HOME | DD

Description
This is probably the first writing assignment in a long time that I’ve enjoyed writing because our teacher gave us the option to write it in English. It’s been so long since I’ve gotten to do anything in English so you better believe that I’d jump on that opportunity right away. But this particular assignment is special because we’re going to put them in a envelope and mail them to ourselves in the past. The day right before the aliens take over.

Oh, sorry, spoiler alert.

I should probably backtrack a bit, since I’m going to be reading this whole thing in the past. I am currently in my second year of Neptunian Language Arts because I’m still trying to get the basics of this new language we all have to learn as a species. Most of the time we write really stupid assignments like “What was your first birthday like?” or “Exactly how dumb did you feel after the Neptunians easily took over your planet?” But our teacher, who just happens to be a Neptunian, is giving us a special assignment that’s supposed to be a treat for us. We’re creating a time capsule: an account of the time that has passed and what’s changed in our lives. But the twist is that it’s literally going to be a time capsule: as in it’s a device that sends messages back through time.

It only works on mail though: you can’t actually send anybody through it. I’m not sure what the science behind it is but hey: if the Neptunians can travel thousands of lightyears in minutes, then they probably have the know-how to create time machines. However dull and unexciting those machines may be.

Now, our teacher has informed us that this assignment can be about anything that we want it to be. But if this is a message that’s going back in time, I should at least warn myself. Though it’s only like a day in advance so it’s not going to completely prevent the invasion. But there is one time that I had an encounter with a specific Neptunian that I wish I could go back and change. So I’ll talk about that in a moment, but first I’m going to give you some background.

So if you haven’t guessed by now, the Neptunians take over the world. But it’s not like a bloody war or anything: it’s actually surprisingly peaceful. What happened was that it was election year in the U.S. and there was one particular candidate named W. E. Gottchya who was running for the democratic party. From the moment he became a candidate, people loved him a ton. His political ideologies were kind of simple, but he was a pretty charismatic fellow. Despite being a democrat, a lot of republicans voted for him as well, but they’ll usually vote for anybody with a nice hair cut and an expensive business suit.

He ended up getting elected, and I can remember that it was a pretty big win. Most people were very satisfied with the outcome of the election which doesn’t happen often. Though in January when he went up on stage to give his inauguration speech, he ripped the fake mask off and yelled “Surprise! We totally got you guys!”

After that, the Neptunians began landing. The army was supposed to fight them, but they couldn’t because Gottchya was now the Commander in Chief and he ordered them to stand down. The Senate would have done something about it, but unfortunately most of them were Neptunians in disguise too. So after that, the Neptunians practically ran America and Gottchya exchanged his place as the leader of the free world with some other nameless Overlord from Neptune. I was especially bummed out because I actually voted for the guy myself. But in retrospect if he had never been an evil alien plotting to take over the world, I think he would have made an awesome president.

Apparently, the same thing happened in every other major country: Neptunians tricked their way into positions of power and by the time we found out, it was already too late. But this wasn’t the first time they had tricked us. They had been using a special wave generator to camouflage their pristine high-tech civilization on Neptune so that scientists here on Earth would think that it was just a big ball of gas and not a solid planet with water, vegetation, and a breathable atmosphere. Before that, they actually came to Earth thousands of years ago and built the Pyramids. Though it was only supposed to be an art project done by one guy. After they left, the Egyptians stole all the credit for it.

Long story short, Earth was conquered by the Neptunians. We weren’t the only ones conquered either: they had been all over the galaxy taking planets left and right. But with a world so close to theirs, they just really wanted to do something special when they decided to strike.

Believe it or not, being ruled by the Neptunians isn’t so bad. There are no more wars, everybody is fed, and disease is virtually erased from existence. But the drawback is that now the only language we are allowed to speak is Neptunian. And that sucks a lot more than it sounds, because Neptunian isn’t like Spanish or French. It’s not full of English cognates that help you remember it better or fun sounding words that make it worth speaking the language at all. Neptunian is a pointlessly tough to learn, difficult to speak language.

To give you an idea of how difficult it is to communicate using Neptunian, I’ll try and explain it the best way I can. I don’t know much about the anatomy of the average Neptunian, but I think that they must have an extra tongue because there are parts of the language that are actually impossible to speak at all. There’s an emphasis on how you say certain words and the shape of your mouth while you speak as well. People make the silliest faces while they talk to each other and I try and be polite and not laugh but it’s sometimes difficult: they really do look ridiculous. It’s easier to communicate on the phone, but the problem with that is that Neptunians monitor phone calls. Not only that, they will jump in and actually criticize you for saying a word wrong. That’s just obnoxious: it’s like Google but in real life.

But I hate speaking Neptunian. I know it pretty well, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have trouble with it from time to time. Some people learn a new language and use it so often that it feels just as natural to speak it as their first language. So far, I’ve had no such luck with Neptunian. I still feel like a beginner, and it’s a language I use literally every day. I could not be worse at a skill that I use so often. Another thing about Neptunians is that they just love to see humans struggling to speak their language. That and they are really prideful. So I really don’t like talking to them because whenever I mess up, they are all too eager to point out what I said wrong.

If you haven’t surmised by now, the Neptunians actually do live among us. I’ve never seen one in it’s true form, but they have managed to design special bodies that they can inject their consciousnesses into in order to live on Earth and work with humans. You could tell that they tried to create a vessel that was as close to the human anatomy as possible so that those of the Neptunians who integrated with society could really “co-exist” with us.

The problem is that they kinda screwed it up. Every Neptunian that lives on Earth looks almost exactly alike now: each of them look like a bald Keith Richards. It was like they created the perfect human body for a Neptunian to use, but when their consciousness entered it, the skin began to melted like a plastic doll and all the hair fell out. So now my neighborhood is filled with bald Keith Richards look-a-likes who constantly try and correct your grammar.

But when this whole New World Order thing took effect, I tried to be open minded. I really did. But then I had this encounter, and I’m going to start from the beginning and try and illustrate where I think it all went wrong.

So it was a Sunday, or a glorfbogel as they say in Neptunian. My classes had just ended for the day so I was heading to work. By the way, this is a side note but that’s another reason why I hate Neptunians: they don’t believe in weekends. The classes they teach are 7 days a week. And that act like they’re doing us a favor. That really boils my blood, you know?

Anyway, that’s an aside. I was heading to work at the Factory, which doesn’t actually manufacture anything. The Neptunians don’t really “get” the concept of working, but they still tried to replicate an environment where we humans could still feel civilized. But because we are rationed everything including, food, water, and housing, there really isn’t a need for money. And everything that comes to Earth is made on another planet so there’s no point of having an industry. So instead, my job is to sit in an empty room with a red button on the wall and anytime to button lights up, I just press it. Then I wait until the button lights up again. That goes on for about 4 hours, and then they give me what they call “Happy bucks” which is essentially just monopoly money with the print of a bald Keith Richards on it.

I still have to go though: it’s in the schedule they gave me. And humans that don’t follow the schedule they were given and do what they are told end up in a zoo somewhere on Venus or something. I don’t complain about it though. To their faces at least. In order to get from the facility where I take my classes to the Factory, I have to walk a few blocks through the city. Again, not an issue. I thought about taking the subway, but I figured that it was a nice day and I might as well walk anyway.

That changed though: halfway to the Factory, it started raining. Very, very hard rain that instantly drenched me. After five seconds though, it stopped. This is because the Neptunians are working on the device that controls the weather on Earth the way that other similar devices control the weather on Neptune and Venus and the like. It doesn’t work very well though, and sometimes we get five second rain showers, wind storms, and the occasional fog that only comes up to waist height.

Standing there, dripping wet and pruny, I was no longer having a nice day. I was the kind of wet where it was going to take a few hours of toweling off before I could even resemble being dry. To make matters worse, a few Neptunians happened to pass by and were under a nearby awning of a building when it began to rain. So they were dry, and this gave them the privilege of pointing and openly laughing at me.

I still had to get to work though, despite how wet and angry I was. I couldn’t go back home to get a new change of clothes because if the police caught me at home and not at work, they might beat me with shock batons for a few minutes. Neptunians don’t seem to understand the negative connotation associated with police brutality so they don’t see the harm in practicing it from time to time. With that in mind, I continued on to my workspace.

I was still wet by the time I got to the Factory. And things didn’t exactly get better from there: there was a note on the door that said that they had moved management. Now everybody who worked at the Factory had to go work at the Mill, which was on the other side of town. I forgot to mention the whole “job circulation” where at random everyone gets a new job. And I had never worked at the Mill so I wasn’t sure how different it would be. They might actually have us work instead of just sit and press a button.

That was even more maddening than the rain. I really wanted to yell at someone: take my anger out on an innocent bystander. That’s what I did before the Invasion anyway. But if I yelled at a Neptunian, the Police might think I’m rebelling, and I could end up in a fetal position in an alley somewhere getting worked over by three officers wielding shock batons. And wet clothes plus electricity equals not fun.

Let’s review: I’m wet, I’m frustrated, and on top of that I’m kinda hungry. The holy trinity of uncomfortability. Oh, I forgot: the tag on the back of my shirt was also bothering me. We aren’t allowed to rip them out because supposedly the manufacturers of the shirts we wear put secret tracking chips right in the collar. But it’s not that big a secret when you can feel the chip scratching against the back of your neck as you walk around. But like I said: can’t do anything about that. There was nothing else left to do but walk all the way to the other side of the city.

I arrived at this one street that was mostly empty save for one lone Neptunian who was nonchalantly leaning up against a telephone pole. As I go to pass him, he said to me “Hey” in that sort of way you kindly greet a stranger. I wasn’t having it, but I still wanted to be polite so I said “hey” back. And that’s where the problem started.
I should explain: the Neptunian word for hello is “Smorgff” but the word for pinecones is “Smorgf.” You really have to put emphasis on that last f, because Neptunians pick up on that stuff really easily. But I ended up spitting out the word “smorgf” as I passed by him, trying to be polite but unable to hide my frustration. It was still kind of a weird situation, because if you had been there standing on the street nearby, you would have first seen me walk by a Neptunian, then hear him say “hey” and then hear me angrily say “pinecones” before continuing on my not-so-merry way like I totally meant to say that.

If this guy was at all sensible, he would have understood what I was going for and kindly refrain from bringing it up. But he wasn’t. This particular Neptunian just happened to be the living embodiment of everything I had come to despise about our alien overlords. At the time, I didn’t realized I had done anything wrong. He calls out to me “hey, that’s not right!”

“What’s not right?” I called back to him.

“You said Pinecone. You meant ‘hello’ didn’t you? You did mean ‘hello,’ right? Or is that the new trend among humans now to greet each other by saying ‘pinecone?’” He asked with a chuckle.

Any other day, I could have just said “whatever” and kept walking. But I decided to engage him. But I decided that this was where I was going to stand up to a Neptunian, especially since there weren’t any others around. So I turned around and said “Dude, you know what I was trying to say. It doesn’t matter.”

He stepped away from the telephone pole and began walking towards me. “No, it does matter. Diction is very important: how you communicate with others reflects your intellect.” He pointed out.

Now I was starting to get peeved. I took a step towards him, the muscles in my neck tensing. “Hey, look. I’m not having the best day right now so why don’t you just drop it, huh?”

“Drop it? Sorry, I don’t let something like this slide. My mom was a Neptunian Language Arts teacher and she raised me with expectations as to how people should talk to one another. I’ve heard your human dialects and languages before. Sounds like a bunch of unorganized claptrap to me.” He said, shooting me a smirk like he expected me to not respond well to that last comment.

Sure enough, I didn’t. “What the sandwich was that supposed to door?” I shouted, my hands clenching into fists.

He only laughed, intensifying my frustration. “You just said ‘what the sandwich!’ I’m guessing you failed your Required Citizen Classes several times before they let you out with a passing D-. I bet you can’t even Glorb.”

I was a bit taken back because I wasn’t familiar with the last word he used. Going over the vocabulary library in my mind, I couldn’t quite place the word or it’s meaning. So despite how embarrassing it was, I asked him “What did you say?”

“I said you can’t even glorb.”

“I know, but what does that mean?”

“What? The word glorb?”

“Yeah. I’ve never heard that before.”

At first, he stared at me in disbelieve. Then he began to giggle. “You’ve never heard...glorb? Seriously? You’ve never...” he said, his eyes growing a bit moist as his giggle escalated. Soon he was bellowing with laughter. “Glorb! You’ve never heard glorb! You’re such a ninimattu! Glorb! Oh shamvu!” He shouted as his body was rocked with his own merriment.

I didn’t know what to say, because now he was spouting off other words I didn’t know. In my mind, I’m shuffling through the rolodex of all the memories I had in my Required Citizen Classes looking for a time when the teacher even said the word ‘glorb’ or ‘ninimattu.’” Not once at all, or maybe she may have said it under her breathe during a dull morning when the coffee machine in the teacher longue was broken, leading to a ripple of stress in the faculty.

I want to tell him to shut up, but then I realize that I don’t quite remember what the word for “shut up” is in Neptunian. I tried to use the words I did know that were similar, but they ended up coming out weird. “Friend, close that mouth that belongs to you!” I said through gritted teeth in Neptunian.

He paused for a moment, only to blink at me twice in disbelief. Then he broke out into even more laughter. And at that moment I discover that Neptunians probably aren’t used to human laughing, because he was doing it all wrong: his tongue was sticking out and repeatedly slapping against his teeth while a strange noise echoed out of his throat. It sounded like someone was crushing a frog under their foot, then lifting up so that the frog could instantly resurrect, and then crushing it again all within the time frame of half a second.

So he’s laughing, and I try again. This time I really do attempt to remember the correct words for “Shut up.” It’s hard to concentrate though when there’s an alien right in front of you mocking your existence to your face. I could feel my face start to simmer with boiling heat. My hands are clutched into fists, and after about 3 separate momentary migraines I come up with a phrase that I THINK means “shut up.”

“Hey, fruit cakes are vegetables!” I shouted, pointing at him and narrowing my eyebrows. I didn’t realize until later after that conversation that I had totally screwed up that line, but his laughter only got louder and louder. While he was doing it, he was staring at me wide eyes with a big, angry grin on his face.

He was chuckling, but the look on his face said to me “I’m not laughing WITH you, I’m laughing AT you!”

Finally, after being laughed at by an alien who thinks he’s better than me while I’m tired, wet, and hungry, I freaking snap. I stamp my foot on the ground and shout “hey, shut the hell up! You Neptunian tard-sandwich!”

The laughter ceased, and he stared at me with disbelief. Not because I had said anything particularly stunning, but because I had said it in english.

At first, he didn’t know how to respond. Then he got angry. “Hey, you can’t do that! That’s illegal! It’s illegal to communicate in any language but Neptunian!” He said in his native language.

“Screw that! I’ll speak in whatever language I want to! It’s my freaking tongue!” I said once again in english.

Now he was getting frustrated, probably because the tables had been flipped and now HE doesn’t understand what I am saying. He looks around with help, discovering that we are alone on this street. Or so I thought. He looks over my shoulder and waves his hand. “Police! Police!” he called out.

I turn around to see three Neptunian police officers coming my way. “Police officer” is just the common word used to describe these armor-clad enforcers with black, bulletproof padding and electrified stun batons. They rush over to help what they think is an “endangered Neptunian citizen.” So all of a sudden, I’m in the middle of a triangle of dystopian Keith Richard Policemen.

“What seems to be the problem, citizen?” One officer said to the prick.

“Officer, this ‘human’ has been disrupting the peace!” He said, spitting out the word “human” like it left a bad taste in his mouth.

I stepped up to defend myself. “No, I wasn’t! This guy’s the one disturbing the doorknob! You should orange him!” I said.

I could hear one of the officers snicker under his mask from my bad grammar. However the officer I was facing obviously wasn’t happy. “Son, how long have you been taking your Required Citizen Classes? Don’t you know that the word Ubisnock (peace) has an ‘aw” sound instead of an ‘ooh’ sound at the end? That’s just basic grammar.” He said.

“I understand officer, but I-” I began to say before he stopped me.

“Boonkly.” He said, holding up his hand to stop me.

After a long, confused pause I said “...what?”

“Boonkly. Ardorf harsulick nen slapyap.” he said.

I could say without a doubt that I didn’t understand any of those words. Not just one out of the sentence, no, all of them. None of them were in my lexicon. I was at such a loss that I didn’t stop myself from leaning forward and saying “could you repeat that?” only I made a mistake: I said it in english.

Because one of the officers is behind me, I didn’t see him as he flipped on his stun baton and wacked me in the back of my head. But I definitely felt it when it happened. I got two different kinds of jolts that moment: one jolt from the feeling of blunt force trauma and the other from 50 volts of electricity. I am so wrapped up in this blanket of pain that I fall to the ground and give the other two officers free range to get their own free wacks in. While there are three officers repeatedly brutalizing me with rods, the prick I was talking to just stood there and grinned. “Well...looks like next time you’ll remember to say ‘hello’ to someone who greets you.” He said.

I’ll spare you the details and say that it wasn’t a fun experience. Fortunately after three minutes of a beating, you go numb to the electricity anyway so the next 10 minutes weren’t so bad. But I twitched constantly for the next two months and I couldn’t take showers for a while on account of all the second degree burns on my torso and thighs.

So here’s my one message to you: myself from the past. I know that it sucks but you can’t really do anything about what’s going to happen the day after you receive this message. You already voted so you can’t stop Gottchya from being elected. You can’t stop the whole world from being taken over and you can’t prevent the inevitable required citizen classes you’re going to have to take.

But there is one thing you can change: on that day when you’re walking across town because you switched jobs, and you’re wet, hungry, and frustrated, make sure that you remember what I’m about to say. When you see that Neptunian on the corner, leaning against the pole, when he says “hey” to you, don’t say “hey” back. Just walk up and clock him as hard as you can right in the cheek bone. Punch him so hard that it pushes all the saggy, melted skin from one side of his face to the other. After that, just run away.

Because let me tell you: if you go through that whole ordeal that I went through, then you’re gonna wish that you had done that in the first place. I wasn’t able to do that, but you can.

And I’ll never be a resistance fighter who throws molotovs at Neptunian Police Officers, or a rogue pilot who drives a lone starship right to Neptune to launch a nuke at the alien capital, but if there’s one bit of payback I can give the Neptunians for all the frustrating junk they’ve put me through: it’s that.

One punch freshly tailored for the biggest Neptunian tard-sandwich I have ever met.

Description
This is probably the first writing assignment in a long time that I’ve enjoyed writing because our teacher gave us the option to write it in English. It’s been so long since I’ve gotten to do anything in English so you better believe that I’d jump on that opportunity right away. But this particular assignment is special because we’re going to put them in a envelope and mail them to ourselves in the past. The day right before the aliens take over.

Oh, sorry, spoiler alert.

I should probably backtrack a bit, since I’m going to be reading this whole thing in the past. I am currently in my second year of Neptunian Language Arts because I’m still trying to get the basics of this new language we all have to learn as a species. Most of the time we write really stupid assignments like “What was your first birthday like?” or “Exactly how dumb did you feel after the Neptunians easily took over your planet?” But our teacher, who just happens to be a Neptunian, is giving us a special assignment that’s supposed to be a treat for us. We’re creating a time capsule: an account of the time that has passed and what’s changed in our lives. But the twist is that it’s literally going to be a time capsule: as in it’s a device that sends messages back through time.

It only works on mail though: you can’t actually send anybody through it. I’m not sure what the science behind it is but hey: if the Neptunians can travel thousands of lightyears in minutes, then they probably have the know-how to create time machines. However dull and unexciting those machines may be.

Now, our teacher has informed us that this assignment can be about anything that we want it to be. But if this is a message that’s going back in time, I should at least warn myself. Though it’s only like a day in advance so it’s not going to completely prevent the invasion. But there is one time that I had an encounter with a specific Neptunian that I wish I could go back and change. So I’ll talk about that in a moment, but first I’m going to give you some background.

So if you haven’t guessed by now, the Neptunians take over the world. But it’s not like a bloody war or anything: it’s actually surprisingly peaceful. What happened was that it was election year in the U.S. and there was one particular candidate named W. E. Gottchya who was running for the democratic party. From the moment he became a candidate, people loved him a ton. His political ideologies were kind of simple, but he was a pretty charismatic fellow. Despite being a democrat, a lot of republicans voted for him as well, but they’ll usually vote for anybody with a nice hair cut and an expensive business suit.

He ended up getting elected, and I can remember that it was a pretty big win. Most people were very satisfied with the outcome of the election which doesn’t happen often. Though in January when he went up on stage to give his inauguration speech, he ripped the fake mask off and yelled “Surprise! We totally got you guys!”

After that, the Neptunians began landing. The army was supposed to fight them, but they couldn’t because Gottchya was now the Commander in Chief and he ordered them to stand down. The Senate would have done something about it, but unfortunately most of them were Neptunians in disguise too. So after that, the Neptunians practically ran America and Gottchya exchanged his place as the leader of the free world with some other nameless Overlord from Neptune. I was especially bummed out because I actually voted for the guy myself. But in retrospect if he had never been an evil alien plotting to take over the world, I think he would have made an awesome president.

Apparently, the same thing happened in every other major country: Neptunians tricked their way into positions of power and by the time we found out, it was already too late. But this wasn’t the first time they had tricked us. They had been using a special wave generator to camouflage their pristine high-tech civilization on Neptune so that scientists here on Earth would think that it was just a big ball of gas and not a solid planet with water, vegetation, and a breathable atmosphere. Before that, they actually came to Earth thousands of years ago and built the Pyramids. Though it was only supposed to be an art project done by one guy. After they left, the Egyptians stole all the credit for it.

Long story short, Earth was conquered by the Neptunians. We weren’t the only ones conquered either: they had been all over the galaxy taking planets left and right. But with a world so close to theirs, they just really wanted to do something special when they decided to strike.

Believe it or not, being ruled by the Neptunians isn’t so bad. There are no more wars, everybody is fed, and disease is virtually erased from existence. But the drawback is that now the only language we are allowed to speak is Neptunian. And that sucks a lot more than it sounds, because Neptunian isn’t like Spanish or French. It’s not full of English cognates that help you remember it better or fun sounding words that make it worth speaking the language at all. Neptunian is a pointlessly tough to learn, difficult to speak language.

To give you an idea of how difficult it is to communicate using Neptunian, I’ll try and explain it the best way I can. I don’t know much about the anatomy of the average Neptunian, but I think that they must have an extra tongue because there are parts of the language that are actually impossible to speak at all. There’s an emphasis on how you say certain words and the shape of your mouth while you speak as well. People make the silliest faces while they talk to each other and I try and be polite and not laugh but it’s sometimes difficult: they really do look ridiculous. It’s easier to communicate on the phone, but the problem with that is that Neptunians monitor phone calls. Not only that, they will jump in and actually criticize you for saying a word wrong. That’s just obnoxious: it’s like Google but in real life.

But I hate speaking Neptunian. I know it pretty well, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have trouble with it from time to time. Some people learn a new language and use it so often that it feels just as natural to speak it as their first language. So far, I’ve had no such luck with Neptunian. I still feel like a beginner, and it’s a language I use literally every day. I could not be worse at a skill that I use so often. Another thing about Neptunians is that they just love to see humans struggling to speak their language. That and they are really prideful. So I really don’t like talking to them because whenever I mess up, they are all too eager to point out what I said wrong.

If you haven’t surmised by now, the Neptunians actually do live among us. I’ve never seen one in it’s true form, but they have managed to design special bodies that they can inject their consciousnesses into in order to live on Earth and work with humans. You could tell that they tried to create a vessel that was as close to the human anatomy as possible so that those of the Neptunians who integrated with society could really “co-exist” with us.

The problem is that they kinda screwed it up. Every Neptunian that lives on Earth looks almost exactly alike now: each of them look like a bald Keith Richards. It was like they created the perfect human body for a Neptunian to use, but when their consciousness entered it, the skin began to melted like a plastic doll and all the hair fell out. So now my neighborhood is filled with bald Keith Richards look-a-likes who constantly try and correct your grammar.

But when this whole New World Order thing took effect, I tried to be open minded. I really did. But then I had this encounter, and I’m going to start from the beginning and try and illustrate where I think it all went wrong.

So it was a Sunday, or a glorfbogel as they say in Neptunian. My classes had just ended for the day so I was heading to work. By the way, this is a side note but that’s another reason why I hate Neptunians: they don’t believe in weekends. The classes they teach are 7 days a week. And that act like they’re doing us a favor. That really boils my blood, you know?

Anyway, that’s an aside. I was heading to work at the Factory, which doesn’t actually manufacture anything. The Neptunians don’t really “get” the concept of working, but they still tried to replicate an environment where we humans could still feel civilized. But because we are rationed everything including, food, water, and housing, there really isn’t a need for money. And everything that comes to Earth is made on another planet so there’s no point of having an industry. So instead, my job is to sit in an empty room with a red button on the wall and anytime to button lights up, I just press it. Then I wait until the button lights up again. That goes on for about 4 hours, and then they give me what they call “Happy bucks” which is essentially just monopoly money with the print of a bald Keith Richards on it.

I still have to go though: it’s in the schedule they gave me. And humans that don’t follow the schedule they were given and do what they are told end up in a zoo somewhere on Venus or something. I don’t complain about it though. To their faces at least. In order to get from the facility where I take my classes to the Factory, I have to walk a few blocks through the city. Again, not an issue. I thought about taking the subway, but I figured that it was a nice day and I might as well walk anyway.

That changed though: halfway to the Factory, it started raining. Very, very hard rain that instantly drenched me. After five seconds though, it stopped. This is because the Neptunians are working on the device that controls the weather on Earth the way that other similar devices control the weather on Neptune and Venus and the like. It doesn’t work very well though, and sometimes we get five second rain showers, wind storms, and the occasional fog that only comes up to waist height.

Standing there, dripping wet and pruny, I was no longer having a nice day. I was the kind of wet where it was going to take a few hours of toweling off before I could even resemble being dry. To make matters worse, a few Neptunians happened to pass by and were under a nearby awning of a building when it began to rain. So they were dry, and this gave them the privilege of pointing and openly laughing at me.

I still had to get to work though, despite how wet and angry I was. I couldn’t go back home to get a new change of clothes because if the police caught me at home and not at work, they might beat me with shock batons for a few minutes. Neptunians don’t seem to understand the negative connotation associated with police brutality so they don’t see the harm in practicing it from time to time. With that in mind, I continued on to my workspace.

I was still wet by the time I got to the Factory. And things didn’t exactly get better from there: there was a note on the door that said that they had moved management. Now everybody who worked at the Factory had to go work at the Mill, which was on the other side of town. I forgot to mention the whole “job circulation” where at random everyone gets a new job. And I had never worked at the Mill so I wasn’t sure how different it would be. They might actually have us work instead of just sit and press a button.

That was even more maddening than the rain. I really wanted to yell at someone: take my anger out on an innocent bystander. That’s what I did before the Invasion anyway. But if I yelled at a Neptunian, the Police might think I’m rebelling, and I could end up in a fetal position in an alley somewhere getting worked over by three officers wielding shock batons. And wet clothes plus electricity equals not fun.

Let’s review: I’m wet, I’m frustrated, and on top of that I’m kinda hungry. The holy trinity of uncomfortability. Oh, I forgot: the tag on the back of my shirt was also bothering me. We aren’t allowed to rip them out because supposedly the manufacturers of the shirts we wear put secret tracking chips right in the collar. But it’s not that big a secret when you can feel the chip scratching against the back of your neck as you walk around. But like I said: can’t do anything about that. There was nothing else left to do but walk all the way to the other side of the city.

I arrived at this one street that was mostly empty save for one lone Neptunian who was nonchalantly leaning up against a telephone pole. As I go to pass him, he said to me “Hey” in that sort of way you kindly greet a stranger. I wasn’t having it, but I still wanted to be polite so I said “hey” back. And that’s where the problem started.
I should explain: the Neptunian word for hello is “Smorgff” but the word for pinecones is “Smorgf.” You really have to put emphasis on that last f, because Neptunians pick up on that stuff really easily. But I ended up spitting out the word “smorgf” as I passed by him, trying to be polite but unable to hide my frustration. It was still kind of a weird situation, because if you had been there standing on the street nearby, you would have first seen me walk by a Neptunian, then hear him say “hey” and then hear me angrily say “pinecones” before continuing on my not-so-merry way like I totally meant to say that.

If this guy was at all sensible, he would have understood what I was going for and kindly refrain from bringing it up. But he wasn’t. This particular Neptunian just happened to be the living embodiment of everything I had come to despise about our alien overlords. At the time, I didn’t realized I had done anything wrong. He calls out to me “hey, that’s not right!”

“What’s not right?” I called back to him.

“You said Pinecone. You meant ‘hello’ didn’t you? You did mean ‘hello,’ right? Or is that the new trend among humans now to greet each other by saying ‘pinecone?’” He asked with a chuckle.

Any other day, I could have just said “whatever” and kept walking. But I decided to engage him. But I decided that this was where I was going to stand up to a Neptunian, especially since there weren’t any others around. So I turned around and said “Dude, you know what I was trying to say. It doesn’t matter.”

He stepped away from the telephone pole and began walking towards me. “No, it does matter. Diction is very important: how you communicate with others reflects your intellect.” He pointed out.

Now I was starting to get peeved. I took a step towards him, the muscles in my neck tensing. “Hey, look. I’m not having the best day right now so why don’t you just drop it, huh?”

“Drop it? Sorry, I don’t let something like this slide. My mom was a Neptunian Language Arts teacher and she raised me with expectations as to how people should talk to one another. I’ve heard your human dialects and languages before. Sounds like a bunch of unorganized claptrap to me.” He said, shooting me a smirk like he expected me to not respond well to that last comment.

Sure enough, I didn’t. “What the sandwich was that supposed to door?” I shouted, my hands clenching into fists.

He only laughed, intensifying my frustration. “You just said ‘what the sandwich!’ I’m guessing you failed your Required Citizen Classes several times before they let you out with a passing D-. I bet you can’t even Glorb.”

I was a bit taken back because I wasn’t familiar with the last word he used. Going over the vocabulary library in my mind, I couldn’t quite place the word or it’s meaning. So despite how embarrassing it was, I asked him “What did you say?”

“I said you can’t even glorb.”

“I know, but what does that mean?”

“What? The word glorb?”

“Yeah. I’ve never heard that before.”

At first, he stared at me in disbelieve. Then he began to giggle. “You’ve never heard...glorb? Seriously? You’ve never...” he said, his eyes growing a bit moist as his giggle escalated. Soon he was bellowing with laughter. “Glorb! You’ve never heard glorb! You’re such a ninimattu! Glorb! Oh shamvu!” He shouted as his body was rocked with his own merriment.

I didn’t know what to say, because now he was spouting off other words I didn’t know. In my mind, I’m shuffling through the rolodex of all the memories I had in my Required Citizen Classes looking for a time when the teacher even said the word ‘glorb’ or ‘ninimattu.’” Not once at all, or maybe she may have said it under her breathe during a dull morning when the coffee machine in the teacher longue was broken, leading to a ripple of stress in the faculty.

I want to tell him to shut up, but then I realize that I don’t quite remember what the word for “shut up” is in Neptunian. I tried to use the words I did know that were similar, but they ended up coming out weird. “Friend, close that mouth that belongs to you!” I said through gritted teeth in Neptunian.

He paused for a moment, only to blink at me twice in disbelief. Then he broke out into even more laughter. And at that moment I discover that Neptunians probably aren’t used to human laughing, because he was doing it all wrong: his tongue was sticking out and repeatedly slapping against his teeth while a strange noise echoed out of his throat. It sounded like someone was crushing a frog under their foot, then lifting up so that the frog could instantly resurrect, and then crushing it again all within the time frame of half a second.

So he’s laughing, and I try again. This time I really do attempt to remember the correct words for “Shut up.” It’s hard to concentrate though when there’s an alien right in front of you mocking your existence to your face. I could feel my face start to simmer with boiling heat. My hands are clutched into fists, and after about 3 separate momentary migraines I come up with a phrase that I THINK means “shut up.”

“Hey, fruit cakes are vegetables!” I shouted, pointing at him and narrowing my eyebrows. I didn’t realize until later after that conversation that I had totally screwed up that line, but his laughter only got louder and louder. While he was doing it, he was staring at me wide eyes with a big, angry grin on his face.

He was chuckling, but the look on his face said to me “I’m not laughing WITH you, I’m laughing AT you!”

Finally, after being laughed at by an alien who thinks he’s better than me while I’m tired, wet, and hungry, I freaking snap. I stamp my foot on the ground and shout “hey, shut the hell up! You Neptunian tard-sandwich!”

The laughter ceased, and he stared at me with disbelief. Not because I had said anything particularly stunning, but because I had said it in english.

At first, he didn’t know how to respond. Then he got angry. “Hey, you can’t do that! That’s illegal! It’s illegal to communicate in any language but Neptunian!” He said in his native language.

“Screw that! I’ll speak in whatever language I want to! It’s my freaking tongue!” I said once again in english.

Now he was getting frustrated, probably because the tables had been flipped and now HE doesn’t understand what I am saying. He looks around with help, discovering that we are alone on this street. Or so I thought. He looks over my shoulder and waves his hand. “Police! Police!” he called out.

I turn around to see three Neptunian police officers coming my way. “Police officer” is just the common word used to describe these armor-clad enforcers with black, bulletproof padding and electrified stun batons. They rush over to help what they think is an “endangered Neptunian citizen.” So all of a sudden, I’m in the middle of a triangle of dystopian Keith Richard Policemen.

“What seems to be the problem, citizen?” One officer said to the prick.

“Officer, this ‘human’ has been disrupting the peace!” He said, spitting out the word “human” like it left a bad taste in his mouth.

I stepped up to defend myself. “No, I wasn’t! This guy’s the one disturbing the doorknob! You should orange him!” I said.

I could hear one of the officers snicker under his mask from my bad grammar. However the officer I was facing obviously wasn’t happy. “Son, how long have you been taking your Required Citizen Classes? Don’t you know that the word Ubisnock (peace) has an ‘aw” sound instead of an ‘ooh’ sound at the end? That’s just basic grammar.” He said.

“I understand officer, but I-” I began to say before he stopped me.

“Boonkly.” He said, holding up his hand to stop me.

After a long, confused pause I said “...what?”

“Boonkly. Ardorf harsulick nen slapyap.” he said.

I could say without a doubt that I didn’t understand any of those words. Not just one out of the sentence, no, all of them. None of them were in my lexicon. I was at such a loss that I didn’t stop myself from leaning forward and saying “could you repeat that?” only I made a mistake: I said it in english.

Because one of the officers is behind me, I didn’t see him as he flipped on his stun baton and wacked me in the back of my head. But I definitely felt it when it happened. I got two different kinds of jolts that moment: one jolt from the feeling of blunt force trauma and the other from 50 volts of electricity. I am so wrapped up in this blanket of pain that I fall to the ground and give the other two officers free range to get their own free wacks in. While there are three officers repeatedly brutalizing me with rods, the prick I was talking to just stood there and grinned. “Well...looks like next time you’ll remember to say ‘hello’ to someone who greets you.” He said.

I’ll spare you the details and say that it wasn’t a fun experience. Fortunately after three minutes of a beating, you go numb to the electricity anyway so the next 10 minutes weren’t so bad. But I twitched constantly for the next two months and I couldn’t take showers for a while on account of all the second degree burns on my torso and thighs.

So here’s my one message to you: myself from the past. I know that it sucks but you can’t really do anything about what’s going to happen the day after you receive this message. You already voted so you can’t stop Gottchya from being elected. You can’t stop the whole world from being taken over and you can’t prevent the inevitable required citizen classes you’re going to have to take.

But there is one thing you can change: on that day when you’re walking across town because you switched jobs, and you’re wet, hungry, and frustrated, make sure that you remember what I’m about to say. When you see that Neptunian on the corner, leaning against the pole, when he says “hey” to you, don’t say “hey” back. Just walk up and clock him as hard as you can right in the cheek bone. Punch him so hard that it pushes all the saggy, melted skin from one side of his face to the other. After that, just run away.

Because let me tell you: if you go through that whole ordeal that I went through, then you’re gonna wish that you had done that in the first place. I wasn’t able to do that, but you can.

And I’ll never be a resistance fighter who throws molotovs at Neptunian Police Officers, or a rogue pilot who drives a lone starship right to Neptune to launch a nuke at the alien capital, but if there’s one bit of payback I can give the Neptunians for all the frustrating junk they’ve put me through: it’s that.

One punch freshly tailored for the biggest Neptunian tard-sandwich I have ever met.