The Mammoth Space Torpedo Affair
By Michael Lawrence (with valuable contributions by e-griff)
"It's really going to happen!" exclaimed Rod Lewis, a slightly
overweight middle aged man clad in a plaid shirt and khaki shorts,
after watching the Earth's president give a shocking report. The
Peridians, a race of aliens who reside on the planet formally known as
Jupiter, has thousands of Mammoth Space Torpedoes and they're aimed at
Earth.
"I can't believe it; we'll be annihilated!" Rod yelled even louder as
he placed his palms on his forehead, knocking off his ball cap. "We've
got to do something! Oh God, we've got to do something!" Rod's wife,
Georgette, a thin woman with a dark shade of red hair, who was watching
the television right next to her husband on the couch, ignored his
ranting and closely watched the television.
"&;#8230;my secretaries are currently trying to get a hold of the
Peridian Dictator, Felix Carson, and I will do everything in my power
to convince him to rethink this hostile gesture. It's important that
everybody remain calm." With that, President Norris signed off.
"Golly Moses!" Rod continued screaming. "Thousands of torpedoes! That's
enough to destroy the Earth twenty times over! I knew this would
happen! Those dirty Peridians! I knew this would happen!"
"Rod dear, settle down," Georgette said with shaking, squeaky voice.
"The president said we're supposed to remain calm."
"What does he know?" Rod yelled. "I didn't vote for him!" Rod placed
his right hand on his forehead and his left hand on his right cheek.
His face was bright red from all the excitement. He quit all the
yelling but he was still panting hard. He was briefly caught in a state
of deep thought. He seemed to be progressively calming down; his rapid,
heavy panting slowed. His hands slid slowly down his face.
"Honey," Rod said significantly quieter. He, almost violently, grabbed
his wife, hugged her, and kissed her on the lips. "This may be the last
time I see you!"
"Oh Rod!" Georgette yelled as she turned away from him and ran to the
bedroom starting to cry. A good husband should always comfort a sobbing
wife, but Rod ran outside the front door instead.
He stood on luscious, green lawn and stared into the hot, glaring
afternoon sky for about a minute, half-expecting to see a large object
fall out of the blue. Then he suddenly remembered something and without
any consideration for his also-panicky neighbors (some of which were
also staring absently at the sky) he hollered with his arms extended:
"What have I been doing! I almost completely forgot!"
Rod frantically ran on foot (even though he could have taken his
automobile) to the nearest grocery store, about one mile away. He
frenzied through the automatic sliding doors, knocking over a couple of
displays, grabbed a shopping cart, and immediately filled it up with a
rather picked-over supply of non-perishable food items (he would later
find out that they were mostly canned prunes). He quickly pushed his
shopping cart to the checkout aisles and bumped into a couple old
ladies. He soon realized that the lines were awfully long and were full
of people with the same intentions as he.
In complete desperation, when Rod realized he had forgotten his credit
cards, he grabbed his shopping cart full of cans and dashed madly out
the door.
"Sir!" someone yelled, as Rod was halfway down the parking lot "Stop!
You have to pay for those! Sir! Stop!" Rod didn't even hear the
voice.
Luckily for him, the police were too busy dealing with similar
situations to immediately respond to the grocery store's latest
shoplifting report, but he did get some very strange stares from
passing-by drivers as he madly pushed that shopping cart up the road.
When he reached his house, without even slowing down, he pushed the
cart up his driveway, violently forced the door open. He pushed the
cart inside the house where he managed to tip it over sideways spilling
the non-perishables out all over the place.
Without wasting a moment's of time, Rod loudly declared "Honey! Get the
kids! We're going up!" After hearing that curious verbal explosion,
Georgette ran out of the bedroom, her eyes were red with tears.
"Rod! Where have you been! I have been so wor--"
"Honey! Didn't you hear me? Grab the kids! We're leaving!" Rod screamed
as he wiped an ocean's of sweat off his brow.
"Where are we going?!" Georgette shouted.
"To space! Where do you think, Toledo, Ohio?" Rod stormed up the stairs
to the second level of the house when he added, "Pick up those cans,
willya?" Boy does Georgette hate it when Rod gets worked up like
this.
Rod opened the door to his four-year-old daughter's room. He didn't see
the girl so he madly picked up items of the bottomless mass of dirty
clothing and threw them over his shoulders hoping to find her buried
somewhere. He figured out, after a while, that she was not present in
the room so he ran to the door of his six-year-old son where, sure
enough, both of his kids were huddled in the corner shaking.
"I'm sawwy!" the little girl yelled, her eyes dripping with tears. "I
pwomise I will never do it again! Pweese forgive me!" Without saying a
word, Rod threw his daughter on his left shoulder and his son on the
right as he ran swiftly down the stairs while his daughter screamed
"I'm sawwy, daddy! I'm weally, weally sawwy!" and his son tried to beat
the crap out of his back. Both of their legs were wiggling like little
worms.
When Rod reached the living room, Georgette was sluggishly picking up
the cans and putting them back into the shopping cart while letting out
a couple of tears and sniffling once every two seconds. Rod set down
his two children who immediately ran to their mother as if she were
some sort of divine protector. Upon sight of Rod, Georgette
instantaneously stood up embracing her knee-high children and let her
eyes stare vengefully into Rod's panic-stricken ones.
"Would you kindly explain to me what you think you're doing?! First you
run around the house like a madman and then you run off somewhere and I
didn't know where you were going! I thought you killed yourself or
something! And then when you finally return, you bring back a million
cans in a stolen shopping cart, scare the living daylights out of the
kids, and then declare we're going to outer space! And we don't even
have a space pod! And, what's with all these pr--?"
"That's where you're wrong, Honey Dear!" Rod said wanting to correct
Georgette's last accusation before she makes more. "We do have a space
pod!" Rod ran into the den where a stuffed elk's head hung above the
fireplace mantel. He pushed a wooden chair next to it, promptly stood
upon the chair, grabbed one of the elk's antlers, and forced it down.
When he let go of it, the antler quickly flipped back in place and a
low rumbling noise occurred in the backyard. Georgette and the kids ran
to the back, glass door to see what was happening. The concrete of the
patio split into two equal pieces and each piece began sliding to
opposite sides. The kids were happily screaming, wild with
excitement.
"When did you build this thing?" his wife asked with more amazement
than anger (husbands are always supposed to consult their wives on
major projects such as these and, if the husband doesn't, the wife will
never forget it.)
"Remember when those electricians were over last month?" Rod
asked.
"Yes, they were fixing the wiring in the den," Georgette said while
keeping her eyes transfixed upon the opening platform.
"That's what YOU think!" Rod exclaimed as he remembered exactly why he
was panicking and headed back toward the shopping cart to reload
it.
The rumbling soon stopped and the concrete platform was completely
open. The kids were trying as hard as their little fingers could to get
the glass door to slide open (despite the fact that they were pulling
it in the wrong direction, and the door was locked) to explore this new
place under the patio. However, Georgette kept close watch and made
sure her children weren't given the possibility of escape.
When Rod finished filling up the shopping cart (which took twelve
seconds flat) he swiftly pushed it to the glass door where Georgette
remained staring at the cavern.
"Open the door, honey!" Rod yelled. Georgette immediately obeyed trying
to keep the kids inside the house, but the little boy broke free from
her grasp.
Rod went into the chamber where he flipped a light switch revealing a
shiny, white space pod (which remarkably resembled a pea due to the
little crevices embedded into it) with two doors, a huge window, and
everything else that one can expect from a space pod. Rod carefully
inched the shopping cart down a narrow, concrete staircase. He brought
the cart to the back of the vehicle, pushed a button, where a hatch
opened that looked remarkably similar to that of the trunk of a car.
The little boy was closely examining the space vessel, letting his hand
run around it and said, "Hey daddy, this is neat-o!"
At that point, the little girl couldn't contain herself and managed to
break free from her mother's grasp. She ran out the glass door, trotted
down the staircase, and began examining the pod with her brother. Rod
was rapidly hurling the cans into the trunk as Georgette inched
step-by-step down the narrow staircase into the pod garage. When she
reached the bottom, she looked all around realizing that she was really
in a very large tunnel.
"What is this place?" Georgette asked as she stood gazing throughout
the tunnel.
"It's the storm drain." Rod said as he continued to frantically place
the cans in the trunk. Georgette then realized that all this had
probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"You know, when this is all over, you're in big trouble, mister,"
Georgette yelled as Rod put the last of the cans inside the trunk. Rod
pretended not to hear as he quickly shut the trunk and opened the
passenger's door. He grabbed his daughter, who was in convenient reach
at the time, put her in a seat and buckled her down with a heavy-duty
seat belt. He did the same thing with his son, who tried to run away at
first, but his father was too quick for him.
"Get in honey!" Rod yelled as he beckoned Georgette to come over and
get into the passenger's seat. Even though it only took ten seconds for
Georgette to get into the pod, Rod was all ready in the driver's seat,
buckled down, and holding the steering wheel. "C'mon honey, shut the
door and put on your seat belt!"
"I would if I could, Rod, but-Ah, here it is," Georgette said as she
grabbed the door handle and slammed it shut. "Okay. This seat belt
thing-I have no clue!" she said.
Rod, with a rather disgusted look on his face, unbuckled himself to
proceed to strap his wife in. The kids were giddy, laughing in the back
seat.
"There you go, Honey Dear," Rod said as he patted his wife's seat belt
with satisfaction and then began tinkering with his own. After five and
a half seconds, Rod was ready for action.
"Ready kids?" Rod yelled as he looked through the rearview mirror (did
you know that space pods have rearview mirrors?) and both of the
children rapidly shook their heads up and down to each extreme. "Here
we go!" Rod pressed a large red button to the right of the steering
wheel. Without hesitation, the space pod jolted from its restful
position and began racing wildly down the tunnel. The tunnel wasn't a
straight one either. It was full of turns, drops, rises, and Georgette
would later claim that there were also a couple of loops. In essence,
this was a 300-mile per hour roller coaster.
The kids and Rod were screaming with excitement as Georgette screamed
in fear. Pretty soon, they saw a light. It quickly approached and the
white space pod ended up shooting vertically out of the earth. Rod
quickly turned on the thrusts allowing the space pod to reach an
astounding 7,300 miles per second. Everybody's head was glued to the
seats as the space vessel shot through the sky at this incredible
speed. And before you could say "Halle Berry has hairy legs," they
exited the atmosphere and emerged into the frozen dark outer space
brilliantly sprinkled with bright, white stars in exactly the right
places.
"Wheeeweeeee!" Rod exclaimed with excitement. He turned toward his wife
and said, "That certainly isn't like the route we take to your mother's
house, that's for sure! And it didn't have such a tragic conclusion!"
The kids in the back seat were panting, exhilarated from the trip.
Georgette was wheezing, letting out an unusual high-pitched sound with
every breath.
"How about a little background music?" Rod asked with a rather festive
tone. Rod turned to the intergalactic radio waves and listened to a
station that plays only Latino-sounding muzak. Rod moved his arms and
snapped his fingers in unison with the tempo trying to ignore his
wife's distress.
Georgette rested her head on her hand and asked, "Rod, where are we
going?"
"We're headed for Alpha Centuari, on the Earth Colony of Schmalacky - I
hear it's paradise there!" Rod excitedly informed while shooting both
of his arms in the air.
"Why so far away?" Georgette asked.
"It's the furthest away from the explosions, dear," Rod said, still
wanting to pay closer attention to the music.
"And how long will it take us to get there?" Georgette asked.
"Ohhhh&;#8230;..," Rod looked at his wristwatch, "about 1,898
days."
"1,898 days!" Georgette screamed "How many years is that?!"
"Uhhh &;#8230; five &;#8230;&;#8230; maybe," Rod said staring
out the window avoiding all eye contact with his wife.
"Five years!" Georgette shouted in disbelief. "Five years! Rod, can't
you turn around and head for Pluto or something?"
"Well, Honey Dear," Rod said, the tone of his voice dramatically
changed to resemble that of an intellectual professor's. "If I wanted
to go to Pluto, I should have launched at a completely different angle.
You see, we're headed in the wrong direction; it's too late." Rod was
overcome with grief for a minute listening to his wife's sobbing after
he informed her of this terrible news, but he soon resumed dancing to
the muzak.
And then, all of a sudden, some dork interrupted the merry
beat&;#8230;
"Here, live from Washington, the president of Earth, President John
Norris." There was a brief pause. "My fellow Earthlings, what I have to
tell you will shock you but&;#8230;"
"See, it's a good thing we got out of there when we did!" Rod
interrupted, immediately being shushed by his wife, who quit crying and
instead was intently listening.
"&;#8230;will certainly rid the world of its current crisis. The
Mammoth Space Torpedoes that were reportedly spotted on Peridian soil
earlier today are actually newly erected snack food factories. I hope
this misunderstanding didn't cause too much distress to Peridia and to
the Earthling people. Good day and God bless." With that, the muzak
started up again. Georgette's head turned to her husband and her eyes
narrowed wrathfully. Rod returned the look with a confused
expression.
"Well, how was I supposed to know they were snack food factories?" Rod
asked as he shrugged his shoulders. Georgette stared into his eyes for
a couple seconds, they narrowed even more. Then she swiftly smacked the
back of Rod's skull with her fast-moving palms.
"I hope that hurt," she said.
