“All right, listen up Dead-Bolts. Dire straits, here.” All seven members of the Consolidated Army of Shunk were huddled in a loose circle, robotic shoulders clanging together, at one end of the dusty dirt field behind the brewery. Hunt-R, a sash draped over his chest proclaiming him Quarterback / Team Captain / Chaplain, was down on one knobby-jointed knee. “Bottom of the seventh and we are down by a not insignificant number of points—”

DB-3 interrupted him. “Four-hundred and fifty-seven to three, to be exact.”

“Did anybody ask you to be exact?” Hunt-R asked.

DB-3’s head—an emptied-out plastic television shell with a pair of Betacams for eyes—drooped. “No.”

“No, what?”

“No, Squad Commander Hunt-R, Sir.”

“No, Squad Commander Hunt-R, Sir what?”

“No, Squad Commander Hunt-R, Sir,” DB-3 said, and did this little shuffling pirouette, complete with Jazz hands at the end of the third spin around.

“That’s better,” Hunt-R said. “You’re really getting good at those.”

“Been practicing at night in the barracks.”

“Well, it’s showing. Marked improvement. Keep it up. —The rest of you could stand to learn a little something from 3, here.”

“Yeah, like how to be a kiss-ass,” DB-‘Fridgerator’-5 said. “Why are you even practicing end-zone dances when we never actually get to the end-zone?”

“We got there once,” DB-3 said. “Hunt-R got there.”

“Yeah,” DB-5 said. “But it was our own end-zone. He got tackled so hard it pushed him back into it.”

“Still,” DB-3 said. “We got the three points for it.”

“Because the Ref felt sorry for us,” Hunt-R said. “And rightly so. We are terrible. Anyway, where was I?”

“You were about to remind us how we’re fucked,” DB-5 said.

“Oh, yeah,” Hunt-R said. “Yes, we’re fucked. Big time. We are going to lose. Nothing we can do about that now.”

“We could,” DB-4 said, synthetic voice booming out of the four dozen speakers in his ghetto blaster head, “strap a bomb to 2 and send her long.”

DB-2 crossed extension-lamp arms over hub-crap breasts. “How is blowing me up supposed to help us win?”

“Help us what now?” DB-4 asked.

“Much as I’d like to strap bombs to all of you,” Hunt-R said, “this isn’t about winning or losing. This is about teamwork. Generalissimo Trip arranged this game to demonstrate how teamwork can make or break even the most well-armed and equipped military force. And judging from our performance so far, I think it’s safe to say lesson learned–without teamwork, we are going to lose, and lose big time, every time. And not just at football.”

“Maybe it’s not so much a lack of teamwork,” DB-6 said, making constant micro-adjustments to stay balanced on his one wheel, “as a lack of working knowledge of the rules of the game.”

“Yeah, it would have been nice to have been programmed with the rules,” DB-3 said. “I thought we were playing hockey the first five quarters.”

“We’re not playing hockey?” DB-6 asked.

“Regardless of what game we’re actually playing,” Hunt-R said, “it’s clear to me now that we’ve gotten our asses kicked solely because you idiots have refused to work as a team.”

“I like to look at it as more you sucking at giving orders we actually might want to carry out,” DB-2 said.

“Never-the-less,” Hunt-R said, “there’s just this one play left, and all I’m asking, begging for, is that this one time, we show a little teamwork.”

“I dunno,” DB-5 said. “What’s in it for us?”

Trip’s voice crackled over the radio directly into their heads. “The Generalissimo won’t have you melted down and turned into door-jams, that’s what.”

“Sure, there’s that,” DB-3 said, “but can we also still get pizza after the game?”

“Pizza is for winners.”

“He’s got a point,” Hunt-R said. He swept his glowing cyclopean eye across the spare-part, dirt and oil smeared faces of the Shunk army. “So, we’re agreed, then? To avoid being melted down, we actually try this one time to carry out the plan?”

“If there’s not going to be any pizza, I vote for melting,” DB-3 said.

DB-2 whacked 3 in the side of the TV set. “Shut up. –We’re in.”

“Good,” Hunt-R said. He stretched a hand out at DB-5. “Ball?”

DB-5 opened his chest freezer and pulled out the frosted, half-deflated orange rubber ball. He held it out for Hunt-R. “So what’s the plan again?”

“What’s the plan?” Hunt-R yanked the ball away from DB-5. “It’s the same plan we’ve had each play since the beginning of the game!”

“Count of three, we toss them the ball and run away?” DB-3 asked.

“Head for the hills, yep,” DB-2 nodded.

“So say we all,” DB-6 said.

Hunt-R rubbed his temple with a fingertip. “That is not the plan.”

“But it should be,” DB-2 said. “They’re murdering us here. Literally. 1’s head has gone missing.”

They all turned to look at DB-1, leaned back in tripod speed mode, his cylindrical torso topped by a jagged-edged smoking crater of wires. A light on his chest flashed out Morse code: “I… j…u…s…t… w…a…n…t… t…o… g…o… h…o…m…e.”

“We all do, 1.” DB-2 patted DB-1 on the shoulder. “We’re seriously outclassed here.”

“Not to mention in serious pain,” DB-4 said, and looked over his shoulder down the field at the other team, waiting impatiently at the 101st Parallel. The four eight-year-old members of Bernice’s Third Grade class glared back at him and he shuddered. “That little pig-tailed one can really kick,” he said, rubbing his dented shin.

“Yeah, about that,” DB-5 said, “why do we have pain sensors, again? And why can’t we turn them off? I mean, we’re robots. We don’t need to feel pain. There’s no reason—”

“Pain builds character,” Trip said over their head radios.

DB-2 lowered her voice. “I’d like to build him some character.”

“Save it for the field,” Hunt-R said. He thrust his hand into the center of the huddle. The others placed their hands/pincers/lampshades on top of it. “All right, let’s get this over with. Somebody give me a mournful dirge and… break!”
Hunt-R looked up and they were all running off. For the sidelines. And right on past.

“Sorry!” DB-4 yelled back over his shoulder. “We’ll send a postcard!”

They rounded a grain silo and were gone. Hunt-R’s shoulders sagged. “Well… at least they’re finally showing some teamwork.”

A Holiday Vignette by J.I.Greco

I am standing in the toy aisle at Wal-Mart, the week before Christmas. I am eight years old and my entire universe is temporarily defined by the few square feet of shelf space in front of me, crammed with Episode Seven figures, marked down for the holiday. Priced to sell. Wouldn’t sell otherwise.

The movie had been less than one could have hoped, of course, even to my young, somewhat uncritical mind, but the figures… the aliens, especially… now they are something to drool over. Nothing like the real aliens, the ones that had appeared barely a month ago, shocking the world not with their effortless takeover but their lack of serious imposition on humanity and her governments afterwards. But the plastic and micro-chipped toys with their vocal samples and limited robomotion, they are as close as I am going to get anytime soon.

The assumption that they would always demand nothing of humanity, leave Earth unchanged, of course turned out to be a false one, thankfully. Just as certainly as my assumption I would not encounter a Zchaak ever, let alone soon.

Behind me, my sister is twisting impatiently, tugging at a belt loop on my mother’s jeans, probably making overly-wrought tortured faces, the kind six year olds excel at. My mother, she is letting my sister’s whining grate on her nerves. I hear familiar exasperation in her voice. “Come on, Danny. We’ve still gotta get groceries.”

She doesn’t understand my dilemma, my hesitation. I have to pick one, and only one, for that was the deal I’d made with her. This close to Christmas, one figure and one figure only. And that is the problem. I want one that most closely resembles the Zchaak and none of the alien figures are quite right. One figure has purple skin, close to the Zchaak’s general shading, another the tufted foot-pads, only without the razor-sharp prehensile claws. But none of them are close enough, even when I squint.

“Mom, he’s doing this on purpose…” my sister says, voice pitching up.

“I am not,” I say, feeling pressured to choose before my mind is made up. I reach tentatively for Senator Ackbar. The bulbous head. Too sloped, too terrestrial, I decide. Before my fingertips get within an inch. I let my hand drop back down to my side.

I hear my mother sigh and my sister make a disgusted choking noise.

“He told me last night he was gonna get Chancellor Skywalker,” my sister says. “Make him get Leia…”

I turn to glare at her, maybe kick out at her, release some faux-Ninja moves, the kind she always runs screaming from.

I turn and stop cold.

“Your children…”

It is standing there, behind my mother and sister, a looming hulk of dark purple folds of flesh, bivalve head with three deep set green eyes around a cluster of breathing and eating slits, a skirt of slowly writhing tentacles around its waist, five strong double-jointed legs holding it upright. At both ends of the aisle, people are gathering, staring.

“Oh,” my mother says, after a pause, her breath starting up again, shallow. “Sorry. They’re in your way?” My mother draws my suddenly dumb-struck sister close to her hip.

I too am dumb-struck, but not out of shock or fright.

“Not in my way. Enjoy their proximity.” Dark green eyes swivel in their sockets down at my sister, then slide to stare at me. I return the stare. “I can not have children. Your yellow sun. Radiation. Atrophies reproductive organs. Permanently. Most painful, at first.”

“I’m sorry,” my mother says, nervous trill in her voice. She’s trying very hard to stay calm, not do anything that might spook or offend. What the telenet announcements have advised. “–Danny, really. Just pick one.”

The Zchaak’s folds ruffle, readjust themselves. Its head swivels back towards my mother, its eyes breaking the lock with mine, reluctantly. “A sacrifice given willingly to the Path. For benefit: Your species, the Zchaak, the evolution of life in galaxy.”

Something about the way the Zchaak’s tentacles stop writhing then, about the way it’s nictitating membranes flicker. My sister hugs my mother’s thigh tight and my mother stretches out her hand, fingers splayed insistently at me.

“–Danny, take my hand. Come on.”

I reach up for my mother’s grasping hand. But at the last moment, something makes me change my mind.

“But I want a child,” the alien says, it’s voice a shrill, rapturous rasp, a bellowed croak from bladders hidden deep within its folds of flesh and scale.

I reach for the outstretched tentacle, grip it tight, draw in a deep breath at the feel of the serrations, their permanence. My eyes lock with the alien’s.

It happens quickly, even in the slowness of oft-recalled, now dreamlike memory. My mother slumping to the cold department store floor, surprised gape frozen on her face, hole punched through her forehead, a serrated tentacle tip snapping back from the hole, flicking blood and brains over the toys. My sister crying suddenly, a wailing and confused cry.

I do not look back, to watch my sister cry over my mother’s body.

Because my mother is not dying. She is leading me from the store.

I have made my choice.

THE END

The best book we’ve found so far along those lines has been that old “classic” Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd. It’s a nice short book with no plot line and incredibly boring art sure to put any kid to sleep half-way through, which is why, I suspect, it’s a classic. It certainly isn’t a classic for any other reason. In fact, after two months of it being our go-to sleepy time book, it’s become obvious to me the book, short as it is, is perhaps the most complexly awful kid’s book ever. Here’s some reasons why:

1. Expectations Dashed –  For a book called Goodnight Moon, awful strange, don’t you think, that the moon is neither the first thing said goodnight to, nor, as common-sense, poetic symmetry, and the expectations created by the title would seem to demand, the last? The first thing said good night to is the room, and the last a bunch of noises. So why isn’t the book named “Goodnight Room”, Ms. Brown, huh? Just trying to be cleverly post-modern with your arbitrary list of stuff? Or are you just reminding the room and those damned noises that they can be easily replaced by some arbitrary celestial object, and to keep their mouths shut about royalty payments?

2. The Creepy Old Woman – Why exactly is she in the room? And more importantly, how does she get in and out? Ms. Brown goes to great lengths to describe the contents of the room, and then say goodnight to them. No door is mentioned, nor bid goodnight. I suppose the old gal could have crawled in through a window, but at her age, would that be safe? My best guess is she teleported in. Just to tell the kid hush. Kinda a waste of technology, if you ask me.

3. The Two Clocks – Why are there two clocks in the room? Whoever decorated the room is playing a dangerous game — they risk creating a child that grows into a time-obsessed adult who, undoubtedly and inevitably, will forgo a social life and friends in favor of pursuing several advanced physics degrees, eventually building a time machine that unravels the very fabric of the cosmos, precipitating the Big Crunch. So, yeah, that’s for that, you bastard interior decorator.

4. The Lazy Cat Myth – There are two cats, and a mouse. And the cats seem to be letting the mouse live a free and happy life. This is clearly canine-backed propaganda perpetuating the myth that all cats are lazy. Oh, wait. They pretty much are all lazy. Never mind.

5. The Mitten Fetish – For the entire book, a pair of mittens share a drying rack with a pair of socks. Until the mittens are said goodnight to, when all of a sudden they are alone on the rack. Where did the socks — which reappear mysteriously on the very next page — go during the interim? Perhaps the old lady teleported them away. But wherever they went, it is clearly a sign that the artist had an unhealthy thing for mittens. If you know what I mean.

6. The Bedside Phone – There’s a fully-wired phone. Right there next to the kid’s sleeping head. Beside the obvious question of what does a kid need a phone in his room for anyway, aren’t the missing parents just asking for trouble? The kid’s gonna wake up every time the phone rings. Those old-fashioned phones, they weren’t exactly quiet.

7. The Unattended Mush - A bowl of cold mush is left out on the bedside table on the last page, and as the old lady has already teleported away, we can assume that’s where the mush will stay all night. And you know what? That’s how you get ants.

But at the end of the day, teleporting old ladies and arbitrarily-ordered lists aside, the book continues to deliver as a make-’em-want-to-sleep bedtime book. The Infant turns the pages himself, rapidly, two or three at a time, and when we reach the end, he bites the book, giggles, and throws it to the floor, ready to hit the crib and be done with the day–and no, smart ass, he does not say goodnight to everything in the room.

If any single movie influenced Take the All-Mart! the most, it had to be Tank Girl. The original draft of Take the All-Mart! even opened with Trip talking directly to the reader about how the world had been destroyed a half-dozen times over and everybody was pretty well fucked now — a homage to Tank Girl’s opening narration.

I loved everything about the movie. The script was sharp, the actors knew exactly what kind of movie they were making and ran with it, and the world the movie presented was this perfect fully-drawn pocket universe. It was just downright fun.

So it’s always stunned me that I seem to be in the minority in my love for this film. It’s got a 4.8 on IMDB. That’s a worse rating than Saw 3D: The Final Chapter and only slightly better than Jaws 3-D. How is that even possible? In what kind of sick and depraved universe do we live in? I mean, come on: Lori Petty just nailed Tank Girl’s snark and spunk, and how could you not crush on Jet Girl? And did I not mention Malcolm McDowell is in it? And Iggy fucking Pop? And Mr. James Hong? And that awesome soundtrack — Devo and Bjork and Magnificent Bastards? And right in the middle of it there’s a frakking musical dance number?

Seriously. Instead of a 4.8 on IMDB Tank Girl deserves to be ensconced in the Funky Goofy Wildly Entertaining Sci-Fi Movie Hall of Fame, along with Buckaroo Banzai, Big Touble in Little China, and Army of Darkness. So, if such a thing exists, and you are or know the person in charge, get on that. Chop chop.

P.S. Yeah, about the comic the movie was based on. Read it. Didn’t get it. It’s very British underground scene, a lot of jargon and in-jokes. Art’s great, and I’m sure if I was smart enough to grok all the references I’d thoroughly enjoy it. But I’m not, and I didn’t. So sue me.