ASHlings believed the fourteen thousand cigarettes produced per minute, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, were really fuel rods needed by the massive throbbing engine room that propelled the spacecraft through dimensions one could accept only on faith. These fuel rods were inert unless burned, and this required millions of humans to help out by lighting up and causing the collective combustion needed to keep the spacecraft moving at warp speed through its secret dimension.

It made perfect sense to Bubba that the good and loving Consciousness had figured out long ago the planet wasn’t going to make it unless IT intervened. It followed logically, according to Newton’s Third Law, that if all actions cause an equal and opposite reaction, there would have to be an Evil Force who liked things exactly the way they were and wanted them to get worse.

Thus it was, as more combustible fuel rods were produced and ignited around the planet, the Evil Force got increasingly desperate and irritable. It studied history to figure out what had worked in the past. It came up with a destructive and divisive campaign of nonsmokers’ rights that instantly resulted in discrimination, hate groups, censorship and fame for the surgeon general. Sweeping antismoking campaigns, lawsuits, horrendous taxes and bloody skirmishes on the Senate floor unfurled like the Southern Cross and sent litigious and greedy troops into a senseless war that could be watched by all on C-SPAN and CNN.

The ASHlings alone knew that if the campaign of evil aggression caused people to quit lighting up, soon there would be no more combustion, except by cars, which didn’t count. The production of fuel rods would cease. The engine room would be silenced. The alien spacecraft would have no choice but to change course lest it be powerless and adrift.

Bubba was thinking about all this and was in quite a state by the time he stopped at the guard booth and Fred, the guard, opened his window.

“How ya doing, Bubba?” Fred asked.

“I’m late,” Bubba said.

“Seems to me you’re early. You don’t look like you’re in a good mood.”

“I didn’t read the paper today, Fred. Didn’t have time. How’re we doing?”

Fred’s face darkened. He was a closet ASHling and often conspired with Bubba when Bubba rolled up in his piece-of-shit Jeep and displayed his parking permit.

“You saw the video board downtown, that Dow Jones display in front of Scott and Stringfellow?”

“Didn’t get there.”

“Bubba, it’s getting worse,” Fred told the truth in a hushed voice. “It’s up to eleven ninety-three a pack. Help us, Lord.”

“No, it can’t be right,” Bubba said.

“Oh yeah it is. Let me tell ya, they’re talking about taxes and settlements pushing up the price even higher, as much as twelve dollars a pack, Bubba.”

“And then what?” Bubba angrily blurted out. “Black market. Bootlegging. Layoffs. And what about the cause?”

“Won’t help the cause, no sir,” Fred agreed, shaking his head as Bubba held up traffic.