Message from the Author: I hope you enjoy this story as much as I am enjoying writing it. More Episodes to come. Stand by for Chapter 2!!! Now, without further adieu...

EPISODE 1 – A LITTLE EXPOSITION AND MINTAKA BATTLE FLEETS 101

by Robert J. Morris

Cruise Steurung was old.

He was also very young once but that comes later in the story, so we will definitely get into all of that fun stuff. This old fella bounced around throughout his uneventful life experiencing things and occasional moments in a vast ocean of uneventful happenings, speckled with oddly and exceptionally profound albeit vary rare and brief glimpses of success. Despite those very rare quasars of victory, he was mostly ignored and not liked very much.

During Cruise’s life he had always missed the boat on very specific and uneventful key moments. Sometimes he would celebrate minor successes that allowed him to move up a few notches in prosperity however largely major steps would result in Cruise metaphorically tripping on the staircase and would be left holding a wasted vision of his future-to-be. He would then revert back to what he did best, feeling sorry for himself and drinking at the local pub.

Our relatively unrecognized hero simply got old through the obviously entropic passage of time with a general lack of inspiration. Scratch that.

At the local pub he was inspired. Well, sort of. Her name was Jada. Jada Malarky. The bartender at ‘The Hangnail Pub and Saloon”. During the last 40 years of Cruise’s uneventful and relatively unpopular career he found himself mesmerized by this amazonian, er sorry, amazing woman, which I would suppose brings us into the story of Cruise’s unpopular time-line. Well, the timeline was rather popular, however, in this particular timeline, Cruise was not, and that’s not to say that Jada’s story isn’t equally as un-interesting, it’s just not the focus of our disinterest.

Well. Not at the moment anyway.

Besides all of that, there will be 187 other variations of her to talk about later in the story.

So. Where do we start in this story? Before you lose absolute interest, keep in mind that there are many t’s to cross and several i’s to dot; also a couple of Pi’s to resolve. Not to say that this tale isn’t dramatic. Before you go and consider Cruise’s life story lack-luster, remember that our could-be-would-be-should-be hero of our tale did in fact shatter the space time continuum into 187 parallel dimensions. More on that later.

Right. Where was I?

Yes, Cruise.

Mr. Steurung was a quantum physicist. Mostly unrecognized but managed to profess at a college of applied arts and technology. He was also a decent writer and had a few books under his belt, which were relatively unpopular except in the academic circles where he was ostracized by smart asses and ridiculed by assholes and not necessarily in that order. This was considered normal activity in the scientific community as several theories would be hypothesized and written into a paper or journal. Once submitted (regardless of a theory’s feasibility) those ‘cool kids’ in the community who managed to kiss enough ass to obtain signatures from the more popular scientists, would in turn get other less popular scientists to also sign off on these papers and journals. Often, more often than not, without even being read. Reading them was considered inconsiderate.

Cruise had submitted many journals and papers having very few of them recognized for their intellectual prowess and practical use for application. Unfortunately, the consideration council in charge of considering his papers always very inconsiderately read them. His work was then considered, “flighty” and rather “obviously impossible” by the consideration council as they didn’t read much anyway and considered it a waste of their time.

Cruise had several theories of quantum physics and energy transfers between entangled entities which he felt he could never test for, as there was this rival scientist who always managed to take the grant money in the categories that he himself happened to apply for. He despised this man. Since highschool, Max Perturbe was always there, getting the girl, gaining popularity, winning the science fair and the pie eating contest. Every year Cruise would gear up for an impossible victory as Max Perturbe was always just a fair bit better, more handsome, had a wider attention span and was also more fun at parties. He was also a fake ginger.

It’s fair to end the story here and say it just doesn’t look good for Cruise.

The End…

…But that would not be fair to you my dear reader. Let’s continue with Cruise’s ability to cope with his failures.

At every turn of a loss Cruise would end up at the pub to celebrate his defeats. Actually, Cruise would also go to the pub to celebrate his victories, all three of them. In fact when it came to being indiscriminate of his actions he didn’t discriminate at all. He actually had the most unclever ulterior motivation. Jada Malarky.

It was all about Jada. She was a silly girl and it was very obvious to everyone who frequented the Hangnail that Cruise was retard-balls smitten by her, and she fed his ego like a Roman lion in a gladiator pit. Half his problem if any, was her, just giving him enough to keep coming back and spending his hard earned time. He had much more of it than money which he also spent as fast as he earned.

So that wasn’t working out for him in his final days in this time-line.

Also, before we kick start into the meat and potatoes, I must also make mention of Simon. Simon Seighs. It sounds ridiculous and a touch cliché, but yes, Simon Seighs. Let it be known that he did in fact name himself, which is a rather interesting story in and of itself. The reason I must make mention of him is because he is a crash landed being from a planet in the Mintaka star system, located in the Orion’s Belt constellation. He is also responsible for eventually assisting an unaware Cruise in finding out his purpose.

One quiet afternoon while forward scouting for a large Earthbound Mintaka battle fleet, staged somewhere on the outskirts of the Andromeda Galaxy awaiting his progress reports and eventual jump co-ordinates, Simon was in his cloaky space ship. The unique craft that he operated was cloaked and sitting very still and quiet in Earth’s L1 Lagrange point, where the gravity of the sun and the earth overlap and cancel each other out. Simon’s ship was so still and so quiet that he himself had in fact fallen asleep when suddenly a horribly large piece of human-made space junk, named SOHO had clipped the side of Simon’s spacecraft. It damaged his ship’s auto pilot while Simon slept like a baby and the spacecraft slowly listed toward the annoyingly blue Earth.

Despite what they say about religion and politics. I will need to speak on both to give the reader some insight to the space politics surrounding our star system. You seriously need to know why a Mintaka Battle Fleet is being rallied to invade Earth.

Here is the condensed version…

Millions upon millions of years ago, there was the great Mintaka Empire.

Mintaka is a star system located in the Orion Belt and is a very very old system. Also called Delta Orionis by the Humans on Earth, it’s the origin point of most humanoid life and is responsible for seeding planets with their crazy biological inventions. They have potentially had an impact on almost every resource in the Milky Way galaxy, which is most likely the reason they moved to the Andromeda galaxy. It is mostly believed that they are mostly stuck there. It is likely they do not have the intergalactic drive necessary for moving large fleets. It is also possible that they may have been overrun by one of their very own inventions.

Let me explain.

Every once in awhile their inventions come back to bite them in the proverbial bum. One of these inventions were the various races of beings from the Zeta Reticuli system which were classified as possibly the second worst and most evil collection of lifeforms that ever existed. After a horrible genocide was committed by the Zeta Reticulans in order to wipe out the Alpha Centaurians on Alpha Centauri, most luckily several Alpha Centauri refugees managed to escape the genocidal Zeta Reticulans in their space life rafts and wandered space for many thousands of years in cryogenic sleep. They eventually found Earth and weren’t very fond of the large and often bitey reptiles that occupied the surface. Mars seemed like the ‘go-to’ option for them.

After getting settled in on their new planet they soon found out that they weren’t welcome there as the locals were engaged in a space battle of their own. So once again, the Alpha Centauri had to relocate but didn’t get very far as their largest space ship had broken down in Earth’s orbit. Their second largest ship was damaged in an attempt to flee the solar system and crashed on Earth in a massive nuclear-fission explosion that subsequently wiped out the dinosaurs.

The Alpha Centauri decided that since there were no longer a dominant species on Earth they could now begin to populate the annoyingly blue planet and claim squatter rights on this new frontier they aptly named Earth. Little did they know the Mintaka had a strict contract in place to farm dinosaurs for another client race elsewhere in the galaxy. Word got around very slowly about this non-fulfillment as the client race was actually destroyed by the Zeta Reticulans in an unrelated conflict, and the alpha centauri flourished on their new planet Earth and were mostly left alone.

Fast forward to 1996. The Mintakans are now able to detect our outbound transmissions and wondered what happened to the dinosaurs here as they were sincerely positive that a mammalian bipedal creature could surely not survive on such a hostile planet. Fearing the worst, several forward scouts were sent to monitor the planet and decide whether or not a planetary reset was necessary.

After reviewing television shows and periodicals, news events and updates regarding human space exploration, the Mintakans decided that since they had not heard from their clients that they would not proceed with a reset and instead monitor our growth. A sentient society of these humans may be far more valuable a commodity, surely.

That was until a 1990’s television shows made it to their closest communications relay post. A television show called ‘Full House’ was intercepted, re-broadcast to other research stations, reviewed for well over a decade and before the now very nervous Mintakans ordered to no longer monitor these Humans. They became intent on destroying what they considered to be the first most evil collection of lifeforms that ever existed. The Mintaka assembled a long range battle fleet and sent their best interstellar pilot as a forward scout to secure the rendezvous point for a warp jump point for the fleet. Enter Simon Seighs. The forward stealthy battle scout who’s spacecraft just collided with Earth’s SOHO satellite.

With all of the racket that ensued. The colliding, the beeping, the warning sounds and emergency sirens… Simon eventually woke up to find his ship hurtling through the upper earth ionosphere, tumbling is it went toward the annoyingly blue Pacific ocean. Upon waking up he very cleverly manipulated luck into his favor and drove the stealthy vessel through Earth’s atmosphere and crash landed his ship somewhere near the Eureka Beach boat marina in California. His eyes were closed the entire time. Unfortunately, when he had been found washing up on the beach, doctors determined that Simon had in fact sustained brain damage and was immediately hospitalized. Though nobody could identify the man, they treated him as a homeless case requiring rehabilitation in order for him to regain sense of self. This comes with its own case of irony as he does become entangled with his other selves, multi-dimensionally speaking, but we’ll discuss this much later.

During his rehabilitation he decided to name himself after his favorite children’s game which he very cleverly played with the nurses. The nurses liked him but often found him distracted and otherwise out to lunch. However they did find it disturbing how well he could solve logic puzzles and analyze various types of systems which he often also referred to as games. Among his favorite systems to analyze were the frequency of visitations by family members of the other patients and his ability to predict when such visitations were going to take place. His second favorite game was guessing the color of nurses’ undergarments based on the smell of the synthetic dyes contained within and found it even more entertaining to challenge himself at a distance from the subject. This was possibly one of the more disturbing games he was clever at. It was also cause for some mystery and even serious controversy amongst the staff. His constant mentioning however of an upcoming alien invasion from the planet Mintaka got him sedated on a very regular basis. We shall go into much more detail about Simon, a little later.

Finally, since no story is complete without an antagonist, we have been sure to incorporate into the story at least one secret society, one evil alien race, one rival scientist, one-hundred-and-eighty-eight parallel worlds, one heavily damaged multi-verse, ormus, and a nosy next door neighbor (sometimes running around with pointy objects).

So without any further adieu, let’s start off our story of Cruise in a place where he was often found frustrated, impotent and completely at a loss. Yes, that’s right. His laboratory.

Cruise stared at his crumpled up napkin notes with one eye. He held his head cupped in one hand, supported by his elbow on the desk. He had mild spins from the number of pints he had consumed that night on an empty stomach. Cruise thought maybe if he tilted his head and supported his head it may counter the directionality of his spins. Didn’t work last night either. One of his napkin notes read, “Read Desk Notes in Top Drawer – undecipherable garble…ending in a wavy trailing off ink line”. It appeared that he had fallen asleep while writing this note to himself

“Top drawer of what?” he inquired to himself under his beer breath, trying to piece together last night’s black out, during this night’s black out.

Cruise took a glance around the room. Now able to use both eyes again to see at a slight distance he scanned all of the storage type devices that contained a top drawer of some kind and wondered to himself what the hell kind of scavenger hunt he put himself on this time.

“I wonder what the hell kind of scavenger hunt I put myself on this time,” he muttered aloud.

And what a scavenger hunt it really would be, because what Cruise is failing to remember is why he wrote a reminder note in the first place. Placing his final drink of the previous night on his napkin note however created a perfectly rounded blotch of indecipherable garble ending with a wavy trailing pen line which would ultimately lead him to losing all motivation to finding out what it referred to, seeing as every major piece of furniture in the house had some sort of drawer located near or around the top of itself.

Admitting defeat and beginning to nod out, he began to grumble.

“I‘m done. Goodnight, shit-hole.”he seemed to say to his apartment and the world, as he looked around, very, very slowly.

“I was supposed to… hmm.. something…”

His eyelids grew very heavy and …….

“… what drawer was I talking about? … “

and……. wait for it …….

Out cold he went.

His body went limp in his vintage Victorian wood and leather desk chair which of itself is funny, because he, on some occasions would slide out of his chair when he wore polyester pants and wake up in a puddle on his floor. More correct to say that he was the puddle.

Fortunately he did not wear polyester on this occasion and woke up with the indents of keyboard buttons imprinted on his forehead after his lovely night’s rest in his lab. He looked deeply into the muted and dim reflection of himself in the computer monitor. He was quite sad. Every day he had to find the strength to do it all again for another twenty-four hour period and see if it would garner any sort of different result. Results are important, different results are better. One can troubleshoot a problem by eliminating unrelated factors much in the same way altering variables manipulate the result-sets in a controlled environment. Control was Mr. Steuring’s problem. This is also not without its sense of irony.

As he stared back at the infinite void of dark guilty matters of his past in the computer monitor.

TWAAAYNE TWAAAAYNE TWAAAAYNE TWAAAAYNE

A very loud and annoying reminder alarm went off on his pocket organizer. The pocket organizer was the rage of the 90’s. Amazing technology allowing you to keep important scheduled events and phone numbers, addresses and several kilobytes of data and programs in your pocket. It was almost like having a computer in your hand. It was a great decade of wonder.

“Ohhhh…right. Morning class today stupid, “ Cruise said out loud to himself. He grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen that was sitting in a handy spot next to his computer monitor. Dumping out the last two pills into his hand, he popped them into the back of his throat and washed them down with the remainder of last night’s final bottle of the least most expensive cervesa he could find across from the bar at the liquor store.

“Breakfast of champs,” at that, as if on que, he started coughing horribly as he choked on the very words he muttered under his breath, He clears his throat before telling the universe, “Let’s get this damn day started.”

He huffed a bit and got out of his Victorian desk chair. He began to strip off his clothing, slowly losing garments; slowly making his way to the bathroom. Slowly getting the shower water running. Pretty much every action was performed slowly. It was a comfortable pace for whatever time in the morning on this day in 1996. He leaned on the wall of his shower stall with his forehead against his forearm. A decent position that allows the water to run full blast over the top of your headin order to wash the guilt of yesterday off one’s body. Feeling liberated by the wonder of the new day he decided to not be bothered with removing himself from the shower to urinate and simply relieved himself with not so much as a twitch.

He let out an uncomfortable sigh and started to lather up and rinse himself off.

“OKAY.”

‘Right.”

He shaved and managed not to nick himself with the blade.

“Today’s a better day already. Let’s do this like we do every-time,” Cruise said to himself in a rather moody fashion. In response, His reflection just stared back at him like he hadn’t said anything at all.

Cruise left his house to take the city bus to the college where he professed.

To be continued in Chapter 2 – Morning Class or No class at all.