Zac Bingley: Galactic Bureaucrat

By D. A. Howe

When the Guurundian Empire invades Earth, they decide humans are useless and unpleasant—until they discover humanity’s gift for paperwork.

One thousand years later, Zac Bingley, office worker, is assigned the task of locating the ancient and long-lost Form-001, by Oolulang, his tyrannical employer.

To add to Zac’s woes, Oolulang encourages him to form a romantic relationship with his co-worker Wex Kowalski for the sole purpose of breeding more employees. What Oolulang doesn’t know is that Zac and Wex hate each other.

Zac, Wex and Corley (a new intern) set off on an unnamed space transporter owned by a mysterious pilot who calls himself Dan. While on their enforced adventure, they encounter the strange inhabitants of the Empire while navigating the bloated and inefficient galactic wide bureaucracy.

Along the way they discover Form-001 is more important than they assumed, Dan isn’t who he appears to be, Wex may not hate Zac as much as she first thought, and Zac, whether he likes it or not, might be the unexpected savior of the galaxy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. A. Howe
• Release date: May 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9780473604882

Book preview

Prologue

One thousand years ago, using the Guurundian Empire’s calendar, a research vessel traveling in a sparsely populated region of the galaxy happened upon a dented, barely working spacecraft. No life forms were detected. The primitive craft’s technology was a laughable attempt at space travel. However, as a junior-grade technician dismantled the spacecraft for parts, he discovered a golden disk.

The disk's cover displayed strange markings that could have been artwork, or something more meaningful. The junior-grade technician reported his findings to his crew chief, and his crew chief reported it to the department chief, and up the chain of command it went until it was brought to the attention of the fleet commander.

The commander sent the disk directly to a team of scientists. They began to try to decipher the symbols. It took ten years before they realized the diagrams were an attempt at communication. It took another ten years and many science-based discussions that turned into science-based arguments before they agreed that one of the figures was a crude depiction of a vehicle. In the diagram, the vehicle sat on a circle. Why anyone would send a message about a vehicle out into the galaxy remained a source of contention. They eventually reached consensus after the lead scientist, BrangTorDor, repeatedly punched one of the team in the face with his many tentacles. The next day, Jiipeeta Soltone, a lower ranked team member, proposed that the circle represented a racetrack with speed markers. Jiipeeta had run out of ideas five-years ago, but at this stage, ending the project seemed more important, along with avoiding further beatings. His teammates agreed. From there they concluded that the jagged lines on the disk represented mountains. A star pattern provided an indicator of time. Two smaller circles showed the number of occupants needed to drive the machine.

The scientists concluded that the golden disk’s diagrams documented a sporting event from long ago. The disk was nothing more than the equivalent of a souvenir pamphlet thrown into the garbage.

That would have been the end of it, except for the fact that a young scientist named Eegeer was desperate for a promotion. Ignored by everyone else, including Jiipeeta, Eegeer wondered if the disk was supposed to spin at a certain speed. He constructed a playback mechanism, revealing that the disk contained pictures and audio signals.

Excited, the science team jumped at the chance to push Eegeer out of the way and vindicate their squandered years and tarnished reputations.

Another ten years passed. The results were unimpressive.

The grainy pictures they extracted displayed planets that could have been in any solar system. One of them, named Earth, seemed particularly unremarkable. Various photographs showed Earth’s native species. The pictures of the dominant primate consuming food weren’t the grossest thing the Guurundians had ever seen, but they came remarkably close. The garbled sounds made by the primate species hurt Guurundian ears.

Having finally unlocked the secrets of the object, the team was disgruntled to learn that it only contained annoying sounds and boring images. Jiipeeta summed it up with a journal entry. We spent thirty years on this?

After the Guurundian High Command recovered from their disappointment, they consulted with the Tragranon about what to do next. After all, Earth had wasted their time.

The Tragranon, a being from another galaxy whom they admired very much, was typically busy most days with a heavy schedule of meetings, drinks, and parties, in no particular order, and they didn’t know if the Tragranon would even talk to them.

General Hotormaxx wasn’t sure if the Tragranon would take the call, but to Hotormaxx’s great pride, the Tragranon deigned to speak with him.

I’m negotiating with the last of the Skor’treen. What’s up?

We deciphered the disk, said Hotormaxx. A planet called Earth sent it into space.

Why?

We don’t know. It seems like they did it because they could.

Weird.

What should we do, Great One?

You do what you think is right. Just try not to cause any more problems.

And with that, Eegeer was moved to a cleaning job. He was the highest paid lab equipment cleaner the Empire had ever seen.

Once that was out of the way, General Hotormaxx decided that Earth’s dominant primate was far too stupid to be left unsupervised and needed rescuing. Luckily for the Guurundians, the inhabitants of Earth had unwisely included their galactic address within the data. The Empire promptly dispatched a fleet.

When the fleet finally arrived on Earth, an electromagnetic pulse sent from the battle cruiser switched off every source of power on the planet and most forms of communication. After that, the Guurundian fleet destroyed New York, Moscow, and London. This convinced everyone that saving the populace from certain death by ‘volunteering’ to join the Empire was a sensible choice, and the leaders of every country on Earth swiftly capitulated.

x

Has anyone made a survey of Earth’s inhabitants?

Commander Jot Tambir wasn’t addressing anyone in particular. Instead, he stared through the large view-screen windows, his profile silhouetted by the solar system’s M-class star. His gelatinous lower mandible seemed more bulbous than normal as he jutted it out in a way that he believed enhanced his looks. Behind him he heard a click as a reporter captured an image of his stunning visage to send to the Guurundian High Command for publication on the official news feed. The Guurundians had decided it would be wise to document their ‘rescue mission’ and broadcast it to the galaxy. Just in case anyone thought they were the bad guys.

An unassuming crew member put up a tentacle. We are just finishing, Commander.

And?

The scans indicate that the dominant primate is average. As we suspected.

Define average.

Very average.

Be more specific.

Their abilities are slightly below those of the sentient tardigrades of Boomi 12, but better than the carnivorous lemurs of Hex Six, replied the unassuming crew member.

All that tells me is that they failed to develop a way to survive in a hostile environment and they’re not cannibals.

One of his sub-commanders hesitated. Well, no, they don’t generally eat each other. But according to their historical records, they have been known to indulge on occasion.

What about the ecosystem?

A big mess. I’m unsure as to how much longer the planet could support life.

Tambir shook his head. He was sorely tempted to liquidate all seven billion of them and save himself the effort, but their mission was to rescue these useless creatures. Besides, it would be a waste of potential resources. We’re here now. We need to find something to do with them.

Someone else volunteered a possible solution. Food?

No, said yet another someone else. Have you seen the chemical analysis? Mostly bone and gristle, with traces of carcinogenic chemicals from hair dye and food coloring. They’re too hazardous to convert into food.

Tambir sighed. It sounded like a deep sucking noise, as if parts of him were leaking while he tried to plug the gaps.

How did this species ever manage to send anything into space?

We’re unsure, sir. We assume some of them are smarter than others.

A technician tentatively waved to get Tambir’s attention. I may have found something, sir.

What?

The technician gulped. I’ve been researching their many cultures and they do all have one thing in common.

Which is?

The use of forms, contracts, and legal documents. They call it paperwork.

Explain.

The entire planet is kept functioning by people writing things on forms and signing them and dating them and then everyone agreeing to abide by the writing on the forms, so they don’t go to jail. They also use them to order goods and services.

That can’t be right. It would take too long to get anything done. If you want someone to do something, you threaten them with torture and death, said Tambir.

The technician’s face turned bright yellow. Tambir continued, ignoring the technician’s obvious expression of fear. Do more research on this ‘paperwork’ invention. We’ll figure out what to do with the primates when we get back. Even if all we’ve done is collect tons of future fertilizer.

A member of the logistics team interrupted their planning session. Sir, when would you like me to release the nano-translators?

Tambir turned to the subordinate. "This morning would have been good, but I guess you’d better do it now. Hadn’t you?"

The subordinate gulped using one of his two throats and immediately released the translators. These were independent nanobots that functioned together as a microscopic translation web. They were designed to multiply after release and spread across a planet. The Guurundians picked up the technology in a deal that eventually went bad and involved mass destruction. Their only consolation was the Tragranon telling them that their actions had saved the galaxy from a terrible threat.

The nano-translators executed two tasks on release.

One: they sampled the communication modes of a sentient species and used that sample as the new official planet-wide language (should the planet not already have an official planet-wide language). If there was more than one form of communication or multiple languages, they acquired every scrap of information they could find before building their network based on a randomly selected individual. Two: the nano-translators invaded the speech and language part of the targeted organism’s brain. Automatic translation took place wherever an individual lived or journeyed from the day the nano-translators took up residence.

The nano-translators fanned out from the battle cruiser and selected a human. The sample was provided by one Jake Grogan, a truck driver living in California. Thankfully, Jake had a good vocabulary. Unfortunately, Jake liked to curse. Thus, an imaginative range of four-letter words were downloaded into everyone on the planet.

x

Brad Barnes was thirty-five-years old and lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Hoover, Alabama. He’d moved there as a kid with his parents, and somewhere along the way he’d developed a habit of commenting frequently and angrily on social media sites. Back in the old days, he would have been referred to jokingly as that person who kept writing strongly worded letters to the newspaper. Or simply as, That nut job that lives across the street.

Brad had never come across a comments section that he didn’t want to pick a fight in. If someone liked a world leader, Brad hated them. Actors were all fat and untalented, all women were bitches, people who were executed got everything they deserved. Science was a hoax; religion was either a hoax or completely true, depending on who he was trying to rile up at the time. Racism was just an ugly word from the PC brigade, and white people were awesome. Just because they were white.

Safe and sound at his kitchen table, he happily spewed streams of venom via social media. If someone replied to his invective, his favorite retort was that he knew where people lived, and he’d be around to kill them later on. Not only did Brad not know where anyone lived, he hadn’t left his small town in over a decade because he didn’t like sharing trains or planes with strangers.

Brad told himself he was very smart, as did other people that he met in dark corners of the Internet.

As he was herded onto one of the giant transport ships designed to remove seven billion people from the planet’s surface in less than a week, he overheard a Guurundian guard complain that Earthers were dumb, ugly, and smelled funny.

Brad was upset. Humanity was being kidnapped, and now they were being insulted by their captors within five minutes of boarding. In his opinion, unlike humans, Guurundians really were ugly and smelled awful. Brad tapped the shoulder of the man in front of him. The man was older and wearing an obviously expensive suit. He sported a Rolex with a gold strap on one wrist.

If this had been any other time, Brad would have hated the man on sight. However, the stress of the current situation was enough to make him bypass his usual need to send out a pithy comment along the lines of: he’d seen an asshole that could walk and talk, as well as take a dump. The man turned slightly towards Brad and raised an eyebrow.

Brad stuck out a hand. Brad Barnes.

David Lipinski, said the man, returning the handshake.

Humanity needs to stick together, said Brad, foregoing any preamble and launching straight into his objections. We’re human beings! We can’t let some lizard-skinned, slant-eyed, pointy-eared piece of shit take over the planet! Earth is for humans, not aliens. They can’t just land wherever they want. We need to demand that they let us go!

David’s eyebrow raised at Brad’s outburst, and his expression showed that he’d heard this sort of outrage too many times to count. As Brad ranted, he failed to notice the look of alarm on David’s face.

A Guurundian guard tapped Brad on the shoulder. You should see what you look like to us.

As Brad tried to squirm his way out of the situation by saying he hadn’t been referring specifically to Guurundians, but aliens in general, the guard yanked Brad from the line.

Are you useful? said the guard.

What do you mean? stammered Brad. He’d never been asked that question before.

What use are you? Do you grow food, or manufacture machines, or make the paperwork and file the paperwork to send the food and machines somewhere?

Unbeknown to Brad the Guurundians had very much warmed to the idea of paperwork, over the number of days it took to round up everyone on the planet.

Um, no. No. Not precisely...

Then what do you do?

Brad had to think about that. I, uh, hang out and, uh, stuff.

The guard sized him up. You are useless.

Brad did not like being called useless. His long-practiced ability to rise to any occasion made an appearance. Hey, motherfucker, I am not useless! You goddamn communist social liberal turd of a snowflake loser.

For his pièce de résistance, Brad swung around and pointed to a man in a wheelchair. If you want useless, he’s useless. Look at him. He can’t even walk. I bet he’s retarded too.

The guard paused a moment as he processed what Brad had said. The human that uses the wheels for transportation does many things. We have already asked him and others in his pod of friends and family how he is useful. He helps other people and is good at his job as a person that does paperwork with numbers. He is of use. From what we can discern, many of his brethren that also use the wheels and the sticks, and the canes and mechanical things are useful in many ways. Likewise, are the brethren that think differently to other humans.

It was at this point that Brad learned that their alien abductors didn’t care about a person’s looks, gender, status, religion, or age. They also didn’t care about a person’s physical or mental abilities. As long as a person wanted to contribute and had the right attitude, the Guurundians were happy.

You are not only useless, but you are also unpleasant, said the guard.

The Guurundian picked Brad up by the hoodie of his sweatshirt and dragged him off the transport and into a group of other Earthers that had been herded to one side.

Brad was thrilled. Once again, it confirmed that he was a genius, even if other people, like his father and his neighbors, failed to agree with this assessment.

x

The fleet left two days later.

It was at that point that Brad discovered he didn’t know how to do anything by himself. Neither did anyone else who had been left behind. With the power gone, along with the Internet, large bands of angry, outraged, professional trolls roamed the countryside picking fights with each other. The only people remaining on Earth were genuinely and completely pointless.

After a few weeks, some of them decided they had been discriminated against and that they should have been kidnapped like everyone else. But there was no one to complain to about it, except each other. Which they did. This set off a chain of conspiracy theories about a mysterious cabal living in a bunker in an unknown location. No one knew the cabal’s precise goal, but it was definitely something to do with the world’s billionaires.

Eventually most supermarket shelves were emptied. There was nothing left to scavenge. Hunger forced Brad to pick wild mushrooms for dinner. The mushrooms were cooked on a barbecue he’d found in a hardware store.

Brad died three days later. His final regret wasn’t that he wished he’d been a better person because he knew he was already awesome. He did however wish he could have written a 140-word complaint about the irresponsibility of allowing deadly mushrooms to grow where people could find them and eat them.

Whistle while You Work

The Tragranon regarded the meals that they had sent back to the kitchen, and said, You are the fussiest people I have ever met. These words shamed the Guurundians at the Tragranon’s dining table, and they humbly asked that the meals be returned. Then they ate the meals, even though the meals were overcooked and poorly presented. Here, the Tragranon teaches us that the Guurundians should always be grateful for the bounty the galaxy delivers to us, no matter what form it appears in. The Tragranonalon with Commentary, Resources, 7:14.

"Chocolate milkshake," said Zac to the beverage machine.

The machine in the elevator chimed pleasantly, confirming that it had understood Zac’s request. It delivered a sweet liquid that didn’t contain chocolate, sugar, or milk. It would, however, keep Zac alert and energetic throughout his working day.

Super-hot spicy root tea, said the Splidenteran standing beside Zac.

The machine spat out a cup of boiling liquid. The aroma of a chili-like substance wafted into the air. Several occupants in the elevator coughed.

The Splidenteran standing beside Zac lapped at his drink, his tongue pulling the pungent liquid into his mouth. The Splidenteran, made mostly of muscle, paused to look Zac up and down.

"Did I tell you that I was working in the Central Imperial Park this morning and I got dirt all over my pants?" said the Splidenteran. Someone else in the elevator snickered. The other occupants kept their eyes and eye stalks facing forward.

"Oh, I get where you’re coming from. Dirt can be a real problem. It makes everything so dirty," said a Merplerp standing beside the Splidenteran. Merplerps were short and squat and known for their inherent ability to fix anything mechanical. They burst out laughing. Which for both species sounded like fast hiccupping punctuated with the occasional grunt.

Zac tried to ignore them and continued drinking his milkshake. They could mock him as much as they liked, but it wouldn’t change anything. His position of team leader carried some weight. Zac threw a warning glare at a small creature beside him. Its laughter abruptly changed into a choked-off snort. Even though Zac had heard the insults often enough, they still annoyed him.

His species were called dirters by everyone in the Empire. It was a slang name that apparently somehow connected them to their planet of origin and the name had stuck. A long time ago dirters lived on a planet, way out on the galactic arm, alternating between wondering if they were alone, and trying to destroy themselves. The Guurundians showed up, realized dirters were generally awful, but despite it all, saw their potential. They generously offered dirters a life where dirters would see the stars and help the Empire maintain order. The dirters leaped at the offer. Or so the story went.

The elevator stopped on the hundredth floor. The custodian and maintenance divisions occupied every floor from zero to one hundred. The Merplerp and Splidenteran exited, still snickering at their shared, poorly delivered joke. They were part of the custodial and maintenance division, which explained most of their bravado. They had a certain amount of latitude because no one messed with their division. The automated waste disintegration system in your assigned housing unit would remain forever broken if the custodial division felt that you had disrespected them.

Zac was still drinking his milkshake when the door opened at the very top of the office building. After the elevator briefly stopped at one hundred, it had gone past 1,900 floors of dedicated bureaucrats who devoted themselves to inventing forms, changing forms, signing forms, stamping forms, approving or declining forms, filing forms, losing forms, finding them again after three years, sending forms away to other places to have their information transferred to another form, and finally, being unhelpful to people who didn’t understand how to fill in a form.

He automatically traced the well-worn path from the elevator to his desk, artfully side-stepping poorly placed filing boxes, while ignoring the spectacular view from the large, curved window that wrapped around the building. Anyone looking through the window could see the Hub, a planet-wide megacity, spread out as far as a compound or non-compound eye could see. The city name became synonymous with the name of the planet. After all, the Hub covered every available land mass.

However, at some point during Zac’s working life, the never-ending vista had ceased to be interesting.

Still distracted by the insults he had received from the custodian and maintenance division, he almost failed to notice the commotion at Wex’s desk. Wex was Zac’s age, thirty in dirter years, and part of Zac’s core team. Wex was the senior team member and she was determined to take Zac’s job. Even if the promotion would only make her the overworked leader of a minimally productive team. Sometimes Zac thought that the vague hope of a promotion was the only thing keeping her emotionally intact.

Zac diverted from his original path, skirted around ten boxes of forms piled on top of each other, and headed towards the people clustered around Wex. Sounds of awe floated from the small crowd as they stared at the form clutched in Wex’s hand.

He cleared his throat to get their attention. What’s happening?

The last time everyone was this excited an employee had located a thirty-year-old cheese requisition form that had been categorized as a requisition for alcohol. Naturally, the original request had been denied and the form promptly lost. The original applicant’s daughter had begged them to find the form again because her father was growing old and wanted one last taste of his favorite brand of cheese. Many more years passed before it was finally approved and eventually landed where it was supposed to go. By that time the store itself was no longer selling cheese, and the daughter had lost interest. Also, the father was dead.

Someone managed to get their vacation approved for this year.

That got Zac’s attention. He reached over to take the form from Wex’s hands and studied it in more detail, not quite believing what he’d heard. Apparently, someone named Girllip Tuna had applied for his annual day off in financial quarter 4,401, and now, in financial quarter 4,403, it had been approved. This is unheard of, Zac said out loud, reiterating what he’d said to himself in his head.

I know. I applied for my day off three Hub years ago and I only got an update on the status two days ago, said Wex.

Approved?

Of course not.

Zac nodded sympathetically, even though he’d never applied himself. He kept his disappointment to a minimum by filling out forms only when necessary and keeping his requests to the basics.

After briefly admiring the luck of one person and the favors bestowed upon that person by a random universe, Zac continued towards his desk. His chocolate milkshake had largely melted, and when that happened, it tended to taste less like a good-for-you treat and more like someone had figured out how to make chalk taste vaguely appealing.

His assigned desk, as always, seemed to be sinking under the weight of the demands sent to him from all corners of the Empire. Processes always had unintended side effects, and the side effects of thousands of processes, procedures and associated rules meant that requests always took a long time to shuffle through the Empire’s bureaucratic machine. Of course, Zac and his team would try to fix the problem, or at least pretend they could fix it. But as always, what sounded like a good idea at the time slowly devolved into a dreadful idea that never stopped being dreadful, no matter how many times they rewrote a process.

The papers, forms, manuals, and journals on