The original, 3-page short story version of

"TIE FIGHTER PILOT"

Copyright © 1979 by Roger M. Wilcox. All rights reserved.
(writing on this story began 2-June-1979)

The original draft was written on a mechanical typewriter, single-spaced, with no right margin. If written today, it would be called Star Wars fan fiction; but at the time, the term "fan fiction" had not yet caught on with the mainstream.

All spellings, punctuation, capitalizations, strings of exclamation points, etc. are as in the original.

You have been warned.





CHAPTER 1: LOST AND FOUND...

He couldn't keep it up; he just couldn't keep that TIE fighter up any more. He had to crash land, & with no fuel. That neutral planet down there was his only hope. He put down his landing gear, & streaked down through the atmosphere.

His ship crashed down intact, but the atmosphere was slightly radio-active; enough to kill him, but not enough to kill the inhabitants of the planet. And there just happened to be a shoe-shining inhabitant looking for a bigger sucker than himself. Of course he came upon the strange space ship, or how would the story continue?! It looked kind of weird, but what would you expect from a guy on a neutral planet? He climbed in the thing. He found the power slowly recharging from the solar panels on each side.

The buttons were very confusing — obviously in another language; from another planet. He thought that the only way to make that thing work was to push all the buttons & see which ones worked the ship. He finally accidentally pressed a red button, and the space ship took off. Sraglam (Glam, for short) (yep, that's our shoe shiner!) got so excited that he accidentally pressed a rotating button, & the ship shot straight up. Within 35 seconds, the ship was out of the atmosphere. This was the time when he finally figured out where the landing gear button was (of course, he didn't see it, he just pressed it). Now, hurdling upward wasn't so fantastic, considering that he was twisting & turning in all sorts of ways, so much so that he got a little sea-sick (no, air-sick) (no, space sick!). Therefore, he was looking frantically for the button to bring 'er down. With all that button-pressing, it's not surprising that he accidentally pressed the button, and several bright-green flashes spurted out from the front.

"Oh, these must be the headlights for flying in deep, dark space", Glam said to himself, "With its big, empty areas, and space creeps, a-and boogie men, a-a-and — Y I K E S !! I scared myself!" He quickly switched on the "headlights", only to find out that he needed to keep the button constantly pressed, which he was not able to understand the reason for. Nevertheless, he kept the button depressed (although he should of made it happy).

At that moment, another space ship came around — about the same design as his, except longer & with the solar panels flanged inward. About 34 sec. after the 'sighting', a voice came over the "CB", saying, "Shut off your guns, don't you know you're wasting shots?!"

Of course, being not so smart himself, Glam replied, "Ten-four, good buddy — put the medal to the petal, and the thing to the floor! What's shakin', mean dude?!"

"This is Dahth Vader", the voice replied, "And cut out that meaningless jibberish!!"

"Darth vader?", S.G. replied. "Who's he?!"

"Only the most sinister, e-val super villain in this part of the galaxy! Who are you?", Darth asked.

"Only the greatest shoe-shiner this side of the Crabby Nebula — SG!"

"Who is ESSGEE?!", Darth asked (what, again?!).

"Sraglam," he replied. "Who is also the biggest sucker!!" He finally remembered what the argument was about in the first place, and released his finger from the gun firing button....


CHAPTER 2: NEAR CRASH...

After all that flying around, Glam noticed a low fuel tank (unfortunately, it was his). the only thing he could do was to land the craft & let the thing recharge. But how to land? He didn't even know how to steer it! Nevertheless, he looked for the set of rotating buttons, which he thought he'd come across before. Funally he found the set, & rotated down toward surface (well, I ac'nt SAY HE FLEW down toward EARTH!!).

Diving at speeds greater than bearable, Glam was barely able to pull up, and to fly along at about 50 megaphones above the ground. Now, his power level was down to "RR" stage, the lowest level above "GONE", and he still hadn't found the landing gear button. Searching around, he could barely help pressing the throw buttons for both solar panels, one after the other, a few frisbees apart. He finally found the button labelled w/ the 2 landing gear skis, and after pressing, also ran out of gas. This was fortunate, because he was able to land close enough to his solar plates to get 'em. But unfortunately, he was too far away to see 'em.

Boy, was he in a fix. He couldn't fly out to get the panels until he recharged, and he couldn't get it recharged until he had the solar plates. The plates were frisbees apart, but nevertheless, Glam started out on the long trek for the plates along the long, hot, dry desert....


CHAPTER 3: RE-START....

The desert on Neutral Planet was not quite as deadly as those here on earth, but in that manor, the whole planet was desert. Glam was tired out about ½ way to the panels, so he had to rest.

When he awoke, it was getting dark — danger time. It's called that because that's the time when the elements "awaken", and cause the most destruction. Glam knew this was a dangerous time, so he had to hustle to make it through the night. He finally found a hole in the ground, and stayed the night.

The next morning, Glam found the plates, alright — right in front of him! The only thing he could figure was a windstorm during the night blew in his direction. Nevertheless, he rolled the hexagonal solar plates to the spacecraft. When he got there, he had a tough time rotating the plates to fit correctly, and finding the insert-holes, but he finally got them to recharge the craft.

After recharging, Glam reboarded the spacecraft, and started the engine. He left into space just as before, but with one major difference; he knew how to run the craft. After skimming along the surface for a few seconds, he rotated the ship upward at 45°, and retracted the landing gear.

When he got out of the atmosphere, he was witnessing the worst holcaustic battle since the Death Star. Before he could figure out what in hell's name was happening, a voice came over the CB saying, "Get those X-wings! You're on our side, aren't you?!"

When the X-wing pilots heard this over the frequencies, they immediately recognized him as a neutral. So, of course, they started inputting more words & lines, like, "No, no! Get the TIE fighters! We're the good guys!!"

With that, the whole thing was incomprehensible, and Glam said to himself, "I can't take this any more!", and pressed the firing button with his eyes closed.

As soon as that happened, the x-wings veared off, but the TIE fighters stayed where they were. This was a dumb move on their part. The instant this started happening, the "sound" of explosions hit on the TIE fighters were "heard". One after another, the entire mob of TIE fighters was wiped out. Several tried firing back, but either their shots were deflected by his, or the fighter was destroyed before the pilot had a chance of scoring a direct hit. Soon, there were only 3 TIE fighters left, except for Darth's, all of which escaped to the outermost reaches of the universe.

The crowd of X-wings let out a tremendous cheer over the C.B. intercom system. It was their most triumphant moment since the destruction of the Death Star — one man single handedly destroys an entire mob of TIE fighters within a matter of mill-ons. The 2 X-wing leaders swooped down towards the TIE fighter (remember our friendly—neighborhood shoe shiner?), and extended some cables to tow the exhausted TIE fighter to the hangar, for the design to be copied and for Glam to get a big send-off.


CHAPTER 4: THE THRONE ROOM AND END TITLE...

After several hours of unsuccessful persuasion, they finally forced Sraglam into the reception outfit, and kidnapped him to the medal hall. He marched down those solemn aisles to the medal held by princess lay-off. "Escorted" by several 'big apes', Glam made it to the princess, and recieved the "double luke" medal, for those who do something braver (and succeed) than Luke Warm. As soon as this occurred, Glam was finally able to say something ever since this whole miserable folly started:

    "I'm SO confUUUUUUUsed!!!!!"

TTTTT   H   H   EEEEE      EEEEE   N    N   DDD
  T     H   H   E          E       NN   N   D  D
  T     HHHHH   EEE        EEE     N N  N   D   D
  T     H   H   E          E       N  N N   D  D
  T     H   H   EEEEE      EEEEE   N   NN   DDD
(or is it?)




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