Aliens Don't Eat Dog Food

Extract

'My name is Jordan and my mate’s name is Boy Dave (because his dad is Big Dave). To begin with I should say that none of this was our fault. I would have thought that protecting the future of all humanity was a bit more important than they made it out to be. “They” being most of the teachers at school and our parents and also some other people.

All I can say is that it wasn’t at all like a film where we would have walked in a line out of the dust to some stirring music. If it had been a film, obviously two of us would have died while we were protecting the future of all humanity and that would have been a fat, lazy one, who showed he was quite brave in the end, and also a quite good-looking one who was bad and then became good just long enough to die a hero, although we couldn’t exactly have done it like that because there were only three of us.

Somewhere out there in the universe there may be a few aliens who were a bit impressed by our attempts and this might help the future of all humanity in the long run. All I can say is that there were some members of humanity who didn’t deserve to be saved and I hope the aliens have made a note of who they were.

Most of it was Ryan’s idea. In the film he would be the weird genius who no one listens to at first and then everyone has to beg him to help them at the last minute. Boy Dave and I don’t bother with the middle bit and just listen to him first time, which in this case might have been part of the problem.

We were sitting in a boat we’d borrowed from outside the Black Horse pub. It was the last weekend of the summer holidays and it hadn’t rained for about four days. We’d done most of the things we’d planned to do, but this morning was the day for our trip on the stream. You have to get up early for this or they notice one of the boats has gone, but, being a pub, the Black Horse doesn’t open until eleven, so as long as you get the boat back by nine thirty it’s normally OK. Boy Dave and I are banned from going near the Black Horse and this was something to do with a plastic tree-climbing frame, which I can’t really remember.

Ryan doesn’t like rowing, so Boy Dave and I had the oars. That morning it was misty with lots of dragonflies whirling over the surface of the water. The swans were there too, but they’re incredibly badtempered and don’t like it if you make eye contact.

Ryan was in the middle of dissecting a dragonfly when he suddenly looked serious.

“I’ve been meaning to mention some research I’ve been doing,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “It has to do with extraterrestrial beings and is probably quite important.”

Boy Dave and I looked at each other. We like Ryan but sometimes he can be a bit boring.

“It’s quite obvious that aliens exist,” he said. “Quite a lot of people have been abducted by them, especially in America. I think they mostly abduct Americans because the FBI try to hide all the attempts the aliens have made to contact planet earth.”

Boy Dave said, “All that alien stuff is boring.”

But when Ryan gets on to one of his obsessions it’s
impossible to stop him.

“That’s exactly why it’s important that people like me take an interest and try to understand the messages,” he said. “Here on earth we have examples of metal which can’t have been mined or made. There are whole spaceships which definitely haven’t come from this planet, and bodies of aliens hidden away in basements to try and pretend they don’t exist.”

“That’s just made up.” Boy Dave pushed away an overhanging branch with his oar. “Everyone knows it’s people with tinfoil hats who live in trailers and just want to get on TV.”

Ryan shook his head. “I’ve been on the Internet and there’s accounts of serious people who have actually seen them. Like ex-FBI agents who think we should know the truth.”

“How do they know they’re not just plastic models?” demanded Boy Dave. “You never see live aliens, just dead ones that all look the same.”

Ryan rattled his jar crossly. Inside was a tatty looking moth and another dragonfly who was probably absolutely terrified after what had just happened to his friend.

“Small point.” (Ryan always says this.) “If they go to all that trouble pretending
aliens don’t exist, then they’re not really going to make a plastic one and show it to someone and pretend it’s real are they?”

It was just after nine o’ clock. Andy, the landlord of the Black Horse, comes out for his first fag at quarter to ten to wait for the draymen, so we had to be getting back. Boy Dave and I paddled the boat round in a circle. The mist was lifting; it was going to be another
sunny day.

Suddenly Ryan started pointing at the air. “If we don’t do something to show the aliens that someone actually takes them seriously, they’re going to come down one day, with a big alien army, and take over the planet. The future of all humanity depends on making positive contact. Negative contact will end in the complete annihilation of the human race.”

Talking of complete annihilation, we managed to get the boat back under the tarpaulin just as Andy came out wearing a pair of stripy pyjama bottoms. As we sneaked round the other side of the Black Horse and across the road Ryan said in a sinister voice, “The preparations are in hand.”'