Columbidae SFSD #4 Round IV

Bear Mk II

It wasn’t until they’d travelled a mile or so through the dust that they realised what they were driving on.

“Aw shit, Knobber, Dick, stop a minute,” Titty called out as she pulled the brake levers upon her buggy, the wheels sending up a plume of fur as she skidded to a halt.  She reached downwards, her suited hand delving into the surface of the planet before returning, in her fingers a tatty brown furry toy.  “Mars is made of teddy bears.  Well, bugger me.”

“Alright,” said Dick, although luckily his comms weren’t working so no one heard.

Knobber gunned his buggy’s pitiful two-stroke engine, bears flying from beneath its wheels as it fought for traction, “Keep going,” he growled, the former Mars Colony now in sight.

Knuckles whitened over handlebars and brakes were forgotten as Knobber, Titty and Dick sped over the planet's surface, beady eyes and stuffing spewing in their wake, until finally, they reached the former Mars Colony

It was obvious that it was a former colony, as the colony itself was piled in a massive heap of tangled limbs outside the airlock.  Weapons at the ready, they entered the Martian compound, searching every room.

* * * * * *

“Help me,” a tiny voice echoed down the narrow hallway, “Please, somebody... help me... I’m all alone...”

“This way,” Titty hissed, gesturing off to the left. She led the way through the narrow, winding confines of the compound until there was nowhere left to go - only a door.  A big, heavy, imposing door.  Silently they crept into the room which appeared to be a library of sorts.  

A lone girl sat before a large bay window - no more than seven or eight years old, but before her there was a bear... and a tea set, and a candle, but the bear... the bear was the twin of that which had appeared in Supreme Admiral Commander Kirk’s office.

“Hey little one,” said Dick as he crouched before the child, “how did you end up here?”

“Poor kid,” Knobber echoed,

“What?  Hang on a sec, am I the only one who can’t see a kid here?” Titty hissed through the comms, "that's a bloody alien,"

The child giggled, clutching the bear to her chest. In the creepy sing-song voice that only a child can achieve, from her mouth spewed the musical uttering; “she can see me, she can see me... aughh!” she gasped as Titty launched herself at the child, slamming a hand over her mouth.

“Why are you here?” Titty hissed as she stared at the betentacled creature before her, not understanding why Knobber and Dick couldn’t see the same,

“Only you can see me,” the faux child hissed back, “I’m merely a projection of my true self.  A singular eye cannot create an optical illusion,  you have one eye, they have two - I'm like 3D glasses, do you really want to kill an innocent child before your peers?”

Titty glanced upwards, at the gaping maw that was the tear in the fabric of reality, the aliens crawling through in their hundreds,

“Why are you doing this?” She shook the girl by the throat,

“For shits and giggles mainly,” said the child, “also the fact that my race wants to kill humanity and take over his dimension.”

“By fucking with reality?” interjected Knobber, “how?”

“By messing with the fabric of reality... because the opposite of reality is essentially ridiculous - hence the teddy bears - as is unravelling planets with ones mind.”

“Do you know what would be the best way to wipe out all of human kind if you were a space alien with a special kind of mind ray...?” Knobber leered, “Make all women telepathic. Because if they suddenly found out about the kind of stuff that goes on in our heads they would kill us all on the spot. Men are not people - we are disgustoids in human form.” He elbowed Dick in the ribs, “Ain’t we?  Eh?”

“Oh hell yeah,” Dick replied, “but tell me, how did you come up with the bears?”

The little girl shrugged her shoulders, “Quantum?” she grinned,

“Oh fuck,” Titty cried out as her hands loosened their grip from the faux-childs throat.  She backpedalled frantically as the aliens poured through the void, through the rip in the fabric of reality, clawing their way into the room, “Run!”

So they ran, the human, the humanoid and the robot.  They ran for their lives, so focussed on their destination that they ran blindly into a stray purple wavering time vortex. An extraordinary array of expletives were uttered before the three popped back out into real time once more, arriving about fifteen minutes before they landed on Mars.

“Shit,” Knobber slammed the ship into reverse, navigating his way out of the time vortex like a pro, “We gotta nuke Mars,”

“Aha,” Titty smirked, “it appears that during the time lapse, I invented a planet nuking missile,”

“Well then, that’s bloody convenient isn’t it?” Dick grinned back,

“Yup.”

“Stop boasting, you purple headed ninny, go ahead and fire the fucker,” Knobber yelled

“With pleasure, Captain,”  Titty pushed the big red button marked ‘Do not touch, not under any circumstances - unless you are under attack by aliens masquerading as children with teddy bears’.

All eight plasma cannons fired simultaneously.  As the planet formerly known as Mars became enveloped in pseudo-nuclear atomic fire, it imploded; white giant, red dwarf, black hole.  It did the lot in a matter of seconds until a puff of unremarkable grey dirty feathers pouffed outwards.

“Report!” cried the comms,

“The enemy has been eliminated. Sir.”

“...” The Supreme Admiral Commanders words were lost in a cacophony of what sounded awfully like that of a bag of popcorn in the microwave... that or teddy bears turning into pigeons, restoring the space time continuum once more, the rip in the fabric of reality having been stitched closed.

“You know what?” said Dick, “I heard there’s a planet in the next galaxy over to the left with a truckload of beer needin’ to be shipped...”

“Fuck yeah...”