Chapter 2

Gorg found himself facing an important decision. One that would impact his entire trip, and possibly decide the future of his home movie screening parties.

He could turn right and head into the Andromeda Galaxy, or left, into the Milky Way Galaxy. There wasn’t much to do in either Galaxy that he knew of, but he’d been to Andromeda a couple of times already on school trips. It was quite beautiful but so boring one would want to bash one’s own head in with a mallet after a week or two.

He decided to go left to the Milky Way. He’d learned in his Astronomy 101 class back in his University days that it had one hundred billion planets and four hundred billion stars. That should keep him busy for a while.

And that was the sole purpose of this trip after all — to find something interesting to do. He was bored; bored with his job, bored with his planet, his friends, his family, and his life in general. Nothing ever varied. One day was as dull as the one before it and the promise of the one after was just as tedious.

Every day when the three suns rose in the morning, he’d get up out of his bed, eat breakfast — if he was fast enough and interested enough to catch it — shower, dress, and go to work at his job where he would stare at a screen all day looking for anomalies in numbers that were never there. He’d never caught an error, not once in all the moon cycles he’d worked there. The data entry people were too damn efficient, in his opinion. Would it kill them to throw him a bone once in a while and make a mistake?

But they never did, and life went on with its boring parade of monotony. Hence why he decided to go on this little trip to a different galaxy instead of taking part in his family’s usual vacation trek to the shores of the Great Purple Inland Sea.

He finally decided his first stop would be the Heliocentric Solar System with its nine pretty planets and bright sun. The third planet from the sun was his first objective — he’d never been there but had heard a rumor that there was intelligent life on it. Octopi, they were called. The rumor said they lived underwater in great seas, which would be sort of a drag because Gorg could only hold his breath for twenty minutes or so before needing oxygen again, and really, how much meaningful conversation could one have in twenty minutes?

But any creature with as many tentacles as an octopus might have had the forethought to create some sort of tourist stop where he could get informational brochures on the different beasts that inhabited their world.

They might even have a zoo. That would be awesome. While he disliked the idea of creatures being kept in cages, he thought having them all in one place would be ever so much easier than wandering all over the Earth, seeking them out one by one. Earth wasn’t big by any means, but it was still large enough to make a self-conducted tour problematic.

He liked convenience. It was…convenient.

Beyond brochures and zoos, he really wanted some excitement, something interesting to happen, to experience some sort of grand adventure, and to have a tale he could tell his grandchildren when they gathered around his tentacles on the holiday.

Not that Bloober Day—there was only one holiday on his planet, which in part contributed to its overall boring nature -- was exciting or even especially interesting. It was tiresome, like every other day, except there was more food and storytelling for groups of bored grandchildren.

Bloober Day commemorates the first time his people discovered that flatulence was a renewable source of energy.

That was it. The entire extent of the single global holiday was based on a fart.

B-O-R-I-N-G.

Gorg wondered if the Earthling octopi had holidays and decided they were too smart not to have them. They probably had lots. One for every one of their tentacles, at least. Maybe two.

He was startled by a loud thump that made his entire spacecraft shake. He’d been so wrapped up in his internal monologue that he’d completely missed the fact that he’d flown directly into the middle of a meteor storm.

Another thump followed the first, and he winced at the damage the meteors were doing to his craft. He’d worked so hard refurbishing it this past moon cycle, too. It was an antique and cherry. Or had been until it started being pummeled by meteors.

The fiery meteors with their long, sizzling tails were beautiful but deadly as they shot past his ship in a dazzling display.

He banked left, then right, threading his way through the meteor storm, trying to avoid the big ones while taking his lumps from the little ones.

Eventually, he flew out of the storm, and when he did, he spotted a pretty blue planet in the distance. Finally, something went right for him for a change! His destination was in sight, and he hadn’t even had to consult the EGPS – the Extraterrestrial Global Positioning System. Sweet! His mother had insisted he install it because he hated to stop and ask for directions. He’d argued that he hadn’t needed it, and now he proved it by finding Earth all by his little lonesome. Meteor shower notwithstanding.

He descended into the atmosphere, hoping the dings he’d taken from the meteor storm hadn’t damaged his shield to the point where he’d burn up during entry, which would undoubtedly suck.

When he remained flame-free, he breathed a sigh of relief. That is until every light on his console lit up, and all the alarms went off.

He struggled with the controls, fighting them. They wanted him to plow into a mountain range while he tried to aim for a water landing. He almost won the fight but missed the water by the skin of his tentacle. He kept the nose up long enough to avoid a jetty of big black rocks, then crashed head-first into the sand lining the shore. The belly of the ship skidded and bounced along for quite a while before reaching a stop, its nose buried in a dune.

When he stopped shaking and started breathing again, he figured it was time to debark. Seeing the planet was, after all, why he was there. He could check his craft a little later to see how badly damaged it was. In his heart, he knew he was just stalling — he didn’t want to know how terrible the destruction was and knew instinctively from the roughness of the impact that it would be devastating. He’d probably totaled it. Chances were good he’d need to phone home for a ride back, which would be mortifying. His dad had been after him for at least seven moon cycles to get a new craft, or at least an updated version of the one he had, but he’d insisted on keeping the antique. Now look where he was. Stranded on a distant planet with a busted craft you could barely get parts for anymore, and out of warranty.

His dad would say he told Gorg so, and worst of all, he would be right. His mother would wring her tentacles and wonder where she went wrong. Ugh.

Gorg decided he could worry about that later. For now, he had a planet to explore and Earthlings to meet.

He checked his instruments to ensure the air was breathable — no sense in taking a chance on his head exploding even if rumors said the atmosphere was perfectly sustainable — and was pleasantly surprised to find the air quality was very similar to that of his home planet. That was great news; his ship’s portable breathing apparatus was as antiquated as the vessel — it was bulky and uncomfortable to wear all the time. Not to mention inconvenient, and he’d already made clear to himself how he felt about being inconvenienced.

He opened his hatch and popped his head out. When they called this the little blue planet, they weren’t kidding, he thought. There was a blue ocean to his left, extending as far as he could see, all the way to the horizon, with waves lapping at the shore and a giant bowl of blue sky above him. There was a structure on his right, a residence of some kind, he presumed, and even that was painted blue. Perhaps the color blue was sacred on this planet. That would be an intriguing factoid to add to a tale. Not exciting, but interesting at least.

The rhythmic sound of the ocean was soothing, reminding him of the Great Purple Inland Sea back home on Jizm. For two moon phases every tri-season, he and his family would go to the shores of the great inland sea and camp there, contemplating its impressive purpleness.

Why? He had no idea. The inland sea was always purple. It was purple last tri-season, it was purple this tri-season and it would be purple next tri-season, of that, he had no doubt.

It was boring to sit there and stare at it, which was why he’d skipped the latest family gathering to go on this trip.

One of the smart things he did was intercept satellite broadcasts from Earth as soon as he entered the space close enough to do so. He couldn’t understand the language yet, so he just watched the images. He was amazed that the octopi he’d thought were the predominant species on the planet were, in fact, not. Humans were. Handsome little devils, they were, except for their sad lack of tentacles. Otherwise, some of them were quite attractive. The discovery made him excited to learn more, and he watched their satellite broadcasts with eager anticipation.

The first thing he did was learn their language. It was easy enough with his supply of LBMs—Language by Mouth—a pill that allowed one to absorb any oral language overnight. Just pop one before bedtime, leave a recording of the language you wished to learn playing all night, and by morning, you would instantly be able to communicate.

Of course, everyone used it to get through all the language courses at University, although the instructors considered it bad form.

Screw them. How many times would one need to speak Ancient Hzabethian, anyway?

In any case, he was glad to have a supply onboard his ship. He took one and, by the next morning, realized he could understand and speak a language called American English. He was quite grateful to the pill — he’d never have been able to muddle his way through learning it organically. Not with eight different sounds for the letters “ough” alone. Rough, couch, through, thorough, plough, cough, brought, and hiccough. It was mindboggling and quite unnecessary if one asked him, which no one had.

However, learning the language helped him decipher the satellite transmissions, and the first thing he learned was that in North America, it was what they called the “holiday season.” Not just one holiday — an entire season of them! He saw images of white, frozen water called snowflakes, with many of them molded together to make snowmen, or swept into snow angels that looked like the imprint of big birds, small round ones called snowballs, snow forts that he doubted would survive a siege but were interesting, nonetheless. There were beautiful, colorful, twinkling lights hanging on houses, trees decorated with lights, brightly colored balls, and strands of metallic silver. He learned that every time a bell rang, an angel — whatever that was — got its wings and so much more; it was overwhelming. One particular station broadcasted nothing but holiday documentaries. Hallmark, it was called. It seemed everyone fell in love during the holiday season, which made him believe it must be synonymous with mating season, what they called Renewal Season on his planet. It was all quite enlightening.

He quickly checked his charts and found he’d had the luck to crash land in California, a part of North America where people spoke American English. He wouldn’t even need to waste another sleep cycle learning another language! California was on the coast, which explained the ocean and the sand.

He climbed out of the craft and was immediately disappointed to see there was no snow anywhere, just sand. He descended to the sandy dunes. The sand here was white and soft, but when he tasted it, he found it grainy and inedible, not at all like the white, sweet sand at the Great Purple Inland Sea back home. He spat it out and went to wash his mouth out with seawater.

And almost choked on the salt. Ugh! Someone had definitely over-seasoned this planet.

Where could he go to get something to wash the sand and salt out of his mouth? All he had left in the ship were emergency supplies and he’d be foolish to dip into those reserves yet. Especially if his father sent one of his egg-brothers for him, who would, no doubt, take his sweet ass time getting there.

The structure! The residence, if that’s what it was. Maybe he’d find something in there. Despite what he’d learned watching the transmissions from Earth, he refused to believe anything with as many tentacles as octopi could not be masterful teachers. If the octopi had coached humans to build it, surely they would have stocked it with supplies. The octopi would’ve instructed them on preparing for interstellar visitors.

He stood on his two legs and gathered his eight tentacles closer, holding them up in delicate swirls and curls. They were so sensitive, and the sand was prickly. He felt stupid not to have packed long tentacle sleeves for the trip. But he’d opted for short sleeves because it had been warm in the ship. Perhaps they sold long sleeves somewhere on the planet. He felt confident the octopi would’ve thought of telling humans to stock them.

He found a wooden walkway leading up from the beach to the grassier knoll on which the house was situated. The house was built on stilts, and a long flight of wooden stairs led up to a porch where a door awaited.

Gorg negotiated the stairs easily — they had them on Jizm, too — but paused at the door.

He didn’t know the protocol.

Should he walk right in? Knock? Utter a secret password? Was there some sort of interpretive dance that needed to be done to gain entry?

He settled on walking in.

Maybe he should have chosen to do the interpretive dance because the Earthling inside screamed when he saw Gorg and fainted dead away.