Woes of an Alien

The small orange ball of light sped away into the distant clouds, a
will o' the wisp messenger.

Eillat nodded a couple of tentacles in satisfaction and squelched away
from the probe sensor read-out. His partner, Phlytch, raised an
enquiring eye-antenna at his passage.

"Yes, it's away," Eillat peeped, the high-pitched sonics sounding
somewhat innocuous in comparison to his transparent slug-bulk. "This
will be even bigger than the Mandelbrot set."

"I hope so," Phlytch returned, reshaping his amorphous form to better
fit his rest cubicle. "We've already been here four years. These humans
are even denser than that white dwarf we almost fell foul of outside
the Marellan cluster."

"Well, what do you expect from a life form that thinks something
called 'Pop' is the epitome of musical genius?"

Phlytch's pseudopods curled in distaste. He still remembered when the
receiver rig had locked onto Radio One. In the end they had been forced
to detonate the dish rather then suffer one moment longer.

"Time for my post-prandial," Eillat said, "Keep a tentacle out for any
response."

Phlytch shrilled a reply and began to extricate his blobbiness from
the concave plasteel of his cubicle.

Meanwhile, Eillat gratefully relaxed in his own pod, allowing his form
to disintegrate a little. By The Great Squid, he would give anything to
get away from this insipid little rock called Earth. Humans were so
stupid; he found it amazing that they had managed wits enough to crawl
from the primordial swamp.

When the Captain of the Wixshaut Supreme Interstellar Unit had
commissioned Phlytch and he to infiltrate Earth airspace with the
intention of delivering highly classified information, he had been so
excited he had almost ruptured a rather delicate digestive sac. The
honour of being Wixshaut's ambassador, to be entrusted with such an
important mission, was second to none. His family had been so proud and
a particular attractive young blobette had shown quite an interest in
him. He had expected to be back exchanging bodily gel-cals with her by
now, but instead he was orbiting the same planet he had been orbiting
for what seemed like the past millennium.

No longer did he care about the honour bestowed upon him, no longer
did he care that the message he was carrying held vital relevance to
the scurrying little stick-creatures below. All he cared about was the
fact that he was still being forced to dodge a seemingly endless array
of space-junk and was several hundred light years away from his
admirer's willing psuedobulk. Indeed, if one more so-called expert came
up with any more plasma vortex theories he was probably going to bust a
macroscule.

'Forget it, Eillat,' he angrily told himself, shifting restlessly in
his pod. 'I must try to relax my cranial juices, or I'll never get any
rest.'

He tried to still the roiling. 'Calm yellow ocean, calm yellow
ocean.'

Soon he was afloat on the fragrant sulphur reaches of the Briaxis
Ocean and his rather corpulent form began to flatten slightly.

"Eillat, Eillat!"

Eillat awoke so suddenly that part of his rear section ended up flying
wildly through the air to land in a big splat on the hull.

Muttering a string of choice Wixshaut swear words he reintegrated
himself and slithered, with much irritation, into the control
room.

"What is it?" he parped angrily, sounding somewhat akin to a slightly
disgruntled hamster. "What's so important that I'm forced to part
company with myself in such a disturbing fashion?"

"I'm sorry, Eillat," Phlytch at least had the decency to drip a
little. "By the way," a tentacle perked, "you're not quite
straight."

Eillat bloomed a fetching shade of green as he noticed the
embarrassing protuberance where it shouldn't be. He quickly sucked it
into place and brought all twelve glowering eyestalks to bear on the
unfortunate Phlytch, who dripped even more under that withering
gaze.

"Well?"

"See for yourself, sir." Phlytch slid to one side to give Eillat a
clear view of the probe sensor screen.

Eillat's eyestalks swooped as one to the display.

Pictured in minute detail were three humans self-importantly strutting
around an elaborate crop circle. The beautiful Koch fractal design was
perfect in every way and Eillat felt a sense of renewed pride as he
watched the men traverse the swirls, taking various measurements and
readings.

"At last!" he warbled excitedly, watching with a great surge of
impending revelation as the three men reported to a solitary, fuming
figure on the edge of the circle. Eillat shot a pseudopod to the volume
control as they prepared to speak.

"It is our opinion, Mr Palmer, that this is the work of
hoaxers."

"What!?!" Eillat's disbelief resonated so high that his vocal
container almost ejected from a particularly uncomfortable orifice. "My
finest work! Created by foolish humans with ropes and boards?"

Sensing Eillat's slight displeasure Phlytch began to edge away, but
not fast enough.

An irate tentacle wrapped around him and forced him proboscis first
into the sensor array.

"You tell me, Phlytch, does that look like a hoax to you?"

Eillat blooted histrionically away, leaving poor Phlytch to extract
his mistreated ectoform from various slots and switches.

"This is the ultimate insult!" Eillat raged, splats flying
indiscriminately. "I can't take it any more!"

It was all finally too much for the poor, beaten-down
Wixshautan.

He had spent too long away from his home, too long in contact with
these crazy earthlings.

He cracked.

"I've done my best, who could have done more? No one, that's who! But
nooo... obviously it wasn't clear enough, obviously I underestimated
their capacity for moronity, I mean, what does it take to get through
to these idiots? Earth is about to implode, geddit? How can you be so
consistently stupid? What do I have to do, spell it out
phonetically?

"Right, that's it!"

He whirled to the gravi-panel, more splats flew as the ship broke
orbit and began to plummet through the Earth's atmosphere.

"Eillat! What are you doing?" Phlytch screeched as he finally
extracted his last tentacle, only to be immediately splashed all over
the gravi-panel by an insanely rampaging Eillat.

Eillat's rapidly disintegrating form shot to the sensor screen, his
three remaining eyestalks leering maniacally at the gaping humans
below.

"Explain this away, you exasperating little insects!"

The ship exploded in mid-air, unable to take the stress of too much
power and far too many splats.

* * *

As his disembodied cranial fluid settled gently to the ground, Eillat
heard with the vestiges of his consciousness his hard-won
epitaph.

"Nasty bit of ball lightning that."

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaghhhh!"

-The End-