Chapter 8 (or infinity standing upright)

Some­thing was writ­ten on the table­cloth. It said “Vos es obvius nefas capu­lus shop.” He thought it was just writ­ten upside down, but then recalled a barista who’d rejected him in Rome and real­ized it was Latin for “You are in the wrong cof­fee shop”. So he left.

The dude fol­lowed him onto the side­walk. Jerry turned left, then right, then left, then right, feel­ing like a Demo­c­ra­tic cam­paign advi­sor. The dude inter­rupted him.

“Jerry. Lis­ten, there isn’t much time. I know you saw the aliens. That was no dream or high induced fit. They’re real and they are here to destroy us.”

“Why?”

“It all goes back to an ugly inci­dent in the 80’s. One of them stopped in town for a banana split, but it was Decem­ber and Dairy Queen was closed. Why do you think the state made them put on their inter­state sign that they are open only from Feb 15– Nov 15th ? To avoid inter­galac­tic incidents.”

“So, I’ll never see get to see Amer­ica win a medal in mixed pairs biathlon. Or that woman in the cof­fee shop ever again.”

“No, but let me be clear about one thing. And the future of the every­thing depends on this. NO ONE MAY REFER TO HER AGAIN until the end of our quest to save the earth.”

Jerry pon­dered this:

If I never spoke to her again, had she at least heard the sound of my heart strik­ing my head across my face? Seen me yearn for her, like wind strik­ing a silent chime?

“Jerry? First, what did I just say? Sec­ond, there is no time for over­wrought poetry. We’ve got one chance at this.”

“How can you be sure we have any chance?”

“Because the Silge want to destroy the earth on April 2nd.”

“So?”

“That’s a Fri­day. Destroy­ing the earth on a Mon­day or even a Wednes­day? Okay. But a Fri­day? That’s just wrong. Which means we’ve got some cos­mic juice on our side. Come on, we need to see some­one about a ship.”

The dude led him to a non-descript, but LEED cer­ti­fied build­ing on East Main. As they walked, Jerry thought:

In the orig­i­nal movie Spar­ta­cus, the real hero is the first guy who jumped up and said “I’m Spar­ta­cus” after the real Spar­ta­cus stood up to accept his fate. Because that guy, as opposed to the other hun­dred who fol­lowed him and said “No, I’m Spar­ta­cus.”? The Romans could have looked at that guy and said “Close enough. Cru­cify him.”

“Dude?”

“Yes, Jerry”

“I’m Spar­ta­cus.”

“That’s cool, man. But actu­ally, our Spar­ta­cus is a woman and you are about to meet her.”