| Gothor here. I decided to start numbering these in case you miss one, even if it meant wasting valuable time counting 'em. Looks like this is #13. Great. Just great. As the SUV sped away, I looked back towards the white circus tents and bloodthirsty gunmen. That's when it hit me: They got my friend Joe. Damn. I was gonna miss him. I'd known Joe since we were both in Mario Bros. pajamas. "We don't have any company," I said. "At least not yet." "Company?" "Yeah, you know. No one's following us." Dude had a weird accent and didn't know the biggest car-chase cliche next to smashing fruit stands? Must not be from around here. He nodded absently and I got my first look at the man who saved me: oldish, wild white hair, hawk nose, rail thin. "Project Nightshade," he said. Then he sat there, hunched over the steering wheel, eyes bugging out so far I thought they'd bump against his glasses. "What do you know about starch?!" "Uh, I dunno. Dad uses way too much in the laundry --" "How about Spudnik?" "You mean 'Sputnik'?" "Yes, that's what they'd like you to think." He shook his head and muttered something I couldn't make out. "What do you know about Oingo Boingo?" "I know that one! They were a band in the eighties, the lead singer was Danny Elf--" "Trick question! Oingo Boingo has NOTHING to do with this." This guy was starting to piss me off. But he saved me, so I kept my mouth shut. "What's all this about, man? In the past few days, I saw a man dismembered and rearranged, I saw a potato come alive and I saw... I saw my father eat it. I him eat the potato." The gave me a long look of sympathy and nearly crashed into oncoming traffic. Hornes blared, he regained control. "Solanin! Sorry about that, I'm... not used to driving." "Yeah, sure, no problem." I reached for the seat belt. "This goes way back. Something crashed into the Peruvian Andes in the 13th century. Something terrible, something not from this world. Contamination was contained due to the rough geography. Everything was fine until the 16th century, when Spanish explorers mucked everything up and brought specimines to the Europeans. Contamination spread rapidly throughout the world. In 1719, there was but a single infestation in Londonderry, New Hampshire. By 1999, 560,000 hectares of American soil yielded 21.7 million metric tons... of potatoes." "Wait, what? I thought you were talking about aliens." He looked at me and lightning flashed, reflecting in his glasses. "I am." Gothor out.
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