by Geoff Rodkey
BZZZZZT! BZZZZZT! BZZZZZT!
Marf must’ve turned on the fence before we crashed. Either that or the pod had deployed it automatically.
But soon enough, the swarm would bust through.
Somebody had to do something.
I was the only one standing.
I lurched to the door and opened it.
At first all I could see was the crackling blue light of the fence, surrounding me in every direction. I blinked it away, and when my eyes adjusted, the sight of thousands of frenzied Zhuri—all shrieking at me from just beyond the fence’s ten-foot perimeter—made my knees buckle.
A moment ago, Ila’s music had put them on a knife’s edge between angry and happy.
But when the music had stopped, they’d tipped back into anger.
Now they wanted to kill me. The thought of it was making them scream even louder.
BZZZZZZT! A Zhuri threw his body against the fence.
BZZZZZZT! BZZZZZZT! Two more.
BZZZZZZT! BZZZZZZT! BZZZZZZT!
What can I do?
I couldn’t sing. I was terrible at it.
Even if I could, they wouldn’t have been able to hear me. It was too loud.
Where’s that drone mic?
It didn’t matter. What was I going to say that could stop a swarm?
Hey, there! I just flew in from Earth, and boy, are my arms tired!
Actually…
Maybe…
It’ll never work.
But I’ve got to try it anyway.
I raised my leg as high as I could, bringing it down in a long, bendy-legged stride. Then I did the same with the other leg, slowly walking forward in the most exaggerated, silly-looking Zhuri impression I could manage.
The Zhuri closest to the fence drew their heads back in surprise.
The other quarter of a million didn’t notice. Most of them couldn’t even see me. They were just feeding off each other’s anger.
I kept going, bobbing up and down like a jack-in-the-box, until I was only a step away from the fence. I took as long a stride as I dared—getting so close to the electrical field that my hair stood up—then sprang backward off my lead foot, pretending to get zapped by the fence.
I landed hard on my butt, expecting to get a bounce from the usual spongy floor.
But we were outside, on the hard tarmac of the spaceport. I didn’t get any bounce at all. Instead I almost broke my tailbone.
Ouch…
Hopefully, that made it funnier.
I staggered to my feet. The shrieks of the Zhuri filled my ears. I couldn’t smell anything except gasoline.
But the fence hadn’t buzzed since I’d started my slapstick routine. That was progress.
I did it again, bounce-walking up to the fence, then pratfalling backward like I’d been zapped. The landing hurt even worse the second time.
As I got up, I heard a rumble behind me.
“MRRRRMMMM!”
Marf was standing in the open door of the pod. When our eyes met, she winked.
I was trying to figure out what the wink meant when there was a piercing scream and the fence lit up. I turned just in time to catch a glimpse of a Zhuri bouncing off of it, knocking several others out of the air like bowling pins.
Not everybody was enjoying the comedy.
“MRRRRRM!”
I turned back to Marf. She was waddling toward me—much more slowly and clumsily than I knew she was capable of moving—with her hands raised, like she wanted to strangle me.
I was so confused that I stood frozen in place until her giant paws were almost around my neck. At the last second, I came to my senses and ducked out of the way, diving under her outstretched hands.
I tumbled to the ground. When I got myself turned around, Marf was already headed back my way. Her hands were outstretched again, and her waddle was so pronounced that the flesh was sloshing back and forth on her frame like water in a stirred-up bathtub.
It’s like she’s trying to look ridiculous.
Ooooooh. Right…
I limped to my feet and ran away from her in an exaggerated, bendy-legged Zhuri imitation. As she chased me in a circle around the pod—moving just fast enough that I stayed an arm’s length out of reach—the Zhuri closest to the fence began to draw back again, their tubelike mouths going limp.
But they were the only ones in the swarm who could see us. Even as they drew back, the crowd behind them kept pushing forward in anger. Every couple of seconds, someone from the middle of the swarm pushed his way through to the front, screaming in fury as he flung his body against the fence. When it zapped him back, it knocked out a big chunk of the front row, and the screamers behind them would rush into the breach.
We were losing fans as fast as we were making them.
Marf and I made three full circles of the fence, stopping at every turn for a fake grappling session. By the end of it, I was panting and sweaty.
But the screams of anger were as loud as they’d ever been.
At the end of a long loop, I stopped and turned, planting myself a couple of feet in front of the fence. Marf lumbered at me, her hands raised.
I ducked under her arms again, tumbling past her to land on my stomach.
But I’d planted myself too close to the fence. Marf couldn’t stop in time. She hit the wall of electrical current with an earsplitting BZZZZZZT! and toppled backward, collapsing on top of me.
I was buried alive under six hundred pounds of unconscious Ororo.
“MRRRF!”
I could barely hear my own yell. The screams of the swarm and the buzzing of the fence were muffled like I was underwater. I tried to kick and squirm, but there was just too much Marf on top of me.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I was going to suffocate.
The muffled screams were getting louder. The buzzing was almost nonstop now.
My cheek was pressed against the pavement. I tried to suck in air, but there wasn’t any.
Fireworks appeared in my eyes. I was blacking out from lack of oxygen.
At least it beats death by venom….
Then I was gone.
Dead.
I could hear an angel in the distance, welcoming me to heaven with her song:
Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there
Which through the world is never met elsewhere
Such a pretty song, I thought to myself. My sister used to sing it.
That angel sounds just like my sister did.
Maybe death isn’t so bad.
Ila’s singing must’ve woken up Marf. She rolled off me with a rumbling groan. As I coughed and sputtered for breath, Ila’s second verse filled my ears.
Home! Home!
Sweet, sweet home
There’s no place like home
There’s no place like home
She was standing at the pod door, eyes squeezed shut, blood still trickling down the side of her face from the gash in her head as she belted the song into the drone mic.
It was a good thing her eyes were shut. If they’d been open, she might have fainted at the sight of a quarter million Zhuri starting to sway as one over her head.
After she finished “Home, Sweet Home,” she broke into “What a Wonderful World.”
She followed that with “Tomorrow.”
She’d just launched into “Over the Rainbow” when the swarm parted in front of us. A group of Zhuri led Mom and Dad through the crowd to the edge of the fence. They had to wait for a minute while Marf—still half-wrecked from the fence’s neural disrupter—dragged herself back to the pod’s control panel and shut the fence off.
> Everybody hugged and cried, and the first thing Dad asked was why we were wearing garbage bags. We started to explain, but the swarm was getting restless over our heads, and we figured Ila should start singing again ASAP.
So my sister dried her tears, and after Mom bound up the gash on her head with fabric that Dad tore from the bottom of his shirt, Ila went back to belting out songs.
She didn’t stop until her voice gave out two hours later.
But the fence never went back up, because we didn’t need it anymore.
If there was an announcement on the news that the government had changed hands, we missed it. By the time we dug our earpieces out of the wreckage of Marf’s pod, they were already reporting that “everyone agreed” the humans and their music were welcome to stay on Planet Choom.
LAN: Welcome back to the Human Channel’s afternoon comedy block! I’m your host, Lan Mifune!
NAYA: And I’m Naya Hadid! You’re watching the Ed and Fred season four marathon, and that was episode six, “Fred Gets a Puppy!”
LAN: With us in the studio today, our usual panel of interspecies comedy fans: Marf, Ezger, and Iruu. So! What did everybody think of this one?
IRUU: It was very funny! Especially when the new puppy left his body garbage all over the house. But it was also sad and upsetting. I did not understand why Fred made the puppy his prisoner.
LAN: That’s not actually what happened—
MARF: Of course it is. Fred attached a collar to the puppy’s neck and dragged it places against its will. And at night he locked it in a crate. How was it not his prisoner?
NAYA: It wasn’t like that on Earth! We loved our pets. And they loved us!
MARF: You are fooling yourselves. They could not possibly have loved you. You were oppressing them.
IRUU: Perhaps they only pretended to love you in exchange for food? That would make more sense.
EZGER: There was not nearly enough food in this episode.
MARF: You say that about every episode.
EZGER: It is always true. Except for that episode about the eating holiday.
LAN: You mean, the Thanksgiving episode?
EZGER: Yes. Although I hated that one too. They should have eaten the bird before it was dead.
NAYA: I feel like we’ve had this argument before….
EZGER: Many times. And you are always wrong about it.
LAN: As much as I’d love to rehash the food argument, it’s time to read the news. Whole lot of stuff happening in the human community today. Right, Naya?
NAYA: There sure is! And it all starts on the suswut field. Last night was the season opener for Choom’s Regional League Three—and for the first time in planetary history, a team of humans competed! Head coach Dave Gunderson’s Fightin’ Ninety-Niners squared off against Team Seven Eight! And lost by a score of…oh, wow: thirty-three thousand six hundred and twelve…to zero.
LAN: Is that even possible?
IRUU: It is. I watched this game on television. It was very sad. Everyone agrees humans are not good at suswut.
EZGER: And yet suswut is so critically important to all our lives. It is definitely not a pointless and stupid game that serves no purpose.
IRUU: I agree it is not that! And I am pleasantly surprised you feel this way, Ezger.
MARF: He doesn’t. Do you remember last week’s panel discussion? When we explained what “sarcasm” means?
IRUU: Oh! I do remember that. Ezger, were you using sarcasm just now?
EZGER: Of course not. I would never use sarcasm. Especially not when talking about suswut. Watching groups of Zhuri fly through the air and throw things at each other is certainly not a complete waste of everyone’s time.
NAYA: Ooookay…back to the news!
LAN: Yes! Moving on to the world of education: open enrollment begins today for the Iseeyii Interspecies Academy’s adult extension courses in music, animation, and improv comedy. All skill levels and species are welcome, so whether you’re human, Zhuri, Krik, or Ororo, if you want to get involved in the cultural life of our planet and have tons of fun while you’re at it, come on down!
NAYA: This is so important, people. Especially the animation classes! We are desperate for new animation talent!
LAN: We really are. Can’t keep playing Birdleys reruns forever, folks! Gotta start making some new stuff! Give a little back to this planet that’s been so good to all of us! What other news have you got, Naya?
NAYA: Couple of very big stories in music today. First up, the joint Ororo-Human Task Force on Musical Technology just announced a major breakthrough: engineers working from data collected in human video archives believe they have successfully manufactured an oboe!
LAN: Oh, that is big. Marf, aren’t you on that task force?
MARF: I am. And I must say, reconstructing the oboe was an even bigger challenge than the trombone. But I should point out that this breakthrough has not been confirmed yet. We won’t know if the oboe was a success until someone actually learns how to play it.
LAN: Fingers crossed—and if any of you watching at home think you’ve got what it takes to make actual music come out of what we’re almost but not quite sure is a working oboe, please contact the Task Force on Musical Technology ASAP!
NAYA: Last but not least—the biggest music news in months! Do you want to handle this one, Lan? It’s pretty close to home.
LAN: Yes! The new Ila Mifune album is finally complete!
IRUU: Oh, that is wonderful!
EZGER: I agree! And I am not even being sarcastic.
LAN: It’ll be available for planetwide download on Human Music Frequency One starting tonight! And to mark the release, Ila’s going to play a free concert tomorrow evening at the Nug Memorial Concert Grounds outside the city.
IRUU: I cannot wait for this concert! Everyone agrees Ila Mifune is the biggest star on the planet!
MARF: Not if you’re an Ororo. We find human voices squeaky and irritating. We’ll be staying home and watching TV that night.
NAYA: If you do, keep it on the Human Channel—we’ve got you covered with a Birdleys season ten marathon starting tomorrow afternoon! But if you’re headed out to the concert, most of the planet’s going to show up, so get there early and get your sway on!
LAN: Everyone agrees it’s going to be awesome! We’ll see you there! And don’t forget—save the front rows for the Krik, because they’re too short to see over our heads.
EZGER: Thank you for mentioning that. It was a real issue at the last free concert.
LAN: It’s my pleasure, Ez! Hey, we’re all in this together.
GEOFF RODKEY is the author of the Tapper Twins comedy series, the Chronicles of Egg adventure trilogy, and The Story Pirates Present: Stuck in the Stone Age, a comic novel bundled with a how-to guide for kids who want to create stories of their own. He’s also the Emmy-nominated screenwriter of such films as Daddy Day Care and RV.
@GeoffRodkey
geoffrodkey.com
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