Metropolis

There’s not a lot that happens in Lubbock, TX. We mostly drink and work and find ways to amuse ourselves. There’s really even less reason to come here.

UNLESS YOU ARE HORRIBLE SPACE MONSTERS.

Randy left his lunchpail at home.

Carlene needed something else to do today, apparently. It wasn’t enough that it was summer, and their 3 children were out of school in in her hair. Shit. She was gonna have to cancel her hair appointment today. Not like he ever noticed anyway. But she’s gonna take him his lunch anyway. He can’t afford to just get a burger at Jumbp Joe’s. he’ll get a beer, then another. He’d already been writ-up for being drunk on the job, and if got his fool foot broke by dropping a pipe or whatever on it, then she’d have to go begging the churches for help. She wondered if the Lord Jesus had that slight look of condescension when he was passing out loaves and fishes that time. She approached the field where he worked with building resentment. She never got any peace, and she was going to give him hell.

Randy heard the old green Neon pulling up, even over the wind and yelling and metal sounds of the pumpjacks. He dreaded the day it finally left one of them on the side of the road somewhere. Can’t afford to get it fixed. Or him, for that matter, not that he’d seriously consider it. Too late for that now, anyway. He was paying for it, like he’s be paying for this visit too. The car stopped and the door opened. He braced for hell.

Hell didn’t even notice them.

Fossil fuels. Primitive. Gur Lak didn’t even need the ring’s scanners to tell him what the petroleum small in this new atmosphere implied. This was Jordan’s world. He’d only known a couple of Earthlings, and figured the whole planet to be basically backwards cavethings, who felt superior in their atavism. He saw the machines in front of him and almost shook his head at the sight: they actually think they can control even this simple phenomenon. His ring flashed and a structure fell. Black exploded from the ground in a shower, and the dots began to scatter in panic. Too easy. His fellow Sinestros touched down  and set to work. The field was soon aglow in yellow energy. Bent steel fell asunder, colliding. He saw in the black pond forming before him a full color spectrum, sickly and mixing, before a yellow spark set it ablaze. Rows of jagged bone parted in an approzimation of a smirk. Ths blaze set one Earther running. Gur’s eyes traced his trajectory, and found a green vehicle of some design. They had to know there was no safety in that shade. He raised his arm, and an amber shaft sped toward the green heap.

Randy saw the beam strike his car and propel it into the wreckage of one of the pumpjacks. Terror had locked his nervous system down. He could only gape as the Neon slammed against the steel and fell to the ground. He ran dumbly towards it, registering the wall of heat too late. Instinct threw him back. Grief washed lines down the soot on his cheeks. His legs gave and his ass hit the ground. His hands made futile grabbing motions in the dirt as around him things burned and screamed and he couldn’t understand any of it. His head turned slowly on his neck, he finally caught sight of one thing that he could make sense of.

There, where his car and family had been moments ago, was a dented, scratched metal lunchbox.