Earth vs. Everybody (7 page)

After I had been
at my station for a week or so, the city put a small wall in front of me.
Fortunately, pedestrians could still smell me back there, so they weren’t
surprised when they heard the wall asking them for money.

While I struggled
to get my new career going, Buzzy’s big trial finally got started down at the
courthouse. Everyone in town tried to crowd into the courtroom to witness this
thrilling spectacle. Even I sat in on as much of it as my begging business
would allow. The people who were waiting to give me money didn’t like it—they
were late for work already—but I couldn’t miss Buzzy’s trial.

On that first
exciting day, all sorts of motions were made and testimony was given, but it
didn’t turn out to be as exciting as we had expected. Most of it was just plain
mystifying. To our surprise, we discovered that we didn’t know nearly as much
about Intergalactic Law as we thought we did. What the hell was “Xappyx vs.
Zernx”? And how did it serve as a precedent in this case? And what in the hell
was a “precedent”? We couldn’t follow that part of the trial—the legal part—at
all. We thought it was going to be like the trials we saw on TV, with people
pointing shaking fingers at Buzzy and saying: “There he is! There’s your space
monster!” And Buzzy struggling to get at the witness and threatening to wreak
his awful revenge on everybody. And cops whacking him to get him to settle down
and be nice. And the judge banging his gavel to add to the noise. But it wasn’t
anything like that at all. It was just a bunch of legal junk. Our local newsmen
tried to get a handle on what was going on for their viewers by analyzing the
facial expressions of the prosecutor and the defense attorney and the other
newsmen. And that seemed to work pretty well. Now we knew when something smiley
was happening. Or something frowny. At least we were getting some idea of what
was going on. We weren’t completely in the dark like we were before.

The reporters who
had flown in from space for the trial knew what was going on, of course—they
were familiar with Xappyx vs. Zernx—but they didn’t seem to be too interested
in the opening days of the trial. They were more interested in reporting back
to their home planets all the sights and sounds and smells around Central City,
busily taking pictures of the trees and lakes and parks and so on.

The Mayor was
excited by this—this is what the city fathers had hoped would happen—and tried
to get the reporters to take pictures of the city’s Bustling Business District,
its Various City Improvements, and our World Famous Vacant Lots, with him
standing in front of them wearing his “Mayor” sash. But the reporters just
wanted to take pictures of the sky and the greenery and the water. And they
didn’t want the Mayor in the pictures at all. Not even on the edge. He thought
they were the worst tourists he had ever seen.

The courtroom was
packed for the first couple of days, but since nobody really understood the
legal issues involved, and there was just that one fist-fight, when the jury
accidentally picked two foremen, soon everybody was back outside trying to
slicker our alien visitors out of as much money as possible. Everyone was
renting out their yards for space ship parking at exorbitant prices, and
offering the aliens everything from “Space Insurance” to “Space Bums” (that was
me) at triple the ordinary prices. It wasn’t long before a number of visitors
to our fair city had to send back to space for more money.

Then,
on the memorable afternoon of July 4
^th
2009, Independence Day, just when Buzzy’s trial was about to reach its stunning
prosecutorial misconduct phase, and just when I was finally about to start
turning a pre-tax profit with my bum business, Central City was attacked from
space. The prosecutors had been promising real “fireworks” for the 4
^th
of July, but they got more “fireworks”
than they had “bargained for”.

Since it was the
4
^th
of July, I was asking
passersby for firecrackers when the alien warships entered the atmosphere. I
looked up, irritated at the interruption. A laser beam took off my hat. Another
one hit the bum next to me, who promptly sprang to pieces. Buildings around me
began exploding and holes started being punched in the sidewalk by bright green
power rays. The sky was full of alien craft of all shapes and sizes, from every
planet you could name—and more. I had no idea what it was all about. Nobody
tells bums anything. When I’m running things, that will change. We’ll keep the
bums informed. In fact, I think we’ll tell them first.

The public wasn’t
alarmed by all the explosions at first. They thought it was the greatest
fireworks display ever, and stuck to this opinion even when it was pointed out
to them what the “fireworks” were, and that their homes and places of worship
were gone. “Whatever it is, it looks great,” one of them said, stubbornly, with
what was left of his head.

Alien ships began
landing all over town. Troops poured out of them and began systematically
taking over all of the city’s most important buildings. Many of our citizens
hurried over to screw them out of their money, but were rudely slapped aside.

Our local
military men were taken aback by this sudden onslaught. They hadn’t had
anything to do since 1945, and had gotten complacent. They weren’t as ready for
a fight as they were in, say, 1946. Central City Air Force Base managed to
scramble a few fighters, but most of our planes were destroyed before they
could get off the ground. Our ground forces were mostly destroyed on the ground
too—though some of them managed to get part way under the ground before they
were destroyed.

After the first
few hours, it was obvious that we were no match for these invaders from space.
They were superior to us in every way. And didn’t they know it! They brushed us
aside like we weren’t important at all, usually adding some derogatory comment
like: “Stand aside, runt!” or “One side, shorty!” or sometimes even “Go home,
boy! Go home!” which was possibly the biggest insult of them all. The real
fighting that was going on was between the aliens themselves over who was going
to be taking over the Earth and who was going to be taking their sorry green
asses back up into space where they belonged, while our men mostly just stood
helplessly off to one side, like the runts they were.

Similar battles
were raging all over the globe. All of Earth’s major cities were being taken
over just as easily as ours was. And nobody seemed to be able to do anything
about it.

Occasionally,
somebody who thought he was wise and important, and could handle this all by
himself, would go out alone to talk to the aliens, carrying a copy of the Holy
Bible or A Folk Guitar. But none of them ever came back. When we looked out to
see what was taking them so long, what the big holdup was, we saw that there
was nothing left out there but their sneakers, with little wisps of smoke
coming out of the top. So being wise doesn’t work. We know that now.

Our scientists
were very excited about all this, of course. They love stuff like this. Now
they had proof there was life on other worlds. It was right here, wiping out
the life on our world! It was breaking in to the scientist’s laboratories and
beating the daylights out of them, knocking over their experiments, punching
them in the belly, and twisting their scrawny necks for them. You can’t have
better proof of life on other planets than that.

Through all this,
Buzzy’s trial continued on determinedly. Central City wasn’t going to let
anything stop this great trial we had going. This was the goddamn trial of the
century, God damn it. But most of the spectators and reporters had already lost
interest in the proceedings, and were outside watching the interplanetary war
instead.

To revive
interest, the prosecution tried charging Buzzy with additional crimes,
including weird sexual felonies of a highly titillating nature. Buzzy’s lawyers
didn’t object too strenuously to this. They wanted to see where this was going.
They wanted to get a good look at whatever sex evidence the prosecution had
before they started objecting.

Since all the
aliens were fighting among themselves and seemed to have completely forgotten
about us, our military men decided the time was right for a counterattack.
After all, this was the kind of military situation—where your enemies are all
looking the other way—that generals dream of when they’re kids.

Our counterattack
had a chance. On paper, anyway. We had the element of surprise on our side.
Everybody thought we were beaten already. In fact, they’d forgotten we were
even around. But we were. And they were under the impression we had
surrendered. But we hadn’t actually signed the surrender document yet. Oh no,
not yet. We also had a secret weapon they didn’t know about. It was a
Flame-Throwing Atomic-Powered Jumping Poison Rocket Cannon. It was six or seven
weapons in one, and was guaranteed by the company that had sold it to us and
then moved on to the next town to be utterly devastating. Our boys chuckled as
they loaded it. This was going to be good. Or we would get our money back.

Unfortunately,
this superweapon was made of recycled materials, like just about everything is
these days, with the recycled materials guaranteed by the faulty printing on
the package to be every bit as strong as the real thing. That guarantee was the
first thing to fly apart when the cannon blew up. The explosion also leveled
what remained of our army. And knocked our navy over. It didn’t surprise me.
I’ve warned people about recycling. Our products are bad enough when they’re
made out of new materials. They’ve got to be even worse when we make them out
of garbage. Think people, think!

After our
glorious counterattack had failed so miserably, Central City realized it was
all over and surrendered, becoming the first Earth city to do so. I guess we
shouldn’t have been proud of that, but we kind of were. Hey, only one city
could be first. And it was us.

The aliens began
rounding up the city’s civilian population. I was one of the first, probably
because I kept waving my arms and yelling: “Me! Me! Pick me!” I’m pretty easy
to round up when I’m hungry. I figured wherever they were taking us there had
to be food there. I mean, they’ve got to feed us, right? Damn right, they do.

I was penned up
along with a few thousand others from my area in a kind of large cattle
enclosure. It wasn’t bad. It certainly was better than the life I’d been living
recently.

“Hey look,
everybody!” I said. “We’ve got a slop bucket!”

I was just
getting myself settled in—I found a great spot between the slop bucket and the
branding irons—when I realized I had forgotten something. Something important.

I headed for the
main gate and tried to push my way out through the crowd of people who were
being herded in. The guards roughly shoved me back.

“I want to go
out,” I explained.

They told me I
couldn’t go out. They had just gone to a lot of trouble to get me in. They said
I had to go sit back down where I was before. I argued for awhile, but it
didn’t do me any good. I went back to my spot and complained about the guards
to my neighbor. After he’d heard the whole story he agreed with me.

As soon as it got
dark I made another attempt to get out. But this time I didn’t tell the guards
about it. I wasn’t letting them in on this one. I couldn’t trust them anymore.
Dressed in black, and with my face smudged so if they caught me they wouldn’t
know it was me, I stealthily made my way around to the back of the enclosure,
where I knew there weren’t as many guards posted because of all the poison ivy
and snakes and weirdos. I waited until the searchlights had passed by me, then
crashed through the fence and made my escape. Like I mentioned before, us big
guys get to make our own doors.

Keeping to the
back alleys as much as I could, and only engaging in long philosophical
conversations with alien invaders when it was absolutely necessary, I made my
way back to my old begging spot near the courthouse, looked around on the
ground, found my toothbrush, and stuck it in my back pocket.

“Where to now?”
asked one of the several hundred prisoners who had followed me.

“Back to the
pen,” I said. “They’ll be slopping us soon.”

The prisoners
were dissatisfied with this plan, which they felt wasn’t bold enough. They had
a brief discussion about whether to go back to the pen with me or elect a new
leader and follow him someplace better. Just as the second ballot was being
counted a huge blast knocked us over. We all looked up. What the hell?

More invading
alien craft, with insignia I had never seen before, were streaking into the
atmosphere, blasting the hell out of everything and everybody, Earthmen and
aliens alike.

I saw my house
get vaporized. Then my office building was incinerated. Great, I thought. Just
perfect. Oh well, at least I didn’t have anything else left to lose. The next
explosion took out my toothbrush.

One of the bombs
hit the courthouse just as Buzzy’s trial was ending and he was being sentenced
to life imprisonment in a big flashlight. The explosion knocked over everyone
in the courtroom, blew off Buzzy’s battery case, and opened up a hole in the
side wall of the courthouse shaped exactly like him, right down to his
mustache. Well, you can’t ask for a better chance than that. And Buzzy took it.
He ran for it.

When he reached
the spot where I was, he ignored my request for a quarter to help out a
disgraced Mouseketeer, grabbed me, and began dragging me along with him, using
me as a shield.

“Hi, Buzzy,” I
said.

“Shut up,” he
said.

As bullets from
pursuing policemen swirled around us, he dragged me to a parked Intergalactic
News ship, forced open the hatch, got us both aboard, and blasted us out of
this world.