Freebies
by Michael A. Kechula
The Emperor of
Mars sent 7-billion dozen chocolate chip cookies
to Earth as a good-will gesture. The President of
Earth’s Amalgamated Nations was so grateful,
he declared a global holiday to honor the Emperor. Everyone
on Earth received a dozen cookies, and gobbled
them up.
That night,
the President yelled over TV, “This is an
emergency. We have been bamboozled. We just
discovered the cookies from Mars contain teensy
nano-nuclear bombs within every chocolate morsel.
Martians might detonate the bombs any second. Induce
vomiting immediately! Get to a hospital as
quickly as you can!”
Vomit flooded
the streets. Every hospital on Earth was
overwhelmed.
Watching the
pandemonium through a giant telescope, the
Emperor of Mars pressed a detonation button on a
doomsday machine. Instantly, billions of
Earthlings who hadn’t vomited or had their
stomachs pumped, exploded.
“I told
you they’d eat free chocolate chip cookies,”
General Ggg reminded Mars' Emperor, as billions
of tiny nuclear mushroom clouds rose in Earth’s
atmosphere.
“You were
right about that,” said the Emperor. “But
you were wrong about no Earthlings surviving.
Many regurgitated our bombs before I pressed the
detonation button. Millions may have
survived.”
“No
problem. I’ll notify our spies on
Earth to take a headcount to let us know exactly
how many survived. All we’ll have to do
is send an extra-large pepperoni pizzas to every
Earthling remaining. We’ll embed more
of our miniature bombs in every slice of
pepperoni.”
“Do you
think we can fool them twice?”
“Absolutely. Our
spies tell us Earthlings have notoriously short
memories. Most days, they can barely
remember what they had for breakfast. Plus,
they can’t resist glomming onto anything
that’s free. To top it off, nobody on
Earth can resist pepperoni pizza.”
A week later,
a million Martian troopships landed on Earth. Nobody
was alive to resist their invasion.
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