Aliens
Chapter 4: The Curse of Journalism

Lilo walked through the lounge and made for the door.
"Er... I would not be doing that if I were you," muttered Jumba from the couch.
She shrugged her shoulders and turned the handle.
Instantly, half-a-dozen microphones were shoved in her face, protruding from the arms of the army of journalists and reporters at the door.
"Ms. Pelekai, is it true that..."
"What have you to say..."
"About the existence of aliens..."
Lilo slammed the door shut and rushed into the lounge.
"Jumba, there's millions of newspeople and cameras and they're after our blood and…"
"We know."
"What do you mean, w..."
But she stopped, for Jumba had been replaced with five more reporters.
Lilo screamed and ran for the laundry.
The laundry was no longer there.
Instead, there was a laboratory; in the center was the lifeless body of Stitch; surrounding him were thirteen scientists, all prodding the body, and one grabbed a chainsaw, and swung it down...
Lilo screamed again.

But when she looked around, what she saw was not the laboratory, but her own bedroom.
"I've gotta stop eating avocados before bedtime," she muttered to herself sleepily, rubbing her eyes.
Wiping her forehead, she went to examine herself in the mirror to make sure she didn't turn into a pumpkin or something. When she didn't, she quickly changed into a green dress and hoped onto the lift.

"We've gotta get that article retracted!" Lilo clamoured as she ran into the kitchen.
Pleakley, looking up from his bowl of oatmeal, slowly shook his head as he brandished the latest edition of the Kokaua Town Gazette.
"What! Come on, Stitch, no-one must read this!"
Stitch moaned. "But... but... breakfast!"
"There'll be time for breakfast later. We've got to act fast, or..."
"And how do you suppose you do that?" Pleakley asked, trying to hold down a laugh. "It's not like you can just run 'round the island and grab every copy, it's just preposterous!"
Lilo smiled back at him.
"Er... I was just kidding... y'know... with the joke..."
But his plea was left unheeded as Lilo rushed to the front doorway. Stitch quickly grabbed a bowl of cornflakes and gulped it down, spilling a minute amount of milk on the ground, then proceeded out the door, paying no attention to Pleakley's mutterings about a previously clean floor.

Somewhere else, in a rather darkened room, a monitor flicked to life.
A floppy drive clunked.
A hard disk churned.
A computer froze.
"Darn computer! 'panic: we are hanging here…'? What type of error message is that!"
A thump signified the reset button being pressed, while a loud beeping noise indicated the success of the Power-On Self Test.
A single note rang through the empty voids of the room. Upon the screen appeared a single progress bar and what seemed to be a spinning beach ball.
The lonely being sighed and rested his head in his hands while he waited for the system to load.

Meanwhile, Merwin was walking down Main Road East, which ran directly through Kokaua Town's CBD. Stopping in front of Mrs' Hasagawa's store, he sniffed the air rather deeply.
"Ah, smell that! It's the smell of discovery, adventure and…"
"Actually, I think it was me. Sometimes gastric emissions…"
Abruptly, Merwin heard a noise. It sounded… noisy.
"Hey, Dean!"
But Dean was lost in his own thoughts, mostly pertaining to the smell Merwin claimed to have smelt.
"… and I never know."
"Dean!"
"Y'know, I shouldn't have had that grande-sized tortilla on the way up…"
"Dean!"
"Huh?"
"Suspicious noise at two o'clock."
"But it's 8:27…"
"I meant… oh, never mind. See those trees over there?"
"Yeah, the park's on the other side. So?"
"I heard someone talking about shields. And the only… things that talk about shields are aliens!"
"They could be a couple of Trekkers…"
But Merwin was already making his way to the entrance to the zoological park, and so didn't hear this last remark. Dean grudgingly followed.

"I still don't get why I have to come along!" wined 625.
"This is the only leave I've gotten all year!" Gantu replied, waving his hand. "Besides, you've been begging me to take you to a zoo since that incident with the Emperor penguins!"
"Hey, it wasn't my fault they escaped," 625 retorted, slightly annoyed. "They shoulda put a 'Slippery When Wet' sign out, maybe I wouldn't have lost balance."
"Well, that doesn't matter right now," said Gantu boldly. "We're here to relax, drink ice-cold sodas and laugh at the ridiculous earth-fauna and flora."
"I'll be at the snack bar," muttered 625. Gantu groaned.