(even if you aren't vegan)
Working Title
Somewhere, a balloon popped.
"Mommy, Mommy!" cries a young child, "I get the strangest feeling that somewhere, a balloon popped!"
"Where?" asked Mommy.
"I DON'T KNOW!" hollered the young child, and broke into tears.
"Oh, don't cry, don't cry, I'll buy you a new one."
Elsewhere, politics were happening.
"What did you say?" bellowed the General.
"I said, sir," started his secretary.
"I don't care what you said! This is a war, you know!" snapped the General, "Dial me the president!"
"But, sir, the president is on the line," the meek secretary responded.
Explained the General, "Then hang up, and dial him back up! Do I have to tell you everything?"
The secretary sighed, and with his triangular fingerprint on his middle finger, pressed the "Hang up" button, then redialed the president.
"Why were you using your middle finger?!" snapped the General, lying on his back, "Are you disrespecting my authority?"
"No, sir, I lost my index finger in the war, sir."
"I don't care about the war! Don't you care that there's a war going on?!"
"Yes, sir."
"Then why do I have to tell you there's a war going on?" asked the General. Mumbling, he added "I swear, what use is a secretary if you have to tell them how to do everything..."
Elsewhere, poverty was happening.
In a slum in Cleveland, a man was sitting in the alleyway, smoking a cigarette. Once he was done, he tossed the butt beside him, into a pile. He'd gone through about five packs since Sunday. He needed them to calm down. It was his only way to relax. He took another drag of the still lit cigarette in his fingers and made a depressed sigh.
A man walked up to him. This stranger was dressed to the nines -- which baffled the smoking man. Nobody like that came around without a reason.
"Excuse me, sir," said the man in the suit, "can you tell me where this is?"
The smoking man was instantly suspicious. "How would I know? I've been living here all my life," he said. "Never been anywhere else."
"Well, I'll tell you where you are," said the man in the suit. The smoking man glanced up at him with a puzzled look. "You're on skid row, my friend -- and I can help you out."
The smoking man got up to meet the man at eye level. "You don't need to tell me that." He took a drag of his cigarette.
"Ah, but... I can help you, no?" The smoking man backed off a bit, giving the man in the suit some room. "Let me give you an offer, if you'd be so kind. You'll find it hard to refuse."
"... I'm listening. Make it quick."
"How would you like to be in the movies, my friend?" asked the man in the suit.
"I would like to be in the movies very much."
"WELL TOO BAD!" screamed the man dressed to the nines, and ran away.
Here, at least, poverty continued. But at the other side of town, there were more important manners to attend to. A balloon had popped.
"Oh, calm down," said the neglectful mother, "it's just a balloon— not the end of the world!"
"YES IT IS!" cried the 4-year-old whose balloon had popped.
Needless to say, it wasn't.
It wasn't the end of this world, at least.
Elsewhere, panic was happening.
A small red balloon was floating in the skies above the planet Mars. People on the ground were screaming in fear, panicking and rioting. TVs were probably also stolen.
"What is it?!" said an especially loud Martian woman over the din. Nobody heard her but she was probably speaking for the masses.
"It's some sort of alien bomb, I know it!" said a Martian man. He wore a lab coat, so he must have been right.
"Get me the president!" said another, entirely different human man in a lab coat.
"The Martian one or the regular one?" asked one of his assistants.
"The regular one." explained the lab coated man, who was privy to top-secret information.
"We can't sir, his phone line's tied up!" said a panicked assistant after several tries.
"TIED UP?!" exploded the man who knew too much. He hurried over to his gigantic telescope and took another look at Mars. "TIED UP?!" he repeated. "Tied up..."
"So, uh, how are the wife and kids?" said the General.
"Sir, don't you think we should leave the presidential hotline open for emergencies?" asked his meekness.
"Smith, I think too much stress is bad for a man's health. The president probably doesn't get enough calls like this. Besides, what could possibly be more important than his wife and kids?" responded the General, his hand over the phone, "Family over work after all!" he added with a light chuckle.
"WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" screamed another scientist, who had been told the news by his colleague.
"Get a hold of yourself man!" said the entirely different man in a lab coat, chewing on a pen.
"WELL THEN TELL ME, O WISE JAMES," the other scientist said, "WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT HAVING 3 WEEKS UNTIL EARTH IS DESTROYED, HM?!" and threw his arms up in the air.
"3 weeks means we have time to prepare."
"WELL WHOOP-DEE-FREAKIN'-DOO. I'LL BE ABLE TO GET MY AFFAIRS IN ORDER BEFORE WE'RE ALL BLASTED INTO THOUSANDS OF TINY ATOMS."
"No, there has to be something we can do..." said James, his eyes desperately searching around the room. Conical flasks, microscopes, macroscopes, mold samples, all useless in the face of this new obstacle. Everything James had trained for had lead up do this moment, and everything that lead up to this moment left him severely unprepared. Winston was just panicked, and he was the only man he felt he could turn to. Besides, the two were both men of cold, hard science. This was war.
"MOMMY!" shouted the clairvoyant little boy, who had released his little red balloon intentionally.
"What is it, my little angel?" asked his mother.
The boy pointed both fingers at his balloon. "Mommy, do you think it'll go to Mars?"
"It'll just pop in the upper atmosphere," said his brutally honest father.
"Moreen!" gasped the wife and mother, turning to her son, "Don't listen to him. Your balloon will float on forever."
"Martians have space travel now?" asked a surprised Smith.
"Not now, Smith, I'm busy seeing if the President wants to go bowl with me."
"We can't build anything in time to go out and battle them in 3 weeks!" explained the NASA administrator, "Heck, our space shuttle hardly even works any more!"
"This is a breaking news report!" said investigative news anchor Biff Jackson, "Martians' battle-equipped spaceships are heading to destroy Earth in three weeks."
The president was a diplomatic man. "It would take at least 4 weeks for a message to get through to all of Mars, and by then it would be too late."
James stood over the phone, paralyzed. He ran all the scenarios through his head once more, looking over the speed dial. General Shumocker was just too crazy, telling Columbia the world would end soon would accomplish nothing (and even if we did manage to survive, society would be totally wrecked if it weren't kept a secret (but then again, how long can something like this be kept a secret?)), and time constraints plagued the other two. He couldn't do anything, and neither could anybody could anyone else. Why would he burden them? Who was it okay to burden, thought he.
Neurons fired, searching his memory banks. James thought so hard he developed a nervous twitch in his left eyelid. For what seemed like hours, he thought of all the phone numbers he knew, all the people and places he could call, when suddenly a smile cracked in his face. He knew exactly what to do.
The humble phonebooth. So outmoded in today's world of cell phones. But still, it would be too much of a burden to remove them all — besides, where else would Superman change? — so they remain, albeit useless. But today, a phonebooth was about to play a great role in history. The phonebooth rang.
Six packs, now. Six whole packs. And then some. He had wasted so much money on packs. He knew it was unhealthy for him, but what did he care? He had nothing to live for. He lit up another one, and found that his carton was empty. Seven, then. Nothing to live for, so keep on smoking. A phonebooth rang, 2 yards away from him.
Suddenly, and without warning, the phonebooth began to shake. An eerie light leaked out from its inside, dotting the city around it with points of light. People stopped and stared at it as it vibrated and hummed with a low din. Time seemed to stop.
And then the phonebooth blew up.
James listened to the line ring dead. What happened? Every phonebooth he had tried to call never even picked up.
Hundreds of miles away, the Martian General was smiling. Who would have thought the "Blow up all vending machines and phonebooths" button would come in handy?
General Shumocker, back on Earth, was having a terrible dilemma. He had lost the keys to his car.
