The 20 kilometer wide interstellar space object, 3I/Atlas, could be billions of years older than Earth itself. It is racing through our solar system at 130,000 miles an hour. Like two other recent travelers from outside our solar system - Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov - astronomers are puzzled by 3I/Atlas's non-comet like characteristics.

Scientists are particularly piqued by 3I/Atlas's brilliance, its peculiar travel path, its composition, its distant origins, its phenomenal age, its high speed, its motive force, and, ultimately, whether it is a natural phenomenon at all... or something sent by another intelligent world. Some university professors have wondered whether 3I/Atlas is simply a very large Winnebago. Are its out-of-this world travelers looking for a rest stop at some trashed-up nearby planet (like Planet Earth) where they can pump out their space RV's huge bilge tanks?

Or are its alien intentions more subtle?

Could 3I/Atlas be a mission of curiosity and diplomacy? A voyage of investigation and education? A project of exploration or... in the sense of bedbugs, cockroaches and rodents... a house-cleaning project of galactic pest control vis-à-vis us?

But there's more. Informed observers have detected another anomaly: its distinctive shape.

At one of their daily three martini lunches, astronomers at SETI (the Senter for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)1 located at Omphalos National Observatory at Weinflaschen Staatsuniversität in the Himalayan Mountains near Umbilicus, Switzerland came to a startling conclusion: 3I/Atlas most closely resembles a very large wine flask hurtling through Space. Indeed, SETI astro-oenologists conjecture that the mysterious bottle-like object could contain remnants of (very) vintage Madeira, 5 billion year old Schnapps or Tequila fermented by an alien civilization.

If 3I/Atlas is, indeed, a very large wine bottle lofted into space by marooned castaways from a distant world billions of years ago, might there be a message in the bottle? Might it contain a message from an alien intelligence that we are not alone... or that others elsewhere would rather that we left them alone... or simply that 'Kilroy was Here?'

The mere mention on television news that 3I/Atlas could be an "alien" spacecraft caused President Donald Trump to sign an Executive Order (Monday's Executive Order No. 76,4092) declaring that if 3I/Atlas is, indeed, an alien visitor from another world, then it will be immediately arrested by Immigration Control officers and deported to El Salvador, Somalia or back to wherever 3I/Atlas comes from.

The President appeared at an impromptu news conference where he donned his signature red chapeau that proclaimed his omniscience. Upon jutting out his chin and affecting his trademark tough-guy scowl, the President declared: "Whoever tries to infiltrate America with this alien, and most likely Communist Chinese, technology will also face 2,500% import tariffs. Because America is the greatest marketplace in the Universe, and if these Communist Chinese aliens want to do business here, then they have to bend the knee and pay the price."

But Mr. Trump quickly withdrew Executive Order No. 76,4092 with Executive Order No. 76,4093 after spectral analysis of 3I/Atlas led the newly rebranded "Department of War" to conclude that 3I/Atlas contains not only organic brewer's yeast and vinting compounds, but also many valuable rare earths necessary to make America's sense of exceptionalism exceptionally exceptional again.

The spectral analysis revealed that 3I/Atlas seems to be largely composed of mineral compounds like democracium (a glittering mineral similar to pyrite aka 'fools gold'), neofascistium, eurobaloneum, and zionesium - all highly toxic compounds that, even in small quantities, cause brain death, historical amnesia, colonialism, genocide and delusions of grandeur.

Scientists also noted that 3I/Atlas seems to be off-gassing the not-so-rare organic compound stupidium.

Stupidium can be found almost everywhere on Earth, but mostly in the capital cities of Europe and North America. It is a completely useless mineral good only for manufacturing even more stupidium. Scientists thus warn against efforts to capture or mine 3I/Atlas fearing that additional stupidium introduced into Earth's environment could lead to terminal civilizational collapse, increased French, German and British military engagement in NATO's never-ending war against Russia, and inevitable nuclear conflagration.

3I/Atlas's retrograde orbit will bring it closest to Earth around the first weeks of October, roughly coinciding with the Jewish High Holy Days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the so-called Day of Atonement.

This coincidence caused Benjamin Netanyahu to lay claim to the entirety of 3I/Atlas as an integral part of Greater Israel as prophesied in the apocryphal Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Books of Moses carved in ancient COBOL on 8" not-so-floppy stone disks. "In the Sixth Book of Moses," Mr. Netanyahu explained, "all of the negativity of the original Five Books of Moses was restated from right-to-left as positive commandments instead of negative ones -- such as Thou Shalt Kill (especially, but not exclusively, Palestinians), Thou Shalt Steal (especially, but not exclusively from Palestinians) and Thou Shalt Covet (especially, but not exclusively the homeland of Palestinians)."

Israel then beamed messages at the flying object from deep space welcoming its chosen people to help annex and colonize the West Bank of the Jordan River along with the soon-to-be constructed Sodom and Gomorrah Club Med Resort and Trump Gaza Plaza (where Gaza City used to be before it was razed and depopulated).

3I/Atlas, however, immediately began to counter-transmit communications back to Mr. Netanyahu stating (loosely translated from the space alien vulgate): "Fahgettaboudit schmuck! Ain't no 'atonement' possible for a traif mamzer like you!" It then began to emit images of a fluttering Palestinian flag while broadcasting the following message in Arabic, Aramaic, Farsi, Chinese, Russian, Old Icelandic, Celtic, Khoisan and Esperanto: "Palestine Will Be Free From the River to Alpha Centauri."

This, in turn, caused Israel to demand that the United States nuke and radioactively sterilize 3I/Atlas because it likely was inhabited by doctors, hospital workers, students, children, mothers, journalists and similar types of terrorists. The U.K., Ukraine, France and Germany followed suit and proscribed support, contact, or any mention of 3I/Atlas in public gatherings, on social media, in any scientific journal or even in private conversations, all in the name of preserving democracy, capitalism, freedom of speech and whatever.

Mr. Trump additionally proposed that after the United States bombs 3I/Atlas, it should be colonized and developed with luxury hotels, golf courses and, especially, nuclear missile bases from which to attack China, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, India, Lichtenstein, Yemen, Lesotho, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

In furtherance of America's civilizing project, Mr. Netanyahu proposed that the United States should undertake the ethnic cleansing of 3I/Atlas with U.S. weapons and tax dollars; but thereafter the U.S. should deed the property over to Israel.

As part of his lobbying for this proposal, Mr. Netanyahu issued a personal invitation for Mr. Trump to join him at a private viewing of the 5 Eyes' director's cut of the not yet (and never to be) publicly released movie entitled "Epstein's Kompromat Videos of the World's Richest and Most Powerful." Which, in turn, caused Mr. Trump (who wishes to win the Nobel Peace Prize by re-imagining America as some kind of Warrior Valhalla) to... immediately change the subject... by bullying yet another small and defenseless country and serially invading Chicago, Los Angeles, Vatican City and Minneapolis.

The Democrats unanimously decried Mr. Trump's war-mongering and colonial projects, but voted, as always, to continue to fund them.

As 3I/Atlas entered into its closest fly-by on the far side of the Sun (making it impossible to observe directly from the Earth), astronomers noticed that first the moons of Saturn and then the moons of Jupiter suddenly... disappeared. Shortly after that, the planets Mars and Venus, too, entirely vanished as though someone or something had swallowed them whole.

3I/Atlas then braked and changed its trajectory. It circled around, then hovered above Planet Earth.

An enormous "Buuurrrrrrp" was heard from the darkening skies overhead as, around the globe, people started thinking, I wonder what's for dinner tonight?

* * * * *

Funny story? Maybe so; maybe not.

But these are not such funny times, are they?

I completely understand why people check out of reality. It's hard enough to deal with one's own difficulties without becoming overwhelmed with those of others. It's intended to be like that, of course. It's like Degas' painting of the absinthe drinkers - we seek a release, a drug to anesthetize us against the incessant barrage of evil.

The faces in Degas' painting are our faces at the end of a hard day. Worn out. Isolated. Numb to the world. It's very difficult to accept, let alone acknowledge, bitter truths that gob-smack us, even as we live just marginally better at the expense of those who live significantly worse.

What's the least one can do and still remain sane? And human? Speaking truth to power, to be perfectly frank, is one of those meaningless platitudes that, ultimately, is just a cop out. Power doesn't care about truth being spoken to it - it's not even listening. Power cares only about being pulled down off its pedestal.

I grew up in the Vietnam era. Did protests really end that war?

I don't think so, at least, not by themselves. The Vietnam War ended (although the global and never-ending world war did not) only partly because of protests in the streets and anti-draft campaigns on the campuses. It ended, also in part, because young American soldiers - of all races, ethnicities and social classes - increasingly recognized that this war (like all wars) was a racket that profited others at the cost of their lives.

The Vietnam War ended primarily, however, due to the courage, the sacrifice and the determination of the Vietnamese partisans who took on the world's biggest, baddest colonialists. They persevered for decades. And they won.

Do I have the strength or the stamina to take on that kind of a sacrifice? Sometimes I feel like I do. Sometimes, I feel like I don't.

I respect the younger folks of this age (by which I mean everyone young in age and spirit!) who are, once again, willing to take up the cudgels of resistance. I do not mean joining in sclerotic party politics or one-off protest marches. Millions and millions and millions of autochthonous, city-and-port-clogging protests extended over long periods of time might achieve something. Anything less than that, however, will only lead to personal exhaustion.

Nor do I mean meaningless drawn-out courtroom arguments over the rule of law and the law of rules.

What I do mean, is that I am not quite sure what I mean. Or maybe I do, but I can't, or won't, say it out loud. But there are hopeful signs in today's more gutsy youth movements, those movements far more meaningful that the silly, manufactured, nonsensical non-issues of recent years past. You know, the ones that were intended to Balkanize us and deflect our attention elsewhere.

One day, people around the globe will recognize that the superficial social and economic phenomena that we want to ameliorate today are the result of decades - no centuries - of just a few fundamental, systemic, core problems that have a name, that have been deliberately mislabeled, that have been deliberately misprinted into our collective psyches, that have been historically inverted and perverted, that have been intentionally masked by one cultural, social and political distraction or the other.

Perhaps one day. But not today.

There is no Deus ex machina. Alas, because a Deus ex machina would be so easy. But it won't be easy. It cannot be easy or it wouldn't be worth it. No one will 'save us' except ourselves. Not even 3I/Atlas, even if it is an emissary from a more advanced alien life form.

Prost!

Here's to 3I/Atlas, the 5 billion year old giant wine bottle from elsewhere in the Cosmos that might - but probably doesn't - contain a message to all of us on Earth. Intelligent… or dumb as a rock (by which I mean both 3I/Atlas and us)… welcome to our world, Stranger!

Bon voyage! And... bon appétit??

* * * * *

Leave a comment

"This isn't my report!" Frank Kelsey protested. He leaned back and widely displayed at shoulder height his open hands in the universal gesture of defiant incomprehension.

Were a pinhole camera focused on the scene... and it is certain that there was... the movie scene would have appeared to be static:

Dr. Kelsy in his short-sleeve blue shirt, looked through the lower half of his bifocals. His posture and his face showed surprise and indignation. He was seated in the low hard guest chair in front of Dr. William Merrell's mahogany desk, the low hard chair intended to make a visitor feel small and uncomfortable.

Dr. Merrell leaned slightly forward in his executive leather chair. Behind him was a credenza. On the credenza stood a careful arrangement of portraits of his wife and children. Dr. Merrell’s hands lay on his desk, his fingers and thumbs touching thoughtfully, his eyes contemplating his fingers. Behind him, framed pictures hung on the walls: university diplomas; photos of various Very Important People standing shoulder to shoulder or shaking hands with Dr. Merrell; civic awards for this, that or the other; pictures of rockets rocketing off and capsules landing. Through the plate glass window in the far wall one could see the manicured grounds, the guarded front gate, the flag hanging limply in the traffic island that separated entering and exiting vehicles.

There, on Dr. Merrell's desk, was the two hundred seventy-five page lunar water report, stamped "Secret and Confidential," ostensibly drafted by Dr. Frank Kelsey, Team Leader, et. al., Project Jump the Moon, lying on the dark wood desk straddling the no man's land between the Executive Director and his subordinate.

The scene remained static. They didn't move for nearly half a minute.

Finally, Dr. Merrell spoke. "Frank, you and I go back together a long time," he said in that ersatz friendly tone the superior uses to address an inferior. "I know this project is important to you. But you also know that it's a lot bigger and a lot more important than either one of us."

Dr. Merrell put up his hand to preemptively stifle the outrage about to burst from Dr. Kelsey's mouth. "Frank, we've talked about this many times before and I know where you are coming from. I respect your opinions. You know I do. But there are times when it is more important to be part of the team than just a stubborn old man who refuses to be reasonable."

The outrage erupted anyway. "Bill, what are you asking me do to? Do you want me to lie? You saw the studies, Bill, the same ones I saw!"

Dr. Kelsey grabbed the report and riffled the pages looking for the pictures of the magnified water samples sent back by the lunar rover inside the newly explored lunar south pole craters. "Look at them Bill! They're unique! We've never seen anything like this before! They're small, tardigrade size, and they must have incredibly slow metabolism--but they're definitely alive, Bill, and they're positively, absolutely not Earth contaminants! This report is 180 degrees opposite from what I actually wrote. This is all bullshit! I can't believe what you are trying to get me to say! Look at the organic analysis, would you already!?"

"Frank. You're wrong. No one agrees with you. Your entire team has already signed off on the report as submitted!"

"That's because you pressured them!"

"No, Frank, it's because they have more sense than you do!"

Dr. Merrell leaned forward, his fingers now interlocked tightly, his eyes drilling into Dr. Kelsey's eyes. He spoke clearly. Softly. Authoritatively. In the tone a superior uses to address a subordinate.

"Frank, you need to listen to me. Project Jump the Moon needs the water we've discovered. The plan was agreed on almost a decade ago: we land on the Moon and we set up a way-station at the south pole. The lunar south pole has water and it is always in the light of the sun. Cheap energy and water - the essentials of space exploration. The Moon becomes a type of service station for the missions to Mars, to Europa, to Titan, to Ganymede, Uranus and beyond. We use solar cells to power the Moon station. We mine the frozen lakes of water on the surface and below the surface of the moon, use some for consumption so we aren't always bathing in and drinking our own recycled piss. And we split most of the rest of the lunar water molecules into their constituent atoms to make hydrogen fuel for the rockets and to provide oxygen for the colonists to breathe. We can't transport all of the necessary hydrogen and oxygen from Earth. It just can't be done. This is the only way to go, Frank. It works because there is no life on the Moon. Not now, not ever! There are just contaminants from prior Earth exploration and it is absolutely imperative that those contaminants be sterilized so that we are not further polluting space with our garbage!"

Dr. Kelsey blew up. "You're wrong! Those samples show nothing like life on Earth! These things have unique amino acids and proteins, a reproductive cycle like no other, a locomotive system - a slow one, no doubt, but by every definition, Bill, they're alive! We don't know anything about them, how they got there, what they live on, what their life cycle is, whether they're connected to anything else. Good Lord, Bill, this is the Holy Grail of space exploration! And now we're going to kill God knows what--we don't even know what we've found--just so we can beat the Russians or the Chinese or the Indians or the Japanese? We're going to do this just to set up some stupid missile bases and mine minerals on the outer planets and moons? We're going to do this just for the Power and the Money? Come on, Bill! I'm not stupid! The chlorination, irradiation and extreme heat decontamination treatment proposed by this report for the lunar south polar water isn't about any environmental concern for humans polluting space. That's pure bull! It's an extermination project. It's genocide on a trans-human scale. It's about more of what humans have always done - lie, cheat, steal, colonize. Always in the name of what's good and always for the sake of exploitation and domination."

Dr. Merrell leaned back in his executive chair and folded his hands behind his head. He was framed by the view through the picture window of the manicured grounds, the flag and the sentry gate.

"Frank. This is a very big deal. There's a lot riding on this--a lot of time and energy has been invested in this and a lot of important people have made it very clear that the project must go forward, full speed ahead. I mean really important people, Frank. The sterilization equipment is already being prepared in situ. You recognize as well as I do that if there really were 'life' on the Moon--and everyone one of us except you, Frank, agrees that there is not--then we can't use the water to hopscotch our way to the outer planets. It will be like some picayune non-viable endangered species, a trifling snail darter, blocking progress all over again, just so starry-eyed idealists like you, Frank, can study these worthless things. And for what? For the sake of pure science? The so-called pursuit of 'knowledge?'

"Give me a break, Frank!!

"We aren't children and we live in the real world. The Universe is Nature and Nature is not some Disney World of eternally happy animations. Nature is not a children's cartoon. It's competitive. It's impartial and it's indifferent. Life is made to be aggressive. Humans, of all creatures, excel at that competitive aggression that Nature demands of its survivors. We are also part of Nature, Frank. Space exploration is in our genes. The cleanup project is going to happen whether you approve of it or not. Space exploration and, yes, even exploitation, is our national and our human destiny.

"And Frank, mark my words: this is the kind of thing that makes a career... or breaks it. We are going to decontaminate what the team correctly concluded we have mistakenly contaminated with Earth's bacteria and parasitic hitch-hikers. We have agreed--that is, all of us except for you, Frank--we have all agreed that we need to clean up the mess we must have accidentally made on the Moon so our Earthly contaminants do not get transported to all the other planets we are traveling to. And if we find Earth contaminants on the planets, too, then we will sterilize and decontaminate whatever we find wherever we find it. Everyone else on the project agrees that this isn't a cover-up, Frank, and it isn't anything ignoble. It's the only responsible thing to do. This is a huge forward leap for humankind, Frank. This is the dream of breaking free from Earth's chains. You can be part of the team. Or...you can be off the team."

Dr. Merrell leaned further forward. "Frank. The time for discussion is over. Are you with all of us, or not?"

Dr. Merrell lifted his hand to again stifle another eruption of outrage. "Look, Frank. Listen to me. You've got responsibilities. You've got a wife. You've got family. You've got kids. College isn't cheap, you know. You have a reputation that--at least up till now--has been exemplary. Why do you want to risk everything, ruin your whole life and your family's, for the sake of...what...some useless, obviously unintelligent dead-end...and, ultimately, unproven alien life form...in some hypothetical evolutionary scheme nobody recognizes, when it's just you, just your ipse dixit, Frank, that these are not just inadvertent contaminates from early Earth exploration?

"Frank! Sign the report! Please! Everyone wants you on board. We need you."

He pushed the confidential Jump the Moon project report across his desk toward Dr. Kelsey.

Dr. Kelsey sucked in air and shook. "No!" he finally shouted and swept the report off Dr. Merrell's desk onto the floor. He got up and left, slamming the office door behind him.

* * *

Dr. Merrell picked the report off the floor and straightened it. For several minutes, he sat quietly looking at the photographs hanging on his wall.

His back-line on the secure desk phone rang.

He pushed the blinking red button and took it hands-free.

"So he won't sign," asked--or rather, stated--the caller, because the caller surreptitiously had listened to the whole conversation and watched it through the live pinhole camera feed.

"No." Dr. Merrell began absently to thumb back cuticle from the lunulae of his fingers. "But I know Frank Kelsey. "He's going to do something rash, you know. He's going to go to the press or write some letters to the academic journals. He does have a good reputation, even though he's wrong."

"He had a good reputation," said the voice coolly. "There are things we know about him. Foolish little things he's done and probably not entirely forgotten. We're all like that, of course. When people are young they do things. You, especially, understand, Dr. Merrell. A person does petty and embarrassing things, but not so petty that they won't jeopardize someone's security clearance."

The voice on the phone paused to let the thought seep in, and then continued.

"And there are bigger and smaller transgressions that one may be accused of, some of which may actually be true. You know, things like past correspondence and friendships with foreign nationals, occasional moral indiscretions, peculiar web searches, certain louche photographs found on someone's computer hard drive, a questionable business expense, a mistake on a tax return that may not have been unintentional, an ambiguous email once sent that now needs to be reevaluated, maybe some ethical transgressions that violate federal laws that no one knows exist. It can all be very public, very scandalous, very dishonorable and very expensive. One learns quickly just how expensive.

“The press and the professional journal editors also know that they should contact us immediately if Frank Kelsey... or anyone else, for that matter... tries to publish something critical about the program. We are satisfied that their own counselors and advisors will confirm that Dr. Kelsey, and anyone like him, is a crank, a charlatan or a tool--wittingly or not--of some hostile power. Maybe it was mental illness or a loner mentality. Maybe it's just something in the water where someone grows up. Frank Kelsey is about to become, in a sense, radioactive.

“No publisher will want to touch him or anyone like him. In a worst case scenario, one could have a car accident. Or the spouse and family could have an accident. People become depressed. Sometimes, out of shame or desperation, stories end like that. And although none of those things need actually come to pass, if they do, they could have a salutary effect on the team effort. Nothing builds cohesion like the group sense of loss for a fallen star."

Dr. Merrell looked abstractly out the picture window. "He does have his own files and research and a copy of the studies of the lunar water analysis. I am sure he uploaded and copied his records."

"Once, he did have his own files and research and copies of the studies," said the voice. We researched Frank Kelsey pretty thoroughly. This meeting was your idea, Dr. Merrell, but we correctly anticipated how it would go. Dr. Kelsey's records are no more. Digital records can be modified and they can disappear quickly and absolutely when one has the tools and access. We did leave a few items in his folders, however, but they've been, what should we say, updated and improved, you understand, to reflect data consistent with the project final report."

"But you realize that he didn't and won't sign the final report," Dr. Merrell noted.

"No matter," said the voice on the telephone. "His signature is no longer relevant to this project anymore than he is. In a few months, Dr. Kelsey will be forgotten." There was a pause and then the telephone voice concluded before hanging up: "There seems to be nothing else for us to discuss at this time, Dr. Merrell. Thank you for your effort and hard work. Goodbye."

Dr. Merrell stood up and looked at the pictures on his credenza, the pictures hanging on the wall, the view of the sky out his picture window. It was that season of the year, that time of the month, when he could see the moon, faintly, even in the late afternoon. The moon was in its waning gibbous phase and Dr. Merrell could just see it through the clouds.

It was too bad about Frank Kelsey, he thought to himself. A very stubborn man. Dr. Merrell speculated that Frank's take-down would begin almost immediately. It was probably already underway. It wouldn't take too long and, once begun, it would be irreversible. Frank's existence would be sterilized. So, too, Earth's Moon. The sterilization of the frozen water in the Moon's craters would proceed posthaste, to undo an inadvertent contamination by Earth bacteria and viruses, so everyone had agreed. Once begun, it, too, would be irreversible. Project Jump the Moon would proceed. Life would go on. We live in a rules-based world. People like Frank... and me... just have to follow the rules.

Dr. Merrell decided to go home early.

* * *

Distantly, elsewhere, the voice that had been talking to Dr. Merrell on the secure back-line phone, was, meanwhile, talking with other people who were also distant and elsewhere.

Frank Kelsey was already off the agenda, already old news. Done and over. The topic for discussion was Dr. Merrell, his future usefulness to the project. The consensus was that Dr. Merrill, too, was disposable. Dr. Merrell's body language and sentiments hinted at less reliability than was desirable. Trees need to be pruned, shrubs need to be trimmed. No one is irreplaceable. Dr. Merrell, too, would need to be carefully watched and monitored. It was likely, just not yet, but one day soon, they concluded, that Dr. Merrell, too, would have to go. There were unwritten rules in the rules-based order. Sacrifices were necessary. The sacrifices of others. For the good of the order. Their good. And their order.

Author's Note

The names of the protagonists in this story are drawn from real people. "Frank Kelsey" is a fictionalized character whose name is derived from Frances Oldham Kelsey, MD, PhD.

In 1960, Frances Kelsey began to work in the pharmacology center of the Food & Drug Administration. One of the first drugs she was asked to approve for use in the United States was thalidomide, a drug manufactured by the German company Grünenthal that it marketed as a sedative, a flu medication and as a completely safe cure for morning sickness for pregnant women. William S. Merrell Co. - ergo the name Dr. William Merrell in the story - proposed to mass market thalidomide in the United States and reap enormous profit from its sales.

Thalidomide, however, can cause peripheral neuritis (damage to the nerves of the hands and feet). Crossing the placental barrier, it can result in birth defects like phocomelia, severe flipper-like deformations of the arms and legs, blindness, central brain damage, facial deformations and miscarriages. The pharmaceutical manufactures of thalidomide knew, or at least had hints, about the drug's problems and they deliberately chose to ignore them for the sake of making money. The pre-sale testing of thalidomide was limited, inadequate, and obfuscatory. It was a block-buster miracle drug, the companies proclaimed, the science be damned. If, later, there were occasional birth defects, who could actually prove the direct causal relationship between the drug and the defects?

Dr. Frances Kelsey, almost alone, sensed that something was wrong with thalidomide. She stood up to the enormous pressure heaped on her. Millions of doses of thalidomide were already being sold in Germany, in England, in Australia and elsewhere. The companies urgently wanted to sell to Americans what they had already sold to millions of expectant mothers across the globe. America was a lucrative market. Pregnant women were the marketing target. Only Dr. Kelsey held them back.

Dr. Frances Kelsey had seen indications in the non-U.S. medical literature that not all was well with thalidomide. There were medical anecdotes, a few limited observations, scattered reports of birth abnormalities and major health concerns raised by doctors in Germany, England and Australia. The reports were frightening. The damage to newborns appeared to be catastrophic. Dr. Kelsey dug in her heels. She demanded that the proponents, manufacturers and marketers of thalidomide prove that it was safe, that it did no fetal damage and that it did not cross the placental barrier; and she demanded that they establish its safety first before thalidomide would be allowed into the American marketplace. It is called the precautionary principle.

Doctors, pharmaceutical companies, politicians, lobbyists, everyone dumped on Dr. Kelsey for resisting the medical consensus that they claimed to represent. They ridiculed her. They derided her. They threatened her. They tried to go over her head. There was a lot of money at stake. The pressure was intense and unremitting.

Luckily - for the United States, at least - the information dam broke and the dirty secrets of thalidomide's legacy of death and birth defects came out before the Merrell corporation could break Dr. Frances Kelsey's resistance. Ultimately, thalidomide was not marketed in the United States. Lives were saved.

It isn't known exactly how many mothers and surviving babies were adversely affected by thalidomide in the countries where it had been marketed - possibly 10,000 to 20,000, likely more. Many additional thousands were stillborn or died soon after they were born.

When I lived in West Berlin, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, I lived very close to a German hospital that cared for survivors of the thalidomide disaster, babies who had been born without arms or legs or born with malformed feet and hands. I saw a few of the teenage survivors riding the public buses to the hospital, holding their schoolbags at their shoulders for want of any arms, or using elaborate walking devices for want of any legs. It made a lasting impression on me, of their courage, and of the courage of Dr. Frances Kelsey who saved countless thousands from a similar fate.

Dr. Frances Kelsey died in 2015. She was 101 years old.

She was a heroine and the epitome of courage.

____

Note 1: Top photo credit - Diatoms living between crystals of annual sea ice in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. Image digitized from original 35mm Ektachrome slide. Prof. Gordon T. Taylor, Stony Brook University Public Domain File: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diatoms_through_the_microscope.jpg Created: 1 January 1983

Note 2: End art credit - Projectile Trains for the Moon | Les trains de projectiles pour la lune.url=https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/illustrations/trains-to-moon/ | author=Montaut, Henri de | year=n.d. | publisher=Old Book Illustrations. Appeared in Book Title: De la terre à la lune Author: Verne, Jules Publisher: Paris: Hetzel, n.d.

[Trigger Warning: This story contains "fowl" language and alludes to "triggers."]

Quälpooň played the decrypted plasma fax message again.

Request your urgent attention to orbital rock jam & demand confirmation of resolution. Invoking Clause 82 immediately. Also Criminal Code for Illegal Dumping. Penalties and interest will accrue.

Best regards.

MTR, Provisional Ass't Director, Trade and Import Registry, Upper Utula III.

Message sent today, marked urgent.

Quälpooň shouted "OFF!" at the voice command microphone and then shattered the plasma player with his iron-knuckled gloved fist. He picked up the parts in one handful and threw them against the boardroom wall just missing the nuclear cuckoo clock. The crash scratched the steel wall as the player smashed into several more pieces that hovered like ocean flotsam in the low-gravity.

"We are already losing money on this $#@!*&+@# haul of $#@!*&+@# rocklets!" He screamed at his subordinates and crew, drops of yellow spittle spraying from his drooping multi-color mustache onto the five cringing and heavily bearded men and women who were seat-belted to their executive chairs at the small oval conference table.

"Clause 82 means, as you useless $#@!*&+@# bums well know, that the TIR can now start charging ME rent and dumping fees and penalties - DUMPING FEES!!! - for this pile of debris we've hauled over here for mining and grinding, and if YOU do not come up with a solution to the problem IMMEDIATELY then I am going to personally throw you one by one into the garbage composter and feed you to the cabin rats! I am not going to lose any more money on this job because of your incompetence!" Quälpooň pounded the boardroom table one more time causing everyone's cups of mash-grog to lift up with the impact.

Quälpooň glowered. Nobody moved. They stared at the table.

"WELL?!?!?!?" screamed Quälpooň and brushed an iron pitcher off its magnetic coaster onto the floor with the back of his hand. The pitcher drifted down while the mash of rum and butterscotch infused hemp syrup hung glob-like in the air and then began to elongate slowly onto the floor.

Leŋawolpena spoke up sheepishly. "We could try using the starboard lifeboat to nudge the larger rocks out of the way and then..."

"$#@!*&+@#!!!" screamed Quälpooň. "You know there are hundreds of thousands of rocks out there and that would take eons, and in the meantime Upper Utula will have shaded out before the rocks start raining down on it and everyone on the planet would die, if not from the impacts, then from the interruption of photosynthesis ultimately causing starvation and asphyxiation. And worse than that, I'd go broke; and I AM NOT GOING TO LOSE ANY MORE MONEY, DAMMIT!!!"

Whereupon Quälpooň pounded the conference table one more time and one of its legs broke causing the table to tilt and all the crystal mash-grog mugs to slide softly off their magnetic coasters onto the floor where they did not break on impact.

"... or we could just get into the starboard lifeboat ourselves," whispered Aótarone, "... and then we just hightail it out of here and let Upper Utala fend for itself. No witnesses, you know. We did that before when we got into a similar jam, a few years ago and..."

Goolpath, Dtahlathũng and Schoonkar, quiet till then, nodded their beards slowly and muttered approval.

"I know what the $#@!*&+@# we did before!" screamed Quälpooň, and that's exactly why we can't do it again, because everyone this side of Betelgeuse knows what we did before, even if no witnesses lived to tell about it! And even though we bribed our way out of it once, it will cost us ten times as much to bribe our way out the second time and after several more million deaths, that's going to get $#@!*&+@# too expensive, and I don't have enough money, thanks to you bums!! So you need a better idea. I mean what do I keep you all around for, if all you do is stare at the table and mumble to yourselves??"

"... maybe it's time for us to call in... Little Annie Asteroid... " mumbled someone at the conference table.

They cringed as Quälpooň was about to pound the table again. Quälpooň's face turned bright red, but he recovered himself. He thought a moment. Then he sneered quietly: "Yeah, maybe it is time to call in Little Annie Asteroid."

* * 2 * *

The airlock opened and a buckskin-clad Annie Asteroid strode in followed by her android valet/spittoon wearing a holstered laser-tipped cigar cutter. She pulled a whiskey flavored cheroot from her over-the-shoulder cigar bandoleer, bit off the end and spat. Her bowl shaped copper-headed valet/spittoon raced over and caught the cigar tip in mid-air. Ka-ping.

Annie Asteroid struck a match with a scratch of her thumbnail. She lit the cigar and sucked deeply. She curled a single blue smoke ring into the faces of the six space desperadoes who had sent her the urgent call for help.

"Annie Asteroid, at you service, gents and ladies. Who's in charge here?" She looked up into their mistrustful eyes and cleared her throat snarlingly. The grimy clutch of space rowdies in their dirty iron-studded overalls towered over the 4 foot 8 inch tall Annie Asteroid, but they felt uncertain and overawed by her brashness.

"So you're Little Annie Asteroid?" sneered Quälpooň. "You look like a, like a tiny little... shrimp! Ahaw haw haw!"

Little Annie Asteroid tapped the ash on her cigar and spat to her right. Her android valet/spittoon caught the ash and spit on the fly. Ka-ping.

Annie Asteroid's eyes narrowed. Her dusky ankle-length duster caught a breeze from somewhere and luffed like a leather sail. An Enno Morricone soundtrack to a Sergio Leone spaghetti western whistled through the ceiling speakers.

(Source of Audio 1)

Holstered at her waist, the pearl handles of two sawed off charged particle blunderbusses glistened in the artificial light. Her bowl-headed android spittoon menacingly held aloft its ruby laser cigar cutter.

Annie Asteroid hissed: "Nobody calls me 'shrimp' twice, Mister." She stared at the six bearded men and women massed before her. Nobody moved. The eyebrow over Aótarone's patched left eye began to twitch. A space fly buzzed languorously around the ceiling fan that slowly churned the rising plume of cigar smoke. The cabin rats cowered in their hidden cracks of the spaceship and fearfully gnawed their forepaws. The pendulum of the captain's nuclear cuckoo clock softly metronomed the silence.

At last, Annie Asteroid snapped her fingers and broke the spell. "Gentlemen and ladies," she said; then paused and looked over her hosts to confirm that she used her words most advisedly. "Gen-til-men and La-dies, so what's the deal? You rang me up, so let's get right down to business. I'm very busy these days and I don't have time to waste."

"Well," said Leŋawolpena, "you see we have this bunch of space rocks that we've, uhh, corralled from an outer meteor belt; or maybe they were just, you know, "lost" from the space yards of some other populated planets, I don't rightly remember right now. And we just moseyed these rocks along to this here milling planet, Upper Utula III or whatever it's called. And they've got one of those typical dark market grinding operations where they crack rock and extract the minerals and cast ingots or whatever for resale at less than wholesale, you know what I mean? And, it seems, we corralled just a few too many, and now the Upper Utulans, or whatever they call themselves, are a little put out because we have so many asteroids and bolide hulks that we're blocking out their light just a wee bit, and the gravity from this here Upper Utula III is starting to draw these puppies in, because we, ahh, miscalculated just a little bit and, our mass of rocks have their own gravity, and we and Utula III are all blocked in because everything is getting closer and starting to accelerate so..."

"So tell me something I don't already know," growled Little Annie Asteroid.

"So," said Dtahlathũng, "one of their honchos at their Trade and Import Registry got a mite testy and has given us a rather strong, ahh, request, to move our haul of rocks out of their light stream, and especially before we have a major catastrophe on our hands, because they've started to fine us, and maybe worse still if things get still worse. Like Upper Utula III and a whole bunch of people could get just a little bit killed, you know, just a little bit killed, and we could lose a whole lot of money, too. And we had some ideas how to deal with this, but... "

"I told you to tell me something I don't know," scolded Little Annie Asteroid.

"Awright, Ms. Annie," interjected Schoonkar, bitingly annunciating every syllable with clear irritation. "Why don't you make things easy and tell us what you already know, okay?"

"Ahaw haw haw!" snorted Quälpooň as he stroked the green and orange whiskers of his braided beard.

Little Annie Asteroid spat to her left and tapped her cigar into her android spittoon.

"I know that you yahoos are dammed sloppy and your telecom security is pathetic. After I got your e-mer-gen-cy call, I hacked into your ship's records and read several months of your internal and external communications you supposedly stored se-cure-ly in your nebula cloud server. So I know where you lassoed your pretty load of dark space rock, and if I wanted to check - which, mind you, I don't, anymore than the Upper Utulans care to know where you got your product - but if I did care to look, I'd wager there's a proprietary brand or two etched onto the surface of those little doggies.

"And I know that you all got real greedy and brought in a whole lot more space rock than you can handle - which isn't saying too much because there isn't a whole lot that you idiots can handle - and now you're in deep dragon shit right up to your tobacco-juiced mustaches, right? Because you idiots are about to wipe out one of the most lawyered, marginally legitimate and vengeful of this galaxy's dark rock trading planets, and that ain't too good for business, is it? I know that you wanted to use a kinetic jackhammer to solve your problem, but that would only make ten or more asteroids for every one you smashed apart. And you thought about using tactical nuclear mines to blast open some space, but that, too, would just create radioactive dust particles that would likely be even more hazardous with no appreciable reduction in overall mass. And you wanted to bulldoze here and there and shove things out of the way.

"But this isn't a two-body problem or a three-body problem but a multi hundred thousand body problem and any one move affects another, so you could never figure out how to readjust your rocks without rocking and rolling even worse. And you ran out of ideas. And you ran out of escape routes, too, right?

"So finding yourselves in a jam (namely, you are so many slices of toast!), you called me in because you guys have a re-pu-ta-tion, don't you now? A re-pu-ta-tion for cutting out when the heat is on. And so your financial well being - and probably your very existential being - is on the line. And that's why you called me, Annie Asteroid, to save your space bacon. Now, tell me, what's the deal?"

The space rustlers spluttered at Annie Asteroid's insults. But she was right, of course, so they ate their pride (and their space bacon) and just grumbled.

Quälpooň spoke. "So you already know the deal, Miss Annie. What can YOU do for us, you little Shr... ?" He caught himself in mid-sentence.

"The deee-al," replied Annie Asteroid, " is not what I can do for you, but what YOU can do for me! Because only I can save your worthless, idiotic, rock-rustling butt-heads. The DEAL is a minimum of 100 million universal credits, transferred upon delivery of completed services, plus a 60/40 split of anticipated gross revenue on the sale regardless whether the transaction is completed - and 60% is my take - on whatever you would have gotten for this haul, PLUS costs and expenses... AND MILEAGE and fuel surcharges to get to and away from this fleabag planetary system, of course. Your obligations will be guaranteed by an ironclad first position UCC Article 1 security interest in your crappy rust-bucket of a space ship and an equally ironclad UCC Article 1(A) security interest on your crappy rust-bucket lives.

"That's outrageous!" Screamed Quälpooň as he pounded the head of one of his subordinates for want of a table to bang on.

"That's fine," said Annie Asteroid sweetly, or as sweetly as she could say anything. "I'll just be going on my way then. Ciao, kiddos. Hasta la vista. Thanks for the memories and all that. Have a good time when the grateful Utulans, or such of them as survive this catastrophe, toss you into one of their ore grinders as a reward for having destroyed their entire dark rock cracking and peddling operation. Bye now. Ta ta!"

She ground her cigar into the ship's floor, spat in front of her and turned to reenter the airlock exit as her spittle was caught mid-air by her android valet/spittoon. Ka-ping.

"Now hold on a minute, Miss Annie," said Quälpooň jabbing his leather gloved fingers into the airlock door to keep it from closing. He smiled his gold capped crooked teeth like a politician looking for babies to smooch. "How about if we negotiate something, you know, like... say... a crate of genuine Commando Super X Cigars and a contingent 2.5% commission on profit net of expenses after taxes?"

"How 'bout 100 million universal credits, payable upon delivery of completed services, plus a 60/40 split... plus the cigars, MISTER!" she roared in reply. "It's a take it or leave it proposition! And, in case you're thinking about it: nobody stiffs Little Annie Asteroid!"

Quälpooň ground his crooked gold teeth and pounded the head of another one of his subordinates. "Okay, Miss Annie, it's a deal. But you better get the job done right." He breathlessly swore to himself "You pint-sized cheating little space SHRIMP!"

Little Annie Asteroid's android valet/spittoon quickly scrolled through on a tiny screen the 1,800 page Terms of Service agreement that Quälpooň and each of his crew signed, without reading, with a swipe of their hobnailed leather gloves.

"Cuckoo, cuckoo," said the captain's nuclear wall clock.

* * 3 * *

The six space buccaneers watched from the port-side observation window as Little Annie Asteroid cautiously maneuvered around the logjam of space rock in her single-seat space scooter. Now and then, she would pull with a grapple or push with an extension poll to rearrange a small meteor a little more here or there relative to the others. She extended from the nose of her scooter a several hundred foot long slender rod tipped with an anti-matter anti-magnet. With it she gently tapped the flanks of some of the tumbling rocks. The black market rock rustlers could see her in the scooter cockpit framing the asteroids with the flats of her hands and making line-of-sight reckonings of angles and distances.

"How is she going to pull this off?" wondered Goolpath out loud as she twirled one of her green drooping mustaches. "Is this all for show? Little Annie Asteroid isn't using any digital mapping, no artificial intelligence, no quantum algorithms, no deep doo doo learning, no neutron bombs, no infinitely stochastic computer modeling, no nothing."

"I heard," replied Leŋawolpena, "... and it's just what I heard somewhere or other... that she does all the a-rith-ma-tic in her head, like she's got some kind of in-tu-i-tion or a feeel, you know what I mean?"

"And I heard she's like a high stakes pool hustler," said Dtahlathũng. "She ain't a-fear'd of nothing and always walks away a winner."

"And I think she's too damn expensive, and a cheating little shrimp!" said Quälpooň mostly to himself. But he, too, watched closely as Little Annie Asteroid's space scooter darted gingerly around, between and through the thickness of hundreds of thousands of congested rocks inexorably being drawn by their own and Upper Utula's gravities into an inescapable spiral of darkness and death. "And she's too damn expensive," he repeated.

* * 4 * *

After several Earth-equivalent hours of reconnoitering, Little Annie Asteroid announced by a cosmic voice mail to her rustler clients: "I am ready, Gentlemen and Ladies. It is time to take your seats. Time to buy your bags of popped hull barrrrnacles, chocolate covered Goooobers and rrrrumiedumdum sodie-pop. The currrrtain rrrrises momentarrrrily. Buy yourrrr sou-ven-irrrrs at the front airlock door. Place your bets on the table, gents and ladies and sit back and enjoy the show! And get ready to pay the agreed upon price for the salvation of your gnarly, money-grubbing, twisted souls!"

Quälpooň and his crew, the cabin rats, the space fly and the nuclear wall clock cuckoo bird all pressed their faces against the observation window, each one of them peering through quantum binoculars at Little Annie Asteroid's tiny scooter flitting around the logjam of hundreds of thousands of slow rolling space rocks. Little Annie Asteroid extended from the nose of her scooter the several hundred foot long pool cue tipped with the anti-matter anti-magnet. Her copper headed android valet/spittoon hovered in the vacuum outside the scooter and gently rubbed chalk on the tip of the cue stick.

"Black metallic Asteroid 46B-omega 9 in the corner pocket," announced Little Annie Asteroid by cosmic communicator, and with her long cue stick she tapped a small tumbling rock into another trajectory.

"Red siliceous asteroid 777-calypso 4, left side pocket," she said and tapped another asteroid into another orbit. Little Annie Asteroid framed a cluster of nearby asteroids with the flats of her hands and made one more line-of-sight reckoning.

"And nowwwww... prepare for break, Gentlemen and Ladies..." After a few practice thrusts Little Annie Asteroid swiftly jabbed her astral cue stick and struck a large white carbonaceous rock that, in frictionless space, careened into two more that transferred kinetic energy into a chain reaction of more and more and more asteroids until within 45 minutes the entire gigantic cluster of space rock was moving in a choreographed dance of bumps, spins and shoves that unshaded the light corridors of Upper Utula III, left not a single large asteroid heading for a collision with that planet, and only micro meteoroid dust that would burn up entering into its atmosphere.

An hour later the Provisional Assistant Director of the Trade and Import Registry for Upper Utula III sent a plasma fax:

Well done, Captain Quälpooň. We have... for the time being... canceled your room reservation at the Upper Utula III penitentiary. We also will immediately terminate the imposition of additional penalties and interest for illegal dumping under Clause 82 of the TIR master contract.

However... due to the random dispersal of hundreds of thousands of space rock, you will be cited for littering and violation of the UUIII revised environmental code that will be enacted later today and applied retroactively.

Thus, in expectation of the new law being passed, fines and penalties of several millions of Universal Credits have prospectively been imposed, in addition to the already accrued penalties and interest for illegal dumping under Clause 82, and not (yet) including contract cancellation and termination fees provided by Clauses 104-119 of the master agreement.

Our lawyers will be in touch with you soon to arrange terms of payment; and in anticipation of your insolvency, an impound team and tow vehicle are presently on their way to secure your vessel and sell it on Space Bay for salvage value with any deficiency, of course, remaining to be paid in monthly installments with compounding daily interest accruing at 24%.

Best regards. MTR, Provisional Assistant Director, Trade and Import Registry, Upper Utula III. Have a nice day!

"$#@!*&+@#!!!" screamed Quälpooň as he drove his leather hobnailed glove into the cabin wall, narrowly missing the nuclear wall clock. The clock bird jumped out and screamed: "Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"

"Damn right!" hollered Quälpooň. "Man and woman the lifeboat and let's get out of here before that little shrimp...

* * 5 * *

At which moment, as Quälpooň and his crew struggled to make room for themselves in the cramped lifeboat by throwing out the cabin rats, the space fly and the cuckoo clock bird who were also desperately trying to get away, Little Annie Asteroid and her valet/spittoon strode through the airlock.

"Are we in a hurry to go somewhere, Gentlemen and Ladies?" she asked puffing a black cheroot as she twirled her pearl handled charged particle blunderbusses. Her android valet/spittoon reached across the lifeboat with its ruby laser cigar cutter and carved the words "Out of Service" right through its front windshield, thus rendering the lifeboat as nonfunctional as the dysfunctional lives inside it.

"Cuckoo!!! Cuckoo!!! Cuckoo!!!" screamed the nuclear cuckoo clock bird. It petulantly flew out of the lifeboat back to its hole in the wall clock. En route, the bird pecked Dtahlathũng's and Goolpath's hairy noses and then dropped a load of cuckoo doo on Quälpooň's head.

Quälpooň, wiping his head with the back of his hobnailed glove, stepped out of the lifeboat to take full responsibility for the situation.

"I take full responsibility for the situation," croaked Quälpooň, choking on the abhorrent thought put into his mind by the author of this story. He stammered and disavowed the author's out-of-character confessional drivel. "Hold on a minute! Who wrote this confessional drivel?"

Author: I wrote it, of course. Now read your lines, Quälpooň.

Quälpooň: No way! This is totally out of character! What is this, some kind of morality play? I'm going to talk to my agent. I'm the bleeping star of this story and I refuse to talk like some whiney nincompoop! It's in my contract!

Author: You are NOT the star of the story, dummy. Annie Asteroid is. That's why her name appears in the title, not YOURS!

Quälpooň: Maybe my name isn't in the title, but I appear first and I appear last, so I'm the most important player here. Besides. If I have to read those lines, then I QUIT!

Author: Okay, okay. Fine. Have it your way, Quälpooň! Spool it back again and take it from the bottom of page 8.

Quälpooň, wiping the load of cuckoo doo off his head with the back of his hobnailed glove, stepped out of the lifeboat and refused to take any responsibility for the situation:

"This is all really your fault Little Annie Asteroid because if you hadn't actually delivered on what you said you would do, we wouldn't be in this mess, now would we? Well, maybe a different mess, but not this one! Now we don't have the money to pay you, we've lost control of our ship and we have to get out of Dodge before we end up spending the rest of our lives breaking rocks in an Upper Utulan debtor's prison. And what's more," he continued pointing a doo-smeared finger of speech at Annie, "if you pull the trigger on your short barrel blasters, then you'll blow the ship's outer pressure hull and everything will implode and you and me and all the rest of us are going to go bye-bye. So why don't we just call it a day, shake hands and let bygones be bygones, hmmm?"

"Well, maybe two out of three," said Little Annie Asteroid amusedly, "but I ain't shaking no hand that's been wiping nuclear cuckoo doo! And remind me, Mister, what was it I said nobody dared call me twice?"

"Shrrrrimp!" trilled Quälpooň obligingly and smiled his gold-toothed political smile.

"Oh, right," hissed Little Annie Asteroid. "Thanks for reminding me. Now that you have said it twice." She spat to her left and her android valet caught it in its brass spittoon. Ka-ping!

Annie's pupils narrowed to razor blades as she blew a smoke ring toward Quälpooň and his crew who were cowering under a tarp in the lifeboat. An Enno Morricone soundtrack to a Sergio Leone spaghetti western whistled again in the background.

Time froze. The nuclear cuckoo clock sounded 36 o'clock. Time unfroze.

"Well, then, Gentlemen and Ladies," said Little Annie Asteroid a few moments after time had defrosted. "I guess I'll just be one my way." She holstered her pearl handled blunderbusses, doffed her black felt rhinestone studded stetson and carefully stepped rearwards into the airlock without turning her back on Quälpooň and his crew.

She was instantly joined in the airlock by her android valet/spittoon, the cabin rats, the space fly and the nuclear cuckoo bird (who, flapping one wing good-bye, stuck out his tongue and said something in bird to Quälpooň that loosely translates as "pffssssssst"). The valet dipped its copper spittoon head spilling the collected cigar ends and spittle onto the floor of Quälpooň's ship, and the airlock doors sealed with a slurp.

A few minutes later and hundreds of millions of parsecs away, Little Annie Asteroid made a spooky action at a distance photon cell phone call to Quälpooň.

"Gentlemen and Ladies," she said, "I neglected to remind you of a couple of things... the first, in case you've forgotten, is page 788 of our 1,800 page Agreement and Terms of Service (which I am certain you carefully studied before digitally signing), which provides at paragraph 3088(d)(1)(iii) subpart (S)13, certain rights and remedies in the event of a subscriber -- that's YOU, my friends -- breaching its contract with Little Annie Asteroid -- which, of course, is me. And that remedy is an immediate acceleration of fees, costs, damages and penalties. Are you good for the gold, Gentleman and Ladies?"

"Sure," sneered Quälpooň in response. "We've got money coming out our ears right now! All you gotta do is come back and get it, you little SHRIMP, ahaw haw haw!"

"Ahaw, haw, haw yourself," calmly replied Little Annie. "And the second thing I forgot to tell you yokels is that in anticipation of you bums being true to your re-pu-ta-tions and not making good on your fi-nan-ci-al obligations, I took the pre-cau-tion of sinking the cue ball, so to speak, subject to ex post facto adjustment if, in fact, you surprised the hell out of me and actually did pay your bill. But that not being the case," Little Annie Asteroid continued, "I see no reason to adjust anything."

"Whaddya mean?" growled Quälpooň and his crewmen and women by photon speaker phone.

"Well," said Little Annie Asteroid, "just about now you might look out your port-side observation window. And remember, nobody stiffs Little Annie Asteroid. And nobody calls me 'shrimp' twice! Bye now. Have a nice day!" And her spooky action at a distance photon phone transmission winked out.

Turning quickly aside, Quälpooň and crew gasped and stared out the observation window. They watched in terror as the quick tumbling carbonaceous sphere of cosmic rock that Little Annie Asteroid had used to set the others in motion - her cue ball, so to speak - loomed rapidly bigger in the window frame as the asteroid, now close enough to see its surface fissures and craters, flying like a cannonball toward the flank of what would soon no longer be their ship.

END

(... or not?)

Thug nap Ttnuggha stood next to the transport cocoon and looked his colleague straight in the composite eye. Dagna nap Ttnuggha looked straight back into Thug's composite eye. Their hundreds of sub-eyes became tearful. They embraced, then bumped their forearms, thumped their trochantors, entwined their antenna, slapped each other's head with their feelers, gave each other high fours and low twos, rubbed coxa, bumped hindwings, swore friendship and undying fidelity, bowed to each other and then slapped each other on the trochantor again.

"Good luck, Thug nap Ttnuggha!" buzzed Dagna nap Ttnuggha. "And, remember, everything rides on your success!"

"Ourvwa Patta willing, Dagna nap Ttnuggha," buzzed Thug. "I will see you again, when I see you again. Keep the nest ship safe and dark, and let me know if you see any signs of Doonaskat."

"I will," buzzed Dagna nap Ttnuggha standing rigidly at attention. "I salute you, brave Thug. Now, go with Ourvwa. I will keep the nest ship safe and dark from the Doonaskat, till you return!"

Thug then entered the silvery, tightly wound transport cocoon, slid the door shut and pushed the activator button. Within seconds, he had traveled 5,000 miles through near space and, slowing at the end, landed softly on Earth in a dense copse of cottonwood trees and blackberry bushes. Thug exited, removed his travel bag and covered the silky transport cocoon with tree branches and thorny blackberry. He unzipped the bag, removed his disguise and put it on. Uncomfortably warm and clumsy, he thought, as he folded himself up into the animal-like, plastic skinned mannequin, but good enough for the job he had to do. Now in costume, Thug combed back his strange hair with his strange hands, tested his two wobbly legs and experimented moving his neck-mounted head back and forth, up and down. He would not be able to talk exactly like the natives - the Ttnugghas did not have any means of vocalizing except by buzzing - but he would, to all unskilled observers, look and walk like one of them. Even his synthesized, pre-recorded selection of "words" would suffice to create the impression of conversation, if necessary, to the undiscerning listener.

Good enough, Thug buzzed to himself, and, resisting the impulse to fly or sample the local flower nectar, he strode on his two legs out of the copse into a meadow. He then followed a road, walked miles north and west and south and east and thence walked into the City.

* * * * *

Winner Wilson sat on the park bench eating a hot dog. His daily 15 minute lunch at the food carts was his only respite from the typical tight schedule of back-to-back investor, technology and management meetings that occupied him from 6 am until 9 pm six days a week at HyperZipz Megagalactic Technologies, Inc., Wilson's latest business venture that had gone public only three weeks earlier.

The initial public offering had been a huge success. With HyperZipz's stock (NASDAQ listing: HZMGTI) trading at one thousand seven hundred fifty dollars a share more than the initial public offering, the company now had a market capitalization of over 900 billion dollars, more than several countries' annual GDPs combined and even more than the sizzling Mega-World Hot Snot Weinerdawg stands that had also become a publicly traded transnational corporation. Not too shabby, thought Wilson as he licked the last drippings of proprietary formula Mega-World Hot Snot Weinerdawg mustard from his fingers, not shabby at all for a company that really didn't have a product or a technology; nor even a hot dog roaster or a proprietary formula Hot Snot mustard sauce.

And that was a problem. Only a temporary, short term problem, of course, thought Winner Wilson, but still a problem.

Wilson had been born 25 years ago. His parents (or, rather, his father) had named him "Winner" for a reason: they (or, rather, his father) wanted him to believe that he could succeed at anything he set out to do. "Success is all in your head," Winner's father had told him time and time again. "If you believe you can do it, then you will do it!" His father, of course, believing in the magic of positive thinking, had gambled away every nickel he had by investing in fly-by-night penny stocks and bizarre get-rich-quick schemes. He accumulated stacks of criss-crossing loans used to leverage piles of debts stacked on top of bigger piles of debt. Finally, when the house of cards collapsed and the family home was being foreclosed, his father ran away to some obscure and distant place that would not extradite him and was never heard from again.

But the loser father had succeeded with his son: a "Winner" in name and in deed. After dropping out of grade school, Winner started, ran and then sold off his first start-up for a few millions. It was an age of financial wizards, dragons and unicorns and the Market Makers could buy, pimp, pump and dump almost any venture that could generate a market buzz. Winner looked and walked and talked like a marketer's dream. He carried an air of self-confidence, talked like he believed in himself, no matter what star he was reaching for. There was no project too big, no vision too unattainable for the chutzpah of Winner Wilson. Repeating what his father had drilled into him early and often in life, Winner said he would think big, stand tall and reach out for the stars. It sounded good, even if devoid of content, and the Market Makers invested in Winner Wilson and funded him.

With dizzying rapidity, he started, ran and sold one company after another, each one bigger than the last one, each one more audacious than the last one, and each one increasingly mysterious as to what, exactly, the companies did to justify their existence. But no matter, the investors liked that kind of cojones, and so did the media, substance be damned; and, so long as they could market him, the investors continued to fund Winner's serial high-tech business ventures.

His best friend, intellectual property and tax lawyer, William "Big Bill" Rokhead (rhymes with blockhead, thought Winner Wilson in an occasional moment of self-doubt), said to him, "Win, (his friends called him 'Win'), we could sell any crap company you want to come up with, so long as you sell high, run fast and you've got me to keep your butt out of the frying pan and away from the fire!"

But Winner Wilson had gotten his butt stuck in the frying pan this time and the fire, too, was licking too near for comfort. Even William "Big Bill" Rokhead was warning that this time, maybe this time, his client had gotten in over his head. The CYA text messages his lawyer was sending were a clear signal that even the rats were preparing to abandon ship.

Wilson's investors, moreover, were not a jolly bunch of people, even under the best of circumstances. The stories started appearing last week in the business press, questioning, really, what on earth did HyperZipz Megagalactic Technologies, Inc. do, anyway? In response, Winner had issued a mass of confident, but very misleading press releases that had suggested (without actually saying so) in mysterious ambiguities that HyperZipz had developed... or was developing... or hoped to, or had thought about or imagined the possibility of a new and "free" source of energy that would free humankind from fossil fuels, nuclear power, wind, wave and solar dependency forever, breaking the bounds of gravity, freeing humankind to mine black holes, exploit dark energy and colonize the galaxies... and, incidentally, make oodles of money. And the stock of HyperZipz Megagalactic Technologies, Inc. soared... for a few days, at least... until the business press started again to natter and quibble about "what on earth did HyperZipz actually do, anyway?" Or, the critics carped, "was HyperZipz merely dishing hype?" And the company stock resumed its descent into the toilet. At which point, Winner Wilson's investors reminded him that they were, indeed, not a jolly bunch of people under the best of circumstances. And these were not the best of circumstances, so, in no uncertain terms, they let Winner know that they were "displeased" with him and his company, and he quickly better do something about it before they did something about him.

What Winner Wilson meant to do about it was to find someone to scapegoat, find a sucker (or many suckers) on whom he could offload as much of his HyperZipz Megagalactic Technologies, Inc. stock as he could at the best price he could get, and then, failing all else, find a fast jet to some obscure and distant place that would not extradite him, like his father before him.

And that's when Winner met Thug.

Thug had been homing in on Winner Wilson from the beginning. The Ttnuggha knew something about buzzing and they knew that Winner Wilson had created some of the biggest marketing buzzes on Planet Earth. Thug tracked him down and saw Winner sitting on the city park bench licking the proprietary formula mustard off his fingers. Thug sat down next to him on the bench.

Winner Wilson was vaguely aware of Thug's presence, but didn't see him any more than he would have seen any other stranger. Winner stood up to go - it was time for another meeting, another round of investors baying for profits or his head, another management meeting with researchers who wanted to know what on earth they were supposed to be researching. So Winner got up to go, but he was surprised when Thug reached out, grabbed him strongly by the arm and drew him back down to the bench.

"What the.... ?" asked Winner Wilson.

"Hello Mr. Winner Wilson, sir," buzzed Thug, which, translated into one of his prerecorded utterances, sounded halfway intelligible to human beings.

"Buzz off, you bum, and keep your hands off me!" said Winner Wilson.

Thug held Winner firmly. "I have The Technology of the Future," said Thug in a deep, slightly fuzzy baritone (although Thug was puzzled that Wilson would know about Thug's ability to buzz off). "I will give The Technology of the Future to you, Winner Wilson, if you want it," said Thug in his baritone simulated voice. Thug then reached into his jacket pocket with his free hand and pulled out a scroll of tungsten foil with formulas and algorithms engraved upon it. "Take it, Winner Wilson. It is the gift of the Future to the Present. Take it and succeed!" Thug pressed the tungsten scroll into Wilson's hand.

"Creep!" muttered Winner Wilson and pulled himself back. He darted quickly away from Thug, the oddball stranger on the bench, and walking fast, headed back to his company campus. Wilson tried to throw the scroll of foil away but it stuck to his fingers. If he rubbed it off with one hand, it stuck to the other hand. It was stickier than bubble gum, airplane glue, hot asphalt and a William “Big Bill” Rokhead legal contract all rolled together. As he walked, he tried and failed to scrape it off, tear it off, wash it off in a public fountain. Finally, Winner Wilson rubbed his hand on his pants and it was off his hand. But it now clung to his pants leg. He rubbed again. Winner Wilson entered his headquarter building with the titanium scroll firmly adhered to the seat of his pants. He chose to ignore it for now - he was late for his first of the dreaded afternoon meetings, the meeting with his project managers and team leaders.

Winner Wilson entered and sat down at the head of the mahogany conference table. He felt that he had sat on something and reached, without thinking, to push the something off the seat. He was faced with a boisterous, rebellious crowd of scientists and engineers. They were murmuring, grumbling, heckling, shouting at him to come clean, to tell them what on earth they were supposed to be doing at HyperZipz because they were all about to quit and start their own start-up doing the Next Big Thing, just as soon as they could figure out what it would be. Worse, thought Winner Wilson, the meeting with the investor group was next, and they would be even more enraged than the scientists, managers and engineers.

But Winner Wilson still had the master's touch and in a word he quieted the querulous rabble. "Quiet!" He shouted. But once they had quieted, Wilson wasn't sure what next to say or do except for what he always said and did which was to look smug and self-confident and string together platitudinous concepts like "concept" and "succeed" and "forward" and "determination" and "courage" and "strive" and "energy" and "vision;" and as he got wrapped up in the froth of his own harangue, Winner Wilson stood up and pounded the table. And the tungsten scroll that Thug had thrust upon him which had been stuck to the seat of his pants, had again become stuck to his hand, but then became unstuck. It rolled across the mahogany conference table and unfurled on its own, amazingly, into a huge, luminescent, 3D detailed schematic of The Technology of the Future.

The assembled project managers and team leaders scrutinized the schematic diagrams that lay unfolded on the table and as they did so, their eyes grew wider and wider. "Extraordinary," said one. "Astounding," said another. "Elegant and insightful," whispered a third. "It's the holy grail of science," said a fourth. They all looked up at Winner Wilson with surprise, admiration, and contrition writ on their faces and unbridled eagerness to launch into their work. And Winner, always a self-confident man with an air of invincibility, looked smug and triumphant even though he hadn't a clue what the devil they were talking about.

Months later - after HyperZipz Megagalactic Technologies, Inc.'s stock had spiraled into the stratosphere, and after Winner Wilson (now a paper trazillionaire) had been nominated for a clean sweep of that year's Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Economics, Literature, Peace and Stock Marketing - only then did Wilson finally stop trying to find the stranger who had handed him the tungsten scroll with The Technology of the Future.

Winner Wilson, for a few weeks, had gone back to the park bench where he had eaten his hot dog. But the stranger, Thug, never came back and could not be found. Winner Wilson never told anyone that someone else had really been responsible for his big break-through, not Winner Wilson. But if the strange man would never return, and Winner didn't know who he was, then maybe he didn't exist after all. So Winner Wilson decided to just tear up the certificate for an option to buy one share of HyperZipz Galactic Technologies, Inc.'s Class Q non-voting common stock that Wilson had intended to exchange with the stranger (under threat of immediate, costly and protracted litigation) in return for the stranger's notarized signature on the 295 page long legally sticky confidentiality, non-disclosure and irrevocable release agreement of all intellectual property rights in The Technology of the Future, which agreement his lawyer, William "Big Bill" Rokhead (rhymes with blockhead, Wilson thought), had prepared for him.

No, Thug, the stranger, was never seen on Earth again, which was not surprising because Thug, his mission accomplished, had left Earth and returned to the nest ship in his silky transport cocoon.

* * * * *

Thug stripped off his uncomfortable human costume and saluted Dagna nap Ttnuggha. Dagna nap Ttnuggha looked straight into Thug's composite eye and the hundreds of his sub-eyes became tearful. Thug and Dagna embraced, bumped their forearms, thumped their trochantors, entwined their antenna, slapped each other's heads with their feelers, gave each other high fours and low twos, rubbed coxa, bumped hindwings, swore friendship and undying fidelity, bowed to each other and then slapped each other on the trochantor again.

"Thug," buzzed Dagna nap Ttnuggha, "you have been a great success! Our mission is now almost complete."

"Yes," buzzed Thug. "The Earth beings will be lured away from the false and self-destructive technologies that the sinister Doonaskat have surreptitiously seduced them to pursue for nearly 500 years. Humans now have had their eyes opened! They are certain to abandon their false and destructive technologies and follow the new Technology of the Future. In due course, liberated from their errant ways, the humans will make enormous civilizational leaps forward. Sooner than later, they will reach Doonaskat, the civilized star system closest to Earth, and, most assuredly, the mutually antithetical imperial ambitions of Earth and Doonaskaat will violently clash. In a matter of only a few millennium, they will have completely obliterated each other. Their mutual destruction will usher in a new age of Ttnuggha hegemony, peace and prosperity."

"I congratulate you, Thug nap Ttnuggha!" buzzed Dagna nap Ttnuggha. "Now, let us keep this mission and our success secret, for the good of the Mother Nest and the larvae of all eternity." Dagna took a brown bottle from the shelf and shook out two small green pills. "In the name of Queen Ourvwa Patta, I salute you Thug!" buzzed Dagna.

Dagna offered a green pill to Thug who placed it instantly between his mandibles. "I salute you, Dagna," buzzed Thug and he collapsed in a heap on the floor.

Dagna nap Ttnuggha quickly engaged the self-destruct sequence of the nest ship ensuring that within three minutes it would explode. Dagna then swallowed a green pill, saluted Queen Ourvwa Patta with all six of his arms and legs, and fell down dead next to Thug nap Ttnuggha.

Seconds later Thug arose. He removed the green pill that he had tongued in a cavity of his lower mandible and tossed it away. Thug walked to the control panel of the mother ship and terminated the self-destruct sequence. He pushed Dagna's lifeless exoskeleton into the waste chute and ejected it into space.

"Disgusting arthropods," chirped Thug with unfeigned revulsion because he no longer had any need to buzz like a giant, nauseating bug.

Thug unzipped his Ttnugghas disguise revealing his feathers, his claws and beak. Thug pushed his now useless Ttnugghas outerwear into the waste chute and ejected it into space.

Thug reset the coordinates for the nest ship toward Doonaskat and sent a victorious message via Zippeldisk skipping across the multiverse:

"All hail Doonaskat! Mission accomplished. The misguided Technology of the Future has been seeded on planet Earth. As with all the other destructive and distracting technologies we have previously provided to the verminous, simple-minded Earthlings, they will follow this false scientific lead for a few centuries down the cul-de-sac we have prepared for them. Ultimately, it will lead to their Civilizational Dead End and cause them to annihilate themselves! They will not become unwitting allies of the equally misguided Ttnugghas and both accursed lifeforms will become extinct. We, the Doonaskat, will have wiped out two galactic pests with one blow."

Thug preened his wings and sharpened his beak. He settled into the captain's seat, prepared himself for deep sleep, and sat back for the long journey home.

He did not notice... high above him... suspended from the cockpit ceiling... the many millions of tiny Ttnugghas silk cocoons, their pupae not yet having formed feelers, mandibles or compound eyes, also sleeping, patiently incubating, traveling back to Doonaskaat with Thug.

###