Beamer, not BMW

Hey all, this is the short story my group wrote in Creative Writing in August. It's Sci-Fi, so I feel no compunction about forcing it on you. It's not fantastic or anything, but it is mildly amusing. The screenplay is even funnier, but it's really long. Written by me, my roomie, and another guy.


The first thing Todd noticed when he woke was that the floor was cold. The second he noticed was that the air was alive with the hum and whir of machinery. The third thing he noticed was that somebody’s elbow was shoved into his cheek.

He cried out and shoved the elbow out of his way, yelling, “Get off me!” He kicked forward, shoving himself out into the middle of the room, and there lay for a moment, his mind a whirl of confusion and mild disgust.

He noticed, distantly, that he was in a box-like room, maybe ten feet on all sides, with blank, stainless steel walls. A frosted glass door was straight across from him.
He got to his feet and turned, finding himself facing two men still tangled in a heap on the other side of the room. One of them he recognized as Kenneth, the thirty-something gymnastics coach at the local high school; the other figure was the scrawny twenty-odd town baker whose name Todd could not bother to remember. He turned away to survey the room.

From behind, he heard a jumble of cries of confusion and pain and Todd decided it would be best not to bother turning around. He exhaled deeply, trying to make sense of the tumult, and finally the voices behind him stopped jumbling into one another.
Todd turned to see Kenneth glaring at the baker, who was standing with his arms folded over his chest.

“You calm now?” Kenneth said.

“No,” the baker growled, “but I’ll live.”

“Good.” Kenneth looked up to Todd and waved broadly. “Hey, you’re—you’re the kid from the ice cream parlor, right?”

Todd frowned. “Name’s Todd. And you’re the high school gym coach, Ken, right?”
The man’s expression darkened. “Kenneth.”

They glared at each other for a long moment, an electric silence filling the room. The baker slid forward, looking from Todd to Kenneth and back. Finally, he said, irritably, “Eugene.”

Oh. The baker did have a name.

The tension melted immediately, and Todd turned back to the door, pushing against it. The door swung out, and he held it open, looking over his shoulder to the others. “C’mon,” he said. “We’re getting out of here.”

Without waiting for the adults to follow, Todd slipped out into the hallway and moved a few feet down to a two-way intersection. He looked to the right and was immediately hit by a bout of vertigo, staggering back and grabbing the wall to keep his balance. The entire hallway curved downward and dropped away, floor and ceiling melting into each other and forming a far-too-close horizon line. The effect left Todd dizzy and somewhat nauseous. As his stomach settled, he leaned forward and looked to the left; same deal. It was as though he were standing on a massive sphere.

“Hey,” Kenneth called, approaching from behind, with Eugene just behind him. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Todd said, righting himself and swallowing. “Just a little dizzy. It’s trippy down here. Look.”

Kenneth did so and was sent reeling back as Todd had been. Eugene approached with slightly more caution, having seen the others react, but was left none the better for it. He pulled away, heaving, and muttered, “I don’t like this place.”

“Could be worse,” Todd said with a shrug. “This isn’t a gang thing, at least. Way too clean.”
Kenneth stared at him, jaw dropped. “What?”

Todd shrugged and rounded the corner. “Well, no good just standing here,” he said, taking off down the slowing hallway. Kenneth called after him, but he ignored the coach’s pleas and made his way down the corridor.

Within a few minutes Eugene and Kenneth were behind him again. “You don’t know where this will lead!” Eugene hissed.

Todd smiled to himself. “Better than being stuck in a storage closet or something.”

Eugene could not argue with that, and fell mostly quiet save for the occasional grumbling that escaped him. Kenneth glared at him, and the baker stopped. After traveling for several minutes in silence, a door appeared from the crest of the hallway. Todd stopped for a moment, somewhat stunned—he had grown accustomed to the infinite sloping corridor—but recovered quickly and moved on. He stopped outside of the door and hesitated, then reached out for the door.
The door vanished and opened into a dark room.

Todd squinted, trying to peer through the gloom. He could see nothing but shadows and the occasional flare of oddly colored light. Kenneth slipped past him and toward the room. “This is…”

The lights flared on, blinding Todd. He shut his eyes, waiting for the pain to fade. Slowly, he opened his eyes again, and saw a mass of shadowy creatures in front of him, set apart by slits of glowing green eyes.

“They are awake.”

The voice was a hiss, and behind it, a new cacophony of hisses arose in agreement, the mass of shadows twisting as it spoke. One of them let loose a high-pitched hiss, and the group fell silent. The one in the lead leaned forward and looked over to another, twitching its head, and the other slipped forward, interposing its body between its kind and the three in the hallway. It sucked in a deep, rasping breath, then spoke.

“Hello my homies! How does it hang?”

"It speaks outdated slang!" Wailed Eugene, "what sort of awful place is this?"

"Get a hold of yourself" Kenneth said scornfully, while Todd grinned.

"I feel like I understand him, man."

“Thank you, Zon, I think we’ve established communications,” the first said, and the one that had approached—Zon—melted into the mass of shadow. The leader moved forward and nodded. “Welcome, residents of—“ He stopped and glanced at one of the others. They exchanged words, and then he looked toward the three. “Earth.”

Todd blinked. “Aliens?”

“I believe that’s your word for it,” the primary figure said. “I apologize for any disorientation you may have experience, but I’m afraid we are in dire need of your help.”

None of the humans responded. The primary alien interpreted this as an invitation to continue speaking.

“We have a device that is very important to us,” he explained, “and we believe you can fix it. Our beamer has been malfunctioning, and—“

“I’m not terribly good with machines,” Eugene said suddenly. “Ken?”

Kenneth glared at Eugene for a moment, then turned back to the aliens. “I might take a look at it, but auto repair is hardly my specialty…”

The aliens stared at him.

“Beamer,” he repeated. “A BMW, right?”

“A… a what?” one of the aliens murmured.

“Earth humor,” another said, and the congregation of dark shadowy things promptly broke into a chorus of nervous laughter. The laughter stopped abruptly and the leader of the group shook his shadowy head. “No. What we want fixed is—“

“A beamer!” a high-pitched voice suddenly cried, and the entire room turned to look at the speaker. Sitting on the floor, several feet behind the aliens, was what could best be called a pile of pink gelatin, sporting three eye stalks and a wide, grinning mouth. One of the aliens sighed heavily at the sight, but the pile of gelatin looked up at the congregation expectantly and continued. “It’s a transportation device, something you use to get from one place to another real fast!”

“A teleporter?” Eugene asked.

Somehow, the pile of gelatin nodded.

“Yes, thank you, Fred,” the primary alien said, waving the gelatinous creature off.
“Yes. We believe you can fix our beamer.”

“We really can’t,” Kenneth said. The aliens stared at him, anticipating the rest of his sentence. He shrugged uselessly. “Well, we can’t. Never dealt with a… beamer…. before.” He looked over to Eugene and Todd, and the two nodded.

“But you were discussing such advanced technology when we took you,” the primary alien cried.

“We were discussing science fiction,” Kenneth explained. “Fiction.”

The aliens fidgeted amongst themselves, then re-congregated into their imposing formation, and this time the leader’s voice took on a sharper tone, more commanding.

“We are afraid you have no choice. We will not be able to return you to Earth without fixing the beamer.”

“Not re—“ Eugene cut himself off, then glared at the aliens. “Why don’t you fix it? It’s your advanced technology!”

“We lost the owner’s manual.”

He stared at the aliens for a moment, and then simply turned around and walked away.

The alien shrugged and looked at the two remaining in front of them. “Can you fix the beamer, then?”

Kenneth shrugged. “We can try.”

Todd shrugged. “Eh.”

“Excellent.” The prime looked over his shoulder again. “Fred! Escort them to—“

The gelatinous creature was gone. The prime blinked.

“He always does that… Zon, then.”

“Yo!”

“Escort our guests to the beamer.”

The alien saluted, and slipped forward, into the hallway. “Follow me,” he said, and began to move through the ship. Todd and Kenneth followed.
* * *

Their assumption had been correct; between the two of them, they had no idea how to fix the device. Todd saw it as nothing more than a tangle of wires and metal fixtures, and retreated. Kenneth stood at it much longer, but eventually he had to pull back, shaking his head.

“I can’t figure it out,” he said. “Sorry.” He paused, and then said, somewhat anxiously, “Do you suppose you could just let us return to earth, or…”

“Ain’t happening, my man,” Zon said. “If we can’t get the beamer to work, you ain’t getting sent back.”

“Of course…”

“Hey,” Todd said. “If the beamer’s broken, how did you get us up here in the first place?”

Zon’s eye twitched, and his voice dropped. “I don’t think you want to know.”

Todd took him at his word.

“Well,” he said, stepping further away from the control panel. “I’ve done everything I can. I’m looking around the ship.”

Kenneth tilted his head. “Are you going to try and track down Eugene?”

Of course not. “Sure, I’ll see if I can find him.”

Kenneth nodded. “Be careful. You don’t want to get lost in this place.”

Zon gave him a thumbs-up. “Sweet. Have fun.”

Todd left the room and took to the curving corridor again. Zon had mentioned that it was the way the ship was constructed, with a gravitational core that pulled everything toward it, making it easier to deal with just building things like a massive sphere around it. Todd could not have cared less about why the hallway sloped; all he knew what that it was disorienting yet cool, and the more he wandered through the hallway the more comfortable he felt navigating through the ship.

He took a few minutes to wonder which way Eugene might have wandered off in and began walking in the opposite direction. After a few minutes, he came to a side hallway, and turned to travel down it, curious where it would lead.

He stopped a little ways down as the ceiling seemed to disappear. Disoriented again, Todd took a moment to get his bearings again, and then crept forward slowly, using the wall to keep himself balanced. As he neared the swath where the ceiling seemed to be missing, he realized it was a window, built on the outside of the station and opening into a view of space.

An expanse of blackness, pockmarked by stars, met his view. A little off to the side and partially obscured by the ship’s hull was a blue-green-white ball. Earth.

He stared at it for a long moment, enraptured by the sight, and felt a trembling run through his limbs. It was gorgeous. So small, and so distant, and so meaningless, now that he was out here, hanging over it in the sky. His home was down there.

His home. Where Mother and Father would argue into the night, screaming at each other across the room. Where the gang kids would single him out and beat him up because he was smaller and easy to take on. Where his father neglected him. Where he had to quite school just so he could his family from going under. Where people always referred to him as ‘kid’, never game the respect he deserved, never noticed him except when he got in the way or they needed to use him for something.

Out here, where he could see the big picture of the planet and ignore the problems back at his home, his insignificant piece of life on an insignificant blue orb.

A thought whipped through his mind, and he blinked, almost shocked by it.

The aliens would not return them to Earth if they could not fix the beamer. They could not return them without the beamer. If they failed to fix the beamer, they would be trapped on this alien spaceship, skirting the cosmos until the beamer could be fixed. A smile stretched across his face. And even if they could find somebody to fix it, the beamer could always be broken again. That was what happened to advanced technology; it snapped in half at every possible opportunity, it constantly malfunctioned.

He would never have to deal with the frustration and pain of Earth again. He could be an interstellar traveler, not worrying about how bread would get on the table night after night.

“I’m not going back.”

He felt the conviction in his voice, and laughed. That was it. He was not going back.

He continued laughing at his private joke and made his way down the hallway, looking out for another window to break up the view of the stainless-steel ceiling. Unfortunately, he did not find any more before he ran across Eugene, apparently lost in the hallways.

“Hey you!” Todd yelled, and the baker perked up and whirled to face him, exhaling deeply.

“Ah, Todd,” he said, walking forward. “Good thing I found somebody. This place is a tangle of confusion… why’re you so happy?” Eugene looked out the window and clenched his teeth and shook his head. “Home,” he mumbled. “Yeah… hey, did you and Ken really take up the alien’s offer and look at their beamer. Thing.”

Todd nodded. “Can’t do anything about it, man,” he said, shrugging. “Wires and stuff are too crazy. Can’t even figure out where to start.”

Eugene grunted. “I’d have figured as much. Advanced alien technology and all that… you give up, then?”

“Yeah.”

“And Ken’s still…”

“Yeah.”

The baker sighed heavily and looked down the corridor. “This place is bizarre,” he said finally. “I mean, it’s… interesting, but I really don’t want to hang around here any longer than necessary. Got stuff to do back home.”

“Yeah?” Todd tilted his head, confused. “You got family or something?”

“I got baking to do,” Eugene said, flashing him a smile that implied he was only halfway joking. His smile faltered after a few seconds. “Employees to take care of, too. Nice people, but between the lot of them they have the business sense of a gnat. The bakery would go under in a week if I couldn’t get back.”

“No family stuff, though?”

Eugene shrugged. He was silent for a minute, and then began, “Hey, ah, where is the room, anyway? I can’t do much, but I might as well see what it is I can’t do much about.”

Todd jerked his hand over his shoulder. “Down the hall, hang a left, first hallway you reach leads into it. You also have to kick the door down to get in.”

Eugene stared at him. Todd gave no indication that he had said anything strange.

“R-right,” Eugene murmured. “Well, I’ll go off and… yeah. Thanks. See you.”

He took off down the hallway. Todd watched him for a few seconds, and then turned back to where he had been wandering. Back to that enviable, beautiful solitude. To wandering freely. To—

The fresh scent of strawberries?

“Hey guys!”

Todd turned and saw the gelatinous pink thing sitting behind him sprawled on the floor, looking up at him and smiling. Todd blinked a few times, trying to recall his name.

“Hey, you’re the—the jelly-blob man.” He continued searching for the name. “Fred?”

“Hey, yeah!” the jelly blob named Fred said, somehow beaming yet brighter. “You remember my name?”

“It’s so normal,” Todd said. “And you don’t look anything like the other aliens.
What’s up?”


“You guys gotta fix the beamer to go home, right?”

“Yeah.” You were there doing the conversation, jelly-man, you know that.

Fred seemed to consider his next words carefully, his stalk eyes contracting and giving him an air of deep thought, and he said after length, “I can fix the beamer.”

Todd stared at him.

“You can what?”

“Fix the beamer,” Fred said. “I’m a certified beamer-fixer-upper guy.”

Todd stared at him, sputtering, “Why haven’t you mentioned that the aliens?”

“Them big guys?” Fred seemed to deflate—or liquefy—slightly. “They never listen to me. I told them a bunch of times that I can fix the beamer, but nobody will hear me out. Nobody up here takes me seriously.”

Todd shifted where he stood, staring down at the floor. How familiar that sounded.

“But!” Fred said, brightening up immediately. “I can fix the beamer! Real fast too. If you…” He stalled for a moment, looking at the opposite wall, his eyes glazing over. “If you want my help, that is. I can do it.”

Todd turned away for a moment. “Thanks for the offer, Fred,” he said. “But I’m not sure I want the beamer to be fixed. I—I like it up here. I want to stay up here, hang out, explore space. There’s not much waiting for me back home. This is a dream. This is—“

He turned to face Fred and fond nothing there to face. He blinked, recoiling slightly, and stared at the floor, where a few specks of bright pink jelly were clinging to the steel.

How did he do that?

Todd circled the ship for hours, looking over the displays and through the windows he occasionally ran across before he inevitably came back to the room with the beamer. Kenneth was still there, alone and scratching his head as he stared at the panel, his eyes glazed as though he were staring through it.

“You still here?” Todd asked.

Kenneth looked up. “Oh, hey, kid,” he said. “Yeah, I’ve been trying to get this thing to work for a while, but…”

“No go?”

“No go.”

They fell silent, and after a few moments Kenneth looked back to the panel. “I don’t think I can do anything about it,” he admitted quietly. “I’ve got to keep trying, but—“

“Why bother?” Todd said suddenly. Kenneth turned to him, alarmed.

“Why bother? Why should I give up? You’ve got a home and a family just as much as I do, did you give up on that?”

Todd snorted. “Whatever,” he growled. “I don’t want to go back there. It’s better up here.”

“How can you say that!”

Todd fixed Kenneth’s gaze, and said coolly, “Nobody beats me up here.”

Kenneth tried to mouth something, but his words could not escape him. He turned around again, keeping his eyes away from Todd, and said, his voice hardly above a whisper, “I’ve got a son, Todd. He’s not yet six months old. I—” His voice faltered, and his shoulder slumped. “I have things to take care of at home. I guess… I guess you do, too. But, Todd.” He turned to face the boy again. “You can’t just ignore everything bad back on earth. You still have responsibilities back home.”

Todd folded his arms over his chest and glowered at Kenneth. The man stepped back as though hurt by Todd’s gaze. “I got responsibility because nobody else will take it,” he said acidly. “I can’t live my own life back home.”

“Then at least let us live ours.”

He stared at Kenneth for a moment, and Kenneth continued. “If you—if you’re really willing to abandon everybody back home, I can’t stop you. But kid—Todd. Eugene and I… we’ve got to go back. Please. If not for yourself, then at least for us.”

Todd stared at him for a long moment, and then once again turned his attention elsewhere, his jaw clenched and his mind aflame. He mulled over the possibilities, mulled over the responsibilities, considered the situation. Would he be allowed to stay here if the others went home, or did the aliens not want to bother with taking care of humans? And if they let him stay, what would happen back home? His job covered a lot of his family’s finances. Without him…

“Fred can fix the beamer.”

Kenneth blinked. “What?”

“Fred,” Todd repeated. “Fred told me he knows how to fix the beamer.”

Rather suddenly, Eugene appeared from the other side of the console, wires wrapped over his shoulders and a wrench in hand. “Fred?” he said. “Fred doesn’t have any limbs. How can he fix this thing?”

“How long have you been there?” Todd asked, taken aback.

“Long enough to hear that Fred can fix this stupid thing,” Eugene grumbled. “I’ve been crawling under floorboards for the past half hour because somebody seemed to think it would help.” He sent a glare at Kenneth, but Kenneth completely ignored him.

“Well,” Kenneth said, still shocked. “If Fred can fix it, then I guess we best find him—“

“Hey guys!”

The blob in question dropped from above and landed on the control console. Kenneth and Eugene both cried out and pulled back in shock.

“Fred?” Todd asked. “Where did you come from?”

Fred waved a stalk eye at the ceiling. “The ventilation grate,” he said. “I—I accidentally fell through.” He grinned and bounced happily. “But if you want the beamer fixed, I’m your man!”

“So we’ve been told,” Eugene said. “How, though?”

“A magician never gives away his secrets,” Fred said happily. “You want me to fix the beamer?”

Eugene nodded vigorously. Kenneth looked over to Todd, giving him a sideways glance, waiting for the young man’s approval. Todd considered for a moment, and then nodded slowly.

“Yes,” Kenneth said. “Please do.”

“Then out of the room!” Fred ordered. “I can’t work with your constant distractions!”

They bolted, and the door shut behind them. They exchanged glances, not entirely sure how to react to what had just happened. And then they waited.

Ten minutes later, Fred popped out of the ventilation shaft behind them. “Finished!”


The shadowy forms of the aliens congregated at the door as Eugene and Kenneth stood at the opposite end, once more in a cube room, surrounded by stainless steel walls, a window dividing them from the aliens.

“Here we go,” the primary alien said, leaning over the panel. “Are you prepared?”

Eugene shrugged. “I suppose,” he murmured, looking over to Kenneth. “Is the kid not coming with us?”

Kenneth shook his head. “I suppose not,” he murmured. “I don’t know why I figured he would be, but…”

The door into the room slid open, and Todd walked in. Kenneth looked up, smiling broadly, and Eugene exhaled and rolled his eyes, muttering a half-unheard “Figures” under his breath.

“I thought you wouldn’t come,” Kenneth said.

Todd smirked. “I got stuff to do back home,” he said. “Thanks.”

Eugene coughed. “If you guys are done having your moment,” he said, “we’d best be shot back to earth.” He looked through the window. “Beam me down, Zon!”

“Wrong name,” the alien said. “But well enough. Brace yourselves!”

Todd frowned. “Against what?”

The alien activated the beamer. The air was filled with a hum of energy, and then light began to spill around them, heating the room. The hum rose to a scream as it collected energy, and then—

—the ice cream shop appeared around them.

“We’re… back?” Eugene said, glancing around the parlor as though waiting for something to break.

“Looks like,” Kenneth said. He looked to Todd. “You all right, Todd?”

Todd smiled. “Yeah. I’m all right.”