Deluded Custodians join the Space Race

Sound the Sirens! Mars is Attacking!

A Kurt outcome for some shady characters.

Welcome to this month’s Deluded Custodians challenge. You can read the rules here. I certainly didn’t!

So yeh, Kurt Vonnegut, something, something, something, a character of your choosing, who would you be.

Well, I decided to be Unk from the Sirens of Titan, and just like Unk, I really can’t remember much. So, I pretty much forgot what I was doing here and went off on a tangent.

Yes, Ann James, I know what you’re thinking, “bloody typical”, but as custodians, we are deluded by name and deluded by nature.

Let the delusion begin!

A massive crowd had formed at the mansion of former tech gazillionaire, Dark Fukkennerd.

Despite a trillion dollar marketing budget for his last ditch project, the Betterverse, only a single user had signed up.

Chloe from marketing had warned that connecting up users via The Probing Company’s proprietary mind-expanding anal probe wasn’t a great idea, but Dark didn’t listen.

His CTO, Bradd, a keen enthusiast for the project, was getting kickbacks from The Probing Company. If only Dark had read one of over two dozen cover stories in the New York Crimes, The Pacific, amongst others, he would have known.

Unfortunately, he didn’t read much beyond his self-published “The Burden of Genius”.

Now, this mansion was all he had left.

After the collapse of the Betterverse he knew he had to pull the plug.

Yet, at the fateful moment, something strange happened. Aliens from Tralfamador, in one of the most brutal miscalculations in galactic history, had summised that taking over the Betterverse would ultimately give them complete control over the human race.

As Dark pulled the plug, to his shock and amazement, the Betterverse continued to function. Dark immediately fell into a coma from which he is yet to awake.

On the north wall of the mansion was a huge screen showing what was happening in the Betterverse. Since Dark fell into a coma, absolutely nothing had moved on the screen.

After six months in a coma, Dark had still not awaken, yet he began to mutter over and over again,

“7pm. 7th September, 2077. 7pm. 7th September, 2077. 7pm. 7th September, 2077…”

The world assumed that this meant something was going to happen on the screen at this time. The greatest mystery surrounding the Betterverse was:

“Who had the one sign up been?”

All would be revealed.

It was 6:50pm, 7th September, 2077 when the crowd surrounding the mansion parted like the Red Sea to make way for a 120 metre long limousine that slowly glided through the crowd and pulled up in front of the screen.

The door opened and out stepped Eloi Mush, the richest man in the world. He waved and the crowd went wild.

He held up his left wrist and pointed at his Mango Watch.

“Ten minutes to go!”

The crowd went wild again.

Mush not only owned The Probing Company, he now controlled the social media platform, Coq, the extra, extra longform blogging site, Tedium, and the incel-based suite of business software, Microcock. He also owned the swankiest resorts on both Mars and Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.

After some chit chat with the crowd the clock ticked over to 7pm.

The crowd fell silent and every eye was fixed on the screen.

Way off in the distance a small dot appeared. Gradually, the dot got bigger and before long the dot resolved into a small figure running into the foreground.

The figure grew in size as it got closer and it looked like it was frantically trying to wave its arms. It wasn’t succeeding because the figure appeared to have no arms.

The one user was about to be revealed and the atmosphere was electric. Just then, the figure came into focus and the crowd gave a collective gasp.

It was Fukkennerd himself.

“Help me! Help me! You have to help get me out of here. To Mars, to Mars. You have to get to Mars, it’s the only way you can save me!”

Just then, Fukkennerd ran out of the left side of the screen and once again, the screen fell completely still.

Mush knew that Fukkennerd had been talking directly to him. A coincidence? He was heading to Mars that day anyway.

“Well, I don’t want to be in too much of a hurry to save Fukkennerd.”

He decided to throw a party instead.

Sprawling over several months, it was the wildest party in history. Mush was in his element with some of the hottest women in the solar system.

As he scanned the party he spotted a particularly handsome and sexy trio. It was Red Nohandsmum, Tinker Quick and Sim Gymdashian. He yelled out to his brother, the renowned sculptor, Ron Mush. He pointed at the trio.

“Ron! Ron! This.”

“I need a completely life-like 50m tall sculpture of these lovely ladies for my resort on Titan. I’m going to call it The Sirens of Titan”.

As the party grinded on, the crowd slowly fell away until only Red and Eloi remained.

Eloi was pleased as it was Red who had been giving him the most consistent erections during the party.

It looked like Red might be about to leave, too. Eloi knew he had to hit her with a killer line, something that would reflect his intellect, sophistication and all round good charm.

“Hey baby, wanna shag?”

“Sure Eloi. In exchange for your Mars Base Veronica”.

Mars Base Veronica was the swankiest of his swanky resorts. The jewel in his crown. He was overcome by another erection.

“OK!”

The next day, Red and Eloi boarded a ship to Mars.

“Listen hear, Eloi, no sex until we get to Mars and Mars Base Veronica is officially in my hands.”

Mush was beside himself. Maybe if he could convince Red to try one of his anal probes he could speed the plough?

“I don’t know, Eloi. How do I know if I can trust that thing? Maybe you should give me a demonstration just to prove its safe?”

“Perfectly safe! Let me demonstrate!”

And just like that, the trap was sprung.

Mush awoke with a stabbing pain in his buttocks.

“Where am I?”

“Mars Base Australia. It’s a giant penal colony. We’re all here for the term of our unnaturally extended life.”

It was at this moment the Mush realised he didn’t remember anything and that he had no idea who he was.

“Who are you? You just came in yesterday.”

Just then, someone shoved him from behind, “Get out of the way Uncle Old Man.”

“Who? Who? I don’t know.”

He was now Uncle Old Man. Soon this devolved and everyone just called him Unk.

Mars Base Australia was red and desolate. For the first few days he just sat there, looking out at the bitter horizon.

After a few days the first memory began to stir.

“Red. Red. A colour, a rock, the horizon. Red everywhere. Red. A person? A person!”

The sun was just setting and he was starting to recall his first real memory.

He awoke next morning with a stabbing pain in his buttocks and once again, he could remember nothing.

By sunset, that first memory had began to emerge again.

After a few days it dawned on him that just as his memories were coming back, they would be wiped every morning. If he could hang onto that memory, perhaps he wouldn’t need to start again every morning. He needed to start recording every memory as it emerged. However, the first thing he was going to need to remember was that he was recording his memories.

Months past and the story was beginning to take shape. He was Eloi Mush, former richest man in the world and his entire empire, and future, was now in the hands of the Sirens of Titan.

Except for his fellow inmates, he was entirely on his own.

Wait, there was one man. Fukkennerd.

He had to set him free, if only he could remember how.

After another month, it was starting to come back to him. The Tralfamadorians were using a relay on Mars to control the Betterverse. If he could destroy the relay, the Betterverse would finally collapse and Fukkennerd would be free.

The Sirens had caught on, realising Unk was no longer in an empty brain state.

Unk had told everyone in Mars Base Australia what was going on so there was no way they could return him to his memorylessness. They needed a new plan. If they could facilitate Unk’s escape in circumstances under their control, perhaps they could kill two birds with one stone?

They needn’t have bothered. Unk had come up with a plan so ludicrous that it would never work. They just needed it to not work in a way that would take Fukkennerd down as well.

The next morning Unk awoke and refilled his memory.

He needed to get to Titan.

Surely there would still be some loyal subjects there?

Along with Fukkennerd, they would be the two most genius geniuses in history and they would construct the mightiest armada and conquer Earth.

That morning a new inmate called Phil appeared.

Miraculously, he arrived with a means of escape, transportation that could get them to the relay and a spaceship at Mars Base Central that could then get Unk to Titan. Oh, and he could probably forge up some documents to get Fukkennerd off Earth.

The next morning the plan was hatched.

Four days later they had made it to the relay. Unk was able to access the Betterverse from the console.

“It’s Eloi. I’m about to get you out of there.”

“Eloi? I don’t think so. Where is all your hair and what’s with the two foot long beard?”

“Forget it. I’m actually Unk. Eloi has sent me to rescue you. Here’s the plan. I’m going to disconnect the relay, the Betterverse will collapse and you should awake from your coma.”

“Should?”

“Will. Definitely will. Anyway, I’m going to send you some fake documents so we can rendezvous at Mars Base Central in five days. I’ve got a ship there that will get us to Titan. On Titan, we’ll build an armada and conquer Earth.”

Unk disconnected the relay and five days later, he, Phil and Fukkennerd were sitting in a spaceship ready to go to Titan.

“Hey guys, there’s a great cafe around the corner and would you mind if I quickly went and got a coffee for the trip?”.

While Phil was out getting a coffee, something happened.

“Did you feel that? It’s like everything just blacked out for a moment.”

“Yeh, like a temporary coma or something.”

Fukkennerd was still traumatised from his time in the Betterverse.

Just then, an alarm sounded and a voice came over the public address. “Intruders in Bay X17. Intruders in Bay X17.”

They looked out of the cockpit window. They were in Bay X17. Where was Phil?

There was loud banging on the Bay door.

“We’re just going to have to go without him.”

That, of course, was the plan.

They landed on Titan and it looked like the entire place had been nuked.

All that remained was the 50m tall sculpture, The Sirens of Titan. They got out and looked up at the towering sculpture.

The spaceship contained all the equipment and robotics they would need to mine the resources and then build their armada. They got to work immediately.

Three years later, the armada was ready.

“When Titan moves behind Mars, we’ll launch and stay in Mars’ shadow until we hit Mars. Then, we’ll move out into the open. They’ll never see us coming.”

There was one small detail they had missed. The Sirens of Titan was not in fact 50 metres tall, it was 50 centimetres tall.

During that brief blackout they’d been shrunk down to one hundredth of the original size.

Once the fleet penetrated Earth’s atmosphere, Unk and Fukkennerd began to suspect there might be a scale problem.

The entire fleet landed on an outdoor ottoman at Gymdashian’s villa.

Gymdashian knew they were coming. She walked out onto the patio and sat on them.

With one fell swoop, the invasion, along with Mush and Fuckenerd, was squashed.