A New Pet (standard:humor, 1080 words)
Author: meesterking	Added: Aug 23 2001	Views/Reads: 3143/2049	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
I wanted a kitten or a gerbil, not a stormtrooper called Nigel

A New Pet 

It wasn’t what I expected. A guinea pig, a cat, maybe a gerbil. That’s
what I expected. Imagine you’re me, wandering online, looking for 
something different. It was at petluckydip.com.  For the uninitiated, 
you type in your credit card details and your address, then for just 
14.99 plus postage, they send you a pet chosen completely at random 
from their extensive selection. It could be kitten or cougar, rat or 
rhino. Reasoning it’d be something small and furry for me to fuss and 
feed I applied and promptly forgot about it. 

Anyway, when the front doorbell chimed, I was watching dodgy daytime TV,
some silver haired lothario was eyeing up female audience members 
whilst ridiculing Kathy from Solihull and her attempts to bring up 
thirteen children on £28.50 a week. Tearing myself away I opened the 
door, my jaw dropped. Blocking out  the midday sun was a menacing tower 
of white armour. I couldn’t believe it. The delivery guy had brought me 
a stormtrooper. 

I didn’t want a stormtrooper. I wanted a cat. I was told his name was
Nigel, he’d need walking once a day but could feed himself. Whilst 
signing the delivery note, Nigel marched stiffly into the house. I shut 
the door, leaving the courier walking away whistling and went to make 
friends with my new pet. 

Nigel was standing to attention by the living room window, sitting down
on the settee I coughed politely but there was no reaction. His uniform 
was gleaming, I felt touched as he must have polished it specially for 
the occasion. 

‘Won’t you sit down?’ I asked ‘Is that a command?’ he sounded hopeful.
‘Err, yes’. He perched himself on the edge of an easy chair, laser 
rifle in hand, poised to spring up and defend the house from rebel 
intruders at any moment. I went to make a cup of tea. 

I  offered him one but he declined in the clipped manner of a flight
lieutenant in a 1940s propaganda film. As I drank my tea we began 
chatting, all the unanswered questions in my mind about star wars were 
answered. He explained everything. 

Obe Wan had been right when he said only stormtroopers were so precise,
but due to the contractual obligations of appearing in the sequels, 
they were ordered to shoot to miss any rebel with a speaking part. 

It turned out that the emperor suffered from  severe depression. ‘His
evilness’ as Nigel called him, had planned to lose the war against the 
rebels all along. The imperial psychiatrist who discovered this was 
immediately frozen in carbonite and used as a desk by the emperors 
secretary. Apparently even the supremely evil being needed someone to 
dictate correspondence and answer calls from senators. It was alleged 
incidentally, that her mistyping  on one particular memo led to an 
entire planets population being thoroughly and ruthlessly cleaned 
instead of slaughtered. The emperor had dictated ‘wipe them out, all of 
them’ but Denise (his secretary) had neglected to include the word 
‘out’, thus leading to an imperial commander receiving a direct order 
to ‘wipe them, all of them’. It was only when an expense form was 
handed into accounts for over four billion jay-cloths that the mistake 
was realised. 

I found out all kinds of useless information. Apparently the empire seal
of approval was bestowed on Mr Sheen alone for use on cleaning 
stormtrooper uniforms. The deathstar had a standing order for 5000 cans 
a week. I hope Mr Sheen feels happy, knowing he has a role in 
propagating an evil empire of epic proportions. But rebel cheers were 
raised for Boll Gatts, the computer whizkid whose software is used in 
all manned imperial vessels. Nigel bitterly recounted how tie fighters 
would freeze mid battle for no discernible reason or crash without 
warning. Then the imperial army upgraded from empire 3.1 to empire 95, 
which turned out to be merely a cosmetic improvement but didn’t 
actually work any better. It put a lot of money in Bolls pocket though, 
and that’s all he cared about. 

Stormtroopers tended to wear underwear and a vest as the inside of the
suit could cause chafing to delicate areas. Nigel went very quiet when 
I asked about ewoks so I quickly changed the subject, asking if there 


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