Travel Bug (10 page)

“My psychic,” he said.

“How Hollywood, the host answered.

“I would like to bring her out now. Her name is Jezebel.”

The Rapture woman was starting to get out of her seat, rising from her chair with all her demonic beauty for the world to see.

“No, we don’t have time, I’m sorry,” said Brooks.

“I see,” said Ian.

“Just one or two more questions, Ian, and then I have to move on with rest of the show.”

“Sure.”

“How did you know this woman was the genuine article?”

“She traced all of my steps, what I did every day for months, even years. Only someone with genuine ability could do that. Plus she was raised to believe psychics were evil. You know a real Bible thumper type. If someone like Jezebel can move past her upbringing to discover her real spiritual gifts then I can at least leave my mind open. I mean my family never took religion seriously and her family disowned her for her new beliefs and practices.”

“I see.”

“What else did you want to know?” asked Ian Flick.

“The friendship, albeit a controversial one with the “People’s President” of Venezuela, how does she feel about that?”

“I think his speech at the United Nations made that clear. I mean to them we are the devil. The west rapes their land and resources. I guess Marx and Mao would sort of be their Jesus.”

“I should think.”

“My psychic got me to grasp the spiritual nature of these concepts.”

“Ian Flick, ladies and gentlemen.”

Since we were thinking along the same lines, to say the least, the dirty old man and I ended up in Flick’s penthouse with his “psychic” companion.

They went into a deep French kiss and she dropped her robe at the drop of a hat. Her body was beautiful and the drapes did not match the carpet. The hair all around her gorgeous vagina was a lovely light shade of brown. Her hair was as grey as the whitest witch or oldest lady around. The breasts were perfect, not too small and not too large.

“I’m feeling stressed about my mission of conscience to Venezuela,” said the actor.

“Would you like me to give you a blow job?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Lay back baby and whatever you do, don’t think!”

We knew this man was about as much of a man of the people as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao or Fidel Castro. They all deeply cared about their citizens; please disregard the mountain of skulls that were made up of the countless innocent victims of genocide under their regimes.

“Christ, I think I know what she means to do now,” said Harold.

“I think I know, too, but I’m still not exactly sure why…”

“She’s lost her faith and become almost everything she once stood against. We keep thinking she loves these people because she admires her faith and perhaps she does. We may yet still find out that’s true. However, this critical loss of belief in anything, this complete nihilism seems like she wants everyone to lose faith as well until she gets hers back or dies.”

“Lose faith?” I asked.

“Yes and in the most extreme sense possible,” he answered me.

“What if she never regains it or has been so traumatized that she no longer cares if she gets it back. I mean she was putting down any female staff who wore short skirts of slacks while watching my parents. Now she’s walking around almost naked and blowing celebrities.”

“Okay, point well taken, Andrew but she’s radically changed. An unstable woman has stumbled upon the most important piece of science in the world and she comes from a fundamentalist cult that rejects rational thought and science.”

“I can see her now believing in the devil but not God,” I said.

“So can I,” he answered me.

“You see many of those people believe much more in Paul than Christ, it’s only another step.”

“She’s no Satanist,” said Harold.

“No, she’s not,” I answered him.

“What is she?”

“She’s the death of those who don’t see the world the same way they do.”

“Who are they?”

“They are anyone who doesn’t understand the importance of freedom.”

This unstable third world leader could lead to a world war, the likes of which no one had ever seen. Unlike the popular opinions in the American leader, it was very likely this guy did have “weapons of mass destruction.”

“Why Ian Flick?” asked my great grandfather.

“She needed someone who was close to this fascist dictator bastard.”

“Is that all?” he asked.

“No,” I answered.

“What else?”

“She needed the stupidest possible pawn to help her cause chaos and destruction.”

“Oh, I understand. She needed a politically active Hollywood actor.”

Somehow I thought it was nice to return to the present. The real present of our humble, well, arrogant home, we were after all, far from poor. The sad fact of this woman’s life escaped me. It was like her mind was wired to go from one extreme to another all the way, all or nothing!

“We need a plan that’s as mad as she is, really crazy,” Harold said. Harold sighed. “What would that plan be?”

“It beats the heck out of me, Harold.”

Then it dawned on me. In order to catch a lunatic, one had to become one. A few more trips and we might just get there for real. The meat of the unnamed species lay before us. The electric saw came down slowly and cut a unique portion off of one of its immense black legs.

First, dinosaurs, like the classic Tyrannosaurus Rex ran right by us. We knew we could not interfere, merely observe. Still, it beat the hell out of any science fiction movie on the subject.

“Why are we here?”

“Harold, I don’t know.”

Just when we gasped for air from seeing the monsters, two little boys cried at the foot of their mother at the Roman Coliseum. Then a giant lion came and ripped them to shreds. There was not even a scream, mercifully.

“Some of the first Christians,” said Harold.

“The kind who were really persecuted, not the type who hate to be made fun of on HBO and think they are martyrs.”

“Surely,” he answered me.

The showers of Auschwitz were filled with ordinary people who thought they were going to finally be treated like humans and get clean. Harold and I watched in horror as the poor people were gassed to death.

“Christ, this stuff is hard to watch,” said Harold.

“I don’t know how much more……”

It wasn’t up to me how much we could take; it was up to the travel bug. Then I had a terrible revelation. What if the meat we ate was partially corrupted by a piece of the thing’s eye? We wouldn’t know what to do then. This was somewhere between fantasy and reality. I mean the dinosaur looked like it was chewing on Detective Warner!

Terrifying images of those who were burned alive at the stake for merely being scientifically inquisitive flashed before my horrified eyes. And then they vanished.

History went by rapidly. We saw the many deaths in the inquisition, the trial of Galileo, Joseph Smith claiming to be a prophet in New York State and terrorists in Afghanistan caves planning another attack on America.

“What the heck is wrong with us?” Harold asked, very frightened.

“I don’t know but I know we’re not thinking right,” I answered my great grandfather.

“The beginning…”

“It sure is,” I answered him.

“We need to go back to the beginning of this madness……”

“Yes,” I agreed.

We sure went back but there was no Garden of Eden or evolution. It was large metallic ship where we went next. Little pale men with huge heads and large black eyes got off of it. We could not understand their language or their culture. I think it was safe to say we were truly lost.

We had no idea what planet we were on but we knew that these little things were pissed off. The dead were all around us and they incinerated them immediately, there were apparently no Last rites for the tiny aliens from another world.

“Something has really scared these creatures,” said my great grandfather.

“They look like they are gathering hunting supplies…”

They had these spears that were five times bigger than them; they were no more than three feet tall, head and all!

The one with a black hat made some kind of noise and the rest fell on their knees immediately.

“He must be a member of the clergy,” I said.

“I think he started out as some rich brat who went to seminary…”

“That’s not funny,” I said, laughing.

If that’s what he was, his flock followed him rather faithfully up a hill that was filled with more corpses of their kind.

“These poor things,” I said.

They slowly made their way down the hill and we followed behind them, obviously unseen. There was a cave of some sort. It was large, very large and we couldn’t help wondering why they anxiously wanted to go inside of it.

“One of the pawns is going in,” I said.

“I wonder if his family comes from money, I doubt it,” said Harold.

The poor little creature walked quietly into the darkness of the cave but didn’t come back out the same way. He came out screaming and in about five or six pieces!

Twelve more marched inside. None came out alive!

“What the hell is this thing?” asked Harold.

“Harold,” I laughed. “I honestly don’t know.”

Neither did these tiny, sad little creatures that were losing their lives left and right. I figured out that the trail of alien species behind us… might have come from whatever was inside of the cave.

“Christ, what is that?” asked Harold.

The noise was more than merely inhuman; it was simply hideous for human ears.

“I think the devil himself is in there,” said Harold.

Were these many creatures that conquered the travel bug?

The head alien one spoke up. He inspired more to face death in battle, even miraculously after what they had just witnessed. I had always thought the ones who gave the marching orders were cowards and sociopaths. This thing spoke a language my great grandfather and I could not understand. And yet we could…

He made noises we could not understand but yet were crystal clear. Die for me and the cause. Kill this thing and your names will live forever. He was sort of an alien Alexander the Great except Alexander was no coward.

Twelve more of them came in. Pause. Long wait.

“Hey, they’re not getting slaughtered, at least not as fast,” said Harold.

“No,” I said.

Longer wait. Longer pause. No screams.

“My God,” said my great grandfather. “What the hell is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure sounds scary.”

“It is scary.”

Twelve alien skeletons came out; well actually, I counted eleven. Then there was that old familiar sound and I recognized them, the red eyes.

“Oh my God,” said my great grandfather.

“It’s not our God, it’s their devil……”

The unnamed species came out of the cave, slowly at first. Then it took a quick step with all of its appalling black legs all at once, at least, so it seemed. I was in shock to see what it looked like awake and fully alive.

“The last warrior is still alive, inside of his mouth.”

“It won’t be alive for long,” I said.

I was right. It sucked it in, meat and all and spat it out as only skeletal remains of the alien soldier. Then something happened.

“Look,” said Harold.

Dear reader, sometimes one just has to be there. You have to admit that when you’re on a planet you don’t know, in a universe you don’t know, possibly even a time and dimension you don’t know, description may elude you.

There was something either digested in the alien’s body or that was part of the armor he was wearing…… that is what I thought at least. Like I said, impossible to describe…

“Now, finally a suicide mission on the side of good and not evil,” my great grandfather said.

The toxic substance went right to his head, whatever it was. His body shook uncontrollably. He looked like he either fainted or died for a moment but then got right back up and started eating another soldier. The alien managed to take his spear and cut the monster’s eye a little. Acid came down from it and melted the soldier. One could briefly hear his cries of agony but not for long, not for long at all. The travel bug or unnamed species fell. It looked like it either fainted or died; it was hard to tell which. Well, for the casual viewer it would have been.

We boarded the mother ship and saw the ancient technology that far exceeded man’s science. This was way beyond what humans were capable of grasping. We recognized it as something deep in the caves of our ancestral mansion. The hidden secret of the Godley family, certainly the biggest one we knew of, anyway. The martyr sent him to be frozen. Now he was in these machines to stay frozen. Why didn’t they just kill him? There was a hologram of the one who died in sacrifice and they all kneeled before him except for fearless leader.

“What the hell is going on?” Harold asked.

“Look out the window… porthole,” I said.

The planet outside looked very familiar. It was earth. The ship landed and they brought out the unnamed species, it took a hundred of them to carry him. They used some type of technology to make themselves physically stronger for lifting. I couldn’t help wondering why they didn’t use it to kill the killer bug but these guys moved in mysterious ways.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“The Great Land,” said Harold.

“What?” I asked.

“Alaska,” he answered me.

“Okay,” I said.

Now how this bug came to be in Alaska and how the heck it ended up in Pennsylvania, in a cave, in a mansion, was well quite beyond me.

“Look,” Harold said.

The tiny things were putting tiny red stars of some kind all around the frozen bug. They ran and fled. The explosion sank the creature very far down, deep into the earth, frozen but not for… all time.

“This is amazing,” Harold said.

“We need to use what meat is left wisely to see what’s going on,” I said.

Then we willed ourselves ten minutes into the future. We were in the mother ship once more. The strength of our will gave us a brief glimpse of what these creatures thought or how they did things. We actually understood for a moment, the hieroglyphics that were being created in their virtual manuscript on the ship’s computer log. These little folks were as religious as any human who would drink Kool-Aid and say goodbye to the cruel world.