Has it already been almost six weeks? Time flies, doesn’t it? Well, as promised, The Man Who Had No End of Garden Fence Troubles got written eventually, and I took my time with writing it (although it didn’t take the full six weeks, just a couple of days – busy busy, other things, blah blah blah). I don’t know what to think of the end product, though. I know I’ve said that before, but this one is just… dunno.
Anyways, here it is. The next batch of restrictions will go up tomorrow (probably) but it’s no longer a weekly challenge, so the story (probably) won’t go up this week. Stay tuned.
Title: The Man Who Had No End of Garden Fence Troubles
Premise: So, an advanced alien civilization does hundreds of thousands of routine invasions of less developed species around the universe almost daily. They hire loads of staff who remotely oversee and manage these invasions from their desks, and are mostly bored and underpaid employees at the bottom of the corporate food chain. Our story follows one such alien through his daily routine, charting his catastrophic blunders and incompetence that destroys many small civilizations.
Dialogue: “Listen, I’m not sure I can legally do what you’re asking here…”
Technical: Every sentence has to have the letter ‘z’.
The Man Who Had No End of Garden Fence Troubles
A pleasure to meet you, my name is Zorbek. Zorbek Gumzlow. I am a Zerdu from the planet Zerduntsinub, in the Zoigolonio system, but I work for Zoop Acquisitions, the largest interplanetary mergers and acquisitions company in the known universe. Our mission statement here at Zoop is simple: ‘if we want you, we’ll take you, even if we have to destroy you in the process’.
At Zoop my official title is ‘Interplanetary, Terrestrial and Civilatory Acquisitions Officer’; ‘civilatory’ may not be a word on your planet, but it is on mine. But my colleagues have a different title for me: Womplungzapingzow. Womplungzapingzow, literally translated, means ‘the man with garden fence troubles’. But what Womplungzapingzow really means is more akin to what a man with garden fence troubles has, in the sense that if you have an issue with your garden fence, unless you have a pet that likes to get out and run amok, it is unlikely a serious issue, but inevitably the issue will be overblown, because of some hissy neighbours, shoddy workmen, a council with serious prioritisation issues, or any other bunch of crap that results in a total catastrophe, you wishing your fence never existed in the first place, and the total annihilation of one or several civilisations of lesser beings that reside in your backyard thanks to fifteen hundred percent activity trampling their natural habitat to death simply because you pressed the wrong button one or two or twenty times and it’s not like anyone’s going to miss the Betelgeese anyway.
Or something like that anyway – the interdepartmental politics at Zoop can get pretty complicated.
My day starts between the sunsrise, when I am awoken by six alarms that I snooze about four times each (I’m not good with mornings) and follow a pretty typical daily routine – I shower, shave, break my fast with the blood of a small mammal, get dressed, brush my teeth, put on my tie (always put your tie on after you brush your teeth – this is probably advice you have heard before, but I can tell you from personal experience, you absolutely should follow it), and finally kiss my wife, Zala, goodbye, before I leave. Unfortunately I do not get to include an extra step where I collect my briefcase, as my job at Zoop is not relevant enough for me to need a briefcase.
My commute into work is not pleasant – I lost my pilot’s license in an unfortunate zapango-related incident, and have to catch the two hour shuttle to make the interplanetary jump between Zerduntsinub and Zerdanitzao, the planet where my office is located. It isn’t the main Zoop office – that’s located on Zerdinzibub – where they do the upper tier civilisation takeovers. At my office on Zerdanitzao we handle tiers fourteen through twenty, the lowest levels of civilisation in the universe – for reference, your ants would be tier sixteen (understand what I meant about the fence thing, now?).
Normally, when I reach the office, my day drags along slowly, with little to note, but today is different – today is Zong Day. Every Zong Day, Zoop holds a special promotion drive, where one being from every department is guaranteed to be promoted to a higher tier, usually the highest ranked acquirer, but not always, so there’s always a chance it will be me. They monitor our terminals from the Zoop main office, and at some point during the day we receive a notice about who gets the promotion, so it is essential that we maintain a perfect day’s work, just in case.
When I finally arrive I have to take the stairs, as all of the remote lifting machines mess with my zibo. On my way to them, I cross paths with Noz, one of my colleagues in the department.
“Good morning, Zorbek,” he says, nodding his head ever so slightly.
“Good morning, Noz,” I reply in kind. Though our greeting is genial, Noz actually hates me. We were best friends when we were younger, but he stole my girlfriend, Zil, in college. They’re married now, but the joke’s on him – she’s a total zonch. Noz knows I let him steal her, and he’s never forgiven me for it.
When I reach my cubicle I sit down at my desk and activate my Zublof machine. The Zublof is named for one of the most efficient acquirers in company history. It is said that Zublof singlehandedly acquired over four million civilisations over a thirty year career, before an assassin finally managed to get him. That was just after I started at Zoop – they say you can still hear the echoes of his screams in the bowels of the building, late at night.
My Zublof tells me there’s a promising option on the planet Nubligar. I press a button and accidentally wipe out an entire race of zabovians. It isn’t entirely my fault – the buttons for zoonc (integrate) and zoonk (mercilessly annihilate so completely that the screams of the countless generations never to be born ring through the cosmos for the next thousand years) look the same, and are right next to each other. I can never remember which is which, but who can blame me, I can barely tell a zinch from a zanoo.
Considering my chances for a Zong Day promotion have just been flushed down the yorviz, I decide to take an early lunch. For six hours, by the time I make the trip to the closest food establishment, back on Zerduntsinub. The shuttle is a four hour round trip, where it used to take me just twenty minutes, before the, uh… zapango.
When I eventually get back to the office I have a notification showing that Noz got the promotion, and another notification showing that my superior wishes to see me. Before I go over to Noz to wish him congratulations, as I know he would have done to me, even though it would not have been genuine coming from either party, I hit zoonc on the next civilisation on my Zublof – Gazramonians, I believe it said, I wasn’t really paying it much attention – because, as they say, ‘a right and a left puts the nyinrod back on straight’.
My superior is a Betelgeesian called Yarg, and when I reach his office he calls me inside and after an uncomfortably long wait gestures for me to sit at his desk (which has a small sign upon it that reads ‘zookeeper’ – I believe he believes he is being ironic) before he asks me why I didn’t close the door, at which point I get up and close the door and then site back down again. Yarg is bright red in the face, and whenever I am near him he oozes hatred for me, which I cannot blame him for, as I did (in my defence, inadvertently) make him a member of an endangered species, though in my humble opinion I was doing him a favour, as he now enjoys a minor celebrity which got him his supervisor’s role in the first place, and in all honesty the Betelgeese weren’t exactly a friendly species anyway.
“Zorbek,” says Yarg, his head leaning back so far I’m actually drawn to make eye contact with the folds in his quadruple chin, “I have something important to discuss with you. As you know, Noz has received the Zong promotion, so he’ll be shifting departments. That leaves us with his role to fill, and I’m thinking you, Zorbek, are the man for it.”
As you may recall, I said that Yarg hates my guts, so as you can probably imagine, right about now I was practically zinging my zanutsens, waiting for the-
“But,” Yarg continues, holding up a pudgy finger, “Womplungzapingzow, we both know your track record isn’t perfect. The next thing to come across your desk will be a report on the Gazramonians. Whatever you do, they must go zoonk. They’re a plague species, and if we try to zoonc them they’ll have half the systems in the universe destroyed in a week. You do it, you replace Noz. But if you screw it up…” he grinned like a shark, serrated teeth and all, “…you’re zipped.”
“Zi… not fired?”
“No, Zorbek. Zipped.”
From the way he looks at me, with the relish of a thousand years, I get the impression that he already knows I zoonced them. When I get back to my desk I check my Zublof, but it’s well and truly too late. There’s a short window of time for one to cancel a zoonc protocol, but my meeting with Yarg dragged on and I missed the opportunity.
Luckily there is one other alternative, one that doesn’t require use of the Zublof, but it isn’t strictly… well, it’s the type of thing you would use the phrase ‘it isn’t strictly’ to describe. And, much to the chagrin of my highest sense of azenwoo, it requires going downstairs.
On my way to the stairs I cross paths with an assassin looking for an acquirer called Nizookie. I don’t know any Nizookie, but after the assassin tells me which department he is looking for, I point him in the right direction. We get a lot assassins wandering around Zoop – occupational hazard. I’ve had three come after me myself, because of the Betelgeuse incident (I suspect Yarg may have been involved with the hiring of at least one) but the Zoop security is so efficient that very few succeed. The current record is two hundred and nine attempts (held by Zublof himself) but that number goes well up over three hundred if you count the individual assassins, as after the first hundred attempts or so they started sending them in two and threes.
I make it downstairs and head for Goozol’s office. Goozol’s role is to be a noiboloshivoziwitz, and because of that he has access to systems that regular acquirers don’t. If anyone can help me out, it’s Goozol.
When I get there, we make pleasantries, he asks me what I’ve debased myself to come all this way down for, and I say, “Goozol, I need you to cancel the last zoonc from my Zublof, and change it to a zoonk, if you can.”
“You missed your window,” Goozol replies, stating the blatantly obvious.
He turns his attention back to his specially enhanced Zublof and starts clacking away. After a while I realise what he’s typing is not a zoonc cancellation order.
“Goozol?”
“Listen, I’m not sure I can legally do what you’re asking here…”
“Yarg threatened to zip me, Goozol. It needs to be a zoonk.”
“He’s going to zip you?”
“Can you cancel the zoonc or not?”
“Done,” says Goozol, “it’s done. I’ve changed it to a zoonk. You’re zip free.”
“Thanks, Goozol.”
“Anytime, Zorbek.”
Crisis averted, and by now, it’s close to finishing time, so I head back up to my cubicle and give my Zublof a cursory glance. It has nothing new, so I generate a quick message for Yarg to let him know that the Gazramonian order is taken care of.
My trip back home to Zerduntsinub is as long and disenchanting as my journey in. I get home late, and Zala is already asleep. She stirs a little when I get into our noizench sack, but she doesn’t wake, and I settle myself down for the four hours’ sleep I get before I have to wake and my day begins all over again.
All in all, a pretty standard day at Zoop, but I can’t complain – after all, I got a promotion.