Getting Interrogated Sucks

Once again, I had a spotlight being shined down onto me. This time though, I was duct taped to a chair, which was pointless since my wheels had already been disabled.

"The numbers, alien! What do they mean?" Jethro pounded his fist on the table that was beside him. He held up a sheet of paper with a jumbled set of numbers on it.

I doubt you even know what any of that means.

He responded by flipping the table over. "You better start talking, alien, cuz ole Jethro's patience is running thin!"

And why is that my problem?

He took a deep breath and stepped away. After a few moments, he came back with a slightly calmer demeanor. In his hand, he held out a dish in front of me. "Listen, I think we got off on the wrong foot. How about you tell me about the aliens and I'll let you have this entire bowl of marshmallows."

I see you're taking the good cop, bad cop approach. Joke's on you though, I don't have a mouth.

There was a crash as he shattered the bowl of marshmallows on the ground in frustration. "I swear, I didn't want to do this, but I'm running out of options."

He tossed a towel over me, covering my ocular sensor. There was a pause, while I heard the sound of a sink running, followed by the sloshing noise of a bucket of water being carried. If I had sweat glands, they would have been perspirating.

Woah, wait a second, Jethro! There's no need to resort to waterboarding.

Getting water dumped on my exposed circuitry would without a doubt fry me. I wasn't particularly in the mood to die just after getting revived. If Jethro wanted aliens, then I'd give him aliens... Nobody said any of it had to be true though.

I'll tell you everything I know. Just put the water away and get this rag off of me.

"I knew you'd crack." He did as I said and uncovered my optic sensor. "Go on, spill it, alien."

So us 'aliens' have been using giant vacuums to suck up all the water from the surface of the earth and take it back to our planet.

Jethro pulled a notepad and pen from his pocket and began jotting down some notes. "And what exactly are you planning on doing with all that water?"

Isn't it obvious, we're... building an intergalactic waterpark.

He shook his head. "I knew you aliens were scum! Destroying an entire planet for your own pleasure. You're even more evil than I thought."

I was a bit surprised that he actually bought such an outlandish claim. All I did was roll with the first thing that popped into my mind. Who knew it would be so easy for a vacuum to outsmart a human.

Jethro continued. "Now, the question is: how did that cockroach king end up with you?"

My 'alien' companion and I were on a special mission to retrieve gas for our 'spaceship'. We were ambushed by a group of guys dressed like bears. My partner was captured, while I was left for dead.

"Interesting… There’s something I need to show you."

Dragging me still strapped in the chair, he brought me to another room. In it were jumbled piles of books and papers scattered about, along with a dozen metal filing cabinets that were so full that they couldn’t fully close. On the wall was a cork board with a giant map of Nebraska pinned up on it with red lines and circles drawn all over it.

"I've been tracking the Beary bandits for the past month or so. Those bastards came out of nowhere and took over the entire state." He pointed to the city of Lincoln on the map. " They're definitely planning something big. They've been hauling in limestone from all over the state to the capital. If they have your alien friend, it could be trouble."

I don't necessarily know about that. He isn't exactly a useful 'alien'.

Turning back toward me, Jethro nodded his head and ripped the duct tape that was pointlessly restraining me to the chair. "We're going to Lincoln and getting that alien back. There’s not a lot of time left. If I'm going to save the world, I can't let its secrets fall into the wrong hands."

Wait a second. We don't have to go that far. Trust me he isn't worth-.

"Don't you start with your trickery on me again. We're going to Lincoln and that's final."

It was on him if he didn't want to listen to me. I wasn't even really sure if Eddy was still alive. When Jethro saw him, it would immediately be obvious that he wasn't an alien... Actually knowing Eddy I couldn't be so sure about that. He definitely didn't act like most humans.

👽👽👽

The sound of a drill and welding torch rang out as Jethro was finishing off reassembling me. "Alright, alien, I made sure you weren't rigged with any explosives and put you back together."

"Shouldn't you have done that right off the-....what the-?..." I was thrown off guard as my thoughts manifested into a robotic tts voice.

"Reading your responses on that monitor was getting annoying, so I soldered a GBL speaker to you." He proudly patted the cylinder shaped speaker that he haphazardly mounted to me. "But don't get any funny ideas, I still got my eye on you."

If I had eyes I would have rolled them. "I'm sure you will."

He Immediately turned his back to me and started down the hall. "Enough chit chat. We have a lot of preparations to make."

I followed him over to another room, with another giant map of Nebraska laid out on a large table in the center of it. After placing me down on the table, so I could see, he pulled a handful of Oligopoly game pieces from his pocket.

"This will be you." He placed down the metallic thimble piece. "And this will be me." Of course, he made himself the battleship.

"So my bunker that we are currently in is in an undisclosed location, of which I will not be telling you. From here we'll take my van..." He put the car piece down to represent his van and pushed it toward the city. "...And travel to the outskirts of Lincoln." He pulled out a black marker and circled an area outside the city. "Once we've surveyed the area and figured out where your alien friend is, we're going in guns blazing like back when I was in Nam and extracting him out of there." He drew a big explosion in red. "I'm expecting a lot of collateral damage by the time I'm done with them."

I was doubtful that a single old doomsday prepper could take on an army of schizo bear guys, but he seemed adamant on his plan.

"Do you even have the gear to pull this off?" I wondered.

He chuckled. "Come with me, let me show you something."

Escorting me back across his concrete bunker, he brought me to an out of place looking bookcase against a wall.

"I wouldn't have taken you for much of a reader." I responded.

"Why would I waste my time doing that? These are just a decoy." He pulled on a particular book and the case swung open like a door, revealing a hidden room. Inside was an arsenal with enough firepower to fight a war.

I rolled inside and took a single look around. "How the heck can you even afford all this?"

He smirked as he pulled a .50 bmg sniper rifle off the wall and racked the bolt back. "Let's just say I invested in gold."

He proceeded to create a pile of weapons he was going to bring, which consisted of everything from assault rifles and submachine guns to light machine guns and an RPG. He even had a handful of improvised homemade explosive devices. The majority of the stuff he had seemed pretty illegal to own.

"Here, this one’s for you." He held out what appeared to be a Deretta N9 handgun.

"In case you haven't noticed, I don't have fingers."

"Obviously, you didn't notice the other tweak I made to you." He shoved the handgun into a custom made bracket that was mounted on top of me. It had a mechanism that allowed me to pull the trigger. "Just so you know that gun I gave you is just an airsoft replica."

"What the heck am I supposed to do with a fake gun?"

He shook his head. "That's all you're getting. I'm not stupid enough to give an alien a real gun."

Unfortunately, he wasn't going to budge on that. After he finished packing up his weapons, he led me over to one final room of his bunker.

"And this bad boy is how we're getting to Lincoln." He slapped the top of a cargo van that had metal plates welded to the outside and a cow catcher attached to the front. It looked as sturdy as a tank.

After loading up all his gear into the back, he placed me in the passenger seat, while he sat on the driver's side. He pressed a button that was attached to his visor and a large garage door opened up to the outside. With the turn of a key, he fired up the engine and proceeded forward into the unknown dangers of the Nebraska wasteland.