Xenu's Lotto Part One (eBook)

Chapter Three

Long before Vanilla Nova and the Nognians reached their home world of Nogn, near the galactic core, with the lucrative insurance policy in claw, and even before Vanilla Nova had wrapped up his deal with Sprorp, word had quickly spread: There is a virgin race of suckers out there on one of the galaxy’s boondock spiral arms and they are just begging to be rapaciously and repeatedly hornswoggled.

Agents from the hated Andromeda galaxy, always alert to the current buzz thanks to moles placed deep within in the Nognian Home World Insurance Conglomerate, had eavesdropped on Vanilla Nova and Sprorp’s negotiations and had excitedly passed the info onto their trade ministry on the planet Zicval of the Andromeda Central Core. The captain of a hastily prepared Zicvallian privateer dialed in the co-ordinates of the small whitish-yellow sun and its swirling band of rocky and gassy offspring. He set sail with expectation of returning with riches far beyond the dreams of every greedy little shyster who ever waded through the turquoise pools of Zicval in search of a mate or at least enough of the priceless grunderfish quano with which to leverage one.

“There she is, captain,” the navigator said as the blue and white globe spun lazily on the giant display above the ship’s bridge. “Shall we pillage?”

Captain Fzbhark (Fzbhark—is the close English spelling and pronunciation of a Zicval plosive sounding name, a name that sounds remarkably similar to the gagging, popping noise heard at the conclusion of a successful Heimlich maneuver) was seated in his grand captain’s throne thoughtfully steepling the fingers of his hands beneath his seventy-four chins. He smiled monstrously (a smile which would cause permanent psychological harm to any human child unfortunate enough to glimpse it). He grunted affirmatively. He then muttered with great lust the Creed of the Raiders of the Andromeda Galaxy.

“Rape the riches from our foes. And tape those bitches by their toes. And shake them whence their ankle grows. Take and take and take some more, until fat with loot you can take no more. Then have or not your way with their wenches, plowing through their dainty trenches. Until lastly not another wench, will fit upon your manly wrench. Then plant atop the highest peak, the Zicval flag for claim to keep.”

The three mates and the navigator repeated this, and they all declared their amens. Captain Fzbhark nodded to the navigator. The navigator smiled and silently slid the craft into the outer envelope of the planet’s atmosphere. The craft dropped quickly and steadily toward the earth with none of the violent, fire-burnt afterbirth that marks human atmospheric re-entry. As a matter of fact, these fellows really looked like they knew what they were doing.

During the five-day trip from the Andromeda Galactic Hub, Fzbhark and his men studied all the transmissions that had ever emanated from Earth and quickly learned the simple languages, customs, and norms of the vicious, scrawny, semi-furred bi-pedal creatures who’d somehow clawed their way to the top of the ecosystem. If humor had been a part of the makeup of a Zicvallian, these long-distance travelers would have found it difficult to cease laughter when viewing the black and white moving images of early human spacecraft scorching through the atmosphere. If the voices accompanying the images were to be believed, these blazing balls of nearly molten metal contained one or more of the vicious little semi-furred bi-peds. The aliens watched in awe as these small smoking metal pods were carried back to Earth merely via the fickle fingers of gravity. Some pods came sizzling into the sea while others clanged to a stop on some distant craggy steppe. Zicvallians have the capacity for awe, which they felt for the brave, vicious little semi-furred bi-pedal pilots of these flaming balls, but they lack the capacity for empathy or irony, both of which in varying quantities are required to experience humor. Otherwise, one or more of them would have lost his life to laughter instead of what they soon lost their lives to.

Two of East St. Louis’ finest stood atop the massive orange back-hoe, eying their latest endeavor with mixed feeling. Paramount among these feelings was job security. They had just accidentally chopped through the main underground concrete artery that carries all the semi-solid sewage away from St. Louis and much of the central Midwest, pipes it under the Mississippi River, and finally deposits it into the vast treatment facility up near Peoria Illinois. Sewage snaked forth from the gash at quite an alarming rate, later estimated at six times the flow rate of water over Niagara Falls. Their feelings of job security arose from the fact that it was going to take a goodly amount of time to rectify this situation. The muckity-mucks who ran the sewage department would need ever’, by-god, union sewage worker they could get their hands on in order to do so, whether a certain duo of union sewage workers had created the problem in the first place or not. Standing with hands on hips atop their backhoe, watching the river of feces flowing into a ravine forming into a large and deep semi-solid lake, two of East St. Louis’ finest waxed philosophic.

“Whew!”

“Yup.”

Just then, a huge triangular UFO appeared in the sky. To their shock and surprise, it was headed straight for the ravine full of poo, which must’ve been at least a hundred feet deep at that time. The UFO was dropping so precipitously that it seemed a crash was inevitable. Standing atop the backhoe with hands on hips, two of East St. Louis’ finest waxed philosophic some more.

“Uh oh!”

“Yup.”

Back on Zicval, there are wading pools that span thousands of square miles. In these pools lives the grunderfish. This fish possesses a freakish biological quirk that makes it one of the rare marvels of Andromeda’s Galactic Hub. It consumes its swimming neighbors! Through a complex series of acidic and enzymatic processes, the grunderfish converts a portion of the consumed neighbor into energy. What is not converted into energy is jettisoned out the rear of the creature as flotsam. This flotsam, referred to by traders as quano, is the rarest and most valued substance in the galaxy. Many free-market galaxies-such as Lord Xenu’s galaxy, the Milky Way, for example-base their currency on their vast and well-regulated quano bullion stores. Socialist galaxies, always on the alert for the means to sabotage those worker-exploiting galaxies such as the Milky Way, are constantly on the lookout for quano finds which they could use to undermine the currency of said worker-exploiting galaxies, and thereby, however obliquely, aid the downtrodden exploited workers in their struggle for emancipation from brutal and heartless capitalist tyrants such as Xenu.

The highly energetic nature of inner galaxies tends to produce beings with highly advanced yet simple biologic energy engines. Nearly every creature, bug, and germ who calls the inner galaxies home feeds directly from the universe itself through the process of coupled universal quantum expansion-or CuQe, rhymes with nuke. CuQe allows one to tap from the universe exactly the energy you require with no waste thanks to the free energy the universe offers to everyone as a by-product of its constant and predictable expansion. It is accepted in hubs throughout the universe that all civilized creatures sup their CuQe in this manner. Creatures who sup up on their neighbors for energy, thereby creating quano, are considered the lowest form of life. Since these creatures are so rare it stands to reason that their quano is also rare. Extremely rare. For the traders of the Milky Way Galactic Hub and hubs throughout the universe, this meant that quano was something to be hoarded lest the competition beat you to it.

While the Milky Way Galactic Hub is quite advanced technologically-especially when compared to the Andromeda Galactic Hub-it seems that much of the things Hubbers trade have little or no intrinsic value. It is merely the perceived value, based on faux shortages and rumored gluts and pinpoint marketing that set the price of everything. The Milky Way Galactic Hub is the free marketer’s dream-come-true, as it was so designed, lo those many eons ago by its eternal emperor, Lord Xenu. For traders from Andromeda, as loyal subjects of Xarm the Beneficent, ruler and progenitor of the largest and still growing worker’s paradise socialist galaxy ever conceived, a quano find of such magnitude as East St. Louis meant a black-market score of untold quintitrillions.

When the quano sensors started squealing on the deck of the Zicvallian privateer freighter everyone aboard sat up a little higher.

“Uh, captain. . .picking up strong signs of-.”

“I know! I see it! Quano!”

Fsbhark chewed up and spit out the word while still peering at the screen over steepled fingers. This was going to be far more lucrative than he could have ever dreamed.

“Yes sir, but something is wrong. Must be. These reading are far too high.” The navigator punched a series of buttons attempting to get the computer to verify the readings.

“Your readings are quite correct, yeoman. Look there!”

The computer began zooming in on an area alongside a wide river which ran down the center of a continent in the planet’s northern hemisphere. It took a couple seconds for the aliens to realize that, not only were they staring at the largest quano pile they’d ever seen in their six millennia life span, but that sucker was still growing!