Barry is a human. And humans are the most powerful species in the Universe.
Now anyway. Yesterday, or even the day before that, the whole race would have been quite near the bottom if one were to concern themselves with a ranking.
All that’s changed now thanks to The Great Bottleneck Battle.
Oh, there are still things out there physically there, that make humans look like titty-sucking bugs. Stupid creatures. Hungry. Slimy. Evil things that live in caves and marshes and high up in the mountains of planets and physics far away. But they aren’t the point here. Humans are.
Barry is a soft little human who when naked would remind an observer of pizza dough in look, texture, and smell. The smell being slightly yeasty due to a medical condition involving gut bacteria he hasn’t got diagnosed for yet.
Always tomorrow with this guy.
Barry never walks barefoot, because it hurts.
Barry doesn’t eat pork that’s pink, or runny eggs, or drink anything that makes his stomach sweat.
Barry has never been in a physical fight either. Unless it counts when in primary school he would run from an assailant until winded and then he would ball up and take a few blows. His goal? To wear out his opponent.
Eventually, the bullies stopped coming.
And today, Boring Barry looks into the sky a member of the most powerful species ever to develop consciousness. Lucky to be alive during the final moments of The Great Bottleneck Battle. He watches it now determine humanity’s fate.
“Where are they?” his friend, Shiela, another of the universe’s most powerful creatures, a 360-pound female who gets winded standing up from her desk chair. They are in his backyard watching light from the battle erase millions of star from the night sky.
“Jupiter,” Barry responds. And he reaches a pudgy hand into her open bag of Cheetos, which she jerks away to keep for herself.
“What is that orange ball?”
“Jupiter.”
“Why is it orange.”
“On fire.”
They stand still, silent, watching. The planet burns and the explosions and streaks around it, in various colors, mean the deaths of creatures never glimpsed by human eyes, and maybe not still for several months from now.
“How much longer do you think they will fight?”
“I don’t know,” says Barry, unaware, like everyone on earth, the battle ended an hour ago.
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