Story

Ivan

I posted this before, but I have edited it slightly to fix some content/grammer problems. I figure someone should get some enjoyment out of it.


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 accidentally 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 checklist 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
our sitting room hoping Carol wouldn't be aware of my "minor indiscretions",
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 leaped under my
bed and reached for my first 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 that's blending a big rock (don't ask).

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 had had a little too much to drink.

I gazed at the note for what seemed like thirty minutes before even reading
it. It 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 was so going
to be 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 customary 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 furiously. 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.

Ivan

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.

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 more 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 own 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 also 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.\\

passive

heh, that was pretty damn cool

go ivan...

go keen..

go teletubbies?

Ivan

Well, thanks for taking the time to read it.

:ninja:

patch

That was great crack!
I suggest you expand it into a series of short books for clever kids....

RopeDrink

Not bad at all - Would definately appeal to the 'slightly' younger reader should you ever consider an attempt at converting it into book format

Either way, nice job Ivan!

McGinty

Ivan, that was very funny and a great read. Its hard to write sci-fi and yet make it easy for the reader to understand you, and you covered that angle really well. I also like the way you brought the reader into it, the story was personalised which I enjoyed. Love the tellytubbies bit and like what ropedrink suggests could be a great idea for older kids/ or grown ups like me, but who are really kids at heart. Thanks for the good read.