There Goes the Galaxy Page 9

  “Hi,” he said, with a tenuous wave. “Welcome to my cornfield.” It wasn’t fancy, but it was honest and sincere. And Triple-R hoped that would be enough to at least start things off on the right foot.

  The aliens stood there a moment more. Triple-R pretty much had imagined they wouldn’t say, “We come in peace,” or “Take us to your leader,” or some such thing, since aliens would have to be a little more clever than your standard B-movie writer.

  But he wasn’t really prepared for what they did say.

  “So they really all will come with the planet, at no extra charge?” the man asked, looking straight at him.

  “Pardon?” said Triple-R. He’d understood it. It sure wasn’t in English—and it seemed to be emanating from some sort of mechanical device on the alien—but Triple-R had understood it. He just didn’t know how to answer.

  “That’s right,” said the woman, her rubber smile pulled just a bit wider. “It’s one deal: the property and all its resources and inhabitants. All a part of its atmospheric charm.”

  “Um, hi,” the Earth man tried again. “I’m Rob Rodell, and this is Whipplefork, Iowa. United States. Earth.” He didn’t want to extend his hand in case that was a sign of insult where they came from. Better to err on the side of caution. “So where are you all from? Pretty far from the looks of things.” He laughed nervously. “Can I, um, get you a mojito?”

  “Carbon-based, too,” said the alien man, approvingly. “Carbon-based life-forms with a basic humanoid structure. That adds some versatility.”

  “Stellar,” said the woman, her head bobbing. “So you’re still planning on making the bid, then?”

  “Who should I speak with at your agency regarding the current owner?” asked the alien man.

  The woman’s smile faltered for a moment, and Triple-R wondered if her head would pop. “That would be Ms. Magglestig, Mr. T’murp. She’s our branch manager.”

  “I’d just feel better knowing who I was dealing with,” said the alien called T’murp.

  “You know,” the woman continued, “if you’re truly uncomfortable about the arrangement, my agency would be more than happy to find some alternate investment property. One more fully suited to your tastes?”

  “It just has so much potential,” T’murp admitted.

  “It’s virtually screaming with potential,” agreed the woman.

  Triple-R tugged at his collar, not overly comfortable with the sound of that screaming part. He wasn’t sure why.

  “Well,” said T’murp, “thanks a heckuva lot, Mimsi, for your time and for the tour.”

  “It was my pleasure,” and the woman turned and headed toward the ship. The man smiled to himself a moment, then followed.

  “Wait!” said Triple-R. “You’re going? Don’t you want to have a cultural exchange? Impart ideas for intergalactic peace or something?”

  “No, no,” said the man, through the translator, “that won’t be necessary.”

  “Well …” Triple-R looked back at his home and then to the ship, feeling an emptiness in his chest that seemed almost the size of space itself. “Don’t you want to abduct me?”

  “Blazing stars, no!” exclaimed the woman, “I just had the upholstery cleaned.”

  “What about a hair sample? A tissue sample?”

  The woman was heading up the ramp, quickly. The man said, “Thank you, no; we’re good for now,” and vanished into the craft.

  “Probes?” asked Triple-R weakly. His disappointment was manifest now. It wasn’t that he was so very jazzed about probing, but it was an alien encounter. There just had to be more somehow.

  The woman waved, “Okay, take care.” The ramp disappeared, the hatch closed and the spaceship silently began to rise off of the crushed cornstalks. Triple-R watched it rise up into the sky, all black and silver and shiny, like some big lit bat. He watched it until it was nothing but a vague flicker, and then it was gone.

  He sighed and slowly headed back toward the house. The night sky would never be the same.

  Excerpt from:

  How to Gain Pals and Sway Life-forms in Cosmic Commerce

  Chapter Seven

  With permission from the

  Eddisun Center for Ideas, Interceptive Marketing and Cliché Prevention

  DiversiDine Entertainment Systems and Aeroponics: The Captivating Case for Invasive, Cross-Pollination Marketing

  Overview

  They’re the delights we devour while watching holovision and the holovisions we buy. It’s the Uninet programming that binds us to our seats and the product promos scripted right into our favorite shows.

  It has a choke-hold on our daily lives from Alpuck-2 to Zerplix-37Q and we savor each second as we gasp for air.

  What is it? It’s the clever cross-pollination marketing of Eudicot T’murp, founder and CEO of DiversiDine Entertainment Systems and Aeroponics.

  Newsmillenium voted T’murp “Life-form of the Year” eleven times to-date. Universal News and Worlds Reports named him one of the “Top Ten Inter-Galactic Visionaries Ever, Even of Those Who Died Tragically.” Rational GeoGalactic called his business “The greatest addition to modern universal society since the ICV gravity field.” And the Dogstar teen Uninet channel voted him “Most Snarggable Ear Lobes” two U-years running. (Eddisun Center, Data on File.)

  Yet how has Eudicot T’murp, this daring darling of DiversiDine, raked in these accolades? How has he taken the smallest seed of an idea and nutured it into flowering good fortune? In this chapter, we’ll examine how T’murp began with one simple innovation and turned it into a vast network that’s quietly wrapped around consumers and won’t let go. And we’ll even shovel up some techniques you can use to spread over your own marketing strategies!

  Deep Roots in Ottoframan Frugality

  Eudicot T’murp broke pod to Cardoon parents, Harb and Fissel, in a simple one-story greenhouse in South Klorofil on the semi-arid planet of Ottofram. There, the indigenous Cardoon people worked to cultivate the soil, and make the most of the produce they grew. Stems, leaves, seeds, roots: the farmers wasted nothing. And it was this background that led young Eudicot T’murp to take a fresh look at Cardoon cuisine. (Eudicot T’murp: Leaf and Let Leaf. Eudicot T’murp. RP: 11.)

  Fertile Imagination Spreads Spores for Snackin’

  A favorite delicacy of Cardoon children was the “smorg,” a mottled brown spherical fungus with a sweet and flavorful spore-filled center. The fungus was filling, cheap, easy to grow, and portable.

  Why, wondered the teenaged T’murp, couldn’t they export this myecological munchy and share it with other hungry life-forms across the GCU? Its sales could do wonders for their people. It could fund bigger greenhouses, expanded roads, and planet-wide Uninet access. “Back in those days, we only had one local station: Germination Live,” recalled T’murp. “All germination, all day. You ever tune in to watch a seedling grow hour after hour? Nah, me neither. I knew we needed more contact with the GCU. And I had this feeling it needed us, too.” (Eudicot T’murp: Leaf and Let Leaf. Eudicot T’murp. RP: 21.)

  But when T’murp and his family pitched the smorg to the people on neighboring planets, the response was surprisingly cold. “Turns out, the smorg looked too much like the speckled poisonous plants they had on their own worlds,” said T’murp. “And the idea of fungus for dessert … They just couldn’t get past it.”

  Yet T’murp had some other tricks up his fronds. “I figured if looks were the main sticking point, we could work on that. So that’s when I got a new hobby: smorg bio-reengineering.” (Eudicot T’murp: Leaf and Let Leaf. Eudicot T’murp. RP: 27.)

  It took nearly a U-decade of development, 400 failed attempts, and several months of market positioning, but Eudicot T’murp transformed the dangerous-looking fungus into the creamy-white Smorg® “cake” that’s beloved today. Suddenly, the Smorg won the Ottofram City Agricultural Days’ “Food of the Year” award. It teased taste buds as a favorite at the Aeroponic Gastronomy Club Annual Meeting. And it ultimate
ly exploded into the Quad Four Comestibles Show and Expo when it was voted “Most Likely to be Stashed Away Selfishly and Eaten at Two a.m.” (Eudicot T’murp: Leaf and Let Leaf. Eudicot T’murp. RP: 39.)

  Branching Out with New Product Lines

  Soon South Klorofil became a bustling aeroponic agriculture town. Yet Eudicot T’murp felt he could do more. He examined other traditional Cardoon delicacies for their own unique marketing potential and soon Sleemy Snaps®, Flinky Rolls® and Frallip Squash® joined the Smorg snack family. (Eudicot T’murp: Leaf and Let Leaf. Eudicot T’murp. RP: 75.)

  By this time, T’murp had moved from the family’s tidy little greenhouse into an elegant five-story glass domicile. T’murp’s family was happy and comfortable, and his city thrived. Yet T’murp worried that the GCU’s enthusiasm for Smorgs was just another passing fancy. “Through our new Uninet access, I saw the rise and demolecularization of trends on an hourly basis,” said T’murp. “The market was fickle. I knew my products could only stay on-top if consumers couldn’t get away from them.” (Eudicot T’murp: Leaf and Let Leaf. Eudicot T’murp. RP: 84.)

  So T’murp made two purchases: the GCUnivision Holotheaters, a company with entertainment megaplexes across most GCU worlds; and StarLite Productions, a unimedia development and marketing company responsible for blockbusters like Epochageddon Eclipse and hit Uninet programs like Qeeping Up with the Qeegles. (Eudicot T’murp: Leaf and Let Leaf. Eudicot T’murp. RP: 93.)

  Drawing everything under a canopy now called “DiversiDine Entertainment Systems and Aeroponics,” T’murp’s holotheaters offered entertainment otherwise unavailable on the Uninet—the first information of its kind intentionally disconnected from Uninet access since the second GCU Boundary Expansion. There, holotheater-goers enjoyed a wide selection of tasty treats, and all of them DiversiDine brand.

  T’murp’s production company followed by creating quality entertainment options for both the holotheaters and Uninet, featuring DiversiDine products liberally as both background scenery, script talking points, and major plot items. (Eudicot T’murp: Leaf and Let Leaf. Eudicot T’murp. RP: 140.) Who can forget the scene in Epochageddon Eclipse when action great Rix Manglutes faces the Altair-5 tarpit monster? He pulls a Smorg from his pocket, devours it in seconds and rasps, “That delicious, fresh-grown Smorg from DiversiDine lasted longer than you will, you slimy slaggard!” Such is T’murp’s subtle marketing at work.

  Today, DiversiDine’s reach has extended to the production of holovisions, pocket vis-us, and other technologies. Purchase of the Translachew company has also added a line of well-known translational products to DiversiDine’s holdings. (Eudicot T’murp: Leaf and Let Leaf. Eudicot T’murp. RP: 152.)

  Overall, the Translachew transition has been successful, though recent independent research suggests there may now be a weighted DiversiDine-related bias over competing brands in the gum’s vocabulary. Eudicot T’murp denies the claims. “If consumers are reporting uncontrolled outbursts of words like ‘Smorg’ and ‘Frallip Squash,’ I can only suggest it’s user error, influenced by the great flavor and high quality of those products.” (Heavy Meddler News. Data on file.)

  Turning Over a New Leaf with T’murp’s Techniques

  GCU entrepreneurs looking to fertilize their success The T’murp Way might want to branch out with the following strategies:

  —Market like an invasive weed. Make sure your products spread wildly, are hard to dig out, and impossible to spot-kill. Strengthen connections between products by cross-pollinating. Develop tangled root systems of marketability that leave customers firmly entwined.

  —Inspiration blossoms from what you already know. In T’murp’s world, success comes from cultivating what you know well and love best—then branching out and wrapping tightly around every aspect of everyday life until consumers get a head-rush.

  —Remember, your first crop might not yield the juiciest results. Eudicot T’murp knows it can take a less-than-fragrant public response to help define market need. So tend your idea, do spadework on what the market will handle, and use lots of fertilizer. You’ll grow fresh ideas that really produce—or, at least, make half-decent compost.

  Chapter 6

  “What do you think of this?” Rollie asked. In the airy, domed marketplace on Golgi Beta, he held up something dark green and oblong that looked a little like a small, weirdly-shaped melon. He tossed it to Bertram and Bertram was surprised how soft it was, how velvety the outside.

  “Pretty cool,” Bertram said, turning the casing in his hands. “Some kind of vegetable?”

  “Kidney, actually,” said Rollie. “From an Alganitan mathgar.”

  Bertram dropped it back into the bin like a hot potato. Rollie nodded knowingly. “Yeah, never cared much for mathgar kidney myself.”

  Harvested organs might have explained just one of the aromas in the market—smells that overwhelmed in wondrous and conflicting ways with every new stall. Some were as unfamiliar as they were enticing. Others, Bertram would forgo the familiarity. Bertram sniffed his hands and grimaced …

  He was never going to get that mathgar kidney off.

  “Now I want to do this quickly,” Rollie told him, “hear me? In and out. Keep a low profile.”

  “A low profile, understood,” Bertram agreed.

  Bertram followed Rollie through the stalls of hot foods, cold foods, freeze-dried foods, underwear, outerwear, beasts of burden, burdened shoppers, infopills, herbs, kachunkettball memorabilia, jewelry, holographic images of celebrities, Non-Organic Simulants, hand-lasers, stunguns, flat pack assemble-it-yourself interplanetary cruise vessels, star maps, maps to the stars’ homes, vis-us off the back of a hovercraft, knock-off designer levitating boots, towels able to suck up an entire planet’s water supply, portable communicator implant seeds, firewater, rocket fuel, fuel for thought, 60 kinds of soup, and plaster yard statuary. (Even in the Greater Communicating Universe, consumers aren’t immune to the lure of one-of-a-kind hand-painted lawn art.)

  They stopped at a long counter with a sign above it that read, “Shop-O-Drome Customer Service Station #12.”

  A robot wheeled up to them. “Good afternoon, dear life-forms, and welcome to the Golgi Beta Shop-O-Drome. I’m Erl, your personal merchandise conveyance expeditor for this visit. How may I enhance your shopping experience?”

  Robots were so polite. Bertram glanced to Rollie as Rollie pulled a small machine from his pocket. From it he read, “We need looktas, say, five toks of them. And four tchutsaree steaks—good cuts, none of that stuff your thief boss tried to pass off on me the last time. Seven cases of Zlorgon Sub-Atomic Headbanger, two cases of zaffney, a new hydro-bratometer, four hyper-rotostation J’s and … here.” He pushed a button. “Just sent you the list. Oh, and did Marlok happen to hold that special package for me? I know it’s been some time …”

  “Captain Tsmorlood!” exclaimed the robot with tinny recognition rippling through its speech diodes. “Forgive me that I did not initially register your voice print; these sensors aren’t what they used to be, you know. I will process your order and check with my employer for your package.”

  Rollie nodded. “Stellar.”

  The robot rolled off and Rollie leaned against one of the shelves, juggling a couple of kidneys as he waited.

  Bertram stilled the man’s arm. “What’s that about? The package?”

  Rollie tossed the kidneys over his shoulder, back into the crates. “Just this little thing I was working on the side.”

  “Legal or illegal?”

  “Depends on what part of the GCU you’re in,” Rollie said with a grin.

  “I thought we were going low profile.”

  “No harm in tying up a loose end or two along the way, is there?”

  Bertram was about to say it would depend on how many armed and angry law enforcement agents got tangled up in the threads, when out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a strange movement to his left.

  It was something slinking toward them with an eerie
, sideways step, its eye-stalks bent in their direction with keen interest. It edged closer, tilting this way and that in slow, careful appraisal. Finally, the being nudged Rollie, and in a gruff, clacking voice said, “Hey. How much you want for the zakari?”

  Rollie peered disinterestedly at the creature. “Eh?”

  “The zakari,” said the being, giving another nudge, and yet another. “How much?”

  “Him?” Rollie stopped the thing at the approach of Nudge Four. He hooked a thumb at Bertram, an amused smile spreading across his features. “A zakari?”

  “What’s a zakari?” asked Bertram warily.

  Rollie beamed. “He thinks you’re a prize show animal.”

  “A prize show—” But the thing was trying to open his mouth and examine his teeth. Bertram slapped away the creature’s hand, which was actually a large purplish claw. “Hey, pal, do you mind?”

  “Zakaris are known for their small stature, curly fur and high-pitched whine,” Rollie informed him.

  “Oh yeah? Well—” Bertram blocked the being, who was now trying to test the firmness of Bertram’s tennis arm. “Dude, don’t make me get the drawn butter.”

  “Thirty-thousand yoonies,” Rollie said.

  Bertram shot him a furious glare. “Jesus, Rollie.”

  Rollie struggled to keep a straight face. “Thirty-thousand yoonies and I’ll consider letting you have him.”

  “Son of a bitch,” exclaimed Bertram, “this isn’t funny.”

  Rollie whispered, “Thirty thousand yoonies is an insane amount, Ludlow. He’ll never, ever go for it. Not in a trillion U-years.”

  “Deal!” said the being.