Tom's Plan

"I ain't so sure this is gonna work," I told Tom as he loaded up the donut rail gun.

"It's always worked before," he reassured me.

I hate to be contrary, but I had to ask him, "Are you positive about that?"

"I sure am." He sounded pretty durned positive to me, but I come from a place where the closest you're gonna get to a straight answer is a shrug of the shoulders and a 'It could happen'.

"Let's just pretend I'm stupid here," I proposed. "Just explain this to me one more time."

"Fine," he sighed as he completed the loading. "We've loaded all your donuts with wadded up hundred dollar bills and set timers on them. When that dragon over there gets in range, you pelt him with your gun, the timers on all of the donuts explode inside the dragon and spray it with money. How much more simple could it be?"

"It's not really the mechanics of the plan I don't get. It's more the theory of it. I mean, I ain't never tried this or nothin and, well, you say 'shoot' and I'll shoot, but I don't understand how peltin a ghost dragon with hundred dollar bills is gonna do anything to it except let it buy a bunch of new stuff or go out for a fancy dinner."

"Look," he grabbed the bridge of his nose, "that dragon is made of ghosts, right?"

"Right."

"And those ghosts are angry, right?"

"I'd say so."

"And we're on a planet that is alien, yes?"

"Got that right."

"So, you'd say they're angry alien ghosts?"

"I would."

"And Thetans are also angry alien ghosts."

"That's what you said."

"There we have it," he announced triumphantly. "The way to get rid of Thetans, as we all know, is to throw money at them. The more money you get rid of, the less of a Thetan problem you have. It's all in the book!"

"Oh, well, if it's in the book then..." I was about to say somethin sarcastic, but I was quite rudely interrupted by the ghost dragon bearin down on us like a back of hammers with a V8 engine drivin it. Next thing I knew, alls I could hear was the woosh of the rail gun and the pop-popin of the donuts explodin mid dragon. Well, that and the unearthly, Lovecraftian roar of a thousand tortured souls. And let me tell ya, it wasn't the "Oh, hey, that hurts so much that I should quite what I'm doin right now and retire to a life where I ain't terrorizin people and possibly eatin them" kinda roar. It was more like a, "you're tryin to stop me, but it's pretty ineffective and just makin me madder, so now I'm gonna devour you and take a thousand years to digest you, most of which will be painful" kinda roar. Sure, when you read the description, they seem completely unlike each other, but when you're standin there hearin it, it's a pretty subtle difference.

There was quite a bit of debate, after we'd teleported of course, about what went wrong with the plan. Mr. Cruise was convinced that the donuts weren't explodin exactly inside the dragon. I fiddled with my controls a bit and showed him the playback of the video my suit's always takin. Right there, in full HD color, on a frame by frame basis, we saw the donuts explodin exactly as they was intended to.

"I just don't understand," Tom said, holdin his head.

"Well, Mr. Cruise, I hate to burst your bubble here," and I did, I really did, "but I don't think you can get rid of angry alien ghosts just by throwin money at the problem."

"That can't be true," he said as he sat heavily on the ground. "I've thrown millions, literally millions of dollars at the Thetans. They all assured me that it was helping. Oh my god!" He began to weep. "I've wasted my life! To think, I could have spent all those millions tryin to help the poor. I could have fed millions of starving people the world over!"

"Don't feel so bad, Mr. Cruise," I comforted him, "you still have millions and millions of dollars. Plus, you can help this world now."

He stood up. "You know, Pat, you're right! I'm going to stop wasting myself on this alien ghost thing. I'm going to start living a new life. Heck," he scuffed the dirt here, "I may even let my wife leave the house once in awhile.

"Gosh," he sighed, "it feels so good to be free of that. It was such a burden for me to know that, if I just spent a little more money, I might become really happy. I feel like a new man! I'm going to shape up from now on. I'm going to be better, I'm going to be nicer and, most importantly, I'm going to be..."

And that's when the dragon ate him. One moment he was there, and the next there was this white streak, like I'd been slapped across the eyes by glowing cotton, and then he wasn't here any more. It's a shame, that, because he sounded like he'd really turned a corner. I don't know how to break the news to his wife. But I'm sure when she hears it, she's gonna need herself some consolin. She may need a strong shoulder to lean on and maybe even a beard to cry into. Then, to recover, she's gonna need a lot of love. A lot of sweet, sweet O'Neil love.

Course, all that was gonna have to wait until after I got rid of the dragon.