Bill was watching an advertisement when I came to him for the very first time. It was an advertisement for the beer he was drinking and when the women in bikinis started playing volleyball, Bill curled the bottle up to his mouth and took a long slurp and licked his lips to get the last drops of yeast fart from them and then I tapped his shoulder.
“Excuse me?” I said to Bill, who froze stiff and then jumped across the coffee table and turned around to see me. Then Bill screamed. When he finished screaming, he gasped and screamed again. For all the terror he seemed to be experience, Bill remained frozen to the spot he landed opposite me across the coffee table. After his lungs exhausted their air on the second scream, Bill’s eyes rolled skyward and his body gave a light shudder and he collapsed down to the carpeted floor of the living room.
Something you should know, while this seems to paint Bill in a sort of cowardice, it is actually a completely common reaction. It’s the same reaction that Ernesto Hathaway had had about eighty years before when I first met him in Africa. And Ernesto was among the most courageous humans to have ever lived.
When Bill came to, he found himself laying on the couch covered with a blanket. I was in the kitchen, making a sandwich. When I returned to the living room, Bill was rubbing his head. I set the sandwich on the coffee table and the clanking of the plate on the glass tabletop made Bill look up and he went to scream again.
“Knock that shit off!” I yelled. And you know what? He did. Bill went into a state of shock, eyes wide, jaw agape, speechless and staring. “Thank you. Well. Hello, Bill,” I said to him. He didn’t respond.
“Perfectly natural of you to be surprised,” I said to him, “but at some point you’re going to seem rude if you don’t start acting normally.” And so Bill blinked once and forced from his lips one struggled word.
“Alien.” And Bill passed right on back out. I ate half of the sandwich I made for him and left.
The next morning, Bill awoke refreshed and terrified. His alpha and beta wave patterns indicated that he’d had a terrible dream. In his dream, Bill was in an empty void of blackness all by himself. Suddenly a little green alien came to him. The alien poked Bill and he exploded into a hot mess of nonsense that expanded out into the void. I’m making a note on the record that I am neither little nor green. Though I could be if I so desired.
Bill rubbed his eyes and shook his head, remembering the night before. He thought for a moment it must have all been a dream. Then he saw the half eaten sandwich and the two empty beer bottles on the tabletop. Part of him chalked it up to indigestion and stress, but still he couldn’t remember making or eating the sandwich. It was important that I speak to Bill.
So I returned.
This time I appeared in front of Bill at the foot of the couch. He rubbed his eyes.
“Bill. My name is Gazoo,” I said, and waited for him to speak. He took a deep breath, pulled the blanket tight around him and spoke.
“Okay,” he said. I smiled. Bill maintained his dull empty look. It was something he did a lot when we first met. I thought he might say more, but he just sat there.
“Right. Bill, it has come to my attention that you may well be very important to the survival of humanity.”
“Okay.” Bill looked out the window, then back to me and blinked. “Okay.”
“Great. Your boss, Howard. His new project for you is very important and must be taken very seriously. I can’t tell you why yet, and I’m only ninety-nine percent sure, but it is my hypothesis that your success on this project will be the defining moment of the human race. Do you understand?” Bill looked down at his own hands, raised one, and slapped himself hard across the face. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, counted to ten, slapped himself in the face again, and then looked back to me.
“Human race. Got it,” Bill said. He stood up from the couch, letting the blanket fall to the floor, and walked to the front door. He looked to me over his shoulder and laughed a bit then went out the door and closed it behind him.
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