November 30, 2002 4:21 PM Joe Coluccio

Dreams of Extraterrestrials – Version 1.0.0.0

Farmer Johnstone and his wife Betsy, who first contacted the Far Fumbling Fab from Eridani False Sun Seven said, “Well, hell, I just naturly assumed they was beaners from the border crossing so I put ‘em to work pickin’ peaches.”
“They did have a kinda cunning silvery glint in their eyes, which was as many colored as the rainbow in a wet sky” said Betsy, “Their skin was real scaly, but it was packed in some kind of sardiny grease. I told Farmer he should pay ‘em a little more than minimum, because workers is so hard to find at the harvest time. We let ‘em set up housekeepin’ in the far shed.”
“ ’Magine my surprise,” continued Farmer Johnstone, “when I go out to the fields at the end of the week and find that they just shucked their skins! Left them shinin’ in the sun. I was abandoned at high crop with but a couple dozen baskets on the back of the tractor pull and most of the fruit in them with what looked like molding greased up spittle covering the fresh fuzz. Them immigrants was gone like a cool breeze through The Devil’s Valley. And didn’t never come back!”

Xortle chortled. Glad to be unclad. Planet fall and deploy was an arduous task. First contact was almost never fruitful. Several worlds back he had communed for almost two heavy rotation days with what essentially turned out to be as sentient as a blaskit stuffed with alklazone.
The vegetation guardians seemed to have a pleasant demeanor as well as an exceedingly dull wit, but some small sense of purpose. The soft short one with prominent features that appeared to be bound heavy hanging flesh sacks of some dubious biological determination was moved to befriend them. A small bowl of viscous bubbling swampy meat was offered to the Highest Fab who hesitated and then fairly excorporated on the spot. Xortle diplomatically rushed forward so that no gap of being could be perceived. Intelligence is, sighed Xortle, as sentience does.
Summer seed day and the Fab diminished, multirated, then solemnly as was custom moved forward with spreading entropy toward a prominent beaming seat of intelligence which bustled like a hard cardace at the fleming nexus.

Xortle hummed. There was all manner of disruption, molecular, mechanical and metaphysical. Communicative messaging impinged with a brutal gross vengeance. These planetary beings marched on solid ribbons of tar macadam holding dark antannaed contrivances that passed oral squawk to aural squeak, pinching low freq to ever higher modulated signals disposed directly into the atmosphere . Xortle and the Fab were stunned at the prodigious waste. They rode buffeted and confused on a hot shot of boisterous bumptious carrier wave. They bored in. Told stories. Laid the lay. Finally they grew fat, sated and sticky sick of their sullied sailing.

“I understand that you city boys had some kind of trouble.” said Farmer Johnstone.
“Yes,” said Betsy, his wife, “we couldn’t get the cable for about three months. Farmer called and complained but all he got was some whining from the telephone clerk. And, Lord, that terrible high pitched static over the phones was enough to make your ears split. I had to stop payment on the party line.”
“You think it had something to do with them pilgrims to which we showed a kindness?” Farmer scratched the back of his hot rude neck.
“I guess they did come about the time the troubles started.” said Betsy, “The night after those flashes lighted the flanks of Old Hiney’s Mountain.”
“Welp,” said Farmer Johnstone, “your sure welcome to take a peek down to the orchard. You won’t find much though. Had to hire a bunch of no goods and they stripped us blind. The woods is pretty trampled up and full of soup cans.”

Xortle opined. The entire rest of the Fab had dissipated in the aether. He was one of the unlucky ones. The Fab would now be a part of the fabric of the world wide nettled and gnostic grid. It might take a micrum, a sweepstage or longer, but eventually the meaning would be made clear. Communications Interspecies would take place. All you can do is plant the stories sometimes.

“Farmer,” said Betsy one night in the coolness, “do you think our children will have rainbow eyes?”
“Yep,” he said, “they just might.”

Xortle flosticated.