“Mutantism on the March” :Chapter 73 “Panic and Terror at Expo 67”

Lucien Loup awoke to the shrill bells of his Bestinghouse alarm in his suburban St. Laurent duplex in Montreal. He rolled over a little too far to turn off the alarm and crashed to the floor tangled in sweat-soaked sheets. He picked himself up and staggered to the shower to see if some cold water could revive him from his beer-soaked evening. With a pounding headache it was going to be a long day. He had slouched downstairs where his wife Monique had prepared eggs, bacon and those damned Le Gros Jean baked beans which meant he might be wet farting all day, He gagged down his breakfast glancing at his favourite “Allo Police” newspaper so he could catch up on the local spate of murders, rapes and drug busts. He laced up his Greb work boots, kissed his wife and placed his battered hard hat on and farting like a sick pig headed out to his rusting Grand Prix Pontiac. It was off to another day’s work at Expo 67 Montreal’s big World Fair that the wonderful mayor of Montreal Jean Droolpoop had promised the world. His construction firm bosses were so delighted at the enormous contracts they had received they donated several thousand dollars to the Mimic Party of Droolpoop. Well political corruption was more his bosses’ business than his. The construction was hard work and he undertook it with pride. He was the foreman for the morning shift. Montreal was so beautiful in the spring almost enough to make you forget its savage winters. He arrived at the site and the security guard was nodding off at the gates most likely some college student taking on more than he could. Well at least he wasn’t smoking pot or demonstrating about the Vietnam War. He had to honk his horn to wake up the young wastrel security guard who woke up and opened the gate. Loup drove over to the US pavilion and checked some welding the evening shift had done. His eyes roamed the site. What wonderful work the working men of Montreal had completed.

Then he saw it. Something that wasn’t there when he had left the site yesterday. It was indeed a strange object and something very large. He chuckled and said it was looking like a spaceship and was most likely part of a large outdoor exhibit outside the U.S.S.R. pavilion. Hs fellow workers smoking their Export A cigarettes sauntered over to the strange object. No one knew what it was or why it was there so they just stared at it. It wasn’t on the delivery schedule. A few suggested with hearty guffaws it was a spaceship from Mars and some of the more adventurous placed ladders against the object and started climbing up the strange fixture. The first construction worker managed to open up the hatch and looked in and turned a ghastly shade of white and screaming headed down the ladder in terror.

Jiber and his crew jumped out of the craft causing a mad stampede and panic amongst the workers. Screams of “INVASION” were heard as the workers made a hasty retreat. An aged security guard took a shot from his shotgun and narrowly missed the Jiber who retaliated with a blast from his ray gun causing the guard to explode like a watermelon dropped from the top of Montreal’s Place Ville Marie. Jiber ordered a retreat leaving a scene of panic behind them. Jiber had hoped that Earthlings were not all so hostile. He had heard of an Earthling war occurring in Vietnam. Did they look like Vietcong staging an invasion of Montreal?