Unidentified Funny Objects 3

by Alex Shvartsman (Ed. )

The little guy didn’t seem to be bothered by my sarcasm, which just invited more.

  “No kidding? The old technology routine? Well… okay, I’ll take it. So does that come on a disk or some sort of thumb drive? Wait, you guys aren’t all Linux, are you? I like that it’s open source software but I am just not in love with the whole penguin for a logo thing. I had a bad experience at the zoo once. Those little guys will try to eat anything the size of a sardine.”

  “As the ambassador for your planet, you will first have to convince me why the human race is worthy to receive our gift.”

  “What?”

  “As the ambassador for your planet, you will—”

  “I heard what you said, but how did I become the ambassador?”

  “Random pick.”

  “Out of six billion people? And yet, I can’t get more than two right on Powerball. That figures. Say, I hope you don’t mind, the ambassador has had way too much to drink, so I am just going to go ahead and urinate by this shrub over here. “

  Little Fonz only shrugged. For some reason his indifference made me belligerent. Or, I should say, more belligerent. I stepped up to a rant while watering, or maybe killing, an arbor-vitae.

  “You are really too much; you know that, Fonzie? ‘Worthy of your gift.’ What makes you think your technology is any better than what we’ve got? You’re from the fifties.”

  “I traveled here. When was the last time you left your planet?”

  “You mean me personally?”

  “The question was meant to be rhetorical.”

  He shuffled across my burnt-out grass and sat in the lawn chair I had just been using before nature called. Clearly his sense of etiquette wasn’t tuned for the subtleties of how long you should wait before taking over someone’s seat. Once his skinny ass hit the chair, I realized it would be even harder to take him seriously. Past the pinch-rolled jean cuffs were lanky lime-green chicken feet. He was short enough that when he was sitting his feet didn’t even touch the ground.

  I caught an odor from him that reminded me I should check the cat’s litter box.

  “Whew, can I offer you something to freshen up with? I’d recommend Lysol.”

  “You have three attempts to convince me.”

  “Of what? Our worthiness?”

  “Aaaaaaaayyyyy,” he said again, with fingers in the air.

  “Was that a ‘yes’? Because it seemed like it meant ‘Hello’ earlier.”

  I zipped up and we looked at each other silently. I noticed that he had a third set of eyelids, and he noticed that I had a bag of pretzels.

  “What are the rules on this thing?” I asked.

  “No rules,” he said, between quick crunching bites of pretzel.

  “So I just have to come up with a good enough reason and the gates to your E.T. knowledge will open up for all mankind?”

  “Yes.”

  “Um, okay. So is it something along the lines of ‘We are a noble and honorable species, and we would do great things with your technology to benefit all of mankind’?”

  “No. You have two attempts left.”

  “Wait, that was a dry run. I was talking out loud.”

  “Too late.”

  “Jeez. Was I at least even close?”

  “No.”

  He started coughing dryly as though something was stuck in his throat. I offered the only liquid I had readily available, his tiny mouth barely fitting over the top of the vodka bottle. He took three quick gulps before throwing up a fluorescent yellow slime all over my patio. Along with the small chunks of pretzel, there were little white insects crawling around in the mess.

  “Whoa. I take it you’re not a martini man.”

  Green Fonzie dropped to the ground and started picking the white bugs from the goo. He gathered a handful, and swallowed them. Except for the white bugs, I probably wasn’t too far off from having my night end the same way.

  Little Fonz jumped back up in the chair and returned to the pretzels.

  “Just what kind of technology are we talking about?” I asked. “Because if it’s those little white stomach bugs, I’m not so sure we’re interested.”

  He sat up in the chair, let the bag of pretzels drop, and pulled what looked like a switchblade knife from his leather jacket. He pressed a button that should have flipped it open to a blade, or in Fonzie’s case, a comb, but instead the device started projecting an intense white beam of light. He fiddled with a tiny knob on the side of it until he had tuned the beam to a dark green. With a wave of his Kermit-the-Frog arm, tiny Fonz ran the beam along the back of my yard, planting a row of thirty-foot tall pine trees that continued through my fence, then into, and up through, the neighbor’s garage.

  Walt was going to be pissed about that.

  Little green Fonzie changed the beam to red, and with another wave, cut down the first few trees. They crashed onto the other fence line, destroying part of Susan Anderson’s gazebo and all of her quarter scale wooden windmill.

  Susan was really going to be pissed. It was, however, an impressive display.

  “Ok, so you’ve got something there,” I said.

  Susan came running out of her house. Even though it was after nine, she was, as usual, still in a business suit. She had always played that off on “the busy life of a Real Estate Agent,” but I think it just made her feel important. It certainly made her act that way.

  “Oh, my! Oh, my! Is anyone hurt? Oh, my!”

  It was all so ladylike and professional until she got to the flattened windmill. There was a flash of horror on her face that was quickly replaced with an angry sour look as she peered across the felled trees, seeing that they originated in my yard, and yet somehow completely missing the fact that the trees weren’t there the day before.

  “What in the hell happened to my wind—”

  Susan fell to the ground. I turned to see my pretzel-loving friend pointing the device in her direction.

  “You didn’t?”

  “She’s only sleeping.”

  I looked back at Susan. There was a subtle movement of her chest and the sound of a quiet snore. Her leg was bent at an uncomfortable angle, but I could live with that. After what that rumor mill had put me through, oh how I could live with that.

  I immediately thought of two other people that I wouldn’t mind being able to put to sleep at will or drop trees on. I looked back at the Fonz.

  “You’re right. I could definitely use that thing.”

  “Why are you worthy?”

  He said “you” as though maybe my situation had something to do with it. Maybe it wasn’t random at all, but maybe they had been watching me, or even setting me up. I had seen Star Trek; I knew the classic answer to the question was that the human race has compassion and that we have the ability to love. So maybe Fonz wanted to see if an embittered guy like me could still believe in such a thing.

  I thought back on my relationship with Cheryl for a moment and realized that yes, I still did believe in love. Maybe it wasn’t the case anymore, but at one time Cheryl and I were very much in love; I was quite certain of that.

  If I was going to be honest about it, the infidelity may not have been entirely her fault either.

  As innocent as I wanted to be in the whole her and Ryan thing, the truth was Cheryl and I had been drifting apart for some time. I knew it, I felt it, and yet I did nothing about it. I just didn’t think we had quite drifted to the shores of infidelity, not yet anyway. At least I hadn’t drifted that far. Maybe the fact that she was the first to find someone else was making me the most upset. Or that it had to be that S.O.B. that used to be my best friend.

  Even though I wasn’t “in love,” anymore, down deep inside I could honestly say I still believed in love. It seemed like the right answer. I kept thinking about it until I had convinced myself that it had to be the right answer.

  “I think we are worthy because we can love.”

  “No. One attempt left.”

  “What? How can love not be it?”
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  “Love is a participant emotion in the biological imperative for your sexual reproduction.”

  “No—not always. In fact, thinking back to college, probably not even most of the time. And what about a mother’s love for her children?”

  “Parental love is a participant emotion necessary for the protection of offspring until maturity.”

  “You are sounding less and less like Fonzie. He would never say any of that.”

  “One attempt left.”

  The little guy was pissing me off. It didn’t help that I was incredibly bad at the challenge, and I’d probably lost some respect for him when I realized he couldn’t hold his liquor.

  I tried to look at the question from another perspective. What could possibly qualify us as “worthy”? We didn’t exactly have the best track record. We were constantly killing each other off with some sort of war. And we had no problem messing with our environment until we were now facing an impending global climate change.

  Even our leaders were embarrassing: Hitler and his Nazis, Nixon with the Watergate scandal, and then there was that whole Bill Clinton—Monica Lewinski thing.

  It seemed that the definition of being human was to make mistakes. Fallibility was the cornerstone of our existence. It occurred to me that maybe the right answer was that we weren’t worthy of such technology. Even though I wasn’t quite sure what their full technological menu had to offer, the appetizer seemed pretty daunting. Hell, Susan was still sleeping, and that ability alone was probably more than most people could handle.

  “You know what, Fonz? I don’t think we deserve it. That’s my final answer; all in. The human race is not worthy of your technology. You heard it right. Not worthy.”

  “You are correct.”

  “I got it?”

  “No, the answer is wrong. You are correct that you are not worthy.”

  “Oh well, no biggie I guess, I just struck out for the entire human race. Could you just kick me in the nuts before you go? That would kind of finish my week off nicely.”

  The Fonz stared at me as though he were seriously considering my last statement. I found myself wondering how bad a chicken claw kick to the crotch could really be.

  “What was the right answer by the way?” I asked.

  “Humor.”

  “Humor? Why is that it?”

  “There is no biological reason for laughter. There is no other species on this planet or in the universe that possesses that ability.”

  “And how would that make us worthy?”

  “It alone does not, but knowledge of its power does. Humor has the ability to cure your planet of its ailments.”

  “You are going to have to explain that one to me.”

  “I’ll let you think about it.”

  With that final enigma, Fonzie was gone. No ship, no flash of light, nor vortex of a wormhole, just gone.

  ###

  Past Walt’s garage I could see the lights of his pickup as it came up the driveway. He turned off the truck and got out, surveying the pines sticking through the roof of his garage. He saw Susan sleeping in the yard, listened to a few heavy snores and then turned his to focus to me.

  Somewhere in the universe, my little Fonzie was taking off his jacket and jeans, ungreasing his hair, and telling whoever sent him that Earth was not ready to receive their technology. I felt pity for the lot of them, because they didn’t possess the sense of humor needed to appreciate the look on Walt’s face.

  “What in the hell happened here?”

  “An alien did it,” I said, taking a pull from the vodka bottle.

  Walt rolled his eyes, turned, and went into the house.

  I guess that wasn’t the right answer either.

  ***

  James A. Miller is an Electrical Engineer who lives in a small town west of Madison, Wisconsin. Much of his day is spent programming machines to do the things people want them to do. Much of his night is spent with his family. In the times in between, he reads or writes, and thinks about possibility. And then there is that dang rental property where the tenants are always complaining. That seemed like a great idea before the whole Real Estate meltdown. Stupid. He should have just got a part time job at McDonald’s. He blogs at breakingintothecraft.wordpress.com. This is his first published story.

  The Gefilte Fish Girl

  Mike Resnick

  So I walk up to her and say, “Ma, we gotta talk.”

  And she never looks up from the TV, and she says, “Not during Homemakers’ Jamboree, Marvin.”

  And I say, “Ma, I’m Milton. Marvin is your goniff brother who is serving six to ten for passing bogus bills.” (Which he is. He’s a great artist, even the judge admitted that, but he just doesn’t do his homework, and printing a bunch of twenties with Andrew Johnson’s picture on them is probably not the brightest move he ever made.)

  Anyway, she says “Marvin, Milton, what’s the difference, and did you know that Liz Taylor is getting married again? What is it for her now—the thirty-fourth time?”

  And I say, “You know, Ma, it’s funny you should bring that up.”

  And she says, “Funny? Okay, Mister Big Shot, tell me what’s so funny. Are you the one she’s marrying? Go ahead, make my day.”

  And I say, “Lots of people get married, Ma. Some of them even get married to women who aren’t Liz Taylor, hard as that may be for you to believe.”

  And she says, “Lots of mature people, Melvin.”

  And I say, “Melvin is my cousin who ran off with the gay lion tamer from the circus. I’m Milton, and speaking of mature, I’m thirty-four years old.”

  And she says, “You’d think someone who’s thirty-four years old would know to change his socks without being told.” Suddenly she curses and says, “See? You made me miss today’s health tip. Here I sit, waiting to go to the hospital for a nerve transplant from all the tsouris you cause me, and I can’t even watch my television in peace.”

  So I say, “You’re in great shape, Ma. Every artery’s as hard as a rock.”

  “Feh!” she says. “God has reserved a special place in hell for ungrateful sons.”

  “I know,” I say. “It’s probably right next to where He puts all the henpecked husbands.”

  “Don’t you go making fun of my dear departed Erwin,” she says.

  “I wasn’t,” I say. “And besides, all we know is that he departed in one hell of a hurry. We don’t know for sure that he’s dead.”

  “If he isn’t, he should be, that momser!” she says.

  Well, I can see the thought that he may be alive and God forbid enjoying himself is about to drive her wild, so I try to mollify her.

  “Okay, okay,” I say, hoping the Lord is otherwise occupied and does not hear what I am about to say. “May God Himself strike me dead if he’s not your late husband.”

  “Well, he was late for most things,” she agrees, leaning back in her chair. “Except in the bedroom. There he was always early.”

  I try to change the subject again.

  “We were talking about marriage,” I say.

  “Someday, when you’re old enough,” she says, “you’ll get married and ruin some poor Jewish girl’s happiness, just the way your dear departed father ruined mine, and the only good thing that will come of it will be a grandson who, knock wood, won’t take after his father and his grandfather but will show me a little respect and compassion.”

  I begin to see that this is going to be even more difficult than I thought, and I try to come up with a subtle way to break the news to her. So I think, and I think, and I think some more, and finally I say, as subtly as I can, “Ma, I’m engaged.”

  And she looks away from the television set and takes her feet off the hassock and plants them on the floor, and stares at me for maybe thirty seconds, and finally she says, “Engaged to do what?”

  “To get married,” I say.

  She digs into her sewing kit, which is on the floor next to her, and pulls out a scissors.

  “Here,�
�� she says, handing it to me. “Why waste all afternoon rushing me to the hospital’s cardiac unit? Just stab me now and be done with it.”

  “Jugular or varicose?” I ask.

  “Schmendrick!” she says. “How can the fruit of my looms talk to me like this?”

  “I’m the fruit of your loins, Ma,” I tell her. “Fruit of the Loom is what I’m wearing beneath my pants.”

  “All right,” she says. “Just stand there and watch me breathe my last.”

  “Your last what?” I ask.

  She glares at me and finally says, “Before I die, at least tell me the name of this female person you’re engaged to do whatever with.”

  “Melora of the Purple Mist,” I say.

  “Melora of the Purple Mist?” she repeats. “How can I fit all that on a wedding invitation?”

  “Just use Melora,” I say.

  “And what bowling alley or topless club didi you meet Miss Whats-her-name of the Purple Mist at?” she asks.

  “I met her at work, kind of,” I answer.

  “I knew it!” she says, poking a pudgy forefinger into the air. “I knew I should never let you take that job with the sewage company!”

  “It’s a salvage company,” I say.

  “Sewage, salvage, what’s the difference?” she demands. “It’s that Gypsy who walks around half-naked with her deathless beauty sagging down to her pupik, right? I told you she had her sights set on you!”

  “She’s not a Gypsy, and it’s not her. She’s just another diver.”

  “So you’re marrying some other girl who lies around on deck with her tuchus soaking up the sun,” she says. “I should feel better about that?”

  “She doesn’t lie around on deck,” I say uneasily.

  “On deck, below deck, big difference,” she snaps.

  “Bigger than you think,” I say. “The truth of it is, she spends most of her time about 50 feet below deck.”

  “So she’s a diver,” she says.

  “Not exactly,” I answer.

  “What, then?”

  “Try not to get real excited, Ma,” I say.

  “I’m not excited, I have convulsions all the time,” she says. “Just tell me.”