Bubba And the Aliens

Relix, Elva

“I’ve got another question, Arlo,” Janet said as she turned to him. He nodded and she continued. “Why not just go to Lakanica now and stop the princess from being abducted?”

Arlo raised a finger in the air and pointed at Janet. “Another excellent question. Osned said we cannot affect our own timeline. It was actually Bubba who suggested we do the same thing.”

“I’d do anything to save the princess,” he said woefully.

“Osned gave us several examples of when different beings had tried to use time travel to do it,” Arlo continued. “No matter what they did, they could not change their past in any significant way. It was why he put us back here after our abduction by the Pilifinos. We cannot change the fact Bubba hit a slice that knocked Osned out, even if we tried. God, or fate, or karma, or whatever you want to call it will not let us affect the incident.

“Let us say we went back two weeks in time. I steal the clothes Jack wore golfing. Hoping he would not be arrested on Darfo Seven. Even if I did, Jack would have replaced it with something just as tacky, or worse than what he had worn. When we got to Darfo Seven, the result would be the same. We can hide in the past, but we can’t change it.”

“Interesting,” Janet said thoughtfully. “After getting kicked off of Octavia, were you ready to rescue the princess?”

“More or less, yes we were,” I replied. “We were a little surprised the Khelids were not more upset about what happened on Octavia. They said it would work itself out. It was not much of an account anyway. They provided identification cards to Gilfoy and Danny Boy. We gave them the information we would need for one additional card. They provided it too.

“Danny Boy was a pilot on earth. He picked up the controls of the Janet’s Lair quickly, much faster than what I was doing on the Lakanican ship. I gave the copilot duties to him and Sven so I could work on strategy with the rest of the group.

“We had the weapons we requested from the Khelids. We had gas masks and some chemical agents which would incapacitate the Elvi along with the tranquilizer guns. We still did not want to cause a major incident.”

“If the princess was kidnapped, how would you cause an incident?” Janet asked.

“We were studying the Elvi and some of the events they were suspected of being involved in. If we got caught, or were unsuccessful, we knew we would probably be killed by them. They could never claim any knowledge of what happened. Doing so would be an admission of the kidnapping,” Arlo summarized.

“We spent a few days on Khelid making sure we had everything we needed. We spent some time training with the Herpes, and then we went back to Elva. We wanted a few days to study the city. We needed to know if there was any updated information we could get from Lakanica.” Janet nodded solemnly as she listened.

“I think Jack mentioned it earlier,” Dingo plowed in. “But think of Relix as Vegas in the seventies.”

“What’s Relix?” Janet inquired.

“It is the capital city, where the King lives. It’s Elvis’s hometown and center of power on the planet,” Dingo answered. “Elvis is the true king. I mean he is royalty, from a noble line of ancient blood. Man, he looked great too. I don’t know what their lifespan is, Arlo?”

“Averages about a hundred and fifty of our years, although their childhood and puberty resemble our timeline,” he explained.

“Anyway,” Dingo continued, “he didn’t really look much different than he did in his movies.”

“You got to meet him?” Janet was amazed.

“Yeah, he invited our whole group up to the Palace.” I replied.

“Why?” She wondered.

“Because he wanted to meet the champ,” Arlo said, shaking his head and pointing towards me.

“Maybe you should explain,” she said, meeting my eyes.

“We got a hotel in Relix. It really was a lot like Vegas. They have gambling, shows, and cheap buffets with good food. We were a little worried coming into the space station because our foursome had been on the planet before with Bipodecus and the envoy. We didn’t have any problems though. I guess the identification cards the Khelids gave us worked out well. We had been given diplomatic immunity the first time. When we went with the envoy, we never went through any of the screenings.

“The casinos do sports betting from all around the galaxy. They had lost money on the fight in the arena because the odds against anyone surviving were something crazy like a thousand to one. They usually bet on the order of who gets killed and how long it will take. A lot of it is pool betting.”

“I don’t have any idea what you are talking about, but don’t explain it,” Janet stated.

“Someone at the space station spread the word Gilfoy, Danny Boy, and I were on the planet, with a small entourage. We took three moderate rooms and planned to surveille the city over a week to ten days. We were in Carminelli’s house the first time we were on the planet, but we had a lot more recon to do. It would give us plenty of time to do nothing but be tourists. We had a couple of thousand credits each from the Octavia delivery. The Khelids paid us for it even with the difficulties we encountered.

“It all changed within a couple of hours. We were down in the casino hitting a few different tables. I prefer blackjack, along with Arlo who is decent at counting cards. Dingo is a poker guy. Bubba likes to sit at the bar and drink.”

“Waste not, want not,” Bubba stated. “It ain’t gambling if you know you’re gonna lose.”

“The Herpes, including Gilfoy, were wondering the floor. Hello was with us at a blackjack table. Danny Boy was with Dingo playing poker. We weren’t trying to win anything really. We figured it would be a good idea to try and fit in. The exchange rate for Galactic credit was a little more than ten to one, so we had a bit over twenty thousand to play around with.”

“I’ve got a feeling this is all leading up to something. Did you get kicked out for cheating?”

“Counting cards is not cheating,” Arlo said quickly. “It’s a matter of constantly calculating odds in your head as each card is played.”

“No, we didn’t,” I answered. “Arlo was on a pretty good run. I was up a couple of hundred. A guy walks over to the table and the dealer stopped flipping cards. This guy tells her to finish the hand, so she does. Arlo hit a blackjack and I had a twenty. The dealer busted.

“Anyway, the guy introduces himself as Tony Fenzino. He says he is the manager. He says to call him Big Tony. He wants us to be his guest in the VIP section of the casino. When we get there, Gilfoy and Danny Boy are already there. There was no sign of Dingo or Bubba. They poured the booze and brought the fight up on video. They wanted a play by play of what we were doing, how we developed our strategy and that sort of thing.

“Everything was cool,” Arlo spoke, “until they wanted to know where Jack, Danny Boy, and Gilfoy were really from. You have to remember Danny Boy was charged with identity theft. They knew he wasn’t Ozkerian. Besides, he would have been a Giant on Oz. Average height is like five six or so and Danny boy is six-three.

“We all kind of looked at each other and didn’t know what to say. After a few moments of silence, Big Tony just laughs and slaps Jack on the back. He tells us it is okay if we do not want to say, but he knows we are not Palladians either. Then he starts asking about the ship. Originally it was going to be registered with Lakanican government papers. When Bipodecus quit the gig, they put everything in Jack’s name.”

“Basically, they wanted to know what had happened where a ship’s captain was fighting a Kelvekian in the first place,” I told her. “They pulled the video of the dinner party and talked about how they thought there were hints of editing and how different I looked at the party from the fight in the arena.”

“What were you wearing in the arena?” Janet wondered. “You said the party was formal.”

“Yeah, in the arena they had given us brown dust-colored pants and jerkins. I was clean and pressed in the Octavian’s style of formal wear at the party. So, it was a drastic difference. I have to admit I thought it was pretty ugly, but we didn’t have much of a choice.”

“What did you guys wear to Elva?” Janet asked.

I kind of rolled my eyes a little bit, which Janet saw. Guys don’t care about stuff like it. I still don’t care, but my brain forces me to notice. “We were wearing the clothes from Darfo Seven on Elva. But they knew we were not Darfons either. We were too short, squat, and inelegant. A Darfon might have had a more equal reach with the Kelvekian, but they would not have the muscle to effectively fight.”

“Hey, I’d like to see that fight,” Bubba announced. “I mean the Darfon would get his butt handed to him, but I’d still like to see it.”

“More likely his head,” Dingo observed.

“Oh yeah,” Bubba agreed.

“They also wanted to know why a guy with his own ship was down at the ten-dollar tables playing blackjack. Surely, I had a couple of million credits what with the new ship and the clothes from Darfo Seven. They had seen my crew and they didn’t look like space trash.”

“We aren’t your crew,” Dingo reminded me. “They called you Captain Jack, not us.”

“Why did they call you captain?” Janet queried.

“Because all the paperwork said it was my ship. Obviously, we were not Khelid. Big Tony didn’t really seem to care. He gave us the run of three suites on one of the top floors of the hotel, had all of our bags moved to them and then asked if Danny Boy, Gilfoy and I would consider doing some promotional shots and advertising for the Casino. He said we could do it all in a few hours in the next couple of days.”

“What in the world for,” Janet asked.

“Think Vegas again,” Arlo replied. “Where does Captain Jack go after killing a Kelvekian? Why he goes to the Artisan Casino and Hotel on Elva.”

“Wait, I have to change my mental picture,” Janet stated. “You’re talking Big Tony and Vegas and I’m seeing mobsters and European guys. Now I have to switch it to elves.”

“Lord of the Rings elves, not the Keebler ones,” Dingo reminded her.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. She rubbed her temples for a moment and opened up a fresh beer. “Okay, tall elves in Vegas. And you said seventies Vegas, so bell bottoms, platform shoes, polyester suits,” she ended speaking to herself.

“Wide collars and wide, obnoxious, ties too,” Bubba added. “You know, those ties that look like they were made after somebody killed a couch or tore down old wallpaper. Either those or open shirts and gold chains and gaudy jewelry.”

“Okay, I’ve got a mental picture,” she reassured him.

“It’s worse than whatever you’re thinking,” Bubba continued.

“I get it,” she stated quickly.

“A quick conversation between the four of us and Danny Boy and I agree to do it, for a reasonable fee. Gilfoy gave them a flat no. He said it wouldn’t be prudent for people to know his whereabouts and left it at that. We worked it out with a couple of lawyers the next morning. Fifty thousand galactic credits each for Danny Boy and I.”

“That’s two and a half times what the Lakanicans were paying you to rescue the princess,” Janet observed.

“Meanwhile,” Arlo interjected, “I asked about their security systems and how they monitored the floors. I gave them a story about working in a bank and asked how their systems compared. They told me banks were a joke and walked me through their control room. They even brought up the video from our table and asked how I was managing to beat the house consistently. I told them it was nothing but a run of luck.”

“So, we had to rethink our plan of rescue for the princess,” I stated.

“Why?” Janet inquired.

“Because Danny Boy and I were going to be paraded around the town as celebrities staying at the Artisan. We could not be part of the raid. It actually worked out to make things a little easier. While everyone was concentrating on Danny Boy and me, the rest of the group was left alone.”

“I asked about the security system because I wanted to know what was available on the planet,” Arlo explained. “It was decent stuff, kind of grainy video quality, definitely not high definition. Again, think about seventies television shows, or old broadcast TV. None of us had any idea what kind of security system they might have where they were keeping the princess. But I wanted to be prepared if they did.”

“While Danny Boy and Jack did the celebrity thing,” Dingo picked up, “we used our obscurity to plan the mission. We took Gilfoy to a salon where they cut his hair short and conservative. He was then dressed by one of the best tailors around. Besides the Vegas stuff, there was Hawaiian style clothing and suits which looked like they came from the fifties. We were also able to find five pocket jeans and some regular shirts in some of the shops.

“Gilfoy, cleaned up, shaved, and in a double-breasted suit, looked nothing like the long-haired, bearded guy who had been in the arena with Jack and Danny Boy. In this guise, he went to visit the Lakanican Embassy on Elva. He got the updated information on the princess’s location. He was told Bipodecus would be returning to help us.”

“Was it by choice?” Janet wondered.

“No,” I replied. “The council told him to finish his mission. Whatever he must do to rescue the princess was paramount. He argued he was unworthy to continue. They told him it was a chance for redemption. He was still greatly conflicted when he came to us. He was also unrecognizable. He had shaved his beard. He was dressed in island garb. His gray/green knobby knees sticking out of long shorts and sandals covering his ugly feet.”

“They were some of the ugliest feet I’ve ever seen,” Bubba added. “They were hideous. He wore a flower shirt with striped shorts. I don’t know what he was thinking.”

“They weren’t jorts,” Dingo teased.

A small tear fell from Bubba’s eye. “I miss my jorts,” he said. “I hate myself for missing them.”

“Back to Elva,” I said after the uncharacteristic emotional display. “Big Tony set Danny Boy and me up for interviews with the local media throughout the week, all taped at the Artisan, of course, with their logos in the background and a shot of the hotel in each segment.”

“The Elvi ate it up!” Arlo said. “They loved it when neither of them would talk about their backgrounds. It gave everyone a chance to make up and spread rumors. The odds were forty-five percent they were Herpes from the secret military program. No one believed they were Palladian because scientists and geeks didn’t fight like they had. Some believed they could be Octavian, but the build is a little different, even though there is an Octavian military.”

“They bet on it?” Janet asked.

“They bet on everything,” Arlo said as he nodded. “As Jack said, it gave us time to adapt our rescue plan. The best information available put the princess at Carminelli’s place. It was the mansion we had searched the first time we came to the planet. We had been through the building once but had not really familiarized ourselves with it.

“And even though the space station had stuff which was technologically mind-blowing; they did not have it on the planet. They had computers, but nothing like we are used to now. It was still monochrome monitors and basic logic. The casino had a system directly tied to one of the banks, but nothing like the internet or online banking existed on Elva.

“This was important to me because I went into several electronics stores and asked about cameras and security systems. I fed them a story about maybe staying on Elva for a while and wondering what could be bought across the spectrum from do it yourself to top of the line systems. I found out if Carmenelli had security cameras they would be big, boxy, and easy to avoid in most cases. There was no way to relay real-time video off-site, so security might be able to pull an alarm, but it would take local police several minutes to respond.”

I took over coordination,” Dingo said. “We sent Dylan and Kristin to the central planning commission. They got the plans for the utilities and every house in the neighborhood of Carmenelli. They passed it off as an engineering study or something. They never told us exactly what story they used, but it wasn’t a big problem. We then used Ella and Bob to approach Carmenelli and ask if they could tour his house for an upcoming galactic news segment on important members of the community.”

“What about Elsa?” Janet asked.

“After what happened on Octavia, she and I had a somewhat adversarial relationship.” Dingo admitted.

“Dingo didn’t want her to knock him out again,” Bubba suggested.

“As I stated before,” Dingo replied testily, “I was drunk and suffering from the virus when it happened. She was quick-tempered and directly opposed to any plan I had, simply because it was mine. She seemed to get along well enough with Gilfoy. Both of them were a little off in my opinion. They paired up with Arlo and Hello to do recon around the city and plan our escape.”

“One of the issues we were going to have to address was how to get the princess off the planet once we had rescued her. We could not take her back to the hotel. We were going to need an almost instant disguise for her. The Khelids had given us a new identification for her which placed her origin as Tzatziki, so we were shooting for a look similar to Hello, which was kind of eighties rock. Big hair, black leather jackets, leggings, and tights.”

“It would still be an issue,” Arlo informed us, “because she could not leave the planet as Hello’s cousin if she never went down to the planet. Hello offered to help. She said she knew someone on Elva who could take care of the problem. They snuck her off the surface and onto the space station. Then she used the fake ID to head back down to Relix.”

“I thought you said you never snuck past the ID scanners,” Janet accused. Her memory was sharp as a tack.

“We,” Arlo emphasized, “never did.”

“Are you going to tell her about Hello now?” Bubba asked with concern.

“Tell me what?” Janet asked.

“Not now, it’s like the stuff at the end with Osned and Dahlia, we will get to it when the time is right.” Arlo offered.

Janet looked at me for a moment. I shrugged my shoulders. Arlo was right. It was better to stick to the order of events as much as possible.

“We set everything up to happen on a Thursday night the second week we were there,” I said, ignoring the lingering questions about Hello.

“How long would that be?” She asked.

“It was our ninth day on Elva. Danny Boy and I came into a bit of fortunate luck. Big Tony knew Silvio Carmenelli. They were partners in a couple of real estate deals. Big Tony wanted to show us off to his friend. He set us up to have dinner together on Wednesday night.”

“It allowed me,” Arlo said, “to fit Danny Boy and Jack with buttonhole cameras. I sourced them from the space station. George and Michael picked them up on one of their trips to the ship. They were still running back and forth every couple of days. Much higher quality than what was available on Elva.”

“Why wouldn’t they have the latest technology on the surface?” Janet wondered.

“Well,” Dingo answered, “it’s kind of like living in one of those historic neighborhoods. There are only certain things which are allowed for regular folks. You want to keep everything in the period. Since Relix, and most of Elva, is kept to the Kings preferred settings, they are kind of stuck in the late sixties and early seventies as far as fashion, style, architecture, and everything else. The government has the latest and greatest for most of their stuff, but as with most bureaucracies, they lag about eight to ten years behind because of the paperwork and approvals needed to change anything.”

“While we were at Carminelli’s,” I picked up, “we enjoyed dinner and once again watched the fight from the arena. The Elvi seemed fascinated by it. I let Danny Boy do most of the talking during the play by play. We came up with a story of us being outcasts on Palladia due to our out of the box thinking and unorthodox approach to things. Scientists don’t really like it much.”

“Hey, remember the meteorologist you dated in Spain,” Dingo jumped in. “She was like that, wanted everything explained and able to fit into a neat little box. She went nuts when we ran with the bulls, couldn’t stand the chaos.”

“So, what about this Spanish weather girl,” Janet inquired.

I shook my head and shot Dingo a dirty look. There were a lot of stories and a lot of women I had not bothered to tell Janet about. “Nothing important, it was a long time ago. I think the scientist thing just piqued a memory for him. At Carminelli’s, there was one area of the house he would not let us near. He had a couple of guards roaming the halls. We noted there were no cameras in the areas we were allowed to visit. We had dinner on the veranda overlooking the pool.

“One big difference between Relix and Vegas is Relix is in a tropical zone, so it is more like Miami as far as the weather and humidity.”

“I’ve never been to Miami,” Janet claimed.

“Southern California then,” I modified. “There were grass, trees, and bushes instead of sand everywhere. It allowed us more places to hide in the dark and have some sort of cover instead of trying to cross open ground when approaching the house.”

“But you didn’t take part in the raid,” Janet reminded me.

“No, I didn’t. Danny Boy and I had dinner in the casino with Big Tony and some of his friends. Afterward we went down to the gaming tables. He kept trying to push us towards the VIP tables with high stakes so he could recover the fee for our advertising gigs. We didn’t gamble in there, so he left us out on the floor for the most part.”

“How did you do?” Janet asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I came out ahead for the week, but not by much. Arlo ended up with about ten grand after I shifted five to him to play with. He doubled what I gave him. How about you Dingo?”

“Lost everything in one hand on Tuesday night. I was up twenty thousand at that point. I lost about two thousand in actual credit, I guess. Win some, lose some.”

“Doesn’t it bother you,” she inquired of him.

“Nah, we were about to rescue the princess and get twenty thousand from the Lakanica. It was a wash. Me and money tend to have a love/hate relationship anyway. I like to have it because I like to spend it. What good is a million in the bank if I die tomorrow? The government and an ex-wife might end up fighting over it. I save everyone the trouble by blowing it myself.”

“A unique and delusional perspective,” she admonished.

“Appreciate your understanding,” he replied and opened another beer. It was the last one. Whoever wanted the next one was going to have to head to the garage again.

“After Danny Boy and Jack had dinner with Carmenelli,” Arlo explained, “we downloaded all their video and compared it to the plans we had for the house. We tweaked our entry and exit strategy. Ella and Bob never gotten in to see Carmenelli and talk architecture with him. We were going to use gas canisters and masks to knock everyone out. We would use the tranquilizer guns as a backup for any additional resistance. Would you like the details of the raid?”

Janet shook her head no. I could see the disappointment in Arlo’s eyes. “Why don’t you give us the high points,” I suggested.

“Jack and Danny Boy were out of commission. That left three of us,” He pointed at himself, Bubba, and Dingo, “and five of the Herpes. We wanted to be prepared but thought a group of more than eight would be too hard to manage. It looked like there were four guards at most in the part of the house we were entering. Sven, the twins, and George went up to the space station early in the day to make sure everything was ready in case we needed to depart quickly. Bipodecus stayed in the room with Hello so he could reassure the princess after her rescue.

“There were three-second story windows on the south end of the house which overlooked the garden. Using the darkness and flora to conceal our approach, we planned on making a human ladder to peek in each window to decide where to start our raid.”

“Then we found a ladder lying on the ground,” Bubba supplied, “so we just used it.”

“Let me tell the story,” Arlo admonished. “We looked in the windows and found about six girls in each room. The rooms were all decorated in different themes, a jungle room, a desert room, a Memphis room, etcetera, you get the idea. And every one of them had a velvet Elvis hanging somewhere prominent.

“From our research, we had not found any alarm system on the house. We tossed sleeping gas grenades through each window after putting our masks on, then used the broken panes to release the locks. We climbed through the windows in groups of two. Dingo was with me. Gilfoy and Bubba took a room, as did Dylan and Kristin. Bob and Michael waited for us outside.

“The princess was not in any of those rooms. We met in the hallway outside the doors. This wing of the house had a central hallway coming from the center. It ended in a “T” hallway which led to these three rooms. Bubba joined Dingo and I on the right side. Gilfoy went with Kristin and Dylan down the left. There were four doors on the left side and two on the right. We were just opening the first set of doors when one of the guards came into the hallway.

“Dingo,” Arlo pointed accusatorily, “shot him in the head with a tranquilizer dart. He screamed when it hit him, alerting the rest of the house before he hit the floor.”

“I was aiming center mass,” Dingo retorted. “My first shot does always tend to go a little high though.”

“Dingo and Gilfoy stayed in the hallway while we entered the two rooms. We dropped canisters of sleeping gas in each one and searched them for the princess. She was in the room Bubba and I entered.”

“She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” Bubba interrupted. “There she was, passed out in this big old king-sized bed in red silk pajamas. Her dark black hair was fanned out around her head. She had a cute little upturned nose. Her lips were thin and luscious at the same time. She had a little pout as if something in her dream disturbed her.”

Janet was staring at him. We had heard it a thousand times in the past few weeks, so it was nothing new. But for her, it hit with unexpected force. She had never heard Bubba talk with such intensity before about anything except weapons. We all waited in silence to see if he would continue, but he was done. He was lost in the memory of the first glimpse of her.

Arlo continued. “We let everyone know we had her and started backing out of the room. Guards were starting to shoot from the other end of the hallway. They weren’t using darts! We tossed a couple of canisters of gas towards them and exited as they fell. Bubba was carrying the princess like a sleeping child. He relinquished his hold on her to climb out onto the ladder, then we gave her back to him and he carried her down over his shoulder.

“Shouts of alarm were heard throughout the house. We intended to leave no trace of our presence. We abandoned the idea and left everything where it lay as we beat a path off the property. The gas canisters and the darts had no markings on them of any kind anyway as a precaution. There are about ten acres of woods behind the house. We made our way quickly through them and into a couple of vehicles we had stashed there. Kristin began applying makeup and a wig to the princess in the back of one of the cars while we drove around town, mostly on the back streets.

“When the princess woke up about half an hour later, she was still cradled in Bubba’s arms.”

“She had the most amazing eyes,” Bubba spoke again. “They were wide with fear as she woke up. We quickly explained we had been sent to rescue her by her father. She calmed down and began to cry with relief. She worked with Kristin and changed her clothes to match Hello’s.”

“Had they done anything to her?” Janet wondered.

“She hadn’t been touched, if it is what you are asking,” Arlo stated.

Janet nodded.

“No, they had been giving her lessons on how she was supposed to act in the presence of the King. What was expected of her as one of his wives, how to hand make peanut butter and banana sandwiches for him and such. We found all of this out later. Physically, she was fine. They had yelled and screamed at her, but that was about it.”

“I got a lot worse from the nuns at Saint Catherine’s growing up,” Bubba offered for comparison.

“Which you probably deserved,” Janet opined. “So, you rescued the princess, and then what?”

“After Kristin got her reasonably disguised, we went to the bar in the casino. We thought Mikimo should appear with us on camera before we made our way back up to our rooms. Besides, if we were sitting in the bar with her, it would not look like we were trying to hide anything. Bubba kept one arm around her protectively the whole time.

“She was still a bit groggy from the sleeping gas. Initially, a rush of adrenaline had counteracted the effects, but she was dropping back off pretty quick. She began to sway a little bit and we finished off our drinks and made our way upstairs. She passed out in the elevator. Bubba once again picked her up and carried her.”

“Little wisp of nothing,” Bubba said softly. “I bet she didn’t weigh a buck ten. I took her to our suite and pulled her boots off her, slipped her under the covers and took a chair beside the bed to watch over her. I wanted to be there if she woke up and needed anything.”

“It was lust at first sight,” Dingo commented.

“You shut your pie hole! It wasn’t anything like it!” Bubba yelled.

“I was talking about me, not you,” Dingo defended.

“Danny Boy and I came to the room about three in the morning,” I said. “Bubba was still watching over the princess. We went to bed. All in all, it seemed a successful venture.”

“Until” Janet prompted.

“A bellhop delivered an envelope to us the next morning,” I continued. “We were invited to be guest of the King himself for dinner that evening. We knew Bipodecus and Mikimo could not be at the party, but we felt we had to go.”

“Marilyn Monroe,” Janet blurted out.

“Huh?” I responded.

“You know all those tabloid stories about her and Elvis faking their deaths and living simple lives in Montana or something like it,” she said excitedly.

Arlo shook his head for a moment and met Janet’s eyes. “No, the fake Elvis died on the toilet just like was reported. The CIA killed Norma Jean Baker because of the affair she was having with the president.”

“Why should I believe you?” Janet questioned.

Arlo looked to me for help. I had none to offer. The stalemate continued for a few moments before I spoke again. “We did not see Marilyn at the dinner with Elvis,” I said slowly, a little disturbed they were arguing over this. “Bipodecus and Mikimo went up to the ship. George came down with Sven and the twins. We consulted with Big Tony, who referred us to Carmenelli, ironically. He made some calls and told us where to go to get appropriate clothing for the dinner. It was the place Gilfoy was fitted for his suit.”

“It was horrible,” Bubba stated. “I mean what those freaking Darfons did to Jack and me, well, it gave me a huge headache to even try on some of the outfits.”

“Me and Jack,” Dingo mis-corrected him.

“It was the worst of what seventies fashion had to offer,” I supplied. “Not to mention the white guys with the perms and the leftover beehives. I just don’t have words to adequately describe how bad it was.”

“Once we were properly outfitted,” Dingo began.

“Or improperly,” Bubba editorialized.

“We went back to the hotel and let the girls do their makeup and whatever else it is you do for hours on end to get ready. Then we went out front and got into a limousine for the ride to the palace.”

“So, you had dinner with Elvis,” Janet said with some amazement.

“Yes, we did,” I answered. “There were probably fifty people there. And oddly, everyone had their own jar of peanut butter. The King slathered it on everything he ate. Not a lot was said during dinner. Just small conversations and such, but afterward we went to the ballroom. We watched the fight in the arena again, which we had seen almost continuously for the past week and a half. Elvis turns to us and tips his glass and asks us how a couple of earthlings ended up on Octavia in the first place.

“I just stared at him for a moment, and then he gave me a smile. He said, come on guys, I spent almost thirty years on earth. I know who you are. He gave me a little wink and nodded, so I told him our story. I left out a few details concerning the princess and the Herpes, but I cobbled together a reasonable simile which seemed to satisfy him.”

“After it, things got really weird,” Bubba suggested. “I mean, he got up and sang a few of his songs. Not the stuff he did here, but some he has written while back on Elva. They weren’t bad, but they were, you know, different. He did maybe ten songs or so in the ballroom on stage, then a DJ came out and all these people who weren’t at dinner appeared and started dancing, drinking, and doing drugs.”

“You’re kidding!” Janet exclaimed.

“No, he ain’t,” Dingo replied. “It was a wild party, like one of them seventies pornos with the funky disco music and swirling colored lights and all. It was interesting; some of them aliens ain’t exactly anatomically the same as us.”

“And did you participate,” she asked looking at me.

“I did not,” I answered. “Nor did Bubba.”

“I didn’t even want to be there,” Bubba stated. “Arlo and Hello sat with us watching the goings on. Dingo and Danny Boy and the Herpes were all dancing and drinking and writhing around to the music.”

Janet sent a withering look towards Dingo.

“Are you freaking kidding me, Janet? I had a chance to party with Elvis! Crikey you drongo! I hit the floor, and the bar, and took off with a couple of them Elvi; two of them Janet!”

“The night kind of devolved from there,” I offered. “Dylan and Kristin were dancing together. Bob and Ella were making eyes at each other. I was not overly concerned with Danny Boy or Gilfoy. They were surrounded by people who wanted to talk to them.”

“Then Elsa took center stage,” Arlo began. “There was this slow seductive song. I guess a bit of stripper came out, because when she started dancing everyone else just turned and watched. I guess whatever she was drinking was the same as tequila because it started making her clothes come off.”

“You witnessed this little strip tease,” again accusing me.

“Honey, everyone in the room saw it. She sucked up every bit of energy in the room.”

“I didn’t see it,” Dingo said smugly.

“It’s because you were already in bed with the Elvi girls,” Arlo reminded him.

“Just saying I wasn’t a witness,” he defended.

“We were all a little worried,” I said. “Well, Arlo and I were worried anyway. We didn’t want to do anything to draw a bunch of attention. Almost every eye in the room was on Elsa. Trying to stop it would have only made it worse. When she had shed her pants and shirt, a crowd had moved in close and cut off our line of sight.

“Arlo, Hello, Bubba and I sat back, sipped our drinks and tried to keep an eye on the rest of the group. We could not keep track of everyone. We caught glimpses of people here and there. It was a futile effort. We did see Gilfoy carry a naked Elsa out of the room. As I said, the party kind of went wild and lasted well into the night. It seemed ungracious to just get up and leave. We didn’t want to search rooms all over the palace trying to locate everyone, so we sat and listened to the music and drank sparingly.”

“I guess it wrapped up around five in the morning,” Arlo said. “We walked out of the palace and found a line of limousines for the reveler’s disposal. Bob and Ella were with us, along with Dylan and Kristin. Gilfoy, Dingo, and Elsa were nowhere to be found.”

“George and Sven?” Janet asked.

“They stayed at the hotel to gamble a little and discuss what they were going to do next. We figured we might need a roundabout way to get Mikimo back to Lakanica because Carmenelli would be looking for her there. We packed up our things and left messages for the rest of our party to join us on the ship when they recovered.”

“Why not wait at the hotel?” Janet wondered.

“Because Bubba wanted to get back to the princess,” Arlo responded.

Janet looked at him.

He nodded and picked up his empty beer bottle. He gave out a long sigh, then rose and grabbed a handful of bottles and headed out to the garage.

“What am I missing,” she asked as she turned to me.

“He’s in love with her,” I answered softly.

“How did it happen?” She queried.

“Obujutte Thirteen,” I said. “It happened on the desert oasis of Obujutte Thirteen.”