How To Save The World: An Alien Comedy (47 page)

“Ar … yeah,” Hex concurred.  “I suppose.”  Hex was clearly more impressed by her amazingly lush legs than by her hair.

“Anyway, are we getting the tunes on?” Kesta prompted.  Hex’s ts4 player
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had been playing up so they were currently reliant on Eric for supplying the tunes.

“Yeah, a bit of
Random Capitalisation?” Eric suggested.

“Good choice,” Kesta
endorsed.

“Yeah, top band,” Hex agreed, nodding approvingly at Eric’s suggestion.

So Eric got out his ts4 player and selected Random Capitalisation’s new album, then the three friends laid back and enjoyed that winning combination of sunshine and music.

But within seconds Eric’s mind was back once again thinking about his actions that morning.  And annoyingly it wasn’t the enjoyable bits that his mind seemed keen to focus on.  It was the guilt.  The fact that his number one lass would soon be dead.  So Eric tried to nudge his mind in the right direction by actively recalling some of his favourite enjoyable bits from the morning, and replaying them over in his head, but it didn’t do any good.  His mind seemed set on being a snide to him.  No matter how hard he tried to focus on the enjoyable bits, his mind had its heart set on focussing on the guilt.  Except that now it was
.  Font size 12 wasn’t big enough to describe it properly.  It needed to be at least font size 50.  Because this was some seriously big guilt.  Eric had never felt this guilty before in his entire life.  And all he had done was save the Earth.  It didn’t seem fair.  He didn’t ask for this to happen.  He just stumbled upon it.  Or rather,
it
stumbled upon
him
.

‘Man.  I knew I shouldn’t have hiked up Helvellyn,’ he told himself, thinking back to when he first met Jixyl and Azleev.  ‘I was originally just gonna spend the whole day recording some tunes until Monty came up with the daft idea of going for a hike.  It’s his fault.  If it wasn’t for Monty I would never have even been here in the first place.  So he’s the one that should feel guilty.  Not me.’  But this rather feeble attempt at logisticising his guilt away failed miserably.

And then Eric felt a feeling that made him feel nostalgic.  He felt the urge to play the guitar.  And the urge to get fit.  And also the urge to learn Japanese.  Quite a weird combination admittedly, but this reminded him of how he would always feel when he was younger in the morning after the first few times he scored.  When he first started scoring he would initially be left with a strong urge to play the guitar.  Then a couple of hours later he would then feel the need to improve his life by getting fit.  And then for reasons he wasn’t entirely sure of, he would also feel the need to learn Japanese.  Maybe it was just because scoring was basically a shallow pursuit, whereas playing the guitar and getting fit and learning a foreign language are positive activities with long term benefits.  So maybe it was the pendulum effect.  In the same way that alcoholics sometimes become teetotal, maybe doing something really shallow left you with an urge to do something with a purpose.  So maybe by the same principle, obliterating the entire population of a planet left you with an overwhelming need to do something massively beneficial to mankind.

Like getting fit.

And playing the guitar.

And learning Japanese.

Hmm…  Maybe not.  But whatever the reason, that was the way Eric now found himself feeling.  He needed to exercise.  And he needed to strum.  And he needed to learn Japanese.

But
given that there were no native Japanese speakers on Fem, and given that even if there were, people could just use G.O.T. to communicate with them, there were therefore unsurprisingly no Japanese books available on Fem.  So Eric was stuck when it came to learning Japanese.

Likewise with playing the guitar.  Ko Pagna was a relatively small island with only a small village with a very limited selection of shops and therefore no musical instrument vendors.  So again Eric was stuck when it came to playing the guitar.

So that left getting fit.  “I think I might go for a jog later on,” he announced.  Back on Earth he exercised a fair bit and was generally in pretty good shape, and he had intended to continue this when he arrived on Fem, but since his arrival exercise had fallen well down the pecking order
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below partying it up and generally having a good time.

“What do you wanna do that for?” Kesta asked, derisively.

“To get fit,” Eric explained.

“Nothing wrong with jogging,” Hex interjected.

“Apart from it’s a bit sad,” Kesta remarked.

“You see, for someone like you I can see why that might be a bit of a problem,” Eric replied.  “But I’ve got enough coolness in the bag to do the occasional sad activity and still remain well above the cut-off point for coolness.”

Kesta just laughed and rubbed his chin with the palm of his hand at Eric.
[90]

“I might go for a jog as well later on if you fancy tagging along,” Hex offered.

“Aye, could do, like,” Eric agreed.  “How far do you go?”

“I normally run along Sunrise Beach, then up past Dolphin Resort until you get to Moonshine, then cut through Moonshine onto Sunset Beach, then along Sunset Beach to the lighthouse then back to my hotel,” Hex described.

“You can get to Sunset Beach through Star Resort, you know,” Kesta pointed out.  “You don’t have to go all the way along to Moonshine.  Just if you wanted a shortcut.”

“I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the concept of jogging, like, Kesta,” Eric mocked.  “It’s not about taking shortcuts.  It’s about running as far as you can.  Cos, like, if jogging was about taking shortcuts you could just run across the road and back and then be all, like, ‘Ar, that was a class jog, like.  It was just one big massive shortcut.’”

“No, man.  I just meant if you didn’t want to go all the way up to Moonshine then I was just saying you can get through to Sunset Beach through Star Resort,” Kesta protested.

“I’m happy doing the distance I do,” Hex answered.

“But thanks for the tip, though,” Eric smirked.  “If I ever decide to redefine the concept behind jogging then I’ll probably take your advice.”

“Here, man.  I was just trying to be helpful,” Kesta snapped, shirtily.

Hex and Eric finalised their plans for their jog later on then the three friends settled back once again into a relaxed session of sunshine and music.

And then Eric found that his overwhelming urge to do something to help mankind returned once again.  And in principle Eric was all in favour of acting upon this urge.  The only trouble was though, that Eric generally just preferred doing stuff for himself all the time rather than doing stuff to help other people.  Like, he was a firm believer in charity and all that, but just when other people did it.  He wasn’t that keen on actually doing it himself.  He had better things to do.  So in an ideal world it would be other people doing the charity work and all Eric would have to do would be to think, ‘Yes, well done.  I commend you for your efforts.’  So that sort of poured cold water on his urge to do something to benefit mankind.

But in any case, he had just saved mankind from obliteration by the Femlings, so surely that was enough.  Surely that should satisfy his urge.  But then he realised that he had actually misread his urge.  It wasn’t mankind he needed to do something for.  It was the Femlings.  Sort of by way of an apology.  It was sort of a ‘Soz for obliterating yous out of existence and all that, but here’s a gift by way of an apology’ type of an urge.

But what could he do?  That was the question.  What would make up for wiping out their entire population?

The answer was simple.

Nothing.

So there was no point stressing about it.  There was nothing Eric or anyone else could do to make up for initiating the obliteration of an entire species.  Nothing whatsoever.

At least, that was what Eric believed as he lay there on Ko Pagna Sunrise Beach listening to tunes in the sunshine.

But Eric’s beliefs, like many peoples, weren’t always a hundred percent accurate.

Eric always felt good after a jog.  And today was no different.  He felt good.  Really good.  The guilt from earlier in the day had pretty much worn off by now.  And an excitable buzz had taken its place.  Not quite to the extent of the euphoria he felt that morning, but he still felt pretty good nevertheless.  It was as if his emotions were on a pendulum at the moment.

‘Ah … luscious endorphins!’ he thought to himself, as he cooled off in the shower.  ‘Luscious endorphins from a luscious jog.  And now a luscious meal with luscious Sveltish Indie Chick to lusciously look forward to.’  Quite a common feature with Eric was that when he felt really good his vocabulary apparently narrowed quite considerably.  ‘Luscious lusciousness!’ he thought to himself, rubbing his hands together.  In actual fact however, it was the range of emotions he felt which narrowed, not his vocabulary.  His reduced vocabulary merely reflected the reduced range of emotions he was feeling.

He emerged from the shower and headed to his wardrobe to choose his outfit for the evening.  The standard rule he would usually follow was pretty straight forward.  For a cool lass with cool fashion sense if you wanted to impress her you had to dress cool yourself.  Or for a lass who tended to dress sexily, but not particularly cool, it was more important to focus on trying to score and therefore, for example, wearing a fitted t-shirt to highlight your tonedness was always a good idea.  It was highly likely that any attempt to highlight your coolness to a sexily dressed lass would be wasted on her, as she would be more focussed on a person’s sexiness rather than his coolness, so you had to dress with that in mind.

But in Sveltish Indie Chick’s case Eric wanted to both impress her and arouse her.  He had been feeling horny all day.  Even during the peak of his guiltiness there was still a fair chunk of horniness lurking around in the background.  So ideally he wanted the date to end with a repeat of this morning.  But he also needed to impress her by dressing cool and that presented a problem.  Generally speaking cool clothes tended to be slightly baggy, whereas sexy clothes tended to be a bit tighter.  So what to go for?  What mattered most?  Arousing her or impressing her?

‘I have to say, coolness is over-rated, like,’ Eric decided, as he realised he was more bothered about arousing Elskar than impressing her, and he therefore opted for a fairly snug fitting dark blue t-shirt with the words ‘style therapist’ emblazoned across the front.  He then had second thoughts though, and realised he didn’t want to completely forego coolness and so in the end decided to also go for a pair of anti-fit jeans as a sort of a compromise.  It was probably a bit of a mixed look but he decided he wanted to hedge his bets and cover all bases.

So he carried his chosen outfit over to his bed and was about to get ready when he noticed something strange.  Something quite significant.  ‘Flip!’ he thought to himself.

The bed was covered in ants.  Not the entire bed.  Just around the area where he had splatted that ant earlier that morning.  ‘Ar, excellent!’ he immediately thought.  It probably seems a bit strange that he should be pleased to discover his bed was covered in ants but his subsequent thoughts better explained his reasoning.  ‘Class!  Elskar was right!  Lasses love being right, so when I tell her she was right it’ll get uz a total load of brownie points straight off the belt!’  He then danced over to his table and picked up a piece of paper, then danced back to his bed and spent a few moments splatting all the ants with the paper.  ‘But, like, not excellent that my bed is covered in dead ants, like,’ he clarified to himself.  ‘That’s a bit rubbish admittedly … but definitely worth the brownie points, like.’

And so once he was ready Eric then set off for Mango Restaurant to cash in his brownie points with Elskar.  He arrived five minutes early which he knew wasn’t very cool and all that, and ideally it would have been better to stroll up a few minutes late, but being fashionably late was what you did when you were fairly chilled about a date.  And Eric was very definitely not chilled.  He was extremely excited about meeting up with Sveltish Indie Chick.  And since his episode that morning where he had initially used his watch as a fake excuse to run after Elskar before subsequently coming clean, he had decided that from now on honesty was the best policy.  No more lying.  From now on he was going to be totally straight with Elskar about everything.