Author : Brenatevi
Stuart was sitting on his couch, munching on orange-colored cheese-like puffs, and watching some horrible show on TV. No, wait; sitting didn’t exactly describe what he was doing. Slouching was maybe halfway there, but even then it doesn’t properly convey Stuart’s laziness. Stuart indolently ambled towards laziness and gave up before reaching it. Online TV was the altar that he would have worshiped on, except that would have required a job to pay for it, so he accepted network TV.
It was during a commercial break (a product that allegedly guaranteed to get anyone off the couch) that the lights came for him. It began with a slight electric charge in the air, just enough to cause the hairs to stand up on the neck. Then there was a flicker in the lights that was accompanied by multicolored motes of dust. Stuart noticed none of this, so the lights decided that it would skip to the main attraction: a blinding beam shot through his front door with such force that it was knocked off its hinges. The beam unceremoniously yanked him through the doorway. He was unconscious before he was out of his house.
Stuart’s awakening was just as abrupt.
“Congratulations from the Galactic Publishing Clearance House! You are the final winner from Earth of a one-way ticket to the refugee center on Omicron Omicron Omicron!”
Stuart attempted to roll his head around to see who was speaking, but he felt like he was frozen solid. Then the speaker came into view; a little gray man that could not have been the source of the booming voice danced a little patter, before letting out yet another announcer-like bellow.
“Now before you try asking any questions, I have some terms and conditions that you need to know. Number one: you are currently in a form of stasis because we’re about to warp to the wonderful OOO, and otherwise you would projectile vomit. Number two: you don’t need to talk because I have conversational precog, so I know what you’re about to say before you do!”
Then Gray made a conspiratorial aside, “Wonderful power you are about to think, but you try having this power while having three hundred wives and you would be begging to be sent to the asshole of the universe.
“But I digress because we have condition three: your planet is about to be turned into atomic ash! Yes, your world leaders have lost their ever-loving minds, and have decided that mutual self-destruction was the only way out! You are one of the last humans to exist! With that in mind, you are going to live out the last days of your life among the offspring we’ve genetically reconstructed from the DNA we’ve been stealing from you your entire life!”
The horror that was creeping into Stuart’s mind compared nothing to the soul heave that was the jump through warp.
“Yes, you’re doomed to be a zoo animal, along with the rest of your progeny, but think of this: sex with aliens. Yes, you can do the multi-appendage limbo with aliens from all across the galaxy!”
There was a lurch as the spaceship landed, and then a thunk as the door that Stuart didn’t know he’d been facing opened. What he saw outside that ramp made him thankful that he was still in stasis: there was a multi-limbed creature, with multiple mobile lumps that looked vaguely familiar crawling over it. Then it spoke.
“There’s your daddy!”
Fun echoes of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. Nicely done.