I Wouldn’t Mention It If I Were You

by Luc Reid

You know what I liked most about being a liason to the aliens of the Third Expedition? Screwing with their minds.

Sure, there were always other human functionaries around who would’ve make my ass into an umbrella holder if they’d caught me at it, but that just added to the fun, and anyway they couldn’t speak ?’!a, so they never knew exactly what I was saying. As for me, I speak ?’!a like a native. If you learn enough languages when you’re a kid, after a while learning another one is like finding your underpants after an orgy: inconvenient, time-consuming, and sometimes sticky, but almost always doable.

This one time we were driving past the Washington Monument and I said to the aliens, “See that obelisk? It was built to the exact reported size of George Washington’s phallus.” (They double checked their information repositories here to make sure they weren’t misunderstanding. You should’ve seen the expression on their tentacles.) “I’m not going to go into details, but … listen, ever heard the phrase ‘father of our country’? George Washington. Honest to God truth. But people don’t usually like to talk about this stuff in polite society. I wouldn’t mention it if I were you.”

Or last month, when we kept seeing people walking dogs. “You can tell whether the human owns the dog or the dog owns the human by who’s choosing the direction they go in. See that little brown dog over there? One tug and they’re on a side street. The human’s definitely the pet there. The dogs keep them in little plastic rooms lined with newspaper at night. But people get touchy if you get the owner wrong. I wouldn’t mention it if I were you.”

So now that I’ve been kidnapped and am being brought back to their home planet in preparation for what sounds like a bitch of an invasion, of course I’m as scared as a man with a incontinent seagull on his new hat–but I also have all kinds of new possibilities. And who knows? Maybe I can even bend things a little in our favor.

“Hey,” I say. “Did I ever tell you what happened to the last batch of aliens that visited earth? It was a pretty distressing situation: I wouldn’t mention it if I were you. But here’s the thing: you know how we’ve only got one moon now?” …

The Courtship of Joe the Wrench

by Rudi Dornemann

(Being a sequel to Neostalgia.)

Joe’s association with the Ballet Mechanique brought him steadily closer to respectability.

The first hint came soon after he began helping out with dancer maintenance, when his name appeared in the program. Since “Joe the Wrench” was deemed unsuitable for the opera-and-ballet crowd, it was his full name, Josephus Wren, that appeared.

Then he had to wear a hat whenever entering or exiting the building. Not the soot-stained, crumple-rimmed bowler he wore around his own shop, but a crisp top hat. This he doffed as soon as he entered the ballet’s backstage workroom — after asking permission of Miss Linn, who sat in the corner, snipping choreography into long rolls of player-paper.

But the biggest impetus toward respectability was Eona Bellinghew, the mechaninque’s human prima. Joe watched from the wings, entranced by the grace in her every motion, so sinuous, so smooth compared to the lines of automatons who mimicked and accompanied her. He began leaving his crisp hat on, started wearing white shirts, and even managed to keep one or two free of axle-grease. He rebuilt the gears of half the troupe and there was talk of his becoming a partner in the theater. He created a bouquet of mechanical roses and — with Miss Linn’s help — made them bud and bloom in their own miniature dance.

Of her many suitors, Joe was the one Eona selected to accompany her to the Grand Duke’s ball. At first, he was dazzled by his proximity to her, and she shone more brightly even than she did on stage. Soon, however, he saw that the curve of her arm, the turning of her head, even her smile, all these were not the originals the automatons followed, but echoes of their mechanical movements.

In the workroom the next day, peevish and dispirited in his battered hat, he fidgeted with an en pointe ratchet that wouldn’t lock and his muttered “grind it!” came out louder than he’d expected. Miss Linn’s embarrassed turn of the head Joe recognized at once. This was the genuine, original gesture. His heart bloomed like a mechanical rose.

The opera-and-ballet crowd still prefers the Mechanique, but, over the last few months, many of the more discerning aficionados of the dance have come to prefer the Theater Linn-Wren. No, the shows aren’t as lavish, but there’s a passionate imagination at work that’s been missing from the Mechanique for some time.