The First Mann on Mars - Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten of the hilarious new science fiction novel, The First Mann on Mars by best selling, multi-award-winning author Mark Watson...
The First Mann on Mars
©Copyright 2024 by Mark Watson
THE STORY SO FAR…
Moronic Billionaut Derek Mann, along with his snarky, silver AI sidekick Barry Wilkinson, have been rescued from an ugly, dangerous spaceship and have now landed on Mars. Back on Earth, things have gone predictably wrong—most of Northern Europe has been obliterated after Derek’s genius friend Noel decided to crank the Large Hadron Collider up to eleven. The rest of the planet is now enjoying the charming chaos of a post-apocalyptic era. Meanwhile, Derek and Barry have discovered that Mars is far from a barren dustbowl…
Chapter Ten: Here come the remix!
Glerktergle stormed into the Martian Parliament building with all the dignity he could muster, which, given the circumstances, wasn’t much. His face still bore a faint, greasy sheen where the sausage had made its unforgettable mark, and his mood could best be described as incandescent. He bypassed the Prime Minister's secretary with a withering glare and a dramatic flourish of his hand, the kind of flourish that suggested he’d recently taken a crash course in melodrama from an overzealous soap opera star.
Had he paused for even a moment to observe the decorum of Martian bureaucracy, he might have been more prepared for the thunderous wave of laughter that greeted him as he flung open the doors to the Prime Minister’s office. Instead, he walked straight into the kind of mirth that could melt glaciers, or at least derail carefully constructed arguments about interplanetary diplomacy.
The Martian Prime Minister, feet casually propped on his desk, was surrounded by staff, all in varying states of collapse as they rewatched the now-infamous footage of Glerktergle’s sausage incident. To Glerktergle’s utter horror, the perpetrators themselves were present too: the foolish Earthman who had thrown the offending banger, the silver AI whose smugness practically radiated like a heat lamp, and their Martian floozy accomplice, all howling with laughter.
“Prime Minister! I demand—” Glerktergle began, but his words were drowned out by yet another uproarious round of laughter as the footage replayed. Worse, his furious hand-waving accidentally activated the entertainment system’s motion controls, causing the video to slow down to an agonizingly deliberate crawl.
On the screen, Glerktergle’s face loomed larger than life, his eyes crossing comically as the sausage spiraled toward him in exquisite, excruciating detail. The moment of impact was a masterpiece of Martian cinematography: the sausage bent and rebounded in ways that defied physics, his head wobbled like jelly, and—most humiliatingly—his tongue, for the briefest of moments, appeared to flick out and lick the sausage’s greasy tip.
This detail, amplified by the slow motion, sent the room into paroxysms of uncontrollable hilarity. The footage now showed the aftermath, the foolish Earthman thrust his fist into the air in glorious triumph on the replay, shouting, “One with the banger, baby!”
“Turn this off at once!” Glerktergle shrieked, flailing his arms like an enraged octopus. Unfortunately, this only caused the motion controls to glitch further. The footage rewound, sped up, and looped, with the audio distorting…
“B-b-b-banger, b-b-b-b-banger, one with the b-b-b-b-b-banger… BANNNNGERRRRRRR, baby-baby-baby-baby!”
The AI, who had clearly decided to embrace the chaos, added, “Here come the remix!” and started beatboxing in the corner. Derek and Doreen joined in, body-popping like malfunctioning robots, their antics turning the Prime Minister’s office into an impromptu dance floor.
The Prime Minister, tears streaming down his bright red cheeks, waved feebly at his staff to stop, but they were too far gone. One aide collapsed onto the floor, clutching their sides.
“This is an outrage!” Glerktergle roared, his face now a rather alarming shade of puce. “This is beyond contempt! This is the ultimate insult! This is an act of war!”
The Martian Ambassador, who had managed to compose himself just enough to speak, smirked and said dryly, “We’re already at war. You lot started it, remember?”
“Oh, well then!” Glerktergle spluttered, momentarily thrown off his dramatic tirade before regaining his footing. “Then this is double war, you hear me? War times a thousand! No, times nine thousand! War with bells on! War with sprinkles! War served hot for breakfast with a triple helping of—of—of…”
“Sausages?” the Martian Ambassador suggested, deadpan, before dissolving into laughter again.
Glerktergle let out an incoherent screech of fury, his fists shaking in the kind of theatrical rage that would have made even the most over-the-top villain in the galaxy proud. “You’ll regret this, Martians!” he bellowed, storming toward the door. Unfortunately, his exit was slightly marred when he tripped on a corner of the rug, staggered forward, and smacked face-first into the doorframe with a resonant thud.
As he stumbled out, the Earthmen and their Martian allies collapsed into yet another fit of uncontrollable laughter.
The laughter in the Prime Minister’s office eventually subsided, though sporadic snickers rippled through the room like aftershocks every time someone muttered, “One with the banger, baby.” Derek, Barry, and Doreen were catching their breath when a sleek Martian aide with a clipboard and a face that could only be described as professionally curious sidled up to them.
“Mr. Derek!” the aide said brightly, addressing him with the kind of deference usually reserved for rock stars, war heroes, or people who had successfully thrown sausages at ambassadors. “A moment of your time, if I may?”
Derek straightened up, brushing imaginary dust from his already dusty suit. “Of course,” he said, trying to sound like a man who got approached by clipboard-wielding strangers all the time.
“I’m from Martian Broadcasting Universal,” the aide explained, holding up a sleek red business card that shimmered like liquid in the dim light. “We’d like to discuss the possibility of you appearing on one of our programs.”
“Me? Really?” Derek blinked, taken aback. “What kind of program?”
“Well,” the aide began, ticking things off on their fingers, “there’s Martian Morning Madness, which is a sort of breakfast show with lighthearted interviews and cooking segments. We’d love for you to demonstrate your, er, sausage-throwing technique live on air.”
“Oh, I like the sound of that!” Derek said, puffing up slightly. “I’m very good at throwing sausages, as you’ve seen.”
“Clearly,” the aide said with a professional smile that didn’t betray whether they thought Derek’s ‘talent’ was absurd or genius. “Then there’s Game of Throws, our high-stakes sporting competition. We’re confident you’d make an excellent guest competitor in the sausage-tossing finals next week.”
Barry raised an eyebrow. “Game of Throws? That’s… a thing?”
“Oh, very much so,” the aide said earnestly. “The ratings are astronomical, especially during the sausage events. Viewership spikes whenever someone hits an ambassador.”
Derek beamed. “It’s nice to be appreciated.”
“And,” the aide continued, “we have Dine or Decline, a reality show where contestants cook for alien dignitaries and try not to offend them. You could make something sausage-related—perhaps a re-creation of today’s events, but, you know, plated.”
“there’s also I’m a Celebrity… Beam Me Out of Here!—a survival show where contestants are dropped into hostile alien environments and have to complete absurdly dangerous tasks for the entertainment of the masses.”
Barry raised an eyebrow. “You mean, like throwing sausages at ambassadors?”
The aide chuckled nervously. “Well, not exactly… though given your talent, we could work something in.”
Derek grinned. “I like the sound of that.”
“Then there’s Big Venusian, our intergalactic reality show where contestants live in a sealed biodome and slowly lose their sanity while trying to win public votes.”
Barry smirked. “Sounds like Big Brother, only with more acid rain.”
“Precisely!” the aide said, seemingly unbothered by the criticism. “And we’d love to have you on Love Moon. It’s a dating show set on Earth’s moon, where contestants try to find romance despite low gravity and an overwhelming sense of existential dread.”
Barry snorted. “Derek? On a dating show? That’ll last five minutes.”
“Oi!” Derek protested, feigning offense. “I’ve got loads of charm. Haven’t I, Doreen?”
Doreen gave him a cheeky smile. “Let’s just say you’d be an… unforgettable addition.”
The aide pressed on. “There’s also Gogglesphere, a show where celebrities don VR headsets and try to perform everyday tasks in ridiculous simulations—like cooking Martian cuisine while riding a unicycle through a sandstorm.”
“Oh, I’d be brilliant at that,” Derek said confidently. “I’m very adaptable.”
Barry rolled his eyes. “You couldn’t even adapt to the onboard coffee maker.”
“And last but not least,” the aide continued, “we’ve got Geordie Shore. It’s… well, we’re not entirely sure how to describe it, but it’s very popular in the North-East quadrant of Mars.”
“Geordie Shore?” Derek frowned. “That sounds oddly familiar…”
“It’s best if you don’t overthink it,” the aide advised.
“And endorsements?” Doreen asked, clearly enjoying herself. “Derek’s got ‘banger ambassador’ written all over him.”
The aide’s eyes lit up. “Funny you should mention that! Universal Sausage Incorporated has already reached out to us. They’d like to discuss a sponsorship deal. Something along the lines of, ‘One with the banger: taste the legend.’”
Derek’s grin widened. “I could be the face of interplanetary sausages!”
Barry snorted. “Or the face they aim at.”
“Either way, it’s publicity,” Derek shot back, unbothered.
The Martian Prime Minister, still wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, leaned forward in his chair. “Derek, my boy, I think you’ve single-handedly done more for Martian-Earth relations today than our entire diplomatic corps. You’ve made us laugh, humiliated Glerktergle, and proven that Earthlings can… well, throw sausages remarkably well. Consider yourself an honorary Martian citizen.”
Derek placed a hand over his heart, visibly moved. “Thank you, Prime Minister. I’ll wear the title with pride.”
“And perhaps,” the Prime Minister added with a sly grin, “we can send you to the next Venusian summit. With a few sausages in your arsenal, of course.”
As the room erupted into laughter again, the Martian Broadcasting aide eagerly handed Derek a stack of contracts, each glossier and more absurd than the last. Doreen leaned over and gave Derek a playful nudge. “Well, Sausage King, looks like you’re a celebrity now.”
Derek nodded, holding the contracts like trophies. “It’s not every day you achieve interplanetary fame by smacking a diplomat in the face with a pork product. I’d call that a good day’s work.”
And as the laughter carried on, echoing down the hallways of the Martian Parliament, Derek couldn’t help but feel that this was only the beginning of his unlikely rise to galactic stardom. He just hoped Glerktergle didn’t have access to a reality show of his own.
END OF CHAPTER TEN
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Interesting. Have you done anything in horror ? I'm prompted after watching " Reanimator "( Comedy Horror 1985 ) yesterday. 2 VERY DIFFICULT tastes that don't always taste great together.