Intelligent Life: The Phone Call from Outer Space
When Fred Levitts found an advertisement for Vega’s Bartending School and decided to call them, he thought he was making a wise decision. The advertisement was plain and simple. All it said was the school’s title followed by “My school is out of this world!” and a phone number. Unfortunately for him, the advertisement was literal- Vega was a near sighted Bolaptoid with a nasty temper from the Avarix Galaxy.
The phone call that Fred had placed cost Vega 267,000 krumets in interstellar distance charges (which is quite a lot in case you’re not familiar with interstellar distance charges or krumets). It didn’t matter that Vega had never been to the planet Earth (in fact the closest Vega had ever come to the Milky Way Galaxy was approximately six hundred and five light years). Though Vega had a decent idea of how his number somehow ended up in the hands of Fred, he lied and said he didn’t and then complained for hours on end to a service representative. Even after all that, his phone company wouldn’t budge on the issue.
How Vega’s number ended up on Earth was actually half Vega’s fault and half chance. A couple years earlier, in a desperate attempt to meet the demands of his growing customer base, he ripped open random interstellar hyperspace holes, basically tiny black holes the size a bunny might use, and dumped numerous advertisements for his school into each of them. It just so happened that one opened up into the Milky Way Galaxy, an advertisement was caught in the Earth’s gravitational pull, and fell eventually into the hands of Fred.
After Vega paid his fees on his Alturian Visa Card (the third best card in the universe), he made a trip through hyperspace to find the man that cost him so much money. Three Earth days later, Fred found himself face to face with Vega inside his home, which was a monument to all space exploration, movies, and novels. He knew the entire Klingon language, had watched every Star Trek episode known to mankind and had secret plans for building his own enterprise. For Halloween, even though he was thirty-six, he dressed up as Han Solo and went trick or treating. Quite clearly to every human, Fred was in love with space, but meeting a seven foot, 300 pound Bolaptoid, which looked like a cross between a slug, a dog, and a millipede, was not Fred’s idea of fun.
Held at gun point by a Bolaptoid Death Ray, model X7R43, Fred was forced to leave everything behind and pay off the debt he unknowingly caused.
Vega’s Bar is located on the planet Vandragoth, a desolate waste basket for the rest of the Avarix Galaxy. Farriages, also known as Heapers in common slang, collect garbage from central places on the other planets and dump it on Vandragoth’s barren, sweltering landscape.
Nobody wants to live on Vandragoth, which is the closest planet to the galaxy’s three suns. Each sun had been strategically placed by the Soleare Company, which specialized in creating suns, to cast perpetual sunlight across many of Avarix’s planets. This also made Vandragoth hotter than hell. The galaxy was home to no race but housed many. Asranon, which was the fourth planet down the line, was covered in swamps and muddy water; where the Dollopians had settled after their home planet had been eaten by a swarm of Zeebles.
How Vega had ended up on Vandragoth is only known in rumors and tales. There is only one thing that’s for sure, he wasn’t born there as the home planet of the Bolaptoids is over 1,673,284 light years away.
After the shock of being the only human within a billion light years of his home wore off (that’s not an exaggeration), Fred got to work immediately learning his new profession. His textbook was actually a mini computer with numerous buttons that told him everything there is to know about bartending. For instance, if you were to look up how to make a Tardaran Comet Tail, it would tell you how to make each drink and what its effect would be, and in this case the drink would make you feel as if you were attacked by a swarm of killer bees, which was quite a pleasurable thing to the Tardarans among others. Also it would tell you in perfect English what race would like that particular drink, what time of day should you serve it, what a good chaser for the drink would be, and finally how many times on average the drink would be ordered in a day, week, month and year. It also did this with the other 3,784 drinks he was supposed to learn.
Needless to say Fred got right to work. Very quickly he memorized all the ingredients in the most common drinks, like a Vevarian Haze or a Lymhon Tentacle, which would either make one feel like they were made out of bricks or clouds respectively. A couple of the more uncommon drinks he makes are Parasite Defecators and Brick Faces, neither of which would be very polite to explain.
After his two week training was over, Vega decided to pay Fred 200 krumets an hour, which is a very low wage for any galactic bartender. Fred never sees any of it and he doesn’t expect to, but he doesn’t care as he feels the benefits of his job are amazing. He only works two hours in Vandragoth time a day, though one Vandragoth hour is the equivalent to six Earth hours. Opportunities to meet new people are always present and the job has awesome health and vision benefits. Plus he gets a free room right above the bar.
After a week of work, he fell in love with his job and often when Fred reflects back to his previous life, he realizes that this was exactly what he had been looking for all along.
