War of the Worlds 2022. Half hour Comedy Audio Drama with an original soundtrack and multiple contributors. HG Wells would be proud (or some other word).
THE TURD PROPHECY OF HYBOBOLUS CLUNE -A story like no other, read it on this site, upland it to your Kindle/ Audible account or listen for free on Spotify, Pocketcasts, Krump, Google Podcasts, Link, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Brumble, Donk, RadioPublik, Drommer, YouTube and Flamp https://anchor.fm/bria…/episodes/The-Turd-Prophecy-e1d7nkn
But the day his father died was etched in his memory.
And the fireball that streaked across the sky.
It should have been a good day, Blardan had been watching Konossus 5 return from an expedition.
‘Every time you see a shooting star, think of your father’, his mother had said.
Now. The thing about time is. It passes.
And the thing about space exploration is, it takes you away from home.
‘Look, the third planet is blue, I told you’, whispered Blardan.
The Navigator whistled, ‘so we are close.’
‘Whisht’, hissed Blardan, ‘say nothing to the chief, but I’ve altered our course.’
It took eight days for the course change to be noticed, and repercussions to begin:
‘What have you done Blardan?’
‘Something I should have done the minute we left Earth chief, I’m bringing us home.’
‘You’ve gone mad.’
‘No chief, it’s the wisest thing I’ve ever done. All my life I’ve been blindly following my father’s footsteps. You know what madness is, leaving a newborn child behind for this. Pure selfish madness. ‘Space travel is in your blood’, they said. ‘Just like your father’, they said. Well. Maybe I’m not like him. Maybe fate had us traverse our home star. Maybe the universe sent me a sign. A chance for redemption. And I’m taking it.’
‘This is crazy, you can’t.’
‘I have. We’ll enter the atmosphere any second. And you can’t do anything to stop us chief.’
‘Blardan you idiot, we can’t just drop out of a galactic traverse like that, the ship will burn up on re-ertry.’
At that same moment.
Far below.
Little fingers gripped a mother’s hand, and looked up.
‘A shooting star, is that daddy?’
‘No, but the universe has sent something to remind us of him.’
Am starting up a 60 second clip a day thing for social media. It’s gonna run for 90 days and will be a mix of standup, storytelling and skits. Social Media is the only game in town for getting slots for storytelling so that’s the motivation -not ideal for context.
I’ll also be mangling the topic of social media in my upcoming live gigs (well, I say gigs …more like shouting to strangers at a bus stop but the process is more or less the same).
‘Guys, you’re lucky I let United Earth use my AI’, explained entrepreneur/ podcaster Leon Extrovert, ‘that last communication from Venoccus was hashtag too long, like who wants to read: ‘Dearest Humans, we are about to celebrate our megaannum solar ejection with extraplanetary explosives, it is important you do not view this as a declaration of war.’
‘Oh, this, it’s an Andromedan intergalactic secret service uniform.’
‘Come again?’
‘An intergalactic secret service uniform.’
‘Really, what are those three symbols on the breast?’
‘They’re not symbols, they’re Andromedan script for ever camouflaged, ever disguised, ever incognito’
‘So you’re an extraterrestrial spy.’
‘Yes, my job is to secretly visit planets marked for colonization, and blend in before reporting back on how many natives there are, so we know how many there are to kill. The key is to go undetected’
‘Excuse me’, said the traveller to three men repairing the path, ‘I’m lost, and looking for Seanleabapheistín.’
‘Seanleabapheistín?, never heard of it’, replied one.
‘It sounds familiar’, said another.
‘You two are too young to remember‘, said the third, ‘but I know that name well. Seanleabapheistín was a familiar name back in the days of magic, when everything was shrouded in a mist of bewilderment. It was built on a hilltop. Facing away from this mortal realm into the endless potential of time.’
‘That’s it’, said the stranger, ‘do you know the way?’