Confessions of a.. Space Explorer

Confessions of a.. Space Explorer

I met this alien online – at least she said she was an alien, and she invited me to visit her secret landing place in the Azores for.. well, to be perfectly honest, space exploration.
I was a little concerned: I don’t normally trust people who claim they are aliens, online. I mean, come on: anyone can claim to be anything, online.
But Buzzra –her user name, reassured me of her alienity –if that’s the right word, and sent me some pics of her which, as far as I could tell, were the real McCoy.
To be perfectly frank, from what I could tell she was naked in those pics, though nakedness in alien terms is not nakedness in human terms.
I mean pets are naked, aren’t they?
You can’t get in trouble for looking at pictures of naked pets, can you?
Naked aliens?
Still, to be safe, I sent her pictures of me that weren’t – me that is. In fact, I sent her pictures of my dog Altoona, an Irish Wolfhound/Chihuahua mix (giant body, teeny little head).
She was incredulous.
That’s not you, she wrote (actually, she typed “LOL, pull the other one!”)
Yes it is, I typed back.
How can you type so well, with paws, she asked?
You’d be surprised, I bluffed.
I love your tiny head, she confessed.
So we IMmed back and forth and eventually, made plans to meet. She sent me detailed directions to the landing spot in the Azores and, to make a long story short, it was a sting.
Not your usual DA running for re-election saving the world from aliens make a big splash in the newspaper type of sting, but a real sting.
I mean to say that Buzzra was an actual alien, but not like her picture at all.
She wasn’t harmless mass of fur and chocolate jimmies – but, instead, a giant wasp-like alien that preyed on large animals, sucking the life force from them through their tiny snouts.
From my picture –which was actually Altoona, she thought I was the perfect prey: lots of life force, tiny little snout.
So when I showed at the appointed time and place, though she was angry, she was mainly disappointed.
Without a snout into which she could insert her prehensile sucker apparatus, she had no use for me – so she just left me there, with about a dozen other guys and girls who had pretended to have snouts, and blasted off for an uncharted solar system.
End of story?
Of course not.
When I got there - at the prearranged meeting spot in the Azores, besides the actual humans, there were already dozens of dismembered pets strewn about.
Even in the Azores this attracted a lot of attention.
I was one of seventeen who were arrested and charged with a wide variety of odd offenses.
Of course the press got wind of this too: except from public officials, there is no more appealing subject than one of their own in trouble. Soon my face, and that of my completely innocent (though obviously naked) pet Altoona, were quickly splashed across the front pages of several local newspapers.
My defense? Simple.
There is no law against stupidity – though the fines are very large indeed.
I am in deep doodoo, but I didn’t do anything illegal.
The worst that can be said is that I gave in to the national temptation: personal space exploration.
And it wasn’t as if I went out of my way to find Buzzra: she was online, advertising her alienity, and personally invited me to explore.
It’s a clear case of entrapment.
There isn’t a human I know that doesn’t fantasize about space travel.
If the police came to your door today, can you honestly say that your hard drive wouldn’t have a few pics of glowing nebulae or twin giants?
There are other, personal issues of course.
Why an otherwise regular guy –with a wife and family, and a nice home and three cars, and a self-propelled lawn mower would still feel the need to explore space is a question that needs to be answered.
But I have already paid a high price for my ‘indiscretion’: I have had to turn over my entire collection of Star Trek memorabilia to the local authorities; I have been asked to resign my position with the Immigration and Naturalization Service: I have had to trade in my Ford Explorer for a Subaru Forester, for appearances sake.
In many ways my life –at least my life on earth, has been turned upside down.
And from that perspective I have learned something very important about myself, which was probably obvious to everybody but me: I am attracted to aliens.
Now I am coming out of the ‘hangar’, so to speak: admitting to myself that this is who I am.
I may not have fur, or a spout, or an ounce of common sense, but at least I am at peace with my.. fantasy life.
Sad to say, ever since the Azores, Altoona has never been same.