Unidentified Flying Dingle

Just a bit of fun.

Unidentified Flying Dingle

Deep in space, a little spaceship headed for Earth. If you could hear sound in space, you’d hear it going ‘WHYOOING OING OING’. The ship was silver and shaped like a pencil. A small green humanoid was on board, sitting in a comfortable armchair, writing in his travel journal.

Journal Entry 27:
Had a great time on Blorgle-beep Twelve. Lovely planet, friendly people, great food. Next stop is a place called Earth. Looks very blue. I don’t know of anyone who’s been there yet. Excited to see what it’s all about. Signing off for now. — Dingle.

It was Christmas time on Earth, and the streets of London were busy with shoppers shopping. The clocks had just struck 8 p.m., and the crowds were still out in force.

Above the bustling city, a tiny flash of silver shot across the sky. Nobody was looking up, so it went unnoticed. The spaceship whizzed through the air and landed on Oxford Street.

“Easy does it,” Dingle said, working the buttons on the ship’s console. He brought the ship vertical, engaged the landing gear, then plopped it down nicely, avoiding the humans.

Smoke whooshed out from under the ship, and a side door swung open, forming steps for Dingle to climb down.

The sudden appearance of a little green man caught everyone’s attention.

“I come in peace!” Dingle said, stepping onto the street. Nobody could understand him, of course; to humans, it sounded like “Sha-bimby zoing plop plop.”

Dingle expected to be taken to their leader for some vigorous handshakes. He was confident they wouldn’t attack him. That only happened when he visited planets that were a bit behind the times, so to speak. But the humans didn’t do anything. They stood there, mouths agape, pointing rectangular devices at him. The street was quiet, except for the occasional cough. He could hear some jingling music in the distance. It was an odd situation. It creeped him out a little.

He said, “Ba-binga floppy-flop. Shnoozle schnitzel?”

It was no use, he thought. His translation machine had been damaged on Blorgle-beep Twelve, leaving him with no way of communicating.

The humans heard the word “schnitzel” and assumed it was all an elaborate marketing campaign for breaded meat. They quickly lost interest in Dingle and went back to thumbing their rectangles.

Dingle gave up and decided to try somewhere else — maybe the other side of the world. He jumped back into his spaceship and set off. By the time he’d zipped away, he was trending on social media, not that he would’ve had any idea what that meant.

The silver pencil whizzed across the sky and landed in Australia.

Dingle stepped out onto a golden beach that stretched as far as his three eyes could see — no humans, just sand, sea, and beautiful weather. It was a relief. He decided to go for a swim.

The water was clear and blue and refreshing. He loved to swim when he got the chance. He splashed about for a while, then dived under the surface. The way his body processed oxygen meant that he could hold his breath for a full two hours.

It seemed this side of the planet was uninhabited, which he couldn’t understand — this place was far nicer than that smoky old city.

Eventually, out of the depths of the big blue sea emerged another being. Massive and grey, with a streamlined body and a pointy face, it glided up to Dingle and stopped just below him.

Dingle said, “Ahoy, on this fine day. Are you here to take me to your leader?” which, underwater, sounded like, “Blub-blub-blub, schoozle schnitzel?”

Surprisingly, the shark understood him perfectly. It grinned wide, exposing too many sharp teeth to count, and said, “You look tasty, friend.”

“Oh, for the love of—” Dingle said. Then the shark came at him.

Dingle avoided the shark’s attempt to eat him in one bite and stuck himself to the monster’s belly, using his tiny suction fingers and toes to hold on tight. The shark thrashed around violently. Carefully letting go with one hand, Dingle reached into his stomach pouch and felt around for the teleportation device he always carried for emergencies. With the click of a button, he dematerialised and then rematerialised in a soft armchair aboard his spaceship, sopping wet.

He was beginning to think Earth was a death trap, but he didn’t like to give up so easily. He decided to give the blue planet one last chance — but not before he’d had a cup of wimble tea.

Not knowing where to go next, he punched in a random location, and the spaceship zipped off.

He landed in a beer garden on the outskirts of Liverpool. “Not this country again,” he thought. Then he caught the sound of people cheering from inside the pub, so he went in to have a look.

The pub was filled with people chanting, “Oi oi oi oi!” and “Come on then, let’s ‘ave it!” Dingle found it all very amusing and eventually joined in.

He went, “Oi oi oi oi,” and somebody handed him a beer. Amber-coloured, it fizzed on his tongue when he drank it. Maybe Earth wasn’t all that bad after all.

A small man on a big screen kicked a ball into a net, and the place went wild. Dingle stood on top of a table and did a jig, feeling all warm inside and joyful.

The pint of beer weighed almost as much as he did, and when he finished it, the room began to spin, round and round. His joy quickly turned to nausea.

He stumbled back to the ship, crawling on all fours.

His spaceship was equipped with all sorts of interesting gadgets. While searching for one that analysed the molecular structure of food and drink, he tried his hardest not to be sick.

He found the gadget and switched it on. It scanned him over, went ‘beep beep’, and printed out the results on purple paper. Dingle couldn’t believe his eyes — all three of them. He’d been drinking literal poison! For the love of all that’s good in the universe, he wished he hadn’t just consumed his bodyweight in poison.

“Autopilot,” he said.

“Yes, boss,” replied the autopilot.

“Get me out of here. Now.”

“Anywhere in particular?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere. Just not here!”

The autopilot wasn’t sure what to do. It panicked and entered the coordinates for all thirteen Blorgle-beep planets at once. The spaceship vibrated for three seconds, then shot upward as if fired from an invisible slingshot.

*****

Journal Entry 28:
I’m finally back in the land of the living after hugging the toilet all night. Bad headache this morning. I’ll be telling all my friends to avoid Earth. Happy to leave the humans to do their own thing. Never going back. Too dangerous and weird. They drink poison for fun! — It tasted good, though.

P.S. Remember to fix the translation machine.