Bouffon Stories 2011 Read online

  "That's a whale."

  "Wow. What a large whale."

  "Not really, they are like that."

  "Not where I come from they aren't."

  The old lady looked at Jay suspiciously, but part of her was rather excited about all this.

  "Now, let's look at your cities? whoa, whoa, whoa now! Will you just look at that!"

  Jay was focusing on the part of the Earth that was covered in darkness. And lo and behold, every single city had a dangerous serial killer. Some used chainsaws, others used axes, still others used butcher knives. But every single one of them terrorized their city's inhabitants.

  "This is not good," Jay said. "Not good at all. I know these guys. They're not from here. They were sent by an evil overlord from my home world."

  "Really now?" the old lady said incredulously.

  "It's true. But I know just the way to send them back. All we have to do is open a black hole through which we can suck them up. But it needs to be big. About the size of? that thing there, with the mountains."

  "That's Switzerland."

  "What? Oh. Well, okay. Let me just? press this button? and?"

  The old lady watched as Jay slowly fell silent. Sparks came out of his back. She went over to him, carefully nudging him. Then she discovered a hatch in his back. She opened it to find that his batteries had leaked. Now they were flat.

  Oh great, she thought. Now it's up to me to fix things. In Jay's stead, she pressed the button.

  An enormous black hole appeared, from which a purple black vortex emanated, which started sucking. It didn't, however, suck up the serial killers. Instead, the black hole, which was the size of Switzerland, started sucking up? Switzerland.

  The old lady tried pressing buttons and pulling levers, but it was all to no avail. Switzerland was gone, the serial killers were still on Earth. She walked into the elevator and pressed the button to go to the ground floor.

  She walked out of the apartment building and adjusted her hair, and walked home, just before night fell and the chainsaw killer roamed the streets again. But nobody cared about the chainsaw killer right now. When she switched on the TV, her hope that this had all been a bad dream was crushed in an instant.

  "Breaking news: Switzerland disappears from the face of the Earth, scientists puzzled," the news reporter said.

  Eternal Waltz

  It had been days since I left the space ship. Or maybe it had been months, I don't know. It could just as easily have been millennia. But it felt like days. It had started out so beautifully. We would go on a mission to Mars, a mission that would somehow benefit humanity. Of course we gobbled it all up. We were scientists, and adventurers. We were on top of the world. And soon we would be out of that world.

  The journey was amazing, the most amazing experience of my life by far. How beautiful those myriads of stars looked, like lighthouses that guided our way in an ocean of darkness. We were sure we could do anything then. We felt like gods. And perhaps we were, but even gods have an Achilles' heel. Ours was the people who built our space ship. Of course, we knew the government couldn't spend too much of the tax payers' money on a project like this, but we never expected them to cut corners building a space ship. We soon found out, however. The blast rocked us to the core.

  It's funny, I had imagined my death to be quite different. Painful perhaps, long drawn out. But this was just a moment. I instantly transformed into this? I don't even know what I am. Ethereal being maybe? I like to call it a soul, but I don't know if that's correct. Being afloat in space like that, I experienced loneliness like I couldn't imagine. Here's the thing: it seems that souls can't enter the Earth's atmosphere. That same Earth that we were so eager to escape, I now tried so desperately to return to, but all to no avail.

  There was no way out. The darkness surrounded me. Miles and miles of universe stretched out on all sides, and I had no way out. I couldn't even commit suicide to end it all, because I was already dead! Then, by some stroke of luck, I remembered an accident that had taken place ten years prior to our journey. A crew had been sent to the Moon, tasked with setting up a base there. A construction error made sure they would never return to Earth. They were left to die there.

  It was terrible, yes, but just suppose? I managed to guide my immaterial self towards the site of the crash. And there she was. Another soul in this wide open space that felt so claustrophobic. We both couldn't believe it. We were indescribably happy, and all we could do was dance, dance, dance. It's funny, the only dance we both knew was the waltz? we had no music, but we needed none. We just danced, danced, danced. And we still are. And when you look up at night and see a shooting star, say a little prayer. It might just be us, dancing our eternal waltz.

  For Science

  "Mister President, walk this way please."

  "I must say, I'm very curious about what you've been doing here. That telegram of yours certainly piqued my interest."

  A man in a white coat, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, gently ushered the head of state into a room devoid of any decoration. Only one wall was different from the other three, in that it had a large window. And beneath the window stood a console full of buttons, levers, and controls that made the president slightly nervous.

  "Don't be alarmed, Mister President. Now, let me explain all about our experiments. You have probably heard about DNA replication."

  "Uh, yes, yes, of course," said the president, who went to business school and knew nothing about biology, but he had to keep up appearances.

  "Normally, that process takes place in our body, allowing us to make new cells. Now, scientists have figured out a way to do that outside the body. That's nothing new though, we've known about that for decades."

  "Then? what is it that you're doing here that's so special?"

  "Ah. Suppose? suppose one could isolate DNA from dead tissue and replicate it. And I'm not talking about things that died recently. Of course, we started experimenting on lab mice, each time increasing the period between death and DNA recovery. We found that there was no loss of quality over time, so we started to experiment with older things. Much older things."

  "You mean? like? dinosaurs?"

  "Oh, no, Mister President. We're not trying to create some sort of Jurassic Park or anything. We're scientists, after all. No, we thought: what do we really want to know? The big things in life. Where will we go, and?"

  "Where do we come from?"

  "Exactly. And we think we have solved part of that puzzle by bringing this baby back from the dead."

  The scientist flipped a switch, showing the figure of a being that was something halfway between a man and an ape, blinking and shielding its eyes.

  "What? what is it?" the president asked, astounded.

  "She is a Neanderthal, one of our early ancestors. And the fun thing is, we can actually understand her. It took a team of some of the world's best anthropologists and linguists to crack the code, but now we have built a machine that interprets her growling noises and transforms it into English, using speech synthesis."

  The president looked at him questioningly.

  "You know, like that thing Stephen Hawking had."

  "Ah, yes. Well, I'm interested to hear what he? er? she has to say."

  The scientist pressed some buttons, and a whirring noise was heard. That was then interrupted by the mechanical sound of a voice.

  "You? gods? You gods! Me worship you!"

  "This is?"

  "Amazing?" the scientist offered.

  "Well, yes, but the word I was looking for was 'frightening'."

  "Ah, yes, she tends to have that effect at first. You get used to it quickly though. See, the thing is, the shock of being brought to our modern times has confused her. She thinks we're gods. Which is interesting, because it tells us the Neanderthals had some form of religion."

  The president stood there, shaken. All he could do was look at the primitive figure behind the glass, rambling about gods.

  "Well," the scientist said, "best n
ot keep her too excited for too long. I can see you need some time to take this all in yourself. Okay, let's switch off the lights."

  "No! Me afraid! Me no like darkness!"

  The president, who was already on the verge of leaving, turned around. "Um, professor? she? she doesn't seem to enjoy herself."

  "Yes, but what can you do? That's not the point, is it? We're not here for her enjoyment. We're here to further our knowledge. That's what counts."

  "I? I suppose it does," the president answered, swallowing the lump in his throat.

  The Last Collector

  Ray got off his horse and stepped into the hot, desert sand. He surveyed his surroundings, and when he was satisfied there wasn't any robotic activity anywhere near, he took a cigarette out of his pocket and began smoking it, savouring every intake of breath. He didn't care if he died today or tomorrow, humanity was done for anyway, and he might as well give it the final nudge.

  Actually, that's just what he had been doing for the past ten years. A member of the super secret Collector Corps, he had been exterminating humans. It never got easy, but it had to be done. Since the machines took over, anyone who fell into their clutches was as good as dead anyway. The only thing left to do was to deprive the Hub of the energy source the humans provided. And that meant killing them.

  Over the years, Ray, who presented himself as the archetypical cowboy, had grown into a very skilled Collector, dodging several attempts on his life by the robots. He was miles ahead of his comrades? so far, in fact, that he was now the last Collector left on the planet.

  Finishing his cigarette, he threw the butt into the sand, and habitually stepped on it with his spurred boot. He took out a pair of binoculars and looked all around. Miles away, he saw something that resembled a building. That's odd, he thought. In the middle of the desert? He decided to investigate it, slinging his rifle on his back and kicking his horse into gear.

  When he arrived at the run-down building, he first thought it was abandoned, but then he heard a child cry from one of the higher storeys. When he looked to the source of this sound, he noticed something had been painted onto the top part of the building. It had faded due to exposure to the sunlight, but he still recognized it: a red cross.

  Ray stepped inside, his gun at the ready. The lower floor was all but abandoned, with only some overturned filing cabinets and tables greeting him. He slowly walked up the stairs, to the second floor. Nothing. The same with the third and fourth floors. As he approached the fifth though, he distinctly heard the sound of a crying child again. He ran up the steps, and when he got to the seventh floor, he saw the crying child, but not just that.

  Ray was absolutely astonished to find a fully operational maternity ward. All around him, families were welcoming their newborn children into the world, looked after by nurses.

  A little girl came running up to him.

  "Mister, mister, are you the candy deliveryman?" she said.

  Ray smiled at this naivet?. "Perhaps I am," he answered, and sighed.

  How is this possible? he thought. Surely the robots must know of this. Food and water would have to be delivered, and they would need electricity? but upon closer inspection, he saw that the lights were off, and nothing was actually plugged into the Hub. He looked at a pretty young nurse, who smiled at him.

  "Welcome, sir, how may I help you?" she said.

  "I, uh? I just walked in here and?"

  "Ah, you must have heard of our new arrival. She is due any minute now. She'll be born prematurely, and, well, this will be a special birth," she said, smiling mysteriously.

  Ray had seen a lot of deaths in his life, and that never upset him. But a baby being born was a different matter. It was one of the most important reasons for him never to become a father. He just couldn't stand it. Not so much because of the graphicness of the event, it was just that he couldn't cope with the explosion of love that followed every birth. A mother holding her child always made him feel uneasy, perhaps because he had never been held like that. His mother had died while giving birth to him.

  "It's all right, you can look now," the nurse said. She took the baby and put her in an incubator.

  "I don't think you should be doing that," Ray said.

  "Don't worry, sir, it's quite safe, I can assure you," the nurse said, as she connected the incubator to the power grid and switched it on.

  "No, I really don't think you should be doing that."

  "Oh dear? too late? it's already on."

  The nurse looked around, an evil grin on her face. It was her last grin. As Ray's revolver smoked, he watched the limp figure collapse. Just as he expected, there was no blood, just some sparks and wire.

  Everyone in the ward looked at him incredulously, but he didn't notice. He tried everything to switch off the incubator, knowing that by now the Hub would have been alarmed, and it was only a matter of time before they would find out the hospital's location.

  Seeing that his efforts were in vein, at last he smashed the glass of the incubator with the butt of his rifle.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?! My baby, my baby!"

  But the baby was unharmed. Ray quickly took her out of the incubator and handed her to her mother.

  "Here. Hold her close to your chest. Keep her warm."

  "But?"

  There was no answer. Ray rushed down the stairs towards the cellar.

  Once there, his back stuck to the wall like glue. Carefully peeking around the corner, he saw his target: a generator. Starting up the incubator had switched it on. He also saw the nurse hadn't been alone. The generator was guarded by a Shatterbot. When human matter came into contact with it, it would explode.

  The face of the baby in the incubator flashed before his eyes. Then he saw the mother, his own mother's grave, and the face of a helpless old man he had killed as a Collector, all in a fraction of a second. In another second, he had made up his mind. He ran straight at the Shatterbot and hurled himself on it.

  "What was that?" one of the mothers in the ward asked, as the floor shook.

  "Probably an earthquake."

  But it wasn't an earthquake. Ray's last mission had succeeded. Before the location of the hospital could be sent to the Hub, he had interrupted the signal by blowing up the generator. He had sacrificed himself so that humanity could live on. Because this pathetic maternity ward in the middle of the desert was just that: humanity. And in those two seconds, Ray had figured there would be a .0001% chance of that sliver of humanity growing back into something larger, large enough to some day take on the robots. To him, the gamble was one worth taking.

  Spaced Out

  "Red alert! Red alert!"

  At moments like this, Annie wondered why she'd ever signed up to be a space marine. The poster had shown her favourite model, Kirk "Muscle" Frankincense, standing in the glorious sunlight, his enormous shiny chest reflecting the light into a planet, like a laser beam, casually destroying a planet. Of course, in reality, space marines were nothing like this. Most of them were nerds, busy programming the course of the space ships so as to carefully avoid any contact with the enemy. Most of the time. Not today.

  A big space ship was on a collision course with the ship Annie served on, the Titanic II (named by someone who must have been seriously drunk at the time), and moments later slimy green aliens boarded it. The nerdy space marines could do nothing against them, instead electing to run away when they could, and Annie, though valiantly defending herself with some showy but ineffective karate moves (her hand would slice right through the strange creatures like Jell-O), was quickly captured by the aliens and taken to their ship.

  "What do you want from me?" she demanded, but the aliens did not reply. They led her to an ominous swivel chair, which turned around to reveal? Kirk Frankincense.

  "Hello there, lady. Welcome to my space ship. And before you try anything stupid, may I remind you? I'm your only friend here."

  What a creep, Annie thought, cursing herself for worshipping that tra
itor when she was an impressionable teen girl.

  "So, you're actually fighting for the other side?" she said, still not quite believing what was happening.

  "Other side? other side? it all depends on what you see as the right side. See, it all started when I took a couple of mercenaries to save a buddy of ours, Ryan. Of course, the idiot was nowhere to be found. In hindsight, I'm glad to be rid of him. He was always carrying this blue canary around, it was his pet. Really weird guy. Anyway, we didn't find him, we crashed on the planet Xzorsgolopsky?"

  "What?"

  "Don't make me say it again, dear."

  "Whatever."

  "Yes. Well, I was the only survivor, and I was lovingly looked after by these 'aliens'. I even fell in love with one-"

  "Ew!"

  "-and married her-"

  "Ewwwwww!"

  "-and had children with her."

  "EEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!"

  "Pff, you and your bourgeois human sensibilities? soon our super race of slimy green humanaliens will rule the world!"

  "How?"

  "How? Come look at this."

  Kirk conducted Annie to a window, where they could see a tiny dot.

  "That's the key to ruling the universe," Kirk said.

  "Looks awfully small."

  "Yes, it's about 93 million miles away, and that's why it looks so small."

  "Oh. But what is it?"

  "It's a gigantic nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees. We're using it to drain the universe of hydrogen, and when that's done, humans won't be able to survive! Our slimy green super race will rule the galaxy!"

  What a creep, Annie thought again. If only she could stop him. If only Ryan were here? he might put a stop to this. Surely he knew Kirk's weak spot, because every villain has one. Take out the bad guy, roll the credits, end the war. But Ryan wasn't here. All was lost.

  Then Annie looked up, and to her surprise, she saw a blue canary in the outlet by the light switch.

  "Psst," the canary whispered. "Press this."

  Before Kirk could react, Annie made a dash for it and pressed the button. The tiny dot in the distance exploded.

  "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Kirk shouted, falling to his knees. "What have you done?! That was the only life source keeping my children alive! Noooooo?" the muscular man said, his voice trailing off when he started sobbing.