How To Save The World: An Alien Comedy (4 page)

“Gift Of Tongues,” the alien explained.  “It’s a bit like Bluetooth.  Except that Bluetooth only allows mobile phones to communicate with each other, whereas G.O.T. can analyse brainwaves and translate what you’re saying into a language I can understand.  And vice versa, so you can understand me as well.”

“Well how do you explain the Geordieness?” Eric quizzed.

“Well your brain obviously thinks in Geordie, doesn’t it?” the alien explained.  “So that’s what the G.O.T. picks up.  It’s obviously not going to be BBC perfect English cos that’s not how you speak.  It converts my language into your local dialect.”

The alien could tell by the look on Eric’s face that he wasn’t convinced.  “Look, I’ve done a bit of research on Earth and I know yous’ve got loads of different languages.  So if you don’t believe uz then say something in another language and I’ll tell you what you’re saying.”

“Right!” Eric agreed, accepting the challenge.  He figured that the chances were that a TV extra would expect him to say something in one of the more common languages for English people to learn, such as French or Spanish, but Eric knew a bit of Japanese which he was confident would catch the TV extra off guard.  “Kono hito wa totemo baka desu.  Demo watashi wa sugoi desu.”  Eric stared at the alien smugly.  “What’s that mean?”

“This man is very stupid,” the alien translated quick as a flash.  “But I am better than good, but not as good as excellent.”

Eric looked momentarily confused.  “Better than good but not as good as…” he muttered to himself.  “Ar, right!” he remarked as the penny dropped.  ‘Sugoi’ was actually Japanese for ‘great,’ so the alien’s long-winded ‘better then good, but not as good as excellent,’ reply threw him for a second.  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” Eric acknowledged, once his brain had finally caught up with things.  “…although I would generally translate ‘sugoi’ to mean ‘great.’  But I suppose ‘better than good, but not as good as excellent’ means the same thing as ‘great.’”

“Ar, right,” the alien replied, looking a bit confused.  The G.O.T. on his mobile phone had translated Eric’s previous sentence back into his own alien language as, ‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right …although I would generally translate ‘great’ to mean ‘great.’  But I suppose ‘great’ means the same thing as ‘great.’’  G.O.T. was an extremely useful technological advance with massive benefits when it came to space travel, but it was not without its flaws.  “That last sentence came out a bit weird, like,” the alien explained, “but even so, I still basically knew what you said.  All thanks to the magic of G.O.T.”

“Aye but just cos you knew what I said, that doesn’t mean you’ve got some clever hi-tech translation device on your mobile phone, though,” Eric surmised.  “That just means that by a fluky coincidence you speak Japanese.”

“Japanese?  Is that the language you were speaking, like, was it?” the alien inquired.

“Well, aye.  You obviously know it was cos you knew what it meant,” Eric asserted.

“I knew what it meant but I didn’t know what language it was,” the alien explained.  “G.O.T. translates but it doesn’t tell you what the original language was.  That’s not what G.O.T. is about.  It’s purely a communication tool.  Not an educational tool.”

“Aye, very funny,” Eric remarked, “but the joke’s dragging on a bit now, so if you’ll just tell uz which way the exit is.”

“Look, if you’re still not convinced then try something else,” the alien suggested.

Eric decided that if the chances of the TV extra speaking Japanese were pretty remote, then the chances of him speaking Japanese
and
Swedish were extremely miniscule.  Admittedly, Eric spoke a bit of both those two languages, but Eric was hardly representative of the English public.
[6]
  By and large most English people were pretty ignorant when it came to learning other languages, other than a few words they picked up at school or on holiday, and Japanese and Swedish weren’t generally on the syllabus.  Nor were they popular holiday destinations.  So Eric figured he’d definitely catch out the TV extra this time.

“Jag heter Eric.  Jag är
en fotograf,” Eric remarked, with a full-on Swedish accent.

“Ar, right.  Nice to meet you, Eric,” the alien replied.  “I’m Jixyl.  And if you’re a photographer then I’ll have to ask you not to take any photographs.  Just cos, like, we don’t want everyone on Earth finding out about us.”

Once again Eric’s attempts to catch out who he thought was a TV extra had been unsuccessful.  “Ar, I’m not really a photographer,” Eric quickly explained.  “I’m really a pensions clerk but I haven’t got up to that chapter in the Swedish book yet.  I only know the words for photographer, policeman and bus driver … and photographer sounds like the coolest job out of those three.”

At this point Azleev, the injured alien, managed to stand up and introduce himself.  “Hi, I’m Azleev.”  He offered his hand.  “You’ve got a good kick on you, like.  No hard feelings, though.  I mean, fair enough cos I can understand that it must have been pretty scary for you.”

“Aye, well like I said,” Eric shrugged, “soz and all that, but it
was
your own fault, like.”

“Ar yeah, no worries,” Azleev agreed.  “I’ll just have to make sure that if I’m ever gonna freak you out again I wear a stomach pad.”

“Aye, soz about kicking you in the stomach, like,” Eric apologised.  “Is your face alright, is it?”

“Well it’s not as sore as my stomach but my nose is bleeding a little bit,” Azleev replied.

Eric noticed a tiny spot of red on the alien’s nose.  “Hmm, I would have thought your blood would have been green, like,” he mocked.  “What with you being aliens and all that.”  He raised his eyebrows and his voice was dripping with irony.  He looked around the room for a hidden camera but there didn’t appear to be any.

“What are you looking for?” Azleev inquired.

“A camera,” Eric replied.

“Here, man!  How many times do I have to tell you, man!
?” Jixyl retorted.  He was starting to get a bit frustrated at Eric’s scepticism by now.  “It’s not a TV prank, man!  We’re really aliens!  I translated that other sentence, didn’t I?”

“Aye, but I’ve realised now what’s going on,” Eric replied.  “There must be a multi-lingual translator in the next room and you’ll have a radio in your ear or something, and he’ll be telling you what I’m saying.”

“I’ve told you, man!  It’s G.O.T.!  Look, you can check my ear!”  Jixyl tilted his head towards Eric to let him inspect his ear for a transmitter device.  Eric leaned his head forward for a better look but couldn’t find any radio-type device on Jixyl’s person.  He still didn’t look convinced though, so Jixyl came up with an idea he hoped would persuade Eric of his sincerity.  “I tell you what … I’ll switch my mobile phone off, then you’ll be able to hear my normal voice.”

“Well, if you want, like,” Eric shrugged, “but you’re just gonna come out with a load of weird sounding gobbledegook, like.  But go on then, if it’ll make you happy.”

Jixyl took his mobile phone from his pocket, pushed a few buttons, then began speaking in his own language.  “Hey, I can’t understand why he’s so sceptical, like,” he commented to Azleev.  “I mean, I know Earth is a non-contact planet
[7]
but, like, even so … like, what’s so unbelievable about there being life on other planets?  I mean, humans would have to be pretty arrogant to think that a universe as big as this would only come up with one planet with life on it.”  Eric noted that even without G.O.T., Jixyl spoke in perfect English.

“Hmm, well by a strange coincidence it just so happens that your own language is totally identical to English.  Hmm, what a coincidence,” Eric joked.

“Eh?  How’s that?” Jixyl asked, looking baffled.  “I can totally understand what you’re saying.”  He looked genuinely confused.  “Eh?  That’s a bit mad, like.”

“Ar, hang on a minute,” Azleev interrupted.  “I think I’ve still got
my
phone on.”

Jixyl tutted.  “You daft chump, man, Azleev,” he remarked at his mate.  “It’s a good job I wasn’t slagging Eric off, like.  Or he might have started hoofing
me
in the stomach as well.”

“Well I don’t actually hoof people in the stomach on a regular basis,” Eric pointed out, defending himself.  “That was just cos I thought I was being attacked by an alien.  But I’m not gonna kick off just cos someone slags uz off.”

Jixyl then looked momentarily confused again.  “Have you got a new phone, like?” he asked Azleev.

“No, I’ve still got my old Nukol 4460,” Azleev answered.

“I didn’t know the 4460 had G.O.T., like,” Jixyl queried.

“Yeah,” Azleev confirmed.  “Good phone, the 4460.”

“What version?” Jixyl inquired.

“I dunno.  Just the black one with silver buttons,” Azleev replied.

“Nar, man.  What version of G.O.T.?” Jixyl clarified.

“Ar … I dunno,” Azleev shrugged.  “I’m not a total mobile phone obsessive like you.”

“Well it can’t be any higher than 1.6,” Jixyl remarked, “cos the 4460 is nearly 3.19726027 years old now
[8]
and version 1.8
[9]
didn’t come out ’til 2.13150685 years ago.”  Jixyl was indeed a pure mobile phone obsessive.

“Well whatever,” Azleev shrugged.  “It’s definitely got G.O.T. though.  It might be an old version but Eric understood what you said so I must have some version of G.O.T. on my phone.”

At this point Eric noticed something weird.  Something
really
weird.  The aliens lips were moving, but they were no longer moving in synch with the words they were saying.  It was like watching a badly dubbed foreign movie.  Only this was in real life, not a movie, which didn’t make any sense.

“Flip!” he exclaimed.  “How’s that happening?”

“How’s
what
happening?” Jixyl replied.

“Your lips are moving out of
synch with what you’re saying,” Eric observed.

This seemed to make perfect sense to Jixyl.  “Ar,
of course … it must be 1.6 then, cos they didn’t introduce lip synching imagery until version 1.8.  See I told you,” he boasted, smugly.

“Jixyl, man.  I never doubted you,” Azleev remarked.  “All I said was I didn’t know what version of G.O.T. I had cos I haven’t got a degree in the history of mobile phone statistics and models like you have.”

Once again the G.O.T. failed to pick up on the irony in Azleev’s voice, so the tone of voice it selected for the translation didn’t accurately portray the irony intended.  Fortunately though, Eric was astute enough to realise that Jixyl probably didn’t possess an actual real degree in the history of mobile phone statistics and models, and it was more probable that Azleev was merely having a sarcastic dig at his friend.

It was also at this point that Eric noticed something else which was rather peculiar.

The aliens only had four fingers.

This was the straw that placed a great deal of pressure on the camel’s back, so to speak.  “Fuck!” Eric remarked, as the scary realisation that this might not actually be a TV prank show after all started to dawn on him.  “You’ve only got four fingers!”

“Actually, I think you’ll find we’ve got eight fingers, actually,” Jixyl retorted.  He seemed rather touchy about his digital inferiority.

“Eh, flip!  That must be a bit of a gutter, like,” Eric opined.

“Well, no.  It’s not at a gutter at all,” Jixyl snapped.  “It must be a gutter for you, is it, having to carry around an extra finger.  I bet it just gets in the way, does it?”

Eric could tell that Jixyl was a bit sensitive about his lack of a fifth finger.  “Ar, soz.  Like, I didn’t mean any cheekiness by it, like,” he quickly apologised.  “I just mean, like, it must be a gutter.  That’s all.  Like, for example what do you do when you’re playing the guitar and you want to play F add 9?”

“Well F add 9’s a rubbish chord in any case,” Jixyl retorted, but he was clearly trying to convince himself more than Eric.  After all, only a total fool would attempt to deny the aural beauty of F add 9.  “Why would you want to play a daft chord like F add 9 when you could play F minor?”

“F minor?!” Eric exclaimed, rather shocked by Jixyl’s controversial chordal choice.  “You’re kidding, aren’t you?  How can you say a minor chord sounds better than an add 9?  F minor’s totally depressing!”

“It’s just Jixyl, man,” Azleev cut in.  “Once he gets in a mood he can be a complete miserable git.”

“I’m not denying that,” Jixyl admitted, “but nevertheless, F minor is still leagues above F add 9.”

Jixyl decided that this was the perfect moment to attempt to get Eric to accept the reality of the situation.  “Anyway, we’ve got four fingers.  We’re not TV pranksters from your planet.  We do actually come from another planet billions of miles away.  So basically … deal with it.  That’s the way it is.  We’re really aliens.”

“Fuck!” Eric exclaimed.  “This is mental, this, like.”  He allowed himself a few seconds to take in the situation.  “Fuck!  I think you are, y’know.  I think you’re actually
really
aliens.”

“Ar, well great,” Jixyl replied, meaning the opposite.  “The great musical chord expert has finally realised that we’re aliens.  Well whoopey-do!  Isn’t that great?”

“Fuck!” Eric repeated once again.  By now any attempt at family-friendly exclamations were well out the window.