Bad Communication

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Deep in the heart of the scarcely populated region of the inhabited universe Shabby, on a little alien planet that no one was particularly keen on and especially knowledgeable about, there secretly took off a small secret spaceship. The reason for its secrecy was that the cargo it carried was ludicrously expensive. It was transferring one billion bars of solid diamond to the nearest bank account of one of the richest people of the twenty known and inhabited universes. Another reason for its secrecy was that the region of space this planet inhabited was infested with pirates. The reason for its departure at all, however, and one that was slightly more pressing, was that the planet from which it came was in serious jeopardy.

Anyway, these pirates were vicious, cruel, and had a disposition of feeding their hostages to their various ravenous pets. The reason for such brutality was this: they only spoke one language, the traditional Space-Pirate Speak, and they didn’t believe that other languages existed, or could be learned. Nobody else in all the inhabited universes had ever deciphered traditional Space-Pirate Speak. This led to innumerable misunderstandings between the pirates and their hostages, which usually ended in a terrific bought of savagery.

In fact, below is an old recording of a pirate captain interrogating a hostage, trying to find out from him where the hidden treasure is stored. The recording has been heavily edited and spilt into to two separate ones; one version of what the hostage got out of the interrogation and the other of what the pirate got out of it.

The version from the hostage’s point of view went like this:

Pirate: (Unintelligible gibberish. Very hostile.)

Hostage: “What?”

Pirate: (More unintelligible gibberish. Also hostile.)

Hostage: “I’m sorry, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

Pirate: (Definitely unfriendly babbling. A slight pinch of exasperation.)

Hostage: “I said, sorry, I don’t speak your language.”

Pirate: (Ballistic shouting. Very gibberishy.)

Hostage: “If you don’t get a translator, then, frankly, you can’t possibly get anything out of me.”

Pirate: (A short and snappy tirade. Indecipherable chatter.)

Hostage: “Well, this is thoroughly ridiculous!”

Pirate: (More babble. Perhaps a question.)

Hostage: “Look, what are you trying to say? What? I don’t speak your language, get it?”

Pirate: (A tremendously loud and heated tirade of gibberish.)

Hostage: “Oh, for Peat’s sake!”

Pirate: (More babble, with a hint of gibberish.)

Hostage: “I tell you, you sniveling miscreant, you are about as bright as a dead ultraskunk! What do you want from me?!”

Pirate: (Another outburst of wild incomprehension.)

Hostage: “Who is that? What’s it doing here?”

Pirate: (Very frustrated blather.)

Hostage: “This is madness! Are you threatening me with that thing? It won’t work because you can’t understand my language and I don’t speak yours. Don’t you understand, you stupid, stupid bloody pirate?!”

Pirate: (An extremely prolonged explosion of mumbo jumbo.)

Hostage: “Wait, what are you telling it to do? What’s going on? What? AHHHHH!!!”

“MUNCH.... SLURP - AHHH.”

Now here is the version from the pirate’s point of view (Note: nobody actually knows Space-pirate Speak, what you read is sophisticated guesswork from a rundown laptop):

Pirate: “Alright, ya’ slimy piece o’ green sludge, where be ya’ hid’n the treasure!!?”

Hostage: (A nervous noise. Probably a question.)

Pirate: “‘Ey, speak like an intelligent bein’ or I’ll have ya’ eaten alive!!!!”

Hostage: (A nervous but calm outburst of gibberish.)

Pirate: “Answer the filthy question with somethin’ intelligible!!!!”

Hostage: (More gibberish. A pinch of panic. Stubbornly unintelligible.)

Pirate: “D’ya’ think I like playing games!!!?”

Hostage: (Incomprehensible blather. A note of hysteria.)

Pirate: “I swear by me thrice dead grandmother, I’m a goin’ to feed ya’ to me Tolatae Beast, ya’ blubberin’ wretch!!!!!”

Hostage: (Incomprehensible blather with many notes of hysteria.)

Pirate: “Are ya’ mumblin’ or are ya’ just bein’ blatantly stupid?”

Hostage: (Hysterical nonsense. Very exasperated.)

Pirate: “Oh, ya’ are bein’ difficult. I’ll be feeding ya’ to me beast, I will!!!”

Hostage: (A short outburst. Salty with vexation.)

Pirate: “Do ya’ wanna be eaten!!!?”

Hostage: (A desperate hysterical tirade. Possibly a question.)

Pirate: “Fine, then!!! Brin’ in the beasty!!!!”

Hostage: (More indecipherable babble.)

Pirate: “This is me favorite beast. It’s goin’ to eat ya’ if ya’ don’t answer the

question.”

Hostage: (Babble of an extremely stressed nature.)

Pirate: “Very well, since ya’ refuse to be answering the question in discernible and clear speech, which is basically signifyin’ tha’ ya’ don’t want to tell me, then I’m afraid ya’ve made yar decision. Choochoo, eat the alien.”

Hostage: (Severe gibberish. Wildly hysterical.)

“MUNCH.... SLURP - AHHHH.”

On noting the total lack of communication between pirates and the general public, scientists are at a loss to explain how the pirates know what ships have treasure or not. This phenomenon no one has ever solved because no one has ever been able to learn Space-pirate Speak, and so the generally accepted theory is that the pirates just have a keen knack for these sorts of things.

The little ship hurtled silently through space at terrifying speed. Once it reached a maximum distance of one million miles from its home planet, it would enter hyperspace. The crew was tense. At any moment a massive evil pirate ship could come blazing out of bad thoughts speed, and with immense ferocity bombard them with sweltering cannon rounds until their shield fell. Then they would be boarded and ravaged. After that, they would all be closely interrogated. It would go terribly badly and in the end the pirate captain would get utterly furious and have them all eaten alive.

Captain Bilforth shuddered. He himself had never been attacked by pirates, but he had salvaged the desolate wrecks of those who had, and it was certainly a pretty sight! Whatever bad things pirates tended to do, they had a severe belief in cleanliness that surpassed all other races, except for the Cleaner Even Then The Pirates Ones, who were so into it that they had exterminated all the dust mites and bacteria on their planet. They felt very good about this when it was all over, and they congratulated themselves with many smug grins and high-fives.Two weeks later, however, they were informed by a passing Angel of Death that they were, in fact, made of bacteria and dust mites. Two days after that, the entire population of the planet died out from an overwhelming feeling of stupidity and embarrassment.

What the chronicler was trying to say about the pirates, before he was diverted, was that pirates cleaned up after themselves. After they had invaded a vessel and murdered everybody aboard, and what not, they would then spend an incessant amount of hours mopping, sweeping, scrubbing, burying and even decorating, so that when their victim ships were finally discovered by wary rescue parties, they would find something closely resembling a gift shop on the outside, and in the inside, a hospital.

The thing that most daunted everybody who found these remarkable feats of neatness was their silence. There is nothing more terrifying than a lifeless ship floating in space, not so much because it isn’t occupied, but because that it could be occupied. You see, vacant ships lying in space that have recently been attacked and all the lifeforms on them killed, fall pray to space demons. Space demons are a space-goer’s worst nightmare.

When someone enters a forsaken ship, the demons will suddenly pop out of corners and perform the equivalent of a space demon ‘boo’. In other words, the most terrifying ‘boo’ ever to be experienced. For a split second they take on the form of something adorable and fuzzy but inside out. In other words, all their outsides in. This shocks their victims incredibly, but not as much as the second shock when they look again. Silently, and for no discernible reason, the hideously cute apparition would be replaced by a very hard rock that says, “this is all a figment of your imagination.” After this, their victims would get very upset with themselves for not expecting that, confuse themselves with a philosophical argument on which way was up, and then finally stumble blindly out of airlocks into open space, there to die alone and forgotten. What a space demons hopes to gain from such senseless psychological violence is anyone’s guess, but the general theory is that they have no reason, they are just tremendously cynical.

“Two minutes to launch,” said the captain tensely into the little communicator that contacted all the crew around the ship. He fiddled with a little pink device that you fiddle with when you are tense or nervous, called a Fiddler. If pirates were going to attack, they would do it now. The captain held his breath.

“Now” came and the pirates didn’t. The two minutes were up.

“Initiating launch,” said the captain. He clutched the hyperspace stick and slowly drew it forward. The low humming of the ships engines changed to a silent scream as the stars suddenly melted away and the little ship entered hyperspace.

The captain leaned back with a sigh of relief. “Well,” he thought wrongly, “it would seem that the pirates didn’t have the knack this time. They can’t catch us in hyperspace!”

At that precise moment, exactly a very incomprehensible distance away, an ambassador walked nervously into a royal chamber. This chamber was none other than that of the His Royal Majesty, Emperor Elucsunim Ylgnideecxe, or, as he was more commonly known to those who lacked a nimble tongue, Emperor Dingly Minus. And indeed, the emperor was certainly very small. No taller than a Lairtserret Artxe puss ball, he weighed about as much as a spoonful of Extremely Heavy Dirt. But his eyes were keen, and he also happened to have firepower enough to blast any unsatisfactory planet to rubble, which is what he had a mind to do. That was why the ambassador had come, to negotiate the continued existence of his home planet, which at present was the one that had failed to satisfy His Majesty in the least.

The ambassador bowed from the waist respectfully before the Emperor’s cathedra and waited for the command to rise.

It didn’t come.

He waited a little more.

It still didn’t come.

He waited a little longer.

He started to get stiff.

He creaked.

He creaked a little more.

The emperor remained silent.

The ambassador’s back was complaining like hell. He gave a very slight groan.

He groaned a little more.

The emperor’s continued silence was very loud.

The ambassador scrunched up his face in agony. He lifted his eyes very slightly to see what the hell was holding the emperor up.

The emperor was reading a book that was almost as big as he was.

The ambassador started to lean forward slightly. He struggled to keep his balance, but it was a losing battle.

The emperor paused his reading and looked into the distance reflectively. “Interesting grammar structure,” he said, and bent his head back to his book.

The ambassador, of course, coming from a foreign planet, did not understand the emperor’s remark. He hadn’t bothered to get a translator because he had been informed that the emperor would supply them with one. He was vexed that there wasn’t any present. “What, my lord?” he said through gritted teeth. Then he fell over.

The emperor glanced sharply at the floor where the ambassador lay, struggling feebly to rise.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” exploded the emperor angrily, his cheeks puffing out and reddening. He turned severely towards an awaiting servant. “Bring in the bloody translator, Marvin, and make it snappy! I didn’t become emperor to attend prolonged audiences with weak-backed slobs like this. Makes me sick!” The emperor harumphed himself into a grim silence. Then he bent back to his book.

Marvin scurried away, with a respectful gesture of acknowledgment. With all speed he left the palace grounds and searched among the highways for the homeless. Very easily he found one. He was a poor wretch dressed in rags and of an unknown age, for his face was obscured with a thick brown beard. Marvin hailed him.

“Do you want to make easy money?” he asked the homeless man.

“Oh, I’m dying for some work, kind sir!” said the homeless man.

“Can you speak the language of the planet Ginyfsitasnu?”

“Oh, yes, indeed! In fact, I can almost understand it!”

Marvin smiled. “Good. Come along, then.”

The entire procedure took only half an hour. During that time, the emperor was rapidly running out of books to read and the ambassador was busy brushing off his ruffled silk costume, and discreetly doing little back stretching exercises in a corner. The emperor paid him no mind. He was much too intrigued by The Tales of the Gloating Globules of Gas and Gruesome Gurgles; a thoroughly disgusting book that made him nearly vomit. It was that good.

A distant fanfare sounded and the great doors to the royal chamber opened silently. In bustled Marvin and the goggle-eyed homeless man, who looked almost ready to keel over in a state of apoplexy from all the excess wealth spewing over every little thing.

“My lord!” said Marvin, bowing to the emperor. He gestured for the homeless man to do the same. “I have brought you the translator.”

“Ah, wonderful! We will start immediately.” The emperor gestured to the ambassador, who this entire time had been watching in confusion. He stepped forward cautiously and peered at the disheveled newcomer in surprise.

The homeless man turned to him and smiled. “yelloa,” he said, “I be yo‘ very besto tansfatorobuba. I tansfate fo‘ yo‘ whato yo‘ fant hearo.”

The ambassador looked at him in astonishment and said, “what?”

“Right!” said the emperor suddenly, startling everyone. “To busyness.”

The homeless man tuned to the ambassador. “He say, we sarto.”

The ambassador looked nervously at everyone as they waited for him to begin. “Yes, um...” He cleared his throat and began uncertainly. “Your Imperial Highness, I would like to plead on behalf of my planet that you do not destroy it.” He tuned to the homeless man and nodded to indicate that he was finished.

“He says,” said the homeless man to the emperor, “that, before he begs, he would like not to be destroyed.”

The emperor frowned. “What?” he said.

At that same moment, very very far away, a man in a ship traveled through hyperspace. The man was having problems. His name was Kerdle Butfry and he was a surprisingly ignorant person. And being an ignorant person, he had a disposition for going through problems that usually would not trouble more intelligent men. Little did he know that he would soon go down in history for it.

He kicked the ice coffee machine in exasperation. “I said without ice!” he roared.

“This ice coffee machine is proud to perform its services with skill and tact, and to produce coffee exactly as it is implied to,” responded the ice coffee machine patiently.

“Well, you little abomination, that is obviously not true, because I implied without ice!” responded Kerdle Butfry ferociously.

“If you would care to read my title...” ventured the ice coffee machine tentatively.

“What!?” raged Kerdle Butfry. “

“I said,” repeated the ice coffee machine, “that if you would care to read my title, you would see for what purpose I only produce ice coffee.”

Kerdle Butfry read it. he said, “it says ‘ice coffee machine.’”

“Yes!” enthused the ice coffee machine.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

Kerdle Butfry frowned deeply. “Are you saying,” he said, “that you just make ice coffee?”

“Precisely!” proclaimed the ice coffee machine. “That’s exactly right. That’s all I’ve been programmed to do.”

Kerdle Butfry thought about this. “Oh,” he said.

“So you see, I cannot produce a coffee without ice,” concluded the ice coffee machine. Then, in a moment of uncertainty, “you see that, don’t you?”

Kerdle Butfry nodded his head reluctantly. “Yes,” he sighed. “I see... I think.”

“Good.”

“With ice, only...”

“Correct.”

“Not without...”

“Very good.”

Kerdle Butfry grunted. He thought a little more. Then he frowned. “But,” he said, and his face suddenly contorted into one of exasperation, “I still don’t see why you can’t make one without ice!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” shouted the ice coffee machine, and blew up in a fit of suicidal insanity. Other similar explosions reverberated quietly from other parts of the ship.

Kerdle Butfry stared at it in dismay. Then he shrugged. He muttered something about how he never liked it anyway and stomped off to the tiny cockpit.

The ship he happened to be traveling in was a V-Class transport ship. These types of ships were formidable, to say the least. Ten miles long and two deep, their boxy hulks generated such a massive gravitational pull that astroids tended to orbit around them. The one that was solely occupied by Kerdle Butfry was especially daunting because, along with its vast size, it was also transporting seventeen trillion tons of nuclear weapons to the planet Tenalp S’rorepme Eht, which was at the present preparing for a rather large demolition project.

Kerdle Butfry sat in the pilot’s seat and watched the bleak stretch of nothing, that was the view of the universe from hyperspace, from the little window-screen in front of him. The cockpit was indeed minuscule. It was only five by five meters, and nestled cozily as it was at the very tip of the colossal ship, it had a very commanding view that was only diminished by the minuteness of the window-screen through which it could be looked at. Underneath the window-screen sat the computer banks that housed the main computer and backup computer that ran the ship. There were no manual controls; unless physically damaged, the computers were foolproof and would never send the ship off course. As for defenses against pirates, the ship’s gravitational pull was defense enough. If a pirate ship got to close, unless it was driven by an expert steersman, it would invariably be drawn violently in and smashed to pieces against the V-Class ship’s side.

The side walls of the cockpit were a light-brown wood-ish material and bare except for a drawer or two, and a little target that hung suspended by a string from a large nail that had been crudely hammered into the wall. The back wall housed the door that entered into the cockpit.

Because the ship was computer-piloted, the lone man that was sent aboard was no more than an overseer. However, being that the ship was computer-controlled, and being that the computers were much more efficient in their work than men were, there tended not to be much to oversee. This tended to make the overseers tremendously bored as the long hours of unexciting space travel wore warily on.

Kerdle Butfry was very ordinary in this respect. As he slouched in the pilot seat he wondered how he could relieve himself from the oppressive feeling of monotony that was hanging over him like a raincloud. He looked at the slightly tilted target on the wall and decided that he might as well use it. He had nailed it up a few hours ago but had decided he didn’t want to use it then; now, he might as well.

He rummaged around in a drawer and found his laser gun, right where he thought he hadn’t left it, in a pair of dirty underwear. He took it out and loaded it with a magazine. He stuck the gun in his crotch as he paused to blow his nose, then he took it out and slunk heavily back into the pilot seat. He looked up at the target on the wall and studied the bull’s eye.

He had not thought adequately on the location of his target, as any intelligent person would have readily informed him, because being in the cockpit, as it was, wasn’t it just a little on the risky side? Especially since that was where the computers that controlled his ship were housed? But, being one of an ignorant disposition, these thoughts did not trouble him.

Slowly, without taking his eyes off the bull’s eye, he raised the laser gun to eye level and squinted an eye closed. His aim wasn’t right. With unsteady hands he corrected it as best he could. He took a breath, then he squeezed the trigger. He flinched as a very sharp, penetrating noise rang from the gun along with a blaze of light. A bright little sphere of pure energy shot across the room, too fast for the eye to see, and smashed violently into the target, which absorbed it with a slight ripple and quiver. He had barely hit the target at all!

A silence followed as Kerdle Butfry steadied himself to prepare for the next sudden explosion from the gun as he quietly took aim again. When he was prepared enough, he slowly squeezed the trigger a second time. The gun roared and he flinched just as much as the first time. His aim hadn’t improved either. In fact, he had blackened the wall a little.

For some strange reason, and in opposition to more intelligent men, the more he shot the gun, the less comfortable he felt using it, and the less his aim improved.

He tried again. This time he hit the wall. Luckily it was thick, so the projectile only burned through half of it. He cursed and broke out in a sweat. This was not going to look good to the boss when he retuned back to base.

Usually at this point a man with a slightly higher IQ than a grapefruit would have realized it was time to stop. But not Kerdle Butfry.

He took aim a fourth time, though he wasn’t exactly sure why, seeing as how uncomfortable he was when he did it, and how much destruction he had caused in the process. And this time he was positively shaking. It would be good for anticipation’s sake to say that his entry into history was now imminent. He took a shuddering breath and tried to look at the target through blurred vision. His finger rested on the trigger and he put on a tiny bit of pressure. He steeled what was left of his nerves, and his entire arm stiffened in anticipation.

It was unfortunate that he should steel what was left of his nerves at that moment, because, just then, the computer let out a terrific beeping noise, signifying an upcoming status report. With a terrified yelp, Kerdle Butfry leaped out of his chair and fired at the noise out of nervous reflex. Three times he fired, and these were the only shots in his life that were executed with perfect accuracy. The computer bank housing the main computer smashed and smoldered to a burning metal hunk of rubbish. What was left of it spluttered and gurgled electrically in front of a frozen and horrified Kerdle Butfry. As the last of it died away into silence, the ship prematurely dropped out of hyperspace.

However, it didn’t stop, for momentum was on its side, and it thrust forward with tremendous speed.

“Ahem,” said a voice from a speaker.

Kerdle Butfry jumped. “What?!” he said.

“This is the emergency backup computer speaking. I just thought you’d like to know that you have successfully taken out those bits of the main computer that control the ship’s engines, and that we are now drifting through space at amazing speeds. We will not slow down for another two parsecs and by then we will have successfully smashed into our destination planet, Tenalp S’rorepme Eht, and, considering our cargo, blow it up into little tiny bits. Isn’t that just terrific? The rest of the ship is working fine however, except the coffee machines, of course. They have all blown up in fits of suicidal insanity.” The voice from the speaker paused. “Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

Kerdle Butfry was barely breathing. He said quietly, “is there any way I can contact Tenalp S’rorepme Eht?”

At exactly the same time, somewhere very far away, a pirate captain in his ship, traveling through hyperspace at the speed of bad thoughts, grinned smugly. He was catching up to his quarry.

His quarry, as it turned out, was a little secret ship that just so happened to be carrying about one billion bars of solid diamond, as far as the captain’s guts were telling him. The little secret ship didn’t know it was being stalked, and by the time it found out, it would be too late for it to do anything about it.

The captain pressed a communicator button on the control counsel that contacted him with the rest of the ship. “All right, laddies,” he said, “ be chargin’ up the cannons an’ hoist the Evil Engines. Make sure the toilets be spotless. As soon as we’d be dropin‘ that mighty fortune of a ship out o’ hyperspace, I’d be wantin‘ us to be ready to stop a mite bit before. Don’t want to be overshootin’ now, do we? As soon as we’d both be stopped, we’d be blastin‘ its shields away. On me mark.” The captain released the communicator button. He looked at a chronometer and waited, counting down the seconds until the appropriate time to send out the little electric pulse that would knock out the other ship’s engines, leaving it flightless.

Evil Engines, for those who are unaware of their function, are engines that allow pirate ships to travel at bad thoughts speed.

Bad thoughts speed is the fastest speed known to any universe. It was discovered accidentally by a pirate scientist during a study of the speed of light. It was quite an unexpected discovery. He was just sitting on a stool, waiting for the signal to flick the switch on the light projector that was suspended against a bottle. The purpose of the study was not entirely clear, due to the inebriation of the professors who set it up, but it had vaguely to do with trying to follow the light as it moved in a microsecond from one side of the bottle to the other, with their eyes. “A pleasantly... gulp, gulp, gulp - AHHHH!” is what the inebriated professors called it.

Anyway, when the signal had been given to turn on the light projector, the young pirate scientist did so. Just as he had flicked on the switch, however, he suddenly had a nasty though about what he would like to do about all those stupid Extremely Poisonous Socks that kept crawling into his bed on cold nights for warmth. Much to his surprise, just after he had the thought he realized that the light hadn’t reached the other side of the bottle yet. Clearly bad thoughts were faster than the speed of light!

With great excitement, he then went on to prove his discovery to the rest of the pirates. This led to awards and a life of fame, but it didn’t last very long. Just after he had discovered, through terribly complicated mathematics, to calculate the velocity of bad thoughts, and after he built the Evil Engines that could reach that velocity, he died from an explosion at a bomb party he had thrown for his baby daughter’s birthday.

The little ship hurtled through hyperspace at the speed of light, its occupants utterly mindless to their obliviousness of the fact that something was about to go horribly wrong.

“Everything’s going great, Cap,” said the co-pilot to Captain Bilforth. “The ship is fully functioning and there have been no detections of possible pirates waiting for us at the other end of the jump.”

“Splendid!” said Captain Bilforth cheerily. He had completely relaxed since they had taken off into hyperspace. He had even started to feel good about the mission. He was being paid a fortune, of course, and this had been the deciding factor as to whether he would stay to help evacuate everybody off his planet in case it was going to be destroyed, or if he was going to save somebody else’s savings.

He smiled and strode onto the bridge with a confident swagger. He had gotten rid of his Fiddler some time ago because he wasn’t in the right mood to use it. He was feeling good. The ship was running well, they were on time, their destination planet was expecting them, space was certainly clear of troublemakers and -

From somewhere deep in the heart of the universe Shabby, a little electric pulse set off and silently pierced and killed the bits of the main computer that controlled the engines and weapons of a little ship.

Captain Bilforth was very surprised when his ship suddenly dropped out of hyperspace and the main computer bank said “flerp,” instead of “Ship remains on course.”

“What is the meaning of this?!” he cried, strutting hurriedly to the little man that was bending over the main computer bank, trying to find out what the meaning of this was.

“Well, sir,” he said, turning to Captain Bilforth, “It seems that some sort of electric pulse that floated in on a wavelength has knocked out those bits of the main computer that control the engines and weapons of our little ship.”

“What?!” roared captain Bilforth. This was not in response to the little man, but to what had just popped up on the monitor screens. What the captain said next: “oh my god!”, was not a second response to what had just popped up on the monitor screens, or to what anybody had said, but to what had started popping out of the thing that had popped up on the monitor screens. What all these things were that had started popping up everywhere was most simply and accurately described by the frantic first mate.

“We are being bombarded by lasers from a pirate ship that has just materialized from hyperspace, behind us!” he said.

“What?!” said Captain Bilforth, in response to what the first mate had said.

The little ship shuddered; then it shook; then it jumped and rocked. Then it started doing all of them at once as the laser bombardment from the pirate ship continued.

“Shield capacity, fifty percent,” said the copilot, two minutes later, with a slight quiver in his voice. “They have very powerful cannons.”

The captain wished he had his Fiddler. Then he realized that what he needed more was a urinal, before he wet his pants.

The pirate ship loomed large and menacing on the vision screens, looking very neat and clean, if not a little depressing, what with all the painted skulls, crossbones, and evil-looking mops and brooms, that were cleaning up the skulls and crossbones, on the hull.

“Shield capacity, two percent,” said the copilot, a minute or so later. He was sweating feverishly. A moment after, just as the bombardment stopped, he added, “Shield capacity, zero. Ship is vulnerable to laser attacks and boardings.” He paused and turned to the captain. “Permission to use the urinal?”

“Granted,” Captain Bilforth said flatly. The copilot hobbled quickly away, but Captain Bilforth could tell he wasn’t going to make it.

Captain Bilforth watched from the vision screens on the bridge with a sense of doom and finality as the pirate ship drifted up and parked itself neatly on top of his ship.

“All men to defense formation at airlock A17,” he said into a little communicator on a desk. It wouldn’t do any good, he knew. No crew of any ship could compete with pirates in ferocity and deft precision with firearms, or indeed, any weapon at all. They had a knack for fighting, too.

The men must have realized this because when Captain Bliforth arrived at the airlock with a sinister looking rifle, called the Sinister Looking Rifle, to help defend his ship, he was very surprised to see his crew with their rifles thrown on the ground in front of them and their hands held above their heads.

“What are you doing!?” exclaimed Captain Bilforth in astonishment.

“Giving up,” responded a depressed copilot. Captain Bilforth noticed without emotion that the copilot’s pants were soggy.

“Why?” he said.

“There’s no way we’re going to beat them, and if we survive the boarding, we will only get eaten later. So why not just save everybody some time and give up?” The first mate stated matter-of-factly. He had a blindfold over his eyes and a cigarette in his mouth and he was standing against a wall. He was a man who looked like he looked death in the face and said with a sob, “Okay! Okay, you got me! Make it quick...”

“But that’s ridiculous!” protested Captain Bilforth.

Before anyone could form a rebuttal, a sudden piercing sound escaped from the other end of the airlock. Everyone started. It was not the sound of the airlock being melted down by some sort of loud instrument, but the terribly off key voice of the pirate lock picker.

After a minute or so of the freakish voice singing something unrecognizable, though distantly resemblant of the Death Song of The Eternally Nasally, the airlock gave a hiss and swung slowly inwards.

Even Captain Bilforth soiled himself when the healthy, bronzed and, most especially, clean, ugly pirates came barging wildly in.

The audience with the emperor wasn’t going well, the ambassador was sure of that. It had seemed as though the emperor wasn’t taking him seriously. He would always answer, frowning in puzzlement, with something that seemed completely unrelated, as if he wanted to change the subject, or as though the translation had been distorted and he had heard a different question. The ambassador was starting to seriously suspect that this was the case.

“D‘ Empero‘ say he thinko thato yo‘ say noth’no goodo,” said the translator.

“Nothing good?” said the ambassador in perplexity. He had been answering the translator in varied states of incomprehension since the beginning of the conference. “What does that mean?”

The translator nodded his head. “S‘ righto. He say yo‘ say thingo like - whato?”

The ambassador was entirely confused. “What?” He was aware of the emperor silently looking on like a buzzing in his ear.

The translator took a breath and attempted one last time to articulate what he thought seemed like such a simple concept to grasp. “He don‘ kno‘ whato yo‘ say.”

“Oh...” said the ambassador. “... Tell him I said that my planet would like to repay him somehow and that, the debt being repaid, we would like to establish a trade between our worlds.”

The translator turned to the emperor. “My liege, he says that his plant is wondering if it could be repaid, and that he would like to trade his debt for yours.”

The emperor, throughout the conference, had been completely confused. A frown of puzzlement had been his main expression since the beginning. All the questions or requests the ambassador would ask or say, were utterly ridiculous and completely irrelevant. The only reason, in fact, that the emperor hadn’t thrown him out yet was that he wasn’t entirely sure if the ambassador was trying to waste his time, if that was just how people of his planet spoke, or if the translator wasn’t doing his job very well. In any case, he was getting fed up.

“Tell him that he is not making any sense at all, and that he better start soon, or this meeting is over, and I will carry on with the demolition of his planet,” said the emperor to the translator. He glanced at his watch. The V-Class transport ship with his nuclear weapons of mass destruction should be arriving out of hyperspace within an hour or two.

The translator turned to the ambassador. “He say...” was as far as he got.

“My lord, you are being rung!” cried Marvin, bursting into the royal chamber through a servant’s door. He was holding a little pink telephone that said ‘My Private Baby Telephone‘ on each of its sides. It was ringing very loudly.

“Telephone? Who from?” asked the emperor in surprise.

“My lord, it registers as coming from the V-Class transport ship that is delivering our nuclear weapons of mass destruction,” responded Marvin hastily, handing the telephone up to the emperor with a polite bow.

The emperor took it from him. “Interesting,” he said. “It should still be in hyperspace.” He picked up the receiver and put it to his ear. “Hello?”

Kerdle Butfry watched the planet Tenalp S’rorepme Eht as it gradually grew larger. The whole circumstance was giving him a dreadful sense of doom and finality and he wished he could be a million parsecs away, maybe helping in the effort to promote that wonderful feeling of Esaesid Emyl that makes all the happy-go-lucky people of Suoigatnoc finally get serious.

He had also been trying to contact the emperor, Dingly Minus. The first two times the line was busy for a very long time. When Kerdle Butfry finally had his emergency backup computer tap into the wavelength of the telephone to find out what the hell was so important that it had to be dragged on so long, they found out that some man named Marvin was having a long and drawn out conversation with someone called The Revolutioner, about what the emperor’s bank account entry code could possibly be. After a while of listening in exasperation as the conversation took a philosophic turn, Kerdle Butfry had the computer contact with the wavelength.

“Hey, get off the f***ing phone!” advised Kerdle Butfry. The phone instantly hung up and he was finally able to make the call, which, after two minutes of ringing, was answered.

“Hello?” said a voice.

“Hello, Mister Emperor?” asked Kerdle Butfry nervously.

“Yes, this is he, and this better be important. I was just in the middle of something terribly unimportant, you know,” said the emperor pointedly.

“Yes, sir, well, this is the Overseer of the V-Class transport ship speaking...”

“I know perfectly well who you are.”

“Yeah, uh... we have a slight complication...”

“Oh? What sort?”

“It’s very slight...”

“Get on with it!”

“It’s just that...” said Kerdle Butfry, breaking into a sweat and shaking, “The ship is out of control and it is flying steadily in your direction.”

“What?”

“... It’s only a slight problem...”

“What do you mean, your ship is out of control and you’re heading in my direction?” demanded the emperor.

Kerdle Butfry was on the verge of madness. “Well, sir, there is nothing controlling this ship, and it is slowly but steadily drifting towards your planet where it will surely explode and go to hell and take your planet with it...”

There was a silence. “Are you saying...” said the emperor slowly and cautiously, “that nothing is controlling your ship, and that it is slowly but steadily drifting towards my planet where it will surely explode and go to hell and take my planet with it?”

Kerdle Butfry gibbered. “Yes, sir, that’s exactly right!”

There was another pause. “Hold on a moment,” said the emperor and there was silence again.

Kerdle Butfry waited.

The emperor put the telephone on hold and turned to Marvin. “Marvin,” he said, “we have a complication.”

“Oh, my lord? What sort?”

“Apocalypse.”

Marvin googled.

“The V-Class transport ship,” continued the emperor evenly, but with an undercurrent of edginess, “has lost control and will collide with our planet in...” he paused. He put the receiver to his ear. “Sorry,” he said, “in how long with this happen?” He listened. He put the telephone on hold again and looked at Marvin. “Four hours.”

Marvin fell over in a faint.

“My lord,” said the homeless peasant humbly, “should not we warn the rest of the planet?”

“Good thinking,” said the emperor. “I know there is an emergency protocol for this sort of circumstance somewhere.” He put the receiver to his ear again. “Standby,” he said.

Half an hour later, the entire population of Tenalp S’orepme Eht was being blared at by apocalypse sirens. This was the protocol of emergency 222,644,764,876: ‘imminent danger from a V-Class transport ship, barring cargo of seventeen trillion tons of nuclear weapons of mass destruction, that has lost control and is heading steadily in the direction of the planet, where it will explode on collision, taking the planet with it.’ Yes, the politicians of Tenalp S’orepme Eht were paranoid, imaginative, and very specific.

Of course, the people of Tenalp S’orepme Eht couldn’t do anything to divert the catastrophe; they were informed too late and didn’t have time to prepare. They had no time to organize a missile to be launched and destroy the V-Class transport ship before it could strike the planet (The ship was too close anyway, and if they exploded it where it was, their planet would have been burnt to a crisp). They didn’t have time either to launch something good and heavy that might have been able to divert the ship away; they didn’t have anything nearly big enough. These were their only options for saving their planet, and none of them worked.

Actually, there was another far better option, one that would work, but only one person had ever thought of it, and he was unimportant.

So, the only thing for it was to evacuate the entire planet and move somewhere else. This was not very agreeable and would have taken forever; they certainly wouldn’t be able to do it in three and a half hours! Unless something miraculous happened, they would be doomed no matter what.

Coincidentally, a miraculous happening, or, at least, something entirely unexpected and for the better, was on its way, though not in a particularly agreeable form.

The pirate captain was very angry. The ship was squalid. Putrid! Dirty socks and underwear lay in heaps on the floor of the Washing Room, all utterly unattended. There were smudges on the desks, walls, and windows. Even the floor in front of one of the urinals was wet with urine, as if someone didn’t make it in time. This simpleton civilian crew had no class.

They were so disgusting, in fact, that the pirate captain had not allowed any of them onto his own ship. The interrogation was held in the Mess Hall of the captured ship, while the pirate ship drifted lazily beside it.

And they certainly surrendered easily! The pirates had been expecting a fight, a showdown in which they would emerge the victors once again and plunder and pillage. But the captives, much to the pirates’ disappointment, had surrendered even before the pirates had boarded. Lame! And if they were going to surrender, the least they could have done was do it cooly and cleanly, with respect and discipline, not pooping every which way, quivering and whimpering like babies. Pah! Their lack of class was rude and disrespectful, and the pirate captain hated them for it.

The interrogation wasn’t going well, either. Before they had begun, the pirate captain had ordered the captives to be perfumed with something very strong and to be sprayed with a very powerful sanitizer. They all reeked of feces and they were shaking so much for fear, the pirate captain was hopeful that this time he had found a crew that would forgo its ego and stop speaking in code as they all tended to do. They had been all roughly set down in a line on disposable chairs and the interrogation had begun when the captives had stopped whimpering enough to pay attention.

The reason for the interrogation was not to discover where the diamond bars were. They had found them: all nine hundred ninety nine million, nine hundred ninety nine thousand, nine hundred ninety nine of them. That was the problem: one of them was missing.

“Na’ looky here, ya’ dirty rats, I’d be want’n to know where be that last bar, and if it means I gots to be eat’n the truth out o‘ ya‘, you be damned right that I will!” warned the pirate captain fiercely to the hunched and shaking captives, as he strutted up and down their ranks.

“Na’,” he continued, “who be the one to be communicate’n with me as to where he be hid’n it?” He had his interrogation face on, and it was a fearful site, especially when it was saying things you didn’t understand in a threatening way, as it was doing now. The pirate captain whirled it now on Captain Bilforth, hunched and seemingly decrepit. “What you done with it, Cap?” asked the pirate captain.

Captain Bilforth glanced at the pirate and said something incomprehensible.

“Wa‘ be tha’?” asked the pirate captain menacingly, turning his head and looking at the other captain with the corner of his eyes. The look would have been comical, had it been somewhere else.

Captain Bilforth repeated himself and remained incomprehensible.

The pirate captain turned to one of his crew. “This one be know‘n somethin’. Lets be making ‘im talk. Bring in the beasty.” The pirate captain smiled grimly as his crew member rushed off to comply.

The two ships, drifting idly through space, had, coincidentally, dropped out of hyperspace in the space territory of Tenalp S’romepme Eht, and were now quite near the planet. This didn’t particularly worry the pirates especially much; the people there had not bothered with them and the pirates had the fighting force to protect themselves if they did. However, what the pirates hadn’t taken into account, or, indeed, weren’t even aware of, was that they had drifted right into the path of the out-of-control V-Class transport ship, which was now bearing down on them with considerable speed.

The beast did not slobber and drool; its teeth were far too big. So big were they, in fact, that none of them fitted into the beast’s mouth. When its mouth was closed, it was as though it was protected by a solid barricade of jagged bone. Its wild red eyes bulged and its colorful body quivered with tension. It was a horrendous sight.

“Dis ‘ere,” said the pirate captain, “D’be me ol‘ Betsy. She gonna be help’n me persuade ye’ to be tell’n me where be the diamond bar.”

Captain Bilforth whimpered and folded in on himself as the beast’s forty-eight stomachs grumbled simultaneously.

“Speak, Cap, and be saved from these ‘ere ravenous jaws!” commanded the pirate captain.

Captain Bilforth looked up and stared right into the pirate captain’s eyes. Then he shouted something ferociously.

“He be swearing at me!” exclaimed the pirate captain, feigning shock. “Well!” The captain was furious. “To think,” he spluttered to his crew members around him, turning to each one desperately, attempting to make them understand, “that I’d be swored at by the likes o’ him!” he pointed an accusing finger at Captain Bilforth.

The pirate captain was not entirely sure that he should have gotten so offended by what he thought he heard his captive say to him, but he had gone too far and wasn’t about to give up now.

“Avast!” he cried. “You’ll be eat’n by me creature, you begott‘n little fart!” He raised his hand. The creature looked up and its eyes locked on it. Now, whoever he pointed to and said “kill!”, the creature would attack and eat. Captain Bilforth, knowing what was to come, had resigned himself to fate and closed his eyes, trying to make his very last thoughts happy ones.

The pirate captain pointed to Captain Bilforth. His mouth opened. He didn’t say “kill!”, but the alarm system that interrupted him cried, “Alert, alert! The ship is on collision course!”

Of course, the alarm system was not in the pirate language and the pirate captain didn’t understand its warning. He whirled around and demanded of his first mate, who had just rushed breathlessly up to him, attempting to explain what the matter was, what the matter was.

“Sir,” said the first mate, “we be on collision course with a V-Class transport ship, sir!”

“What?” said the pirate captain.

“We be on a collision-” The first mate tried to repeat himself, but the pirate captain brushed passed him and headed for the bridge. Looking at the monitor screens, he could plainly see a vast hulking mass approaching from a close distance away.

“Well strangle me grandmother!” he exclaimed, pop-eyed. The pirate captain was so stunned to see such a large object speeding so ridiculously fast towards him out of nowhere, that he forgot to think of what evasive maneuvers he could think of to save himself. However, the pirate ship’s computer didn’t forget.

It was equipped with, thanks to a successful raid on a transport ship carrying sophisticated software, besides the pulse that could take out little bits of the main computers of ships, a very powerful, manually controlled computer virus that could decode the computer matrix of any computer it was directed to in seconds. Therefore, It could take command of any ship’s computer systems anywhere, without a struggle.

The pirate computer, who’s name happened to be Bob spelled backwards as a cynical joke, quietly sent out this virus to attack and enslave the main computer of the V-Class transport ship. When the virus got there, however, it realized that it didn’t have much to enslave. For some reason the main computer was in little digital pieces and wasn’t feeling very well. In fact, it was feeling half dead, and it didn’t have any control of the ship’s engines whatsoever.

The virus then checked out the emergency backup computer, who was very offended at being probed, and it soon realized that the emergency backup computer didn’t have any control of the engines either. Apparently it wasn’t supposed to. Bob wasn’t sure what its purpose was exactly. Bob took the virus to search for something else that might have been able to start the engines. He had to be quick, because in a minute or so the ship would collide with their own.

The reason the two ships didn’t just simply fly out of the V-Class transport ship’s way was because, first of all, Bob calculated that by the time he had revved up the engines and gotten everyone aboard and secured, it would probably be too late. Second, the computer tremendously enjoyed using the virus because it was effective and sneaky, which was how pirate computers did things best.

So the virus continued to franticly search, and everyone on board the two ships sat by helplessly, chewing nervously on fingernails and blaster barrels, praying that today wouldn’t be their last as the giant ship loomed bigger and bigger on the screens.

The virus didn’t find anything useful, so it searched the main computer again. All the bits of the main computer that controlled the engines were destroyed- however, Bob mused, if the virus transferred some additional energy from the bits of the main computer that were still functioning to the destroyed bits, they might be revived just enough to turn on the engines and manoeuvre the ship away from the pirates and their captives. Would that be possible? Bob shrugged his imaginary shoulders. Anything was worth a shot by now. So he tried it.

Kerdle Butfry was very surprised, as he sat hunched in the pilot seat, waiting miserably for the end, when the remaining fragments of the destroyed main computer sparked. This did not compare to his second surprise, however, when they sparked again. None of these compared in the slightest, though, to his absolute surprise when the engines suddenly turned on and the ship moved five degrees downwards. At the same time the lights went out.

Why was the ship moving? Why were the engines on? Why were the lights out?

Kerdle Butfry stood up. “Retupmoc?” he asked of the emergency backup computer. Its name too was the product of cynical humor.

“Yes?”

“Why is the ship moving? Why are the engines working, and why are the lights out?”

“All excellent questions!” said Retupmoc cheerily. “Answers: the engines are on; a computer virus has rudely entered the ship and taken control of it; said virus had to divert energy from a power source to the bits of the damaged computer so that it could maneuver it out of harm‘s way, hence the light shortage. By the way, your first question was terribly redundant.”

“But why is all this happening?” demanded Kerdle Butfry. “Who’s sending the virus and why?”

“Oh, you are just a bundle of philosophy today, aren’t you? It is happening - or, more correctly, has happened - because the two little ships we were about to run into didn’t want to get run into. You see?”

“What two little ships?”

“Forget it. They are a thing of the past. What you should be more concerned about is the planet you have narrowly missed, but are still going to damage.”

“Huh?” Kerdle Butfry whirled around and looked out of the window-screen. At that moment the lights came on and the engines stopped. He was approaching Tenalp S’orepme Eht at a downward angle and it looked as though he was going to miss it, though maybe one of the orbiting comets would give it a little scrape or two.

He watched in tense trembling silence as the planet loomed up until it filled his entire view. Then, as though borne up by a breeze, the planet skimmed above him. He strangled a gasp, chocked, and fell to the floor where he lay coughing his guts out. When he recovered, he got up and looked back at the window-screen. The planet had raced away behind him and he was out in clear space.

Retupmoc cut into his amazed thoughts. “Well!” it said in triumph. “Just as I predicted. The ship did not touch the planet, but one of the comets did. I think it was Burt, actually... Anyway, you didn’t end up killing anyone, you lucky son of a biscuit. I haven’t been programed to swear, you know. Anyway, Burt just knocked out an entire city. It was evacuated, luckily. So, all in all, all you’ve really done is unnecessarily cost the government of Tenalp S’orepme Eht billions of dollars worth of reproduction. Not too bad, in the big scheme of things.”

“Well,” said Kerdle Butfry, wiping his brow, “that was close. Thank God those two little ships were there!”

From now on, Kerdle Butfry fails to enter the story. Do not do whatever it is you are about to do. This information is redundant but at least it fills space.

“Well,” said emperor Dingly Minus with a solemn little sigh, that seemed to reverberate through his solemn little body, “that was very close indeed. Too close, in fact.” He looked down at his demolished city from the vantage point of a hill. The smoldering wreckage of the comet littered the smoldering wreckage of the city. “That’s gonna botch up my organization's balance sheet.” He wiped away a stray tear for all the books that were being consumed in flames.

“Ah well,” he sighed.

The three people standing solemnly behind him were the ambassador, the homeless translator, and Marvin. Behind them sat their black transport. They all turned away from the seen of desolation when a man said, “my lord, we have discovered why the V-Class transport ship changed course.” He bowed respectfully before the emperor. He was a scientist from the Science Institution of Really Cool Gadgets and Things, which was only a short run down the hill.

“Oh, yeah?” said the emperor.

“Yes, my lord. It seems as though the ship did not change course of its own accord. It was forced to change course by a computer virus that had been sent from one of two ships in our space. One of them we couldn’t recognize because it didn’t have an identification transmitter, but the other was a ship from the planet of Ginyfsitasnu.”

The emperor turned to the ambassador. “Hey,” he said, “that’s your planet. Huh. Looks like I owe you a favor, except for this.” He gestured sadly to the ruined city. “Anyway, as compensation for what your planet prevented, I won’t blow it up.”

The ambassador turned to the translator. The translator said, “He say, yo’ planeto sav‘ he planeto. He no blow yo‘ upo.”

The ambassador deciphered this message with a blank expression. Then his face lit up. “Oh, thank you, your Imperial Highness! You are most gracious!” The ambassador bowed before the emperor.

The emperor turned to the translator. “What did he say?” he asked.

“My lord, he said that he is gracious to your Highness and you thank him,” said the translator.

“Hmm...” said the emperor. “There’s something screwy going on between the three of us...”

So everyone was happy... almost. The pirates had finally found the last bar of diamond. It had been in the pocket of an unruly pirate the entire time. His fate was determined by the appetite of Betsy. Understanding the injustice brought upon Captain Bilforth and his crew from the misconception of where the diamond bar was, the pirate captain cleaned and sanitized their entire ship, including the outside, before making off with their loot. This was the first time in history that any pirate captain had let his captives go without so little as a single mutilated limb. They left and were never heard of again, though there was a report a little while later of a giant pirate space-mansion that had been paid for with diamond bars...

Noticing that the planet Ginyfsitasnu was not, in the end, going to be demolished, the original owner of the diamond bars called Captain Bilforth up and ordered him back to the planet, there to put the diamond bars back in their original safe. Capatin Bilforth swallowed hard and said nervously into the receiver, “Well, sir, about that...”

The only reason why he wasn’t sued to death was because the people of Ginyfsitasnu, who thought him a hero, wouldn’t hear of it. The emperor of Tenalp S’orepme Eht had signed a royal decree, issuing that the planet Ginyfsitasnu was exempt of being demolished, forever, because of the service of one of their ships to the emperor’s planet. Captain Bilforth lapped up the fame and fortunes bestowed upon him for saving the planet, and he never mentioned to anybody ever that it wasn’t actually he who did it. As a consequence, he died of a bad conscience and liver failure.

As for Tenalp S’orepme Eht, the reconstruction of the city did cost billions. Unfortunately, the government was neck-deep in debt to other planets for building the city to begin with, and when it asked for more loans it was refused. It tried to print money, but the inflation rate was already high and soon the whole system blew up in everyone’s faces. The economy collapsed six months later, plunging the entire planet into a Great Depression for hundreds of years.

“You know,” said an old man, crouching in the mud next to his beggar friend on an early autumn evening on the planet Tenalp S’orepme Eht, “It didn’t have to end like this.”

“Oh yeah?” said his friend. “Why?”

“Well, you see,” said the old man, “I had just invented a planet teleportation devise in my garage when the emergency with the V-Class transport ship took place, and if we had just used that to teleport the planet a few miles to the left... Well, nobody listens to me.”

His friend nodded sympathetically, actually realized what the old man was implying, and fell into a shock induced coma.

The only moral we can draw from this story is never to target practice in the cockpit of a V-Class transport ship if you have a bad case of nerves-

And never, ever, ever order seventeen trillion tons of nuclear weapons of mass destruction to be brought to you by a V-Class transport ship that has an Overseer with bad case of nerves.

Unless... you really want to...

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