Earth vs. Everybody (13 page)

In the mid 1920’s
I accidentally knocked over Frank Roosevelt with my time machine.

“You bastard,” he
yelled. “I’ll be in a wheelchair for months!”

“Sorry,” I
called, as I whizzed away through the years.

When I started
hearing the word “bummer!” over and over and saw that I was knocking hippies
down, I figured I’d gone too far. I slammed on the brakes and skidded to a
stop.

I could see that
I was in Washington D.C. but I wasn’t sure of the year. I figured since I was
in our nation’s capitol, I’d ask the President. The President should know what
year it was, if anybody did. His aides would have to keep him informed on
something like that.

I was near the
White House, so I got out and hid my machine behind some rose bushes. I was
surprised to find a rocket ship hidden behind the same bush.

When I opened the
door to the Oval Office, I got an even bigger surprise. A younger version of
Buzzy was standing there, looking cool, with sunglasses, a Beatle haircut, and
long sideburns, whispering into Richard Nixon’s ear and shoving Space Money
into his pocket. Buzzy saw me, looked startled, said “You!” and drew his gun.

Immediately he
was pounced upon by Secret Service men. You don’t pull weapons around the
President of the United States unless you want to be pounced on by somebody.
But as soon as the Secret Service men touched Buzzy they quickly jumped away
again, holding their shocked hands and howling in pain. I drew the special gun
I had lifted from the police cruiser and shot Buzzy, instantly slowing him to
the speed of molasses.

Everyone stared
at the suit on the floor that seemed to be filled with slowly pulsating
electricity, and at the unkempt man with the weird ray gun (me). Nobody knew
what to do next. It seemed to be up to me, since I had the gun, and appeared to
have the drop on everybody. First I asked the President what year it was. He conferred
with his aides and said it was 1970 or ‘71. So I’d come too far, as I had
suspected. Then I asked the Secret Service men if they had an empty six foot
tall battery casing. They said they had, but never thought they’d ever have a
use for it. I told them to wrap it around Buzzy.

They got him
trussed up in the casing, then looked at me. “Now what?”

“Uh… deep space.
Widest possible angle of dispersion.”

They didn’t know
what I meant, and, now that I thought about it, I didn’t either. It was just a phrase
I had picked up someplace. “Stab him,” I suggested.

While they were
trying to stab him, and not getting much in the way of results—each stab just
resulted in another nasty shock—I got a better idea: let’s send him back where
he came from, back into space, on the next Moon shot. So that’s how Buzzy ended
up aboard Apollo 13. There wasn’t a lot of extra room in there, but we managed
to stuff him in. I forget where we put him exactly. The number two oxygen tank
in the Service Module, I think.

Nixon asked how
he could repay me for my timely intervention, and I said how about getting me
Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s client records when you get a chance? He said
you got it. I never did get them though. I guess he forgot. People have asked
me why I wanted them. Hey, I collect psychiatrist’s client records, okay?
Sheesh.

Since I was
visiting Washington D.C. I thought I’d stop in and watch Congress while it was
in session before I left. It was very educational, and I came away with a
clearer understanding of how our precious nation works. While I was there I got
into the fun by staging a rare Citizen’s Filibuster on the floor of the House,
which was only legal that one year. They didn’t think I could keep it up for
long—I mean, you’ve got to eat and sleep sometime, right? Wrong, Congressman.
Think again, Mr. Speaker. I had a time machine they didn’t know about, so I
could have stayed on that floor till doomsday (July 4, 2009) without getting
tired or hungry. So I won pretty easy. I’m not sure what the bill I killed was
all about, but it was called the “Give Everybody Their Freedoms Back Bill”
(HB1621), which I characterized, without bothering to read it, as a “flawed
scheme”. Anyway, it was fun taking part in the process.

I intended to
just back up to 1934, but I forgot to shift into reverse and when I stepped on
the gas the machine shot forward into time, instead of backward. I slammed on
the brakes and skidded to a stop, cursing like the sailor I had always wanted
to be. I was about to shift into reverse when I noticed I had stopped next to a
newspaper stand. The newspaper said it was July 7
^th
, 2009, three days after the Independence Day Invasion!
But there were no aliens to be seen. No one had been massacred. No civilians
were being rounded up. No buildings had been destroyed. The town looked kind of
crappy, but it was all still there. I asked a passerby why he wasn’t dead or
captured by aliens, and he said how do we know anything these days.

Dazed, I got out
of the machine, gave the keys to a parking attendant who got in and disappeared
into time never to return, and went to see if my vaporized house and office
were back. They were, looking as disreputable as ever, if not more so. What the
hell?

Larry Laffman was
playing at a night club nearby, so I dropped in to see him to find out if A) he
still knew who I was, since everything else had changed, and B) if he knew
where the alien invasion of Earth went, because I couldn’t find it anywhere. A)
He did, and B) he didn’t. He said to check with Sid. He would know, if anybody
did. Then he finished the joke he had been telling and the audience, which had
been waiting patiently while we talked, roared. I roared too. What a great
joke. He still had it.

I found Sid back
stage trying to talk a young actor into accepting more money per week than he
would ever be worth in a lifetime. If he lived to be a million. The young actor
wasn’t sure about the deal. It sounded to him like he might be getting screwed.
And he didn’t want that. Sid told him to think about it. The young actor left,
his face twisted in a grotesque parody of thought. I went up to Sid.

“I’m Frank Burly.
Remember me? You chased me across the universe for millions of years.”

“Sure, I
remember. Though I shouldn’t. Didn’t happen now. What’s on your mind?”

“Larry said you
might be able to tell me what in the heck has been going on. Everything’s
different now. What happened to the alien invasion?”

Sid hesitated,
looked at his watch, and decided he had time to explain. “There never was an
alien invasion now. You fixed that.”

“How?”

He looked at his
watch again. I took the watch off his wrist and put it in my pocket, then
repeated my question: “How?”

He sighed and
then began: “Well, it’s like this: in the late 1940’s…”

I looked at my
watch. “Hey, couldn’t we speed this up?”

“You’re the one
who wanted the explanation.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s
right. Go ahead. Start in the 1940’s if you want.” I looked at my watch again.
It was almost lunch and we had only gotten up to the 1940’s.

He waited until I
had stopped looking at my watch and muttering to myself, then continued: “In
the late 1940’s when the early space explorers first visited the Earth, they
went away holding their noses. Dirty air, dirty water, trash and Communists all
over the place. The Earth was a dung heap. That’s why the flying saucers
stopped being sighted here. For most alien species, one look at this place was
enough.

“Because aliens
seldom came here, it was a perfect place for an intergalactic criminal like
Buzzy to hide out. But all the filth everywhere drove him crazy. He’s a neat
freak, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. And this place wasn’t neat.

“He had his gang
go to work to clean up Central City, and make sure it was well run and
efficient, so he could live here in comfort. The city officials didn’t know how
the city got so clean all of a sudden, or what was keeping it clean, but they
didn’t question it. ‘Leave Well Enough Alone’ is the city’s motto. Did you know
that?”

“Yeah,” I said,
glancing at my watch.

“Everything was
fine until Buzzy noticed that filth was seeping in from nearby cities through
the air and water, and being carried in on tramps and birds and slobs. That’s
when he realized he was going to have to clean up the whole damn planet. So he
met with Nixon and, using bribery and psychology, convinced him to enact all
the environmental laws and standards we grew to accept as just plain Nixonian
common sense. You think Nixon would have done all that on his own? Not likely.
Too busy bowling and being sneaky all day.”

I frowned. “The
bribery angle I understand. I saw Buzzy stuffing money into Nixon’s pocket
myself. But how did psychology enter into it?”

“People will
respond to any suggestion, no matter how hare-brained it sounds, as long as you
make them think it was at least partially their own idea, and that they were
smart for thinking of it. But you knew that, being so smart as you are.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I
knew that.” I was glad he had noticed I was smart. So glad, I decided to
believe everything he ever said from now on.

“That’s what Buzzy
did to Nixon,” he continued. “What I just did to you. He told him how smart he
was for thinking of environmentalism. Nixon’s vanity did the rest. He pushed
through all those environmental laws and set up all those new regulatory
agencies, even though he wasn’t sure why he was doing it. Didn’t know what it
had to do with bowling. Then Buzzy began organizing environmental groups and
putting thoughts into their heads. Thoughts of cleaning. And arranging. If you
approach it right, you can get somebody who wouldn’t wash his own face to go
outside and wash his garbage.”

I said I had
always thought recycling was a bad idea. And look where it got us. It destroyed
the Earth. Doomsday shroud, and so on. Sid said I couldn’t condemn an entire
program for a single slipup, and I said oh yeah, just watch me.

What he’d just
told me explained something I’d never understood—why Buzzy had pictures of
Nixon all over his office. I assumed he liked him because he was a crook, but
then I remembered that Nixon revealed in that speech of his that he wasn’t a
crook. So that couldn’t have been it. Now I realized that Nixon was his hero
for another reason. The EPA. That also explained why the Nixon Estate had so
much Space Money in it.

“But what does
any of what you’ve just told me have to do with the invasion of the Earth?” I
asked. “And stop looking at me like I’m stupid. You just got through saying I
was smart. Both can’t be true.”

“When Buzzy was
put on trial here, TV viewers from all over the galaxy got to see how nice the
Earth looked now that it had been all cleaned up. It was much nicer than the
planets they were living on. And everybody got the same idea at the same time.
So they all showed up here, fought over the place, and ended up destroying the
whole planet, and themselves in the process.”

“That’ll learn
‘em,” I said, with satisfaction.

“But when you
went back in time and broke up Buzzy’s meeting with Nixon it made it so none of
that ever happened. Without Nixon’s initiatives, the Earth never got cleaned
up. It just kept getting dirtier and dirtier, until it’s the way you see it
now. With garbage all over the place, dirt in the air, and chocolate on
everybody’s faces. No one will ever try to take over this place now. I doubt if
you could give it away.”

“Hey, how do you
know all this?”

“Oh, I get
around. Hear things. And I’m not just Larry Laffman’s agent, you know. I
represent a lot of talented people in a variety of fields.”

“You mean you’re
Buzzy’s agent?”

“That’s right.”

“But… he’s an
evil criminal alien.”

He shrugged. “Agents
can’t afford to only represent Mary Poppins types. There aren’t enough of them.
We learn not to think too much about whether our clients are nice or not. We
just think about how much nice money they can make us. Hell, I represent Jack
the Ripper too.”

“That sounds
dangerous.”

“Aw, he’s all
right. Just don’t offer him sex.”

“Gotcha.”

“He’s available
for birthday parties, if you’re interested.”

I said I wasn’t.

He took his watch
out of my pocket and looked at it. “Hey, I’ve got to go.” He stood up.

“One more
question. What happened to Buzzy?”

“Well, you got
him off the planet on Apollo 13 all right, but he got out of the ship somehow
on its way to the Moon, waited around in open space, then came back on one of
the space shuttles. He told me he had to pry off some tiles to get in. But by
the time he got back there had been a change of administration and the new
President wouldn’t see him, so he hasn’t done as well this time around.”

“Where is he?
What’s he doing?”

Sid jerked a
thumb at the stage. “It’s just a temporary thing. I’m looking to get him
something better. He’s the stooge in Larry’s act.”

I looked around
the curtain and watched Larry pull out Buzzy’s nose until it buzzed with anger.
Then he hit him with pies until he shorted out. The audience howled. Buzzy
didn’t look too happy. But at least now he could tell his friends that he was
in show business. And I thought he was pretty good.

Before he left,
Sid suggested representing me too. He wanted to run me for Congress. He said I
was the kind of one-dimensional blowhard who could really go far in politics. I
had to say no. My message of “More Power To The Fatcats” has never gained much
traction. And every time I kiss a baby it dies. So I don’t think politics would
be a good career for me.

So everything is
back the way it was, pretty much, though there are some differences. With no
EPA or endangered species lists to slow technological development down, all the
gadgets the people of the 1950’s thought would exist by the 21
^st
century are here: hover cars, robot
maids, teleporters, silver suits, everything. Of course the silver suits don’t
look very silver because they’re covered with crud all the time. And all the
dirt and food particles in the air gets in the hover cars’ engines so they
don’t hover much. You have to push them wherever you’re going. But at least
we’ve got them. That’s the important thing. The future is here.