How To Save The World: An Alien Comedy (46 page)

“You don’t need an excuse to make arrangements to see me again,” Elskar pointed out.

“Ar, yeah.  I know,” Eric mumbled.  “But it was just, like, in the spur of the moment and I needed to think of a reason to quickly speak to you again.  Like, sometimes when you’ve only got a brief second to make a decision you sometimes make a stupid decision.  Like, actually … quite often in my case.  Not just sometimes.  So, like, obviously the best reason would have been to just come out and say that I like you, rather than asking you if my watch was your watch, cos obviously it’s not your watch.  It’s my watch.  But, like, I was just, like, totally nervous so my brain wasn’t thinking logically so I didn’t think of the most obvious excuse to talk to you which would have been just to say that you’re sound and all that.  Like, as in I’m saying ‘sound’ when really I mean much better than sound.  Like, really good.

Like, so anyway, d’you fancy hanging out or doing something or something?”

In some ways it was lucky for Eric that he was talking to an alien lass that spoke a different language because it meant that a lot of his phrases which were quite clumsy in English, such as ‘much better than sound,’ translated really well thanks to the G.O.T.  Anyway, Elskar did fancy doing something.  “Yeah, I’d like that,” she replied.  “So what do you want to do?”

If Eric was being totally honest then what he wanted to do was just spend the next two weeks cooped up in his room getting his perv on with Elskar, but he didn’t want to present himself as being one-dimensional, so he tried to think of something else.

“You’re not really into the beach, are you?” he quizzed.

“Not really,” Elskar replied.  “Well, not if you mean sunbathing.  I like going down to the beach on a night-time to Hang Out, but sunbathing isn’t really my thing.”

“I thought, like, cos I don’t think I’ve ever seen you on the beach during the day,” Eric reflected, “apart from that one time when you were with your mate in front of the shop and you had your black vest top on with the white pattern down the side and them cool cut-off jeans that you wear.  And…”  Eric suddenly decided that going into any more detail probably wasn’t a good idea.  “Like … not that I’m a stalker or anything!”  He quickly did the guilty Italian footballer gesture once again.  “I just noticed you cos you were wearing cool clothes.  That’s all.  I just tend to remember sharp clothes.  If you’d only been wearing average clothes then I probably would have forgot … but you weren’t.  You were wearing excellent clothes.”  Elskar smiled at this so Eric added, “Well actually, you always wear excellent clothes if I’m honest.”

“Thanks,” Elskar thanked.  “You wear nice clothes
as well.”

“Thanks,” Eric echoed.  “And, like, that’s like a genuine thanks cos you’ve obviously got excellent taste.  Like, if a lass that wore average clothes had of complimented my clothes I would have been ‘Ar, thanks’ but really I would have been thinking, like, ‘Well, how would you know?’ and I would only have been saying thank you out of politeness.  But it’s, like, a total compliment from you cos you’ve got excellent fashion sense.”

“Thanks.  So what do you want to do, then?” Elskar asked, getting back to Eric’s original point.

“Ar, right … well, em…”  In truth there wasn’t that much to do in Ko Pagna.  Eric’s days consisted of sunbathing, eating and hanging out at The Hang Out Club.  As Elskar had already ruled out sunbathing he moved onto food.  “D’you fancy going for something to eat later on?”

“Yeah, have you been to Papaya Restaurant?” Elskar suggested.

Papaya Restaurant was an expensive restaurant by Ko Pagna’s standards so Eric hadn’t yet eaten there, partly due to his tightness and partly due to the fact that there were enough cheap restaurants serving really nice food that he felt he couldn’t really justify going to an expensive restaurant when there wasn’t really any need.

However, when Sveltish Indie Chick was part of the equation, price was no longer a deciding factor.  “No, but I’ve heard it’s really good, like,” he replied.

“It is,” Elskar confirmed.  “Shall we meet there later on?”

And so they arranged a mutually agreeable time to meet, then Eric hugged Elskar goodbye.  They smiled at each other, then she walked off around the corner and onto the main street.

“Yes!” Eric whispered under his breath, at a volume quiet enough so that Elskar wouldn’t hear it.  He danced into a robotic pose with hi
s hands.  “Yes!  Yes!  Yes!” he repeated, moving his hands robotically in synch with each ‘yes.’  He then exclaimed, “Com-plete chuffed-ness,” with each syllable in sequence with a sort of a lopsided chicken dance.  And then to complete his expression of joy he ran a few steps back towards his room then jumped in the air and did a flare kick
[87]
, shouting out “Flare kick!” as he did so.  He hadn’t done a flare kick for several years so he was pleased that he managed to pull it off with the perfect balance of nonchalance and exuberance.

His pleasure was soon replaced by embarrassment however, as he noticed that Elskar had returned from around the corner and had seen him perform his celebratory actions.

“Ar, hello again.  I was just doing a flare kick,” Eric explained.

“Right,” Elskar smiled.  “I’ve just thought, Papaya has two floors so shall we meet upstairs or down?”

“Em … upstairs?” Eric replied, in the tone of voice you use when you’re answering a question and you half know the answer but you’re half guessing.

“Okay, upstairs,” Elskar agreed, then she headed off round the corner once again.

Once she was out of sight, Eric started chuckling.  He had just embarrassed himself with his unusual celebrations but he was too happy to care.  In fact he was so happy that he did another flare kick.

“Ar, chuffedness,” he exclaimed to himself.  “I’m seeing Sveltish Indie Chick!”

And for the moment he managed to overlook the fact that, thanks to his actions, in six months’ time she would be dead.

Eric sat up and looked at the lush sea.  Then he looked around him at the lush beach.  Then he looked at the lush Sveltish lasses lying on the lush beach.  Then he looked at the lush baps on the lush Sveltish lasses.  Then he looked up at the lush blue sky.  Then he looked at the lush baps on the lush Sveltish lasses once again, just to refresh his memory.  Then he looked behind him at the lush palm trees.  Then he looked behind the palm trees at the lush limestone cliffs.  Yes, life was certainly lush.

Or at least it should have been.  Especially when he had a date with Sveltish Indie Chick to look forward to that evening.

But no matter how he tried, Eric couldn’t get away from the fact that in six months’ time Sveltish Indie Chick would be dead.

Gutter!

And what made it even worse was that it was he that had sealed her fate.

Double gutter!

So he tried to tell himself that technically he wasn’t to blame.  Technically it was the Femlings’ fault for being evil planetocidal maniacs.  If the Femlings had of been sound then he wouldn’t have had to kill them all with the Telix-17 virus.

So if it wasn’t his fault then how come he felt like a total snide?  ‘Why couldn’t saving the Earth involve something different?’ Eric asked himself.  ‘Why couldn’t it have followed the traditional ‘shoot a missile into a two metre exhaust shaft’ scenario?  Or better still, why couldn’t it have still involved all the ‘living it up on a lush beach resort’ parts of the plan, and just missed out the ‘wipe out the entire population of Fem’ part of the plan?’  That way he would still get to enjoy a totally lush lifestyle but he wouldn’t have to deal with all the guilt.

Because the guilt had kicked in big-style now.  The euphoria of the morning was well and truly over.  And to Eric, that didn’t seem fair.  He was only saving the Earth.  It wasn’t his fault the Femlings were snides.  It wasn’t his fault they had to be eliminated in order to save the Earth.  He was just doing his duty.  So why did he have to feel guilty?

The answer was simple.  It was because, in general, the Femlings were totally sound.  Part of this perhaps was because everyone he met here was on holiday and people are always much happier on holiday.  But even allowing for the increased soundness of being on holiday, the Femlings were still a totally sound bunch of people.  Apart from the ref in the Beach Soccer Tournament, obviously.  Any fool could see that it was blatantly a handball in the build-up to that dodgy goal.  But apart from that dodgy ref, Eric couldn’t think of a single snidey Femling.

That’s what just didn’t seem to make sense.  Why would they want to kill an entire planet when they were so sound?  It was just totally crazy.  But that was the way it was.  So that was why the Femlings had to be eliminated.  Self-defence.  Kill or be killed.  And self-defence, as Jixyl had told him, was an admirable quality.  Because if all the nice people just let the evil people kill all the nice people all the time then eventually there’d be no nice people left.  Just evil people.  And that would be totally rubbish.  A galaxy full of nothing but evil people would be a completely rubbish scenario.  So self-defence was necessary.  And admirable.

But right at this moment Eric most definitely didn’t feel admirable.  He felt like a total snide.  Which of course, he was, because he had just kicked loose the first few stones of a potential avalanche of catastrophe.

Fortunately for Eric, however, Kesta turned up right at this moment to temporarily distract him from any further wallowing in self-pity.

“Alright, where did you get to last night?” Kesta asked.

“Ar, it was canny mad, like,” Eric replied.  “I met Sveltish Indie chick.”

“Nice one!” Kesta exclaimed.  “And you mean, like, you actually spoke to her?”

“Aye … well, she spoke to me actually,” Eric clarified, pedantically.  “But I spoke back obviously.  Like, it was a two-way conversation, but she initiated it.”

“So what was her opening line, then?” Kesta quizzed.

“Ar, it was canny funny, like,” Eric commented.  “The first thing she says was, ‘Hey, your mate’s totally fit, like.’”

“Ar, so she’s Georgish, then?” Kesta joked.  “I thought she was Sveltish.”

“Well, nar … she didn’t obviously literally say, ‘Hey, your mate’s totally fit, like,’” Eric clarified.  “She said it in a Sveltish accent obviously.  But anyway, when she said that about Hex I was, like, ‘Ar, gutter.  She’s just using me as a stepping stone to get to Hex.’”

“How did you know she wasn’t talking about me?” Kesta inquired.

“Just cos you were away at the bar at the time,” Eric explained, “and she was looking in Hex’s direction.”  Not to mention the fact that Hex was blatantly the most likely of the three to be described by a lass as totally fit.  “But anyway, I was canny gutted at first, like, but then when I looked at Hex he was getting it on with her mate, so then I realised she was just, like, saying good on her mate.  So then I was, like, ‘Ar, and good on my mate as well … cos your mate’s canny fit as well.  But, like, not as fit as you.’  And then anyway, that started a round of mutual compliment paying and we ended up walking back to my room.”

“Ar, nice one,” Kesta congratulated.  “So you’ve finally broke your duck.”

“And with my number one choice as well,” Eric pointed out.  “Mad, eh?”

“Aye, life’s like that sometimes, though,” Kesta mused.

“Well … not for me it’s not, like,” Eric remarked.  “Well, not usually anyway.  Or at least, not as often as I’d like.”

“Maybe it’s the start of a decent run of form,” Kesta suggested.

“I think I just want to see Elskar again, though,” Eric revealed, in an almost apologetic tone of voice.  “Like, if I had of scored with some random lass then I would have been thinking, ‘Right, this is the springboard to a period of variety.  But with Sveltish Indie Chick … well, like … I really like her, you know.”

“I think she probably likes you as well if she initiated it,” Kesta theorised.

“Aye, it was mad how she initiated it, like,” Eric commented.  “Realistically though, that was the only way it was ever going to happen without uz drinking DQ.”

Kesta grunted non-committedly and glanced shiftily to the side.

“Aye, anyway … did
you
have any luck last night, then?” Eric asked.

“Nar,” Kesta shrugged.  “It was still a good night, though.”

“Aye, it was, like,” Eric agreed.

At this point Hex strolled up beside his two mates.

“Alright, how’s it going?” he greeted.

“Aye, good,” Kesta answered.  “Eric broke his duck.”

“Yeah, I heard,” Hex replied.

“You heard?  How did you hear, like?” Eric questioned.

“Cos the lass I was with noticed you slinking off with her mate,” Hex explained.

“It was Sveltish Indie Chick as well,” Eric bragged.  “Class, eh?”

“Ar, excellent,” Hex congratulated.

“So anyway, what was her mate like?” Kesta inquired of Hex.

“Quality,” Hex enthused.  “Amazingly lush legs, like.”

“She’s got black candy floss hair as well, hasn’t she?” Eric quizzed.

“Candy floss hair?” Hex queried, slightly confused.

“Like, not
literally
candy floss hair,” Eric clarified.  “But you know that type of hair that some Sveltish lasses have where it’s really fine and sort of like candy floss.”