So That's Why They Call It the Big Apple

James R. Drew

Copyright (c) 1989

I watched in horror as the enormous toaster oven opened its door and began to speak. What came out was the worst imitation of Edward G. Robinson's voice that I have ever heard. ``We're moving in, ya hear?'' it said. ``And there's nothin' you can do ta stop us, myah, nothin'. So give up that transistor radio. Myah. It's the only thing standing between us and total world domination. Myah, myah.''

The man standing in front of it, looking all the smaller because of the oven's immense size, clutched the transistor radio to his chest.

``Never!'' he said.

``Then prepare to die, fool Earthling! Myah.'' Then the toaster oven leapt into the air and came down flat on the man, crushing both him and the radio into oblivion. Oh, it was horrible. ``They Unplugged Chicago''-- giant appliances from space take over the Mafia. Definitely the worst film this side of ``Plan 9 from Outer Space.'' I was only too glad to turn off the television.

``Thank God nothing like that could happen in real life,'' I said.

Me and my big mouth.

My name is Marc Lynx. I am a detective, or at least that is what my business card says. But I never seem to get those run-of-the-mill missing person and murder cases. No, the cases I deal with are the sort you never read about in the papers-- except for the tabloids. Elvis-stealing aliens, Hitler's clone, teddy bears possessed by demons, you know the sort. I looked at my watch. It was just past noon, and I had a luncheon appointment at 12:30 down at the Five Happiness; a Chinese restaurant owned by my receptionist Nicholas' Jewish uncle Mordechai Zaronstein. Something about his daughter being missing. A simple missing person case would be a relief. Given my recent earnings, any case would be a relief. Normally, I refuse to take cases involving friends and employees on ethical grounds. Doing so had cost me a girl-friend back when I lived in Frisco. This time, though, my wallet decided to make an exception.

With my car in the shop (damn Yuppies and their Volvos!), I would have to resort to other transportation. A cab was out-- too expensive. I decided to take the bus. Naturally, it pulled away from the curb just as I reached the bus stop. I briefly considered taking the subway, but ruled that out quickly. The last time I had gone anywhere by subway, it had broken down between stations; leaving me stranded for several hours with the operator, a pair of winos, a transvestite, and a nun with her entourage of seven parochial school girls. A nightmare in real life.

So I decided to walk. It was only a couple of miles. Of course, I would have to fight my way through the noon press of humanity, but I could make it. I naturally exude an air of confidence that makes people tend to give me breathing space-- or is it an air of insanity? Is there a difference? In addition, if things really got tight, I could always pull out my .38 Magnum, yell ``Stop, thief!'' and watch the crowd part like the Red Sea.

I made good headway at first, but the city slowly began to take its toll on me. The people seemed pushier than usual. The car horns seemed louder, and all directed at me. I grew tense. My eyes began to dart around, seeing monsters in every face. The fact that most New Yorkers are monsters anyway did not help matters any. Panic grew.

I soon realized what was happening. Withdrawal symptoms. I admit it-- I am addicted. To Twinkies. ``My name is Marc, and I'm a Twinkiholic,'' or something like that. That luscious sponge cake, that heavenly cream filling, all those preservatives. Just thinking about it made the cravings worse. Luckily, I always carry a spare package in my jacket pocket. Panting a little, I stepped out of the traffic flow and reached into my pocket for it.

My pocket was empty! I checked again. Still empty. Panic began to take hold. Maybe the other pocket? I reached in, felt something, and pulled it out. Damn! It was the business card from Mordechai's restaurant.

What was I going to do? The realization set in that I would be a gibbering wreck long before I got to the restaurant if I did not get some Twinkies immediately. My pace quickened. I was jogging now, pushing people out of my way heedlessly. As the tension grew, I started to run. People were staring, but I hardly noticed. One woman who I pushed wrapped herself up in her poodle's leash and fell over, yanking the dog from its feet. Under different circumstances, I might have been happy, since I hate poodles. Now, however, I could care less. I vaulted over a baby carriage like O.J. Simpson does over luggage, reached the corner, and screeched to a halt. There it was! Less than a block away, secluded in the midst of its parking lot, was a 7-11. The ubiquitous convenience store, well stocked with everything from bug killer to beer. And Twinkies. The store almost seemed to glow as I approached. I crossed the street in a daze, ignoring the fact that the light was against me. Cars slammed on their brakes, with more than one driver yelling obscenities out his window at me. But I did not care. At that moment, all that mattered was Twinkies. As soon as I saw them, nestled in their plastic wrappers beside the fruit pies and below the cupcakes, my breathing calmed. I was tranquil. The Twinkie-- my own private Holy Grail, from which I might sip and be reborn. I took two packages, caressing them lightly. So round, so soft, so fully packed with creme filling. Silently, treasuring the experience, I got into line to pay for them. I did my best to ignore the woman in line behind me. Once she saw what I was carrying, however, it was too late.

``Twinkies!'' she said, snootily. ``Those things are just chock full of preservatives, you know. They'll kill you.'' Busybodies really get on my nerves.

``Now this, this is real food,'' she said, pushing a can of vegetables in my face. ``Uncle Orville's Canned Okra. Nutritious, and without any preservatives.'' She sounded very smug.

I noticed she said nothing about the taste. ``You really should eat more vegetables.'' ``Mind your own business, lady,'' I said, more than a bit irritated.

``Well!'' she said, in falsified outrage. ``How rude! Wait until I tell Sally about this! I was only offering some advice, advice you should heed, young man. Just how old do you expect to live to be, eating nothing but preservatives?'' ``Until I'm a hundred and fourteen,'' I sneered. ``I intend to be well preserved.''

I then turned around, ignoring all further comments from ``Okra Winfrey.'' I noticed the headline on one of the tabloids: ``Space aliens save Dan Quayle's life.'' What with how my cases go, I have met a few aliens, and none of them would have been that stupid. Or at least they would not have admitted to it. Now, the ones who stole Elvis, well, they knew what they were doing.

``Next,'' said the clerk, interrupting my memories. ``That's you, man.''

He looked to be about nineteen, had pimples, and sported a thin moustache which looked like about two days growth, but which he had probably not shaved for two months. The ubiquitous convenience store clerk to go with the ubiquitous convenience store. I set the Twinkies down on the counter, reached in my pants pocket, and pulled out some coins, enough for the Twinkies and some thirty cents more. The clerk handed me my change: one thin dime.

Before I could comment on his lack of math skills, the entire building began to shake. The dime flew from my hand to land near the door, where it spun around in a drunken dance. Cans of beer fell out of the coolers, and candy bars leapt from the shelves in a mad dash for freedom. ``My God!'' screamed a woman-- I suppose it was ``Okra Winfrey.'' Too many vegetables make you jumpy. ``It's an earthquake!''

I rather doubted that it was an earthquake. New York is built on fairly stable ground that does not shift much. Not like California. The quakes that I had experienced in San Francisco were one of the main reasons I had moved to New York. That and being run out of town on a rail.

I jumped after my change, but a further shake put me off balance, and I nearly overshot the coin and headed for a video game. However, a twist and a grab at a counter let me stop quickly. Looking for the dime, I discovered I was standing on it. I also found that an older man wearing suspenders and a bow tie was pointing out the plate glass doors at the front of the store.

``It's not an earthquake!'' he said. ``New York is sinking!''

Doomsayers have been predicting for years that New York will sink into the Atlantic, and it is therefore one of the chief fears of New Yorkers, along with the thought of another garbage strike, or that the Statue of Liberty might actually belong to New Jersey. I glanced over my shoulder, and, sure enough, it looked like the man was right. The buildings across the street had become noticeably shorter. The street had already disappeared. For that matter, so had the store's parking lot. I was suspicious. Why should this store be left alone while the rest of the city sank out of sight? More likely, something was happening to this building independently of the others. But I would never find out about it by cowering in the back of the store with the other customers and the clerk. A case to solve, such as it was. I took a step toward the doors so as to see what had happened to the ground.

I planted my foot firmly on the floor, and the linoleum jumped away. I suddenly found myself falling as the store was turned on end. Luckily for me, if not for the Twinkies I was carrying, I only fell a few feet, whereupon I landed on the now horizontal side of a counter. Most of the other people in the store were not so lucky, ending up as they did in a heap, covered by magazines and video rental boxes. One kid, however, slid into the candy aisle, where he was probably in Heaven. I simply held onto the counter for dear life as the entire building began to shake up and down. Then it started to rattle back and forth, which sent several liter bottles of pop and boxes of cereal flying around in a vicious rain which I, being near the front of the store, or the top, as it was at the moment, avoided. Although I should have expected it, I was still caught unprepared as the building proceeded to roll over. They say that when you are about to die, your entire life flashes in front of your eyes. If that is true, then I was in no danger. The only thing that flashed in front of my eyes was a vision of Sister Mary Margaret standing over me with a ruler in hand. Believe me, there has been much more to my life than Catholic school. Whatever is true, as I fell toward the plate glass windows at the front (now the bottom) of the store, seeing the all too obviously hard asphalt beyond, I though I was going to die.

However, I did not die. When the building rolled over, the doors had flung open, and I proceeded to plunge right through them, along with a shower of ice cream bars, styrofoam cups, and two quarts of motor oil. Unlike the ice cream, cups, and oil, I managed to grab onto one of the door handles as I fell. I nearly wrenched my arm out of its socket in stopping myself, but stop I did. I considered myself rather fortunate. I had all of about three seconds to consider myself fortunate before a rack of Cheese Puffs slammed into me and tore the handle from my grasp. Time seemed to slow as the Cheese Puffs and I tumbled to the ground below. Asphalt spun by, closely followed by the convenience store, blue sky, and something huge and red. Then more asphalt, with ever growing yellow lines on it. More store, more sky, more red thing. A whole lot of asphalt, seemingly close enough to touch. Store. Sky. Red which totally filled my vison as I hit the ground.

Luckily, the Cheese Puffs had been underneath me as hit, so I was more or less undamaged. I sprang to my feet, stumbled for a second, and regained my balance. Amazingly, I was still holding on to the Twinkies, although they were rather compressed by now. ``SPAM?'' boomed a voice from overhead. I looked up to see what could possibly have such a large voice. Silly me, I had forgotten that I was still under the open doors, and the rack of Cheese Puffs turned out not to be the last thing to fall out. I looked up just in time to see something blue and silver strike me on the forehead. I think that I would have lost consciousness, but the booming voice spoke again, replacing the blackness with redness, centered somewhere between my ears.

``SPAM!''

I stumbled back a step, and looked down. Indeed, I had been hit by a falling can of Spam. It sat a few feet away, doing its best to look innocent. Now, looking innocent is one of the few things that Spam can do well, and this can was expert. Of course, its effort was aided by the fact that a few feet farther away sat a pair of twelve-foot long Reebok tennis shoes. Worse yet, there were legs of the same scale in the Reeboks. As I followed the legs up, noting the red and white striped socks covering them, they merged into a round, red armored body, which continued up. And up, and up some more. A pair of ridiculously thin arms eventually joined the body, and it was all topped off by a domed head sporting bulging eyes of a sort rarely seen anywhere outside of a Tex Avery cartoon. The eighty-foot tall fire hydrant looked down at me and the Spam with malice in its eyes. Effortlessly, it shifted the weight of the convenience store which rested on its shoulder, tipping it back so that nothing more fell out. I finally realized just why stores claim that their largest losses come from shoplifting. With as smooth a motion as I could manage, I bent down, scooped up the can of Spam, turned on my heel, and ran. Ben Johnson never ran faster, with or without steroids. There was a crash, as if a convenience store had just fallen sixty-odd feet to the ground.

``SPAM!'' boomed the fire hydrant. ``COME BACK, SPAM!'' Not a chance. I raced down the street. People jumped out of my way, and again out of the fire hydrant's. Those who did not move, I pushed. Those too heavy to push got dodged. Some of them probably got stepped on by the hydrant as it TROMP! TROMP! TROMP!ed after me.

I ran into the street without looking. Stopping for the ``Don't Walk'' sign is all well and good, at the right time and place, but it is not something you do when you are about to become gum on the sole of a twelve-foot long tennis shoe. A car slammed on its brakes, screeching to a halt, but it was too late. I ran into its fender and my momentum carried me over the hood of the car in a tumble. I managed to land on my feet and kept on running without missing a beat. From behind, I heard the CRUNCH! as the car became to the fire hydrant what an empty pop can would be to me if I stepped on it-- an annoyance wrapped around the foot which needs to be kicked off. I think that the remains landed about a block away.

As my foot hit the curb, I reached out and grabbed the lightpost on the corner and let my momentum carry me around in a quarter circle so that I was now running down the cross street. Hopefully, this way I would lose the fire hydrant, or at least gain some time.

No such luck. With something as large as that, my little jog did nothing but make it have to change direction slightly. It cut diagonally across the street, crushing anything that got in its way. If I had accomplished anything, it was only to let the fire hydrant gain on me.

``SPAM!''

It was right behind me. I imagined that I could feel the air rushing to get out of the way of those huge feet as they came closer and closer to grinding me into thick paste. What was I going to do?

Luckily, by this time, most of the people had cleared the street and sidewalk before me. It was a good thing, since the sprinting was beginning to take its toll on me. I was no longer alert enough to watch out for little children and stoplights. I certainly was not alert enough to watch out for homeless people lying on the sidewalk.

I was halfway to the ground before I realized that I had tripped over the transient's legs, and I was all the way to the ground before I could think of anything to do about it. By then it was too late-- my stride was broken, my lead was gone. I picked myself up and was sure that I felt the rushing air from the hydrant's descending shoe. A big black shadow obliterated the sky, growing larger as the huge shoe tried to make me one with the concrete. That was when I saw it. My salvation, or so I hoped.

There was an alley only a few feet away. With speed lent by need, I lunged out from under the shoe and dove into the alley. I made it, but I fear that the transient was not quite so lucky. The alley was narrow, and thankfully not a dead end, so I would be able to escape. At the entrance, the fire hydrant cocked its head to one side and then the other in puzzlement, peering in at me. Of course, since its head was attached without a neck, it had to literally move its entire body in order to cock its head, which made it appear to be doing a funny dance in front of the alley.

``SPAM?''

It did not take long, though, for the hydrant to deduce that I had, indeed, fled into the alley. Maybe it could smell me. However it had found me, it must have decided that there was no fundamental difference between the two of us, and it tried to follow me into the alley. Of course, there was a fundamental difference-- I was shorter, and rather a bit thinner. But it did not let the size differential dissuade it as it rammed its body straight into the alley.

At first I was worried that I had misjudged the width of the alley, and that it would be able to pass unimpeded. However, after a few feet, the fire hydrant slowed as the stubs from which its arms emerged ground up tight against the side of the alley. Although it twisted and tried to turn, it looked as though the hydrant were securely stuck.

I should have known that it could not be that easy. With a roar of rage, or perhaps it was pain, the fire hydrant surged forward again. Its stubby shoulders dug a pair of two foot deep furrows in the sides of the buildings, and bright sparks shot off in every direction. It was still coming after me, even if it had been slowed to a crawl. Maybe, just maybe, I would be able toescape it, but only if the alley was long enough to give me a good lead.

``SPAM!'' it boomed, but with a grunt of effort underlying the word.

As my luck would have it, the alley was quite short. I jogged along it and reached the next street a couple minutes before the fire hydrant would be able to, but I wished that it could have been longer. From my general surroundings, I decided that I must be on Wall Street. Yuppies scuttled hither and yon, running around like chickens with their heads chopped off. If I had had no idea as to the cause of the panic, I would have assumed that the market was crashing again. Within moments, the entire street was deserted except for me.

As I walked alone down Wall Street, hearing the faint rumblings of the hydrant as it scraped its way through the alley, I considered my options. I could keep running and hope that the police would take care of the hydrant, but I quickly abandoned that possibility. It is not that I believe that the N.Y.P.D. is inefficient, but I doubt that they could really handle something of this scope. Perhaps the National Guard, or the Army? I considered the metal casing of the hydrant, and put that hope out of my mind as well. If the Japanese army could do nothing against the flesh of Godzilla, could the American army do any better against a metal monster? I doubt it! Of course, I could always give up and let the fire hydrant have the can of Spam. That would certainly solve all of my immediate problems, but I worried about the future. Why did the hydrant want Spam? Why would anyone? And why this particular can? It could always go and hold up another store (so to speak), right? I had a feeling that there was more to the Spam concern than met the eye.

A dark cloud drifted in from somewhere over the harbor to try and obscure the sun. The light breeze that had been playing with my hair turned vicious and tried to bite at me through my jacket. A neon sign in a deserted brokerage house window proclaimed the latest interest rates on long term, high yield C.D.'s, and the glow of its light was reflected in the windows of a solitary parked car. I suddenly came to realize that I was still carrying both the Spam and my Twinkies, which were now nothing but paste from the abuse I had put them through. Only a little dismayed, I put the Spam in my jacket pocket and opened up the Twinkies, squeezing a little out on my hand and eating it like the cheap caviar paste that comes in a tube. Believe me, though, Twinkie paste tastes a lot better than cheap caviar paste. In addition, it helped to replace some of the energy I had expended in my headlong flight from the hydrant, as well as quelling the withdrawal pangs that were coming back as my adrenaline level returned to normal.

``SPAM!''

The fire hydrant emerged from the alley in a shower of debris. As it oriented itself on me, I took off running again. In seconds, it was after me, the TROMP! TROMP! TROMP! of its feet growing ever louder, ever closer. I was almost to the Stock Exchange. A minute longer and I could duck inside and...and...and then what? I had no idea. I was quickly relieved of all concern over the ``what next'' question.

``SPAM! STOP! PREPARE TO DIE!'' A coherent sentence, more or less. This in itself might have been enough to give me pause, but the booming voice exerted command. I stopped.

A loud whine began to build behind me. It sounded like some horrible weapon building its energy, preparing to release it and destory me. What would it be? A phaser? A wave-motion gun? The latest Jackie Collins paperback? Each possibility seemed worse than the one before.

It began to grow dark. With nightfall still hours away, I was sure that I knew what was happening. The fire hydrant had some powerful energy weapon trained on me, one that required so much power that it was literally sucking the light right out of the air around me. The whine continued to increase in volume. My right arm began to twitch uncontrollably. ``What am I?'' I thought. ``A man or a mouse?'' Cliche, I know, but at that moment I was hardly trying to come up with an original line.

A man, I decided. I had come to the conclusion that I was not going to get out of this one alive. I was going to be blown to bits by whatever weapon the hydrant had, and most of Manhattan would probably go with me. At least the hydrant would not get this can of Spam. Sure, it seems silly to lose your life and most of a major city over a can of processed pseudo-meat, but principles have to start somewhere, and mine started right there. I was going to die, but I was going to go down fighting. With this decision, all trembling in my arm stopped. I reached into my jacket and pulled my .38 Magnum from its holster. Certainly, a simple lead bullet would do no good against something as large as that thing, but at least I would be able to go out in a blaze of glory. As I brought it out, one corner of my mind noticed that there was something...different...about my gun. The texture, the color, the balance-- all were off. However, I had no time to dwell on this as I turned, spinning myself around to defiantly face the fire hydrant. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. My arms did an odd, bobbing dance as I spun, but oriented unerringly on the hydrant. As soon as it came into my sights, my fingers tensed, contracting about where the trigger should have been, as I fired off a single shot. Indeed, a trigger would have been there, had it been my .38 Magnum that I was holding. How a banana had got into my holster, I have no idea. As my hands jerked up, reflexively imitating the kickback of a gun, my mind drifted into an odd thought: at least the banana in my holster explained why my Rice Krispies had been so gritty at breakfast. As my hands flew up and I arrested my spin, realizing that the shot from my banana had not happened, I saw that the hydrant was holding nothing that resembled what I would call a weapon. Instead, it was looking up at the ever darkening sky. The whine kept getting louder.

I looked up, too. The little cloud I had noticed earlier had grown to cover the sky from horizon to horizon, which, admittedly, is not very far in midtown Manhattan. It was pitch black and swirling in a funnel shape, being occasionally lit by flashes of green and purple. I could not help but wonder if the Ghostbusters were back in town.

A beam of light shot out of the vortex and hit the street between the hydrant and myself, but did no damage. ``Wonderful,'' I thought. ``The hydrant didn't have any weapons on it, so it decided to call its spaceship. Instead of just New York, it's probably going to blow up the entire state!'' A second beam also came out of the vortex, followed by a third, this one of a slightly different color. They started to move, slowly at first, and then picked up speed to where they were tracing an intricate pattern in the street. After a few seconds, someone turned on the volume. A series of five musical notes played, then repeated. Once, twice, three times. It was a familiar sequence of notes, one that I heard before, from an old song, maybe, or perhaps a late 70's science-fiction movie. The wind picked up again, blowing my hair around more violently, tearing at my clothing. Bits of trash and dead leaves tumbled through the dry gutters, playing tag with wisps of fog running away from the harbor. I put my hand up to shield my eyes from the ever brightening display of dancing lights and flickering lightning. With one corner of my mind, I noticed that the fire hydrant had done the same.

Something began to come down out of the cloud vortex. Actually, it was four somethings, each of them about ten feet across. They were coming down right where I was standing, so I moved. My mind was on the things dropping out of the sky, and I walked toward the fire hydrant without thinking. Luckily, it seemed much more concerned with the things than with me. ``GO AWAY! MY SPAM!'' it boomed.

The four things took no notice, and continued to come down. They were an odd, silvery metallic color, and roughly cylindirical in shape. They looked rather like legs, with off-center landing pads at the ends. Sure enough, another, larger object came out of the vortex, and the four cylinders were revealed to be legs for whatever it was. ``Landing gear for a spaceship,'' I thought. ``And the ship evidently doesn't belong to the fire hydrant.'' Now, before this encounter, I had had a fairly clear idea of what a spaceship should look like. It had to have a circular, saucer shape to it, whether that was the whole ship, like in ``The Day the Earth Stood Still,'' or just part of the whole, like in ``Star Trek.'' This thing had no disc-like qualities to it. It was nearly two hundred feet long, and about as tall as the fire hydrant. The four legs attached to the body in an oddly jointed way, which made them look as if they could bend in all directions. At one end of the body was a curved appendage which was waving back and forth. At the other end was an odd protuberance, with a pair of pyramidal mounds sticking out of it, a pair of glassed in viewports, and a mouth with sharp teeth in it. I had seen a few of these before, owning one myself, but they were never like this. Earthly German Shepherds are rarely silver and they never grow quite so large. As I stood there, I knew exactly how a mouse must feel when cornered by a cat. There I was, standing between a giant fire hydrant out to squish me flat, and a giant German Shepherd-shaped spaceship, which had unknown intentions. It was, however, looking at me. And it was growling.

I was trying to decide which way I should run when a small black hole appeared in the side of the German Shepherd, about where its ribs should have ended. The hole grew larger, and then a ramp of the same silvery material as the ship began to form out of the air. It formed a spiral joining the hole to the street just a few feet in front of me. Then a figure stepped into view at the top of the ramp.

At first, the figure looked pitch black, blacker than the hole itself. Soon, though, it stepped out into the light and was revealed in all its glory. It was pink and round, and it looked to be about four feet tall. Hardly the most frightening thing. It took a single step forward, and then the ramp acted as an escalator, transporting the alien down to street level. Before this, I had only met two different types of aliens. One set were the tall, thin, white aliens with big black eyes that half the population of the world seems to have met. They are peaceful and benevolent, and claim to be tending Earth protectively for the day we finally become truly civilized. It is to this end that they kidnapped Elvis, because they see him as the savior of the human race, the man who will ultmately lead us to civilization. I think that they are more than a little crazy. The other aliens I have encountered were a pair of ugly reptilian creatures who claimed to be advance scouts for some invasion, but who turned out to be nothing more than lost vacationers. Neither encounter had really prepared me to meet this pink thing. The little creature was indeed only about four feet tall, pink, and round. It was fuzzy, too, like a peach, or that mold that grows on sour cream that sits in the refrigerator for too long. It had a pair of fuzzy pink stalks growing out of its top, each of which sported two eyes. They blinked at me in unison. Three arms were attached equidistantly around its middle, and a pair of legs came out from somewhere underneath. On its feet it wore a pair of fancy black and silver spats. The looked really snazzy-- just the thing that every well dressed fuzzy pink alien should be wearing. On its front, or at least the side that was facing me, was a little blue and white patch. It read: ``Hello. My name is Sfherg.''

I pointed my .38 Magnum banana at Sfherg. Hopefully it would think that I held a viable weapon, not just a piece of slightly overripe fruit.

``Don't move!'' I said. ``I've got you covered!'' Sfherg brought its rear arms up over its head just like crooks do in all the old movies and television shows, and I thought that I had it beat. Then it raised the forward one and pointed the small lavender banana it held straight at my chest. Great, just what I needed. An alien race for which bananas really were weapons.

``Ekjm\ lu9u3'm mk $ki04,'' it said, or something equally unitelligible. From where the sounds came, I have no idea. Shferg did not seem to have a mouth.

Sfherg's third hand contracted slightly, and a laser beam shot out of its banana and struck the back of my hand. It did no damage, but, damn!, it was hot, and I dropped my .38 Magnum banana because of it. I shook my hand in the air for a few seconds, and then sucked on the red spot where the beam had hit. That seemed to help some.

The fire hydrant decided that this was its cue to act again. The only problem is, it was not a very good actor. Good vocal projection, that it had, but nothing whatsoever in the way of body language.

``GO AWAY! MY SPAM!'' it boomed.

For the first time, Sfherg seemed to take notice of the hydrant. It swiveled both eyestalks without turning its body and looked at the German Shepherd-shaped spaceship, which was still staring at me with tightly curled lips. ``Uunk4EGj89 jl89';quj9!'' Sfherg jabbered at it, pointing toward the hydrant.

The spaceship's head swiveled away from me and toward the fire hydrant. With a low growl in its throat, it barked at the hydrant, a loud bark which shattered a few nearby windows. The hydrant did not seem affected in the least, and started forward. ``MY SPAM! GO A---'' Its booming voice was suddenly cut off as the spaceship lifted one of its rear legs, revealing a sort of gun turret. A bright yellow laser beam shot out, stunning the hydrant into quiescence. Evidently satisfied that the fire hydrant was no longer trying to horn in on its territory, Sfherg's eyestalks reoriented on me and it returned to jabbering.

``U7ma] cy9ko2' =vRUhik 4k-*YU$ MkPV+w!'' it said. I had no idea what it was trying to say, but I had the odd feeling that it was trying to sell me something. Insurance, maybe, or disposable diapers.

``I don't know what you're selling,'' I said, ``but I ain't buying!'' I showed it my empty hands and shook my head in an exaggerated fashion.

Sfherg continued to jabber at me, throwing its arms about like an Italian juggler on drugs. I was quite aware that one of those hands still held the little heat-beam shooting banana. I took a step back. Sfherg took a step forward. I stepped back. It stepped forward.

Soon enough, I ``cha-cha''ed my way onto one of the fire hydrant's feet. Not the place I wanted to be, trapped between a rock and a hard place, as it were. I felt the fire hydrant rumble softly. It was evidently coming out of its quiescent state. Great! Trapped between a live rock and a hard place! ``---WAY! GO AWAY!'' The fire hydrant suddenly came back to life, acting as though it had never been zapped. It continued to walk forward. Me, I had been sitting on one of its Reeboks, and suddenly found myself flying. I was launched into the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young me with no flying trapeze. I sailed over Sfherg's eyestalks and crashed into one of the legs of the spaceship. I slid to the ground, feeling very much like Wile E. Coyote.

I stood up and shook my head. I think something rattled around in there. I leaned against the leg for a second, gathering my wits, noticing how soft the leg was, almost like real fur. Then I remembered Sfherg and the hydrant. Sfherg had obviosuly not expected me to go flying like that, and both of its eyestalks had moved to watch my flight. The hydrant was evidently curious as well, and had stopped in mid-step to see where I landed. Now that I was down, though, it continued to walk.

The hydrant paid about as much attention to where it was stepping as any normal human would with respect to the sidewalk. In other words, it was much more intent on catching me and the Spam than it was in watching out for small fuzzy aliens named Sfherg that might be standing in its path. Sfherg was not any better, its attention still being focused on me. As a result, no one but me saw the action as the hydrant stepped on Sfherg. I tried to yell, but it was already too late. Sfherg's body exploded in a puff of pink alien fuzz, much like the down that flies when a pillow is ripped open. As the fuzz slowly drifted toward the ground, I noticed that Sfherg's little lavender banana had flown away from the scene of the accident and had landed near my feet. Following my previous pattern for the day, I picked it up and put in in my pocket. ``GIVE SPAM!'' boomed the fire hydrant, oblivious to what it had just done.

``Broken record,'' I thought.

I looked up at the spaceship, which was eyeing me intently again. Maybe I looked like a chew toy to it. I pointed at the pile of fluff that had once been Sfherg. ``Well?'' I said. ``Aren't you going to do something? That fire hydrant just stepped on your master! Sic 'em, boy!'' The spaceship looked at the hydrant, growled, and leapt to the attack. If there had been a throat on the hydrant, the spaceship would have ripped it out. However, there was not, so it just tried to get a grip on one of the knobs on the side of the hydrant's head. The grip was not a very good one, given that teeth do not grasp rounded metal very well, and the spaceship began to slip off.

``GO AWAY!''

The fire hydrant struck out with one arm and caught the spaceship in the midsection. With a yelp of pain, the spaceship let go and fell behind the hydrant. Assuming that the trouble was gone, the fire hydrant resumed its progress toward me. I knew by now that I would never be able to outdistance the hydrant again, and, besides, the spaceship was not yet out of the fight. Quietly, the spaceship had returned to it feet, and it leapt again, this time from behind. It latched onto one of the fire hydrant's arms, and refused to let go. The hydrant hit it on the head a couple of times, but this only drove the metal teeth deeper into its arm. Then the hydrant began to spin around. At first, the spaceship's mass kept the spin slow, but they soon built up speed, until the spaceship was lifted clear of the ground. The street was just wide enough for this stunt to be manageable. Faster and faster they spun, until they were little more than a red and silver blur. Then the hydrant lurched to the side a few feet. This had the effect of slamming the spaceship's aft section into a building the next time it came around. Although pieces of glass and brick flew from the collision, the building survived basically intact. The spaceship was not quite so lucky. Its rear legs and tail were completely sheared off, falling in a crumpled heap on the sidewalk and the solitary remaining parked car. Other bits and pieces of the midsection were scattered all over the area, and probably for several blocks in every direction. I sidestepped one of the front paws, but several smaller chunks hit me. I protected my face with my arms, however, and so managed to escape with just a few cuts and bruises.

Half destroyed as it was, the spaceship's jaws relaxed and opened, and its remains fell of the hydrant's arm, crushing what remained of the car below. The hydrant itself still seemed dizzy from its spin, and lurched drunkenly from side to side. However, it had little problem finding me again, although I suspect it saw three or four of me, not just one.

Weaving slightly, the hydrant took a step toward me, and then another. Then it seemed to lose its footing, but caught itself against the damaged building to its side, leaving a fire hydrant-shaped imprint in the bricks. Quite the first impression. It righted itself, took another step with the same foot, and slipped again. It twisted halfway around and got its legs all tangled up. Then it started to fall over. Its arms flailing wildly, trying to stop its fall, it tipped over, slowly at first, then faster.

``SPAAAAAAAAAAM!''

It was then that I realized that it was falling straight toward me. For the past several seconds, I had been so intently watching Sfherg and the fight between the fire hydrant and the spaceship that I had given little thought to running away. Now, however, I did run. As I ran down the street, the thought briefly crossed my mind that I should just run to one side or the other, and the hydrant would thereby miss me. My legs, however, refused to act on that thought. All they had to do was get some fifty feet down the street, and they would avoid getting crushed by falling fire hydrants. After a short time, I was fairly sure that I had indeed made it into the safe zone, but I was not about to stop and check. If I did, I would be almost certain to find that I was just short, and would get pounded into the ground. It turned out, however, that I had reached safety, as I heard the crash as the hydrant hit behind me. I slowed down and started to turn around in order to see what the damage was when I was suddenly hit by a huge wall of water.

It did its best to force its way into my lungs, but I steadfastly refused to admit it. Failing to drown me, the wall of water decided it would just try to bash me senseless against the street. This it did a fair job of, tumbling me down the street, soundly knocking my head against the asphalt twice. Luckily, Wall Street has a sufficient number of storm drains, and the wall of water soon became little more than a picket fence, and then stopped carrying me altogether. I stood up, dripping wet. There is nothing I like less than to be sopping wet while fully clothed. No, I take that back-- it is much worse to be fully clothed and covered in warm taffy, but that is another story. I finished turning around, and began to walk back up the street so I could see what remained of the New York financial district. With each step, I left a sizeable puddle behind.

Upon hitting the street, the stress had evidently been too much for the hydrant, and its top had shattered, releasing all of the water pent up inside. Even now, a small stream was still cascading out of the wreckage, with no sign of stopping soon. I felt it safe to assume that the hydrant was indeed quite dead. I walked around to its feet, just in time to see the twelve-foot long Reeboks vanish into thin air. The hydrant's huge feet, still clad in red and white striped socks, shriveled up and curled in on themselves, disappearing inside the hydrant's body. All that was left was a brown and yellow mass that had been stuck to the bottom of one of the shoes, the sole remains of my .38 Magnum banana.

I surveyed the carnage. The remains of the German Shepherd-shaped spaceship, the last light just fading from it eyes, lay on the totaled car. A small pile of pink fuzz, all that was left of Sfherg, slowly drifted away on the autumn breeze. Sfherg's lavender banana sat in one of my pockets, and the can of Spam weighed down the other. I picked up what was left of my .38 Magnum banana to see if it was salvageable, but it was not, so I threw it onto the sidewalk. In the window of the damaged building, the neon sign flickered once, twice, and went dark. The cloud vortex overhead was starting to dissipate. In the silence that pervaded the scene, the fire hydrant seemed rather less frightening, with the thin stream of water still bubbling out of it and flowing into the New York sewer system. Well, at least the street was clean.

In the distance, I heard the police sirens start up as they were dispatched to the scene. They would clean up everything and repair all the damage. They would not want me around; this I had learned several times in the past. They would not even want a statement from me, preferring to keep the whole thing quiet. Nonetheless, I pulled one of my business cards from my wallet and stuck it on the still damp nose of the spaceship. No sense in making them wonder.

The whole thing would be hushed up, covered up, buried six feet under. In next to no time, no one would remember anything about it. Even ``Okra Winfrey'' would probably just pass it off as a stomach cramp or something. But I knew what had happened, and that was all that mattered.

So, with my underwear starting to hitch up as it dried, I started off toward the Five Happiness restaurant and my luncheon appointment, for which I was now quite overdue. Sidestepping a chunk of debris, I took out Sfherg's little heat beam-shooting banana and sighted along it, thinking that it really was a pity tabloids.

James Drew is... well, he just is. He is supposedly a graduate student halfway through with his Master's at the University of Oregon, but he really wants to... to... sing! (No, no, no! That's a lie!) He really wants to just rationalize his Computer Science studies as a way of earning money so he can pursue his real interest: writing. Writing science fiction, writing fantasy, writing comic books. Writing the Constitution of the United States. That's been done? Oh, damn.

He can be reached at the address jdrew@cs.uoregon.edu