Terry Cakebread: Human, Part IV

My name is Terry Cakebread and this is the fucking story of my life.

Previously:  Part III

8:00 AM day 18 with the Aliens

I was dreaming that I was on top of the Hell in a Cell and the Undertaker was about to throw me 20-feet to the table below.  I tried to stop it but his strength was too much, I felt my center of gravity float as I plummeted to the earth.

“Damn, what are they feeding you, you stupid piece of monkey garbage, you shit bigger than a horse at a golden corral.”

I did not know where he was getting these phrases but he said them with such conviction I swear he could channel the spirit of Stone Cold himself.

He looked at me and said, “I got the matches if you wanna watch some ass whoop'ns.”

For the next two weeks Stone Cold ET and I watched WWE matches all day long.  His favorite wrestler by far was Stone cold Steve Austin and I think I offended him once when I showed some slight admiration to his least favorite wrestler, The Rock.  When I told him that the Rock would become much more popular than Stone Cold he told me, “Those other humans must be twice as stupid with half the balls as you, you bag of monkey shit.” He knew my name was Terry, but mostly I was various forms of monkey shit.  Stone Cold ET was infatuated with the hulking physiques of the wrestlers in the movies.  Most of the people on his planet were frail beyond comprehension because of the lack of physical work they had to do.  I showed him how to do some basic muscle building exercises like pull ups and pushups.  Because his body was so unaccustomed to physical work it began to respond very rapidly, much more rapidly than any human would expect.  After just two weeks he had a body that would rival the Ultimate Warrior’s!  In that time he told me that the other aliens were impressed with humans’ ability to achieve beyond their means and intended to find out what it was that helped us do so, and that to figure it out I would likely be killed.  I could tell that he was upset by this.  We were actually having a lot of fun watching the matches together, and I found Stone Cold ET and his hatred for the Rock to be hysterical.

8:00 AM day 42 with the Aliens

“Wake up you floating pile of monkey turds, I got an idea!”

ET came storming into the room muscles blaring with a makeshift pair of jean shorts and a bad replica of Steve Austin’s vest.

“I think I can save you, you no good sumbitch.  If I send you back in time I think I can get you back to Earth.”

I knew that even though Stone Cold ET was retarded on his planet that he was much smarter than I was.  I also knew that time travel into the past was impossible.

“Stone Cold ET, you can’t time travel into the past.  Even if you could how would you know where to send me?”

“Stop flappin’ your gums and listen to me you stupid sack o’ monkey goddamn sumbitch.  I said we can send you back in time, just because your dumb ass didn’t figure it out yet don’t mean it can’t happen.  And as for that other stuff, those guys already got all that figured out about when you left and where you came from.  You had a calendar, and clocks and shit in the ship, we ain’t no stupid piles of wastewater like yourself.”

Perhaps Stone Cold ET was smarter than I was giving him credit for.  The accent made it nearly impossible to assume otherwise.  I started to have some hope but it was dashed by the thought that if they did have time machines they would likely be heavily guarded.  The chances that two idiots, by their standards, could hatch a plan to get out seemed impossible.  I voiced this concern to Stone Cold ET.

“You think you got it all figured out don’t you, ya stupid S.O.B. but did ya ever stop and think for a minute?  This place is heavily guarded, on the outside.  You are what they are guarding you dumb pile of monkeys ass.  We are inside, we have a one way ticket to the time machine.”

“What do you mean we?”

“I’m the toughest S.O.B. to ever walk the light of day on this fucking planet and they treat me like some dumb pile of monkey shit like yourself.  I’m hitching my wagon and coming with you to Earth.  WHAT?  I said I’m comin’ with you to Earth.  WHAT?  I said I’m comin’ with you to Earth, and that’s the bottom line.”

I did not see Stone Cold ET for the next two days.  He was busy setting the time machine for October 2014.  I wanted to go back to that day when I watched the time travel documentary.  Hopefully I would be able to push myself in a more fruitful direction.  I sat in that room skeptical that the plan would work and hoping that Donny and Cher didn’t have me killed by then.  The last month was probably the best month I had had in the last fourteen years.  I spent it with a special needs alien who had an affinity for role play but I figure he was probably the best friend I’ve ever had.

8:00 AM day 44 with the Aliens

Stone Cold ET came bursting into the room in his usual fashion.  He was sweating profusely, I think.  I don’t really know if they sweat or not.  It seems equally probable that he was just taking his Stone Cold act to a new level.  He even tried to smash a ridiculous looking knee brace onto his little nub of a leg.  He threw me a bag.  In the bag was a black vest with CAKEBREAD 3:16 written crudely in some make shift glitter on the side.  There was a pair of cutoff jean shorts in there as well.  As I got dressed in my apparent uniform I noticed some cans in the bottom of the bag.

“What are these cans for?” I asked.

“What’s the matter?  You ain’t never seen a god damn beer before you pussy?”

“Beer?  You know how to make beer?”

“Just shut up and have at it boy, you’re gonna need your strength.”

I took a swig of the “beer” or from what I gathered a liquid he managed to get to look like beer.  Fortunately Stone Cold rarely actually drank his beer, he just dumped it all over himself so I followed suit and was thankful for his wasteful ways.  Stone Cold ET started trying to get me pumped up to take down the other aliens. This was our day and I knew that Stone Cold ET was getting fired up because he started mixing The Rock’s catchphrases with Stone Colds when he spoke.

“This is it you sack of monkey shit, we are gonna open up a can o’ Whoop Ass on them jabronis out there.  We only have about fifteen minutes before they send the guards in after us if you smell what Stone Cold ET is cooking.”

“I think I’m ready.  So you’re going to lead me out into the room and say we have a problem, then we ambush them?”

“Hell yeah, let’s get going, Earth better get ready cuz I’m gonna open up a can on its candy ass.”

We walked out into the hallway trying not to look suspicious.  This was hard to accomplish considering we were wearing matching outfits.  I drew stares from every alien we passed by but I did my best to look like Stone Cold ET's captive.  We entered a large room filled with technological advancements I can only dream about to this day.  ET motioned in the direction of the time machine and I saw it.  On the outside it looked very plain, like a polished white box with nothing on it.  The room was filled with other aliens.  There must have been fifteen or twenty of them.  I started to get nervous.  I waited for Stone Cold ET to give the signal.  He called Cher over.  He did not speak because the language of the aliens is unspoken.  He only used his crude Stone Cold speech with me.  Without warning Stone Cold ET lifted his stubby little right leg off the ground and buried it into Cher’s midsection.  Cher’s hair flew around his face as he bent forward in pain.  Without hesitation Stone Cold ET had Cher’s head on his shoulder and delivered his first and most devastating stunner.  Cher was knocked out cold and flew to the floor.  Stone Cold ET stood up with his head flying side to side in a frenzy spraying spittle everywhere as he gave two glowing middle fingers to anyone he could see.  This was our subtle signal.  I sprinted toward Donny and heard alarms going off all around me.

Shit our time is running out.

I got to Donny and leveled him with a rock bottom.  It was euphoric as I felt the power of my legs driving him into the ground.  I was alive!  I narrowly avoided disaster because Stone Cold ET saw that I used the move of his arch enemy and was not amused.

“You do that to one more of these here jabronis  and I’m gonna open up a can on your ass.”

Noted, I moved around the room leveling aliens with DDT’s and piledrivers.  I could see down the hallway armed aliens rushing toward us.  Our time was running out.  I looked across the room and saw Stone Cold ET delivering another devastating stunner to our rivals.  He got up, pulled his alien beer out of his pocket, and began dousing himself with it, waving his free middle finger in the direction of the armed gaurds.  Stone Cold ET was living his dream.  I ran to the time machine and yelled for Stone Cold ET.

He threw me a beer and shouted, “Take that to remember me you hard headed sumbitch, I’m gonna open up a can on these guards to give you some time.  I got it set for Earth already, just do what I told you and don’t flap your gums at me no more.”

Stone Cold ET was right, we didn’t have time.  He ran to the first guard into the room and gave him the stunner.  He lowered his face to within an inch of the unconscious alien’s head wielding dual middle fingers and said as spit flew everywhere,  “This here is for my friend Terry, who believed in me unlike you ungreatful sack of monkey candy ass jabroni sumb–”

The second guard leveled a blast from his weapon that blew Stone Cold ET’s head clean off of his body.  As his body fell to the floor his middle fingers still burned bright white at the tips, his spirit refusing to surrender.  I closed the door to the time machine and heard a loud bang hit the wall.  I had tears in my eyes and could barely compose myself.  I followed the instructions given to me by Stone Cold ET and the machine began to move as I traveled back through time to a place I thought I would never see again.

8:00 AM October 15, 1980 Cincinnati, Ohio

Stone Cold ET was close.  His calculations were a little off but in the grand scheme of things it was a pretty incredible feat.  He managed to set the machine for a distance countless light years away in a time that had long since passed and only missed by 27 years and some miles.  Nonetheless I was back on Earth but in a time that I knew nothing about.  I thought that I was probably going to be done with the whole time travel idea and decided I would leave my mark on the world through my other passion, entertainment.  No one would ever have known I lived most of my life as Terry Cakebread in the near future.  They would only know me as Steve, the name I took to honor my best friend.  Two years later the Movie ET would come out where Spielberg made that impossibly lucky guess as to what the aliens in that distant planet would look like.  Then again maybe that guess had a little bit less to do with luck than I thought.

Terry Cakebread: Human, Part III

My name is Terry Cakebread and this is the fucking story of my life.

Previously:  Part II

8:00AM Day 2 with the Aliens

I sat in that room staring at the door waiting for it to open.  This was exciting for me, when you have been sitting in the same room where nothing happens for fourteen years straight, staring at a door waiting for an alien to bust through wasn’t so bad.  I sat watching the door for eight hours until it finally opened.  ET looked like he was wearing a long black wig, I think it was just his hair.

Do they have hair?

The long haired ET was carrying some of the food that was left on my ship and a bottle of the whisky.  They must have assumed I needed these things to survive.  He dropped it off next to me and walked out. This daily routine would go on for the next 2 weeks.  At least I was drunk.

Sometimes two or three would come in at a time and stand around me.  They looked like they were communicating with each other but they never made a sound.  I was always uncomfortable when they walked into the room – who knew what they were planning to do with me.  They mostly just brought me my food watched me eat it and left.  There were three different aliens that tended to me and the only thing that I could distinguish them by was their hair.  The one with the long black hair I nicknamed Cher, then there was one with a Donald trump sweeping comb over (Donny), and the standard bald ET.  The bald ET was the one who got the daily honor of removing my shit from the corner of the room every day.  I wondered if their hair was a sort of status symbol.  I wondered a lot of things while I was in there, but mostly I was just drunk.

8:00AM Day 15 with the Aliens

“We would like to speak with you.”

I opened my eyes.  My head was pounding, I think I drank a little more than usual the night before.

Did Cher just talk to me?

“What did you say?”

“We would like to speak with you.”

How could they know English?  There were many people on earth who couldn’t speak English and these people were certainly not from Earth.

“How do you know my language?” I asked Cher.

“It was quite difficult really, there are a lot of concepts that are foreign to us, like names and mathematical concepts.  We were able to learn your language by watching your videos and reading your books and notes.”

“You learned my language by watching WWE and reading my notes?”

“Yes we did.”

“You definitely don’t talk the way they do on WWE.”

Cher gave a meaningful expression, I think, and said, “We were able to use the words and their context in the videos to cross reference your dictionary.  This way we were able to learn the whole of your language and not just the dialect employed by your WWE.”

I was done; they could do what they wanted to me.  What was I going to do to stop them?  They figured out the English language in two weeks by watching wrestling with a dictionary that they presumably didn’t know how to read.  They probably learned how to read from those goddamn signs.  I couldn’t outsmart them.  ET was definitely not the most physically intimidating specimen that I had ever seen but I still had no hope of overpowering them.  In the last fourteen years I had achieved never before seen levels of skinny fat that would be appalling to most humans.  I would have to just sit there and let them run their experiments on me.

“You have come an incredible distance with such crude technology.”

“My ship is crude?  I spent years and years developing the most advanced spaceship ever seen on earth!”

“Yes, I understand but your people have very limited intelligence.  Our kind don’t actually have to do calculations as you call them, we just understand math, or the convention of math that you on earth have created to understand certain things.  It really is remarkable how humans were able to develop such a convention to allow them to understand what their limited minds cannot grasp.  It would almost seem to require a higher intelligence to work with so little.  What a paradox that is, isn’t it?  Anyway your ship is very rudimentary but we are very pleased that it worked as well as it did.  I’m sure deep space travel must have seemed nearly impossible to your kind.”

This was amazing, these people looked at me like a chimpanzee who found a way to pass high school with nothing but sign language and a diet of bananas, and everyone knows you can’t open a beer bottle with a banana.

“What do you call this planet?” I asked.  Cher looked frustrated that he had to explain these things that he had already made clear, but he was talking to a fucking monkey after all.

“We do not have names.  We just recognize things as they are.  This is why we do not have spoken communication.  We can look at each other and know exactly what the other desires us to know.”

I felt so stupid at this moment.  I thought that this must have been what it felt like to know me back on earth. I discounted everything anyone else said to me in favor of my own theories.  I talked down to everyone else and ejaculated my superiority all over the face of anyone who came to near my greatness.

Cher spoke again, “We do have one question for you.  What is the purpose of this WWE?”

“It’s just entertainment for humans.”

“Yes, we were able to gather as much, but what is the function of entertainment?”

“It doesn’t really have a function, it’s more so that the audience can take a break from your functions.”

Cher looked confused for the first time.

“What about your fucking hair?” I blurted out, after all I had some questions of my own.

“Our hair is just that, hair.  It distinguishes us, physically, from one another.”

Cher glanced at the others and they all turned to exit.  I was left alone in the room once again.

8:00 AM day 17 with the Aliens

I was sleeping, dreaming about a life back on earth when I heard a loud voice calling toward me.

“Wake your goofy ass up you stupid sumbitch.”

I must be dreaming

“I thought I made myself clear, I said wake your dumb ass up you stupid sumbitch for I hafta open up a can of Whoop Ass on your ass. They got me in hear cleaning up your goddam monkey shit again, and I got a few words to say to ya.”

It was ET and he was talking in a completely accurate impression of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s voice.  He sounded angry, but I don’t know if he intended to.

“Why are you talking like that?” I asked.

Stone Cold ET was acting like a maniac.  He was strutting around me swinging his arms back and forth with power in his stride.

“Let me tell you sumthin, and don’t you go flappin’ your gums while I’m talkin’ to ya.  You see I’ve been watching that WWE that they have been talking soooo much about.  You know it’s been causing quite a ruckus on our planet.”

“It has?”

“Shut up and listen when I’m talking to ya, I thought I warned ya ‘bout flappin’ those gums when I’m talkin’.”

ET was in a frenzy at this point, he had his hands on his knees and his face about an inch away from mine as he spoke to me.

“They keep yammerin’ about this entertainment thing you were talking about because they can’t understand the concept.  I tried to talk to them about it but they just think I’m some stupid sumbitch who don’t know his ass from a hole in the wall.”

“Who can’t understand it?  Cher?”

“Who the fuck is Cher?” ET bellowed as spittle covered my face.

“That’s a name I made up for the guy with the long black hair, the other one is Don, and I imagine I’ll be calling you Stone cold ET from now on.”

“Stone cold ET?  Hell, you know what you sack of monkey shit, I think I like that.  You’re god damn right that’s my name and that’s the bottom line.  Like I said those ass wipes have been yammerin’ about this entertainment thing and they reckon I ain’t smart enough to help them.  That’s why they got me in here wiping your shit outta the corner cuz they say I’m not much smarter than the god damn human.  I think they might be right because I get it, I get entertainment.  I got to watchin’ those big ol’ musclemen in that ring and couldn’t get enough.  That Stone Cold is one tough S.O.B. and I decided I was goin’ to be just like him.  If anyone wants to stand in my way of that then I have two cans of Whoop Ass I’ve been dyin’ to open up on ‘em.”

I didn’t know what to say.  Here was an alien.  A real goddamn alien that looked like fucking ET from the movie!  And he was acting like Stone Cold Steve Austin.  This was actually happening to me.

“What are they going to do to me?”

“I reckon you got about a month in your time before they split your ass to timber to figure out what makes you tick.  Until then they will probably just run some tests on your ship and try to figure out which side of the Mississippi you came from.”

Stone Cold ET was clearly mixing phrases and confusing me in the process.  What I did gather was that I had about a month to live on this planet before I was a dead man.

“Stone Cold ET, do you think you can bring in some of those matches to watch the next time you come in?”

“You're god damn right I can and that’s the bottom line.” His head was bobbing wildly side to side as he spoke.  He started to walk toward the door.

“Stone cold, I have a question.”

“Then spit it out, or are ya too dumb to talk?”

“Did your people ever hear of Jesus?” I asked.

I don’t know what in the Christ you’re talkin’ about boy.  What’d ya say ET?  What? What’d ya say ET?  What?  Boy, you better not be getting smart with me or I’ll knock that stupid little smile clean off your face before you can count to two, and that’s the bottom line.”

“Yeah, I figured you didn’t.”

Stone Cold ET strutted feverishly toward the door and slammed it shut as he left.  I liked him.

To be concluded . . .

Terry Cakebread: Human, Part II

My name is Terry Cakebread and this is the fucking story of my life.

Previously:  Part I

8:00 AM October 31, 2052 Ship Time (ST)

It had been eight years since I left Earth.  I was not getting nearly the amount of work done that I anticipated up to this point in my travels.  Being this deep in space, and the fact that I am was smarter than nearly all other humans, gave me an incredible advantage over any other scientist of my caliber, of which there are few.  I assumed I would be disproving modern theories of the universe handily by now, the way string theories and M theories of the past were dismantled.  The truth was that I was flying at near light speed, warping the very fabric of time, and as I did years were flying by on Earth.  My friends and family were all dead by now and unless humans started to colonize other planets or sent more people out like me, then I was likely the last one of my kind:  a lone human, hurtling through an infinite void, alone.

The whole mission started to seem pointless to me, I thought about how it would feel before I left on this mission and assumed I could deal with it better.  The thoughts were abstract then – this was real.  No one would ever feel as alone as I felt.  There was no hope that I would ever see another human for the rest of my life.  I tried to distract myself by doing the work that I intended to finish.  I became overwhelmingly distraught by the fact that no one but myself would ever benefit from the advances I made, and that during the thousands upon thousands of years that passed on earth since I left many people probably discovered far more than I could realistically do in a lifetime.  I thought I could deal with these feelings since I had always been a loner.

8:00 PM September1, 2027 ET

I stood at an intersection in Washington D.C.  I looked around me and couldn’t help but think that the nation’s capital was not all that I thought it would be.  Everyone around me looked so dirty and poor.  The fact that I was standing at the intersection attempting to hitchhike in my only suit, a blue suit I bought in 10th grade which was fashionably small at the time, and a bright red computer backpack did nothing to quell my nerves.  I did my best to comb my otherwise messy brown hair into a respectable order because I had the biggest interview of my life that day.  When I say interview I mean I was just going to show up at the NASA headquarters and start asking people questions.  I may have been a genius when it came to math and physics but when it came to people, I had no idea what I was doing.

I tried for two days straight without sleep or luck to find someone who would listen to me.  Late on that second day I saw a vivacious blond woman in a pantsuit walking by me as I tried to plea my case with an official who was having none of it.  She must have pitied me because she came over and asked what I was trying to do.  If my social skills left something to be desired for the average person, then they were virtually nonexistent when talking to a beautiful lady like her.  I couldn’t look her in the eye and attempted, without success, not to look her in the chest either.  The best I could do was go full blown nerd on her and show her what I had been working on at school.  She was very impressed by my work and agreed to let me intern at the research and development department at NASA, even with my limited schooling.  Ms. Bosomchest changed my life and it would be a long time before I watched WWE again.

These nobodies in all honesty were lucky that I took my talents down to NASA in the first place.  During the first two weeks I was there the scientists tried to give me the most tedious jobs that no one else wanted to do.  But my genius could not be contained; I had an appetite for answers that could not be satisfied.  I would stay at the headquarters day and night working on my own theories by myself, inspired by all that was going on around me.  By the time I started showing the others what I was working on, people started to take notice.  The fact that I did not have any letters after my name or a degree to fall back on stopped holding me back when people started to listen to what I had to stay.  I began to work closely with Ms. Bosomchest on a daily basis.  She was one of the smartest women in the whole world but the stuff I was working on was much too difficult for her to grasp.  She did the small stuff for me and allowed my mind to concentrate on making real progress.

She became infatuated by me, by my dismissal of her flirtatious attempts, and my sheer intellectual dominance of any room I was in.  When I was stumped I used her, she became my WWE.  She fancied that we were in a relationship at the time but she was the only one connected.  Thinking back about her would be one of the worst things about flying out here in space.  I had someone who wanted to be part of my life, who wanted to share what I had to offer and I just used her for my own advancement.  I thought no one could ever be enough for me, that my only chance to be happy would come from within my own mind.  That is why I was the only one to volunteer for this mission.  That is why I knew I could handle it.

I was wrong.

8:00 AM December 25, 2058 ST

Four years ago my “internet” went down.  The whole thing was wiped out. The only thing that I had left was 24 hours worth of my most recent activity.  This amounted to 24 hours of WWE wrestling videos.  I also had a few books on the universe, a dictionary, and my notebooks full of unfinished theories and calculations.  I used none of these things anymore.  I had been on this ship for fourteen years.  I was in another galaxy so far from earth it is impossible to comprehend the distance in your mind and I couldn’t even summon the enthusiasm to walk over to the windshield and look out.  I tried to watch WWE sometimes but just seeing other people on TV, people I knew were dead, and a species that died long ago was just too depressing.  Mostly I drank and drew pictures.  I brought along 70 bottles of whisky, one to celebrate each potential year on the ship on New Year ’s Day.  I only had five bottles left.

I also brought on this trip a huge stack of notebooks.  I preferred to write out my calculations by hand, my mind just worked better that way.  I filled those notebooks, mostly, with pictures of penises or peni as I like to pluralize it.  If I thought that another human would read my life story I might have left that part out, but since I doubt highly the possibility that anyone will ever know about Terry Cakebread I see no reason not to be honest about the whole thing.  At some point during the trip the subject of the penis, particularly my penis, the last, final penis, or the lone penis, as I referred to it, became infuriating to me.  It became very symbolic of my life.  It, like my life, really had become useless since this whole trip began.  It would never get to do what it was designed to do or accomplish its purpose.  It was an endless reminder that I was lonely and it fucking mocked me.  I would awake each day with acute onset of Bonair’s disease, and find it staring me in the face.  Other times it would just hang there depressed, making me depressed.  But mostly it was just there, being useless, the way I was just there being useless.

I tried to draw other things.  I tried to draw Bob Marley but it just looked like a penis with dreadlocks.  Motorcycle perhaps?  Penis with wheels.  Watergun?  I think you see where this is going.  This day was just like any other, I was drunk like many of the days before lying in my living room amidst a floor strewn with pencil drawings of peni.  The fact that it was December 25, on the ship was just an abstract measurement.  It wasn’t Jesus-mas back on earth and it didn’t feel much like Jesus-mas here either.

Just then the ship started to shake.

The artificial gravity of the ship was disabled and I was floating in my ship.  I was incredibly drunk at the time and I thought I might be hallucinating.  Suddenly I flew up to the front of the ship and was knocked unconscious.  When I woke up I was no longer in the only place I knew for the last 14 years.  I was in a dark square room that smelled like thai food, by myself.  I often had dreams of being outside of that goddamn ship but I could tell that this was no dream, something had me.  The only way I could have been taken out of that ship and still be alive would be if aliens abducted me.  I wondered what they would look like, what they would do to me.  Then the door at the far end of the room opened.

ET

He looked like fucking ET.  I thought that I might be killed but at least I would get to see what aliens really looked like.  But no, I get abducted by aliens that look like fucking ET.  Spielberg , nice fucking guess, thanks for ruining my day.

“Wheres Alf?”

It didn’t answer me.  It just walked around me staring silently.  I felt my butthole tighten up, everything I’ve ever read about aliens tells me that they are going to stick something up my ass, and Spielberg already guessed right once today.  He pulled out a long wand.

He's going to stick that up my ass.

He waved the glowing light over my body like a metal detector.  I didn’t move, I’m not sure If I could have moved or not, but I didn’t.  Then when he was done ET walked out of the room without making a sound.  I sat there dumbfounded.  I didn’t know what to think.  At least they were probably going to kill me, that would be ok.  But what if they just kept me as a test subject?  That’s what humans would have done.

Fuck.

To be continued . . .