Crossing the Line
After three psychedelic years of college, I had little to show for my education save for £50K of debt and a modest collection of stolen street furniture. £50K being one hell of a debt mind you and to make matters worse I had absolutely no intention of working year in year out to pay it off. Having postponed an ‘honest days work’ for three years, I was committed to delaying it further or bypassing it all together, what I wanted was a get rich quick scheme, and I mean really rich.
I realise that this may make me sound a little lazy, perhaps, but trust me, that is the least of my crimes, for you see I crossed a line.
I formulated a two phase plan, I was lazy yes, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t ambitious. I had my first brainwave while watching the movie ‘Trading Places’ (for my money Eddie Murphy’s second best film after the ‘Golden Child’). Unlike Murphy I didn’t have an insider tip on the crop report, what I did have was access to a number of economically savvy students who were reliant on me for the supply of another type of crop. Said students were more than happy to give me a few tips in exchange for the remainder of my stash.
One £25K post-graduate loan and some keen investments later, made a killing on high-risk far-east investments, my temporary sobriety giving me the edge, I was a one woman bull market in a china shop.
After rectifying my sobriety, I trawled the internet for inspiration for phase two of my plan. It was the recent contact with extra-terrestrial life on Europa that caught my eye; the powers that be were looking to the private sector to provide an ambassador ship to Europa, large contracts abound.
As my degree was in Film Studies, my only knowledge of space rocket construction was from watching ‘The Explorers’ what I needed was a rocket scientist. Placing a personal ad in ‘Soldier of Fortune’ magazine I hooked up with an ageing ‘Aeronautic Specialist’, lovely bloke, German accent, like a sweet old uncle, or so I thought.
With my rocket scientist in place I needed labour; rockets don’t build themselves you know and I certainly wasn’t about to. Perhaps it was wrong of me to source labour from the third world, at the time I thought it had been altruistic of me, fair trade and all that. In hindsight, the ex-army General that had originally contacted me via a spam email hadn’t been the best person to assemble the work force.
I swear that I wasn’t aware of the enforced child labour that went on during the rocket construction, and if I had had the time to visit the worksite, those deaths could have been prevented. Sadly, I was too busy sourcing the plutonium for the rocket engines, what with all those trips to the Middle East there just wasn’t the time.
For a while things were good, champagne, cocaine, hot young film stars and wealthy politicians clamouring for my attention. I had my picture on the front of The Economist, The New Scientist and even my local paper: ‘Romford Girl Mercer to Greet Europans’. I was hailed as an entrepreneur, adventurer and an ambassador for the human race. It was a lot to live up to and, to be honest; it wasn’t a surprise I messed it up.
As it turns out I’m not the most indulgent of people, not too bad a thing under normal circumstances, however, when greeting an extra-terrestrial race, especially one whose etiquette is based upon displays of aggression, macho posturing if you like; my impetuous nature was perhaps less than appropriate. You could argue in hindsight there was no need to mount guns on my space ship, but they looked so cool.
Upon my approach to Europa, I had been met by some rather threatening looking Europan interceptor ships, I now understand that it was just for show, it’s not like I simply ordered ‘Open Fire!’ without thinking it through. I did try to be diplomatic; I fired some warning shots first, unfortunately the problem with untested weaponry is that you don’t know what it’s capable of until you use it.
Perhaps it was then I crossed the line proper, or perhaps it was on my return journey.
I had been trying to think of a foolproof excuse as to how I had come to accidentally bring an entire race to near extinction. Thinking on my feet, I tried to make it look like there had been an attempted Europan attack on Earth. I hit somewhere, which I thought would have minimum impact on Earth, and then let off a few explosions in the sky, as if I had vanquished the invading alien hordes. I would then return home a hero and no-one would know any different. Admittedly it hadn’t been fair to pick Australia as a target, ok so I don’t like the accent, but I had only aimed to take out a bit of desert, like I say the capacity of those guns was quite surprising.
Of course if it hadn’t of been for that old Nazi bastard, my rocket scientist, going on TV to grass me up, no-one would have known. That sod just wanted to exonerate himself with his talk of how the damage radius of the blast was incontestably caused by my laser cannon. It was also around that time that the whole enforced child labour thing came out; you just can’t get the staff.
So now I am floating in the somewhat re-arranged orbit of the Earth, my plutonium cells depleted, that’s ok, I’m not in any hurry to get back to Earth. Well, not since the International (now Interplanetary) Court of Justice had put a warrant out for my arrest, crimes against humanity and extra-terrestrial life they say.
It’s not really until now that I have had time to think about it, that I realised that I had crossed a line, the thin line between ordinary girl and perpetrator of genocide. I had had it all, and now I was disgraced, hunted, and still not a penny of my student loan paid back.
