*- I saw aliens at the 7-11.
†- No you didn’t.
∆- Really?
√- What the hell are you on?
∑- Sounds like a concussion. You know, it's possible to whip your neck around so fast you get one, especially if you’re striking out as hard as Blue.
*- That one was totally not on me! The sun was in my eyes! I blame the weather!
†- Sure, the weather. But go on, I’ll bite. We have a long ride. Tell us about the aliens.
*- Yes! Yes! Ok, so... You know how me and Mac told everyone we were going to the 7-11 and that we’d buy snacks if y’all didn’t let the bus leave without us? These very snacks that you all are munching on right now?
Ø- Speaking of which, I’m owed $2 by everyone here if you want to keep enjoying these lovely convenience store refreshments.
*- Shush shush shush, they can pay you back later. Anyways, so we walked to the nearest 7-11. It wasn’t too far, like a couple of blocks and down a hill, but obviously, because we played into overtime it was getting dark. I was telling Mac that with the humidity and the clouds, the sky looked all black and blue with a little bit of yellowy-green and she said something real poetic about it, uh, what’d you call it again?
Ø- A hematoma of god. An outright bruise of the heavens. What my ass is going to look like tomorrow considering our last inning slide-fest.
*- Yeah, well, she said that and we went into the store, and there wasn’t anyone else in there other than this scrawny, sleepy looking guy at the register. He had like a camo beanie, um, some sort of chunky bracelet that I thought was neat, I was gonna ask him where he got it, damn I forgot to do that, oh, and his shirt was real weird, what did it say, Mac?
Ø- Ana-Vern World Tour on Stilts.
*- Yeah! Ana-Vern World Tour on Stilts! Man, I gotta look that up when we get back. What does that even mean? Is it a band or something? I don’t know. I don’t know, but anyways, we gathered our snacks. I went all over the aisles to get a little bit of everything. Mac got sidetracked early on trying to pick out the perfect energy bar.
Ø- There was a plethora of only mediocre options! I was trying to find the optional compromise.
*- Whatever. So I’ve got my snacks, I’ve got my cherry slushie, and I go up and start getting rung up by the guy at the counter. There’s a lot of stuff, as I was buying for you lot as well as myself, so it’s taking a second for this dude, who looks like he’s gonna pass out from boredom or low blood sugar any moment now, to ring everything up. He’s moving slow, but it’s fine. So I’m waiting for him to sloth through it and put everything in bags and what I hear from outside is like, imagine someone blowing bubbles through a megaphone. Yeah, like a soapy, wooshy sort of sound. It was loud. I don’t know how Mac didn’t hear it. Claims she didn’t hear it. Was too lost in the energy bar hell aisle, I guess.
Ø- Nutrition is no joke! I’m not feeding my team any old crap when a simple in-the-moment calorie-to-protein ratio calculation could largely dictate our success in making the finals.
*- We’re not making anything, or have you forgotten that we suck? You take this sport too seriously. And also, you’re distracting from the story so shut up and let me finish!
†- Alright, go ahead, tell us about your mysterious bubble blowers.
*- Thank you. Ahem, like I was saying, there was that bubbly sound and I had turned to look out the doors but I couldn’t see anything and plus, it was dark. But then the guy, who now that I think of it sort of looked like Mike Ringer, didn’t he? Like the celebrity? Anyways, the guy finally finishes ringing me up and I grab my bags, I grab my slushie and I’m curious now so I walk outside. I mean, I figured Mac was going to be a couple more minutes anyways and would hear that I had left cause like that bell, the little bell jingle happens in the 7-11 every time the door opens or closes... So, I’m outside and I’m looking around side-to-side like near the corner, by the Redbox, trying to find whatever made that sound. It was really loud and really weird because like, you don’t ever hear extremely loud bubble blowing often. So, somehow, while I’m looking to the side, this is an empty parking lot mind you, completely empty when we walked into the store and completely empty when I first stepped out, but somehow when I was looking to the side then bring my head back to the center, a huge truck is right there! It was one of those freight hauling caterpillars, look, the same shape as that one, right there, outside the window near where Alex is sitting. Yeah, it was long and mostly white and it had the back end pulled right up to the curb in front of the 7-11 and basically in front of me. How’d it get there? How did it make no sound whatsoever getting there when I was standing right there!
∑- Concussion. Definitely a concussion. We ought to have you checked out when we get back.
*- No, shut up! I don’t have a concussion! It just appeared! The truck came out of nowhere! It made no noise! It was crazy! But that’s not even like the best part so shut up and let me finish telling you what I saw next!
√- Mhm, go on, Blue.
*- Yes, so! The truck just appears and I’m standing there like, what the hell? And almost immediately after, like I couldn’t even see it happen, maybe I blinked, but the back of the truck opens and this little metal ramp that I guess freight trucks use to move down big boxes of stuff came out. No one moved it out, it just sort of slid out the back, and it was all white too, shiny like metal but the same color as the rest of the truck, it almost sort of glowed. But then, I looked up into the back of the truck, and it blew my mind.
Ø- This was when you saw the walnut faces?
*- Ah, stop! You’re ruining my story! I hadn’t told them that yet! And I didn’t say they had walnut faces. I said their faces sort of looked like someone had put a walnut over their foreheads. A forehead isn’t your whole face.
∑- It is if you’re Quentin.
Ø- Hey, no. We are a good vibes team. No petty insults.
∑- Can they be ugly insults?
∆- She said p-e-t-t-y, not pretty.
∑- Yeah, and neither are you.
∆- That doesn’t even make any sense.
*- Ohmygodshutup! You won’t even let me tell the best part!
Ø- Sorry, continue.
*- OK. So I look up into the body of the truck, cause the back is open now, and I see these creatures manning the crates of soda and chips and stuff and they look really weird. Think of a scrub brush. Like a big one, like big enough you could lie on it like a bed, or um, those things that whales have, their uh, bristle teeth, uh-
Ø- Baleen, and it’s not technically teeth.
*- Their baleen! Yeah! They had that scrub brush sort of texture all along the bottom with a big blue rectangular body that hovered in the air. I don’t know how they hovered but they hovered. Their necks were real skinny and smooth, but their heads were these lumpy masses about a third of the size of their body just sort of sitting on the stalk of the neck. They sort of vibrated, the heads, like uh, flapping around, like how you’d expect a jellyfish to have some give to it if you touched it, and yeah, their foreheads were really, really wrinkled. Like if someone had shoved a walnut inside there, that’s what the foreheads looked like, and they only had one eye. Each of ‘em had this big green human eye in the center of their face, and no mouth! Why didn’t they have any mouths? I almost dropped my slushie when I saw them. I was freaked! Here I was, standing in a 7-11 parking lot in Boise and I’m seeing aliens! Like the things from Space Centrifuge or Martian Walkway but this time they’re real, legit outer space entities! Crazy, movie, freaky, walnut-jellyfish-looking aliens! I thought they might want to try to eat my brains!
∑- That would require you to have brains, Blue.
Ø- Hey! What did I say about good vibes?
∑- That there’s not enough batteries in the world to supply them?
Ø- Well now you’re just being vulgar. I get it, the whole team gets it. Nobody likes to lose, but do you really think we’ll get better as a team if you’re just sitting there making snarky comments?
∑- Whatever. At least I’m not ranting like a psycho off the 7-o'clock conspiracy channel about trucker UFOs and nutty squid people.
*- They weren’t squids! They looked like jellyfish! Jellyfish with baleen on their scrub brush bottoms! And I saw them! And I thought they were going to eat my brains but they didn’t! I was just standing there, frozen and one of them, there were like 3 or 4 of ‘em in the back of the truck, one of them hovered over and came out of the truck and these motherfuckers were large, like easily double my size—
∑- That’s not a hard record to beat. Didn’t you qualify as a carry-on last time we flew to Houston?
Ø- So help me Katelyn, I will lodge a formal complaint if you don’t cool your attitude. Your jokes are striking out.
∑- Oh, no, the “captain’ of our losing-record-breaking team is mad at me! You know, for someone who claims to take this game so seriously, you sure stick by your dead weight.
*- I’m not dead weight! I just have a hard time hitting when the sun is in my eyes, that’s all! And I did see aliens! I really did, I swear!...Whatever. Y’all clearly don’t want to listen to me.
Ø- ...
∑- ...
∆- ...
√- ...That was sort of shitty of you, Katelyn.
†- Yeah, don’t think I’ve ever seen Blue actually get upset like that. Maybe they really did get a concussion.
Ø- Katelyn, you should go apologize. I mean it. Or you won’t play until Memphis if I can help it.
∑- … Fine.
Ø- ...
∆- Hey, so...what did end up happening? With the, uh, aliens?
Ø- Hmm? Oh, I mean, I wasn’t there for it. I didn’t see or hear anything that Blue was talking about. I just got my snacks, paid, and walked outside. I guess there were a couple plastic wrapped pallets of soda and stuff off to one side on the curb, but I just figured we maybe hadn’t noticed on the way in or that a normal delivery was made while we were shopping. Blue was just standing there though, staring up at the sky and drinking their slushie. I walked over to let them know I was finished in the store and we started to walk back, first in silence, but then they started telling me about how they’d seen the aliens and everything, real frantic, fantastical stuff. I said, “Cool, I guess,” and they asked me if I’d seen or heard them and I told them no I hadn’t. We walked up to the hill not talking again and they seemed sort of out of it, or maybe just disappointed I couldn’t corroborate their experience. I was going to maybe say something about getting more sleep or drinking less coffee but they said instead, “These 7-11 cherry slushies taste terrible” to which I replied, “Then stop drinking them. They have other flavors, I don’t know why you always get cherry.” They were looking up at the sky again. We were walking up the hill so it was sort of an odd angle to crane your neck at, but they were doing it anyways like they were looking for something and telling me as we climbed, “The only good flavor of slushie the 7-11 has ever produced was the 1992 limited edition Cinnamon Surge that came out as a promotion for the first Roboticon movie. It was in stores for four months only. Cherry is the closest I can get to that until they release Roboticon 12: The Reboot in three months. I’m so excited for it to come out, I’m going to wait in line and dress up and buy the whole team tickets to the premiere!” I was thinking about telling them that the finals were also three months from now. I don’t know why I didn’t. They kept looking up at the sky with cherry red stained on their face from trying to drink a slushie at such an awkward angle while walking. I tried looking up there too but all I saw was like I said before, one big black-and-blue cosmic bruise. Then I almost tripped over my feet. That was really all there was.
∆- Wow… Next time you guys get snacks, can you invite me?
Ø- Sure. We’ll make it a team event.