by Guerin Zand
Child’s Play
A Spaceman’s Story
Written By: Guerin Zand
Copyright 2017 by Guerin Zand
All rights reserved, without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanically, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitious.
Introduction
Chapter 1
The Invitation
Chapter 2
Mother Warned Me About Girls Like You
Chapter 3
Drinks and The Nature of the Universe Explained
Chapter 4
Upgrades, Dinner and More Drinks
Chapter 5
The Morning After
Chapter 6
Me and Sammy
Chapter 7
Some Alone Time with Milly
Chapter 8
A Little Alone Time with Julie
Chapter 9
Date Night on the Mother Ship
Chapter 10
Intergalactic 90210
Chapter 11
Real Live Aliens! Oh My!
Chapter 12
Time to Get Serious
Chapter 13
A Good Night
Chapter 14
The Next Day
Chapter 15
The Big Dinner (Drinks)
Chapter 16
The Big Dinner (Dinner)
Chapter 17
The Big Dinner (Q&A)
Chapter 18
The Big Dinner (Playtime & Nightcaps)
Chapter 19
Drunken Booty Call
Chapter 20
And the Other Shoe Drops
Chapter 21
Drowning My Problems
Chapter 22
The Mother of All Hangovers
Chapter 23
Family Dinner Time
Chapter 24
A Vacation Day
Chapter 25
Dinner With Friends
Chapter 26
One Pissed Off Lizard
Chapter 27
My First Assignment
Chapter 28
I Need a Drink
Chapter 29
The Twin Dilemma
Chapter 30
The Last Supper
Chapter 31
Breakfast at Julie’s
Chapter 32
Departure
Chapter 33
Home Sweet Home
Chapter 34
Goodbye
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Introduction
My name is Guerin Zand and this is my story. Now I know all of you are saying to yourselves, since you’re reading this now, everything must have turned out ok but as you’ll soon realize, reality is a little more complicated than we could possibly imagine. For that reason, I can’t really say how it all ended up for sure, but only what I perceive to have happened. This is the “true” story of what happened to me.
I always remember a great Seinfeld episode where Jerry is amazed with George’s ability to lie and asks George how is it he is such a good liar. George explains to Jerry that if you repeat a lie often enough you’ll believe it, and if you believe it, it’s true.
Now we can clearly see, what I will call Costanza’s Law, demonstrated in our everyday politics. I am convinced that somewhere there is actually a secret school which teaches this to politicians. Costanza’s Law is much like Murphy’s Law in that you can see examples of it everywhere and it can happen at any time.
I will try to keep the technical details to a minimum since the truth is none of us has a clue about any of this. Most of what has been written is based on current ideas and theories that will eventually be disproven by future theories that are no truer than the ones they disprove, please refer to the earlier discussion of Costanza’s Law.
Current theoretical physicists seem to all bow at the altar of Einstein and cannot imagine any possibilities that would question the Einsteinian view of the cosmos. This simply puts a damper on imagination and innovation. I see it as no different than what occurred during the Dark Ages. That is probably why we landed a man on the moon in 1969 and in 2017 we are trying to figure out how we can do it again.
Finally, I want to insure the reader that this story will not contain any of the following.
1) A beautiful woman screaming hysterically at the bug-eyed monster.
2) The afore mentioned beautiful woman running from the bug-eyed monster, tripping, and spraining an ankle resulting in a confrontation between the bug-eyed monster and the stories protagonist.
3) Snotty little bastard children who never do as they’re told which eventually results in more shit raining down on the stories protagonist.
4) There will be no objectification of dogs. Women, men, children and aliens yes, but never dogs.
5) The needless and senseless violence that is the back bone of most popular stories. (Ok, at one point I do bitch slap somebody. That doesn’t count, right?)
6) Gratuitous sex. (Not really sure what this is so I can’t be 100% sure it isn’t included.)
Now although some people may see some religious under tones in this book I am not trying to make any profound religious statement here. I don’t believe in a lot of what man has written or said about God, refer to Costanza’s Law. Maybe my next book I’ll take on the God subject but if you’re going to write about God I think you should at least dedicate the entire book to the subject. When was the last time God actually had a good book written about him?
I am not sure about the whole apocalypse thing but just this past year the Cubs won the World Series and Donald Trump was elected president. If those aren’t two of the signs of the coming apocalypse than what is?
Chapter 1
The Invitation
May 25th 2017 was one of those beautiful spring days here on the Space Coast of Florida. For those of you not familiar with this area of Florida, spring actually starts around mid-February. This morning, at a little after 7 AM, the sky was blue and sunny with the temperature around 75° Fahrenheit, for metric fans use Google to look up the conversion to Celsius and don’t bother me about this again.
Having recently been laid off from yet another job, I had a lot of time on my hands. I worked as a SW, software engineer, and had been doing that for close to 30 years. At that point in my life I had been fairly successful at taking large sums of money from various payroll departments doing this mind-numbing work. The people I had worked for all seemed to be impressed with my abilities and all had great things to say about me so I just went along with it. Personally, I was never really convinced that I had a clue about what I did and I could never actually explain it to any of my non-work friends.
Now at my age, I will only say that I have been a SW engineer for 30+ years after graduating college so do some simple addition and you can probably guess the age, the thought of looking for another job wasn’t really all that exciting. I had enough savings to last a few years and if I was lucky I would be dead before the money ran out. I know that’s not much of a long-range plan but at the time that seemed good enough. My doctor assured me that I would probably out live the money so I thought I would start smoking and drinking again just to prove her wrong. I mean once you set a goal you should be willing to put forth the effort to achieve that goal.
In my younger days, I was quite the drink
er. Some might even say an alcoholic, but that’s not true. To be an alcoholic you have to commit to it and I have commitment issues. I could never drink during the daytime. It just made no sense to me so I didn’t measure up to the standards of the alcoholics I knew. Just one more group that didn’t want me as a member I guess.
Kat is my dog and every morning we like to go for a walk, well actually Kat insists on it and I just go along with it. Yes, my dog’s name is Kat. I always thought it would be funny to have a dog named Kat but I didn’t want to cause the poor animal any identity issues so she spells her name with a K. She is very sensitive on this issue so whatever you do don’t call her CAT! For her first Christmas, I bought her a sister Mouse. No good reason for that name other than it goes good with Kat and I just don’t like the other stupid dog names everyone else comes up with. Kat really enjoyed playing with other dogs and I thought if I got her a sister it would keep her busy and happy while I worked from home. Turns out this caused Kat to dislike most dogs she met after that. It appeared to me that was her way of telling the other dogs “nice to meet you but you are not coming home with us”. Turns out Kat probably would have been happier had I bought a sidecar for the motorcycle and not a little sister but she seemed to tolerate Mouse. Now Mouse is the exact opposite of her big sister. She does not like going for walks or any physical activity other than eating. Kat and Mouse are both border collies and related in that they have the same father and their mothers are sisters. I refer to this relationship as sis-cousins and it is fairly common among families living in this part of Florida.
So, on this morning I decided to take Kat for a walk in the woods / swamp behind my home. There are several hundred acres back there and Kat likes to chase the rabbits and squirrels and I figured I could find a nice place for my “herb” garden. Florida had just approved the medical marijuana amendment and I thought in my semi-retirement I could supplement my income by growing some seriously mind altering ganja. The extra income, off the books of course, could help support my eating habit.
It wasn’t unusual to see all sorts of strange things back in these woods. There are bobcats, bears, rattle snakes, black snakes, pretty much a smorgasbord of snakes, and the state reptiles we call gators. While walking in these woods I would usually carry a gun for protection. I usually load the magazine with a mixture of shot rounds for snakes and rodents and hollow points for the larger predators. If I got bored I could always just let loose and get some target practice in for fun. Kat, of course, is totally afraid of loud noises like thunder and gun shots so I typically wouldn’t do any shooting if she was with me.
The flash I saw, or didn’t see, out of the corner of my eye did not really get my attention at the time but I did start to notice some other thing that didn’t seem quite right this day. First a herd of squirrels, hold on I just checked with Google and found out a group of squirrels is referred to as a dray or scurry (I am going with herd!), came running down the path in front of us. I am talking about dozens, if not hundreds of squirrels, and they were coming straight for us. Ok I hear y’all saying what a wimp. It’s just a herd of squirrels, right? Well in case you hadn’t heard, there had been several recent attacks on humans by some brazen squirrels in the area and they caused serious injuries to their victims. No shit!
Kat was usually there to protect me in these cases but I looked down at her and she gave me one of those twisted dog head sort of looks. I interpreted this as Kat saying, “You’re supposed to be the intelligent one here.” Kat can be a real smart ass at times. I started to reach for my gun realizing that even with 15 rounds I was seriously out matched here. And what sort of squirrels come charging at a man with a dog anyways?
The squirrels stopped about 10 feet in front of us and just looked at me with the funniest squirrel looks I had ever seen. I could have sworn the little squirrel noises they made were actually laughter. Then the herd raised up on to their hind legs and ran off in all directions. Really? A herd of squirrels just decided to get together and fuck with me? Ok, I admit I had smoked a little bud before the walk but the weed wasn’t that good. Kat in the meantime appeared to be snickering a bit as well. Really after all I have done for that dog and this is how she repays me. Ok, the sister thing might not have gone over that well but at least I was trying.
The squirrel herd was just the start of things. Looking around I could see a hawk perched on the head of a gator. Far off in the distance a bobcat and fawn were playing tag. Snakes were gathering together and forming letters with their bodies to make whole words. Unfortunately, the words were unknown to me and did not appear to have any relationship to the English language.
Now I was starting to believe the bud I smoked earlier might have been laced with something and Kat was nodding her head in agreement. I have often commented to friends and family that this world wasn’t strange enough for me but it looked like that was all about to change.
That’s when I saw her. Walking out from the early morning mist that hovered over the swamp. Sort of angelic, or ghostly, as she neared and her physical body seemed to coalesce from the background. The details of her form became clearer as she approached. My vision isn’t perfect so that might explain what I was seeing but then again, I didn’t seem to have any problem seeing the squirrel herd earlier. She appeared to be a young woman maybe late 20s, early 30s. Long blonde hair down to her mid-back tied in a ponytail. She was very attractive with, as they say, curves in all the right places and the greenest of green eyes. She looked slightly familiar but I couldn’t remember ever meeting her before. She was dressed in denim overalls and a white t-shirt, like one of those hot chicks from the old Hee Haw show, but hotter, a lot hotter.
At this point I was starting to have what I can only describe as a small reality crisis. Sure, the herd of squirrels and other animal strangeness was weird but I could accept all of that. But some hot blonde appearing from the swamp dressed like a Hee Haw babe was definitely a crossing of the Rubicon moment when we’re talking about the fabric of my reality. What was she doing out here? Did she just get done wrestling some gators, or fishing the canal and her boat sank? Sure, all possible I guessed, but the fact she was as dry as a bone sort of ruled that all out. If it was just some daydream fantasy of mine she would be a brunette and soaking wet in a t-shirt and daisy dukes, but that’s just me. No, I thought, she’s probably just some hot chick who likes guys walking their dogs in the swamp and she’s going to want to have sex with me. I know what you are going to say but this is one of those instances of Costanza’s Law and I am entitled to my own version of reality. End of discussion.
There she was now standing right in front of me. Still she hadn’t said anything, that I heard anyway. I can’t say how long I stood there ogling her when my eyes finally made their way up to her eyes and I saw this expression on her face that confused me. Her eyes squinted a bit and her lips were pursed slightly. I had seen this look from women before, I was sure of that, but I couldn’t quite remember what it meant. I was pretty sure this was not a “I want to have sex with you” look but I was hoping I was wrong. Kat wasn’t saying much at this point.
“Hello, hello??” she said while waving her hand in front of my eyes. It was a very attractive voice not one of these finger nails on the chalk board type. You know the type I am talking about. The type that can change a hotty into a shrew with a single utterance.
“Um sure.., uh I mean hello” I responded. I know pretty smooth huh?
“My name is Milly and I need you to come with me Guerin.” You thought my opening line was lame, didn’t you? Well what do you think now?
“You want me to come with you where?” I said.
“To my ship of course.” Yes of course what was I thinking.
“Your ship?” I asked.
“We don’t have time for redundant questions. Please we must go.”
Well I have been seeing some strange things but there is no ship in the swamp. I was starting to get an uneasy feeling about all of this. This was turning into a D
WR, DANGER WILL ROBINSON, type of situation.
In my bar hopping days a bartender friend of mine would always whisper “Danger Will Robinson” when an attractive woman, and known looney tunes psycho bitch, would sit next to me and start up a conversation. This was her way of warning me, since alcohol tends to alter a man’s judgement in these situations, that what I was thinking was not a good idea. Depending on the time of night and amount of alcohol consumed I would typically ignore this warning. This usually was a mistake!
Not knowing exactly what to do I decided stalling would be the best plan. “I can’t just run off on some pleasure cruise right now.” I explained to her. “I have to get Kat back home and feed the dogs. They are pretty particular about getting fed. Besides I am not packed or dressed properly for a trip just now. I need to go home and take care of a few things first.”
It was true, I wasn’t properly dressed for a cruise. I was in my favorite “Dude” theme outfit. A bathrobe, t-shirt, boxers, flip-flops and a 45 in a waist holster. That was fine for walking the dog in the woods but I thought it might not be the best outfit for travel.
She appeared a little frustrated at this answer but responded “Well then let’s go back to your place and you can do whatever you need but let’s be quick about it.” Kind of bossy I thought to myself.
“Ok” I said and we started walking back toward my home. Anyone notice I got her to say, “Let’s go back to your place”, in under 5 minutes? I did! The “and do whatever you need” part I also found quite encouraging. This of course is quite typical in many of my past DWR encounters.
