ASIM_issue_54 (2 page)

“Perhaps,” says the alien.

I bend down and touch the top of Iggy’s head. “Well, Mr. Frozen Fingers, are you ready to be the Lord of the Crack Aliens? I bet you are. Yes you are. Who’s gonna be the Lord of the Crack Aliens? That’s right! You are!”

“Are you mocking me?” the alien asks.

“Me?” I say. “Mock? Oh, that doesn’t sound like something I’d do. Or at least, I’d only do it in a really, really subtle way, if and when I did do it.”

“I think you’re still mocking me,” says the alien.

“Well I think you’re just being paranoid,” I reply.

“Please keep in mind that it’s your iguana we’re interested in, not you,” he says. “It would be a simple matter to deposit you back on Earth, which we’ll be doing sooner or later anyway, before departing to show your iguana the galaxy.”

“You hear that, Mr. Frozen Fingers? They’re going to show you the galaxy. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t it grand? Who’s gonna get to be the Lord of the Crack Aliens, and see the galaxy? You are! That’s right, Mr. Frozen Fingers, it’s you!”

The alien picks up Iggy, opens a door, shoves me inside a dark room, and says, “Good night.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

With no explanation whatsoever, the alien closes the door and leaves me alone in this strange place.

* * *

I sit in an alien chair in an alien room on an alien starship, and my brain decides to think about my wife. I haven’t seen her in three years, but somehow our last conversation is still stuck in my head.

“It’s impossible to have a conversation with you,” she told me. “All you ever do is make jokes.”

Naturally my first instinct was to look for a way to nullify the seriousness of her complaint. “They say there’s truth in humor. Maybe when I’m half joking, I’m also being half serious. Or does it seem like I’m usually three-quarters joking? Even then, I suppose there’s still room for a kernel of truth.”

From her expression I could tell that I hadn’t come close to saying the right thing. “Can’t you just talk to me like a normal person?”

How the hell would I know how normal people talk? “You know what your problem is?” I said before I could stop myself. “You think everything’s the end of the world. Well, the end of the world actually would be the end of the world. But everything else just isn’t.”

“I just take life seriously, that’s all,” she said. “I wish you would start to do that. I’ve been more patient with you than a lot of other women would’ve been.”

I couldn’t recall any specific occasion during which she’d exhibited an abundance of patience, but I refrained from saying so. “What is it that you’re being patient about?” I asked.

“You!” she said. “Building a life with me. Accomplishing something. Six years we’ve been married, and I’m still waiting for you to do something other than the odd little jobs you do.”

“Are you calling me lazy?” I asked. “I’m not lazy. I just prefer to do as little work as possible.”

She stood and looked down at me. “You’re an idiot,” she said.

“I was joking, Isabel. Mostly.”

“I know. You never stop.”

So I tried to stop for a minute. “You’re worried about the future,” I said. “I understand that. But trust me when I say that everything is eventually going to work out. In the meantime, what you need to keep in mind is that politeness counts.”

“What does politeness have to do with anything?” she asked.

“It counts,” I repeated. “Before we were married, every little thing had a please and a thank you attached to it, but nothing does now. And you never used to call me an idiot.”

“I didn’t know you as well back then,” she said.

I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t hurt by the remark. “Do you really mean that?” I asked.

She didn’t answer right away. Maybe she was searching for words that would smooth things over; maybe she wasn’t doing any such thing. I never found out, because while she was hesitating an alien appeared in our living room.

“Am I interrupting anything?” the alien asked.

This was our very first alien visitor, and I felt it was important to make him feel welcome. “Not at all,” I said. “I’m sure you have a good reason for being here.”

“Indeed I do,” said the alien. But he wasn’t looking at me as he said it; he was looking at Isabel.

“Something to do with my wife?” I guessed.

The alien nodded his big alien head. “I’d like to take her with me,” he said. “But please don’t think of this as an ordinary alien abduction.”

“What do you want with her?” I asked.

“My people have determined that your wife is extremely holy,” said the alien. “What we would like to do is worship her.”

I laughed. At the time, I’d never heard of such a thing. “You’re kidding me,” I said.

Apparently Isabel had no trouble at all accepting that aliens would want to worship her, and evidently she found my reaction insulting. “You’re an idiot,” she said to me.

It was the last thing I ever heard her say, for the alien chose that moment to freeze her. I had a few seconds to look into those angry eyes I knew so well. Then the alien and my wife disappeared.

* * *

Sitting in the alien chair, I find myself growing angrier and angrier. These aliens believe they can do whatever they like, while fools like me sit back and let them.

What makes them suppose that it’s acceptable to steal a man’s wife and his iguana? Who do these extraterrestrials think they are?

I stand and begin pacing back and forth. Isabel is long gone now, but Iggy is still here in this starship. I’m three-quarters certain that a rescue attempt would be futile, but maybe I owe it to the iguana to try.

I look around the little room where the alien deposited me, searching for anything that could be used as a weapon. There’s absolutely nothing, which means I’ll have to rely on my fists and my brain. But I’m not sure I can trust either in a fight.

After a few deep, motivating breaths, I almost go back to the alien chair and forget all about my rescue plan. Then I take one more breath and stealthily slide out of the room and into the corridor.

I’ve got my fists and my brain loaded up, but there are no aliens in sight. Lucky for them, I tell myself. But then it occurs to me to wonder what kind of range they might have with their mind-reading abilities. Am I giving myself away with my thoughts?

It would be nice to be able to just stop thinking. Not that this is the first time I’ve thought that.

I sneak down the corridor, pushing open doors and peering into rooms. The first three rooms don’t contain anything interesting, but in the fourth I discover what can only be a ray-gun. The iguana-stealing bastards are in trouble now.

Returning to the corridor with the ray-gun, I am full of confidence. I’m going to save Iggy, return with him to Earth, and everything’s going to be fine.

In the eighth room along this corridor I finally encounter some aliens. I count five of them, standing in a circle, and now it’s time to make some demands.

Bursting through the doorway, I start swinging the ray-gun around like a madman. “I know what this is and I know how to use it,” I warn the enemy.

The aliens face me. One of them steps forward. “That appears to be the remote control for one of our entertainment systems,” he says.

Damn it.

“Congratulations on knowing what it is and how to use it,” he says.

Is he mocking me? I throw the useless thing at him, but somehow I miss his big alien head.

He shifts position slightly, giving me a clearer view of the center of the alien circle. At first I think that they’re surrounding a statue, but that isn’t a statue at all. It’s my frozen wife.

“Golly sakes!” I say, because I never would’ve guessed that the aliens coveting Iggy are precisely the same ones who coveted Isabel. “Did I just walk in on you worshiping my wife?”

“Of course,” the lead alien replies. “This is the worship hour, after all.”

“I’d like to talk to her,” I say. “Will you unfreeze her?”

“That’s a highly irregular request for worship hour,” the alien tells me.

“Do it,” I insist, “or I’ll find something else that looks like a ray-gun but probably isn’t and throw it at you.”

The alien holds up his little alien hands in surrender. “There’s no need for threats,” he says. “Especially ridiculous ones.”

And just like that Isabel comes alive.

“Izzy!” I say.

She blinks a few times. “Is it really you?” she asks. “How long has it been?”

“It’s been three years,” I tell her.

“Three years,” she utters. “They only occasionally unthaw me, so it’s difficult to keep track of the time.”

“How have they treated you?” I ask.

“Like a goddess,” she says. “I really can’t complain.”

If she’d given any other answer, I’d be bringing my fists and my brain back out, and having a go at these aliens.

The lead alien reads my mind, and raises his hands again.

“Still,” says Isabel, “I’m ready to go home. Are you here to rescue me?”

“You and Iggy,” I tell her.

“They took Iggy?” she asks. “Why?”

I shrug. “Apparently they wanted to worship him too.”

“An iguana?” she says.

“Why not?” I say.

The alien clears his throat in a very human manner, as though he’s wanting to make a contribution to this conversation. As if he has something so important to say that he has to interrupt two spouses who haven’t seen each other in three years.

“Apologies,” he says. “But there’s no way we can allow you to return to Earth with your wife and your iguana.”

I face Isabel. “Sorry,” I tell her. “I tried.”

“You’re giving up already?” she says.

“No, of course not,” I assure her. I turn back to the aliens, and try to choose between my fists and my brain to settle this conflict. Maybe it’ll be some tricky combination of the two.

“It will be difficult to trick us,” says the alien. “We’ll be aware of any plan you come up with as soon as you think it.”

So there’s only one thing left to do. I fall to my knees. “Please,” I beg. “Can’t you see that you’re leaving me with nothing?”

Isabel’s expression reveals that she doesn’t approve of this plan. “This is almost too pathetic to watch,” she says. “I’d almost rather be frozen again.”

My alien nemesis is slightly less cold. “Okay,” he says. “We’ll give you a choice. You may return to Earth with one or the other, either your wife or your iguana.”

One or the other. Izzy or Iggy. I need to think about this.

Isabel is a remarkable woman. She can always find something to say about just about anything. She looks super nice when she gets dressed up, and she plays a hell of a game of miniature golf.

But Iggy is a remarkable iguana. He’s always very careful about everything he does. He’s quiet, and he’s sensible.

Isabel is staring at me like she can’t begin to imagine what I could possibly be considering. “You’re an idiot,” she says.

And thus my choice is made.

The Earth Spirit’s Favourite Anecdote

…Zen Cho

The year was 3288, the Year of the Qilin. I was born in the Year of the Nian, so I was 53 years old. Quite old already, and two eights is auspicious, so that year I left my parents’ hole and came to Kuala Ketam.

Our kind can live with their parents their whole lives, from small to big until die, but it doesn’t work for everybody’s family. I left my parents because they always look Back. Whenever anything new happen, whenever anything change, they always say: let’s go Back, let’s go Back. Leave hole to go buy thing also, the whole time they keep thinking: go Back lah, go Back. How to live like that?

I am not the kind of person who likes to go Back. That’s why I’m not so religious. I don’t have any problem with the gods, but they got price. Everybody got price one. The gods’ price is you must promise to go Back in the end. I never like to make promise—after cannot keep, then how? So I left loh. I wanted to go somewhere where I don’t have to do the same thing as everybody else, because everybody is doing different-different thing.

Kuala Ketam was like that because of the mines. They mined tin there Back then when tin was still important, so got all kinds of spirits coming in. Gods, ghosts, monsters, all the hantu-hantu also got. And there was people like me: earth people, small spirit who just want to make enough money to send hole to their parents, and to save to build up their own hole.

In that kind of society, with everybody new and mix up together and still don’t know the rules, got chance to make it if you’re smart. I saw that straight away. I dug a hole in a prime location, high land overlooking the river, and then I settle down and watch out for something to do.

Of course it wasn’t that easy to find. I just come from the kampung, got no experience: who want to hire somebody like that? I was only a small earth spirit some more, no power in myself. But don’t think I had nothing to do just because nobody give me a job. Want to set up a hole also have to work like siao. You cannot simply-simply dig a hole where you like—you have to get permission from the forest spirits first. If not they get angry and kick you out then how?