This is Part 3 of a community-written, sci-fi parody serial!
Part 1: Steem Wars: Be There Or Be Square, by
Part 2: Hip to be Square, by
Part 3: I Can See Squarely Now, or Number 2 on Planet 3," by 
Our Mission:
As delivered by
, The Time Lord: Galacdictator Tangle et al.... a distress signal has been detected in the Quadrangular Quadrant. Source unknown, species unknown. Take thine crew and investigate / rescue / dominate whoever it is disturbing the galactic peace.
Our Crew:
Galacdictator Tangle (
Underlord Negavader (
Byepeex Reist-Stoomtrooper Destroyer (
Sixty-Wine (
“And why are we traipsing around in the waste compartment again?” Juavez-7 didn’t seem as into it as I was. He hovered, glancing down disdainfully at the soup.
I fished through a pool of murky water at my ankle joint, and withdrew a suspiciously short balloon. “I’m looking for some emptied fuel cells. If I can get some trace fuel samples together, and couple it with a cup of pancake batter and three toothpicks, I can make a bomb to blow all of these fracholes to heck.”
“But we are on this ship,” Juavez said, yanking on an oversized fuel cell, “Wouldn’t the blast kill us too?”
“You have a problem with that?” I didn’t feel like getting into an argument over the importance of functioning and the meaning of life for some soulless metal carcasses like ourselves.
“Nah.” Then Juavez-7 gasped. “¡Dios mio! Look what I found!”
I turned to look when a muffled barf rang out through the ship, and then the waste compartment began to shift. The Intangible announced “Commencing dump,” and then we were shot out into space in a vacuum-sealed defecate ball.
“Great.”
For a ball of waste hurdling through outer space, the suspension was pretty solid. I was almost bored with the fact that I wasn’t tumbling around in the brown ejection.
I turned to look at Juavez-7, who was struggling with something rather large in the soup closest to him.
“What is that?” I asked.
“I think…” He yanked, hard, “I think it’s an escape pod.”
“There’s no way. It’s too small!” I walked over, and pulled the piece of machinery out of the muck. It was a mess of poles and insulating mesh, and it was soaked in urine and maple syrup.
“You have to set it up, cabron. Like camping. You’ve never went escape pod camping con tu padre?”
“Well, I never met my parents, but I think I’d kill them for building me if I did.”
“Here,” Juavez-7 started untangling the parts, “The longest poles go up in the middle, and then you hook the thingy on the thingy…”
“I assume these are all technical terms?”
“Ay caramba, just trust me. Look.” He hooked his multi-tool into a slot towards the top of the escape pod. “Watch.” He fired a small percussive round and the whole thing inflated into a sketchy but roomy escape pod. The walls sagged a bit.
“Well, plug me in!” I climbed into the escape pod with Juavez-7 and zipped it up. “So are we just going to punch a hole in this muck ball and descend to the surface?”
“Way ahead of you.” Juavez-7 punched some coordinates into the dashboard, and we shot straight down to the surface of Planet Three.
+
“That was something, how an escape pod just happened to be in the waste compartment?”
“Hey, I just take what the good God gives me.”
“You believe in God, Juavez-7?”
“Well, sporks are a thing, so yeah.”
“I think the only evidence of a benevolent God is the fact that a musician as amazing as Prince lives.”
“Ummmm… the Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Juavez-7?”
“Oh wow, look! We’re here!” He hurriedly unzipped the tent and flew out.
+
The planet was as boring as any other.
I couldn't place why, but I was digging the planet. Like, it had a good vibe, or something. Orange rivers struck out from the larger ocean in jagged, right angles, like lightning against the sunlit ground.
We could see a city in the near distance, and I turned to Juavez-7, who was still wiping recycled coronas from his optics. “Ready for some murder?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I said are you ready for some myrrh? And some, like, der.”
“What is der?”
“You’ll never find out if you just sit there like a dunce. Come on!” I had a new found energy, the surging strive for adventure, and I bounded across the new ground, kicking up clods of blue dirt and small, spiky plants. Juavez-7 floated behind me, letting out an occasional sigh.
+
The buildings were rather square, like the better brutalist architecture of the planet Snobtu, and I just knew I’d need to oil my neck joints from all the sightseeing I’d do.
I found a coffee shop, tucked in the bottom of a grey building, and I ducked inside, eager to test out the local color.
The whole place was done in chalkboard paint, which was pretty square, but I didn’t want to judge yet. I looked at the menu, and all they had was “Coffee of the Day,” and “Double Shot Espresso.”
I looked to the bartender, whose entire body was covered in tattoos, and had gauges that pulled his ears nearly to the bar, and I asked what the coffee of the day was.
“Oh, it’s double shot espresso.”
“Is it, like, different double shot espresso?”
“I mean, it’s a little more expensive.”
“I dig it. I’ll have two.”
I sat down at a booth with three caucasian white men, dressed in business attire, all staring at each other’s finely combed eyebrows.
“So what’s the news around here?”
“Barry’s eyebrows. Look at ‘em.”
I looked, and, darnit, they were just too perfect. It almost made me want to buy my own pair of eyebrows.
“You’re right. Hey, Juavez-7!” I waved to him from where he floated in the doorway, “Come look at Barry’s eyebrows!”
Barry became suspicious. “How’d you know my name?”
“That Guy just said it.” I pointed at the slightly taller caucasian.
“Oh. Yeah, That Guy’s a trouble maker.”
“My name’s Sixty-Wine!” I jutted my hand inside the circle of men, and That Guy took it feebly, “And this floating fellow is Juavez-7.”
Juavez-7 waved. “Hola.”
“We completely accept your kind here. We’re not like those other knuckle heads,” the tatted barista piped up.
Juavez-7 narrowed his eyes. “Okay.”
I laughed, shot finger guns at the barista. “You’re a cool guy! We should kill sometime!”
“You mean chill?”
“Ha ha! You’re a funny dude, man, I like that!” I felt very gay, and wanted to burn the entire coffee shop down, but something stopped me. The way these people were so put together was refreshing. They all fit into teeny tiny stereotypes without blurring the lines or reversing their programming, and I loved it. Some would say they were fatally square, but what’s wrong with that?
And then terrorism struck.
The door burst open and a squadron of ill-dressed, skint headed punks burst in. The Leader of the pack was a gender-non-specific ginger, with a pixie cut and half a bra on. The Leader threw a cylinder into the room, but rather than explode, it started playing music. I recognized it as Kan-ray Weast’s mixtape, and turned for a look of approval from Barry, but his eyeballs were melting out, and then his face drooled onto the table in a gory mess.
That Guy got up and ran for the back door, but then one of the punks threw a Ray Bradbury novel at his head and he exploded into furious chunks.
The Leader then addressed the barista, said “Look! A shirt that’s actually from Goodwill!” then they tossed a wadded up t-shirt at the barista, who promptly burst into flames, knocking over the espresso machine and screaming in pain.
“Hey!” I shouted, standing up. “Those were hardworking guys you killed!”
“They were squares.” The Leader looked into my eyes.
“So are boxes! What, are you going to go around throwing dirty laundry and sci-fi novels at boxes now? Have you ever seen a box, and been like ‘Oh, that has to go. I so don’t like boxes.’?”
“I assume you’re new around here. We’re the hip ones, and these squares have been running the quadrant too long.”
Juavez-7 was yanking billfolds out of the pockets of the deceased squares.
I said “So what? You’re parents didn’t like you enough, so you’ve thrown your life away to be ‘different’ and ‘anti-establishmentarian’ just to get them back? Listen, you’re not different or cool just because you don’t suck off our capitalistic system, okay? Someone else is going to cut down that forest for you, and someone is going to have a religion that disagrees with your desire to marry your shotgun, so all the anti-fashion and profane living is only chipping away at what you think is the problem. These guys weren’t the problem. The problem is that fleshy, beating thing that you all share in your stupid chests and until they all simultaneously stop, all of creation is going to get screwed into smithereens. Look at you,” I pointed at one punk, “You actually tattooed a penis on your head. That’s there forever. You couldn’t use a sharpie? We wouldn’t really even know the difference. You could wash it off when you’re at home so the pathetic creature you have as a spouse doesn’t have to roll over and see cartoon genitalia in the comfort of her lower-middle class house. Yeah?”
“And who are you to talk down to us?” The Leader asked.
“I’m Sixty-Wine, mother hovers.” I flipped on my nitrous spewer, and before they could protest, I melted the whole lot of them. “Darnit.” I felt something, and I wasn’t proud of that. I felt remorse. I felt loss. I looked at the splattered corpses of the squares and felt extreme regret that I hadn’t saved them.
Dear God, the SOCOPs would be disappointed in me.
I burned the rest of the coffee shop, raiding the register and nabbing a bag of cuban coffee while I was at it.
Juavez-7 and I stumbled back outside, into the light, when we saw something that no amount of memory wiping could ever un-do.
Byepeex was stark naked, wild eyed, holding a red shirt over his crotch. He looked at me, looked at Juavez-7, looked at his junk, and grinned stupidly.
“There’s a story behind this.”
To be continued...
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