5] Little Green Men:
He sent me a plane ticket, economy, but from the airport, I had to take an Uber at my own expense.
The middle eastern driver in the minivan wasn't happy when I told him the address. "I'll drop you off nearby, but I am not driving into Mirkwood.”
It seemed like the place had already gotten a reputation.
“Get me as close as you can then.”
I still tipped.
Walking into the old industrial park, even from four blocks away, I could feel eyes on me. And motion behind me as I was quietly followed in.
When I had gotten to the actual address, an old man sitting on the front steps held up a bottle of something in a sort of salute. “You the blogger?”
I nodded. “I’m guessing you’re not the Goblin King.”
He laughed, then coughed, spit, and took another swig of his bottle. "Nope, the court jester. His majesty is inside. Along with his court. They’re expecting you.”
The lighting wasn’t the best inside the building due to it not having any power, but various broken windows and holes in the roof let through enough light to allow me to see the aged looking little green man with only one arm who gave me a nod and raised his skull topped staff up in the air in greeting before turning around to lead me deeper inside.
He was wearing a Paw Patrol shirt, sized for a child. Along with a set of similarly sized cargo shorts, and full sized flip flops with a few inches cut off the back on his oversized clawed feet.
A word that might have been “Come.” came from him before he led me down a hall into a large room. The windows had been covered with old sheets which allowed a sullen glow from the sun outside to dimly light up the room.
There were well over three dozen small feral looking goblins in the room. Mostly women and a gaggle of tiny children quietly playing with some battered looking old toys. All of the adults were dressed in used looking child sized clothing mixed in with ordainments made of bones, feathers, and horns.
Many of them had piercings made of the same and ornate tattoos in a wide array of colors.
On particularly large muscular one stood up from a rescued from the trash looking couch, after scooting to the edge to get his feet on the ground, and strode forward at me with his hand out. “King Ernie. Thanks for coming. I would have thought the media would have been lining up to interview me, but I guess everyone wants to talk to the elves over in Idaho. Seems pretty racist to me.”
He grinned at me with a mouthful of shark like teeth and solid black eyes.
“Can’t imagine why.”
He called out something in a guttural language, then shouted something before a pair of his people reluctantly dragged over a chair for me.
I set my phone to record and placed it on top of a cable spool covered in melted away candles. A single large dull orange one in a jar still burned with a pumpkin spice scent.
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He perched himself on the edge of his couch again, I guess he didn’t want his short legs hanging in the air while people watched the interview.
“So for the record. I’m pretty sure I froze to death a few years back. In this very same building in fact.”
His majesty looked down for a moment in thought, looking almost lost.
“I visited the field they buried me in. The closest I could figure out where my grave was somewhere within twenty feet of a field maker.”
He shook his head, then looked up again with a thin smile.
“My people call the world I ended up at the Cook Pot, although calling it Khert’sha might sound better, but it still means the pot for food though.”
He sighed. “Specifically, whatever you can throw in, cook up, and choke down without it putting up much of a fight. Such is life for my kind."
“I didn’t arrive there as an adult, I had to go through the whole being born and growing up deal. Which was an advantage of sorts. I had plenty of time to learn the language, and all about their society.”
He threw his hands wide. "And I didn't get any explanations. No hottie in a sheer white gown with wings, no old man giving me a special power, just getting pushed out from between my Goblin Mom's legs and getting to grow up as a member of the weakest race on Cook Pot."
Grinning again, he leaned forward at me. “But we Goblins. We’re survivors. And we’re good with our hands.”
He reached behind his back and dug in between the cushions to produce a small, double barreled flintlock pistol. "We lost a few people getting them to work, but once we did, we had an advantage, and we definitely had the numbers.”
Running his hands along the barrel he grinned again. “Introducing soap and making the midwives wash their hands cut down infant mortality a lot.”
“Once I took charge as their new king, we began to take prisoners when the other races tried some punitive expeditions. Some of them had useful information.”
He tucked the pistol away. “Such as the existence of a Nexus gate. A magical engine that could open a portal to any place you had ever been. And there I was, someone who had come from another world.”
Spreading his hands out to indicate all of the little creatures around us, he gave me a nod. "A world where goblins aren't hunted for easy kills. A world where my children can grow up, go to school, even get jobs. The American Dream. So I brought the whole family with me.”
He dropped his hands to his sides. “And no one wants to talk to us. Except you.”
Counting off on his fingers, he explained what his people could do. “We got healers, magical healers, as well as seeds from magic plants that can be used to produce Alchemical cures for just about anything. We got beast speakers that can train animals as guide dogs for the blind, drug sniffers, or even helper monkeys. We got shamen who can ward vermin from coming into a building.”
He slapped his hands on his knees. "They can even ward away specific bacteria and viruses now that I showed what those look like in a kid’s microscope.”
Clinching his hands into fists, he began to nearly shout. “We have everything to offer, and all I’ve heard from is the local government is to just stay here until the feds show up to deal with us and they'll send food so we don’t go hungry.”
He breathed heavily for a moment before clearing his throat and looking at my phone.
“So if there is anyone out there who wants to develop a whole new field of groundbreaking products and services. I got dozens of experts willing to work in several fields, and to teach people. We just need a fair cut of the money, and some sort of legal status.”
“Send your representatives and a couple of buses. We can be ready to go in minutes. Just get here soon in case someone decides we’re a problem that is best to just disappear.”
He glared at my phone. “And for anyone planning on that, keep in mind I had to fight through one of the most defended fortresses on Cook Pot to gain control of the Nexus. We won’t go down easily.”
“The cook pot always needs filling.”
After making his statement, I got him talking about Cook Pot. Turned out he believed it was a flat world floating on a sea of flames. Or at least that’s what he was told. “I made it to the edge once, nothing but hot smoke that seemed to go on forever and fields of burning lava down below. But I don’t know for sure that it went all around the world.”
I also got a tour of the building that he had joined together by knocking down walls and reshaping bricks with magic. In addition to his tribe of Goblins, he had a few dozen humans around. “Some of them I knew from before I died. It's only been four years here. All homeless people like me. Others were new, or even showed up after we got here.”
He dug into his pocket and produced a thick roll of cash. "Coins from Cook Pot aren't that hard to convert to cash if you got a human as a frontman. They also spend it for me buying extra groceries and kid’s clothes at thrift stores. As long as they get a cut to buy things for themselves it works out pretty well.”
Waving a hand around, he scowled. "A few of them found out the hard way how easy it was for some of my scouts to follow them around unseen. No one steals from me."
He gave me an accusing look. “I didn’t hurt any of them, they just aren't welcome here anymore.”
I hadn’t said anything.
I shook hands with him before I called for a ride, then walked the two miles to somewhere a Rideshare was willing to pick me up.
It looked like humanity was now sharing our worlds with other races, and how we treat them now, may affect how we interact with them later. Ignoring and isolating the entire population of a new race of people may not be the best plan.
We can, and should, do better than this.