The Time Killer

Prologue

Prologue

      When I began this, I promised myself I would write as complete and entertaining a lie as possible. After finishing, I believed I had carried out this promise. However, the company that would eventually print this insisted that I needed to include other details. They wanted the truth.

      I have never let something like the truth stand in the way of a good story. 

      That means that in the following story some of the lies are true. Alternatively it means that several of the lies are true.

      You figure it out.

*                                          *                                     *                                                 *

      In the beginning, God created the Heavens, the earth and being in his own likeness.

      We began our infinite quest of knowledge. The beings created laboratories, schools and the free coffee refills to expand our minds.

      The first thing we discovered is that the free coffee refill expanded only our bladder, so that was abandoned. It was later rediscovered by the restaurant manager.

      As each day progressed, we soon found that each day was as boring as the one before. So we invented amusement.

      We started bands with names like Open Sores with Pus Seeping from Them and Hairy Legged Woman. They played music so loud that eardrums exploded in a two mile radius. After we lost our hearing, we found we could sleep later without worrying about the birds, the phone or the kids waking us. As a result, we created the second shift job.

      More time passed and we were still bored. We invented the television, which led to further advances including the half hour sitcom and the one hour drama.

      The one hour comedies went on to make stars out of people who would have otherwise spent their life asking things like “you want fries with that?”

      Verily, we were still bored.

      We began to wonder what lies beyond the horizon.  We began to study the Heavens, watching the shifting of the stars, the phases of the moon, and the changing of the seasons. We filled journals with our observations and discussed the possibility of life, like or unlike our own, on other planets.

      We amassed all of our knowledge and surmised we were nothing more than a pimple on the butt of the universe.

      The better educated ones, which luckily were not the one in power, dismissed the above statement as nothing more than an attempt to explain where nonalcoholic beer came from.

      We were finally able to gather enough true believers to have a card game.

      The winner from the game decided that his winning was an omen from the Great One in the Heavens that he, and he alone held in his hand the fate of his people.

      He looked out at his people. Some of them were rich, some were poor. Some well-educated, some thought we were the descendants of cattle. Some were beautiful people who he would make heads of state. Others he would order beaten and commanded to be less ugly.

      He decided we would explore space. He sent his smartest, his strongest, and people who he owed money to into space.

      It was then the trouble began.