great ball of fire (part 2 of 5)

(originally posted 12/3/2017)

Even if the somber faces gathered around the large table in the Pentagon’s formerly-named War Room, meaning that it was called the War Room but someone with a morose sense of humor had recently taped a piece of paper over it renaming it Panic Room, believed Nap Lapkin and his theory that the comet had consciousness the information didn’t help much. While it perhaps explained why this anomaly they had been tracking for a decade had suddenly made a slight course correction and had gone from harmless blip in the night sky to engine of doom and destruction they were no closer to figuring out how to deal with it.

Nap had begun disappearing and plowing the comely assistants that prowled the halls at a rate that was beginning to unnerve the usually-unflappable Generals. It was not uncommon for him to duck out of a meeting after making eye contact with a pretty girl walking by the room and not returning until everyone had endured her cries of passion and ecstasy for more than an hour, in part due to the woefully inadequate acoustical properties of the adjoining supply closet, but since his arrival he had spent more time in the supply room that the War/Panic Room, at one time at least two distinct female cries of passion and ecstasy were heard in what could only be described as a cacophony of foul language and grunts.

He was not taking the news well.

This worried the Generals.

Finally he once again entered the room, wearing only one shoe, and collapsed into a chair.

“So what do we know for certain?” he asked.

“Well, until three days ago this comet was due to fly by with millions of miles safely between us. Then out of nowhere we get a call from some geek with a telescope asking us if we were aware that it was now on a collision course.”

For me to try and describe the particular General or even give him a name is simply a waste of everyone’s time. You have the room pictured, you have the Generals pictured. I trust you.

This did not sit well with Nap. He has seen the movie Armageddon. He looked out the large window of the conference room hoping a cute woman might be walking past. I originally typed that it was a small window but then changed it to large after realizing that nobody describes a window as medium-sized.

“Nap! For god’s sake man. This is serious.” said another General.

“Lance! For fuck’s sake man. Who gives a shit about the window?” said almost every reader.

“Have we considered flying a team of misfit blue-collar deep-core drillers up to the comet, having them crash land on it then blow it up using a nuclear bomb?” Nap asked intensely.

“You just described the plot of Armegeddon” replied a General curtly.

“Yes. Yes I did.”

“Of course we did” said another General sheepishly, “Apparently that isn’t possible.”

The news hit Nap particularly had due to the fact that Armegeddon was one of his favorite flicks of all time and there was a part of him that believed that he had been left to blow up the asteroid like Bruce Willis he would have somehow survived the blast and ended up washing ashore in Tahiti to great fanfare.

Suddenly Nap noticed a thin man in the corner that wasn’t dripping with medals, badges and ribbons. In fact he looked downright civilian.

The man spoke. “This bad boy has a nucleus fifty miles across, an extended atmosphere of over 70,000 and a tail that goes on for days.” A scientist.

The scientist fidgets for a few seconds. “The last part isn’t scientific. I was paraphrasing that scene in Joe Dirt where Christopher Walken says his ex-wife’s legs go on for days.”

“Definitely a scientist” Nap thought to himself.

“And I’m thinking about the scene in Independence Day where the geeky scientist tries to make a joke when the fate of the world hangs in the balance and everyone in the theater wants to shoot him” Nap said aloud.

“Can we give the comet a virus?!” one of the Generals piped up with great enthusiasm. When he realized that his enthusiasm was misplaced he was suddenly happy I had not given him a name or even bothered to describe him in any detail so he could slink off into anonymity.

“We’re getting nowhere fast and we’re running out of time” said the largest and jowliest of the Generals. “So if we’re done plumbing the depths of the silver screen can we start to come up with some real suggestions?” he continued.

“If only John Hughes were here” Nap thought wistfully, “He’d figure it out.”

The room feel silent. Finally all eyes turned to Nap.

“To start with” he offered up, “I’ll need to get closer to it. We’ll need to speak.”

The room fell even silenter. Occupants of the room looked back on the prior silence as if it were Mardi Gras.

Finally Nap Lapkin spoke again.

“Someone get me a rocket.”

If you don’t think that the U.S. government doesn’t have number of specialized spacecraft equipped with a variety of different problem-solving payloads fueled up and ready at a moment’s notice you’re kidding yourself. There are top-secret facilities scattered around the globe that have hangar after hangar stuffed full of vehicles that make stories such as this one possible so let’s just move on shall we?

Nap stood looking up at the towering shuttle when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

“What have you gotten me into now Napkin?”

It was Madonna Axion. Just about the hottest female agent to ever grace whatever department she was working for at any given time. Any other man would have swung his head around at the sound of her approach with a speed that would produce a loud snapping sound and had their lifeless corpse falling to the ground, their eyes eager to drink in the sight of her one last time, but Nap just continued staring up at the towering tribute to man’s need to explore.

“And why is Jeff Goldblum coming with us? You realize you’re an idiot right?”

He finally, albeit slowly, turned around to face her. She looked, as always, spectacular.

She kept talking. “I understand that when the boys in Washington suggested that their science geek go with you on this trip in case anything unusual happened you said, and I quote, “I’ll do you one better” and suggested Jeff Goldblum.” Her eyes rolled ever so slightly. “You understand that Independence Day was a movie right? Not a documentary. That Jeff Goldblum is an actor and not a genius right? How on earth is that ‘one better’ Napkin?”

“On Earth it isn’t … but we’re not going to Earth” Nap said dramatically.

It took her a moment to process his words.

“Holy shit. The comet might as well hit us now and get it over with.”

It’s fair to say that Jeff Goldblum was equally unenthusiastic about going into space as Madonna was in having him there. In fact, he was crying as they loaded him into his seat in the ship. Blubbering. Not crying like a school girl, school girls under 200 lbs were incapable of it. It takes a man to blubber. Or, if you want to be totally honest about it, an extremely large school girl.

As long as we’re being honest, it wasn’t much of a secret that the reason Nap wanted Madonna to accompany him on this mission to save the planet was because he wanted to be the first human to have sex in outer space. Madonna was aware of this when she accepted the mission and considered it a small price to pay to be involved in the most important mission that any agent had ever been a part of. She’d had sex with Nap numerous times and the idea of trying it in space seemed completely palatable.

They had barely left the atmosphere before both parties had unbuckled and moved to a quiet section of the ship. Off came the space suits and they attacked each other with a historic ravenousness. A lesser author would spend six pages describing various sex acts that can be achieved in a weightless environment but I have the comfort of knowing I have one of the most perverted readerships of any unknown writer so I only have to start the balls rolling and your imagination can take it from there. The only thing of note is the fact that Nap forgot to bring a condom. This resulted in two noteworthy things; the first being that Madonna reminded him to pull out before achieving a climax. The second was, as it became clear that he was nearing said climax that she began screaming “Pull out!” in such a way that if this story was ever made into a movie that her screaming “Pull out! Pull out!” would definitely make into the trailer due to the energy and sincerity she delivered the lines. Nobody watching would have any idea that she was referring to Nap’s penis. They would assume it was at the end of some intense scene where lives hung in the balance.

I realize that I said that there was one thing to note and that led to two noteworthy things and that in your mind you immediately imagined this as a flowchart where the word “note” appeared in a circle and had two branches off of it containing the words “noteworthy 1” and “noteworthy 2” also appearing in circles and I forgive you. I can’t expect you to be wonderfully perverted and then begrudge the fact that you’re also into diagrams.

As long as this section is trying to be truthful, let me add that I’m sure that some of you are even more perverted than I dreamed possible and some of you have even somehow created a pornographic flowchart where there are things appearing with a circle around them that would make a longshoreman blush.

So Madonna, naked and gleaming with sweat, is yelling “Pull out! Pull out!”, at such a volume that the old expression “In space nobody can hear you scream” is found to be completely inaccurate, so Nap does just that. Maybe it’s the zero gravity or maybe it was the adrenaline of lift-off but he has the most intense orgasm of his life.

Do you know how fast semen leaves the penis during an orgasm? I got two different numbers from two different websites. One, the Kinsey Institute, stated it was 28 miles per hour. The other said it was 31 mph and then went on to compare that to the top speed of a Peruvian Jaguar. That seems oddly specific. Not just any Jaguar, a Peruvian Jaguar. I think I’m going with the 28 miles per hour.

The reason this speed is important is so you can visualize Nap ejaculating and having the sperm shoot out with no gravity to slow it down. On Earth, this data coming from the same source as our Peruvian Jaguar so don’t take this as gospel, the average distance sperm travels is 7-10 inches (although there is mention of a man who shot it 18 feet but I’m not sure I trust that information)… (although perhaps at the time he was being chased by a Peruvian Jaguar) … (which apparently, given his orgasm, he really enjoys) … (and did you find it odd that I asked you not to take this as ‘gospel’, as if information about male orgasms appears in the Bible?) when in the case of Nap his loads just shot out and down a corridor one after another at top speed. His eyes were tightly closed but Madonna couldn’t look away as burst after burst shot out. Five. Six. Seven blasts from his man-cannon, each one expelling a long string of creamy white globules.

I hope for my sake you’ve seen how liquid acts in space. These packets of baby-batter are going to be floating around inside the spaceship for the rest of the story. Nap’s attempts at convincing Madonna to do the right thing and float around and swallow them goes on deaf ears and will eventually, when the story starts to lag and needs a quick lighter moment, lead to one of these salty beads ending up in the eye of Jeff Goldblum.

For the sake of the rest of the story, which is just about to get started, I will let it go at that. Although I’m sure I’ll regret it when for years after writing this I will think of hilarious things that could result from seven discharges of semen floating around a spaceship.