The Last Tiki Bar on Mars

Your lounging in your spacecraft, a mere million miles from Earth. Or perhaps you’re rolling across the volcanic plains of Tharsis on Mars and it’s not quite lunchtime yet. What snack do you wish you could reach for?

Results appear after you click the “Vote” button.

mmm… snacks…

We’ve seen Sugar Diablo before.

Her stomach growls. Bank account status: low. Patience: none, as usual.

Time for a heist.

Clock out time at the library.  Sugar Diablo lugs her bag over her shoulder, strap slotting between her cleavage.  “Ugh” she thinks.  “Guys love these things but they don’t have to lug them around.”  Two minutes later she’s out the door.

On the bike. Screw the helmet. She’s on her way. Target Lock: You Seasons Market. Port City’s fanciest grocery store. Pizza. For the taking. On the earbuds: The Tremelo Beer Gut. Denmark’s finest. The city blocks go by seamlessly, like a dream. Sun shining, kids in the park. Cars on the street. Everything’s normal, just fine. She’s pedaling slow, the breeze tossing her curly locks. There it is. You Seasons Market.

Bike: Locked. Through the front door. Cart. She tousles her curly black hair. Act normal. It’s a heist.

Walk around, just like normal. Eggs, of course. When you’re shoplifting the price doesn’t matter much. Cabbage. Chips.

It’s a heist.

Sugar sidles up to the deli. The pizzas are out, hot and begging for it. She takes a plate. “Do I pay for this here?” The friendly person in the chef hat answers. “No, you do that up front.” Sugar nods. The unspoken agreement is management is currently trying to kill all their workers and replace them with Roombas with googly eyes. It’s all over the news. “The friendliest store in town.” She says. A smile.

Two pieces… something with vegetables on, partially. She’s looking around. No one stops her on the way to the deli seating area. Two slices. What else? A coke.

There’s cans over there. She walks over and gets a diet. Eyes sharp, no one seems to be watching. Chew chew.

It’s a heist.

It doesn’t take long. Two slices down. Why not a third? She goes back to the counter. Act normal. Everyone does this. Slice three. Plate in the bus bin, can in the recycling.

It’s a heist.

A look around. She can feel the cuffs on her wrist. No one else can see them. Sidle by the seafood counter, these guys really are the friendliest people in town. Through the produce section. No mushrooms for her today.

Self checkout, heh. Self checkout indeed. Scan scan. Before you know it, she’s out the door and a free woman, somehow.

It was a heist!

Pedal, pedal. Home. Lock bike. She turns around, smack into Shadowy Figure, again. What is with this guy? Prepare eye laser attack.

Shadowy Figure’s eyes are barely visible between the wide brim of his slouch hat and exaggerated black topcoat. “Sugar Diablo.” He hisses. “What have you been up to this time?”

What we know from a previous chapter: LunaCon. The largest Science Fiction Convention on the Moon, gathering notable SciFi authors from around the globe. When things went bad on Earth LunaCon refugees fled to Mars. Read more here.

“Ow! OW!  Stop hitting me!”  Harlan is pounding the older man fiercely with a paperback book.

“Where is that shuttle to Mars, L. Ron?  Where?”

“STOP IT!” Hubbard cowers in his seat under the blows.  “STOP!”

Harlan’s teeth are out, bordering on full Werewolf Mode.  He draws back for a moment, waving the offending volume, crouching down in the moon bug pilot seat.  “You and your fucking cult books.  What is this, anyway?”  Harlan draws the paperback for a closer look at the cover.  “Diabetics?”

“Dianetics, It’s like important… life stuff.“ squeeks Hubbard.

“It’s crap, is what it is L. Ron.”  Harlan roughly tosses the battered paperback over his shoulder.  “If you hadn’t insisted on stopping to load six cases of this shite, this stench-ridden boil on a leprous ass we’d be off this rock and on that shuttle to Mars with everyone else, L. Ron.”

Hubbard starts to peek fearfully between a small gap in his arms.  “Hey Harlan, it’s not my fault the only transit bug left had a loose wheel.  And stop calling me ‘Elron’, I’m not some Elf from Tolkien.  It’s just ‘Ron’.”

“Fine.  It’s weasel-dick from now on.  EL-RON.”  Harlan scowls.  “FINE!  What else is back here?”  Harlan twists around, awkwardly held back by his sport coat as he reaches behind the seat of the moon bug.  “Oh, what do we have here?”  He pulls out a liter plastic bottle and holds it to the light.

Scribbled in what looks like black sharpie over the clear plastic is written “Moon Gin – Special“.  “Hey, hey.  It’s not all bad news.  Now we’ve got something to drink while we watch the oxygen supply go to zero EL-RON.”

“I said it’s not my fault.”  But you can tell from the tone of his voice.  It’s his fault.  “Neither of us blew up LunaCon.”

“Tell your Thetans to go outside and fix the wheel.  Get Xenu to help, while you’re at it…”  Harlan sets the bottle down and rummages through his pockets.

“That’s not how it works…”

With a satisfied smile Harlan pulls a pair of LunaCon branded conference swag shotglasses from a pocket.  “Aha!  I knew I had these somewhere.”  He settles back in his seat and cracks open the bottle and fills the little cups.  “At least we can die with a little style.”

The big blue marble of the Earth hangs large through the moon bug’s forward screen.  Harlan is quiet for a moment.  Hubbard straightens up.  “It’s like I’m seeing it for the first time, for the last time.”  Harlan hands the second cup to Hubbard and salutes the Earth with the other.

“To Earth – our home.  And to Luna, our grave.  Salut!”  Both men slug down the oily liquor and are quiet.

Harlan refills their cups.  “Now what.  What do you want to talk about?”

Hubbard fiddles with the controls. “Maybe we can see what dinged up the wheel.” He’s peering at the screen. “Huh. Take a look at this.” On the monitor, the two men can see what looks like a large chocolate bar sticking out of the lunar surface, jamming the front right moon bug wheel.

The obstruction is both featureless and perfect. Harlan is speechless until he isn’t. “Holy shit. Flat black, perfect 1 : 4 : 9 ratio… I thought it would be bigger.”

Hubbard is stroking his chin in wonder. “We’ve hit… The Monolith. Gawd, why is it so small?”

Harlan is scratching his head. “Shipping costs, perhaps? It’s not like it has to be big. Except for the movie. Where’s A. C. Clarke when we need him?”

Author’s note: I’m taking suggestions from where to go from here. What do L. Ron Hubbard and Harlan Ellison talk about while facing certain death from asphyxiation on the moon? Email me here.

Enjoying this romp? Sign up from my Patreon community! You can even do it for free…

Get in on tomorrow’s real estate boom, today!

When the sky’s the limit, there’s nowhere to go but up!

What’s Earth done for you lately?

Talk to your agent about off-earth properties today!

• Ethan Hunt, Agent and Motivational Speaker
• http://phobosrealty.com

“These fries.

Are cold.”

Good news, everyone!

Just what you’ve always wanted: the freedom from having to make decisions! Now you can have the computer link you directly to a random episode of the bits that don’t need to be read in any order anyway. Give it a try!

→ Jump to a random episode of The Curiously Banal Adventures of Banana Man

→ Jump to a random episode of Burning Pork

…Sadly, you’ll still have to pick which page of The Last Tiki Bar on Mars that you want to read. Which you can do here.

What’s it like to be on your way out to Mars? It’s a long trip.

Let’s find out – Chapter Twenty Three, now live.

On Mars, in the Tiki Bar, turns out there’s ghosts.

Catch up with Chapter 19 –  Ghosts in the Tiki Bar.

Or start somewhere else: The Story So Far

Good news, Mars fans! I’ve been busy.

Click here to read the latest from The Last Tiki Bar on Mars: Chapter 19 – Ghosts In The Tiki Bar

And of course, click here to enjoy The Banana Man Holiday Special!

…and remember: Space travel is not possible without chorizo!

— Your bartender

And now we speak with Jeffrey Busybees, the founder of BusyBee, the world’s largest Internet retailer.

We’ve automated just about everything in our warehouses for years now. The delivery trucks are driven by computer. We do find it’s helpful to have an actual human jump out and hand the package to the customer. Put a human face on it, you know? Most things in China’s factories are being built by robots. Automation is Good.

Our next step? Well, that’s to automate consumption! We’ve already implemented that on the production side. When factories, warehouses or the delivery system need something, the robots just place an order with BusyBee. The next step, and I believe this is a natural leap, is to have robot consumers. Humans are fairly predictable, but not predictable enough. Humans are inefficient. If we are going to continue to have the kind of share value growth we want, we need to drive consumption on the curve we’re looking for by ourselves.

That’s why we’re introducing our new BusyBee Robotz. They will have their own bank accounts and apartments across the world. This will keep the humans busy building new apartments for Robotz, construction crews can order anything they need and get it delivered same-day from BusyBee. When we want more sales, we will simply have the Robotz buy stuff. Lots of stuff. We take our cut at every step of the way. When the Robotz apartments are completely stuffed with kitchen appliances, home electronics, wonderful toys of every description… That’s where the humans come in again.

You see it’s quite hard to automate recycling to reclaim as close to 100% of the raw materials as possible, and we need to feed those raw materials back to the factories. Humans are great at smashing things. Give them a hammer and they will smash stuff all day. Then they sort the bits into the correct bins, which we sell back to the factories. All the BusyBee products the Robotz buy, they get recycled. This is going to be great for shareholder value, the economy and the entire world!

Yes, you are right. There is still a yawning demand for fresh raw materials if we are going to continue to grow our consumer economy. That is why we are going to Mars and the Asteroid Belt. Endless supplies of the raw minerals to mine, absolutely zero environmental degradation. It’s a win / win!

Have you had a chance to interview any of our BusyBees on Mars? Talk to my people and we’ll get it set up. See you on Mars!

Marigold woke up on the floor behind the bar. As usual the Yucatan sun beat mercilessly into his bloodshot eyeholes. He raised a meaty hand to shade his face and brush back his bushy, dirty blonde hair.

Morning.

Seagulls called to each other on the Riviera Maya and the humid, cool morning sea breeze boiled over his limp body like a salt-water gazpacho.

Lying there, memories of the previous night, mixed with thoughts about the duties of the coming day arranged themselves in his mind, like so:

Sigh.

“Marigold, why are we here?” his brain asked. Why indeed. With a heave he flipped up to one knee and drew himself upright on the de-laminating vinyl of the bartop. Hazy morning sunlight filtered down through the palms. Due to the nature of being built on sand, the whole pallapa and related structures leaned a bit in the oddball directions usually only seen in the customers after they’d been there for a while. Sticky too.

To his surprise, he found a dwarf with a broken nose in a straw hat and bright hawaiian shirt perched on one of his stools. Looking at him, with that look that says, “I’m thirsty.”

The pair took each other in. The dwarf stuck a half-burned Cohiba in his mouth and causually re-lit it with a fine lighter, a vintage Davidoff, noted Marigold. Taking a solid draw, he exhaled and slowly gazed at the rumpled figure before him with the patience of a man who knew he came expecting to wait.

“Marigold is a funny name for a man.” Cigar stuck back in mouth.

“Yeah, ask my mom about that.” Swipe the bar. Towel, clean enough. This guy has money to spend. “What kin I getcha?” with an attempted note of morning friendliness.

Fact Finding Timmy tapped his gold ring against the empty glass to his right, which gave off a tinny ring. “Scotch on the rocks, still got ice? And some coffee.”

Marigold rattled a couple of battered coolers behind the bar – a few stray cubes swimming in meltwater, waiting for today’s delivery of the fresh stuff. He sniffed his hand and behind the bar pretending FFT couldn’t figure it out, used his fingers to fish out a few survivors into a fresh plastic cup. Scotch not being the drink of choice of the gringo surfer crowd of Tulum, the single bottle of Johnny Walker was nearly untouched.

Marigold’s sleeveless t-shirt, chest hair peeking out of every crevice, the right thing for most of the Carribean weather felt sticky and a bit cold with sweat and salt. Marigold took a moment to breathe, brushing his hair out of his face. Pulling all the professionalism a man could have under the circumstances he set the drink in front of Timmy. With something of a sorry glance he followed, “Coffee. All we have is instant Nescafe, and there’s no hot water until I get a fire going.”

“Of course.” FFT leaned back with his smoke and regarded the mustachio’d bartender, as Marigold tended to the overnight disorder behind the bar. “Things didn’t go so well in Texas, did they?” the dwarf asked, eyebrow cocked.

Texas. Headlights. Fists. Money, but not enough. A long, terrible dark ride to Mexico. Marigold reached out for a toothpick and stuck it in his mouth as a delaying action. Spinning that tiny tree around his pie-hole a bit and peering through his dirty locks he sniffed, “You’ve got cash?”

FFT looked away, smiling a bit. Tapped out a bit more ash. Leaning forward, looking deeper into Marigold’s eyes. Cock the eyebrows, cold stare. “Cash?” #DramaticPause. The camera pans back, framing both figures backlit by the sun just starting to assert itself through the verdant setting of the Gulf of Mexico, a bit of cigar smoke floating through the frame.

Cigar: Tap tap, a quick cigar stab towards Marigold’s slightly blood-shot eyes.

“I’ve got something better, Opportunity.“

After a bit of a hiatus to handle some non-fiction activities we are back in the saddle. Many pots are on the stuff, things are cooking.

In case you’ve been wondering what Arnold Ziffel’s been up to, it is time to read the latest chapter, A Wee Empire.

¡A Victoria Siempre!

Based on a true story…

He does a line. Bald head down on the wooden porch rail. Snort. Snnnnoooorrrttt. “OH YEAH!” Rage Clown crushes the paper straw of the Pixy Stix in his meaty fist and does the best stomping dance a man shaped like a bowling pin can do. Pink sugar dribbling from his nose he waves a full Pixy at the pig. “You want one piggy?”

Arnold eyes the offered stick as if the clown is waving a turd at him. In the other hand the clown is holding a toilet plunger.

“What I want is my money, clown. Where is it?”

Rage Clown is smacking his cheeks with his palms barely smearing his face paint. Bam! Bam! “Haaa hey, show me the merch!”

The sun is setting over the slouching ranch home casting orange shadows over the dusty driveway.

“In the truck, clown.” Rage Clown waddles over to the dusty red pickup and peers into the bed. Inside are several large brown cardboard boxes. He breaks one open, reaches in and pulls out a small plastic cup with a screw-on lid.

“Dr. Ben Wa’s Certified Urine Analysis Kit. Does this shit work?”

Arnold’s gaze is focused on his pack of smokes, using his force of will to imagine eighteen more sticks inside. “Don’t test my patience, clown. Try it yourself.”

Rage Clown smacks the side of the truck and bellows, “Sports Clown! Get out here! Are you high as fuck or what?”

The screen door bangs open. A lanky clown in a Red Sox jersey, a round bulbous fake nose and one of those brightly colored cone hats carefully staggers down the patio stairs one step at a time, squeaky shoes blurting with each footfall.

“Heh heh, what? Is my nose red? Does it give me away?” He pulls back a frilly sleeve and squints at the watch he doesn’t have. “What day is it?”

“The day we stop worrying about passing these fucking pee tests, pull out your damn shitwang.” Rage Clown tosses the cup at Sports Clown in a lazy under throw. The clown peers woozily at the cup and cranks off the lid, removing the test strips from inside.

“Looks legit.” Without ceremony he whips it out and fills the cup, carefully placing it on the hood of the truck and dipping the tests strips inside the liquid. A quiet moment passes then he inspects the results closely, smiles then throws it over his shoulder. “Heh heh. Clean. Heh.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, wuuda about that other stuff?”

“Look in the box, genius!” Barks the pig, rolling his eyes impatiently. He’s a pig with places to be.

Rage Clown digs his paw back in the box and lifts out a package, holds it up to the light and sniffs. “Doctor Ben Wa’s Certified Weed-Free Pee.”

“Fuck my pussy with a robot dog. Here at the Sober House for Clowns, we do things our way.” He lifts the plunger above his head, both hands raised to the sky, feet planted wide. “OUR WAY!” He brandishes the plunger at each of them in turn. “We. Are. Going. To. Have. An. EMPIRE OF PEE!” He jams it under his armpit swagger-stick style and proceeds with the swagger.

“Imagine every goddamn sober clown house. Every one. Across the country. First we sell them drugs.” Sports Clown starts to giggle. “Then,” he punches a fat finger towards the sky “we sell them pee!”

Sports Clown stuffs some Big League Chew into his cheek and lights up a cig. “We’ll be rolling in smokes.”

The sun’s going down. Thunder and lightning in the distance.

Sports Clown drawls, “Sounds like the circus is coming.”

…about our pig…

I get a lot of email intended for other people who have a similar name. This morning’s batch included one with a bunch of latin. Insta-computer translate:

The customer is very important, the customer will be followed by the customer. Chat who hates me. But it’s a good time to hang out, it’s going to be a great time to hate it. Mauris dolor elit, dignissim mollis feugiat maximus, faucibus et eros. Hendrerit’s hateful hatred and now hendrerit commodo.

Another victory for humans and computers working together! Don’t forget, failure is part of the system.

The setting sun casts its last rays through Banana Man’s streaked windows. You might think a janitor would have a cleaner apartment, but Banana Man does not believe in mixing business with pleasure.

The vanishing sun means it’s time to get to work. Overalls: clean. Boots: clean enough. Lunch: in the sack. His black ball cap reads simply: “SCHOOL”. Ready.

Dr. Tomorrow is slouching in the stairwell by a window with a smoke. How does he always get his hair so perfect? Dr. Tomorrow offers him a smile and winks at him as he passes, though it is hard to tell through those iconic dark goggles.

Outside he’s nearly bowled over by a young woman with dark curly hair and backpack clearly stuffed with books.

“After work attack face!” she shouts at him as she storms off. Mildly bemused, he climbs aboard the 007 bus that will take him to the school and his next shift. He narrows his eyes as he spots some crumpled napkins being blown down the gutter. There’ll be time to get those later.

What happens to time in the bus? He wonders. Einstein seemed to think about that, I think. He cogitates on that until the shambling beast reaches his stop.

School. Keys. Stairs. Locker.

Locker.

There it is. Who keeps doing this? The mop is jammed into his just-recently locked locker. Mophead up with sunglasses. Staring.

He looks around and listens. The school is silent. His shift has just begun.

“ToughGuy, if that is your name…” the cop scrutinizing El Señor ToughGuy’s ID looks doubtful.

“Lame mis bolas.“

The cop turns to the impressive pile of wallets on the table.  “How did you grab all these fucking wallets, ToughGuy?”

“Pregúntale al burro quién se folla a tu madre.“

A lightbulb seems to go on over the head of Cop A.  He turns to Cop B.

“Huh.  The pig was a diversion.“