today he looked a lot like I imagine Charles Darwin might have looked.

"What's up?" he said.

"Where have you been?"

"Somewhere safe, watching," he said.

"To what do I owe the  pleasure?"

"Does your species understand natural selection?"

I thought. "Some do. Many don't."

"The species may get hit by it, and not in a pleasant way."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Remember that the role of a male is to impregnate as many females as he can to propagate a species much like himself."

"Yes."

"And remember that the role of a female is to propagate wisely, as with most things. That's why we don't understand why they aren't the rulers."

"So. Do you have a point?"

"Yes. What happens if they aren't allowed to choose wisely."

"What do you mean?"

"What if rapist and child-molesters decide to develop a dominant species by spreading their seeds abundantly and pervasively?"

A crack appeared in the clouds of my thinking and a shaft of light emerged.

"And what if the results of their base decision were now protected by your laws so propagation would prove inevitable?"

"You mean the products of wickedness might be protected by the courts?

"I mean floods of mutants infiltrating your species. Nothing more. Nothing less."

"Did you come back after all these years just to make me feel worse than I already do?"

Paradigms

Ask the Falloonian Time: People ask me all the time to name the biggest difference between Falloonians and your species here on Earth, as if three heads and the ability to shift shapes at will weren’t enough. There are too many others to list, but here is one.

We enjoy a practice known as Chivumibreek. A rough translation in your language would be “Allow those things that have occurred in the past to remain those things that have occurred in the past.”

My research shows that you employed such a philosophy in the past, but large segments of your population seems to regard it as a sign of weakness these days. The man who fashioned Christianity, this Apostle Paul of yours, reportedly wreaked havoc on early believers before he obtained the spirit. King Henry the Fifth of England enjoyed quite a rounder’s life before he quit and saved his country. They say that Catherine the Great was a little loose in the uterus.

That’s all changed. It seems that within the most liberal-minded segment of your American society, a mistake, no matter how distant in the past, or juvenile in conception, stays branded one’s reputation like a tattoo on a sailor. I’ve heard they even have groups of “purity warriors” who guard against redemption in any form. There was a distantly related, and self-annihilating, practice among a group I read about called “The Shakers.” They became defunct, it appears, after abandoning the practice of sexual intercourse because of its original sin nature.

Not so for those on the right who practice a particular brand of, shall we say, "ad hoc morality." From all observations, they pick out what we might call a “salvation date,” or the date on which they assumed the persona of righteousness, and forbid anyone from questioning any actions that occurred before that date. For some reason, the press obliges.

Of course, some don’t even have to take that step. All they must do, it seems to an alien observer, is to denounce the things and people you hate, and the mantle of righteousness falls on them like fairy dust descending on an angel’s wings.

Since this group is unified, internationally connected, free from traditional societal paradigms, and heavily funded, they seem destined to rule your planet as long as possible.

That’s why the Falloonian Elders have ordered me to stay packed for a quick departure.

Ahhh, dear readers. Big Dope fell asleep watching TV last evening. Mrs. Big Dope can’t stand what he watches (old movies and things about how bad someone named Hitler was) so she put her own TV in another room and watches from their  (films about women who chop their husbands up with axes).

So I controlled the remote for a spell. Came upon an old comedy show where a comedian dressed up like some priest and talked in a fake Italian accent. It was an old skit. They wouldn’t let a comedian talk in accents any more. Yeah, the Falloonian Elders have a hard time believing that too. Well this comedian was talking about a news report from years ago when scientists said they had discovered a planet that was approaching Earth and moving away from Earth at the same time. He called it the “coming and going planet.”

It reminded me of a dichotomy among your species. Take Big Dope for example. I won’t include the Mrs. For she has a quicker temper. He’s fairly well off by Earthen standards, yet supports politicians whose party supports helping the less fortunate of your species, what the favorite god of many of you call “the least of those among us.” Friends of Big Dope who are dependent upon, or who are alive today, because of the social generosity of a political party, detest those same politicians and worship others who would allow the poor among you to starve or die. Oh, and the god I mentioned earlier is on the side of the “least” but that doesn’t seem to bother a lot of his followers.

The “coming and going” planet?

The “believing and non-believing” planet?

The “I have mine so let’s move on” planet?

I think I’ll forward the comedy skit to the Elders. They like funny stories from Earth.

Control

I couldn't help but ask Big Dope why so many of your species respond actively to falsehoods rather than facts. What he said was interesting. He noted it has been said that one person can only manage a limited number of people through direct contact and rational supervision. Some argue that, in order to control vast numbers of people, for good or for bad, you must employ mythology.

That has my right head twitching. The left just said, "Groovy man, groovy."

Spokespeople

 Big Dope doesn’t like it much when I question him about religious ecstasy among your species. He’s says it’s too complicated for me.

Me, a member of the Falloonian intelligentsia? Someone who travelled through three galaxies to reach your puzzling planet? Too complicated? Someone who can speak fluently in over 6,500 of your languages, some of which are spoken by fewer than 1,000 people. That doesn’t include dialects. I can even understand and translate rural southern English, although I do have trouble speaking it, and the Falloonian Elders claim I’m making it up.

Too complicated for me? Why I have more cognitive capability in less than a tenth of one of my three brains than he has in his whole puny cranium. Too complicated? Here you have a creature that can instantly compute loci to thousands of planets in over 200 billion galaxies.

One religion in one country in one planet in one galaxy of the known universe? How hard could it be?

“Then explain to me,” he says, “how the official religion of a major political party in the most powerful country on our planet has selected Rick Perry to explain the mental workings and purposes of its god Jehovah, who created those 200 billion galaxies.”

“Rick Perry?” I says.

“Rick Perry.”

“The Rick Perry?”

“The Rick Perry.”

“Let me make sure,” I says. “The Rick Perry who couldn’t name the three government agencies he would abolish if he were elected president?”

“The very one.”

If you’ll excuse me, dear friend, I have some studying to do.

442. Guilt

There was this sound of arguing going on in the backyard of the farm. I heard several obscene epithets hurled. It sounded familiar. I heard one yelled in Falloonian and I knew the source. One had to be C.W. Who was the other? I walked outside.

Mystery solved. It was C.W. in one of his favorite shapes, Lefty and Lucky the conjoined twins. They walked, hip to hip, around an oak tree my late father-in-law and I planted some 25 years ago. It is one of my wife’s favorite spots, and she protects it with zeal.

“Ass****,” Lucky shouted. F****** ratfink.” They pivoted and began walking around the tree in the opposite direction. I noticed a trampled plant.

“Hey,” I said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Nothing,” Lefty said. “We’re somewhere else.”

“No,” I said. “I can see you.”

“What you see isn’t real,” he said. “Trust me.”

“He’s lying again, Lucky said. “That’s all he does.” He smiled. “And he’s real good at it.”

“Am not,” Lefty said. “I’ve never lied since we’ve been on Earth. I’m the greatest truth-teller my planet ever sent here.” They continued walking.

I say they are conjoined twins, and I speak the truth in a literal sense. A narrow square of skin and muscle joins them. A first-year medical student could separate them with a local anesthetic, but they preferred to be “joined at the hip,” as they put it. Somehow, I fear, this close association feeds and supports the worst instincts in each.

I watched them for a minute. Lefty spent two turns around the tree cursing his attachment. When he paused for breath, I broke in.

“Having an argument?”

“Argument hell,” Lefty said. “I’m letting him know what I think of a ratfink mother … .”

“Stop,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Ask him,” Lefty said. “I don’t know anything.”

“You’re cussing like I did when I dropped a link of anchor chain on my foot and you don’t know anything?”

“I know nothing,” he said.

“Ask him about your wife’s favorite jelly glass,” Lucky said. “The one she found in the junk pile and was over a hundred years old.”

“I’ve never touched a jelly glass since I’ve been on your planet,” Lefty said. I wouldn’t even recognize one if I saw it. I use expensive, tasteful glasses, the most wonderful and beautiful ones in the Galaxy.”

“Ask him what happens when one is drinking wine from a jelly glass and drops it on a hard floor,” Lucky said.

“I don’t remember doing that,” Lefty said. “I wasn’t there.”

“You weren’t there when my wife’s jelly glass got broken? What exactly happened, if you had to guess?”

“I’m not going to answer any hypothetical questions,” he said.

“Now he’s in a world of doo-doo,” Lucky said.

“Doo-doo head,” Lefty said.

“Fellows,” I said. “What’s up?”

“He dropped the glass and broke it,” Lucky said.

“I was somewhere else at the time,” Lefty said. He appeared to think. “In Falloonia, yeah, they transfigured me back to Falloonia for a conference. It was the greatest conference they ever had and I was the best speaker, the best speaker by far. Just ask them.”

“So I assume Lucky was with you? He can verify?”

“No,” Lefty said. “He stayed here. I went alone.”

Lucky and I stared at one another.

I had stomached about enough of this. “What really happened?”

“Mrs. Big Dope found out about her broken glass,” Lucky said.

“And?”

Lucky shrugged.

“He jumped in the air and turned over on me,” Lefty said.

“Do mean he ‘flipped’ on you?”

Lefty nodded. “They shouldn’t allow that, not even when someone commits a crime, which I did not, by the way.”

“What happened next?”

“He’s being punished,” Lucky said.

“If he’s being punished,” I said, “won’t you be included?”

“No,” Lucky said. “I’ll still get five meals a day. He’ll only get one.”

“I see,” I said.

“And,” Lucky said, “he’s going to have to wear a sign around his neck that says, ‘jelly glass murderer’ for a month.”

 

Big Dope says I'm two-faced.
What do you think? - C.W.

“Turncoat b*****,” Lefty said.

“Guys, stop it.” I said. I looked at Lucky. “You seem to know that he’s nothing but trouble to you. Why do you stay joined to him?”

“Tell him,” you prick,” Lefty said.

“Well,” Lucky said. “He is good at filching snacks and he gives me half of them.”

“And?”

“He keeps the attention off me. Have you noticed how your wife’s rock collection is disappearing and how I’m getting better at skipping them on the pond?”

“And?” This was getting uncomfortable.

“He makes me laugh.”

“Oh, how?”

“It just cracks me up,” Lucky said “to see you go berserk when he pulls one of his crazy stunts.”  

See also:

Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

Don't Get Me Started

Enjoy these at all? If so, order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers. It will make him so happy. Also, click on an ad. It earns him a little and costs the advertiser, sort of a win-win.

439. Honor

“From things I’ve seen and learned, it’s what many of your species don’t understand about politics,” he said.

“Oh?” We were sitting under my favorite oak contemplating the death of a famous American, C.W. and I. He had, for the occasion enphased (as he calls it) into the shape of the young American soldier from West Virginia, the one who had been killed on his 19^th birthday, 14 days before this draft term ended.

“And honor,” he said.

I looked toward him.

“And duty,” he said.

“Want to explain?”

“I shouldn’t have to,” he said. “Was I honorable?”

“They didn’t think so then,” I said. “Maybe some do now.”

“Did I do my duty?”

“I would say to the ultimate limit.”

“Would it change your mind to know that I was once ordered to open fire, when I was an M-60 machine gunner in an infantry platoon, on a sleeping village?”

“On orders you say?”

“On orders.”

“And?”

“I blew the hell out of everything in sight … men, women, children, dogs, rats, water buffaloes, Viet Cong, you name it.”

He paused and sniffed. “Was I doing my duty?”

I avoided the question. “How exactly,” I said, “did you, … did it end for you?”

“It was later,” he said, “two days after the attack on the first village. In the next one, they were waiting for us, had set up the perfect ambush: rice paddies to the right, gun emplacements to the front and left. We had no place to go. The Lieutenant was from the Academy. He thought all was copacetic, as he phrased it, but we all thought things were way too quiet. “Don’t argue,” he said as he sent us forward with the squad to set up an emplacement. My crew and I had peeled off, using the rice paddies as a buffer, and set up as the rest of the squad did an oblique to the left and moved forward.”

“And?”

“It broke loose. Interlocking fire. The point man and two others fell, both dead. Two others were wounded. The rest were flat on the ground. I opened fire.”

“What happened then?’

“Troops came out of the village in perfect order, firing at us. I looked back and the Lieutenant was running toward the rear of the company, motioning it back. We were stranded.”

I waited.

“The survivors of the squad began pulling their wounded back. The three of us with the M-60 kept firing.”

“What then?”

“The others pulled back to our rear and ultimately reached the company with their wounded. We managed to slow the assault until they were safe.”

“And you?”

“We stayed and kept firing until they reached us. By the time we died, the company had formed a defensive line and was driving the enemy back. My last memory was of a mortar dropping in front of us into a mass of men. Then the rest were on us.”

We sat in silence.

“And this,” I said at last, “has what to do with our mourning an American hero today?”

“What was he doing when the ground fire hit his plane?” he said.

“Flying a mission?”

“To do what?”

“Bomb the enemy?”

“Men, women, children, dogs, rats, water buffaloes?”

“And specified targets. On orders,” I said.

“Fulfilling his duty?”

“As he saw it. As his country defined it.”

“Duty, then,” he said, “may require us to do things we ordinarily wouldn’t do?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“After capture,” he said, “how did our deceased hero perform?”

“As honorably, bravely, and magnificently as any American ever has, under the worst of conditions, for five-and-a-half years, without medical care for his broken body.”

“Withstood it all?”

“Without question.” I thought for a moment. “Did you know that, partway through his imprisonment, they offered to release him?”

“Really?”

“Yes, he was the son of an admiral, and the publicity would have been significant.”

“What happened?”

“He pretty much told them to stick the offer in their scuppers.”

“Honorable.”

“Very.”

“Even though he dishonored your country by being captured?”

“That’s the opinion of only one man.”

“No,” he said. “That’s the opinion of an entire political party.”

“Do you think so?”

“Of course,” he said. “Silence and inaction can carry honor or dishonor with equal ease. Political opportunity can determine which course people or parties choose.”

“But,” I said, “the party sends out campaign ads telling how much they love our military and what great patriots they are.”

“I can,” he said sadly, “call myself a retired veteran of a foreign war enjoying a yard full of grandchildren, but that doesn’t make it so.”

Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

Enjoy these at all? If so, order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers. It will make him so happy. Also, click on an ad. It earns him a little and costs the advertiser, sort of a win-win.

436. Prophecy

It was abnormally quiet in the house. I had come in from working outdoors and my wife was away for the day. I thought I’d better check on C.W. Did I mention that it was abnormally quiet? That’s when it’s a good idea to check on C.W.

But, uncharacteristically, I found him in my favorite easy chair reading a book. At least I assumed it was he, the shape was that of a middle-aged man of scholarly demeanor. He had a long, hawkish, face beset by wrinkles and accentuated by a thin mustache. His eyes flashed beneath a crop of dark, unruly hair.

He looked vaguely familiar but I let it pass. “What’s up? I said.

“The Elders are pissed,” he said, closing the book.

“Oh?” It was then that I notice what book he was reading. It was Nineteen Eighty-Four.

“And why are they pissed this time?”

“Don’t you think they have a right to be?” He said gruffly.

“I don’t know.”

“Listen,” he said. I noticed scads of yellow stickers protruding from the book. He turned to them, one after another, and read.

“War is peace.”

“Freedom is slavery.”

“Ignorance is strength.”

He closed the book. “Sound familiar? Maybe a little like last night’s newscast?”

Before I could answer, he turned to another marker and read, “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” He looked up at me and smiled, then said, “The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”

“Is this going somewhere?”

“Be still and learn,” he said. He didn’t say it in a friendly way. I’d never seen him like this before. He quickly turned to another page and read. “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'”

I just stood there, thinking of our Secretary of Education. “Are you,” he said, “proud of your country now? How do you like being a fulfillment of prophecy? Not the mythical kind where you read a prediction and then go make it happen, but when it happens on its own and you say, ‘So and So saw that coming?’”

As I pondered this, he continued, pointing at another section. He read, “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” He stopped. “Say, for example, you have a twice-divorced adulterer being worshiped as a religious icon by a third of your population. He flashed a half-smile for the first time. If you think the Elders are pissed, you ought to talk to the Galilean. See?”

Trying to make sense of it all, I tried to answer. I could only say, “Yes.”

Do I have to draw you a picture? - C.W.

He snapped. “Is any of this really beginning to make sense? Does any of it sound familiar at all?”

“Yes,” I said. “I first read the book in high school and then several more times since.”

“Idiot,” he snapped. “I’m talking about 2018, not some journey into your past.”

This was the strangest C.W. I had encountered ever. “What is with you?” I said.

“Don’t you watch the news?” he said. “The Elders certainly do.”

“And why are they so upset?”

“You have no idea?”

“Maybe a slight idea. Could it be …?”

“Shut up,” he said. “Listen.” He turned to another marker and looked at me, his dark eyes piercing the farthest corner of my mind. “Listen,” he said, “and learn. Then you may know why the Elders are pissed.

This time he read gravely, “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m beginning to see you point. America today is starting to sound exactly—and I’ll admit it’s scary as hell—like the state described in Orwell’s book.” I paused, “But what has the Elders so upset?”

“Orwell!” he screamed. “Orwell … what has the Elders so pissed about Orwell, his prophecies, and modern America?”

“Yes,” I said, “yes … what?”

“Only,” he said, “that they sent me here in 1947 to warn you.”

430. Retribution

C.W. had left a message: “Under the tree. Sad. Bring the good Scotch.”

I knew what to expect. Pensive moods fit only a few of his shapes, and this had been a rough week for him. I carried everything on a tray, the single-malt I had been saving, two glasses, and a bucket of ice, though I knew he preferred the things in his world be unadulterated.

The Galilean didn’t seem to hear me approach. He sat between a spreading oak and a stand of variegated bamboo. My late father-in-law planted the oak years ago, but he had never enjoyed its shade. Now, a lonely figure, his white robe spreading around him, watched a group of geese leading their young around the banks of the pond.

As I approached, he said without looking, “It’s peaceful here. Someone planned things well.”

“Thanks” I said.

I sat the tray on the table, uncorked the scotch and motioned toward the ice with a questioning look. He shook his head. “I like it just as it is,” he said. “We can change our lives, but not good scotch.”

After I poured a “finger” for each of us, we raised our glasses and touched them. “To the children,” he said.

I said, “To the children.”

The geese caught our attention. They were in a line with the adults fore and aft. The lead goose, a mother I supposed, would flap her wings. Immediately the young ones would mimic with their small, developing stubs.

“She’s teaching them to fly,” he said. “Isn’t it a marvelous planet we have here? So much potential. Could you imagine what would happen to those youngsters if the mother wasn’t there to teach them?” He drained his glass and thrust it toward me. I began to pour and he gave me “the look.” I added an additional finger. He smiled and sipped.

“There seems to be a vicious cult threatening this peaceful place,” he said. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

He did a perfect impression of Zorba the Greek. “Then what is the use of all your damned books?” He laughed and drank half the rest of his scotch. Playing Zorba is one of his favorite games when he chooses this shape.

He brushed his fingers through long greasy hair. “What the hell do they have against my children?” He was still watching the geese.

“No one seems to know,” I said.

“Wasn’t I pretty clear about that?” I said 'suffer not.' I don’t think I said a damned thing about making them suffer.” He tossed off the remainder of his drink and held his glass out toward me. I filled it nearly to the top.

He sighed. “When we dropped the sperm off on this barren rock of a planet, the one you call home, six billion years ago,” he said, “we chose the very best. Yours was to be a glorious experiment in excellence—in thought, expression, and behavior. What the hell happened?”

He sipped. “Might want to take it slow,” I said. “Don’t get yourself all worked up.”

“Oh,” he said, “you know very well that I’m programmed for forgiveness.” He sipped again. “But the Exalted Falloonian, head of this great experiment, isn’t so bound. He can get really pissed. Remember that home planet destruction scene from that Star Wars movie you took me to see?”

I shuddered. He took another long drink, settled back in his chair, and continued. “And what’s with this immigrant shit?”

“What do you mean?”

“Doesn’t anyone remember the scenario the Elders wrote for me and the family? How we were immigrants? If these sons of …” he stopped and took a long breath. Sipped, and calmed his voice. “If these people in charge now had been in charge back then, and had tried to do to my family what they are doing to families now, there would have been thunderbolts galore, you can bet your sweet ass on that.”

I moved the bottle from his sight. “Maybe its time I took you in for a rest,” I said.

He let out a breath. “I suppose so.” He drained his glass and looked at me like a child begging for a last cookie.

“One more.” I said. He held out his glass. I filled it. This time he finished it off in two large gulps. He leaned back. We sat in thought for several minutes.

Before too long, he broke the silence. “There is a day of reckoning coming,” he said.

I looked over at him.

The best of pals. - C.W.

“It may not be pretty,” he said. “Especially for the leaders of this dreadful cult. Maybe the followers too.”

I drew a deep breath.

“It’s been done before, you know. Not like they wrote it, but its been done. Wasn’t pretty at all. Not at all.”

“Let’s get you to bed,” I said.

“It won’t be pretty at all.” He held out his glass.

I shook my head. He rested the glass on the table. Then he dabbed at his eyes with a corner of his robe. He looked at me with deep black eyes. He said, his words becoming slightly blurred. "It’s not going to be pretty for those who harm my children and rebuke the aliens.”

The sound of a crop-dusting plane made the geese bark and rush to the safety of pond, the little ones flapping their wings to no effect.

Not pretty,” he said again. “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth among the wicked.”

He started to rise, then slumped and looked at me. “I don’t really care. Do you?”

See also:

Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

Enjoy these at all? If so, order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers. It will make him so happy. Also, click on an ad. It earns him a little and costs the advertiser, sort of a win-win.

428: Conflicts

In an unusual move, C.W. came waddling into the living room this morning unshaped, that is to say he was in his actual form. That’s always a surprise. He spread himself across the couch as best he could and relaxed. I waited.

“We have a question,” Right Head said.

“Yes, a tough question,” Middle Head said.

“Do you have any ice cream?” Left Head said.

“Is that the question?”

“No,” Middle Head said. He looked at Left Head and back at me. “We have a serious question.”

“I’m your man then,” I said. “Shoot.”

Right Head and Left Head both looked at Middle Head. He looked at Right Head. “You tell him. It’s your problem.”

Right head nodded. “It’s like this,” he said. “This one,” he nodded at Middle Head, “is disrespecting us.”

“He’s being a real asshole,” Left Head said.

“Going out of his way to alienate us,” Right Head said.

“Being a real jerk-off,” Left Head said.

“I’m just tired of being the pocket book of ideas that these two idiots draw from,” Middle Head said. “I have the greatest mind in the galaxy and they add nothing to the deals I make.”

“See what I mean?” Right Head said.

“What a douche bag,” Left Head said.

“I don’t need them,” Middle Head said. “I do the greatest things in our galaxy without them. They just hang around and profit from the things I do. I’m more attractive than either of them, too. Don’t you think?”

I swallowed hard and tried not to think about such things. “I’m not exactly an expert on concepts of Falloonian beauty,” I said.

“You’re as pitiful as they are,” Middle Head said, nodding at each in return. I have thousands of heads wanting to share a body with me. They know I’m the greatest head around. They would line up to be with me.”

“How long have you three been together?” I asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Middle Head said.

“Approximately four million Scheruntshoolters,” Right Head said. “Maybe six hundred Earth years.”

“That’s a long time to be associated with Shit-For-Brains,” Left Head said.

“How could you manage without one another?” I said.

“I don’t need anyone,” Middle Head said. “Haven’t you been listening? I’m the greatest and I tell it like it is. People love that in a head. I tell them, ‘Just kiss my head and you’ll see glory.’ That’s the greatest motto ever thought up.”

“Uh,” I said. “I think I would be a little careful with that if I were you.”

“You’re just as pitiful as they are. Everything you tell me is fake.”

“If you don’t trust me, and you don’t trust the other two heads who have been your friends for so long,” I said, “whom do you trust?”

“That’s the problem,” Right Head said.

“Yeah,” Left Head said, “Just listen to who Scumbag has buddied-up with. Have you ever heard of Wunewphelplaeze?”

“Where’s that? What does the word mean?”

Three GUTS whirled. Right Head spoke first. “Anus Mundi,” he said, then, “No, wait. I hit Latin by mistake.” He started to speak but Left Head cut him off.

“It’s where,” he said, “and I hate to say this, but it’s where the planets in our galaxies used to send their malformed and maladjusted units to keep them from breeding with the normal units.”

“Only one problem,” Right Head said.

“What’s that?”

Does this look like the face
of a man of menace? - C.W.

Left Head broke in. “They started breeding with one another and now they have their own civilization, even have their own leader, the worst unit in the galaxy, one called Ahhlchileya,” a real piece of excrement.”

“A piece of excrement who now has a new best friend,” Left head said. He and Right Head looked inward in unison.

“Fake facts,” Middle Head said. “Cheap lies. He’s had no charges brought against him.”

“Dormantatized units can’t bring charges,” Right Head said.

“He buys Doodo-Head expensive things,” Left Head said. “Where do you think he got that new Les Paul guitar that he plays when he makes us shape up like Slash?”

“Enough, enough,” I said. “I see disaster on the horizon.” I looked at Middle Head. “Can’t we reach a compromise?”

“Compromises are for those who can’t cut the pungent yellow condiment consisting of the pulverized seeds of a selected plant.”

I looked at the other two. “Can you report him to the Falloonian Elders?”

“Hell no,” Left Head said.

“He’s been buying them expensive gifts with funds Ahhlchielya gives him,” Left Head said.  “The Elders have gone bad and will support him no matter what.” The three began to argue incoherently.

I arose and left them there. I walked to the door, opened it, and walked outside for a breath of fresh air. Off to the west, some menacing black clouds were forming. I walked out to our farm pond, sat on the bank and studied the pond. By its waters, I wept when I remembered the good times.

See also:

Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

Enjoy these at all? If so, order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers. It will make him so happy. Also, click on an ad. It earns him a little and costs the advertiser, sort of a win-win.

417: Dark Matter

I had this feeling that the Galilean was going to pay me a visit. C.W. chose it as a favorite shape years ago. He normally uses it times of stress, particularly when he encounters difficulty in explaining us to the Falloonian Elders.

It was a nice day in late winter or early spring, depending upon your outlook. I found him sitting beneath a budding tree watching the birds, his hands clasped together and resting on his robe. He likes birds.

I sat beside him without speaking. I always try to let the Galilean speak first. He turned to me and nodded, Then, he turned back to the singing of the birds for a full moment before he spoke.

“Where the hell do they come from?” he said.

“I think,” I said, slowly while I tried to think. “that they descend from the same evolutionary line as the dinosaurs. Odd, isn’t it?” Reason hit me like a stray raindrop. “But you know that already.”

“Don’t be such a dope,” he said, stroking his beard and refusing to look my way.

“You aren’t talking about the birds?”

“I’m talking about what they call in Falloonia the ‘monsters from your darkest impulses.’ The actual Falloonian term is broader and refers, as well, to self-mutilating tendencies.”

I thought I knew where he was going, but caution crept in. “People? Are you talking about people?”

“These aberrations,” he said, “These malformed examples of your species that originate such damage on your planet.”

“Oh.”

“Would you call such people as this Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions members of your same species?”

“Our anthropologists  are beginning,” I said, “to strengthen the hypothesis that our species bred with Neanderthals and that scattered individuals carry the traces. Would that help explain it?”

“Only if you wished forever to impute a strain of maliciousness to the noble Neanderthals,” he said.

I knew it was time for me to stay quiet.

“I must explain them to my superiors. I told them that I had, in a previous assignment, left written instructions.”

“Oh?”

“Surely you recall ‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.’ That was pretty damned clear, wasn’t it?”

“You don’t think the ones you mentioned read it?”

“If they have, it will come as hell of a surprise to Andrew McCabe.”

“That’s true.”

“Not only that, I left word to love your neighbor as yourself. I made that pretty clear, didn’t I? Did I mince words?”

“No, I recall that you were fairly specific.”

He turned and glared at me. “Fairly specific my ass,’ he said. “I left clear written instruction in … in … what ever language my Galactic Universal Translator had me speaking back then.”

“Your GUT was using Aramaic, I think.”

“Maybe so,” he said. “I forget. At any rate, it translates into English, right?”

“Greek, Latin, English, all of them,” I said.

“So these characters like Trump, Sessions, and the lemmings that are following them can read, can’t they?”

“Supposedly.”

“Has anyone informed them about the instructions that I left?”

“It wouldn’t appear so, although they claim to be aware of you.”

“Then are they just purposefully trying to piss me off?”

“May I make an observation?”

“Why not? Everybody else does.”

“If I may point it out, you are being a little earthy today.”

“So what?”

“Also, what about your strictures on forgiveness?”

He thought, I imagined that I could hear machinery humming. “You’re right, I think I did say that if someone sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says , ‘I repent,’ forgive him. I think me and the boys had been practicing my water-into-wine trick a little too much that day.”

“But you left us with them, your orders I mean.”

 

It would explain a lot, right? - C.W.

He sighed and listened to the birds again. I could sense relaxing calm in him.

“I will,” he said.

“Will what?”

“Will abide by my own rules.

“So Trump, Sessions, and the others are forgiven for their meanness?”

“Not so fast,” he said. “Not so fast.” His face hardened.

“You don’t forgive them?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But first I’m going to wait until the sonsabitches repent.”

See also:

Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

Enjoy these at all? If so, order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers. It will make him so happy. Also, click on an ad. It earns him a little and costs the advertiser, sort of a win-win.

415. Resistance

“Don’t make me have to come in there.”

Oh, no, as I walked in from doing some outdoor chores, I heard one of the most dreaded threats a Southern child can hear. I rushed in the living room to check on things. I heard C.W. before I saw him. He was what you might call, “wailing.”

“Oh, what will become of me, what can I do?”

A voice from the kitchen said, “Try setting yourself on fire.”

I had reached the living room by then and witnessed a sight I’ll never forget. There was the form of what appeared to be a genuine 1968 version of a Haight-Ashbury resident sitting cross-legged on the floor moaning and rocking to and fro with tears streaming down his face and onto a pale pink robe festooned with peace symbols.

“What the … ,?”

“Oh, Big Dope,” he managed between sobs. “Am I glad to see you. You must help me.”

I was feeling a bit weak so I sat. I said nothing.

“Tell me you’ll help me, man.”

“Help you how?”

“Keep them from drafting me.”

“Keep them from what?”

“Drafting me, man. I’m not cut out for the military, man, not even the navy. You know how I got seasick when you took me fishing that day. And the sight of human blood makes me nauseated.”

“Calm down,” I said. I looked at him with all the sternness I could muster. He sniffed once and looked at me. His mustache and beard were glistening from his tears, and his nose was running. He drew a breath and nodded.

 “Now what is this about a draft?”

He started to sound off again, but I wagged a finger at him and shook my head. “Speak.”

“I requested a transfer home,” he said. “They turned me down.”

“Who turned you down?”

“The Falloonian Elders. They quoted Section Eight of the Alien Service Agreement.”

“What’s that?”

“What I had to sign to be eligible to come live with you.”

“No, I meant what is Section Eight?”

“That’s the one where it says I have to participate on host-country life to the greatest degree possible.” With that, he broke down and wailed, “Now I’m going to get drafted.” His sounds filled the room.

“I’m not going to tell you again,” came from the kitchen.

“Calm down,” I said again. “There hasn’t been a draft in this country since the 1970s.”

“And look at how many years you’ve been at war since then,” he said. “Now this new one is bound to require that they start up the draft again.” Snot dripped from his nose. “What am I going to do?”

“C.W.,” I said, … ,”

When it comes to drafting me,
I find I must agree. - C.W.

“Tranquility’s Child,” he said between sniffs.

“Say what?”

“That’s me,” he said, “Tranquility’s Child.”

“Whatever,” I said, “but there is no new war, yet.”

“Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“The political party in power in your country just declared war.”

“Did what?”

“Declared war. What shall I do? I’m too young to die.” He stopped and thought, shaking his head. “I’m only half a century old in Earth years.” With this he wailed again, “Oh what am I to do?”

“I’ve heard nothing about a new war.”

“They call it a ‘trading war,” and that means trading bombs and bodies, my people tell me, body counts and all that. They say I’ll be a hero maybe.” He began to wail again. “Help me. Help me.” His voice rose. “Help me. Help me.”

I couldn’t help thinking of that old film, The Fly. I shook it off.

I said, “Do you mean ‘a trade war’ with other countries? That’s not a war of armies. That’s only about the buying and selling of products. It doesn’t lead to invasions and battles. It’s just about products, or a product.”

“A product that one country buys and one country sells?”

“Exactly. Buying and selling. No ‘bombs bursting in air,’ no troop ships, no napalm, no draft, no dead babies. Just everyday products for sale or trade.”

“Does that include rubber and oil?”

I felt as though someone had slapped me in the face with a wet towel. I stared at the floor for a moment.

“I’m too goddam old,” I said. “You’re on your own.”

He screamed, “Oh woe is me, woe is me.”

A voice from the other room screamed back, “I’m gonna make you think ‘woe is me’ if you make another sound.” 

See also:

Delta Dreaming

All Hat No Cattle

Enjoy these at all? If so, order Big Dope's Book at Wattensaw Press, Amazon, or other book sellers. It will make him so happy. Also, click on an ad. It earns him a little and costs the advertiser, sort of a win-win.