The Cute Innocent Munchkins
Nov 29, 2022 3:39:23 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 29, 2022 3:39:23 GMT -5
The Cute Innocent Munchkins
by
Radrook
I, ambassador Chen, had just arrived at the Aldebaran Five spaceport and the little, gray-skinned, potbellied aliens of that planet, Munchkins we affectionately called them, had appeared dressed in white loin-cloths, their traditional native garb, with their cute tiny, yellow elfish ears located high on each side of their narrow skulls and had greeted me with the usual hospitality as was expected.
They had proven to be a very peaceful childlike species that whose members were always softly chirping at one another and always seeking to politely please. It was considered their nature. After all, they had greeted our invasion forces with welcoming cheers, and absolutely no force had been necessary to subdue them. We knew little of their culture. Saw no need to delve deeply into a culture so subservient that it could be dominated with such ease.
So just a few cursory studies had been done, and those had been enough enough to establish that they were pacifists and posed absolutely no threat. Because of this, I, an interplanetary ambassador, had chosen Aldebaran 5 as a place to enjoy a respite from my ambassadorial responsibilities.
The location I had chosen was relatively unknown, a secluded village nestled in their forest where I could finally feel free from all my official responsibilities. It was also scenic, with a placid lake with a crystalline waterfall framed in pink, blue and white vegetation in the distance.
But instead of transporting me there, as I was expected, I was hastily taken to a dusty village where I found a tribal council waiting, with somber faces, as if burdened with some unimaginably deep sorrow.
Naturally I considered bolting, but had nowhere to go. The spaceport had been left miles away and the interstellar transport had already left and was scheduled to pick me up in an Earth month. So I attempted to remain calm and take things in stride. After all, what had I to worry about anyway. These were the Munchkins.
“Have a seat ambassador!” a wizened white-bearded little one said to me in a deep, resonant semi-growling tone that I had never heard any of them use before. He was also making direct eye contact with me instead of humbly looking away. This was also totally unprecedented.
“What is this all about!” I uttered in a loud confident voice that had seemed to previously always intimidate them. But this time they remained impassive, and worse still-silent until the intensity of their pink-eyed glare forced me to blink my eyes rapidly in panic. Finally the white-bearded one responded:
“We have brought you here for a very important reason ambassador. It is because we need an explanation about your Emperor’s decision to reject our planet’s inclusion as full-fledged members of your galactic empire.”
There was an intense stream of reddish light filtering in from a skylight and it was focused on the speaker giving him a reddish tint which reminded me of blood. I began to wonder why they had chosen to position the old bearded geezer under it. But since it was an official matter, I considered myself off the hook since I was merely there on vacation. So I assumed that once that was cleared up, and they understood my official position, I would be allowed to leave.
“I am not here in an official capacity. I am here on vacation?” I said in the most confident imperialistic way that I could while trying to conceal my quivering hands and nervously-fluttering upper lip. But of course, I could not conceal that I was perspiring profusely as beads of perspiration formed on my forehead and rivuleted from the side of my face and began dripping from the tip of my nose.
“We understand and apologize for the inconvenience ambassador,” the old alien intoned via the crystalline oval interspecies translator which dangled from his thin neck and rested on his white, hairy, narrow chest like some vulture’s egg in its nest. ” but this is a matter of extreme urgency and your former ambassador has just perished and it cannot wait!”
I considered asking for the cause of the resident ambassador's death, but feared that the response would be a challenge to human authority, and I didn’t want to be in the middle of it. The old wizened little alien Munchkin waited silently for a while, as if expecting me to demand an explanation, but I clenched my teeth tightly in order to avoid blurting out something and living to regret it.
After a while of this mutual silence, the little alien rose from his seat, walked to my left and momentarily disappeared into the shadows and then suddenly reappeared once more under the Red Giant star’s reddish glare with some documents in his small hands.
“Are you aware of this?” he said gesturing at me with the documents with an intense furrowing of its thick, white bushy eyebrows.
“I’m afraid I am not!” I responded hoping that the documents didn’t contain a declaration of war or some other message that would make me a reluctant a martyr.
For the first time since my vacationing at that place, I sincerely regretted not having read more on these little aliens' history or their culture instead of just classifying them as cute and harmless. Such an investigation I assumed would have calmed my imagination considerably I preferred to believe.
"So you are ignorant of this?" the little alien said as he held the document in his little hand with its pinkish palm and rounded cute silver fingernails.
"That is correct! I don't know anything about that document. What exactly is the problem?"
There was a hushed murmur among them as if I had violated some sacred custom, or had ignored ambassadorial protocol. I temporarily considered using my sonic blaster, but then, where would I go? I knew less about the planet's geography than I did about the little aliens’ culture. They were pacifists, true, war was unknown to them. But yet, here I was being interrogated in an unfriendly way. Also, where were their former docile smiles and servile ways?
"What is this all about?" I asked once more, and this time the alien calmly walked up to me and handed me a document. The message on it written in their language and the translation was clear, they had been denied-provincial status in the empire.
"Do you consider that just?" the alien uttered in a hurt tone of voice once he noticed I had finished reading.
“Äs I said, your excellency, I am here on vacation. I am also not qualified to act in any official capacity. Perhaps you should give that responsibility to the ambassador's assistant. I am sure he will be glad to explain matters and--"
"He also is dead!"
This declaration was followed by a silence during which they all stared and I stared back in a manner that I strongly hoped conveyed a calm dignity, and not the undignified panic that I was feeling at that moment.
"What was the cause of their death?" I finally had the courage to ask while trying not to lose control of my urinary bladder.
"That is irrelevant to the political issue at hand!" the little alien snapped and his pink eyes seemed to glow with a mysterious effervescence I had somehow not noticed before because maybe it hadn’t been there? Then again how could I have noticed since they had never dared to make eye contact with us before but had always kept their eyes averted towards the ground.
“We I have a right to know.” I responded. “They are official representatives of the galactic empire and their safety was your responsibility and if this was due to any type of negligence or aggression on your part you will be held accountable!” I heard myself say as if from a safe distance.
“No violence nor negligence ambassador. They just simply expired.”
“Surely you have the means to determine cause of death!”
“Would that restore them to life?”
Their sudden lack of cooperation after so many decades of docility was beginning to grate on my nerves.
“That is NOT the point! I almost found myself shouting. “ The point is that the cause of death must be determined in order to assure that their deaths were not due to aggression. There was a murmur among the aliens in response to my words.
“Aggression by whom ambassador? We are a peaceful creatures. Are we not?”
“Then why am I being detained here against my will?”
“But you are not being detained against your will ambassador. You are free to leave this council hall whenever you like. However, it would be wise to answer our inquiry concerning our planet’s rejection as a province of your empire.”
“I know nothing of this.”
“That very well might be. But your general knowledge of the laws can shed light on it. That is all we expect. Then we will take you to your vacation spot and you can do as you wish for the remainder of your stay. So please explain why our noble planet was rejected.”
He was right, I was versed in the nuances which were used to qualify and disqualify societies from full imperial provincial status. But since no alien society had ever been rejected once they reached territorial status, I had not given it much thought. Neither had I considered the little alien capable of reacting this way. After all, they had been colonized for two hundred Earth years, without even a peep.
“For example, please clarify for us what the document means by our intolerable character-flaw?”
He pointed to a sentence on the document’s third page as the council members murmured as if a swarm of giant angry bees getting ready to defend their hive.
“It seems to me that you already know what it means, your excellency, but merely want me to confirm it. Why?”
“Perhaps because we are very optimistic and don’t wish to reach an unfavorable opinion about your alien kind-ambassador.”
There was a small rectangular door not far from where I was seated which suddenly seemed to appear on the wall not far from where I sat, and which I kept eyeing nervously and considering a means of escape. But it was rather narrow and with the extra pounds I had put on recently, I would likely get stuck. Even worse, whenever I eye-balled the door all the little sons of bitches also shifted their gaze in its direction as if expecting me to try it, and I could detect a sly barely suppressed smile on their elfish faces. So I began to suspect it was booby-trapped in some way.
Maybe they had an Aldebaran Gavangular Beast waiting on a short leash to tear me to pieces next to it. Maybe that was how the ambassador and his assistant perished, by using such an exit. That way their deaths would be deemed accidental.
“You look extremely worried ambassador. I assure you, you have nothing absolutely to worry about since all this will be resolved with one gesture of official apologies, on your part, on behalf of your government.” the wizened little alien said with a forced calm voice and a smile resembling a grimace.
“What might that simple, harmless, apologetic gesture be?” I asked with a tremulous voice unable to no longer conceal my growing fear.
“Simple ambassador, to go back to your planet and never set foot on ours again!”
“I am afraid I can’t do that! My ship has left.”
“We will provide you with the transportation.” the little alien shot back.
At that point my duty to uphold Earth’s imperial dignity became too strong, and I uttered the words that I would come to regret for the rest of my life.
“As an ambassador of imperial Earth, I take orders from nobody except from Earth Imperial authorities! Now! You will stop all this nonsense, and quickly transport me to my vacation location at once!”
It has been twenty five years since then that I have been toiling in the mines deep beneath the surface of their world. To those who ask of me, they tell them that I mysteriously disappeared into their forest never to be seen again. Of course, Earth authorities believed them since they had once more assumed their customary humble behavior, and nobody imagined even in their wildest dreams, that these Munchkins would ever be capable of doing such a thing-especially not to one of their beloved Earthian friends and rulers.