literature

Plot of the Retro Bimbo Aliens, Log Pi

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Log Pi

If this is the last log you all see from this, like if an astronaut finds our ship once the power's out and the cloaking device stops working and digs through it and sees these records, I want to start by making some apologies.  

Mom, I was the one that knocked your signed photo of Pat Benetar off the mantle and ended up tearing a hole in it.  I know that the cat I blamed died four years ago, but it was still wrong of me to make Nibbles take the fall.

Melissa, when I broke up with you it wasn't because I felt that I was weighing you down.  I'm pretty sure you guessed that much.  It was because that one time I went over to your house and saw you eat a sandwich made of peanut butter and Doritos.  I know our relationship is too far gone to salvage, but maybe if you examine why you'd do something that disgusting, you can find someone that lives with your faults.

People of earth, I did what I could.  If you're all brainwashed Gynarians now, I'm really, really sorry about that.

More immediately, to newsman Miles Millolovich, I'm doing everything I can.  If my crew and I die, it's because we're trying to fix the situation.  While we may not have seen eye-to-eye in every situation, your hair was always an inspiration to us all.

Okay, now that I've gotten all of that off my chest, I can explain a bit exactly what went down.  How long do I have before we're prepped?

One hour.  Great.  So, I'll have to be quick about it.

Remember in the last log, where I said we'd have to get national attention, and that doing a debate would be the way to manage it?  It turned out that was accurate, but not for the reasons any of us thought it would be.  For those of you who haven't guessed based on all the clues that I gave you in the last log, our Gynarian scouting division was secretly running the "WeGoGals" youtube channel, with the entire persona of Cindi Masters being something we created in a frustrated committee, even down to her holographically projected appearance.  A week ago, we agreed to have a debate with the notoriously conservative newsman Miles Millolovich as to whether or not men should all be tossed into internment camps.  If you were anywhere near the San Fransisco area, it's likely that you saw some of the signs advertising "The Heroine of Youtube Versus The Living Patriarchy" taking place that weekend at the convention hall.  If any of you have watched the news anytime in the past few hours, you're pretty likely to heard about what happened next, but you should probably listen to my firsthand account anyways.

Prep for the event wasn't as taxing as I thought it would be.  Most importantly, "Cindi" needed a support crew to help set up the debate and sign autographs.  This was much easier than I figured it would be, as I initially had reservations about someone questioning our authenticity.  All of the names in the credits were just made up on the spot, after all.  That didn't turn out to be a problem, though.  The moment anyone questioned whether any of our forged names existed or not, they were shouted away by rabid fans, and every single one of our pseudonyms was invited onto a webcast interview with one of the mainstream media outlets.  They threw us all softball questions, and it was actually a pretty good opportunity for each of the rest of us to practice being in character as the role we'd be playing at the debate.  Other than that, it was a few simple hotel arrangements to make it less obvious that we would be arriving primarily by spaceship, and we were pretty much set as far as faking our way into a false set of lives went.

How we actually planned to debate was a little more complicated.  Because we'd written our stuff to be pretty much totally factually incorrect, we had a good idea of exactly the sort of counterpoints miles would be able to make, and prepared some flimsy half-answers to those.  The real meat of the debate, however, was our list of things for Rosalin to get offended over and start screaming about.  From her combat prowess and the way she tends to go completely silent and serious when she's practicing her zorka shooting, I had no idea that she was so good at ad-libbing near-unintelligible gibberish, but with only the slightest "provocation", she proved herself able to generate over half an hour of impassioned screaming about nothing in particular.  To try and make her seem even more unhinged, we dug up some of what we thought would be good dirt on Miles, and instructed her to pepper some of those accusations in with her ranting.

With our script and hologram projectors readied, we made our way back to Earth, leaving Andrea and Morgan behind to keep up appearances in case Stephanie called us up for whatever reason.  Zoey met us there, led us to our hotel room, and after a few days that I can describe as simply "nice", our big day had arrived.

Though we were in walking distance of the convention hall, we were stunned to see a limousine waiting to pick us up and deliver us to our destination.  At the entrance of the convention hall, a throng of cheering fans was waiting for us, waving signs that I'm pretty sure they thought were clever and endearing.  Far, far in the back, we could hear a lone voice yelling "Cindi is a fraud!  She has no listed employment history or graduation records!"  Sticking to the plan, we let him get chased off by a dozen incredibly large fans of either gender, and Zoey made a tweet to Cindi's account claiming that she had been openly harassed even before the debate began and that it was only indicative of the patriarchy we live in.  The crowd split apart to grant us access to the debate hall.

Inside the massive auditorium were even more people, stuffed into every seat to show their solidarity with Cindi as she proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that women were given no support compared to men.  From our vantage point we were able to pick up on something that the cameras behind the audience couldn't--of the thousands of people there, the vast majority of them were men.  I actually felt kind of bad about how negatively I had described Steven during our date, as many of the ones even in the front row alone made him appear as a glistening Adonis in comparison.  The females in the audience were pretty easy to pick out.  They mostly had colored short hair, thick-rimmed glasses, and a number of piercings.

Once the moderator's introduction was done, it was time for Miles to begin with his opening statement.  For most of the audience, it was probably almost impossible to hear, as he was drowned out nearly entirely by a chorus of boos, along with our fans screaming at him that he was a rapist, or a rape apologist, or something like that.  Sitting behind Rosalin, however, I got to actually hear all of it.  Though he was equally well-mannered and well-spoken, the criticisms he levied at our views were direct and without any mincing of words.  According to Miles' opening statement, our videos were poorly written, completely unsourced, and entirely nonsensical when viewed as anything but a means for pushing a narrative.  A few times during his lecture, I had to stop myself from nodding along with what he was saying.  Thankfully, more eyes were on Rosalin, and her rapidly furrowing brow.  She was good at her role.

As "Cindi" began her speech, the crowd went silent with what felt like reverence more than anything else.  It was honestly a bit creepy, staring out over a slack-jawed audience, so I turned my gaze to Miles.  His regular eye-rolls and sighs coupled with the occasional pinching of the bridge of his nose told me everything I needed to know, and as Rosalin's time for her introduction began to wind down, Miles swapped a few of his notecards around, preparing for the counter-attack.  Rosalin kept going until the moderator's bell forced her to stop, at which point she produced a face that expressed that making her stop was somehow callous and cruel to her, but with a resigned sigh, she turned to look at Miles.  I was actually curious as to how he had planned to respond, but all I heard were "Obviously, this--" out of his mouth before the blare of the PA system cut him off.

"All attendees, evacuate the building.  This is not a drill.  Police will assist in escorting everyone out in an orderly fashion.  Please remain calm."  The crowd, which was clearly planning to go back into a set pattern of jeers, erupted into a loud cheer as they all rose from their seats, smashing into each other as they pressed their way towards the door.  As our fake video crew looked around, confused, I couldn't help but turn toward the moderator, wait for him to take his finger off his ear, and ask what was happening.

"It seems as though someone called in a bomb threat.  Then someone else.  Twenty-five of them, to be precise.  That's twenty-five separate threats.  About ninety bombs, if all of them are to be believed."

"You know they're not, right?"  I answered.

"Yes, I've been informed that someone might try to pull this sort of stunt.  Still, at this point it's a police matter.  You and your group should file out as soon as that officer comes back for you."  He gestured toward Miles' podium, where an attractive female police officer was leading Miles backstage and down a hallway that was thankfully clear of the kerfuffle going on in the audience.  There was something about the officer that caught my attention, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure it out.  Sasha, however, was a bit more on the ball.  "Normal cops don't wear high-heeled boots."

I hadn't entirely put all the pieces together, but I knew something was up.  I'm not sure why I did it, but I bolted off toward the hallway the fake officer was leading Miles down.  If I'd thought harder about it, I probably would have come up with something better to yell after them than "Hey, stop!"  Maybe "She's not a real police officer, and she's trying to lead you into a trap!"  or "Wait, she's an alien in disguise!"  Probably the first one.  Unfortunately for both me and Miles, "Hey, stop!" was what my adrenaline-addled brain had decided to go with.  All this did was convince Miles that he actually was in some sort of danger, what with the five known-to-be-rabid hyper-feminists running after him, and with the fake cop as an escort, he took off at a surprisingly fast pace for such a small and well-dressed man.  Ducking down hallways that we weren't familiar with, we lost track of them, forcing our group to split up, but all paths led to a bank of elevators in the lobby.  Watching the number on the indicator climb, I realized exactly what was going to happen, and I bolted for the emergency stairwell just a few feet away.

No longer caring about how weird it would look, I undid the bindings that kept my shoulder tentacles in check and used them to quickly pull myself up the stairs by grabbing onto each next flight's railing.  The hologram flickered and buzzed around it, with each tentacle emerging from the holographic field to fully reveal itself once it was no longer in range of the device, then blurring away as it got closer to me as the projector tried to compensate for it.  Using my arms to stabilize myself during the climb, I was already most of the way up before the others had caught up with me and come to the same conclusion.  Once at the top floor, I burst through the access door to the roof, for some reason not caring whether they recognized me or not, but there was nothing there but an open elevator door.  Looking up quickly, I only caught a glint of light reflecting off metal as the vessel they had used to abduct Miles streaked away from Earth.

I collapsed, defeated, into a crumpled mess on the roof.  As the others came up to meet me, Lianna tried her best to comfort me.

"Hey, you tried your best.  None of us expected Stephanie to try and pull something like this off.  Besides, Sasha and Moran think they've nearly got a way to un-brainwash someone complete, so maybe once we come up with a better plan, we can turn him back."

Still semi-exhausted, I answered.  "It's not going to be that simple.  She didn't just take him because she was looking to add one to her numbers.  She's been doing that by grabbing random people that belong to whatever part of society she least approves of.  This was something special she's planned for, and she needed him specifically."

"What is it, then?"  Zoey questioned, "Why would she need him?  He's just about the most hated guy in the media when it comes to the sort of people she's hanging out with."

Sasha replied to her, letting me catch my breath a little more.  "Exactly.  Remember, we're all here using holographic disguises and people just went with it.  They're almost certainly going to be doing something along a similar line of thought.  Once he's been scanned, they can make a perfect duplicate projection and alter one of her subordinates' voice with a synthesizer.  No one would have any idea that he was fake, and then they could use him to do all sorts of damage.  He has his own followers, so maybe Stephanie plans to lure them all into some sort of trap to mass-convert them?"

"Makes sense."  Lianna continued.  "Anyone that listens to someone she's pegged as a higher-up in the patriarchy would be a fair target for her.  So, what do we do?"  She and the others all turned to me.  For a moment, I was too tired to remember I was still the commander of a group of alien transformation victims trying to stop an even crazier alien transformation victim.  I wish I could do that more often.

"I mean, it's kind of obvious, isn't it?  We have to go rescue him."  The others, satisfied with my answer, helped me to my feet, and we began to plan.  And that's basically where I am right now.  We have a plan that I think might have a chance, but if we screw it up, that's pretty much it for us.  I'll let you know how it goes if I make it back, but Sasha's telling me we're ready.

Wish us luck from wherever and whenever you're reading this.  The future of journalism might depend on it.
Another chapter, and this one I feel I need to explain a bit.

Sometimes, I write these long before I post them.  In this case, I wrote it on the 10th, as the one who's been donating to get it would attest to.  I can't post anything, however, until I have a cover image.  In this case, in the time between me writing this chapter of the story and the cover being drawn, the actual figure whom Miles is based on disappeared for 24 hours, with no apparent explanation given.  Make of that what you will.  You'll have to wait until the next cover is done to find out if he was rescued or has been replaced with an alien doppelganger.
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juju712's avatar
I wondered how the debate would go, but I think I rather think development.