Earth vs. Everybody (9 page)

Finally I
realized I needed help. I couldn’t do this on my own. I went to a government
resettlement agency that specialized in finding the right planets for people
who were too stupid to find things for themselves. The lady there, a Mrs. Jacobson,
interviewed me. I told her about my skills, my education, my experience, that
I’m half alligator and half snapping turtle, a ring tailed roarer, that I’ve
been everywhere and done everything, and that I spit lightning and crap
thunder.

She turned to the
computer on her desk. “Computer?”

“Bullshit,” said
the computer.

She told me to
start again, telling the truth this time. I asked if we could conduct the rest
of the interview somewhere else. Somewhere away from that c-o-m-p-u-t-e-r, but
she said no. So for the rest of the interview I mostly had to tell the truth,
which, I don’t know about you, but that always puts me at a disadvantage.

After I had given
her all my real information and she had cross-checked it with her database of
inhabited planets, she shook her head.

“I’m sorry, but I
don’t see any planets here that need your particular skills, or lack of them.”

“Check some other
universe.”

She shook her
head again. “There are no other universes.”

I thought about
this. “Can I have your job?”

“No. I need it.”

We both sat there
glumly. This wasn’t working.

Mrs. Jacobson
glanced over my personal information again. The word “detective” stopped her.
“Were you ever really a detective,” she asked, “or was that another of your
pathetic lies?”

“Oh, I was a detective,
all right. The pathetic lies start after the word ‘detective’. Just before the
words ‘Army Chief of Staff’.”

“Detective…
detective…” she murmured, as she looked through the data on her computer. “Ah,
here’s what I was looking for. Betelgeuse 13 has an opening for a detective.”

I grabbed the
printout, put on my hat, and opened the door to the airlock. “Betelgeuse 13,
here I come!”

Well, I suppose
you can guess what happened. Yeah, they ended up hanging me.

When I first
arrived on Betelgeuse 13 and told them I was a genuine Earth detective,
everyone got very excited. They’d heard about Earth detectives from our TV
broadcasts. Earth detectives are great. They never miss. Everyone lined up
around the planet to hire me.

But after the
initial excitement, my business quickly fizzled. I wasn’t what they were
looking for at all. They were expecting one of those smart British-style
detectives who carefully reasons things out and then walks over and points at
the criminal. Not the blockheaded film-noir type like me, who just blunders
around with a bottle of liquor in his hand, knocking people down and firing off
guns, and never solving anything. But just because I wasn’t what they were
looking for was no reason to hang me. The reason they hung me was all those sacred
traditions I violated, the “people” I killed, and the historic documents I ate
(hey, they looked good). So there’s another lesson for you teens. Eat at the
diner.

Fortunately, the
people of Betelgeuse 13 aren’t all that up on Earth physiology, so when they
hung me, it didn’t kill me. After a few days they said it was a miracle I
hadn’t died (though some argued that I had been hung by the wrong leg) and cut
me down.

I stayed on
Betelgeuse 13 for awhile after that, seeing if I could make a living with any
of the other skills I had, now that we had all agreed I wasn’t a detective.

I tried getting
jobs lifting things, which is something I’m pretty good at, but everybody on
Betelgeuse 13 had robots for jobs like that. Even the smallest robot could lift
more than I could. And they didn’t complain as much. Or smell as bad. Or get
caught stealing things as often.

And I wasn’t a
good bodyguard there either because everybody’s body was so irregularly shaped
compared to mine. Parts of them—usually the parts that were paying me—always
seemed to be sticking out around the edges where they could get shot. So that
career didn’t last very long either. “I can’t do anything,” I thought to
myself. And God damn it, I was right.

It began to dawn
on me that I had the same problem in space that I had had on Earth. I was
unhirable there, and I was unhirable here. But out here it was even worse. I
couldn’t compete with these space people on any level. Everybody was just too
far ahead of me.

They were all
smarter than me, for one thing. Everybody in space has these chips in their
heads that are full of information on every subject. Just try winning a bar bet
with one of those guys. Just try it, wise guy. You’ll lose. I got one of those
information chips put into my head—cost me all the money I had made as a
detective—but my body rejected it so violently part of my brain came out with
it. So I just ended up knowing less than I knew before. I tried carrying the
chip in my pants pocket instead of my head, but that didn’t work. Just made my
pants real hot.

They all have
these special kinds of pills too. Pills that do everything for you. Instead of
eating or sleeping or exercising or going to a movie, they just take a pill.
And if their hair gets too long, there’s no need for any of your so-called
“Earth Haircuts”. They just take a pill and instantly there’s hair all over the
floor and everybody looks great. But people from Earth can’t take these pills.
Don’t ask me how I know. I don’t want to talk about it. And don’t ask the
doctor who put my butt back together either.

And, even though
I consider myself a pretty modern guy, everyone in space was miles ahead of me
technologically. Even the kids. A lot of the younger trendier types on
Betelgeuse 13, for example, routinely traveled from place to place by
downloading themselves onto the galactic internet. That was the latest thing,
when I was there. They thought interstellar rockets were old fashioned and
corny. They could travel from one end of the galaxy to the other in the time it
takes to click a mouse. The only time I tried that I forgot my password and
couldn’t get out. I finally had to kick my way out through somebody’s keyboard.
Next time I’m going to write my password down.

If they weren’t
surfing the galactic internet they were getting places by using Star Trek style
transporters. I tried that and, on my very first trip, due to a magnetic
disturbance in the planet’s atmosphere, I got split into two Frank Burlys. One
good and one evil. I told the good Frank Burly to go get us both some coffee,
then I took off before he got back. I was afraid that we might be put back
together at some point, but we never were. We weren’t that much different
anyway.

After awhile I
started to get the feeling that maybe Earth wasn’t so bad after all. At least
on Earth I had a chance to compete. Up here my puny mind didn’t get me very
far. I started getting nostalgic, telling aliens I met in bars how great the
Earth was.

“On Earth
everyone had puny minds,” I told one alien, “and primitive thoughts, and a
limited understanding of the world around them. A guy could really compete with
pea-brains like that.”

“Sounds great,”
he said.

“And where I come
from nobody was really very good at doing anything,” I said, dreamily. “In most
instances, a monkey could do it better.”

“Wow.”

“And the trees,
they weren’t ordinary trees, they were watermelon trees.”

“Why don’t you go
back there then? If you like it so much.”

“I didn’t say I
liked it. I just said it was easy. And, anyway, I can’t go back there. The
whole place has been overrun by a bunch of smelly aliens.”

“Watch it,
mister.”

I looked at the
alien. He was bigger than me. “All right, I’ll watch it,” I said, “since you’re
so big, and I’m so small.” I took another drink. “But, whether your people are
smelly or not…” I held up a restraining hand, “and I’m sure they’re not, it
wouldn’t do me any good to go back to Earth now. The same know-it-alls I’ve
been running into out here are down there now too. I couldn’t compete with
them. I might as well stay where I am. Starve here. Save some shoe leather.”

Now I know what
you’re thinking: Hey, Burly, you’re thinking, we all know you’re a hero. This
is your chance to prove it. Why don’t you roll up your sleeves and get out
there and save the good old Earth? To that my answer is screw you, gentle
reader. Up yours, also. I don’t work for you. I don’t do things just because
you think they’re a good idea. Let somebody else save the Earth, if it needs
saving. Or you do it, if you think it’s so God damned important. It isn’t my
job. Screw you. Screw everybody.

On the other
hand, I suddenly thought one day when I had really been drinking a lot, if
saving the Earth was my job, I wonder how much that job would pay? I mean,
they’ve got to give you something if you’ve just saved their worthless butts
for them, right? They’ve got to show their appreciation in some tangible way.
Stands to reason. I never saw Paul Revere in an unemployment line. And I’ll bet
you didn’t either. If I was a hero, I probably wouldn’t have to work for the
rest of my life. I’d get everything for free, just like Paul Revere does. And
Sgt. York—remember all of that free bottom land he got? Well, they’d damn well
have to give me some bottom land too. Better yet—bottom land for everybody.
Anyway, that’s the way it looked to me after about forty drinks.

So I decided to
go back and take a crack at saving mankind. The money was right. The problem
was, how to do it. The Earth was crawling with aliens. I couldn’t overpower
them all—that was my first idea. Knock ‘em all on their cans and tell them to
hit the road or they’d get worse. I didn’t think I could pull that off. I’m
tough, but I’m not that tough. I couldn’t outsmart them all either. I’m very
smart, but I’m not that very smart.

Then I decided
maybe I should just do this the way the heroes in the movies do it. “What will
you do?” people ask them. “I’ll know that when I get there,” they say. And
everybody figures that answer is good enough. And, sure enough, when the hero
gets there he does know what to do. Or sometimes the hero would say: “I’ll
explain on the way.” And people always think that’s a good answer too. I
decided that was the way I’d do it. I’d explain it to myself on the way.

But before I had
a chance to even leave for Earth, I happened to see a newspaper that had an article
about dead planets in it. The Earth was mentioned. I started reading this
article, frowning.

“Remember the
Earth?” it began. “Home of the foot long hot dog and racial hatred? Well, it’s
still around, but no one goes there anymore because of the doomsday shroud
surrounding it and the total lack of life on its charred surface.”

I read the rest
of the article with growing anger. In their ferocious no-holds-barred battle to
gain control of the Earth the aliens had ended up destroying all life on it,
including their own. And now the Earth was as dead as the Moon.

That’s when my
mind snapped, I guess. At least I think it snapped. I heard a loud snap coming
from the direction of my mind. Other people heard it too, and turned to look to
see where all the racket was coming from.

Enraged at seeing
all my planning come to nothing, and my big chance to return to Earth as a hero
gone forever, I threw the newspaper down, kicked over the newspaper rack,
pushed over the newspaper building, dumped the town’s only bridge into the
river, and started tearing up the expressway. After a couple more drinks I got
really mad. When my rage finally subsided a few days later, I realized I had
completely trashed Betelgeuse 13.

While I was
sheepishly looking around at all the destruction I had caused, I noticed that
all of the inhabitants were huddled together out near the horizon, some of them
holding up crosses to keep me away (and they did keep me away, too. Crosses!
Yuck!). I suddenly realized that with no one around and all the shop windows
smashed, I could take what I wanted without—and this was the important
thing—paying for any of it. So I grabbed an armload of stuff. No, make that a
double armload. And with the spaceport abandoned, I could take any ship I
wanted. Free of charge. So I commandeered the newest fastest one they had. And
no one tried to stop me from doing any of that. They were too afraid of me. I
was nuts. It was all so easy, I couldn’t believe it. Hey, I thought, how long
has this been going on?

Like most successful
careers, it had happened entirely by accident. If I hadn’t seen that newspaper,
I might never have realized that with my limitless anger, mindless brutality
and frightening other-worldly appearance, I had all the tools it took to be a
successful space monster.

Dazzled
by this realization, I took off into space and headed for another planet to
pillage, roaring with excitement.

I’m not proud of
the next eighteen months. But a man has to eat. And he has to have bars of
gold. And motorboats, a man needs those too. And if a man can only get those
things by scaring the shit out of another man, he has to do it. Right? Right.
Anyway, that’s the way I had it figured. It made sense to me. And during that
period of my life it wasn’t a good idea to argue with me. I’d scare the shit
out of you if you did.

For the rest of
that year and into the next, I was the terror of the galaxy. I’d land on an
unsuspecting planet, stamp around, roaring my head off, scare everybody away,
get some food, and whatever loot I fancied, maybe take in a movie or do some
ice skating, and then high-tail it back into space before the inhabitants could
regroup.

I thought of
working up a scary costume to wear, something with horns and claws and maybe a
long spiky rubber tail, but most of the frightened inhabitants I encountered
assured me I didn’t need it. It was gilding the lily, they said. They were
already afraid of my size and strength and the crazy way I acted. Plus, they
were put off by the aura of filth, decay and disease I gave off. Whatever I
had, they didn’t want to catch it too. So my bad grooming habits helped me
there.