Beneath the lingering neon glow of McMinnville’s twilight, after the UFO parade dissolved into whispered stories of sacred fungus and stray confessions of alien encounter over half-empty bottles, |||\\|||/ discovered that immersion in human revelry was as dangerous as it was exhilarating. |||\\|||/ felt a rush, but also felt direly sick.
The intergalactic live-stream ratings continued to soar, turning |||\\|||/ from a quirky fungus cultivator and dealer on a backwater into an unwitting cosmic celebrity. |||\\|||/ ‘s image, and his alien face/earth mask firmly in place, flickered across interstellar feeds. Each pixel of |||\\|||/ reminded the trillions of viewers that while Earth’s charms were intoxicating, its stage was as unsafe and unpredictable as the cosmos itself.
As the night deepened, |||\\|||/ forget his purpose in McMinnville and began the delulu dance of noticing subtle clues of surveillance they were keen to avoid. Overhead, drones hummed like an ever-watchful lullaby, cameras were on street corners, and safety officers were easy to see. And that night, amid the heady mix of fermented grapes, fun fungi, and stoned delusions, |||\\|||/ experienced a brush with danger—a brief, charged standoff where fixed eyes trained exactly on |||\\|||/ seemed to flicker with more than mere suspicion. In that split second, the unspoken language of cosmos passed between |||\\|||/ and these unknown eyes: mutual recognition of kindred spirits operating on the fringes of order and chaos. Or, maybe |||\\|||/ just did too many shrooms and needed to stop staring at the largely googly eyes attached to the municipal trashcan.
The encounter left our interstellar operative both amused and alert. |||\\|||/’s current trisectional existence, one foot in Homeworld’s strategic ledger, another foot in Earth’s raucous stoned culture, and another secret non-human foot meeting the whims of far-off reality TV fans, demanded an equilibrium that was as delicate as it was defiant.
|||\\|||/ wasn’t solely about evading detection; |||\\|||/ was also about seizing the spontaneous alchemy that happened when disparate worlds collided. Since he started doing drugs, that is. And with a smile upon his handsome alien self, |||\\|||/ recalled that self-help mantra that can only come from a broken place like Earth: “you make your own luck”. |||\\|||/ felt the cosmos echo that normally laughable sentiment across the void this evening.
But just as the wine-soaked festivities began to dissolve into the early hours, a coded transmission crackled through |||\\|||/’s secure interstellar channel…a new directive from Homeworld’s upper echelons was received. The message was brief but potent: *Operation Vineyard Rebellion is greenlit.* The words swirled with implications. Earth was no longer just a playground for clandestine exchanges of psychedelic fungi for |||\\|||/. No, it was evolving into an arena where the rules of cultural exchange would be redrafted in real-time. |||\\|||/ knowt the directive promised not only more risky opportunities (which would mean more viewers back home), but it also produced an unsettling amount of moral turmoil and gross hot burps. Some Earthians call this mix of feelings and reflux anxiety. I call it annoying.
Eager to recalibrate from their paranoid thinking that resulted in a starring contest with a police officer’s bike, |||\\|||/ set out under cover of darkness, navigating a network of back-alley sommeliers, renegade poets, and plaid clad musicians who had transformed a defunct agricultural backwater into a secret vino-centric epicenter of counterculture.
In the subterranean lounge of an off-alley speakeasy, an oddly wide space emerged from the chasm open streets where amber light danced off aged oak barrels and the air was drenched in the scent of fermenting dreams. |||\\|||/ heard discussions burst forth in cryptic metaphors, ideas flowing as freely as the local Pinot, and a fevered mixing of philosophical debate with sly jabs at society’s entrenched hierarchies… this place was draining. However, a whispered prophecy among the patrons hinted at a forthcoming “cultural inversion,” a radical, tongue-in-cheek coup aimed at upending social order in McMinnville’s converted downtown core.
For a brief, heady moment, the boundaries between duty and desire blurred. Here, in the dim alcoves of rebellion, the wild spontaneity of human creativity intertwined with the talk of a cosmic coup, which would be enjoyed by trillions of reality viewers lightyears away, but loathed by the lowly local, dirty, Earthians.
That night, as plans were hatched between whispered conspiracies and the clink of crystallized stem glassware, the score was unofficially tallied in the silent language of the cosmos:
|||\\|||/ observed Earthians plotting destruction. And there’s nothing more entertaining than destruction. That’s why Earth’s a hit!
|||\\|||/ thought…
**|||\\|||/ 3, Big Government 0.**
—This Cosmic Reality Show Campaign Has Been Subsidized By Too Much Earthian Drinking—
With a quiet chuckle, our alien protagonist braced for an even more audacious act of cultural subversion. This chapter was not about rigid rules or predictable outcomes—it was about bending expectations, celebrating absurdity, and savoring rebellion in its most delicious form.
|||\\|||/ made the ultimate decision: Homeworld would remain blissfully unaware of the coup. The Earthians would carry on with their vino-induced campaign of self-destruction, unchecked and unchallenged. After all, doing nothing, while being too stoned to be drunk in the heart of wine country, was the kind of high-concept performance sure to dazzle the intergalactic viewers and producers back home.
-Andrew Brunello