green squids

And he’s back! Immediately. There’s no date on this one so I have to assume I wrote it the same day as the previous story. It’s sufficiently light on detail for me to have written it the same day. Why not carry on if I was on a roll? Once again, the stakes are way too high, when Earth is attacked by “green squids” who appear to have the capacity to completely destroy the planet. I don’t think they’re supposed to be squid in the sense we’d normally understand them. In fact, I’m not even sure I knew what a squid was. I’m pretty sure I imagined these creatures as huge amorphous green blobs - a bit like Erato in the Doctor Who story The Creature from the Pit - but much slimier, and I called them ‘squids’ because they were squishy, and made a squishy noise. If you look very closely at the front cover of English 1, underneath the picture of Sam Slade and to the right of the faces saying “Kill Waen!” and “Yes! Kill him!” you’ll probably see what looks like an arched shape, with a speech bubble coming out of it that says “Squirm!” Well, I think that’s one of these ‘green squids’. We also meet two new additions to the Waen Shepherd universe: a computer called ‘Puter, who appears capable of giving advice to people about very serious matters; and Commander, who is presumably senior in rank to Shepherd, but says and does absolutely nothing. It’s not clear whether ‘Puter is portable, mobile or if he resides at GAHQ (that’s Greatest Astronaut Headquarters, but you worked that out already) and only speaks to Waen remotely, but my instinct tells me he was wrist-based. Just like the last story, we don’t know what the enemy wants or what its motivations are. We don’t know anything about it except that it’s green and dangerous, and can’t be killed with blasters. And the solution, as always, is bigger and better violence. I’m not entirely sure why ‘Puter only sounded Yellow Alert when these things posed such a threat, but maybe yellow is the highest level of alert on Earth 2. I’m also not quite sure why Waen had to evacuate GAHQ when it’s implied the squids are actually outside it, but I’ll have to assume they infiltrated the HQ and its destruction was necessary in order to protect Earth 2 from their awesome power. Can’t cope with the strength of these endless thrills? Well, strap yourselves in, because it’s going to get even thrillier! Next up: Ward’s 7…