Text Message from Space

Text Message from Space

by Clark Hobbie

As if being kidnapped wasn’t bad enough, Dr. Jessica Ward reflected as she came back to consciousness, I have to be locked up with someone with poor fashion sense.

“Same…ugly…tie,” she managed to say.

Seth DeVore, the other resident of the bare 10′ by 10′ cell, bridled. His yellow tie showed a picture of ‘Marvin the Martian,’ complete with raygun. “I happen to like it.”

Jessica groaned and rolled to a sitting position. She took in the fluorescent lights, the door with the tiny, reinforced window, and the bare walls. “Why” she asked, “did I accept that grant?”

“Well, look on the bright side,” Seth volunteered, “now you know I’m not crazy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look around…who do you think kidnapped us? The Hare Krishnas?”

“Who did kidnap us?”

Seth shifted his eyes. “I think it’s a branch of the CIA.”

“Why’s that?”

“Number 1, this doesn’t fit the profile of the NSA, the FBI, or any other agency in the alphabet soup, and number 2…” he paused.

“Yes?”

“Number 2, they don’t look like Lava Men or Rectillians.”

“Why did they have to put me in here with you?” Jessica growled.

“I have a theory about that too.”

“And what’s that?”

“They’re trying to get me to talk!” Abruptly Seth leapt to his feet and pounded on the door. “It’s not going to work, you bastards! Roswell! Roswell!”

“Uh…what could you possibly tell them that you haven’t already?”

Seth dropped back into a sitting position. “You have a point.”

Jessica thought back to the day she met Seth.

* * *

Here comes the crazy man, Jessica thought as Seth DeVore knocked on the door to her office. At least he’s punctual. Seth, an intense man in his 40’s, strode into her office and held out his hand. He wore a fairly nice jacket that barely cover his paunch and clashed loudly with his Marvin the Martian tie. He wore thick glasses and sneakers.

Anyone who’s giving me 10 million dollars is allowed to be slightly crazy, Jessica said to herself and shook the proffered hand. Jessica, or Dr. Ward as she sometimes pointed out to people, was another intense person. She had been with the University of Texas for the past 4 years and was in her 30’s, with black hair and contact lenses. In a former age she would have worn coke bottle glasses but not a pocket protector (not being quite that geeky). She was 5’2″ and took her work, which ended up being most of her life, seriously.

“So,” she began, “you’d like to fund my research.”

“Yes, and in particular the area of carbon sequestration. I want you to spend at least $1 million on that, but you can do whatever research you like with the rest of the money.”

Jessica needed to tread carefully around the next subject. “And you want to do this because of what aliens have told you?” OK, that could have been a bit more politic.

DeVore winced but answered “Basically, yes, that’s about the size of it.”

“What do you do, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I used to work for SETI ? the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.”

“And then?”

DeVore sighed. “Then I was…contacted…by the ETs.”

“Contacted how?”

“They sent me a text message.”

“Look, I don’t have time for this…”

“The money is real,” Seth pointed out hastily.

“The area you want me to research is a dead-end. We looked at it before.”

“Not using the approach I’m suggesting.”

Jessica massaged her temples. “The grant money…you’ll give it to me before I start?”

“You can check with the bank, all you have to do is agree. If you want another grant you have to show some progress.”

Stay positive, Jessica told herself, it is 10 million dollars… Jessica gave DeVore a look. “What you’re asking for is not terribly difficult…it’s just not the best use of your resources.”

DeVore jumped out of his chair and started pacing Jessica’s office. Just about every horizontal space was taken up with grant proposals so Seth could only manage one or two steps before he had to turn around again.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone said I was crazy to join SETI. Then I started getting the texts.”

“Just you?”

“Well, no. Actually the whole team got them…but I was the only one who took them seriously!”

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“He started sending me stock tips.”

“And the advice paid off?”

“You have no idea…” DeVore got a dreamy, far-away look as he said this.

“And you want to use this money to…”

“To save the Human Race!” Seth almost shouted. He glanced around and piped down a bit. “I mean, this money isn’t really mine, you know. It has to be used to better mankind before it’s too late.”

“Why don’t the aliens just land a flying saucer and do it themselves?” Jessica asked, interested despite herself.

“It doesn’t work like that. Apparently, the Martians can tap into our communications network, but they can’t come and visit us. Something about quorum estrangement.”

“You mean quantum entanglement?”

“Something like that ? I don’t really understand it.”

“You know what? I don’t care! If the money is for real, I can hire a whole staff of slaves…”

“Don’t you mean graduate students?”

“Same thing. I can hire a whole staff and some of them can investigate this wacky idea of yours.”

“It’s not wacky ? mollusks do it all the time.”

“A microbe that is optimized to produce calcium carbonate to the exclusion of all else is not exactly something that is going be useful to said organism.”

“But,” and here Seth shook his finger at Jessica, “it would be very useful,” (shake, shake, shake), “if you wanted,”( shake, shake, shake), “to sequester a lot of carbon dioxide in a hurry!”

“Whatever!”

DeVore stormed out of her office. “I’ll have my banker contact you!”

“What a nut,” Jessica growled, and got back to her grant proposals.

She worked steadily through the day barely noticing when night closed in. She switched on her lamp. Round about 7 o’clock another faculty member knocked on Jessica’s door.

“A bunch of us were going to drop by the bar to have a drink. Care to go?”

Jessica looked up.

“Thanks, but I need to finish these,” she said, gesturing at the stacks of proposal forms.

“Right, just thought I’d check.” The guy disappeared. A brief snippet of conversation could be heard. “Same old same old.”

Jessica shrugged and got back to work.

* * *

Seth drove home in his expensive, stylish, happenin’ sports car. Another car passed him on the road and for the umpteenth time, he felt strangely annoyed. After a series of underpasses and overpasses, side streets and byways, he arrived at his large, luxurious house. He stared at it for a second and wished he could live someplace like that, then realized that he did.

Typing in his secret code, “ET PHONE HOME,” the gates opened silently and admitted him. He drove up to the garage and got out of his car, going through the “servant’s entrance,” as the attractive real estate broker had described it. After a moment he came out, went around to the front door and entered his house again.

He brooded for a bit in the hall, then walked to the kitchen. Opening a fridge, he took out a frozen meal from a stack of identical boxes in the freezer and popped it into the microwave. He waited impatiently for the thing to finish.

Grabbing a fork and knife from a drawer, he took the meal into the dining room. The big room had a table that could accommodate 8 people with ease, but Seth was the only one there, sitting at the head of the table. He looked out the window at the view of the city and wondered what Dr. Ward was doing. Idly, he prodded the half frozen goop that was his dinner.

* * *

Eleven o’clock found Dr. Ward still working on proposals, though she was showing signs of fatigue. She yawned, stretched, and got to her feet. She reached up to turn off the lamp and paused, looking around at her office for a moment. Then she turned out the light.

She trudged wearily out to the parking lot. Her car stood alone under a light post. She walked out to it, looking neither right nor left, and got in. Starting up the engine she drove to her tiny apartment where she warmed up some canned soup and ate dinner. As she was getting into bed she thought about DeVore ? it would be nice to free up all the time that she spent working on grant proposals. That way she could concentrate on research.

* * *

Back in the cell, Jessica glared at Seth. “I should have dropped the whole stupid project when you made your first ‘suggestion.'”

“Hey, they worked, didn’t they?”

“That’s beside the point.”

“As if the initial idea wasn’t stupid enough.”

“What’s so stupid about trying to stop global warming?”

“Nothing, but your approach is.”

Seth glared at Jessica, “I just wanted to make sure they didn’t get out of hand.”

“Why would they get out of hand?”

Seth opened his mouth to reply, but Jessica cut him off, “Oh yeah, you thought this was from Martians.”

Seth sulked for a bit then said: “When I first found out about them I didn’t believe it either.”

* * *

“Dood: are you the guy from SETI?” the text message appeared on his phone one day.

Seth was sitting in his ‘office,’ actually the basement of his mom’s house, when the message appeared. The office was crammed with magazines with titles like UFO Watch, and posters adorned the walls with proclamations like ‘I want to believe.’

Seth had been examining a small, anomalous radio source. Seth had been with SETI for over 3 years. This was the most promising lead he had seen. The star was emitting slightly more radio waves than normal. He was thinking about the life choices that had brought him to this point when he got that first text from Marvin.

“Who the hell are you? How did you get this number?” Seth texted back.

“I am a Martian, we know everything.”

“Except who the number belongs to. Now go away.”

That had been the first of a barrage of texts that he had gotten from someone identifying himself as “Marvin the Martian.” Seth would have written it off as a random crank but when he found out that everyone else at SETI was also getting the messages he decided that it was a very specific crank.

“I am trying to save the Earth!” another text proclaimed.

“Fuck off.”

But the messages hadn’t stopped. He was just about to ask the police for help when he made the mistake of asking a question.

“How do I know you are a Martian? Mars doesn’t have any life on it.” Seth sent one day, when he was bored enough to consider continuing the conversation.

“I’m not actually from Mars, but saying that makes it sound more leet.”

“So if you’re not from Mars, where are you from?”

“I’m from the other side of the galaxy.”

“And you can prove it?”

“Yeah, check out my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/marvinthemartian.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Seth brought up a browser and loaded the page.

“Who wrote this site?”

“I did! I know, it is super advanced because of almost god-like superior technology…”

The site was black, with dancing gophers across the top and bottom of the page. In the center was an incredibly fake looking picture of a Martian. The picture showed a green skinned individual smiling at the camera. The creature had no nose, a small body, and a huge head. Its face was dominated by large, pupil-less black eyes that gave him an Asian look.

Underneath the picture was some scrolling text, in eye-bleeding red-yellow blinking font, that said:

“People of planet Earth: I am here to help you save your planet before it’s too late!!!!!”

Once the page was fully loaded, the “Battlestar: Galactica” theme music started playing (in 8-bit synthesizer).

The visitor count near the bottom of the page showed a grand total of 135 page views.

When Seth was done laughing he texted him another message:

“Very funny. Now who is this really?”

“My name is Marvin.”

“And that’s your real name?”

“My real name has a telepathic component, so it cannot be translated easily to your primitive human-talk. Best just to leave it at Marvin.”

“OK, you’ve had your little prank, now stop bothering me.”

But the messages continued. Marvin’s goal was to stop global warming by creating new form of algae that would consume greenhouse gases much more efficiently than existing species. In order to fund the endeavor, Marvin provided a number of stock tips.

Seth was close to calling the cops when he noticed one of the companies was in the news, having surpassed Wall Street’s predictions. Seth went back and looked at all the other stock picks that Marvin had sent him. Each one had been a big winner.

Seth began to take Marvin a little more seriously. He opened a trading account and began buying and selling the securities that Marvin told him about. Within a year he had made a million dollars. After ten years he was a billionaire.

It would be nice to say that from that point on Seth had worked tirelessly on coming up with a solution for global warming, but the truth was that a couple of years were lost while he threw endless parties or wooed women who valued money more than other aspects of a man’s appearance.

After a few years, Seth was burnt out on the party scene and was ready to seriously begin working with Marvin. It helped that the job at hand, saving the Earth, was such a noble goal.

* * *

“So when you were sick of floozies and partying you felt guilty?” Jessica’s statement rudely wrenched Seth back to the present.

“No! It was the feeling of the titanic responsibility to use this new fortune for the betterment of all mankind!”

“Is this when the Martians started telling you to work with scientists?”

“Yes.”

“And what made me stand out?”

“You were in the right field, you appeared to be basically competent, but you were underfunded.”

Jessica glared at Seth. “I’ll have you know I was this close to getting a grant from the National Institute of Science, and then I wouldn’t have needed your money!”

“As I recall, the additional funding made quite a difference in what you were able to do.”

Yeah, you could say that again. Jessica thought back to how things had changed.

* * *

Overnight, she had gone from 1 graduate student to over 50. She needed a bunch of them just to keep the others in line. And then there had been her “crack” team.

It wasn’t that the team members were bad students. On the contrary, they all had 4.0 averages. It was just that they were all a little quirky. One, for example, had an orange Mohawk and an annoying tendency to blow bubbles with her chewing gum during staff meetings. Another always seemed to be listening to his iPod and had more facial piercings than seemed possible. A third could barely understand spoken English. The last two, the “twins,” were friendly and talkative. In fact it was hard to get them to shut up. At all.

Leading this group was an annoying, self-important twit who was renowned in the department for being a slave driver rather than having any interesting scientific ideas.

Jessica still remembered the first “staff meeting” that Seth had insisted on attending. It had consisted of Jessica and the “crack” team. Chatter had slowed to a dead stop when Seth entered the room, Marvin the Martian tie and all.

“Here is your fearless leader!” Seth proclaimed. “Here’s what we’re going to do…” For the next 30 minutes he outlined the plan of creating a new form of algae that would sequester carbon 4 to 10 times more efficiently than any existing organism.

As soon as he finished there was a storm of questions from the graduate students. At first Seth seemed happy to answer them himself. As things got more technical he became agitated and finally announced that everyone should write down their questions and email him later.

A couple of weeks of back-and-forth ensued until Seth finally got sick of it and called Jessica.

“I thought you were going to bring in professionals!”

“They are, you just don’t have a clue what you’re doing!”

“Do too!”

“Do not! What’s the difference between a eukaryote and prokaryote?”

“What? How dare you question me?!” But Jessica could hear some typing in the background.

“Ummm..yes, right, let me think, yes, here it is: a eukaryote has a nucleus whereas a prokaryote does not!”

“You just looked that up on the web while we were talking!”

The typing abruptly stopped. “You’re just jealous of my vast knowledge!”

“Look, if you want to make any progress on this we need to have a meeting with my grad students and whoever on your end really knows what’s going on.”

There was a long pause, then Seth said “We can’t do this any other way?”

“Not if you want to move forward.”

* * *

A week later the same group found itself back in the same room, only this time there was a laptop with Skype.

“Where are your cohorts?” Jessica demanded.

“They’re going to join us via Skype.”

Seth dialed a number and someone picked up.

“Joe’s Pizza!”

Seth scowled and hung up. He tried dialing again. This time a thin, reedy voice answered: “Hello?”

“Marvin? It’s Seth. Remember that conference call we talked about?”

“We…we did?” Some strange music could be heard in the background. There was a munching sound and a rustling that sounded suspiciously like a bag of chips then the voice seemed to become more excited. “Oh yeah! Have you got your people there now?”

“Yes, Marvin.”

“OK, what do you want to know?”

“Well, we were hoping that you could help us with some questions about the new organism we’re going to create.”

“The what?”

“You know, the diatom that’s going to save the planet from global warming?”

“Oh, that!” Marvin sounded more excited and his pace picked up several levels as he started talking. “You see it’s very simple, you just need to substitute a couple of genes in the right place, catalyze the…”

“Yes, well, I was hoping you might talk to some of my people…”

“You mean my graduate students!” Jessica said severely.

“…and answer some of their questions.” Seth said.

What followed was a marathon conference call. At first Seth tried to follow the conversation, but he quickly grew bored with the whole thing. He took out his cell phone and started playing solitaire. Finally he just fell asleep.

As the call wrapped up, Marvin was saying “…so yeah you are going to need one of those thingamajiggies to complete the work. I’m sure that my man Seth can set you up with one of those. Right, Seth?”

Seth was snoring.

“Seth? SETH, WAKE UP!”

Jessica poked Seth a few times and the man came to.

“Huh? What?”

Marvin continued, “I was just saying to the team that you could set them up with one of those crude…”

“State of the art!” Jessica cut in sternly.

“…what did you call it? Oh yeah, that you could set them up with a scanning electron microscope.”

“You did? Do you know how much those things cost?” Seth demanded.

“Oh, quit whining and just do it. You guys have my number right?” Marvin asked.

“You gave them your phone number?!” Seth exclaimed.

But the graduate students were nodding.

“And the notes on the web site should answer most of your other questions. Till next time, ciao.” Marvin hung up.

Seth sighed. “Well, here’s hoping they start bothering you guys instead of calling me all the time. So does that clear things up?”

The girl with the orange Mohawk paused in her gum chewing long enough to ask “So, like, who are these people anyway?”

“Yeah,” cut in one of the twins, “at one point his mother came down into the basement and started vacuuming while we were talking to him.”

“He’s an…um…non-traditional scientist…did you get all your questions answered?”

“Yes. Although a few times I got the impression he was reading me the answers from Google or something. We are supposed to be doing original research here, you know.” Jessica said severely.

Seth looked smug. “Believe me, this is the first time anyone has tried to do this…on Earth.”

The guy with the facial piercings took off his headphones long enough to comment “That whole ‘I’m from Mars’ thing. He really seems to believe it.”

“OK!” Seth shouted. “If that’s it, then don’t let me keep you from your work!” He got up and rushed out of the room. Jessica scurried after him.

“This had better be on the level! If I find out that we are just doing some research that someone else has already published…”

“Believe me, Dr. Ward, no one on this Earth has done this before!”

Jessica waited till he was out of earshot. “Twit,” she muttered and went back to her team.

* * *

Back in the cell, Jessica gave Seth a long searching look. “This may not be the best time to ask this question, but since we’re in so much trouble for working with these guys I’m kind of curious to as to why the Martians are helping us to begin with?”

“You know, I asked Marvin that same question.”

* * *

It had been a long and tiring day, and Marvin just wouldn’t stop bothering him. Seth’s phone rang…again he considered just blocking the call. Finally he answered it.

“Seth! How’s it going?” Marvin’s nasal voice came in over the handset. Odd, that, since Marvin didn’t actually have a nose.

“Hello Marvin. Things are pretty much the same as they were 15 minutes ago.” After a second Seth asked him the question that had been bothering him for a while. “Marvin: why are you helping us ? I mean helping humanity with the global warming thing?”

There was silence on the other side of the phone for a little bit, then came Marvin’s tentative reply: “Well, we’d really like to see another season of Seinfeld.”

“Seriously!”

“Look, man, we have this cosmic radio thing that we can use to talk to civilizations all over the galaxy, but the interesting thing is this: what do you say to someone from another race? I mean some species are far advanced from us that we’re like ants to them: you can sort of get things across like ‘this is food’ or ‘don’t go into this container’ but you can’t really talk to them.”

“My people have had thousands of years at this and, of the 10,000 plus species we’ve managed to contact, do you know how many we can say the equivalent of ‘hello’ to?”

“I dunno, 700?”

“Try 10. And after you’ve said ‘hello’ the conversation generally goes South from there. I mean when you know the secrets of the universe, chatting about the time of day just doesn’t do anything for you.”

Marvin paused for a moment. “Now guess how many people we could have this sort of conversation with? Let me save you some effort ? your people are the only ones, in the entire galaxy, we can talk to; and we’ve been looking for someone else for thousands of years.”

“Let me get this straight,” Seth said, “you are helping us because you want someone to talk to?”

“It’s more than that ? I mean the act of trying to understand you teaches us more about ourselves. Your strangeness uncovers aspects about my people that we take for granted. And this is without the whole world of opportunity from cultural and technological exchange.”

“And then there’s the whole TV thing.”

* * *

“So they are saving us because they want more episodes of ‘Wheel of Fortune’?”

“That and they want someone to talk to.”

Jessica shifted about. “So why are we stuck in a cell?”

“Somebody must have spilled the beans,” Seth said, his eyes darting around the room.

“But you told me he has a Facebook page!”

“OK, but someone would have to know to look at it.” Jessica looked at him. “And know enough to take it seriously.”

“Did you notice anything strange about the guy who shot us?” Jessica asked.

“Do you mean the mirrorshades?”

“No, I was thinking of the postal employee outfit.”

Seth revisited the scene in his mind.

* * *

Seth and Jessica had been in a conference room talking with Marvin over the phone when it happened.

“So my results…” Seth started.

“You mean my results,” Jessica corrected.

“…the results will be in the next edition of Science.”

“Is that the one with the swimsuit issue?” Marvin asked.

“No, you’re thinking of Sports Illustrated.”

“Couldn’t we publish in that one instead?”

“It’s not as, um, prestigious as Science.”

Marvin mumbled something about how Sports Illustrated had a wider distribution than Science, but he quieted down.

“Well, great, we’re making progress!”

Just then a postman came into the room with a mailbag and a clipboard.

“Excuse me, I have a special delivery for Dr. Jessica Ward.” The guy was wearing the sort of mirror shades that highway patrol cops wore. He was also bald and had a rather muscular frame for someone who hauled around envelopes for a living.

Jessica took the clipboard and signed her name. She looked up curiously then at the postman. “So where’s the package?”

The postman smiled broadly, whipped out a dart gun, and shot Jessica. “No time to lose…” Jessica said woozily and then collapsed.

“Hey!” Seth protested and the postman shot him too. Unlike Jessica, however, Seth did not fold right away. Perhaps it was that he was obese. He reached for the conference phone. The postman frowned and shot him again.

“Marvin,” Seth said as the postman shot him again. “We’ll have <thwip> to call you < thwip > back < thwip >.” At that point Seth succumbed to the tranquilizer.

“Seth? Seth! What’s going on?” Marvin’s frantic voice came from the speakerphone, but the postman reached over and turned it off.

* * *

On the other side of the galaxy, Marvin was frantically hitting keys on his equivalent of a computer trying to reconnect with Seth. He was distracted by a visitor in his room.

“Maaaahm! You said you would stop vacuuming when I was down here!”

Another alien, grey-skinned, wearing glasses was using a loud and complex contraption to vacuum the carpet in Marvin’s basement “control center”.

“What? I can’t hear you over the vacuum,” the mother-figure alien said. It should be noted that she did not offer to turn the thing off.

“Fine!” Marvin stormed out of the room and went outside. It was a beautiful day with the green sun shining down on the purple grass and glinting off the golden water from a nearby pond. Marvin walked along a path for a bit and then sat down on a bench and gazed morbidly out at the pond.

After a time, a group of other Martians came upon Marvin. Like most of their race, they had grey skin, instead of the green dye job that Marvin favored. This fashion choice tended to get Marvin noticed…

“Excuse me, but are you ill?” asked one of the aliens.

“No, I’m fine,” replied Marvin, gritting his teeth.

“It’s just that your skin is so…”

“It’s dye.”

“Oh, you’re one of those…”

“Yes!” Marvin got off the bench and stormed off to the bemused looks from the others in the group.

It was always the same wherever he went, whatever he tried. Marvin just did not fit in. In a society that promised a place for everyone, it made Marvin depressed. What was the point when you couldn’t Contribute to the Greater Good? Martian society was based around the premise that everyone wanted to help out and everyone was able to as well. So how did you explain someone like Marvin? He was more at home with a bunch of primitives than he was with his own people.

But what would happen if Seth and Jessica were “disappeared,” as the Earthers put it? He would have to start all over again with a new group of people. There might not be enough time to get Sequestalot ready before the Earthers needed it.

As he was musing, Marvin turned a corner and came face to face with an “action group” trying to get citizens to support some new development initiative. Staring at the group quizzically for a few moments, a wide grin (something he had to practice) spread across his face. The other Martians took a step back.

“Of course! Politicians! Seth must have made tons of donations to someone or other to get this thing rolling!”

A nervous Martian approached him. “We’re…trying to get backers for a new filo-nanobot plant in the neighborhood and…”

But Marvin embraced the pollster. “Thanks for the idea!” And then Marvin was hurrying back home.

One Martian in the group looked at another. “Well…he was one of those green skinned quacks. They never watch the 3D anyway.”

* * *

Back in the cell the door opened to reveal a G-Man. Behind him was the postman with the mirror shades.

“So, coming around, are we?” G-Man observed. He was tall, crew-cut, and had dirty blond hair. He also had a smug, self-satisfied attitude.

“We won’t talk!” Seth said immediately.

“Ah, but you just said something!”

Seth looked put out. Jessica chimed in. “Who the hell are you and why are we here?”

G-Man looked depressed. “Why are any of us here? I mean, when you get right down to it, it’s all so pointless.”

“I mean why did you kidnap us?”

G-Man crossed his arms: “That’s easier. You are here because you are collaborating with illegal aliens!”

Jessica looked confused. “Are you trying to say that there are legal aliens working with the government?”

G-Man deflated.

“And who are you? Are you with the CIA, the NSA? What?” Seth demanded.

“Let’s just say that I work for the government.”

“So who are you?”

“You may call me Agent Smith.”

“So what do you want from us?” Jessica asked.

Smith’s eyes narrowed. “What are the two of you trying to accomplish?”

The postal worker in the mirror shades came up behind Smith. “Can I torture them now?”

“Not yet,” Smith said over his shoulder.

“But you said…”

“After I’m done.”

“Don’t you mean if we don’t cooperate?” Seth said, looking anxiously at the postal worker.

“Whatever.”

“We’re trying to create a carbon sequestering organism that Nitwit here says will save the Earth from global warming,” Jessica explained.

“Just as we thought!”

“And how did you figure that out? By reading our paper ‘Sequestalot: A New Organism to Stop Global Warming?'” Seth asked sarcastically.

“No.” Smith said smugly. “We discovered it through clandestine means!”

“I think you just read the Facebook page,” Seth said sourly.

Smith shifted his eyes about. Mirrorshades prodded him again. “Now?”

“But we’re cooperating!” Jessica protested.

“Not necessarily, you could just be pretending because you don’t want to be tortured.”

“Or we could be cooperating because we don’t want to be tortured.”

“Oh, come on,” said Mirrorshades in a petulant tone.

Just at that moment, a short but self-important man shoved past Smith and came into the room. He was wearing a nice suit with a little state of Texas button on his lapel. The white haired man looked earnestly at Seth and Jessica

“Are you Sethica and Jeth?” the man asked.

“I’m Seth and this is Jessica, but yes, we are.”

But before Seth had finished the man had moved forward and started pumping Jessica’s hand enthusiastically.

“I’m Senator Billy-Bob Thompson. Call me Billy.”

“Billy,” Jessica started.

“Senator, if you please.”

“But you just said…” Seth started, but a look from Jessica cut him off.

“Senator Thompson…” Jessica said, “…we want to thank you for your help in extraditing us from…from the US Postal service.”

“My pleasure, Jess, may I call you Jess?”

“Of course.”

“When your associate Miles…”

Seth frowned, “do you mean Marvin?”

“…Marvin informed me that you two major campaign contributors had been unlawfully detained I made it a point to come down here myself! As my record shows, I’m extremely intolerant of these bureaucratic time wasters who are siphoning off resources from good decent working people such as yourselves.” Here Billy-Bob stared up and down at Smith. “And I’m also told that you are bringing jobs to the great state of Texas which is very important in these times of economic duress.”

Seth raised his eyebrows at Jessica ? over Billy-Bob’s head ? and mouthed a silent “Oh!”

“And finally I understand that you two are ambassadors to another world! I’m sure that your Star Brothers understand that Texas is the most auspicious of the United States in which to share their new technologies?”

“I’m sure they will think of Texas as the best place to start up a business,” Jessica said.

“Good! Good! Now if you will excuse us…” here Billy-Bob pinned a “Texas” button to each of their lapels, then escorted the two of them out of the cell.

* * *

“This is hopeless,” Seth said, “I mean, we’re trying to save the world and our own government is trying to stop us.”

“I never did trust those government types. If elected I vow to fight each and every one of those federal bloodsuckers!” Billy-Bob responded.

“You already have been elected,” Sandra pointed out.

“Oh…well, I vow to continue the fight against those federal bloodsuckers!”

“Don’t be so downcast,” came a voice.

“Who said that?” Seth said suspiciously.

“It came from your pants.” Sandra observed. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell us first?”

Seth glared at her and took out his cell phone. Marvin was using the video mode. “Don’t I have to click receive or something?”

“I just let you think that to give you a false sense of security,” Marvin informed him. “Anyways, now that we have my new microbe, Sequestalot…”

“You mean the one that I developed.” Sandra broke in.

“…that we developed, there’s real hope for the Earth!”

“That we developed…” Jessica said as if tasting the sentence.

“Together…” Seth said gazing at Jessica.

“The three of us!” chimed in Marvin.

“Make that four!” cut in Billy-Bob. The others looked at him. “At least as long as you continue funding my campaign.”