Harvester Glorbizzle, from the Triangulum galaxy, has one final stop to complete his employer’s itinerary: gathering specimens for Overlord Zomar’s menagerie and alien anatomy classes. Alive. This planet housed the requested lifeforms. Their fragileness was a relief. Anything easier than those extracted from the asteroid last cycle. During that abduction, three of his pincers had been severed, leaving him with thirteen. Glorbizzle articulated them now, clicking switches and buttons along the control panel. Time to beam up humans and cram as many as possible in the storage tanks. Estimating that several dozen could be pressed inside with the throned creatures from the Savanah world. After flattening them, they would be flash frozen like the other acquisitions. The blue world appeared on screen. Entering the atmosphere, he hovered the vast ship over a section of land filled with bustling hominids.

An error code flashed across the ship’s navigation system. Unknown interference from below. The vertical propulsors flickered, lessening in strength. Gravity tugged. Glorbizzle’s limbs worked the joysticks frantically. Manipulating the trajectory, he coasted the hauler into a clearing, crash landing in suburban New Jersey, down the street from a yard sale. The emergency beacon activated, notifying the dispatcher his vehicle was out of service. The cloaking systems were undamaged thanks to his experienced guidance at the controls. Now grounded, the extraction beam of the starship was useless. It would be several Earth hours until the closest Triangulum mechanic arrived with a serviceship to repair the propulsion components damage and the engine’s variable geometry intake system. Glorbizzle scratched his thorax and underbelly simultaneously, wondering what to do during this unanticipated downtime. While doing so, four other pincers contacted his homeworld about the breakdown on one keyboard while simultaneously notifying his mate he would be late, and to go ahead and hunt for dinner without him on the other. The remaining five pincers adjusted the vessel’s cameras that surround the ship. He zoomed in, studying the strange objects on the tables down the street, as the vessel’s artificial intelligence, analyzed their uses and the mythologies behind their creation.

Glorbizzle learned of yard sales and their reverence in human culture. He felt a wave of heat flush through his carapace, a searing warmth of accomplishment, for having stumbled upon this ancient custom of humankind. Being able to witness, firsthand, the hallowed tradition of exchanging colored paper for junk.

Homemade candles. Wrinkled clothing. Poorly drawn artwork. Ceramic toads holding parasols or banjos. Rocks with googly eyes. Bottle openers and baseball cards and model trains. Teapots and an array of teabags filled with special ingredients. A lava lamp. Cups and purses and dulled cutlery. Wreaths of colorful ribbons tied around broken pieces of wood and tree needles. Microwavable bean bags, masterfully crafted, said to be infused with power to lessen pain in body parts when applied. Cremes of oil and acid. A bicycle wheel. A baton and a trumpet.

Glorbizzle contemplated the effectiveness of such items, as the AI explained their uses, viewing them as flim-flammery objects of a sub-optimal, odorous species. Although the item known as an ice cube tray interested him with its unique storage compartments. There was also a human female who placed stickers on them denoting their worth of transaction with a gun. There was a name tag on her dress.

Francine.

This lifeform was the creator of the yard sale that drew in the other humans. A powerful shaman of the blue planet. Glorbizzle studied her movements. She wore a sunhat and had shiny things dangling from earlobes. This was blasphemous among Triangulumkind…to pierce one’s own carapace. His antennas twitched in revulsion.

Francine of New Jersey’s audacity to self-mutilate oneself with these objects…earrings, and strut, flashing them in defiance, while whistling. This was wrong. All eight of Glorbizzle’s eyes focused, seething hatred and cess-ridden filth, at the sacrilege. Then something even greater than this shamming of life was witnessed that sent his emotions into a simmering rage. The AI stated, in her hand, was the object that interfered with the ship’s guidance system causing the crash. The resulting analysis on the object identified it as a remote garage door opening device. Francine was a formidable opponent, not fragile. This battle may prove even more difficult than with the ringworld denizens from the asteroid belt and their harnessing of anti-matter particle beams. This was a clever human, wearing oversized sunglasses and wielding weaponry, with the power to scuttle a starship.

I don’t know you, Francine of Earth. But if you think you can stop me from harvesting you and your nefarious cult for my Overlord’s zoo…think again. Oh, I am coming for you, Francine, with all my strength and firepower. Your abduction will consist of pain beyond your comprehension. I cannot wait to destroy your yard sale, while you beg for mercy. But Francine, you will get no mercy. You will be flattened and frozen and placed in a container upon my ship. You will regret the day you crossed Glorbizzle of the Triangulum galaxy, the cosmos’ most esteemed harvester. Francine, you cannot win this battle.

Glorbizzle decided to leave the safety of the ship and harvest humans the old-fashioned way. The door slid open, Glorbizzle scurried down the embarkment, fangs salivating, a ray gun at the ready in his third left pincer, beelining towards the yard sale.

Customers perused birdhouses and fishing rods, oblivious to Glorbizzle’s approach. He leaped atop the table, aimed at Francine and fired. Her ample buttocks twisted into the table, causing the shot to go wide as it disintegrated the neighbor’s shed from existence.

Francine arose, terrified, and saw a wallet-sized insect. Shrieking she grabbed the ice cube tray and flattened Glorbizzle until fluid oozed.

A boy came over to ask something. He saw the molecular distortion rifle lying next to the dead bug and picked it up. “How much for this toy gun?”

“Fifty cents,” replied Francine.

“Cool. I can’t wait to use it on my friends at the park.”