The Berki Blunder

An alien ship, in trouble, lands on Hollywood Boulevard. Bad enough? And it's the day of the big premier of the SciFi movie Asteroid, so they land amid huge crowds. It gets worse... One of the crew members is lost trying to find a bathroom. Two earthlings who help replace the broken motivators won't leave the ship. And the U. S. Air Force has them surrounded. What are the poor Berki to do? The Berki are aliens. We've heard everything about aliens, right?-how they're so advanced they'll order us around, or so cute we want to cuddle them, or so evil they'll destroy us. But what if they've figured out interstellar travel, but not much else? The earth would certainly seem mysterious: advanced cities, cell phones, and blockbuster movies. And this strange thing called the Internet, which they fear is a form of magic they'll be unable to duplicate. So they fly around and gather what information they can. And maybe look for a lost comrade while they're at it. That is, as long as their spacecraft works properly. They're aboard a Maginator-class spacecraft, a class not known for its reliability. Welcome aboard the Periwinkle