A short story - Part 1

The peas of fiction

Chapter 1. ED

The calendar said January 1st, 1998. Antigravity cars, intergalactic travel, automatic lawn mowers, polluted skies, Duke Nukem Forever, automated response systems on phones to irritate callers; they had it all. Actually, it was year 2198, the evil dictator hadn't bothered changing the date on his desktop calendar. It did not matter much because he couldn't read anyway. The only reason he treasured that calendar was to remind him of the one incident that shaped his life. He was, but six years old, when someone had hit him on the head, hard, with that calendar. He had always been evil but by a freakish twist of fate, the hard knock on his head rewired his brains and he forgot the alphabet they had drilled into his mind.

Now, for some one as evil as he was, his career options suddenly diminished. Everyone had always expected that he would be a school teacher or a sys admin or even a peace activist (yes he was very evil). But what was a peace activist who couldn't write catchy slogans like "Stop wars, Eat organic oatmeal". So his career counselor told him that he had no choice but to be the evil dictator. It wasn't a difficult job, waking up at 10 in the morning, kicking his cat, execute a few innocent people, start a war (or two if he was feeling productive), eat non organic oatmeal to really rankle the peace activists (yes he was very very evil). Life was good.

Until, one day, she arrived. She walked down the stairway of the space ship, tired after the long journey. She flew economy by TheMerican Airlines and the airline had recently installed new seats with cattle prods near the armrests for economy class. This practice of torturing economy class passengers was a tradition that went back more for more than 250 years. In the ancient times, wise men called CEO's and ergonomic interior designers gave the problem a lot of thought. Initially, they decide to use the small hen coops for the passengers. They soon realized that was too comfortable and then, in a stroke of genius, designed the economy class seats we still use today. The design of the seats was ingenious and evil, worthy of the evil dictator himself. The problem with that was a mad religion freak called Darwin. He predicted that human kind would evolve and humans dutifully obeyed. Successive generations were no longer bothered by the seats and that forced the airlines to come together and come up with a new plan in what is now called the 'secret meeting of 1990'. They decided to continuously 'upgrade' the economy class seats to prevent adaptation by the species and get around the entire survival of the fittest thingy. Some of the legendary ideas were forcing dark cold bitter gooey liquids down the passengers throats when a passenger mentioned coffee, forcing passengers to watch Hollywood flicks (that was soon outlawed as inhumane). Anyway, the latest trend was the cattle prods that stunned you once every five minutes unless you made a slight motion (which you couldn't because of the well designed seats). Anyway, the point is that it was bit of an understatement to say that Leela was a little 'tired' after her flight.

Leela landed in Austin, a long distance away from the capital of the Evil Dictator in Tuttle, OK. Little the evil dictator, or ED, as everyone fondly called him, know then that this seemingly ordinary girl from Baloney Centuri 2 was visiting Earth with a single, irresolute aim, to end the reign of the ED forever! No, the ED hadn't killed her parents, destroyed her planet, banished her at childhood or stolen her cereal. In fact, she had no idea that the ED existed until a week before when she saw his evil photograph in the travel brochure.

Baloney Centuri 2 was first colonized by mankind two hundred year ago. It had virtually no contact with Earth or any of the other human planets except for the annual TheMerican Airlines spaceship which brought UPS deliveries, sliced cheese and oatmeal to the planet. No one ever left Baloney Centuri 2 and with good reason. Baloney Centuri 2 had a great climate, no broccoli, plenty of water, 3 suns , 5 moons to keep the astronomy freaks busy and everything except for sliced cheese and oatmeal (which came from earth as part of the 3000 year contract between Earth and Baloney Centuri 2).

Chapter 2. Leela