In The Air Tonight

Sheila rolls over and turns the light on. She inhales deeply and she smells the coffee her

partner has brewing down stairs and smiles. She’s all cozy and warm. She sleepily

recalls, Tommy was up late last night working on some telecom device to connect with the

cable. Now he’s up early making coffee, that crazy boy, how sweet.


The early morning radio alarm turns on. “It’s a cloudy humid 90 degrees in downtown

Washington and outside our plexiglas bulletproof enclosed transmission nerve center.

The orange tabby cat picks her head up from the foot of the bed and looks to see what’s

next, food or just a few more minutes of waiting for her human to get out of bed and then

food. The smell of the coffee brewing is one cue. The bed is fluffy nice and warm. She

can wait. She’s fat and happy.


The voice continues on the radio and the announcer transitions from the local traffic

disasters, misnamed the rush hour, to a few murders, and then the advertisement segue

comes on, “We are Lockstep Martinini, we build air…”

Bzzz crackle, weeeezrerwerwerrrr…..snap!


“We interruuuuuup,”


“Hello? Hello? Ni hao ma? Gut morgan.  Ah yes, ahem…We are The Abel 520 Flight

Craft Command and Design Center. We build the craft that buzz your planet; that your

silly little air induction based craft chase in the sky and we are the beings that run

experiments on your cognitive processes. Yes we bring life to good things. And no, we

don’t probe.


 bzzzz, crackle zzzzzzzzp,


“Jeeze  Zyborg can’t you get this right?


“We are interuuuup-ink your commercial announcement to bring you The Good News

and its not the Jehovah Witness line of mass hypnosis you all seem to be we billing to…

oh forget it the point is, We of the ABEL 520 Cluster have impregnated all DNA of  the

the the the the,” zzzzzzeep crackle bizap.


“Zyborg can’t you lock onto the source signal? I don’t care about directed energy.”

“…the females of your planet for the next 10 generations who will give birth to children

that will evolve to a higher level of species. There is no getting around it. And it’s about

time too.


“We are sorry about our….zzzzzz bzz zap crackle …technical problems.


“Zyborg, how are we supposed to gain any credibility with these beings if we can’t even

get a complete declaration out?


“Hello again all you humans. We just decelerated from deep space and the com systems

appears to be malfunctioning. Oh never mind it’s not your affair.


“Let me continue.  Zyborg where’s the prepared speech I’m supposed to give. I don’t

care if we were just hit by their puny laser weapons. Where is it? Keep the shield up.


“What do you mean I was on the air? They heard all this, this, they’re hearing… “

There is a sudden silence, albeit with a 60 cycle hum through out the planet’s radio

transmissions.


“If I may continue, we just demoted our com officer and promoted a new one. This

should be better. Now back to our declaration.


“Humans, if by chance you try anything untoward we suggest your telescopes focus on

Phobos, one of the moons of the planet you call Mars. We will vaporize the whole thing,

since it makes no difference to the microbial life forms on that forsaken rock, as an

example.



“And now, we will turn the control of this radio transmission back to the inane broadcasts

you call news. We have no desire to mess with your satellite radio. The music that you

are broadcasting to the universe is one of your saving graces. No one else in this or any

other universe has this so we are giving you all a chance.”


####


“And now the weather from our plexiglas bulletproof enclosed nerve center, Today’s

weather will be cloudy with temperature in the high 90’s. For a January in the nation’s

capital it is unusual. The weather report has been brought to you by the The Petroleum

Institute, an association dedicated to a cleaner planet and Lockstep Martinini a company

dedicated to…”


As the radio drones on Sheila thinks, it’s January silly boy not April first. She sits up,

slides out of bed and is about to laugh. The perfume of the specially blended espresso and

mocha roast coffee that smelled so good just seconds ago makes her sick to her stomach

and her period is late.


THE END


Idea inspired by 1981 Phil Collins, In The Air Tonight