BigBug

Professor Pieter van Zoete was out on one of his many geological field trips. He was on Mars. He was rock hunting on the Red Planet. Professor van Zoete was a recognised world expert on all heavenly bodies and his chosen fields were meteorites, asteroids, and comets. NASA sent to him, by way of professional curtsey, some photographs and information about an object that looked like a meteorite the Curiosity vehicle had detected on Mars. NASA sent the information to the professor’s top secret Dutch government-funded laboratory located below the Schip Museum in Amsterdam. Professor van Zoete exited the Turtle and walked towards the dusty rock laying slightly buried on the Martian surface. It was a deep, deeper than deep freeze temperature, and such a wind blew, a howling conflagration that would flay the skin of any human, but the professor did not wear a protective space suit. He walked naked and free through the storm and he did not carry an air supply. He didn’t need to. He had no lungs. The professor was not a he. He was an ‘It’. Pieter van Zoete was an alien adaptation created by DATA. When DATA altered Pieter, it had to let the boy in him retain some of his human characteristics as he grew so that the adaptation could function and carry out DATA’s work in the human environment. The adaptation had to look and behave as a human. DATA had adapted Pieter van Zoete when he was a boy of just nine years old. It was not a choice. It had been a necessity. The bugs had to survive or revert back to rock. DATA code-named the adaptation, ‘The Bigbug’. That is what it is. Bigbug walked sure-footed through the dark, dense, foul Martian weather. It stopped spot on target, beside the rock laying there on the surface of Mars. Bigbug had all weather, perfect vision, 24/7. This rock may have lain here for millions of years. It may have landed last week but Bigbug knew, even before it scanned the rock, that this rock was not what it was looking for. It scanned the rock regardless. A compulsive procedure, collecting data. Ah, yes! It read on the scan screen, ‘Four point two billion years old, composed of nickel iron with high Cobalt and Iridium content.’ It was a common iron meteorite. Bigbug was hunting for specific rocks. It knew exactly what it was looking for. It was desperate to find rocks from the shower of meteorites that lit up the night sky and rained down on the Moon and Earth, possibly Mars, on the day Jesus Christ was born. These were no ordinary meteorites. They were DATA rock. They were the most advanced life form in the universe, locked away in rock, surviving for aeons in the absolute cold and utter darkness of interstellar space. The bugs emerged from stasis and embraced with joy the warm mother earth. Earth was a jewel of a planet perfectly positioned around the sun to encourage and sustain life. It is a small, water-rich blue and white spinning planet that is a generous and gracious host to all life forms. DATA understood why humans believed a God had created the earth. A belief in God created faith and that eradicated the need to think. There were innumerable vital factors that had to be present at the birth of this planet, factors, forces, natural formulae beyond the ken of killer man, but DATA defined the earth as an amazing, wondrous, masterpiece of random scientific creativity. DATA and Bigbug have found the perfect home in this glorious ball of biological wonders that the humans are destroying. There were more and more of mankind ejected out, hostile, screaming and angry, from swollen indulgent females every day. Man, woman or child, all used the planet as a sewer. They ate shit, talked shit, created shit and dumped it all on a sweet defenceless planet. Humans were engaged in Planetcide which is the most serious indictable crime under Universal Law. They needed to be stopped and, regrettably, because of their savage and psychotic disposition the only solution was to exterminate them. DATA intended to eradicate every last one of the murderous bastards and declare the Earth a human-free zone, an HFZ.

Bigbug kicked the iron meteorite in frustration. That was the boy coming out in it. Bigbug’s erratic, lingering, latent juvenile human traits that DATA had been unable to completely convert or remove. There were practical aspects to adaptation, which produced limitations and these irrational quirks were as illogical as humanity itself. DATA was compelled to leave these immature flaws in its adaptation. Flaws, such as human thought processes and emotions. Damned emotions. The emotion was a fickle folly and the bane of many species. Bigbug walked back to its solar space shuttle. The shuttle was fifteen metres long, five metres wide and fashioned in the shape of a turtle shell. It was the T1 - Turtle 1 - series. It was woven from a fabric DATA filed under ‘WW’. Bigbug nicknamed it ‘Wonder Wool’. All DATA’s terrestrial vehicles and spacecraft were fashioned in the shape of the turtle shell configuration and woven from this Wonder Wool. It was as pliable as silk. It could be woven and moulded into any shape. It was fifty thousand times stronger than Kevlar and it was made from the recycled plastic bags and bottles the lazy, ignorant humans discarded as garbage. WW was a magnificent molecular manipulation, a practical, local sourced, ingenious, super scientific adaptation and an off-world technology, but the spacecraft were all built on Earth in the vast secret METRO DATA facility hidden deep under the North Sea, ten kilometres from Amsterdam. Bigbug stepped into the Turtle. The door closed silently behind it. It spoke to no one. It addressed the ether.

“It’s nothing,” Bigbug said, its English traced with Dutch pronunciation and a hint of adolescence. “Not worth bringing back.” Bigbug listened intently to the unseen as it plotted a course for its favourite meteorite hunting ground - the Moon. On the moon, it was relatively easy to spot meteorites, not like Earth, where they were all mostly buried under centuries, even aeons, of Earth debris or had fallen into the oceans. Bigbug knew some DATA meteorites must have also fallen on the Moon and possibly Mars. DATA had calculated the general trajectory of the shower, but where, o where, did the rocks fall? If they could be recovered it would greatly accelerate DATA’s plans to launch the Great Cull and stop forever the human attack on planet Earth, to stop the extermination of all creatures, great and small, and the destruction of their environment. Habitat is home. Bigbug inclined its head to one side. It was listening to someone or something. It nodded and affirmed to DATA.

“It is a meteorite.”

Down below, on Earth, in Seamus’s house in the Marnixstraat, Amsterdam, Jude Noonan known to all as, Moon, pointed at a large black rock laying on his kitchen table, surrounded by beer cans, a soon to be empty bottle of Jameson, pizza boxes, and ashtrays overflowing with the butt ends of weed and hash joints. Moon pointed at the rock and shouted above the impromptu hullabaloo.

“It is a meteorite.”

Moon uttered these words at precisely the same time Bigbug reported to DATA from Mars, “It is a meteorite.”

We humans now know this was a destiny repeat call.

“It is a meteorite!”

Seamus, dozing in bed in his house in Marnixstraat, heard these four, soon to be famous words again. From afar. He knew it was Moon lecturing loudly to his captive crony audience but Moon was floating about, up there somewhere in the sky. Perhaps he was hiding behind a cloud with his conspiracy-legionnaire-foot-soldier buddies, from the EWAB, the Eco Warriors Amsterdam Battalion, trying to ambush the carcinogenic, mind altering, poisonous jet fume exhaust criminals or looking to hang out with Jumping Jack Flash again. Who gives a shit? It is a meteorite! Ok, agreed Seamus, it is a meteorite! Now let me sleep. Seamus was having a wonderful dream considering the excess from the night before and he reluctantly exited the wonderful land of cotton wool nod. Seamus woke up to the sound of carpet shredding. Murphy the cat wanted his breakfast - now! The cat was meowing in a melodious moan and ripping up the new Ikea half price carpet in protest at its breakfast being late. Better get up. The next stage after this is that Murphy will sneak under the blankets and try to eat Seamus’s feet. Seamus knew who Murphy really was. He had seen the true Murphy in a revealing vision after he had dropped a large Mexican magic mushroom in Dan Murphy’s Irish Pub in Leidseplein on a rainy Queen’s Day. On his trip, he saw that Murphy was not just a cat but a ravenous alien rat on steroids with an insatiable appetite, permanent munchies and a superior intelligence with feline attitude. Seamus wished he could paint the masterpiece that is, ‘Murphy the Cat’, but he could not put down this stunning ethereal elusive in the cold light of day. He stretched out a hand and scratched Murphy’s head.

“Doesn’t matter what you are Murphy,” he said fully aware that the cat could read his thoughts, “I love you anyway.”

The cat exercised its right to remain silent. If that cat could only talk human, I would make a fortune. I would put Murphy on Mastermind and get the cool cranky cat a feline butler. An FB. Better get up. Sore head. A Seamus swaying on two feet. “Need to pee anyway,” Seamus explained to the cat, “bladder full of alcoholic by-products.” Seamus swung out of the bed, stood up and made for the bathroom. Murphy began to purr and brush his head and body around Seamus’ legs, pretending he was a nice, friendly, reasonable, domesticated type of a creature. Pretending he was the household cat, a wee Dutch tabby, without the clogs. Seamus banged his big toe on something lying on the floor, something dense, cold and solid that should not have been there. He tripped over, bumped his head on the wall, landed up on his ass on the floor and Murphy, ever wise in the ways of human earthlings, screamed, dived over Seamus and bolted out the cat flap, for surely it would be blamed for this bumbling upset.

“You big fat hairy boga woga moga hoga toga woga chogzoga,” Seamus shouted after the cat.

He shouted something, a bit angrily, but more endearing like that, for he could not, even in anger and pain, hurl common profanity or say anything upsetting or unkind about or to Murphy. He was a super splendid creature, naughty cat or no. Seamus sat on the floor and held his toe. It hurt. The nail was cracked and the toe oozing blood. Seamus’ mouth was dry, his head hurt and, of course, he had to go to work, clipping weed plants for one hundred and fifty euros a day, and a wee bonus bag of skunk clippings for the Moon. Sore toe. Heavy head. How many times has Seamus had a sore head? How long is a piece of string? He addressed the absent cat.

“Life is not easy for those mature Paddies amongst us Murphy, and there are many, far away from home, far away from the dear old Emerald Isle who cannot, or will not, say no to another one or another.”

Seamus looked at the offending mantrap. It was a rock. A bloody big black rock with two fridge magnets stuck onto it. Irish rabbit’s ears. The rock looked like a black tubby rabbit. The magnets were an advertisement, a promotional gimmick, from Guinness. On the magnets, engraved in grand golden letters, it read, ‘Guinness Is Good for You!’ Indeed, it may be but not nine or ten pints of the black elixir, with one on one whiskey chasers, a bag of Moon’s homegrown, guaranteed Irish, Northern Lights skunk, and a gram or two of Mexican marching powder to kick up the dust of the day, and damn the English King’s health in the morning. Last night’s events slowly came into memory and focused clear as Seamus looked at the strange rock. Seamus knew a lot about rocks. A long time ago, before the war-blighted Ulster and uprooted the dreaming dispossessed, he was a very bright geology student. In a time of festivals and fun. A time of innocence. Before the grand old days of yore became the sad old days of gore. There was a lot of discussion about this rock the night before at the kitchen table. A lot of different opinions about the origin of the rock, one of which was, loudly voiced by Moon, in a highly enlightened moment of high, this reasoned scientific proposal.

“This rock is an egg pod full of baby cats, millions of mini Murphys, that were launched billions of Earth years ago from a purring planet somewhere in the Catty Way.”

Moon’s mind was awash with, ‘Pot Induced Enlightenment’. PIE. Pie pie makes a paddy plot. A plot, not clot. Seamus was sure of one thing, magnets, gimmicks or no, do not stick to rocks!

Moon was convinced he had found a meteorite and he did not care one whit about any scientific examinations. He was suspicious of all scientists and their vile crafts. As far as Moon and the EWAB were concerned scientists were the technical corps of the enemy, the Military Industrial Corporations, the MIC, a gang of criminals, greedy homicidal weirdoes in white coats engaged in destroying Mother Earth. They produced nothing but misery and revelled in devising means and methods of mass destruction. Scientists were modern day savages and science had nothing to do with it. Moon was certain about his rock.

“It is a meteorite!”

So as far as Moon was concerned he had found the soon to be world famous Amsterdam Meteorite and he couldn’t wait for the Irish pub to open so he could bring it across to Finnegan’s, put it up on the bar, and brag about it to all his comrades. Moon was the clandestine unit commander of the Eco Warriors Amsterdam Battalion, the EWABs, and he loved to drink beer and smoke spliffs with his Eco Warrior comrades in Finnegan’s, their Battalion H.Q, as they plotted to save their beloved Mother Earth from the MIC. Moon regarded himself as a free-thinking Paddy. He declared himself to be a pothead pie person. A PPP. This state of alternative intellectual reasoning was, confided Moon, much more preferable than having to operate with a pre-programmed brain. Our conventional brains, Moon discovered, are conditioned from conception.

“We humans are,” Moon graciously confided and explained, “all brainwashed in the womb. The umbilical cord is clogged up with pollution which leaves the foetus defenceless against the MIC’s pre-natal propaganda.” PNP.

Seamus stood up, lifted up the offending rock and put it on the table by his bed. It was heavy. It felt as if it were made of solid iron. He hobbled off to the toilet and pissed, standing on one leg. Not easy to do at all. He sat down on the loo after his difficult piss and wrapped bog paper around his bleeding toe. Why didn’t he, he asked himself, in the small rational part of his mind that was not blocked up with the consequential residues of excess, sit down and pee, if it was so difficult to pee, leaning against the wall, standing on one leg with a god almighty hangover and a bleeding toe? Pride my man. Macho pride. Or was it respect? Tradition? Seamus remembered a question that his old dad once asked the ma when the old boy was on the Kerry moonshine. It was such a simple innocent sounding question.

The recall of this question enables Seamus to create a dramatic digression from the narrative, from the reality of now, and a play is staged in the MIND THEATRE.

I am not Seamus.

I go into my head and walk cautiously along the twisting turning cunning corridors looking for the green neon sign that must light up and guide me to the hidden entrance. This is blind faith on my part. If I do not find the secret sign I could be stuck in here forever, but there it is. Above the theatre door the letters twinkle in the old Celtic script- Cead Mile Failte. I bow in thanks. The door opens. I float inside. This real life performance takes place in the early 1950’s in a small back room in a wee house in the Market area of Belfast. The audience is one. He has the best seat in the house.

Curtain up.

My da, Paddy Price, a tall, well-built, dark-haired handsome man, in his middle thirties, still wearing his work shirt and corduroy trousers, is sitting in his beloved brown leather armchair with the horsehair padding punching through the worn threadbare patches. This chair is his pride and joy. The grandfather who worked on the Titanic claimed the chair came from the second class lounge on the ill-fated liner. It had been left ashore in Belfast as a reject to be returned to the manufacturer. Grandfather saved them all that bother by taking the chair home with him. Da claimed the chair when the old man died. Da loved it. Mother hated it. When my mother demanded da get rid of his rickety relic da declined and told her he would give it a shave if she bought him an extra 7 O’clock razor blade. Ma is not amused. The sofa, like da when he is on the moonshine, is an infuriating irksome embarrassment. I sit under the table and watch. Da’s red flushed face is twinkling scarlet by the light of the coal fire as he reaches over and stabs the embers with the big brass poker he made in the shipyard foundry. He looks up at his mother with devilment and resistance to peacetime domestication in his dark brown eyes. There are two poteen bottles standing by the coal scuttle. One is empty. I can smell the smoke from the fire and da’s pipe. I am sitting still under the table and reading comics by gaslight. Da speaks to ma his broad Belfast accent made raspy with the moonshine and tobacco smoke. His words are turning garrulous. His speech is melting and flowing as slowly as a lazy lava flow.

“What can two wee men do that two wee women can’t do?” says da looking defiantly at ma and sitting provocatively in his tumbledown throne.

“Start another world war?” replies the ma giving da the warning glare.

“Piss in a bucket at the same time. Aye, at the one and the same time. O aye. Two wee men can piss in a bucket at the same time but two wee women can’t and Ireland will be free at last because there is unity in urination.” He slaps his knee and smiles at ma. He believes himself to be witty and even amusing. “Do you get it?” he asks ma his voice faltering. All he gets is a stony glare. He is a rabbit caught in the headlights. He knows he has crossed not one but two red lines. He is now in enemy territory. Drunkenness and profanity. He knows he will regret this but the moonshine has filled him with bravado. “Do you get it?” he shouts defiantly and turns looking for his unopened bottle of moonshine.

Ma gets it. She moves swiftly and grabs his bottle of moonshine before the da knows what is happening. She has got it. The alcohol has rendered da unable to react. Ma dumps his moonshine into the piss bucket. She waves the upended empty bottle at him so he can be in no doubt about what has happened to his moonshine and she stares at him in satisfaction and glee. Ma’s two sisters were nuns, da calls them Paris-buns, and she would have become a nun as well only, we glean from family gossip, da got her pregnant on a promise he was shortlisted to become the next pope. This is a major domestic triumph for ma.

“Abstinence,” she hisses at the crying da, “makes the liver grow fonder.”

“There is no need for this,” sobs da.

“Go to bed,” orders ma. She points towards the stairs with the empty moonshine bottle.

Da gets unsteadily to his feet and wobbles off to bed. His head is down. He is a broken man. Upstairs the bedroom door is slammed.

End

Curtain falls.

Lights out and complete silence.

I studied Yoga in jail and in the long hours and days of solitary confinement, that slowly crept into years, I taught myself to go into a deep trance to protect my sanity. My admittance to the Mind Theatre began when I first met Moon at the Glastonbury Festival. Moon looked out the tent flap at the pouring rain falling so hard and fast the background festival music was a slurry grumble. It was desolate out and no one about.

“This is some festival,” said Moon, not greatly complaining, “there is nothing to do but drugs.” He sighed in resignation, looking up at the dark foreboding English sky.

Moon and I scored a couple of tabs of good acid and we went tripping together with a group of New Age Travellers. We were chatting about God in a cold rain-sodden Yurt which floated in a sea of festival mud. I protested my lifelong scepticism about the existence of God.

“God,” said Moon, “is the very air we breathe. You can be breathing in now the air that Bowie takes in or the last breath that Martin Luther King expelled. God is all around us and in everything we do, good or bad. God guarantees the continuity of life, all life, on Earth.”

The Travellers loved this and Moon sparked off an animated discussion about which famous person’s recycled air one had breathed in. I thought Moon was going to form the Church of the Latter Day Hippy or the Committed Corny Crusties.

“We would be a very sad type of creature without God,” Moon whispered to me.

He reached over and tugged my ear, perhaps a prophetic pull switch, because there was an audible click in my head. In some way, in some magical mystical mysterious Moon way, I do not know the way of it, some type of energy was transferred from Moon to me. An illuminating feral flash of knowledge melted the great wall of sadness that surrounded my heart blocking out the solace of love gone by. My yoga advanced to a new level. It was a stunning experience. It was, it is, a revelation. My mind opened up, yielded its hidden secrets, and I discovered that everything we have ever done or witnessed in our existence is held in our mind forever. Nothing is ever forgotten. Thanks to Moon, and I don’t know how or why he enabled this, when I was in trance I was now shown a way through to that hidden part of stored consciousness where memory re-enacts in performance at one’s prompting. You must know where to find, how to switch on, the Cead Mile Failte sign, or you will never find the theatre door. The mind contains countless pitfalls, false trails, decoys and dead ends but Moon led me to the secret door of the Mind Theatre where memory from one's past can be performed and appreciated as surely as if one were sitting in the best seat in the Abbey. The performances are real life recall. I can smell my da’s pipe tobacco. Here in the toilet in Amsterdam. The horrible smell of Warhorse plug. It always makes me feel queasy. My ma is sitting by the window silhouetted by the street lights. I blow a kiss at her. She turns to me and says, “A man who trips up and doesn’t know why he fell down is a fool.” She smiles and waves me goodbye. I know she is happy to see me. Curtain falls. I leave the theatre.

Seamus returns to the Marnixstraat. It’s ok. I know who he is. He is a good guy even if I say so myself.

Seamus is sitting on the loo. He stands up and pulls up his underpants. Maybe, thought Seamus, that is the reason he would not sit down to piss. Childhood prejudices. Maybe he would take it up with his therapist. Better not. She was formidably gay and intellectually very strict. Pee is not amused. Seamus hobbled back into the bedroom. He needed Aspirin. He hoped there were some left. He saw the aspirin packet standing beside the rock up on the table. The rock sat solid. It looked as if it had been sitting on the table since the beginning of time. Seamus was sure the rock was ancient. Seamus placed it bottom down on the table and it pointed up like the Matterhorn without the snow. He checked out the aspirin packet. Six tabs left. O happy days. He needed a pint of sparkling mineral water. He was confident his guests would not have drunk that, even if they did consume the aspirin-like mints before an alcohol control checkpoint. Two Aspirins, half an hour’s relaxation and maybe he would be ready to face another day in the marijuana clipping rooms of Amsterdam. Two hundred Amnesia plants to get through. In the fridge Seamus found an unopened bottle of Perrier water and there on the floor, posing by his empty bowl, sat the returned Murphy maintaining a dignified silence. Seamus was glad the fat bastard cannot speak. Stuff the fame and fortune a rare meteorite find would bring. Seamus does not want to be lectured to by a cat on the human weaknesses. Better fix Murphy’s food. Murphy looked at Seamus endearingly and indicated, by waving his tail, to emphasise, ‘I never put that rock there, you did! I might be a portly feline but I am not a fat stupid Paddy like you!’ Seamus warmed up Murphy’s chicken fillet in the microwave to just a perfect baby chick temperature. He laid the bowl down in front of Murphy and scratched him between his ears. He poured the fizzy water into a pint glass with ice and the juice of a lemon and fixed himself a strong black coffee.

Moon, our unlikely hero, the Dublin ex-Foreign Legionnaire, was lying on the couch in the kitchen in a Self-Induced Coma. A SIC. Everyone called him Moon, the police, the public and the cat alike. What a shame on the sleeping Moon, this pristine planet policeman, because he discharged a long loud melodious fart. Climate change in the kitchen. Surely the temperature of the planet rose and the Antarctic ice sheet began to drip in protest. Murphy stopped eating just for a moment to turn his head and hiss at Moon. Time to exit before a fog, denser than any London peasouper and infinitely more pongee than a knacker’s yard, clogged up the atmosphere.

Seamus went back into the bedroom, sat by his table and downed the aspirin with a long drink from the sparkling water. Heaven is an instant detox, he thought. His toe was no longer bleeding, just throbbing gently, reminiscent of a long lost, lonely hard on. Seamus was sixty-five. He looked at the strange rock again. He knew a bit about meteorites. It looked burnt and as black as a forgotten casserole in a student bedsit but the rock was smooth and cool to the touch. Seamus rubbed the rock. The Genie never came out, but one never knows, the Genie might be hiding and cloaked in a magically invisible mode. So just in case it was being difficult and hiding in the silence waiting for him to speak Seamus said, “I command you to make this a rare meteorite.” He tapped the rock with his Parker, “I command you, Genie, to make this a Rock to Riches.” Nothing happened immediately, but well, you never know with Genies, and living in a bottle, a dry empty bottle, with not so much as a sniff of the pure in it, must create profound personal behavioural issues. Sure, maybe it was then, no wonder and no drama, the Genie preferred invisibility to intimacy.

Seamus pulled the Guinness magnets off the rock and stuck them back on again. The magnets made satisfying loud thuddy thuds and stuck strongly to the rock. Was this really a meteorite? The Amsterdam Meteorite? That had a nice ring to it. A solar system sound bite? Now ladies and gentlemen especially you, daft rich folk who have more money than sense. Lot number one, the Amsterdam Meteorite! Who will start the bidding for this very rare meteorite? One million pounds. I have one million pounds bid from Houston. NASA we are reading you loud and clear. Seamus stopped dreaming, but magnets do not stick to rocks! Seamus looked at the rock with his hand-held lens, which he used to examine the growers’ marijuana plants for crystal content. He was a senior weed quality control person for most of the dealers who supplied the Amsterdam Coffee shops.

Seamus was impressed with what he saw through his lens. This was no common garden rock even if Moon did dig it up in the potato patch. He became convinced Moon was right. It looked very much like a meteorite. Many terrestrial rocks will attract a magnet, particularly iron slag or iron ore, but this big rock, it must have been a few kilos in weight and on examination it looked, yes, it absolutely did look like a meteorite. Black shiny-burnt crust, regmaglypts which are thumbprint shaped ablation indentations, smooth edges, and oriented flow lines where the meteorite ablated coming through the Earth’s atmosphere.

Moon had struck it lucky. The big question was, how lucky? What type of a meteorite was this? Some meteorites were worth only a few cents a gram and some of the really rare meteorites, Lunar and Martian rocks, were worth thousands of Euros a gram. In the history of Holland, only four meteorites had ever been found. This rarity would add to the rocks value no matter what type of meteorite it was. It would certainly be big news in the Dutch scientific community. Murphy came into the bedroom. Seamus looked over fondly at the cat. He pointed at the rock.

“Magnets do not stick to rocks, Murphy.”

Murphy hissed at the rock. The cat did not like the rock. He could not fuck it. He could not eat it. He could not toss it about like a mock mouse. What use was it to a cat? There was a weird smell wafting out from the rock. A vile odious odour. A horrible smell and this, a repelling repulsion, to a creature that dug up decomposed mice, rats, and baby ducks, from its stash in the garden and ate them after a few weeks of rotting. The hackles went up on the back of Murphy and he adopted attack mode. Seamus thought this was funny. He sat the rock down on the floor to de-freak the cat.

“Come on Murphy, calm down, it’s only a,” but Seamus never got to finish his sentence.

Murphy launched a ferocious attack on the rock. The cat leapt on the rock screaming. It raked the rock with all four claws and if the rock had a throat it would have been ripped out. Murphy tossed the heavy rock over, raked its underside, and then fled. This all happened at astonishing speed. Seamus was stunned. He knew Murphy was a tough Amsterdam street cat. Moon had rescued him from a waterlogged boat laying on the Prinsengracht as a kitten, but such hatred and ferocity he did not expect. Murphy bolted downstairs and out into the small garden on the canal. It dashed up over the fence and then up the neighbour’s willow tree to his favourite bird hunting perch. As far away as the cat could possibly flee from that ominous stinking rock.

Seamus lifted up the meteorite. There were claw scratches in the rock. Murphy had tried to kill a meteorite. Seamus looked out the window. He knew the cat, hiding in the branches, could hear him.

“What’s all that about, Murphy?” He held up the heavy rock and waved it at Murphy. “It’s only a rock.”

Murphy raised his hackles and puffed himself up at the sight of the meteorite. The cat began meowing and howling. It spat up at Seamus. It was clearly agitated and trying to tell him something.

“I know what it is,” said Seamus.

He placed the meteorite back on the table and sat down. He was amused. He addressed the meteorite.

“The cat is jealous. That’s all.”

Murphy heard that. The cat sat still in the tree and stared up at the heavens. It was in attack mode waiting to pounce. To pounce at what? The stars above? The cat hissed up at the unseen moon. Humans had lost their common animal sense. They were as dumb, useless and irritating as a stubborn hairball. Jealous? What animal is envious of Armageddon?

It took Bigbug five of our earth hours to cruise from Mars to the Moon. Bigbug walked from the Turtle and sat on the edge of its favourite crater. It reflected what a hullaballoo there would be if his footprints, clear and visible on the lunar surface, would be found by any future Moon mission astronauts poking about up here. The footprints would stay a long time. There was no wind but Bigbug still enjoyed the Moon environment that surrounded his body. It could feel the sun and solar radiation on its tall skinny muscular body. Bigbug did not like wearing clothing which it regarded as an ecological weakness and a form of vain human adornment. It could not visualize a penguin wearing a parka or an armadillo clad in Armani. It was grateful the Moon was a human-free zone. It looked down at the glorious Earth. The view could be described as breath-taking but only if one had a pair of lungs. If one could find a pair of lungs on the Moon. Bigbug smiled at its little joke. Bigbug took the long silver toot tube that hung around its neck on a chain and inserted the toot tube into eye of its erect feeding teat. This was a modified penis. It was not a sexual organ of reproduction but an enlarged modified feeding apparatus. It oozed bugjuice. The sticky elixir produced by the bugs was a junkies dream. The more bugjuice one used the more came back out. It was a nutrient based form of renewable protein energy. Bugjuice kept Bigbug’s human shell fighting fit and forever scheming. Bigbug fed greedily sucking out the rejuvenating bugjuice. After its lunch, the satiated Bigbug relaxed and enjoyed the view. The mother Earth was a blue and white paradise floating in the cold empty reaches of endless space. A vibrant unique oasis teeming with life that the humans were quite determined to destroy and the only viable remedy to this attack, the one and only solution, a final solution, was to kill off the humans. Eradicate one greedy stupid psychopathic species to save billions of others. DATA, always totally correct in its analysis, predicted there was a seventy-eight per cent chance of tactical nuclear warfare, leading to global nuclear conflict, in the next one hundred years when the religious wars, the Crusades for water and food, and the man manufactured sectarian super plagues broke out. Worship or whither. Accept salvation or starve. Adore for an antidote or be annihilated. All in the name of the one true God of which there is only the one, our one, say the many. The Bigbug documented and filed the nightmare scenario a nuclear war would bring. It saw a blackened, smoking, permanently polluted planet. A poisonous wasteland where this earthly paradise, this cosmic jewel, this glorious ball of biological wonders, had once been. Nothing left but a sad sphere of sterile rotting rock populated by deformed mutant creatures of any remaining species. Unthinkable. Unbearable. DATA was not going to let it happen. Bigbug looked down on the Earth’s oceans. The seas were creepy crawling with nuclear submarines, the real weapons of mass destruction, and yet the warmongers, with their soldier-spin, their embedded mouthpieces and their tamed neutered media, had convinced the gullible greedy citizens of patriotic planet Earth, some tin pot dictator had the weapons of mass destruction hidden under his bed in the basement of his lavish ill-begotten palace. They lapped it up and roared for more blood and guts. Humans were belligerent brainwashed buffoons. One could laugh at them if they were not so dangerous but their behaviour was not funny. Bigbug went naughty and allowed itself to be filled with rage and sadness. Even as it admired the blue and white spinning planet, the humans were slaughtering the great whales. Butchering these magnificent life forms and feeding them to schoolchildren and dogs under the pretext of scientific research. The humans poured their toxic sewage and other unbelievable, disgusting shit, onto the land and into the water systems and the seas. DATA was monitoring the attacks on the whales and gathering evidence. Two months before, a Japanese whaling crew, seeing that the mother whale was about to escape, harpooned her disorientated baby. When the mother came and tried to save its calf, they shot the mother with an explosive harpoon. They butchered the mother, still alive, while the cub listened, bleeding and screaming. They cut the cub loose, it was illegal to drag it on board the whaler, and let it die in agony. The whale was DATA’s preferred choice for adaptation but unfortunately, that choice was impractical while there were humans infesting the planet. DATA’s adaptation Bigbug had vital work to carry out among the stinking humans. Bigbug would much rather have existed as a whale. The whales were such beautiful eloquent refined graceful creatures with magnificent brains. Their poetry and song were a joy. Bigbug was glad the humans were too stupid, too ingloriously ignorant, to understand or appreciate the art of the great whales. This ignorance, a by-product of cultivated human bestiality, was not a recognised defence in universal natural law. If anything, it was an aggravating abnormality. An ostrich buries its head in the sand to escape danger, a human buries its head in the sand, preferably someone else’s head, and looks for gold. Ignorance is no defence against ignorance. Ignorance is no excuse for war. Ignorance is no excuse for the eradication of love. The whales loved the sea the way these idiot humans should love the earth but it was not, absolutely not, to be. Mankind was a condemned species. The evidence against the human race’s crime of Speciescide leading to attempted Planetcide was overwhelming and irrefutable and mounting second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, all day every day this accursed species remained on planet Earth. There was even human rubbish, utter junk, up here on the moon itself and more and more of man’s foul debris was orbiting the planet. One good development was, and Bigbug allowed itself the emotion of smug satisfaction, almost childlike in its glee, DATA will soon control all the Earth’s satellites. Without the satellite snoops, these murderous eyes in space, the nuclear submarines, the bombers and missiles, were useless. DATA would leave them blind, dead and degraded, floating as helplessly in the sea as the murdered whale calf. The psychopaths will be unable to launch their missiles. Bigbug agreed with DATA. It was a planetary priority to get rid of these maniac humans. DATA had created a DSE, a Designer Species Extinction programme, to deal with the criminals. In ten years, at current production, The Great Cull would be launched. The sooner the better. Bigbug went back into the Turtle. It took the shuttle up ten metres and began to scan the surface of the moon for DATA rock. Bigbug was a great movie buff and it brought up one of its favourite movies, The War of the Worlds. It watched the new version starring Tom Cruise several times. Tom was not the hero in the movie. The little microbes that killed the Martians were. Bigbug noted the hero bugs were not credited and resolved to take up this impertinence when the opportunity presented itself. The boy in Bigbug wished he were Flash Gordon and he could fly down into the whaling fleets and sink every last one of their butcher ships. If the butcher of the whales was monstrous barbaric and horrific, and above all unwarranted and unnecessary, it was nothing but a picnic as to what lay ahead for the savage humans when DATA launched The Great Cull. It would be interesting data, to witness and record the slaughter, and also to observe how the humans behaved, when their women and girl children were rounded up and eaten alive by the M&Ms, while the human males, Bigbug would not call them men, were made to watch. DATA was busy at Metro Data creating and storing the M&Ms, an army of cannibal clones. An army of monstrous monsters, the anti-female Misogynist Marine Corps, created with a murderous homicidal hatred of women. Their motto NBNB can be read on a cap badge fastened onto their soft baby skin berets in blood red metallic letters. NO BITCHES NO BREED.