“The human race is doomed,” said the towering, green alien. “If you guess the cause, I will save it. Otherwise, I’ll destroy it first. You have thirty seconds.”
“How would I know?” I lamented.
“I will give obvious hints,” said the grinning alien. “Galactic He-Men!”
“Huh?”
“Cheating camel!”
“What?”
“Chemical agent! Cancel game hit! Get mechanical!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then your world is doomed. Because of climate change, you idiot!”
“What does that have to do with your hints?”
“You humans are simply horrible at anagrams,” the alien said as it pushed the Annihilate button.
Larry Hodges is an active member of SFWA with 117 short story sales, 36 of them “pro” sales, including ones to Analog, Amazing Stories, Escape Pod, and 18 to Galaxy’s Edge. He also has four SF novels, including “When Parallel Lines Meet” in 2017, which he co-wrote with Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn, and “Campaign 2100: Game of Scorpions” in 2016, from World Weaver Press. Larry is a member of Codexwriters, and a graduate of the six-week 2006 Odyssey Writers Workshop and the two-week 2008 Taos Toolbox Writers Workshop. In the world of non-fiction, he’s a full-time writer with 17 books and over 2000 published articles in over 170 different publications. Visit Larry at www.larryhodges.com.
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