CLONE ENCOUNTERS OF THE NERD KIND
By Roger E. Moore

(the sequel to “INTERVIEW WITH THE ALIEN,” by Galen “Lawndale Stalker” Hardesty)

With his stomach knotted up like Los Angeles traffic on a Monday morning, Artie made it to the two-story, pale yellow house without significant problems. He parked his battered Pinto on the dark street next to the mailbox, picked up the extra-large pizza from the heater in back, and hurried for the front door with the delivery. If he ran fast enough, maybe the Grays wouldn’t catch him like they almost had at Daria’s place. Squirrels, indeed! He knew a Gray when he saw one, and he’d seen plenty.

He was halfway up the sidewalk moving at full tilt when he noticed someone was sitting on the doorstep, reading a book in the low illumination from the front door light. The figure slowly became recognizable, though backlit and mostly in darkness. When it became recognizable, Artie’s brain had a seizure.

It was Daria, the small, glasses-wearing, auburn-haired teenager he’d seen only minutes ago--in her own house, blocks away from here! The same Daria to whom he’d delivered a large supreme with extra Italian sausage and mushrooms--but she was here now, sitting and reading, RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM!

So, Daria WAS a clone! And what she’d said about being a high-school student--she’d lied! She’d tried to brainwash him! She was the clone of a real Alien Love Goddess, and doubtless the secret warlord of the raiding party of Grays that had almost carried him off to their spacecraft to be . . . PROBED!

Crazed with fear, Artie attempted to stop his forward motion before he reached the Daria clone. He stumbled instead, feet skittering and arms windmilling and pizza box flying before him. One foot hit the step leading to the front door, and he fell. The flying pizza box bounced off the door back into his hands, and he slammed flat onto the concrete, knocking all the air from his lungs. He lay within arm’s reach of the clone of the Alien Love Goddess, who paid not the slightest attention to him as she continued to read at his side. Her long, auburn hair blew in a mild evening breeze.

The front door opened, and a pair of gray boots stood before him.

“Hmmm,” said a feminine voice. “That was thirty minutes or less, but you didn’t have to kill yourself doing it.”

Artie made gasping, wheezing noises as he held up the pizza. The teenager took it, Artie heard the sounds of her opening the box and inspecting it. “Yup,” she said. “Pepperoni and hamburger beef with extra cheese and onion. Wait, I’ll get the money.”

And she walked off with the product.

Though he was sure he’d bruised or cracked most of his ribs, and he knew it would damage his uniform, Artie forced himself to crawl on elbows and knees through the doorway into the house. Part of his desperation came from wanting to collect payment for product delivered, per his Pizza King training. The rest of it came from a wild, uncontrollable urge to escape the clone of the Alien Love Goddess outside, who was no doubt telepathically summoning her Gray horde to take him away to be probed.

He had crawled inside the house and was trying to raise himself from the stained carpeting when he saw the other clone of the Alien Love Goddess, Daria, right in front of him.

This one was sitting in an overstuffed chair, watching television. She sat in a relaxed pose, arms resting on the arms of the chair, watching a news program with a calm, relaxed gaze. Like the clone on the front step, this one was auburn-haired, wearing the green-and-black outfit typical of this Alien Love Goddess’s terrestrial disguise, complete to her large, owl-eyes glasses.

Sitting in a wicker chair near her was another Alien Love Goddess clone, hands in her lap holding a CD player to which she listened with a pair of earphones, her eyes closed in serenity.

Visible through a doorway was another Alien Love Goddess clone, standing on tiptoe in her boots, looking in a kitchen cabinet for something to eat.

To his far right was another Alien Love Goddess clone, sitting on a stool, with a large blue ball in her hands, studying it with great intensity. The blue ball was a globe of the Earth. Looking over her shoulder was yet another Alien Love Goddess, this one holding what Artie’s fevered brain could tell was a human skull, tucked under one green-sleeved arm.

The message could not be clearer.

“How do you like my artistic statement on globalization?” called the female teenager from another room. “It’s not really pro or con, you see. I went for a realistic consequence, the McDonaldization of everything, the chance that individual differences might erode, but is that necessarily a bad thing? Would we all be the same, really, as each of us is different anyway and want to do different things, no matter what we look like on the outside? It all depends on your viewpoint, I guess. You interpret it as you choose.”

The female teenager walked back into the room. “Here you go,” she said, “Fifteen . . . hey!” She stopped. “It’s YOU!” she said, and her friendly voice was different now.

Artie looked up into a pair of wide blue eyes framed by coal-black bangs. “You!” she repeated. “You’re that guy that put my picture on ‘Sick, Sad World’ and claimed I was some kind of alien love goddess!”

Jane Lane suddenly smiled down at Artie. He could see all her teeth. “You certainly got that part right,” she said. “Thanks. Hey--” She draped a familiar arm around the shoulders of the cloned goddess holding the Earth “--wanna meet my friends?”

A half-shriek tore itself from Artie’s throat as an energy he never guessed he had flooded his battered body. He was on his feet and out the door in a second and a half, past the still-reading Alien Love Goddess clone, down the sidewalk to his car--

--where yet another Alien Love Goddess clone waited for him.

“Did you buy this car from Tom Sloane?” Daria asked, pointing to his Pinto.

Artie’s legs gave out. He collapsed in the lawn by the sidewalk. Escape was futile when facing a telepathic clone who knew all his secrets--even trivial details, like the person from whom he’d bought his car.

The Alien Love Goddess clone walked up and stood over him briefly, inspecting him as he lay face down on the grass. Footsteps came up from his other side.

“Here,” said the black-haired Alien Love Goddess. “Eighteen dollars. You can keep the change. Thanks for the pizza.”

“Whatever you have to show me had better be worth my leaving a fresh pizza in the refrigerator at home,” the clone said to the black-haired goddess. “And worth meeting him several times in the same evening.”

“I think you’ll like it. Did you drive over?”

“Yeah. Mom left me the SUV.”

“C’mon, you can have some of my pizza while we talk world domination.”

“You know all my weak spots.” The two Alien Love Goddesses walked away and left Artie in the silence of the evening, smelling the grass and dirt, awaiting his fate.

Several minutes passed before he realized that he was alone. He raised his head. Eighteen dollars in wrinkled bills lay on the grass before his face. He reached for it in gratitude. The Alien Love Goddesses were merciful. He raised himself on his elbows--

--and saw the Grays. They had surrounded him on every side.

And the Alien Love Goddesses who were their masters were nowhere to be seen.

He opened his mouth to scream, but the Grays were on him like a furry tsunami.


* * * * *

Daria was goggle-eyed from the moment she saw the first Daria on the front step. As she looked over the collection of mannequins inside Jane’s house, she managed to gasp, “Where did you get the outfits?”

“Resale shops, Goodwill, everywhere. I’ve been looking for months. The boots were easy to get, but that green jacket’s hard to duplicate. The wigs and glasses are from a costume shop. I used this foam covering that looks like skin. Took me days to get the tone right for you. Like it?”

Daria shook her head. She was overwhelmed. “This statement on globalization, is this supposed to be in favor of it or it or against it?”

“I leave that for the viewer to decide.”

“What do you think?”

Jane grinned and spread her hands, surrounded by images of her best friend. “It’s got its up side. At least I didn’t use Kevin or Upchuck. Or Artie.”

Daria shivered. “I suppose I should be grateful, but I think you’ve finally crossed that fine line between insanity and dementia. You should take this down before Trent sees it.”

Jane smirked. “I was going to leave it up to surprise him when he gets back from band practice. And if you think this is cool, wait till you see my Halloween costume.”

“It doesn’t involve glasses and a green jacket, does it? Because if it does, I’m having you committed.”

“I’d need a lot of glasses if I used them for this outfit. Let’s get that pizza, amiga.”

Ignoring the faint shrieks coming from outside, the Alien Love Goddesses headed for the kitchen.

La la LA la la…


[[Thanks to Thea Zara, the Great and Powerful, and Galen Hardesty, the Creative and Wise.]]