The perils of the modern age: bright and noisy electronics
have invaded that sacred hall of darkness and silence, the movie theater. All it takes is one user to distract an
entire audience from the awesomeness happening on the screen.
One afternoon, a theater in the heartland of the U.S. of A. had only eight people in
it, since the current blockbuster was already in its third week on the marquee
and therefore almost dead. Half of the
attendees had seen it at least once and were still trying to figure out when
exactly the villain had tipped his hand before they even knew he was a villain,
the sly devil. Sixteen eyes were
staring at the flickering screen, blinking only if absolutely necessary, when
the jarring beep-beep-beep-boop-boop-bip-beep-beep resounded.
The
response was a mix of “Argh!”s, “Ssh!”s, and kernels of popcorn thrown at the
sound. The siren call could not be
ignored, however, and was answered in a whisper.
“Hello?”
"Sssssshhhhhh!!!!”
“You saw a
what?!”
“Take it
outside, man!”
One repeat
viewer didn’t mind missing a boring scene to drag an usher in and bodily evict
the caller, who was struggling out of his seat and down the row, blocking the view
of people behind him, and dodging more popcorn. “Don’t kid about stuff like that – I don’t believe an actual
alien spaceship has just landed next to Stonehenge.”
This got
everyone’s attention. Those with super
phones consulted the oracle that is The Internet for confirmation of the news.
“Holy crow,
a spaceship just landed next to Stonehenge!”
“This has
to be a hoax.”
The caller
covered one ear as an usher with the helpful audience member came up to him in
the aisle. “My friend’s over there right
now – ” He glanced at his phone. “She
just sent me a picture of it!”
Everyone
got up from their seats and ran over to see.
The spaceship looked like a cross between an aircraft carrier and a
tugboat, and was coated in a strange shade of mauve.
The usher
yelled up to the projectionist. “Hey
Mark, get down here, you gotta see this!”
The caller
put the phone back to his ear. “Is
anyone coming out of it?”
“Put it on
speaker!”
“It doesn’t
work. Someone’s coming out!”
“What does
it look like?”
“A… slug?”
“What?”
“Ew.”
“What’s it
doing?”
“Does it
have a ray gun?!”
“It’s
looking around… it turned around… it’s sliding back into the ship….” The sound
of a roaring engine was heard and the caller had to hold the phone away from
his ear for half a minute until it was done.
“Brenda! What happened?!”
“Oh no, the
invasion’s beginning!”
“I knew
something like this was going to happen today!”
“It left?”
“To where,
New York?! They always go to New York.”
“They never go to New York, there’s not enough
room to land.”
“No, she
said it went straight up into the sky, back into space.”
Phones were
consulted again.
“It left!”
“That’s
it? No war of the worlds, no insight
into the mysteries of the universe?”
“Brenda,
what’s happening?” He listened and hung
up. “She had to give her phone to
the G-men.”
Everyone
looked at their phones. “Hey, the
photos were taken down!”
“I can’t
find any of the discussions I was in the middle of!”
“They can’t
wipe out everything about this, can they?”
“Who’s
‘they’?”
“You know,
‘they’.”
“You may
never see Brenda again, you know.”
“We need to
fight this! We can’t let them get away
with a cover-up of this magnitude!”
“They can’t
find out that we know what really happened!”
“We have to
go underground – I have a bunker!”
They all
followed the usher in determined panic after he said this. The house lights came on as the credits
rolled.
One
attendee turned back.
“Hey,
they made me miss the end!”
No comments:
Post a Comment