Pinko Commie Superbunker, Part 1/7

Unofficial Katy's Second Great Misadventurous Movie

Ok, movie lovers, here is your exciting long-awaited premiere of Unofficial Katy’s next thrilling escapade.

You will doubtless be happy as Larry to know that this one really doesn’t need much of an intro by me.

If you are interested in a little background of course then you can read the pinned index for the section, which I did yesterday, and you can find at that link.

All I will say is that if you liked that movie Don’t Look Up!, then you’ll like this.

This is Katy’s second great misadventurous movie. The first one, Ciao, SETI!, can be happily read at that link. That’s part 1 of 8 in total. This one is in 7 parts, and clocks in around the 14.7k mark. Which by my reckoning is around the 90 minutes run time for a movie, not including the extensive credits.

So then, if you are sitting comfortably, and you’ve got your popcorn and stuffed chillies handy, or your Kia-Ora and choc-ices or whatever your cinematic fancy is, then have a little watch of this, and then the movie shall begin.

And you must watch it - that’s an order.

Now the Pearl & Deans are over, enjoy…

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Paws Productions Presents…

Pinko Commie Superbunker

Starring Unofficial Katy, and a few friends of hers…

Written and Directed by Me. So there.

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Unofficial Katy was bored. This was the seventeenth sci-fi convention she’d been subjected to in the previous five years and if truth be told, she just wanted to go home.

Signing books, indoctrinating the uninitiated about her otherworldly origins, having to deal with those who actually believed it, and then shuttling back off to whatever insufficient three-star hotel the convention organisers had palmed her off with, well, that was no way to lead a life on a forbidden planet like this. For her, it simply confirmed everything.

Dystopia.

As far as she had been aware, it had all been mapped out. Like make yourself a famous – what was it they called it now? Speculative fiction (as if all fiction wasn’t such) – writer and then make a sufficient number of people believe you and then…?

It was the ‘and then’ bit they hadn’t told her about.

Scribble her juvenile handwriting in the front page of one of her books and call it a signature, answer inane questions, smile equally inanely and then smile warmly to the next geek in the queue as if you’re a high-class international diplomat.

Interstellar diplomat, more like it. They believed that stuff, these sci-fi convention guys. And how come it was mostly guys? Where were all the girls? She wanted more girls. Not that she was a lesbian, mind (truth is, she wasn’t fussy on that score), but it was the principle of the thing that got her goat.

“Are you really from another planet?”

“If I had one of your petrodollars for every time someone asked me that, I’d be, well, I dunno, richer than you, put it that way.”

“That’s pretty surprising,” SF convention dude says with raised eyebrows, “I mean, sure, it’s pretty obvious since you talk about it incessantly in your books. Like hey, my name’s Katy and I’m from another planet and every story I write is about humans finding out they’re not alone and having to come to terms with the fact that the aliens don’t like them so they have to change their ways else they’ll continue being quarantined and yadda yadda yadda but hell, I’m stupendously surprised that you’d be richer than me.”

Katy leaned back and wondered whether to get up from her chair and stab the guy or something but there was something going on in his eyes that told her to restrain herself. Curiosity, essentially. The thing that always killed the Katy.

So she studied him for the kind of instant a human wouldn’t notice. Then she said, “Who do you work for?”

Now that got him. At the same time, it proved what his client was looking for.

It was a provocation, after all.

“So it’s true, then,” he furthered, “you are telepathic?”

Unofficial Katy just shrugged her shoulders. As good an answer as any.

“Part of me,” she decided to say, “has a mind to humour you and keep you talking. The other part just wants you to get to the point. Who’s your client? And, well, I’m interested to know, genuinely, whose idea was it to provoke me? Yours? Or his?”

“If you’re telepathic,” he riposted, “shouldn’t you be able to know that?”

“Telepathy doesn’t work like that,” Katy responded, “at least not on your forbidden planet. Besides, I’m tired. I’ve had to sign no fewer than seventy-six signatures in the last hour and according to the oh-so-benevolent organisers I’ve got to put up with this for another hour and,” she checked her watch, “two minutes.”

“Why do you put up with it?” It was a genuine question.

She shrugged again. “Destiny, maybe. Of course I only tell myself that to lessen the pain.”

He smirked. “Perfectly understandable. My client is Caligula Jones. He would like your advice. All expenses paid, obviously.”

Of course she knew that. Whilst the telepathy itself may have been instantaneous, the decision resulting from such information required a little time to resolve.

She hesitated before answering. Just so he’d notice.

“Well?” he said, with those annoying raised eyebrows, “you did say you were bored, didn’t you?”

She had to paw it to these humans, Katy decided. They did, after all, know how to do a cunning bit of game theory.

---

“You’re perfectly aware of the advice I’m going to give, aren’t you?” Katy mused idly to the young, sharply dressed dude sitting next to her on the private jet. “And so’s he?”

Nathan (that was his real name, according to the Archive) raised his eyebrows yet again. “Are you saying,” he enquired honestly, “that this telepathy of yours isn’t just immediate? I mean it can act at a distance, so to speak?”

“If you’re implying it’s a quantum teleportation kind of thing, then yes, sure. I mean think about it, why should telepathy only act in one’s immediate locale? Once I discerned your client, I was able to focus on your connection and the reason for your approach. Make sense?”

“Hmm. Sure. But you did say you can’t read sub-vocalisations, right? Just to put my mind at rest on that point, you know?”

“Thinking sexy thoughts again, are you?”

“The fact that you’re asking that as a question rather than a statement makes me feel a little better,” he said, “unless you’re just playing with me?”

“My species is leonine. In our true form. We like teasing, in other words. But you’ve no need to worry. I don’t hear your immediate thoughts. Having said that,” Katy raised her own eyebrows, “I think you should put that girl out of her misery.”

He didn’t need to think twice on that one. “Consider it done.”

---

The Tristar cruised gently into landing at Cali’s private strip (at an undisclosed location along the California coast – don’t ask). The weather was uneventful, in case you were wondering.

Then it idled into the hangar. He was waiting for them.

Nathan introduced her, as if simply to say to his boss, ‘mission successful may I have a performance bonus?’.

It worked, not that money would be meaningful anytime soon.

Cali, as he was known to his genuine friends, wore a big grin on his face. The kind of grin you would wear if you were the world’s third richest guy.

Unofficial Katy knew better than that, of course. She was perfectly well aware that some of those exceptionally rich foci of innumerable conspiracy theories really did have extra hundreds of billions of petrodollars stashed away in undisturbed bank vaults in Switzerland. But she didn’t really care.

She knew what was coming.

Which, after all, was the reason she was here. She had known that for years. The general public might not believe her, all those manic predictions of impending catastrophe resulting from humanity’s hubris dressed up to look like speculative fiction (awards, yes, geopolitical changes in policy, no), but she knew there would be a myriad very important people who would believe her and who, even in their own selfish way, would act upon what she said.

Like this grinning neoliberal vulture standing before her here in the hangar, name Caligula Jones. Total worth (US petrodollars) – official – one hundred fifty-one point two billion (approx.).

Unofficial Katy stifled an internal laugh. That’s a hell of a lot of superbunkers, she calculated. I’m going to enjoy this…

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“Unofficial Katy!”

Caligula Jones raised his arms up even above his shoulders. Katy decided internally not to like him but outwardly to be diplomatic.

So she curtseyed.

“Did I get it right?” Cali said with a grin, “you described the galactic greeting in your stories? Did I get it right?”

Katy mustered a smile. “Sure. Good enough.”

“I am so pleased. I wouldn’t want to insult a guest on our lovely planet.”

“Quite.”

“Well,” he continued, “obviously your telepathy tells you why I asked you here, right?”

“Sure,” she repeated. She knew what was coming. But she decided to act human and let him say his piece.

“Well,” (that was one of his annoying traits, that and the grin), “excellent! But we’ll have paella on the beach first, what do you say?”

That did, as it happens, appeal to her. “Will there be sangria, Cali? May I call you Cali, by the way?”

“All my friends call me Cali. Of course you may.”

“Devoid of all those unfortunate classical connotations, of course.”

“What can I say,” he smiled, “my parents hated me. Explains a lot, you’d suggest, eh?”

“You really want me to answer that one?”

“Hmm. Not really. Anyway, step into my limousine, and we’ll get going. Nice one, Nathan, by the way,” he grinned at his lackey, then motioned to him to join them, “well?”

Nathan hadn’t been expecting that. He’d thought his job was done. And the truth is, he had not been told what this was really all about.

Curiosity, however, would soon deal with that.

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Unofficial Katy viciously bit the head off a giant shrimp.

Cali looked on with approval and a grin.

“More sangria?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Katy wolfed the rest of it down.

Nathan looked on with aplomb.

The Pacific Ocean, Katy thought, really did look majestic in this golden sunset. It reminded her of the subgiant, just before they had to leave. And then the twilight came. The end.

The kind of deep blue that reminded her of home. And almost the deep violet of Ishna. She’d never wanted to stay there, beneath those artificial domes. Incompatible planets are intolerable. Of course she was grateful for being evacuated from her dying world, but when the Ishnaans offered to ‘modify’ her species to make her compatible with their hot and heavy planet, she was horrified. She was only a girl at the time but her voice carried weight. Same as all the others of her caste. The Paetri.

And the Ishnaans listened. They were wise, after all.

So they searched around for another place for them to live. Your world.

Danuih.

The true name of this planet. Her species knew that from the start. Pity yours didn’t.

That’s why what is about to happen is, well, it’s about to happen. Call it postmodern irony, if you will.

Unofficial Katy was surprised to discover that your world’s third richest neoliberal parasite also got it.

Nathan, too, was beginning to comprehend. But for the time being, he just observed.

Cali looked on with interest as Katy munched her way through shrimps. The sangria didn’t seem to affect her, for some reason.

He wondered if he could bottle that secret.

Katy let slip her human disguise for a flickering moment and licked her leonine lips.

Cali noticed. It took him a few moments to recover himself. Despite the fact that he knew already.

He had believed every word she’d said right from the start. And he admired her courage and her forthright attitude. She would’ve made a fine businesswoman, he decided, if she were at all interested in that kind of thing. He knew she wasn’t, obviously.

Mind you, she didn’t seem averse to the idea of intellectual property rights.

“Your species doesn’t use money?” he enquired, sincerely.

She shook her head as she wiped her lips with a kerchief.

“We used to, when we were young. But we never restricted its availability like you do.”

Cali narrowed his eyes. “Hmm. So no inflation, then?”

“Uh-huh. Prices determined by the costs of production and all that. I’m sure you understand.”

“Quite.”

At this point there was an uncomfortable silence. Katy stared, with melancholy, at the ocean. She remembered something. But not anything for human reception.

Finally, Cali said, “Obviously you know why I asked you here?”

“You want me to help design you a superbunker,” Katy answered, nonchalantly, “because you believe what I wrote in my stories about when the catastrophe will happen?”

“The Event. 16 November 2024. 11.26 UTC precisely.” Cali suddenly went serious. And for a moment, as Katy looked at him, he didn’t seem like a predator anymore, but just a human who didn’t understand the way the galaxy worked. Scared, and subdued. And hoping for help.

Katy sighed. “I thought that might be the case. Except unlike your so-called rivals, you’ve never been interested in outer space.”

“Not like them, no. I’m more concerned about my homeworld. If they want to waste their money on self-aggrandising projects like colonising Mars with indentured serfs or space tourism then that’s their business, but me, no, I’m more concerned about the future of my species. Given what happened to yours, I was hoping you might empathise with that?”

Katy lowered her gaze from the ocean and felt his heart. He meant it, she could tell.

She looked across at him. And then nodded. “I will help you, Cali. You win. But your species will learn its lessons. That’s why this catastrophe is going to happen, after all. You do understand that, at least?”

Now it was Cali’s turn to look at her earnestly. He didn’t even need to answer with words.

And neither did Nathan. He just hoped he’d be selected.

Because it all made sense to him now…

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Part 2 next week… Well - it’s here now. Go on - you know you want to!