Destroy All Beatles!
by Rob Morris
JAPAN, 1966
From their hotel suite, the four exhausted lads from Liverpool watched the final destruction of Tokyo International Airport.
"No one make any dumb jokes, kay? But those are some reaallly big critters."
The usual back and forth was gone, and not even John challenged Ringo at this time.
"I never studied any kind of physics. But should creatures like them even exist?"
George chose to answer Paul's query.
"Man insulted nature with the A-Bomb. Nature, she likes to kick back, when ya slap her around."
John was not his usual self. The scene was too absurd, and he kept on hoping to wake up, finding that it had all been chemically induced. No such luck.
"I thought the damned Marcos fiasco was the tail-end of it all! But this never stops, does it?"
Paul walked up to the man to whom he could not be closer to nor further away from, on many occasions.
"Johnny--ya think? This has got us all, but it's got you thrice twice. You wanna make the call?"
Grateful that, despite his aspirations to be their manager, Paul would allow John such an up-or-down choice, a very weary John nodded, anxious to find a working phone and tell his estranged wife that he wished it could have gone better.
"Paul--I do think. If we all live past this, then we're studio homebodies. No more touring."
Ringo tried to cheer them.
"Hey--it was getting hard to put it all on stage, anyway. I've got some silly stuff, I've kept back--now maybe I won't."
George pointed out the window at a battle straight out of Revelations.
"Yer stuff's not silly, Ringo--that out there is silly--and damned scary, too."
With the fateful--and music-history altering--choice made, The Beatles turned on the TV news reports, despite their chilling view of the events only twenty miles away.
"This just in--Godzilla and Rodan have joined forces with Mothra and Angilas to fight off a newcomer--a three-headed, two-tailed dragon who in prophecy is known as King Ghidorah ...now, apparently, Gamera and Ultraman have joined in...perhaps we should not be here."
John stared blankly.
"There isn't anywhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be."
Silently, his friends and the people of Japan disagreed with John Lennon.