Match of the Day
I: First Contact
by Michael S.
Collins
Once the
spaceship landed, there were two types of
witnesses of the problem – those close
enough to see what the problem was, and those who
were still alive. This was highly inconvenient,
since the local polytechnic was shut due to a
lack of government funding, and so there was a
distinct lack of available student cannon fodder.
In between the mud and blood that mingled in the
softly falling rain, the local authorities
assessed the situation.
Which was this.
During morning break, the completely woeful
parking of an interstellar spaceship in the
playground had rudely interrupted the playing of
the children and the boredom of the staff. Now,
as the staffs at Cuthbert’s Primary School
were not trained for such situations, and fearing
irate parents who refused to accept Acts of God
as absolving the school of any blame in the
incident, they had called upon the local law
enforcement. And an ambulance. This was lying to
waste, unused.
The head
teacher was panicking, having had too few smokes
and dozed too long on the spacecraft’s fumes.
Fiddling with his wristwatch, he looked in every
aspect a man completely out of his depth. These
moments occur to us all in life. Perhaps, he
should have taken some refuge in the thought that
his moment of complexion occurred at the same
time as everyone left alive in the area. Life can
often be full of such face saving remedies, if
short on woefully parked spacecraft.
The door to
the spaceship fell forward, crushing an orphaned
football and silencing the milling crowd.
Everyone stood fixated, except for the poor
headmaster, whose nervous disposition and fume
induced asthma attack had turned to a gibbering
wreck. The lights danced upon the gates of the
school and pronounced the heaviest of impending
arrivals. This was the stage the world was set at,
and the arrival of the main characters was
hastily expected. An awe inspired gasp filled the
air. The nearest thing on Earth they could be
described in connection with would be red and
yellow kangaroo/velociraptor hybrids, and even
then they looked nothing like that. Truly alien.
First contact
soon followed. A policeman went over to the group
and dropped dead. That is to say, he just dropped
dead. There was no malicious intent on the aliens
seemingly, no firing of weapons. The man just
plain as day gave up on life on the spot. Perhaps
he had a bad heart? To compound this, another
police officer soon went the same way. People
watching took the only suitable recourse to
action and ran like the wind, screaming all the
way. The first alien watched them with a look of
almost incomprehension before turning to the
headmaster, who was just starting to come around.
This alien flicked through a pamphlet it held in
its claws and read aloud.
“Bonjour!
Nous venons dans la paix.” Silence.
Linguistics was not one of the headmasters strong
points. The creature looked back at its tourist
brochure, and flicked through another few pages
with its claw. “Angleeesh!” It cried.
The headmaster nodded weakly, and it tried again.
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