Mike woke up before Aara and the first thing that he thought was that this really wasn't fair. Being tracked down by his own race and while he was broke and hung over being run into a Mularnian gas trap that is. He took his bearings and realized that he was in the very cell that he had rigged to be able to get out of, momentarily before taking off to the most dull and unpopular place he could think of, Earth. The reason he was there was because of some complications resulting from an outstanding Intergalactic Debit Card bill. The complications were that he had engineered a brilliant compu_virus to thoroughly annoy all of Mulania and would spread more easily than suuulery over steaming mashed gyrts . How would you know if you had it, you ask, well try this; You wake up in the morning and make coffee as usual, no matter what you do to it, it comes out looking like tea and tasting like HP sauce, you go to sit down on your chair and the legs break off from under you, somehow your TV is stuck on the 24 hour Wheel of Fortune channel, cds you try to play are instantly shredded (including computer disks) and you hard drive has nothing on it. No ships can leave the planet without plunging into one of Mulania’s four moons and SOMEHOW every time you try to use your Intergalactic Debit Card, the person working the till would blow up . It was really a masterpiece but the counsel of Mulania was not too pleased. In fact they were so unpleased that they swore that they would have his head. It seemed clear to him that even his IQ of 956 on the human scale couldn't have got them out of this one if he hadn't have already planned that to be held in this room. As it was the plan was easy, as soon as Aara woke up they would open the false wall, crawl through the repair vents and take one of the smaller vessels that were kept aboard and get out as fast as possible to as far away as possible.Aara slowly and groggily sat up and looked around at the room that she was in. It was the same from every angle, made with what looked like stainless steel ceiling, walls and floor. It made her even more dizzy than before and she lay back down with a slight thump. That seemed to attract Mike's attention and he said "Come on we have to get out of here soon." She groaned then remembered why she was here, stood up and smacked him in the face again.
Mike looked very patent for a minute then pulled a small object that looked suspiciously like a TV remote control and pointed it at a place in a wall that looked suspiciously like every other point in the wall and flicked a button. Amazingly, a small part of the wall slid back. Mike began to crawl through it, motioning impatiently for Aara to follow and apprehensively she did. All of a sudden she seemed to be in a void, but really all it was, was a docking bay for the smaller vessels that often came to dock on the vast mother ship. Luckily there was one there and Mike began to edge towards it, trying to see if it had an alarm system. Apparently it did. Blaring lights and a high pitched undulating wail almost burst Aara's ear drums and she felt Mike grab her by the shoulders and pull her into a sort of deep overhang. Aara watched in amazement as the guards rushed out, they were very much like humans except for their astonishing height. Mike was about 6 feet 7 inches and these people made him look small. She squirmed farther back towards the wall beside Mike, afraid of what they would think of her and what they might do to her if they realized their presence.
Mike recognized the guards and also remembered that they were decent guys that might be prone to accept a bribe so he slowly emerged from their hiding place and ignoring her look of consternation, pulled Aara with him. The guards instantly recognized Mike.
"FreJasmBlortle!! said the guard that looked exactly like the other guard "how good to see you again!" what he actually said was "Bleeb watchi oggis blas froumis"
Mike handed Aara a smallish round disk and told her to swallow it. She looked at it a moment then did.
"What have you got with you?" said the other guard. And amazingly this time Aara understood, "It is rather small isn't it ?" Aara almost choked but that seemed to exhaust the topic "rumor has it that you've been on EARTH all these years, you can't have been, I said, you must have already died of boredom"
"Well it is rather dull but it's better than what the counsel has in for me, and this is Aara she is from Earth and I will admit that not ALL of mankind is this short but you would never notice once you get to know her, she is a rather good slapper." he finished subconsciously touching his still red cheek.
"Well I suppose we should question you and send you to the counsel but we wont." mused the first guard "in fact I say that we should come with you to wherever you are going. SasaBuNoch and myself were just commenting on the boredom that we were going through doing our jobs and hauling off people who were doing interesting things to be tortured for being original. Ain't that right Sasa?
"I suggest that we find ourselves a better ship," said SasaBuNoch before Mike cut him off.
"Guys," he said tensely " I don't think it's gonna work this way, I mean we would really appreciate your help but you guys aren't wanted by the counsel. Why not just quit?"
"But you see, it's the excitement of breaking away from the counsel that we are looking for, not the actual getting away." said the guard that wasn't SasaBuNoch. Mike had to thin fast or they would be laden down with two incredibly moronic security guards who had, if Mike remembered clearly, had won the jobs in a magazine Freaky Future Giveaway when they were twelve. SasaBuNoch had always wanted to be a garbage truck driver and GreMorNus’s life ambition was to pursue a career as a hit man, or maybe one of those guys who dressed in drag.
“Hey Mor, why don’tcha turn off the alarm and we’ll talk.” Aara surprised Mike by blurting out. GreMorNus glanced confusedly from side to side, looking for where the sound was coming from and then looked down... way way down and saw Aara. Surprisingly he complied and silence replaced the ear-spitting noise.
“FreJasm” SasaBuNoch mused “She’s kinda cute, if we dressed her up a bit, so why don’t you let us have her and you can go free.”
Aara was worried, it seemed that Mike was seriously considering Sasa’s offer. If she was going to act, now was the time. “D’you guys like bugs?”
“I guess so” said SasaBuNoch, not quite knowing what to think of this.
Aara slowly and mysteriously drew the envelope with the retaken pictures out from the bag she had been carrying. “You give us the ship and some cash, and I will give you these wonderful and exclusive pictures of very rare bugs to be sold to your people for your prophet.” GreMorNur’s eyes lighted up, “really?” he asked, practically glowing.
“You’re serious?” questioned SasaBuNoch.
“Yes!” Aara over-expressed. Mike was staring open mouthed and shaking his head slightly from side to side. “Is it a deal?”
“Yes!!!!!” The guards cried, tears of joy streaming from their eyes. Mike and Aara boarded the ship looking half disgusted and half ready to expire of trying not to laugh.
The little ship was cramped to say the least. The cockpit flashed with about two million little nagging buttons and strange bleeps and gargles escaped the tiny speakers. “Ahhh... “mused Mike, “9053 Reris starsteaker” The Mulanian calendar is now in it’s 9160th cycle making this certain piece of machinery somewhat obsolete. “Damn! it’s not automatic and I can’t drive a standard, DAMN!!! I never thought of that.”
Aara was dumbfounded for a moment then her expression could have been said to be ‘horror mixed with extreme disgust , a little animosity and a pinch of fury, add sugar and beat’. “So.. You mean to tell me that after ALL THAT you can’t even DRIVE this thing??????” Aara’s eyes flared as Mike nodded “Okay then, move over” Aara slid into the driver’s seat, other than having her legs dangling over the seat like a four year old, it was quite comfortable. It was then that she noticed the clutch, the wheel (or something akin to it), the stick shift and the ignition with a set of keys with a chain that read ‘I’m only stupid on days ending with Q’. “Ha ha!!” laughed Aara, “This thing runs like my bug back on Earth.” She turned the ignition and the engines flared and died. She ground her teeth together and tried again with no avail. Suddenly she had an idea, extending her leg underneath the thing-that-could-be-a-dashboard and kicked whatever spaceship companies put under dashboards to be kicked, as hard as she could. The engine roared to life, she looked at Mike mischievously.
This didn’t cheer Mike up at all, it simply reminded him of the many attempts he had made at learning to drive. The time where he ended up wrapped around a telephone pole, the time he flew right off a cliff and was forced to jump out of the car window, the unfortunate incident with the ravine and the time when he met another driver who was curiously in the same lane as he but unfortunately was going in the proper direction. That bastard had ended up with more of Mike’s non existent disposable income than Mike had ever know himself to possess. So sheepishly Mike said “Ya, why don’t you have a go at it then”
And with that, Aara was off. Heading straight on a course for ‘as far away, as fast as possible’.
