There was something strange about today. It looked normal, but there was something different. I got up at the same time as before, 6 o'clock sharp. I traveled to work the same way as I always have, riding the 6:30 interstellar bus from Houston, past Mars and Jupiter, all the way to Europa. I did the same j0ob I was employed at for years now, building safety equipment for the Adamonium miners of Klakxon IV. I even had the usual lunch at the usual dinner with my usual friends. Despite all of this blandness of today, it was still different.
     I fell asleep on the assembly line again and Gary elbowed me in the ribs to wake me up. No, elbowed would be the wrong word for Gary, tentacled would be more appropriate. Gary was an eight foot three Slaag, short for his species. He had six tentacle arms that ended in three finger-like appendages. His skin was a grayish-green color and matched very well with his uniform. His head was was slug-like, a lump of flesh with three eye stalks and an almost cartoon like mouth. It was strange how a Slaag's only bones were its pearly white teeth in a wide mouth.
     "Wake up," said Gary, " the boss is coming." Our boss was a Facelet, four faces on one head to make sure no one could slack off. Good thing they all shared the same brain. He was walking over at a brisk pace, nearly tripping once of twice when one of his faces got distracted.
     "Stevens!" shouted the primary face, "this is the fifth time I caught you sleeping on the job. What do you have to say about yourself?" I glared up at the gruesome face scowling at me. It was at this very moment that I realized that staying up for that monster movie marathon was a bad idea.
     "What...Oh, I"m just a little sleepy," I mumbled.
     "If I catch you sleeping one more time, I'll can you so fast you'll get whiplash!" He spun around and waddled off back to his office.
     I don't know what came over me, but I raised my elbow to the sky and hit it three times. If my boss had been any other species, he would have kept walking, but he wasn't. I might as well just call his mother a prostitute to Glamarion pirates. He stopped dead in his tracks. His whole head turned blood red and all four faces shouted at once. "YOU'RE FIRED!"
     I felt oddly good about this.