Short Story (Please dont sue)

Ivan

I've been sitting here for hours trying to figure out how to start
this story. I know it should be compelling, interesting, use a lot of buzzwords that people will associate with intelligence and as a direct result equate me with intelligence.


At least that’s how I think it works.

No, things are rarely that simple.

This story, at least in the most part contains the truth to the best of my recollection. That is, there are parts where I cannot say if they are true or not because, well I just wasn’t there and so I'm recounting them from other People’s tales. So despite my attempts to keep them truthful, well you know how people can be, trying to make themselves seem more intelligent and humorous.

Now, this tale is of how I saved the Earth. Of course you’re sitting there thinking, wait a minute, I never heard of this. But then, when was the last time you ever heard of someone saving the earth? Think about it. With a planet so large, surely its in peril very often. So in this particular instance it was up to me. Yeah, sure you’re thinking, right. Truth. In fact at this point you've probably stopped reading gone home to wash your dog and
feed your hair. Wow, it’s a good thing no one is reading this.

And yes I know, I'm being deliberately stupid at this point trying to get cheap giggles, can you blame me, I'm not very good at this whole English thing, I'm a boy of science.


I'm one of those reasonably smart kids who likes to poke everything with a screw driver to see if it ticks, and if it doesn’t - find out A) why it doesn’t, and what I have to do to make it tick. Its really a lot of fun but can get you in a lot of trouble. I'd highly recommend it to anyone. It was in keeping with this tradition that I mistakeningly misused my dads favourite after shave as a small detonator for my moms hair-dryer, or perhaps
it was the other way around; the net result was the same so I really wasn’t bothered in either case.

Well my parents were so mad (as you would be) that they made me stay at home while they and my sister went to the cinema. My sister, Sinead, made a point of sticking her tongue out at me. Its one of her small pleasures in life (she's 9).


Since I'm not old enough to baby-sit myself (I'm 14) I was "assigned" a baby-sitter. Now by assigned I mean, my parents grabbed the first willing individual who met their checklist. Of course, their check list consisted of:

2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, 2 eyes, 2 ears and well that could be pretty much anyone.

In this instance it was to be my next-door neighbour, Carol. She's 18. In some circles she's considered extremely good to look at but I'm a boy of science so I'd class her as a 9.89 on a scale of
1-10.

Anyway, she arrived around 5.30, and happily sat in the sitting room as my parents rushed about like those headless chickens you keep hearing everyone talk about. When my parents left, I gasped a sigh of relief and raced into your the sitting room hoping she wouldn’t be aware of my "minor discretions",
it seemed as though she was, as she made it clear I wasn’t to leave my room.

This was made even more evident as she dragged me, ear lobe first, to my bed room and told me - If I left I would be disembowelled. I'd never tried disembowelment, but I'm told it’s really not worth the effort so I settled in for an evening of boredom. I lay down on my bed trying to read one of my favourite Spiderman comics when I must have finally drifted to sleep.

When I finally re-awoke it was to, what I can only describe as, a loud buzzing sound, not unlike the sound a chain saw makes when it tries to cut concrete and fails with a terrible wail. I jumped. Startled, I thought maybe we were being robbed. I leapt under my bed and reached for my last gadget. A high-powered baseball gun. It’s quite simple really, all that’s involved is taking the engine of a lawnmower or vacuum cleaner, minimising it slightly attaching a lengthy tube (as long as your able to carry) filling it with baseballs and voila. Of course this was another of my inventions for which I was severely punished, but only after I
successfully managed to terminate two kitchen windows with severe prejudice.

Anyway, I executed a quick roll along the ground like I've seen spiderman do countless times and raised my baseball gun and started the engine. The noise seemed to draw some attention as I heard the chain saw like noise turn into a much softer noise, sort of like a blender thats blending a big rock (don’t ask how I know).


Along with this change of sound, the noise seemed to change direction and began moving further away from me. I quickly sprang to my feet and opened the door expecting to find a horribly mutilated baby-sitter. Imagine my surprise when I saw a rather large elliptical hole in my parents’ roof. What I can only assume was one of Emily's shoes and a note, that looked like it had been written by a slug that'd had a little too much to drink.

I gazed at the note for what seemed like thirty minutes before even reading it. I stated in big Green letters: We have your leader, if your planet does not surrender within 3 earth hours we shall execute her and then begin boiling your planets seas from orbit.

I was utterly shocked. Here was this, seemingly ridiculous note, written by a seemingly drunk slug informing me of the earth’s demise and my baby-sitter's capture. Added to this the hole in my parents roof, and I knew, I am so going to get blamed for this.


I was determined to act. It was clear from the note that I wasn’t dealing with the most intelligent group of inter-galactic scum as they'd captured my baby-sitter thinking she was the leader of earth. Also, it appeared they were in orbit around earth, waiting for the 3 hours to elapse to vaporise earth.

It was simple. All I needed was a small fusion powered engine powerful enough to escape earths gravity. I'd been working on one for my school science project, due next month. I raced into my room and pulled it off my work desk and ran outside to my shed.

I quickly designed the schematics for my orbital exit/entry vehicle. With a little effort I managed to shape the spare titanium plating from my last science project into a crude shell for my space ship. I spent the next forty minutes assembling the inner intricacies of my ship and of course I included the inertial stabilisers. In fact I got so caught up in the whole project that I got slightly ahead of myself and included some totally unnecessary "extras". I felt no space-ship was complete without a cloaking device, the quantum tyre torpedoes practically built themselves. And my dad’s new stereo system with dolby 5.1 found, a perfect home just behind the main seat.

It wasn’t long before I had made the penultimate alterations to my latest creation when a bright light shone almost directly overhead. It seemed my adversaries were getting restless and had begun their count down a little early. I hadn’t much time so I leapt into the cockpit of my ship and began my own countdown. After a scarily short checklist I started the engines and blasted off.


When I punched through the atmosphere I really was dealt a nasty shock. What lay before me could only be described as a giant teletubby-like spaceship. I always told my sister they were beings of pure evil. It was only now that I realised how true my own words were.

I activated my orbital thrusters to decelerate myself and pulled in alongside the teletubby ship. The TV in its stomach appeared to be a docking bay so I aimed for that. As I approached, my xentron scanner beeped viciously. I knew I had designed it, only I had no idea what it did or what the beeping meant so I just ignored it.

A few seconds later I could see the object that my xentron scanner was designed to detect. The extremely large missile veered directly for me as I engaged my emergency thrusters and attempted to avoid a direct hit. As I did the missile detonated right behind me knocking me off course and into a flat spin.

After playing Mig 29F for 137 consecutive hours on the snes I am one of only 14 people in the world capable of pulling out of an inverse flat spin while hurtling towards an oversized teletubby spaceship. As I just pulled out of the spin I engaged my landing gear and seamlessly landed inside the Teletubby ship's docking ring. A red siren flashed overhead and a ring of seven or eight teletubby creatures formed around my ship. I immediately grabbed my laser pistol and ducked for cover under the dashboard. It seemed like hours before a large head became visible from my position gazing into the cockpit. His or her ugly features became more apparent as their thick, sticky breath fogged up my window. I slammed the emergency open cockpit
button, catching the beast by surprise. The cockpit window slammed open at incredible speed slamming the creature to the ground and leaving it by human standards, unconscious.


Its six friends, alerted by their friend’s quick downfall, seemed to become even more determined to beat me once or twice with their handbags. As I looked over the edge of my cockpit several of them also seemed to breath in deeply as they grew an extra inch or two. They began chattering to each other in some inaudible grunts and clicks. I doubt I would have understood what they were saying if I could have heard them. All of a sudden tubby number six, I had named him Ted, tried to climb up the rear of my ship.

I jumped onto the seat of my cockpit and fired a shot at Ted's head. The laser beam caught Ted off guard and he took a direct hit to the head. The laser pistols low setting merely stunned the poor creature but known side affects from my pistol have been acute hair loss and temporary blindness, neither of which were current concerns for Ted as he fell limply to the ground.

Ivan

Continued (First time ever my post is too long)

His handbag fell from his hand and fired off an energy ring that ricocheted off my ships hull and hit his nearby friend, Egor. Egor too went down, a look of sheer dislike for Ted still engraved on his face as his head thumped the ground painfully.

I made a quick dash for the large door to the left of my ship. The door automatically opened as I approached, causing me to grin remembering my earlier thought about their intelligence. As I was greeted by several new members of the teletubby cast, my smirk however, quickly faded. I dodged left into another hallway and continued to race on for several seconds. As I slowed to an almost walk I noticed some laser bars on the entrances of each
room on either side of me. There was a button marked with the universal symbol for on/off. I flipped the switch to off and ran to each cell expecting to find my baby-sitter. To my relief and to this stories benefit I found her eating some strange looking biscuits and crying uncontrollably.

When she saw me she nearly screamed with surprise. I winked coolly and spouted my attempt at a charming "I'm here to save you now come with me line". As soon as she stopped laughing she picked herself off the floor and leaned on my shoulder as we ran down the hall. When we got to the junction between the jail area and the corridor to the docking area we were met by several bigger looking teletubbys. Amongst them were Ted and Egor. Ted seemed to have a rather large bruise on his forehead.


When they saw us they quickly raised their hand bags in an attempt to zap us.

My lightning reflexes, developed from years of playing computer games allowed me to duck to the left while also pulling Emily after me and forcing her to the ground. As the hand bags fired Emily and I were already running down the adjacent hallway in an attempt to enter the docking area from another direction.


After travelling for a little over 3 minutes another loud siren began to ring and a blue light began flashing overhead. A strange computerized voice began emanating from the walls. The voice sounded first in the strange grunting and clicking tones I had heard earlier and then again in English. The English
version stated how I had already been discovered attempting to rescue my planets leader and as retaliation the seas of "Eat" would now be vaporised. As soon as I got over my hearty chuckle I continued on down the corridor to a door guarded by two stereotypical teletubby guards. After quickly disposing of both of them I peeked inside the room they were guarding. The first thing I noticed was the large electron laser in the corridor of the room. The second thing I noticed was the other guard in the opposite corner of the room. Emily seemed to have overcome her shock after her capture as she jumped almost out of nowhere, across the room at the poor guard. No one was more surprised than me as she began to punch him repeatedly until he fell to the ground grunting and clicking like a baby making grunting and clicking noises.

After I overcame my shock, awe and humour I realised the ironic twist fate had played on me. I analysed the buttons for the laser until I realised which button was the "overload laser resulting in a cataclysmic reaction which would destroy the ship" button. After several seconds of careful thinking I pushed the button and ran as quickly as I could. After several seconds I looked back to find Emily still standing, panting heavily. It didn’t take her long more to realise what I'd done and she quickly followed me.

When we got back to the docking area for the second time there were significantly less guards this time and we easily made it back on board my ship. Just in time to take off and witness the fireworks from far away.

After my personal satisfaction was complete I landed the ship beside my parents house and encouraged Emily that she was perfectly safe and could leave the ship.


And so, that’s the story of how I saved the planet Earth and also as an interesting side note, it’s how I got grounded for 6 months.

Loosely based on a story written by me when I was in 4th class which was loosely based on the commander keen story.

Although not as good as either story was, I still had fun writing it.

Praetorian

That was well put together and hilarious Ivan, fair play to you! It was far better than the Command Keen version!

I can't wait to read your next story!!

Well done

CuLT

After playing Mig 29F for 137 consecutive hours on the snes I am one of only 14 people in the world capable of pulling out of an inverse flat spin while hurtling towards an oversized teletubby spaceship.

No one was more surprised than me as she began to punch him repeatedly until he fell to the ground grunting and clicking like a baby making grunting and clicking noises.

Brilliant . This is the reason there is an english forum.


plus the other things.. but mostly this.

[edit]/moron closes his tags

Ivan

Seriously?

Ye dont think its well... crap?

Its just a first draft* and I was afraid that alot of it sucked.

As for more stories, I wouldnt hold my breath.

Just dont have the time anymore.

* by first draft I actually mean I wrote it in one sitting and never plan on changing it at all.

Amz

Corega asked me last week if the English forum could host short story submissions to which it was agreed yes, looks like you anticipated this in some way.

Looking forward to reading Corega's submission up here soon!

CuLT

Mmm, I'm a big fan of writing too, as is Prae (from some of his initial posts on the forum), hopefully we can make this a regular thing .

Amz

I'm hoping it will become a popular feature of the forum.

Ivan

Originally posted by Amz
Corega asked me last week if the English forum could host short story submissions to which it was agreed yes, looks like you anticipated this in some way.

Looking forward to reading Corega's submission up here soon!

Uh no actually. I wasnt sure how it was going to be received, just posted it up anyway and hoped I wouldnt get banned/sued.

Amz

I was actually joking about you anticipating it.

Ivan

Oh.

seamus

I've spent far too long reading posts on boards and reading serious books, it took me a little while to get back into the "not-so-serious-enjoyable-fiction" mode, but I did really enjoy it.

I used to love reading and writing stories just like this when I was younger, but the serious stuff kind of made it take the back seat.

Your little piece rekindled some good memories (and it's a good story too )

Plyd.