The Adventures of Tom Delay
- GOP Space & Time Adventurer! -
text and illustrations by chris beyond ©2005


Chapter 46: "Before The High Martian Court"

He awoke early that morning. The room was spinning and the last few weeks were a blur. The cell he slept in was obviously built with Martian comfort specification in mind and his back was hurting. But then again, he thought, maybe it wasn't built for comfort at all. He was, after all, in the roughest of prisons on the "Red Planet" and today he'd be facing the charges brought against him by the multiple limbed prosecutor.

The charges were false of course. Every single one a sham, brought against him by the left wing leaning local government of the Olympus Mons district. Many theories tried to explain the reason why the people of Mars had only one wing on their bodies and why some were on the left and others on the right. Nobody ever really asked. (The answer was simply "mitosis.")

His lips were dry and he wished he had some sweet booze to pass the hours with until his trial. The boredom in the cell was far greater than the anticipation of showing these insectoid creatures just how superior the Human intellect was. There was an old RCA television embedded into the ceiling of his cell, but he had trouble watching it because the angle it was set into was built for the longer, more elastic necks of the Martian population and the only way a human could possibly watch it was from outside the cell and upside down. It didn't really matter. One of the clickers on the wood paneled remote was broken and the only two channels available showed a woman cleaning her floor and the other channel showed the same thing, but in Spanish.

He thought about what got him here...and then realized that he didn't remember. He did remember that he was flying an experimental hyper-dimensional space fighter that he had stolen while escaping from General Blax on Planet Nine. God, how Tom Delay hated Blax. He had several adventures and errands in between Planet Nine and Mars. Nobody could have expected him to misjudge how close that satellite was. Besides the space fighter he was piloting only used the metric system for the navigation system. Everyone knows that the metric system is an inferior system of measurement. Measure everything in units of ten? That's crazy talk. The crash landing that followed leveled several Mars housing units, but he survived. Oh, wait, he totally remembered how he got here...at least how he got on the planet that is.

When the guards finally came to retrieve him, Tom was on the verge of figuring out a way of escaping. He had already removed his clothes and had rubbed butter all over his body. He found the butter under his bed. The butter was bitter tasting and green. He had to believe that it was butter. Angered by this display of aggressive nudity, the guards grabbed him and marched him into the showers where hoses blasted him with water and glitter. He was still green, but the glitter seemed to make him look more tasteful.

Luckily, Tom had something up his sleeve for just such an occasion. Two small sheets of paper featuring a speech so overwritten and confusing that even the brightest of Martians would cry our for several minutes before his mind exploded in a parade of blood...or whatever that stuff is in those heads of theirs. If that didn't work (and how could it not), he could fold those papers into some kind of gun shape which would buy him enough time to make it to some spacecraft. Were he more skilled in the art or origami, he would fold the paper into an intricate spacecraft capable of light speed and all those other spacey terms for going fast. "Why don't more people do that?" he wondered out loud to which his guards looked at each other, embarrassed at their captive's accidental vocal outburst. "He does that a lot" said one guard to the other in his alien dialect (which sounded not unlike English with an Asian accent).

Tom Delay was confident...and also a glittery green. He had no doubts that if he told his story from his point of view, these god damn ugly monsters would find him innocent. But why was he here? And where were his sleeves? "Oh crap."

Suddenly, as if a jolt of electricity had shot through his brain, he remembered why he was here and everything made sense again in a strange unexplainable kind of way. Actually the jolt of electricity he felt was from the electrical prod welded by one of his guards who could read minds and didn't care for being called an ugly monster.

Tom remembered that for a short time he had taken residence on Earth and for part of that time he defended that planet from an invading horde of insects which, at the time, defied all logic and conventional weapons. Plus they were small and often managed to evade his sonic hammer. Because of this he needed to develop stronger chemical weapons, but the local government wouldn't let him. He decided that for the sake of the human race he needed to take over and was forced to use methods that he normally wouldn't wouldn't put past himself to put himself in as high in public office as possible. When people could still reach him up there, he got into politics to even further distance himself from the earth people he was trying to save...just in case he failed and they all died up in the insect invasion. "No attachments." You know?

Unfortunately certain humans there didn't take very kindly to his methods in trying to break up the home state he took residence in. For some reason they didn't understand why he had to do the things he did in order to soften certain chemical and business laws and redistrict the state he called home so that he could build better weapons to better fight the invading godless insects that he now surmised must have been placed there by the very alien people who were currently holding him. What was so hard to figure out about that? The outcome on Earth was better than anyone thought, but the damage was done and he was forced to destroy the Earth...just in case the contamination were allowed to get worse...and also because he thought the Earth people were just "too gay."

It was after thinking of the words "too gay" that Tom awoke from his flashback to hear the word "GUILTY!"

Still not exactly sure what he was charged with he fumbled to come up with something to say to the huge Martian judge before him. More armed guards came at him at both sides. He shouted out legal catch phrases like "I'm not out of order," "you can't handle the truth," and "I don't recognize this court!" Out of the corner of his eye he spied a giant Martian laser being brought into the court which looked much like a giant human laser and, indeedee-doo, this laser's only purpose was to vaporize him out of existence. "Focus, Tom, Focus" he said to himself. The alien who had overheard him speaking to himself earlier rolled his many eyes. He heard a scuffle outside the oddly small court doors followed by a loud crash.

"I COMMAND YOU TO SET MY BROTHER FREE!!!"

At the entrance of the blasted open door was Space Jesus and he was pissed off.


~ End of Chapter 46 ~

Next Chapter: "Tom Delay And The Indians"