Stories:Come down to Earth
 Come down to Earth |
A story by The French Sim
Come down to Earth is a comedy/drama story. It starts with the Neebtadrizk family's crash on planet Earth; these Xk'krylg'hnreblvians were actually going on holiday when their spaceship's engine failed. After crash-landing in Pleasantview, Ymn'ixxu Neebtadrizk gives birth to a baby girl who, despite her parents' opinion, will be named after the planet. But things go wrong when Earth's father and Ymn'ixxu's husband, Orflad, is crushed by a falling space debris, causing his wife to brutally turn catatonic. Tattooed with the Krylgian symbol of adaptability, Earth will attempt to live like a normal Earthling, and later try to do something to help non-human minorities.
Contents |
Origin
Believe it or not, the Neebtadrizks were created while playing around with the Boolprop command. The characters' names were made up before the classic Xk'krylg'hnreblvian "few consonants" style was adopted, which explains that they can be easily pronounced.
Cast
Main characters
Earth Neebtadrizk
Ymn'ixxu Neebtadrizk
Orflad Neebtadrizk
Alon Livingston
Larry Jordan
Minor characters
Oztal Neebtadrizk
Wegla Neebtadrizk
Sg'glu Neebtadrizk
Cameos
The French Sim
Fancy Brown
Guinevere Tular
Summary
| Warning: Plot details and/or end may follow! |
The story properly starts after Orflad's death, with a visit from a Man In Black who tells Earth's family about the accident, confirming that it wasn't a plot. Oztal doesn't listen to him though, causing his family to lose their allowances. Meanwhile, Ymn'ixxu remains in her catatonic silence.
Later, after entering her teenage years, Earth decides not to stay at home, makes friend with Alon Livingston and realises that high school teens can be cruel: from that moment on, she wears black shades all the time. After a nightmare, she also finds out that she'll only get her revenge on society by studying hard. By the time she goes to SimState University, her mother has just sunk further into insanity, yet she has no choice but to leave with Alon.
At SSU, she majors politics, her projects revolving around becoming a famous politicswoman. Unfortunately, after one of her mother's visits, she sees that her mental disorders are getting worse; after ordering a
ReNuYuSenso Orb and attempting to cure Ymn'ixxu, Earth just makes thing worse, leading the unfortunate woman to be obsessed by cheese.
The "green Earthling" also befriends one of her roommates and slowly develops a crush on Alon. One night though, she gets abducted by the members of secret society, to which the roommate mentioned earlier belongs; infuriated by the lack of politeness such an act involves, she leaves the society's headquarters, becoming hated by its members. After coming back to the dorm, she's cheered up by Alon, who ends up kissing her. He later decides to move out with her since she's being harrassed by her new enemies.
The new house both move in turns out to be filled with objects stolen from the society by Alon, causing the couple to break up. However, the thief promises that she will meet his ex-girlfriend again...
Later, Earth hears that her grandmother died and that her mother couldn't handle it at all. She ends up being sent to "a country with lots of cheese"; namely, France, at The French Sim's, where she learns a few phrases like "Fromage fondu".
After graduating, Earth comes back home after fetching her mother at the airport and explaining her about her new party and projects, only to find that her house was robbed and her grandfather murdered. Ymn'ixxu, who had just started wearing normal clothes from Earth, has to be taken to the hospital, therefore unable to send her parents' ashes to outer space with her daughter. Alon's "signature" is visible on the crime scene, but no usable evidence for the investigators.
Earth has to go on with her life. She moves in downtown and has her party merged with a bigger one; she's also chosen to declaim a speech in Pleasantview. After trying a Resurrecto-nomitron Alon had stolen in the society's HQ, she accidentally zombifies her father; he then moves in with her and attends her speech against the far-right leader, that ends with her holding the racist politicsman to ridicule. Earth gets chosen as the new leader of the party, which will now concentrate on "social cohesion"; her new status enables her to get Ymn'ixxu out of the hospital, to her husband, whom she immediately feels attracted to again after finding out he smells "like old cheese".
Her parents being back as a couple remind the young woman that she's still single: fortunately, at the Crypt-O nightclub, she meets Larry Jordan, a police officer, who happens to be her type. After a nice night talking and flirting, Earth wakes up in her bed, not remembering how she fell asleep. She calls the policeman and discovers that he simply dropped her back home after she had drunk too much; and as the flirting continues and the couple is about to kiss, Orflad and Ymn'ixxu enter their daughter's room to tell her that she's been elected as Mayor of Pleasantview. Later, as she reads the newspaper in her office, she finds a bundle in The Pleasantview Tribune, in which are a ring and a piece of paper with Larry's proposal written on it.
Unfortunately, on the day before the wedding, Larry's attacked by Alon and is brought to the hospital; the wedding takes place there, and Larry changes his name to Neebtadrizk. It doesn't take long before he comes out of the hospital, only for him and his wife to be abducted as they stargaze by none other than Sg'glu, Earth's own aunt. Her plans to take her niece back to Krylg don't seem to please the latter, who manages to escape the scientist and her employees with her husband. As they come back home, the couple conceives their son; during the mayor of Pleasantview's pregnancy, Fancy Brown just replaces her and six (yes, six) months later, Marty Neebtadrizk is born. He's raised by her mother following her own father's very ways, while Larry becomes a member of the SWAT, thus making his wife more anxious.
He ends up being part of the intervention resulting in Alon being taken to jail. Unfortunately, Earth doesn't know that her mother died on the night before, probably due to cheese-induced metabolic disruption. As her father calls her to tell her about that tragic event and expresses the wish to let the Grim Reaper take him away too, Earth panicks, but nothing will alter his choice and the double funeral occurs a few days after. It's about the end of the former mayor's autobiography, the next chapter being about what happened to the characters after that; mostly nice things except for Alon, who had a painful stay in prison.
The epilogue is about Earth's death, and her origins or appearance not mattering in the afterlife.
| End of spoiler warning |
Real life and cultural references
- Earth's opposant, Mr Nepel, has a name made up by inverting the French far-right leader, Le Pen.
- The Grim Reaper talks in capitals, just like in Terry Pratchett's books.
- The chapter where Sg'glu appears has two references to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
In other media
See also
