How To Save The World: An Alien Comedy (54 page)

‘Be Careful What You Wish For’

Available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk:

US:
How To Save The World: Part 2A - Be Careful What You Wish For

UK:
How To Save The World: Part 2A - Be Careful What You Wish For

Followed by Part 2B of the ‘How To Save The World’ trilogy…
‘By Whatever Means Necessary’

Also available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk:
US:
How To Save The World: Part 2B - By Whatever Means Necessary

UK:
How To Save The World: Part 2B - By Whatever Means Necessary

[1]
 
An exaggeratedly named hill in The Lake District.

[2]
  Eric had done a fair bit of travelling so many of his stories and recollections related to events and occurrences in various parts of the world.

[3]
  Like 94.2% of all statistics, Eric had just approximated these figures off the top of his head, so for the purposes of accuracy here’s a more precise quote, “Malaria kills more than a million people worldwide each year – ninety percent of them in Africa; seventy percent children under the age of five.” National Geographic News, 12
th
June 2003, reporting on a study by two United Nations agencies: the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

[4]
  The Full Moon Party is a party held every full moon (surprisingly enough) on Haad Rin Beach
in Thailand which attracts thousands of fun-loving backpackers from all over the world.

[5]
  Sparring style, i.e. the way a boxer would dance around the ring.  He wasn’t planning on doing a waltz.

[6]
  In case you’re wondering why Eric knew a bit of Japanese and Swedish then stay patient … all will be revealed in due course.

[7]
  A planet that was yet to reach a technological level capable of making contact with the other more advanced planets in the galaxy.

[8]
  This was a blip of G.O.T.  A solar year on the aliens’ planet was 389 days so when Jixyl referred to three solar years on his own planet, it didn't translate very well.  Fortunately though, Azleev had his G.O.T. set to eight decimal places otherwise Eric could have been there all day (or rather, all 1.16338639 days, given that a solar day on the alien’s planet lasted for 27.92127341 Earth hours).

[9]
 
Don’t ask what happened to G.O.T. 1.7.  Some clever marketing executive probably thought 1.8 had a better ring to it.

[10]
 
As most people will be aware, if you send a text from a mobile phone to a land-line in England, the text message will be read out in a robotic monotone voice to the person who owns the land-line.  This is actually quite a useful service, when people use it responsibly and don’t abuse it by playing daft comedy gags.

But if the telephone companies in England showed any motivation whatsoever for cracking down on premium rate scams, then pranks like this wouldn’t work in any case because everyone would know that you can
’t be charged for unsolicited messages.  Unfortunately however, premium rate scams do exist in England and telephone companies attitude to these scams seems to be ‘There’s nothing we can do about it this time but we’ll put a block on your phone so you can’t get scammed again’ rather than ‘Right, we’ll trace the number of the individual that sent you the message then trace their company offices and ensure that the company gets closed down and the culprit gets put in jail,’ which would be the attitude of any responsible company which correctly regarded phone fraud as the preventable scourge upon society that it is.

[11]
  More will be explained about this ‘triple letter’ remark in due course.

[12]
  Or drink flying in this case, to be more accurate.

[13]
 
One of the few remaining spaceships on the market with a less than hundred percent reliability record.

[14]
  Bernie Ecclestone, the man who owns the TV rights for formula 1 and generally makes all of his decisions based on profit, rather than a love of formula 1.  In his defence though, if the teams were stupid enough to sign a document giving him excessive power, as well as half the profits from TV deals, then you can’t blame him for taking advantage of their stupidity.

[15]
  Spoon is another one of the bends at Suzuka Circuit.

[16]
  Or the Galactic Information Network, to give it its full title.  This was basically a galaxy-wide version of the internet, only infinitely faster than the quickest broadband speeds Earth had to offer.

[17]
  We’d probably refer to them as ‘windows’ on Earth.

[18]
A pint of lemonade in Monty’s case, as he was driving.

[19]
  Eric owned a home recording studio, as well as a keyboard and guitar and other musical stuff, as he was well into home recording.

[20]
  Slash lied.

[21]
  Eric was getting a bit muddled up here.  Dirty Dancing was, of course, filmed in English so translating it from Chinese back into English wouldn’t require lip synching imagery because they were originally speaking English anyway, so their lips would have been in synch even without lip synching imagery.

[22]
  This was just Garth’s opinion.  It doesn’t mean he was necessarily right.  Physical attractiveness is a subjective matter, so like all subjective opinions there’s no right and wrong.

Except when it comes to Swedish lasses, obviously.  Swedish lasses are categorically lush obviously.  That’s not open for debate.

[23]
  Sarah was the name of Garth’s lass, although actually you’d probably already worked that out for yourself.  But anyway, just in case you’re a bit gormless I’m just clarifying who she is.

[24]
  Monty lived two minutes walk away from Whitley Bay Beach.

[25]
  A popular TV show on Fem, where thousands of hopeful wannabes competed to become the next big pop star.

[26]
  On Azleev and Jixyl’s planet a week lasted for nine days, so this was the best translation G.O.T. could come up with.

[27]
  Quorgsday is how the day after Saturday and the day before Sunday is literally pronounced in Azleev’s language.

[28]
  From Azleev’s point of view, G.O.T. translated Eric’s, ‘The day after Saturday and the day before Sunday?’ comment into ‘Quorgsday?’

[29]
  Another popular reality TV show on Fem.

[30]
  Media-blogs were basically multi-media digital newspapers with added bells and whistles that you could download from the G.I.N.

[31]
  Approximately equal to four million pounds at today’s exchange rate.

[32]
  That’s ‘ironically’ in the modern sense of the word, i.e. not ironically at all.

[33]
  ‘Chinned’ is a Geordie expression for ‘beat up.’

[34]
  In Africa by a dodgy policeman.

[35]
  Well, thirty times to be precise, but all thirty bullets were fired on the same occasion.

[36]
  Or alternatively, saying, ‘Ar, this alien broke my arm,’ as Hank was more likely to do, seeing as how he still seemed convinced that Eric had broke his arm.

[37]
  Or ‘fruit machines’ as we refer to them in the UK.

[38]
  ‘Scran’ is a Geordie word for food.

[39]
  Jixyl and Azleev were wearing fake extra finger attachments to disguise their digital inferiority.

[40]
  Jixyl clearly didn’t know Eric very well.

[41]
  That’s not a joke by the way.  If you think of the buzz you felt the first time you went to the match and the way you were awe-struck at the noise and all the people, then compare it to the buzz of The Great Barrier Reef or The Grand Canyon, then you have to conclude that your first time at the match is easily an equal to any of the wonders of the world.

[42]
  Jixyl and Azleev had cautioned Eric to wear four fingered gloves (where his little finger and ring finger squeezed into one digit) so that he wouldn’t encounter hostility whilst on Fyra by being mistaken for a Femling.

[43]
  With the obvious exception of the Garamandians from the planet Garamandia, as they had a lead-lined skull which blocked their brainwaves and therefore prevented G.O.T. technology from reading their brainwaves and converting them into the language of the listener.

[44]
  The naming system for cities on Pokar Dix was very boring, although it has to be said, very practical and easy to follow.

[45]
  Or perhaps, lied.

[46]
  Jixyl and Azleev had warned Eric that once he arrived on the planet Fem it would be too risky to use mobile phones to contact each other as this risked the possibility of the Femlings tracing and monitoring the texts and therefore revealing Eric’s secret mission.  Once on Fem therefore, he would have to stick to A.T.S., which was virtually untraceable, as his only method of contacting Jixyl and Azleev.

But while he was on Pokar Dix mobile phone texts were still an acceptable method of communication.

[47]
  Bullet train.

[48]
 
The Femling equivalent of an mp3 player, or a ‘Tiny Sounds (4
th
generation) player’ to give it its full title.  The name derived from the fact that the very first models produced were only one cubic centimetre in size and yet able to hold a terabyte worth of songs.  The tiny size was mainly just a marketing gimmick, however, and when subsequent models were introduced the size became closer to the size of mp3 players back on Earth, for reasons of practicality.

Anyway, Eric had decided to treat himself to one during his time in Sumai City.  Strictly speaking, the funds that Jixyl and Azleev had provided him weren’t meant to be spent on treats for himself but Eric had told himself that music makes him happy and being happy, he had reasoned, is an attractive quality and therefore if he was happy he was more likely to score and therefore treating himself to a ts4 player was beneficial to the mission.

[49]
  From a region in the North of Fem known as Sveltland.

[50]
  By ‘nine out of ten’ Eric meant a lass whose physical attractiveness he deemed equivalent to the rating of ‘nine out of ten.’  Obviously no dudes in real life use terms like this cos it’s demeaning to women to refer to them by a rating.  Obviously, dudes in real life obviously have a lot more respect for women and are generally more interested in inner beauty, rather than shallow superficial attractiveness, so dudes in real life would therefore never dream of using Eric’s crass terminology.

[51]
  A region on Fem that, like Sveltland, also produced more than its fair share of fit lasses.

[52]
  Eric had asked Jixyl and Azleev to program the settings on his G.O.T. unit so that lasses would have accents.  He chose this because although he liked the Geordie accent, the thought of a Sveltish lass with a Geordie accent was a bit weird and not particularly appealing and so he wanted lasses to have accents that corresponded to accents back on Earth that he found appealing, so this was how he programmed the settings on his G.O.T.

With dudes, however, he wasn’t fussed about them having accents, and so every dude he met on Fem would sound to him like they had a Geordie accent.

[53]
  Actually, the biggest thing that stood out about Hex, to lasses at least, was that he was really good looking and had a really well-toned body.  These two attributes may possibly have played a more significant part than Hex’s relaxed attitude when it came to him scoring three times in the last week.

But Eric was judging Hex from a dude’s point of view, and from a dude’s point of view the thing that seemed to play a significant part in Hex’s success was his relaxed attitude.

[54]
  Obvious because Hex himself was from Sveltland, not because he was being big-headed.  He still spoke in a Geordie accent, however, because as previously mentioned this was how Eric had programmed the settings on his G.O.T. unit.  He preferred lasses to speak with accents, but for ease of understanding he decided to have all dudes speaking Geordie.

[55]
  Or the Femling Football Federation Cup to use its full title.  This was basically Fem’s equivalent of the FA Cup.

[56]
  Fem’s rough equivalent of Manchester United.

[57]
  Fem’s rough equivalent of Accrington Stanley.

[58]
  Fem’s rough equivalent of Arsenal.

[59]
  Fem’s rough equivalent of Newcastle United.

[60]
  A famous, but rather unattractive, politician on Fem.

[61]
  Zonny and Kesta
were
actually from Georgeland but, as you are aware, Eric obviously wasn’t actually from Georgeland, but he claimed that he was as part of his fake identity.  The main reason for him choosing Georgeland was that when he was doing his research on Fem, Georgeland was the region that seemed to have the most in common with England and therefore Eric reasoned that a Georgish background would be the easiest to fake.