“ Fine sir.” That’s my superior Col. Sanders. He is tall, slender, and has white puffy hair and a white goatee. He was wearing his usual white suit with a black tie.

I am Captain T’Neil I have crew cutted red hair and like usual I am wearing my air force suit. The suit is a tanish brown and has a black tie. I am working and living in cape Canaveral. I’m a pilot for NASA and right now I’m training for a mission to Mars. It is November 28th, 2009 my crew and I are going to Mars in March of 2010. We will be the first ones to go ever.

It’s 6:00 am and for breakfast I’m having my usual link sausages wrapped in buttered bacon and, boy; does that make your heart tingle. Tom and Jerry Wilkins the communications specialists were having pancakes with OJ. Amanda Huginkiss is the Captain of the mission and my co-pilot. She is tall with strait, long, beautiful hair and is thin. Ben Dover is the person setting up a base on Mars since we will be there for two months. He is a little paranoid about going because he thinks we are going to meet aliens who want kill us, but I think he has just seen too many movies. Kyle is tall, has very red hair, always has a 5 o’clock shadow, likes whiskey a little too much, and is a gun nut. The scientist on the crew is Harry Doppler, a nerd who wears thick red glasses, has bluish gray hair, and is very old, but smart.

At 7:00 am we do are basic training witch is learning how to operate the dune buggy and other basic stuff. At 8:00 we learn more on the terrain of Mars in the second class like what are in the valleys, mountains, and canyons. Terrain is a two-hour class. At 10:00 we learn to repair parts of the ship and other machines. It is a pretty boring class because they just hand us parts and we fix them. Then at 1:00 we eat lunch in the cafeteria, then we go to be last class, and that is learning our specialized job like piloting or communications.

The last four months have been tough but I have learned to pilot the shuttle like a car. We are launching tomorrow at 500 hours (that’s 5am for you morons). We all got done with are final class and were all just sitting around and I had a statement.

“ Well by tomorrow we will be eating our meals in toothpaste form so I am taking you all out to a fancy restaurant and it is on me.” I said to the crew.

Everyone cheered and hollered except Amanda. She just stood there looking very angry with me but I thought it was that time of the month for her.

“Guys… and Girls (looking at Amanda) it is now 4:00 dinner is at 6:00 at the New Sharks Plaza and dress nicely please.” I told them.

At five o’clock I started getting ready for the dinner. I took a shower, put on my best clothes, black slacks, black blazer, and a rainbow colored tie. Then I just sat in my favorite armchair and watched the Florida Marlins play the Atlanta Braves. I was cursing and screaming at the television constantly mainly because the Marlins suck but, hey there better than the Detroit Tigers. I don’t even know why I watch them anymore. It was five thirty so I got up from my chair, turned off the television, got my keys, and drove of in my orange 2009 Corvette, people that go to Mars, especially the first ones, get paid a lot. v When I got to the restaurant everyone was waiting outside the place for me because the reservations were under my name. I walked into the building followed by Amanda and the others. I gave the waiter my name and he showed us our table. We all ordered soon as we sat down, I had a T-bone steak with a baked potato and salad. Tom and Jerry had spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread, and Ben had filleted halibut with a Caesar salad. Harry had chicken Parmesan with a chef salad and lots of bacon. When the waiter asked us what we wanted I asked him what the price for his most expensive bottle of champagne and the waiter told me it was $200 dollars.

Then I turned to the others and said, “ Mr. Waiter bring me your second cheapest champagne for this special occasion.”

Harry piped up and said, “ My goodness when I was a lad expensive champagne cost 19 dollars a bucket, they sold champagne in a bucket because during the depression company’s couldn’t afford glass, and it was too expensive………(an hour later)…..and that’s how the west was won”

We all looked at him like we cared what he was saying but when dinner was served we had light chatting about the mission and life itself. I was going to talk to Amanda about her having a problem with me after dinner.

I waited by Amanda’s bright red Volvo station wagon and she said to me, “hey what are you doing.”

“ I need to talk to you about something” I responded

“ What is it?” she said

“ Well you seem upset with me and I want to know why” I asked

“ Well I have feelings for you and you ignore me all the time,” she explained

The conversation continued like that for a while but I wasn’t paying much attention until she kissed me, see that’s the secret with getting girls just pretend you care. She invited me to her house and we all no how that went.

So I woke up at Amanda’s house at 3:30 in the morning and got ready to go to the launch site I didn’t know where Amanda was but I figured that since I got what I wanted I didn’t care if I ever saw her face again. I got dressed and got in my beautiful car and drove to the launch area. I got to the mission control building and put on my long johns, found Amanda, and talked to her for a while, you know cause I might want to score on the shuttle. Then we all ate breakfast and talked about what stuff we were bringing that was not related to the mission. I brought a golf club and a bag of balls and see how far I can hit it. Amanda was bringing normal food to play with while she was weightless on the shuttle. Tom and Jerry were bringing a box of stupid stuff to mess around with in space. Ben wanted to bring a gun to space to fight the aliens but Colonel Sanders told him its not allowed because he could hijack the shuttle if he had one The Colonel suggested that he get a bucket of popcorn chicken but Ben doesn’t like chicken. So instead he brought Nerf guns to shoot at aliens with also we can have wars with them when we are bored on the shuttle. Harry is such a fried chicken freak so he brought the chicken and the Colonel was happy. We were all done eating so we all got on the phone and called our family and friends. I called my mom and told her I was very scared about going because I didn’t want to die like my father. My father was on the Challenger mission in the eighties that blew up. My mom told me to not worry because now that we are more advanced at this kind space stuff it won’t happen she also said she likes me and wont mess with the O rings this time. My mom calmed me down a little bit but I was still worried about blowing up. Then all of us had to go to Colonel to have are final briefing, he told us to get lots of samples of the ice caps, dirt, and lava flow from Olympus Mons the tallest volcano in the solar system. The Volcano is extinct but there is still lava flow from years ago. The Colonel said the big thing was to find the pathfinder robot and see what happened to it because it died in 2001. Then he told us to make a base that is quick and easy then work on a base that will be permanent. He was targeting that message towards Ben when he told us.

We were an hour away from the launching time so we all went to the bathroom and headed out to the launch area. The shuttle was huge bigger than I thought it would be. It was white with a black trim and the dull red fuel tank and the smaller white skinny ones made it look like the shuttle was on a rocket propelled skateboard. The shuttle looked very similar to what they looked like in the year 2002. They crew and I all had are suits on and then went into the elevator and up to the top of the tower. The tower was a bright red and it had an elevator shaft going up to the top. It takes about 10 seconds to get up to the top and mission control thought they were cute and played some elevator music while we were going up to the shuttle. We finally got there and I went to my seat and the others went to there own and buckled in. We had to sit there like that for a half an hour, but I did have to flip some switches to get the thing started but that didn’t take long.

The other crewmembers talked about stuff when we were waiting, but I was sweating like a pig and when there was a voice that said, “T minus 20 seconds,” I started sweating more.

Then I had to flip the switch to start the “engine”, as normal people would call it. “T minus 10 seconds and counting” that annoying voice said.

“5...4...3...2...1...launch” the voice said.

I hit the button to launch and the tower holding us up was tipping over like it should and we started tipping to and the whole control board started lighting up and beeping. Just my luck it was a malfunction.

Everyone was yelling and screaming and Ben was yelling at me saying, “What the hell is going on why are we tipping over!”

Amanda was crying her eyes out yelling, “I’m too pretty to die.”

Just then I hit the ignition button again and I felt the rumble of the rockets pushing us up towards the sky but we we’re not on course because we tipped over a little bit. We were heading somewhere else, but we could fix that. We were almost out of the atmosphere and the g-force was getting intense. I couldn’t even move and it felt like my skin was going to rip off my body, It was so intense that the 70-year-old Harry looked 23. When we made it barely out of the atmosphere our level one fuel tank fell, then a few seconds later the level two one (huge red one) fell off.

After getting into space and finding out that everyone was okay, I slowed down the shuttle and called mission control to find our new coordinates, but he called us first and Colonel Sanders and he said, “ Hey what happened? Is everyone ok? ”

“Everything is fine sir we just need the new coordinates to Mars,” I replied

“First, I want to know what happened up there,” he demanded.

“Well sir, I don’t know it was a weird malfunction,” I explained.

“You’re the malfunction I know it was you, you screw up. The new coordinates are 46290, 8347 and 666,” The Colonel told me.

I didn’t like that 666-I thought that was a little to evil for me. But I shrugged it off and sat back punched in the coordinates on the control board and unbuckled myself.

Then out of the blue Ben started yelling at me, “You are crazy and you almost killed us, you shouldn’t have been chosen for this mission I knew you couldn’t handle the pressure.”

Then he threw a punch and hit me right square in the jaw. It sent me flying to the other side of the shuttle because there is no gravity. Then I pushed off a wall, and I was heading at him fast and tackled him in mid air. The bad thing was we hit the experimental dingo project and dingoes went yelping through out the weightless environment. Glass, dirt, shrubs in all went everywhere. Then Amanda brought out her cat of nine tails and told us to knock it off or we would get whipped. So we stopped and shoved each other a little and got the vacuum to clean up the dingo mess. She snapped the whip a few times cause we were not putting the dingoes out the cargo bay door fast enough.

Then of all things Ben says, “He started it.”

I then replied “He punched me so I tackled him.”

Amanda snapped her whip again and then sent us to our quarters without supper, which I didn’t mind because I don’t like eating steak out of a tube. So I was just looking at our rooms that were the size of a bathroom stall, and just as comfortable. So I took my golf ball out of my bag and threw it up and down. The first time I threw it up, I threw it like I was on Earth and it went up fast and down just as fast and hit me right in the nog-nog. I was out cold for 6 hours (damn you Newton why didn’t you tell me this would happen earlier). Amanda came in and checked on me and helped me regain consciousness. So I got up and we had to do our little jobs like finding out were we are and such. That process continued for months until we finally saw Mars with our very own eyes. The planet was beautiful from where we were. It looked like a perfect circle just sitting there like it was being held there by a piece of fishing line. The different shades of red and orange made the planet look like it was on fire. All of us stood and stared at it with awe for a minute or two until Amanda told us we had to get a move on. We told her to bug off and then she got her whip out again and we moved quick. The way we got on Mars was that there was this little capsule in the shuttle that we got into to get down there. We all went down except for Jerry because he had to stay up there to communicate with us and mission control. Before we left, the ship had to be in the right position so that the capsule landed where we wanted it. The capsule was the size of a semi-truck container but it was round with landing gear on a flat side. The capsule blended into the planet because it was the same red color as Mars. Amanda, Tom, Ben, Harry, and I got into the capsule, waved to Jerry and blasted of into the wild blue yonder, actually it would be the wild red yonder but that wouldn’t make any sense now would it. The ride down wasn’t too soft. It was shaky and bumpy, and as soon as we were a little ways into the atmosphere of Mars, our parachute popped out and we had a nice little float down until we landed. The landing was horrible when we got out all of us were rubbing our asses like we were little boys coming out of the catholic priest’s office. After we got all the equipment out of the capsule we stared in awe at the beautiful desert like terrain. The orangish red ground had all kinds of rock on it like big flat ones and little round ones. In the distance you could see the massive Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano in the solar system. The ground, hard as a rock, was not fun to walk on. It felt like being on a giant steel rod. Since I had my suit on, all I could smell was what I ate for dinner the other day. So I stumbled around for a while because it was so intoxicating, but I managed not to pass out. Then we set up a small base to stay in until the big base was all done. The small base was like a big silver tent that didn’t let air out. We all moved the equipment into the temporary base, then we had to put together the dune buggy so that we could travel a long way from the base and be able to get back before dark. Ben was starting up that permanent base by getting the materials out before we would help him later. Tom was setting up the communications stuff so that he could tell Jerry what was going on. Harry was setting up the testing equipment because he just couldn’t wait to see what was in the ice caps and lava flow. After Melissa and I put together the buggy, we told Ben to go find the pathfinder. He didn’t mind because he wanted to find out what the buggy could do. He had one question, though; he asked how he was going to find a teeny little robot on this deserted planet. Harry then handed him a beacon and told him, “ Here, you go. This should help you find our little friend.” Ben nodded and went on his journey. We watched him bump along the reddish orange terrain. The buggy looked like an oversized go-cart with big balloons for wheels. I was really surprised how well that buggy handled over all the rocks because some of them were three feet high. After Ben was out of sight, we all sighed and went to do our separate things. Harry was playing with the testing equipment. I was getting the digging machine up and running so we could get a foundation for the base. Tom was still working on the radio; something had broken on the ride down and he was still trying to figure out what was wrong. Amanda was putting the plants in the temporary base to supply oxygen to it, but we would have to wait a while for the plants to supply enough oxygen to breathe. Four hours later, Ben came back with the pathfinder and I was dumbfounded at what it looked like. I was expecting it to need a new battery or a little rewiring, but it looked like it had fallen off a cliff.

I asked Ben, “What happened to the thing? Did it look like that when you found it?”

Ben just nodded his head and said, “ Yeah and there was nothing around that could have done this to it…but I did find this clump of hair on it.”

There were probably 20 greenish, yellowish hairs in the clump. Harry told Ben to give the hair to him and he would run just a few tests on the hair to see if it was thin melted plastic or actual hair. So Harry took it to the base and started up with the testing.

Then Ben said, “This is why I wanted to bring weapons’ if this is some type of killer alien race they are going to kill us all.”

“ Shut up, Ben, There is no life on Mars. We have already figured that out with the pathfinder mission and numerous other satellites haven’t found anything,” Amanda explained

“ Yeah, Ben, get a grip! There is nothing out there but rocks and more rocks, and maybe you might find a rock looking like a rock!” Tom told him

“ Well, you guys can stay out here and argue over whether there are other people out there or not, but I will be talking to Harry. He will have this straightened out in a while,” I told them all.

I went into the base and, talking to Harry about the situation, I found out that he looked under a microscope and it was hair. He was confused though on how it got there. He was running a test to see what it was made of, and to see if it was human or not. As that test was in progress we were forming theories on what it was and wasn’t.

Then I picked up this small machine that looked like a little kid’s radio with a microphone I started to sing wild thing into it when Harry looked at me like I was an idiot and said, “ Uh buddy, that’s a Geiger counter. It’s for measuring the amount of radiation in an area.”

I said, “Oh, will I find any radiation around here? ”

Harry said, “No, I don’t think you will, but go ahead and turn it on if you want.”

Of course, since I had never played with this thing before, I tried it.

When I turned it on and it started clicking, I said, “Harry is it supposed to do that.”

“Well, it shouldn’t because radiation isn’t good for us, but its ok now because our suits are on,” he replied.

So I moved it around the room and the thing kept clicking. Then the hairs analysis came through, saying that the hairs were uranium based.

Harry said, “That can’t be. Uranium based life form! That’s crazy this stupid thing is broken… Wait a minute! Let me see that Geiger counter!”

So I let him have my toy and as he stuck the microphone up to the hair, it was clicking a mile a minute.

Harry exclaimed, “Unbelievable! An uranium base life form! This is crazy!”

“What is so crazy about that? Is it unusual? ” I asked.

“ Unusual! It is past unusual. If you were to go near this thing without a radiation suit you would die in an instant!”

“So, does that mean he in not human?” I knew soon as I said it Harry was going to go nuts. He had that look on his face telling me that I was a moron.

“DUH! You moron, we are carbon based. This guy is made of stuff the nuclear bomb has in it.”

Harry and I told everyone else what the creature was and what we are going to do about it. Amanda was getting worried about dying on a planet with the population of one. Tom just wished that the radio was working so he could hear from Jerry and find out from mission control what to do.

Ben stood up saying,” I told you guys there are killer aliens up here, so you are in luck because I planned for this.”

“What are you talking about Ben?” Harry asked him.

“Well, what we do is find the alien using that Geiger counter and take that there oxygen tank and puncture it making it explode with the alien next to it,” Ben told us.

We all just looked at him in awe. I thought, “I wonder when he thought of this?”

Harry told him,” Ben, we can’t kill the alien. We don’t know if it is friendly yet so let’s not get too hasty.”

“Well, do you think there are more of these things roaming Mars?” Amanda said.

“ Well, I doubt it because if there were a race, that would mean we would have gotten pictures from the pathfinder. I suppose the being has a never-ending life unless it dies of unnatural causes. How it would stay alive is probably like nuclear energy. That stuff stays around for quite a while,” Harry replied

Amanda looked at her clock on the suit and said,” Our eight hours of working are over. Tomorrow, T’Neil, Harry and I will go out to the site and try to find some other trace of the creature to find it. We will then decide what to do from there, but until then let’s get some sleep.”

We all agreed and hooked our suits up to the giant oxygen tank and went to sleep. That night I had a dream that the alien was killing all of us; I even saw Amanda having her head ripped off her shoulders. There was a humorous part, though, I saw Tom getting his arm ripped off and he told the alien, “ Hey man, I needed that.”

The rest of the night I had visions of sugarplums dancing above my head. When I woke up, everyone else was waiting for me to get up and get started on our mission. Tom stayed at the base with Ben because we didn’t need Ben going off on an alien and killing it for no reason. Tom was going to work on the radio while we were gone. I loaded one of the oxygen tanks into the back of the buggy and told everyone to hop in. Amanda got to drive because she beat me at rock-paper-scissors and Harry called shotgun before I could, so I said rifle and he was forced to sit in the back. I laughed at him because he was stuck in the back with the oxygen tank. It was easy to find where the pathfinder was; we just followed Ben’s old tracks. It took about one hour 36 minutes and 63 seconds. Oh wait, that would be one hour, 37 minutes and 3 seconds. When we got there, there were signs that Ben was doing donuts.

All of us split up to find some tracks. We wandered around for about two hours until Harry found something he yelled,” OH MY GOD LOOK AT THIS.”

Amanda and I ran over there and there was a foot print four feet long and a foot and a half wide. Harry thought for a minute and told us that the creature had to be 20 feet tall.

“Captain T’Neil, go get the buggy. We are following these tracks. They lead down into that canyon, and hurry it up,” Harry told me

I ran over to the buggy and drove it over as they hopped in and we were on our way. When the tracks hit the canyon there was a trail too small for the buggy to go down. The canyon was huge, ten times bigger than the Grand Canyon. The most amazing thing down there was a small stream of water, which made Harry almost crap himself. We filled up are suits with oxygen and talked about what we would do if we saw the alien. Harry said he would talk to it.

Amanda said she would run to the buggy and ditch us here by ourselves, and I told them I would protect Amanda, she giggled and bumped her helmet to mine pretending to kiss me and said,” Oh how sweet.’’

Once our tanks were full, we headed down the trail and followed the yellow foot road, aren’t I punny you know with his hair being yellow…and you know the Wizard of Oz…yeah…well…shut up! The footprints were yellowish green because the creature had a glowing personality, if you know what I mean. Since you don’t know what I mean, it is because of the radiation. The trail we were walking on was very thin. I was at the front because I was the strongest guy, Amanda was next because she wanted to be in the middle to be is protected better, and Harry was last because there was nowhere else for him. I could tell Amanda was getting nervous when we got to the bottom because Harry slipped and she screamed like a little girl thinking it was the alien. When we finally got to the bottom. The tracks lead into a cave right in front of us. We went in, searched the whole cave, and found nothing, but there was proof he has been there before because Harry took out the Geiger counter and was checking it out. The counter went nuts and sounded like a woodpecker on crack. We decided that we were not going to see anything else. We went up towards the top again to the buggy to go back to the base. When we made it to the top I looked up because Amanda was screaming like she had seen an alien or something, and when I looked up there was the alien now isn’t that convenient. He was about six feet tall with huge feet and he glowed an eerie green. His head was in a triangle shape with rounded edges, His eyes were as big as cantaloupes. The alien had a pupil and bright green colored eyes. The weird thing was that he had no nose or ears.

Harry started walking towards him and I screamed,” Harry NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOO!”

“ Hey, I’m three feet away from you and anyways I think he is peaceful,” Harry replied

He walked up to the monster and said,” Hi, my name is Harry. I represent Planet Earth would you like some food.”

Harry reached into his pocket and pulling out a piece of fried chicken that he brought and gave it to the alien.

The alien said to Harry in an English accent, “Why, thank you good sir. I will enjoy this appetizer. Would you like me to tell you the meaning of life, or whether there is a god or not?”

When the alien took a bite of the chicken he totally freaked out and started screaming, and it pushed over Harry, grabbed his leg, and ripped it off. Blood was everywhere. The alien beat Harry with Harry’s own leg until he was dead. The blood flew everywhere from Harry’s torn up leg. The thick dark red blood spread for yards and the pool of blood next to Harry had to be three feet deep, maybe not three feet, but it has to be 3 inches. I grabbed Amanda, threw her into the buggy, and drove fast towards the base.

When we got there, Tom asked,” Where is Harry?” “Harry is dead, Tom,” I told him

Amanda was crying because she got blood on her white suit and Ben was saying I told you so. “The alien killed Harry. The chicken Harry gave the monster made him go crazy,” I said.

Tom still didn’t have the radio up so we decided to get off the planet. It was no use trying to get Harry’s body back. The monster probably already had eaten it, but Ben said the best way to get back at the alien was revenge. Then Tom piped in saying vengeance is good too. The plan to kill the alien was that someone would get in the buggy and lure the alien to a big oxygen tank. When he got there we would throw a freeze-dried fried chicken next to him. While he ate the chicken, we would explode the tank. I will make the tank explode by casing three golf balls in metal and hitting them at the tank. The tank was made of a thin enough metal so that the golf ball could puncture it making a spark that would blow up the tank. The tank I would hit golf balls at was about six feet high and six feet wide. We decided that Tom would lure the alien to us. It took about an hour to case the golf balls, but after that we were rolling. When Tom went to get the alien, Amanda and I had a talk about our relationship. I told her how much I loved her and that I would never let the alien hurt her (once again guys act like you lover her and if she lives you’ll get some action on the way home). She told me she loved me and that she wouldn’t leave me behind. We had to end our conversation early because Tom was on telephone and told us to get ready as he had the alien following him. I put all three of the golf balls on the tees and set up for the alien and Tom. In the distance I could see Tom on the buggy and the glowing monster following him. They were almost to the tank and Ben threw the chicken by the tank. Tom drove to the chicken and the alien all of a sudden lunged towards Tom and bashed his helmet open. The alien started eating his brains. It was horrible. The monster ripped off his suit and ripped his rib cage wide-open sending blood everywhere. The monster then started taking handfuls off blood dripping flesh from Tom’s chest. It looked liked cable TV but without the boobs.

I was so scared and grossed out that I almost forgot what I was doing. I said, “Here is to a fiery death alien boy.”

I hit the golf ball, but I topped it and the ball spit across the ground missing the tank by 30 feet.

I stepped up to the next ball and said, “A little cold for you. Let me heat things up.”

This time I hit the ball hard, but it faded to the left a little too much.

I was thinking of another catchy phrase to end the aliens life and Amanda and Ben were yelling at me hurry up dumbass, so I stepped up to the next ball and said,” You know I really should control this explosive anger of mine.”

I hit the golf ball and it looked good and it hit the tank, but the tank didn’t explode, the golf ball bounced off the tank and go right through the alien’s head.

I looked with awe and said, “Meh, it works”

Ben, Amanda and I went up to the alien to see if it was actually dead.

We stared at it for a while and then I said, “It’s definitely dead.”

Amanda started yelling and screaming and said,” Oh god, look at Tom.”

His helmet was ripped apart and his skull was bashed in with his brains half out of his head. There was yellow and red blood everywhere. The yellow blood from the alien made the ground glow bright, while Tom’s red blood made the ground dull and slimy. I looked at his face, which was splattered with green and red blood, but the facial expression on him looked like one of those bitter beer face commercials.

“He saved our lives by sacrificing himself for us,” Ben said.

“Actually he didn’t mean to sacrifice himself it was an accident,” I said.

We loaded all the stuff into the capsule. We even brought along the alien’s body for testing and Tom’s body to be buried on Earth. Amanda and I made giant metal crosses in memory of Tom and Harry. The cross read:

In Memory Tom Wilkins and Harry Doppler Two men who were the space program’s space bitches and died because of it. They both sacrificed their lives so they could save the lives of others. We honor them for that.

“Ok guys everything is ready to go,” Ben said, poking his head out of the capsule.

“Ok,” Amanda and I said at once.

I stepped halfway into the capsule looking out and staring at the red dessert.

“What’s wrong?” Amanda said to me.

“Nothing, nothing’s wrong.”

There wasn’t a thing wrong with me. I just wanted to get off this goddamn planet and never come back…how I longed for some chilly cheese fries and sex.