Bezos, Venusian?



'I don't like the name.'

 'What's wrong with it?'

 'It sounds like a small tool. You know, I can't reach this screw - hand me the bezos.'

 'Huh. Well, maybe it should be a tool: buy a set of six for nine ninety-nine, or choose three for twenty-four ninety nine.'

 'Very funny. Remind me again, chief: why do I have to infiltrate Earth?'

 'Coz they're screwing up the place and it's our lifeboat if things go sideways here.'

 "Xfty! Gonly flugh mreetu.' 

 'Enough with the Venusian, Bezos! And wipe that anger slime off your mouth, it's inhuman. English only, remember? Like I'm talking now. And they like lots of 'likes', so use 'em. Unless you ship now, you'll have to switch to Chinese. And get rid of that second tongue, otherwise they'll think you've swallowed one of their snakes.'

 'I dunno, chief, there's a lot to remember.'

'That's why you have a Venusian brain in one of their clunky bodies.'

 'My body weighs a ton.'

 'Wait till you see some of them! They haul around an obscene amount of flesh. Even the guy they call the Free World Leader is huge - or 'yuge', as he calls it. Some of them can't even get their own language right. Sad.'

'And I'll live...where, how?'

 'Don't worry, you'll live large coz you'll get rich quickly. In fact, you'll be the richest man on Earth in seconds of our time. We're putting you down where their wealthiest nerds live. Their forebears stole the land from the Seattle Indians hundreds of years ago - it's pay back time. Believe me, you'll make friends quickly; other golden guys named Gates and Zuckerberg - they'll be your best buddies.' 

 'Okay. So I'll start with books...?'

 'Yeah, most of them don't read much, especially the men - unless it's about business, sport, or politics. So we'll make books cheap and deliver them straight to their door.'

 'Then we move to...?'

 'Everything else. Heck, Bezos, didn't you read the playbook? We'll give them all the stuff they can cram into their bodies and minds. They'll eat, drink, play, sleep, watch, listen - it will be like an entire Amazon flowing endlessly into their lives. They'll be floating on a river of stuff until it drowns them.'

 'And this is important because...?'

 'Because our packaging plus the fossil boys and the smart phone radiation guys - well, we'll choke the planet, contaminate the air, give ‘em new diseases and fill the seas with plastic until they can't breathe or move. Earth's over, done, gone. But we'll bring you back before that happens.'

 'So when do we colonize?'

'We need to wait a couple of light years while their planet heals. Then, if we have to, we'll move in, recalibrate the atmosphere, and settle.'

'Settle in Seattle?'

 'It's a start.'


© Brian Clewly Johnson

🇿🇦 Cape Town 🙏💦
'Cape Town may be the world's first major city to run out of water.' - BBC

January, 2018

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