Jeff Nostro stared into his beer, hunched over the long bar top of his favorite bar, The Volunteer. Through the windows to his left, the blazing July sun sent in waves of heat, against which the pub’s HVAC system struggled valiantly to combat. On the wall behind him, unobserved, a large flat panel TV was displaying the content of a rolling 24 hour news channel, the volume dialled down to a murmur.
Beside him at the bar, his two work friends Sally and Walid continued their animated discussion.
“…and that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you!" Sally said in an exasperated tone. “We’ve been made obsolete by an algorithm. There’s no point in looking for a job in the same sector. They don’t exist anymore… Jeff, back me up here will you?”
Jeff looked up from his beer, blinking at his two now ex-colleagues. The three of them had left together for the bar, soon after receiving the bad news at the office that morning. The customer support department was axing most of the workforce, ostensibly citing the need for ‘cutbacks’ due to a downturn in the economy. However, they all knew the real reason for the layoffs. The new computer system that management had spent the past three months installing had made nearly all of their positions superfluous. Sighing, he mumbled, “It’s the price of progress. I guess” looking sympathetically at the pair of them before turning back to his beer.
Not that Jeff was overly concerned about his sudden change of employment status. He had never been the ambitious type, content with remaining in low income, low pressure jobs that allowed him to kick back in his plentiful spare time and indulge in his favorite pastimes of chilling, looking for girlfriends (rarely successfully) and gaming; online RPGs and old school table top D&D sessions. Truth be told, Jeff knew that if he had spent half the effort on his career as he had gaming, he would have been a rich man by now.
Walid turned to him and raised his beer, “Anyhoo, it was good working with you Jeff. Any thoughts on where your’e heading now, work-wise?”
Jeff turned to the couple and was about to reply that he hadn’t given it too much thought, when he was interrupted by the sudden blare of the TV behind him. The barman had suddenly cranked up the volume on the TV, in response to the word ‘BREAKING’ appearing across the screen in huge letters.
A harried looking female newsreader came on screen, her hair in disarray, hurriedly squeezing an earpiece in place whilst looking down at a piece of paper in front of her. “Erm.. er.. we seem to be getting reports coming in of some sort of disturbance in Washington DC… Going live now to our DC correspondent Jessica Connors… Jessica, can you hear me?”
Jessica duly appeared on the screen, but it wasn’t the iconic view of the White House behind her that grabbed all the viewers attention. Hovering above the building, in full unequivocal HD detail, was perhaps the strangest sight Jeff had ever seen.
Easily the length of a football field, the sleek gleaming craft hanging over the White House was undeniably alien in origin. Composed of a pearly, luminescent material, it seemed almost organic in nature.
The journalist started to describe the scene, but before she could get more than a couple of words out the TV screen flickered, then went dark. A split second later the screen remained dark but began to emit an ear piercing screech. The bartender frantically pointed the remote at the screen, struggling to either turn it off or reduce the volume, to no avail. Jeff looked down at his phone resting on the bar and noticed that it too was blaring out the same tone.
At his side, Sally pressed her palms to her ears in an attempt to block the awful cacophony.
Suddenly, the noise cut out and the screen began to brighten, a blurred image in the centre of the screen taking on resolution and growing, to reveal a face.
“Holy shit!” Exclaimed Walid. “What the hell is that?” Around the bar, a chorus of gasps and shocked cries rang out. A few stools along from them, Kevin, an old barfly regularly to be found propping up the bar in the Volunteer, peered into the shot glass in his hand with a look of puzzlement on his mottled face, exclaiming in a slurred Irish brogue “the man’s fugly as hell…”.
Jeff looked at the face on the TV and had to admit, the description was accurate. All eyes in the bar were fixed on the TV with rapt attention.
The creature on the screen had pale grey skin, almond shaped eyes with yellow sclera and solid black centers, and a lemon shaped skull. That was where any resemblance to basic human stock ended. In place of a regular nose, a long wrinkled fleshy trunk or proboscis hung down from the centre of its face, giving the creature a vaguely insectile appearance. Atop its head, instead of hair, was a dirty ivory colored cap or crest composed of a chitin like material, resembling a diseased toe nail.
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Wearing a plain white smock or poncho, from which its arms protruded, the alien was seated on a throne like, high backed chair, embellished with golden hieroglyphs or pictograms, too detailed to make out. The grey reptilian arms seemed disproportionately small, almost stunted. At the ends of the arms three black nail tipped claws descended, dangling in front of the figure.
Jeff immediately scrutinized the figure, trying to discern any imperfections in the image, but could find none. It did not appear to be computer generated and the level of realism was beyond even the most recent CGI output of Hollywood. The sheer alienness of the character seemed to indicate that this was not a hoax.
It, or rather he, began to speak in plain, unaccented English, albeit with a nasal twang. “People of Earth, greetings. I am Vogel Cenk, the appointed representative of the Galactic Assembly for this sector. Our probes have determined that your species has now reached tech level Alpha-3 on the Halix Scale, and so under the rules laid out in Resolution 23-S/RES/2660 of the Galactic Code, you will be required to submit a champion to fight on your behalf in the next iteration of The Tournament. If your champion survives to the end of the tournament, or vanquishes all other combatants, you will be welcomed into the galactic community.
“However, should your champion fail to survive the trials, then pursuant to subsection 419 of Resolution 23, your species will be painlessly culled and your planetary resources will be harvested by the Vogel Ascendancy, for the betterment of the galactic community.”
Once again, the bar erupted with loud expletives and expressions of shock.
“Your champion has been selected. See your devices for his likeness…” Cenk continued speaking out of vision and the screen was filled with a photo of a young man. Not just any man; Jeff stopped, staring stupidly at the screen, at first failing to comprehend what his eyes were trying to tell him. Across the room, at his usual place at the bar, Kevin shouted out in a voice loud enough for the whole room to hear “Jeff, you're on the Fecking telly, man!”.
Jeff stood, dumbfounded, in the centre of the room, his friends Sally and Walid still in their seats, their mouths stretched in silent Os of surprise. People around him were muttering and pointing. Some had their phones in hand, aimed in his direction.
The picture was from a year or so previous. Bizarrely, it was a head shot of Jeff taken on vacation, a sandy beach and palm trees in the background. Jeff recalled uploading the image to his Facebook page some time ago.
The feed reverted to a closeup of Vogel Cenk. “It is standard operating procedure at this stage in the process to broadcast highlights of previous tournaments, for educational purposes.”
The feed cut to a view of a live audience of Vogels; gathered around a sunken pit, or arena, about the size of a volleyball court. Some, like Cenk wore the same plain smocks, others were dressed in more flamboyant clothing and had decorated their chitinous head covers with what looked like nail polish of different hues, giving them a more feminine air. The audience were making a peculiar chittering, rasping noise, sending a shiver up Jeff’s spine.
In one corner, a diminutive, grey and brown furred anthropoid huddled, clothed in nothing but a simple loincloth, clutching an ineffectual looking spear, or pointed stick. The creature resembled an oversized Koala bear, with a cute button nose. However, its eyes displayed an intelligence and warmth that instinctively made Jeff side with it. The hands holding the spear were almost human.
Assailing the pitiful figure from all sides were creatures from the realm of nightmares. Something resembling a slug, but the size of a mini-van, reared up in front of the bear. A large maw like orifice opened revealing rows of razor sharp teeth. Milling around behind the slug was a pack of 6 wolves, easily twice the size of their Earthly counterparts.
The ursine jinked to one side, nimbly avoiding the lunging slug-analog. It even managed to get a jab in with its spear, scoring a long shallow wound down its left flank from which green slimy blood spurted forth. Standing tall, the bear chanted words in an unfamiliar tongue, and a wave of distortion shot from the tip of his spear, bowling over two of the wolves in his path. Unfortunately two more of the wolves had circled around behind him and now pounced. Before the bear could evade them, they were on him, followed by the rest of the pack. Howling, red eyes glowing, they literally tore the bear to pieces.
The scene cut to a view of what was apparently the koalas home planet; mushroom clouds rose over cities and rows of koalas were led off in chains, into the hold of a waiting Vogel ship.
Never before in his life had Jeff believed in the existence of true evil; until now. The Vogels in the audience were in paroxysms of ecstasy, throwing their stunted limbs in the air and screeching, their weird rasping chitters a perverse form of laughter, taking pleasure from the spectacle before them.
Jeff was wrenched from his trance state by a sharp prod in his solar plexus. In front of him a crowd had gathered, fronted by a belligerent looking man of middling years. “What’s going on?” He slurred, obviously drunk. Pushing his face closer to Jeff’s he continued “What kind of game are you playing?" The crowd behind him echoed his sentiment, pushing forward and jostling Jeff, making him stumble and slide off his barstool…
Darkness overtook him and he seemed to be falling, falling down through a void covering an immeasurable distance. As he fell, stars and nebulae whirled and coalesced around him; vast clouds of gas shot by at blinding speeds. As he fell he dreamt. In his dream, or vision, he, or at least someone who had a similar appearance to himself, strode through an alien landscape, twin suns blazing overhead. Wielding a dark sword which seemed almost alive, the cloaked figure fought and vanquished monstrous armies, swarming in droves towards him. Strange magical energies surrounded him and emblazoned on his forehead was a symbol Jeff had seen before, but could not remember when; a hexagon inset with an eye.