How To Save The World: An Alien Comedy (10 page)

“Yeah, it wasn’t as if we could have knocked on the door of the spaceship and said, ‘Excuse me, can we have our friend back please?’” Monty reasoned.

“Actually I’m glad you didn’t cos I’ve had a class few hours, like,” Eric boasted.  “I got to see Everest!”

“Everest!” Monty exclaimed.  “Was it good?”

“Aye, class!” Eric enthused.  “It reminded uz of Jurassic Park.”

“Everest?” Garth inquired, looking slightly baffled.  “How’s Mount Everest like a load of dinosaurs?”

“I just mean when they turn around and the dinosaurs are standing there, and they’re, like … flip!!!” Eric explained.  “Well, that’s what it was like for me with Everest.  I looked down and I was, like … flip!!!”

“We should have come with you,” Monty remarked.

“Aye, you should,” Eric agreed.  “You missed out big time, like.  Honestly, this is how class it was … if you asked uz would I rather have a night of fun and frolics with Angelina Jolie or fly over Everest in an alien spaceship…”  Eric stopped to ponder for a moment.  “Actually that example doesn’t work very well,” he conceded, “but it was still really good, though.”

“Aye, we’ve had a good time as well,” Monty re
plied.  “I’m winning 4-1 … and Garth only won his frame cos I potted the black.”

“It’s this cue,” Garth protested.  “It’s got a rattle.”  It has to be said that Monty and Garth’s pool playing exploits didn’t seem quite as impressive as Eric’s recent spaceship-based adventures.

“Anyway, d’you mind if we head off?” Eric suggested.  “Just cos I’m meant to be meeting that Rachel lass and I’m gonna be late now.  And I’m already in the bad books cos I bombed her out on Thursday as well.”

“Well basically, you’re already in the bad books now, so you might as well get your money’s worth and have a few frames of pool first,” Monty suggested.  Monty completely loved pool.  If the aliens had abducted him he would probably have asked them to take him to a pool hall for his request.

“Nar, at the moment I’m only
totally
in the bad books,” Eric explained, “but if I’m any later I’ll be totally
utterly
in the bad books, so I’d rather just be totally in the bad books rather than totally
utterly
in the bad books.”

Monty and Garth quickly finished their
drinks then the three friends headed out to the car park.

“What
are you going to say to that Rachel lass, then?” Garth inquired, as they began their journey back to Newcastle.

“Just tell her, ‘Sorry I’m late.  I got abducted by aliens and went to Mount Everest,’” Monty suggested, tongue in cheek.

“Yeah, honesty’s always the best policy,” Garth agreed, ironically.

“I tell you what’s a gutter,” Eric replied.  “I’m normally totally honest with her
– well, with everyone – but on Thursday we were meant to be going to town to see some film, but I was recording a song
[19]
and I was totally into it and I didn’t want to interrupt the creative flow, so I texted her and said I had a bit of a headache, so could we make it another night.  But that was, like, the first time I’ve given anyone any patter in months … but now it’s come back to haunt uz coz if I make up another excuse now she’s gonna start to think I’m always full of patter.”

“Does she not think that anyway?” Monty asked, sarcastically.

“Well yeah, probably,” Eric admitted, “but at the moment she probably thinks my patter is just jokey patter, rather than fake dishonest patter.  Like, I mean hopefully she realises that when it comes to serious stuff I’m normally totally honest.  Just cos I reckon that’s the easiest way to live your life and keep things simple.  Lying can be a right stress,” Eric explained.  “But now cos I lied on Thursday I’m in a pure double stress now cos she’s gonna blatantly know if I lie to her two times running.”  He shook his head in regret.  “I tell you … that’s probably why I got abducted,” he went on.  “It’ll be bad karma punishing uz for lying on Thursday.  My bad karma’s deliberately putting uz in a situation where I can’t tell the truth and I have to lie again, just to purposely teach uz a lesson for being full of patter on Thursday.”

“Aye that’s what I thought as well,” Monty agreed.  “When I saw that spaceship I thought, ‘This’ll be to teach Eric a lesson for lying to that lass the other day.’”

Eric smirked.  “Actually, guess what the real reason was why I got abducted,” he replied.

“They didn’t do an anal probe on you, did they?” Monty inquired.

“Nar, but that crossed my mind as well for a worrying moment,” Eric admitted, “but nar … it was cos they’ve got this festival of pranks where they go to other planets and play tricks on people.”

Monty and Garth chuckled at the weirdness of Eric’s revelation.

“So what tricks did they play on you?” Garth asked.

“They put on these green scary masks and these scaly gloves and went ‘Raarrrggghh!’ to scare uz, and then pulled the masks off and went, ‘Nar, man.  It was just a trick.’”

“So they had Geordie accents, did they?” Monty mocked.

“They did actually...”

And so as they headed back to Newcastle, Eric told Monty and Garth all about his experiences over the last couple of hours until his mates were fully up to score on everything that had happened.

When Eric finally made it round to Rachel’s house later that evening, he decided that his best course of action was to place all the blame for his late appearance on Monty’s shoulders.  And so he told Rachel that he and Garth had opted to climb Helvellyn, whereas Monty had already scaled Helvellyn a couple of years ago and had therefore decided to attempt a different hill instead.  Eric and Garth had made it up and down Helvellyn according to timetable, but Monty had underestimated the distance and difficulty of his alternate peak and had therefore taken a lot longer than planned, hence the reason for Eric’s lateness.

“Well why didn’t you just ring uz then, to let uz know you’d be late?” Rachel inquired.

“I didn’t have a signal,” Eric explained
[20]
.  “It’s out in the middle of nowhere, man.”

“
I
had a signal when I went to the lakes last year with the lasses from work,” Rachel countered.

“Well mebbees your network is better than mine,” Eric shrugged.

“Yeah and it’s funny how you had a headache on Thursday as well, isn’t it?” Rachel remarked, suspiciously.

“Well it might have been funny for y
ou but it wasn’t funny for me,” Eric remonstrated, pretending that he hadn’t noticed the ironic tone in Rachel’s voice.  “I hate having headaches.  They’re completely non-humorous in any way, shape or form.”

“I was being sarcastic!” Rachel snapped.

“Look, man.  I’m sorry,” Eric shrugged, in a very unapologetic tone of voice.  “But what could I do?  Monty was driving so we had no choice but to wait for him to get back.  It was either that or start hitch-hiking.”

Eric was quickly starting to realise that Rachel wasn’t going to fall for his made up story so he gradually began to consider the option of telling her the truth.  He couldn’t get away from the possibility though, that if Rachel was sceptical about a story involving Monty climbing a different hill, then there was every chance that she was going to be possibly even more sceptical about a story regarding Eric getting abducted by aliens.

In the end he decided he had no choice, though.  Rachel didn’t seem in any mood to discuss the ‘alternate hill’ story any further so Eric finally decided he had nothing to lose.  If it turned out that Rachel didn’t believe the truth then he was no worse off in any case as she didn’t believe his lies either.  Plus, he reasoned he could show her his newly acquired alien phone to prove his story.  He’d no doubt feel a little bit guilty about breaking his promise to Jixyl not to show the phone to anyone else, but right now his priority was curing Rachel of her unjustified huff.

“So do you not believe uz, then?” he asked her.

“It’s just that it’s two times running now that you’ve had an excuse,” Rachel replied, “and you have to admit … you
are
full of patter.”

“Aye, but only daft comedy patter,” Eric
defended.  “When it comes to serious stuff I always make a clear distinction between when I actually mean what I’m saying and when I’m just making daft stuff up.”

“So was your story about it being Monty’s fault serious patter or made up patter?”
Rachel asked.

“Well actually that was neither,” Eric admitted.  “That was just a lie.”

“I can’t believe you!” Rachel snapped.  She shook her head in disbelief.

“Do you mean you can’t believe uz as in ‘you find me untrustworthy’ or as in ‘you’re shocked by my behaviour?’” Eric asked, seeking clarification of Rachel’s outburst.

“Both!” Rachel snapped, giving him a fiery glare.

“But there’s a good reason why I didn’t tell you the truth,” Eric insisted.

“Aye … cos you’re full of patter!” Rachel replied.

“Well, yes,” Eric agreed, “but with a good reason.”

“Which is?”

“Well … before I explain I just want to say that you probably won’t believe uz,” Eric replied, “so before you lose your raj wait until I’ve finished explaining everything cos I can prove what I’m going to say, right?”

“Look, I’m not even interested,” Rachel shrugged, pretending not to be bothered, even though she was blatantly totally bothered.  “If you didn’t want to see uz again I’d rather you were honest enough to admit it, rather than just making stories up.”

“I was abducted by aliens,” Eric
suddenly revealed.

Rachel gave him a funny look for a few moments.  “You’re not even funny,” she grunted.

“Look, I don’t blame you for not believing uz, coz I didn’t even believe it at first … and it was actually happening to me, whereas you’re just hearing about it … but I can prove it.”  Eric removed his intergalactic mobile phone from his pocket.  It looked very much like any top of the range phone you would find on Earth.  Well perhaps a little bit smaller, and a little bit cooler, but other than that very similar indeed.

“A mobile phone?” Rachel quizzed, looking confused.  “And that proves you were abducted by aliens, does it?”  It ha
s to be said, she didn’t look very convinced.

“Aye, cos it’s got this feature on it called G.O.T., which means Gift Of Tongues, and that means I can understand any language.”  Eric hoped that Rachel’s expression would become more curious but his hopes were in vain.  “So if you speak something foreign to uz and then I’ll tell you what you said and that’ll prove that this phone can translate stuff and that’ll prove that it was given to uz by aliens.”

“How about I try speaking common sense,” Rachel suggested, sarcastically, “cos that’s certainly foreign to you.”

“Nar, howay man,” Eric persisted.  “Just say something in a different language and I’ll translate it.”

“You can get computer programmes on Earth that do that,” Rachel pointed out.  “You don’t need alien technology to translate languages.”

“Yes, but I mean, like … I’ll just
know
what you’re saying,” Eric explained.  “I won’t have to type it into the phone for a translation or anything like that.  I’ll just understand what you say straight away … just by listening to you.”

Eric persisted but Rachel wasn’t willing to play along so he had to decide on a different strategy.

“Right then.  If you’re being awkward about it then I’ll put a DVD on and select a foreign language,” he proposed.

As luck would have it there was already a disc in the DVD player, namely The Empire Strikes Back, so Eric selected Chinese and then pressed play.

Chinese kanji appeared against a black background.

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” Eric translated.

The kanji disappeared and the famous Star Wars theme tune began to blast out of the speakers.  A few moments later more kanji began to scroll up the screen.

“Episode Five
- The Empire Strikes Back,” Eric translated, once again with one hundred percent accuracy.

“You’re not even funny,” Rachel
dismissed, but Eric detected the tiniest begrudged smile fighting to show itself at the sides of her lips.

“Look, I can understand that you’re a bit sceptical,” Eric
conceded, “cos admittedly that wasn’t G.O.T.  It only translates spoken words, not written stuff.  That was just me cos I know the introduction to Star Wars anyway even without G.O.T., so I tell you what … I’ll put on a daft women film and I’ll pick any scene at random and I’ll translate that.”

So
Eric quickly flicked through Rachel’s DVDs until he found Dirty Dancing, and inserted it into the DVD player.  Then after choosing a scene at random he selected the Chinese language track and began translating.

Rachel couldn’t help noticing that the characters were
apparently speaking English and that Eric appeared to be simply repeating what they were saying.  “That was English,” she remarked, after a few seconds.  “All you’re doing is repeating what they’re saying.”