Science Fiction: Drabbles and assorted babblings

Gunship Diplomacy Or: How I Learned to Stop Writing While Drunk

"We're not sorry, but the Earth has to be destroyed." said the alien spacecraft.

With those words, the Tuesday morning of every human being on Earth (and quite a few not on it) became measurably worse. It was, for example, significantly more painful than getting your arm chewed off by a pitbull named Cuddles, and slightly more agonising than having to wee in your neighbour's front garden because you got drunk again and couldn't fathom how to use a house key. (It was, overall, less painful than having to read the Da Vinci Code and pretend you liked it because you didn't want to rock the boat.)

Fortunately, the Punctilians who had shown up in Earth orbit to tell humanity this were rather patient. The general reaction of hysteria, rioting and obsessive denial were well within the reactions they expected, and thus, they waited expectantly for the furore to die down. After a few hours of nuclear threats and mildly harsh language, a human spacecraft was dispatched to the orbiting Punctilian mothership, and after a few minutes it was granted permission to dock. Most humans were surprised at the welcome, given that the aliens had just threatened to destroy the planet: the Punctilians, however, were nothing if not vain creatures. Most arrogant humans love having an audience to justify themselves to, and as luck would have it, this rule was not endemic to the Earth.

The human spacecraft, named the Please Don't Shoot, carried only one passenger: after a few perfunctory checks, the human was encased in a bubble of breathable quarantine gel and escorted to the bridge. The bridge of the Punctilian mothership was long and thin, stretching over an enormous artificial void in the ship's centre. (The Punctilians, while enormously advanced, were not very good at metonymy.) The human was seated on something that tried its best to be comfortable but didn't quite manage it, and after a short while the alien commander materialised before them, followed by two others on either side. The Punctilian species looked rather like Silly Putty naturally, but they had all shaped themselves into human forms in order to be more welcoming to the visitor. The commander had shaped itself into a human with the exact likeness of Ryan Reynolds.

It made a sound like a car trying to start up, before letting out a long, reverberating warble not entirely dissimilar to a fart.

"Sorry about that," Not-Quite-Ryan-Reynolds said a moment later. "The handwavium in my universal translator gets a bit temperamental after disuse. What's your name, if your species have those?"

"What the actual fuck?" said the human.

"Pleased to meet you, Wotthaackchullfok. I'm Very-Exacting-Standards, the commander of this spaceship. This," an alien who had taken the likeness of Seth Rogen, "is my chief secretary Expound-Rather-Gradually. Over here," it nodded to the other alien, a copy of Julia Roberts, "is his chief secretary, Conveyance-Of-Points. Now—"

"Hold on, hold on," said the human, trying and up their hands in the quarantine gel. "You turn up here, the first alien life we've ever met, and you want to destroy our planet. I think we deserve to at least know why before anything goes further."

"It's because you're annoying," replied Expound-Rather-Gradually.

"Huh?"

"Well, you're just getting in the way of our project."

"What project?"

"I'll get to that later. For now, I must—"

"I think you should get to it now." said the human, to cross their arms intimidatingly and failing again.

"Fine," huffed Expound-Rather-Gradually. "You see, several of your eons ago—"

"Okay, Grad, that's great," interjected the commander. "Con, if you would?"

"Sure," said Conveyance-of-Points. "You humans are messing with our dictionary."

"Are you fucking high?"

"Well, we are significantly elevated at this point in time, but I see how relevant that is. You see, Wotthaackchullfok—can I call you Fok?—we Punctilians have been building a dictionary for several million of your years. We call it the Reasonably Large Account of Everything Ever Said, Thought or Implied In The History Of Everness: as a species, it's our aim to catalogue everything that sounds or constitutes any sort of communication in the known universe."

"So why do you have to destroy Earth? Do you need to enslave us to help you?" asked the human, curiosity piqued despite their growing frustration with the gel.

The Punctilians made a prolonged series of hissing noises which sounded quite like a group of kettles melting on a stove, and it took a few seconds for the human to realise the aliens were making their equivalent of laughter.

"Help us?" said Conveyance-Of-Points, after things had quietened down. "We're moving entire planets to help write this dictionary, and your species still thinks wiping excretion-holes with paper is sanitary. No, Fok, we don't need your help. You see, humanity does nothing no other life in the known universe has been able to do."

"Which is?"

"You constantly make up words."

At this pronouncement, all three Punctilians shuddered violently. The human, who had a particular dislike of Ryan Reynolds, imagined the actor was being electrocuted, and found the resulting catharsis very nice indeed.

"The Doctor of Seuss!" they cried in unison.

"See-Ess Lewis!"

"He-Who-Must-Only-Sparingly-Be-Mentioned!"

"Who?" asked the human.

Very-Exacting-Standards' perfectly sculpted and stubbled chin dipped in shame. "The one you humans call...Roald Dahl."

"Roald Dahl? The celebrated children's writer?"

"You celebrate it?" roared Expound-Rather-Gradually in a very Seth Rogen-like way.

"You allow those aberrations to be read by children?" squeaked Conveyance-Of-Points in a very un-Julia-Roberts-like way.

"Your planet is further gone than we thought," Very-Exacting-Standards whispered brokenly. "We must deploy our most fearsome weapon." A brown device shaped like a teapot and with the texture of slightly melted chocolate manifested in the commander's right hand. It brought the 'spout' to its mouth and screamed an order into it:

"Release the Controversial Yet Irresistible Creature Of Ultimate Formulaic Creative Stagnation!"

It wiped Ryan Reynolds' irritatingly unmarred brow and looked forlornly at its silent comrades.

"What the hell is the Contro...thing you just launched?" the human said timidly.

"The Controversial Yet Irresistible Creature Of Ultimate Formulaic Creative Stagnation will preserve your world from being destroyed," said Expound-Rather-Gradually in a strained voice. "The survival of your world, however, comes at a terrible cost. Upon reaching the Earth, the creature will liaise with our human sleeper agents, and begin to our mind-destroying agents in the guise of what you call 'romance novels'. The 'novels' will be incredibly boring and completely unoriginal, but your species will slowly become obsessed with them, and kill anything that disagrees. Eventually, you will become a planet of gullible, braindead, trash-spouting morons. COLLEEN is our last resort."

"COLLEEN? Wait..." stuttered the human as they tried to an abbreviation that stretched disbelief to such an extent that it seemed as though a higher order of being was trying to squeeze a badly-setup joke out of it, "You don't mean...you can't possibly mean..."

"Yes," said Very-Exacting-Standards with a sigh that spoke of a heavy burden. "Colleen Hoover."