Poison from a Dead Sun. Michael Hemmingson

to my face. This sort of attitude was common in all departments in the halls of academia; why should my vocation be any different?

Over the past ten years, critics and scholars alike have speculated that Goldgotha was dead; no one had seen neither gill nor fin of him. “Goldfish, as it is, do not live for long,” one person wrote, “so perhaps, even as a kaiju, Goldgotha had a limited lifespan.”1 I have never believed this. I could feel Goldgotha out there, somewhere in the sea, waiting to emerge when mankind, and the world, would need his help the most. I also knew I could call on him, like I did when I was a kid—if I really wanted it, he would appear for me.

      There were some people who also realized this. Well, maybe not “people.” They were aliens from the seventh dimensional realm of Jupiter, inhabitants of the city Startopia, and they wanted Goldgotha for their pernicious plans.

      * * * *

      This is how it happened.…

      During my second quarter at UCSD, I acquired quite a taste for beer and tequila, no thanks to Ethan Lory. I was spending more and more evenings at the campus pub. This is where I met Sachiko. She was everything you’d think a sexy, savvy, twenty-first-century Japanese girl should be, wearing skin-tight back jeans that had a few styling tears in the fabric, one right below her left ass cheek, showing an enticing smidgen of sultry flesh. She was wearing a yellow halter and no bra, the dark nipples of her small breasts hard and obvious and calling to any man’s eyes. Her lips were bright red with lipstick and she wore a classy beret on her head. I was looking at her and she was looking at me; she was alone and sipping a pint of Chinese beer. She got up and approached me. She sat down with me. We talked. She said she was a grad student in quantum dimensional theory, but monsters had always fascinated her. I said the study of other dimensions always got my synapses fired up, and this was no lie.

      You know the story—we have some drinks, we’re drunk, we’re connecting well, she says she has on-campus housing, would I walk her home? She smelled like…well, she smelled like sex. Like she wanted me to screw her.

      And so I did.

      I have to say, it was great.

      We fell asleep in each other’s arms.

      I woke up, naked, strapped to a cold metal table inside some kind of spaceship.

      Sachiko was there; she was wearing a tight silver spacesuit. So were several other women. They were all looked exactly like her—clones, I thought.

      * * * *

      “This is the human shape we took, for this dimension,” Sachiko informed me. “Our true form, in our own dimension—which happens to be the seventh—is a gaseous matter. We are from the planet you call Jupiter, soldiers for the Municipality of Startopia.”

      Gee, I thought. The greatest lay of my life turns out to be an alien that’s a chemical cloud.

      “We want Goldgotha,” she said.

      “What?” I said. I played dumb.

      A jolt of pain went up and down my body.

      “Don’t act ignorant,” one of the Sachikos said. “We can inflict grave discomfort for many hours. We know all about you. We know about Goldgotha.”

      “What do you want with that fish?”

      “Simple. We wish to control the monster and use it. We know you can call it from its hideaway place.”

      “I don’t know if.…”

      “We know you can.”

      “We know,” they all said at the same time.

      I said, “I won’t do it.”

      They said, “We shall inflict horrible pain.”

      Oh, they caused me a lot of agony all right, and I almost broke, I almost gave in, but I was strong, I was determined, I wasn’t going to participate in whatever foul, ill deeds these aliens had in mind.

      I passed out from the torture, sweating and bleeding.

      * * * *

      I came to.

      They had Dr. Ethan Lory captive. One of the Sachikos pointed a large, black, oval weapon at his head.

      “Don’t cooperate with these bitches, kid,” Lory said.

      “We will kill him,” a Sachiko said.

      “They’re serious,” I told Lory, “they will.”

      “Let them!” Lory said, and laughed. “I know all about these trans-dimensional Jupiter aliens! Their entire agenda is to conquer all planets in the third and fifth dimensions of the solar system! They need monsters to do it. You can’t let them have Goldgotha!”

      I asked, “Even if you have to die?”

      “Even if I die.” He winked. “Death is so three-dimensional anyway. They won’t really kill me. They need me.”

      One of the Sachikos said to me, “Will you cooperate?”

      I said, “No.”

      The one with the weapon fired the weapon. Lory’s head vaporized. His headless body slumped to the floor. It was a clean vaporization, no blood.

      “Oh shit,” I said.

      “Proceed to Plan C!” one of the Sachikos said.

      I’m sure Lory would have taken pop culture delight in knowing that his capture and death was Plan B from outer space.

      * * * *

      Plan C was to release one of their monsters onto the Earth. They decided to pick their kaiju from the desert of New Mexico. A Sachiko told me, “In the 1940s of your planet and nation, one of our ships crashed in New Mexico. Its crew was subject to torture by the American government. So, by right of justice, we have chosen to mutate a creature from that region. Behold,” and she laughed manically, “the awesome death power of Armadilgeddon!”

      The monster was a giant armadillo with an impenetrable shell, and a tail that shot out lightning bolts. First, it destroyed Albuquerque, which was no great loss, and then it made its way west. It obliterated Phoenix, Arizona, and started for the port town of San Diego, California—where I now lived.

      Oh, the military tried to kill it, like militaries always try and fail. They sent jets, tanks, and missiles, but Armadilgeddon really did have an invincible shell.

      “Our monster will not die!” one of the Sachiko aliens said to me. “Do you believe Goldgotha can stop Armadilgeddon?”

      “Oh yeah,” I said.

      “If so…,” she grinned, “call for it.”

      * * * *

      I had no choice. After all, human lives were in jeopardy. That spaceship I was in—a big saucer-shaped thing—was hovering over Mission Bay as Armadilgeddon made its way through San Diego, smashing buildings and slaughtering people by the will of its Startopian masters. I didn’t put any blame on the kaiju. It had once been a mere simple armadillo in the American southwest; its only worries being coyotes that wanted to eat it, or speeding cars going down the highway, wanting to run over it.

      I concentrated. I closed my eyes and imagined Goldgotha in my mind, as best as I could recollect. In my head, I said, Goldgotha, help us again!

      I sounded like a child inside my mind.

      In many ways, I was.

      I had to touch upon my inner child, my memories, to make a connection with my former goldfish.

      I opened my eyes and screamed, “GOLDGOTHA! WHERE ARE YOU?!?”

      And from the nether regions of the sea and my subconscious, the kaiju heard my plea…and came forth like a hidden nightmare, a forgotten romance with fantasy. Like a trumpet from an angel of wrath,