Shock the Monkey, page 20
Slash smiled. “Splendid! You shall be Her Majesty, Crown Princess Claire of Claire.” Then he clapped Raymond’s hands together. “Now all that remains is your coronation.”
“A coronation!” exclaimed Claire. She might miss out on being prom queen one day, but this was certainly better. “I can’t wait!”
Claire looked out the window—not at the distant dumping grounds, but at the palace courtyard below. “Will there be crowds and crowds at the coronation?” Claire asked, envisioning the grandeur of earthly ceremonies.
“Well…” Slash hedged a bit. “The monarchy’s relationship with the planet’s residents is… uh… strained at the moment. It will just be a few hundred of my kind, but I promise you, they will be as enthusiastic as thousands!”
“Hmm, well then, I’ll have to make the masses on this planet love me,” Claire said with her signature confidence. “Because if there’s one thing I am, it’s lovable.”
“You most certainly are, Your Highness,” Slash replied, his voice filled with the real Raymond’s admiration just barely beneath the surface. And maybe a touch of mischievous anticipation. “You are exactly what this sad, sorry planet needs.”
21
Full Bowling Ball
THE EARTHLING PTOLEMY WAS A GENIUS IN EVERY SENSE OF THE word. He wrote grand treatises on astronomy and celestial mathematics. He plotted the movement of planets. He cataloged the stars.
But his genius isn’t what he’s remembered for.
He’s mostly remembered for getting one thing completely and spectacularly wrong.
He believed the Earth was at the very center of the universe and that everything, including the sun and stars, revolved around it. He was wise enough to acknowledge that the Earth was indeed a sphere, but when you see the universe from a geocentric model—that is, with Earth plopped in its center like a plum in a pie—every calculation you make after that is wrong.
Never was this so well illustrated as when Quantavius Kratz and Nell Knell set forth on planet Claire. Because as soon as they left the blue house, they were winding themselves deep down Ptolemy’s path—and not just because Kratz saw himself as the center of the universe, but because he and Knell had simultaneously come to the conclusion that they were still on Earth, just trapped in the distant future.
When they came across their first mound of towering garbage, it only served to reinforce their belief.
“What more proof do you need?” asked Kratz.
And with a sad shake of her head, Agent Knell had to agree. “In the end, we turned the world into more of a garbage dump than it already was. Pity.”
“Do you think humans went extinct?” pondered Kratz.
“Or we were killed by robots, that were then killed by better robots,” theorized Knell. “Either way we’re done for. Sad but not surprising.”
After that, everything they saw and experienced just fed their incorrect assumption. If they had come across the town of B’light, they might have been set straight, but they bypassed it completely and were now heading toward a tall structure on the distant horizon.
“That may be some sort of monument to the fall of humanity,” concluded Kratz. “Maybe we can find out what happened there.”
“I thought we were here to capture Noah Prime,” Knell reminded him.
Kratz waved a dismissive hand. “That miscreant seems like a small consideration when faced with the end of the world,” he said. “And besides, if we find out how the world ended, perhaps we can figure out how to prevent it.”
“And get rich in the process,” added Knell.
Kratz smiled. “My thoughts exactly!”
He had to admit that his admiration for his highly intelligent and like-minded travel companion just kept growing. Clearly, the feeling was mutual because she took Kratz’s hand, and together they made their way toward the monument to the fall of humanity, which was, in fact, the planetary palace.
Sahara, after getting over the initial shock of the sad, sorry planet, began to find herself angrier and angrier. To see these poor people going about their business as if they were not relegated to the trash heap of the galaxy was infuriating. Being angry at them would be displaced anger, she knew—but she didn’t know who to be mad at.
“We get by,” Forlo told her, as they rode in his private hovercar toward the palace, which loomed on the distant horizon. “And sometimes we even forget.”
“And it’s better than our sister city, P’Light,” chimed in their driver. “Our goggles are much better than theirs.”
When they left the city limits, Forlo and the driver didn’t take off their goggles, even though the law only bound them to wear them in the city. Perhaps to avoid having to acknowledge the state of the First Citizen’s car.
“When you speak to your friend Claire, I’m sure you can convince her to help our situation,” Forlo said. “Jobs, infrastructure. With a little help, our dignity can be real instead of virtual.”
Ogden chose to stay out of the conversation. This was not his world, not his problems. He was here to undo his life’s most massive screw-up and get Claire back to Earth. Of course, once he did, they’d have to deal with the fact that her parents were now in diapers, but that was a problem for another day. Right now, it was all about Claire.
He couldn’t help but be distracted by the augmented-reality goggles, though, which he kept slipping on and off, comparing their projected visions to the stark reality of this world.
“If I had these goggles at home,” Ogden said, “oh, the things I could pretend to do!”
“Life is more than pretending,” Sahara reminded him.
“It doesn’t have to be, if you pretend well enough,” Ogden replied.
And to that, Sahara heaved a heavy sigh. “Ogden, you and I were on different planets long before we left Earth.”
No argument from Ogden.
The going was slow. The farther they got from B’light, the less the pothole-ridden road seemed to make sense. It was as if the planners had rolled dice every few hundred yards to decide what direction the road would take.
In reality the road, which was centuries old, had not been designed for travel, but to spell out, in First Spiralese, and large enough to be viewed from space, the phrase: “If you have any goodness in your heart, save us from this miserable place.” Unfortunately, money ran out early in the project, so they only got as far as “If you have any goo.” And since goo was plentiful—especially in the trash industry—captains of garbage scows made sure to bring extra whenever they came to dump.
Their limo had trouble handling the hairpin turns, loop-the-loops, and occasional full stops and reverses of First Spiralese cursive—and while the hovercar looked fine with the goggles on, in reality, it was a rust heap with a faulty rear repulsor that left its back end dragging on the ground, shooting out sparks.
It should have been no surprise, then, that the limo completely broke down before it completed the first half of the already incomplete message, leaving them only halfway to the palace.
“I’ve called for a tow,” the driver said cheerfully, never removing his goggles to assess the truth of the situation. “It should be here shortly.”
“On this planet, shortly could be a week,” the First Citizen told them. “Our best option is to walk the rest of the way. And, truth be told, if we approach in a vehicle, we’ll be a target.”
“A target for what?” asked Sahara.
“Let’s just say, arriving at the palace is best done unseen.”
Giving up on the cursed cursive road, they tried to make a beeline to the palace, which was easier now that they were within the no-dump zone that surrounded it. They were grateful for the relative lack of rubbish, but Ogden was still troubled.
“What if there are wild animals? Do we have anything to defend ourselves?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Forlo told him. “There’s no indigenous life left on this planet. Just what people brought with them. And no one brought anything too dangerous. Or at least nothing that’s escaped.”
Somehow neither Ogden nor Sahara was relieved.
Meanwhile, the universe ejected the Fractillian ship back into normal space, and Planet Claire loomed large and ugly before it.
“That’s where we’re going?” Jad said. “Looks kind of bleak.”
“Funny,” said Murdrum. “That’s the name of one of its cities. B’Leak.”
Noah had to admit Jad was right. The planet looked like the result of a little kid mixing all their paints together. Just a brownish globe of celestial yuck. “Well, you get what you pay for, I guess,” Noah said. Fifty bucks for this planet? Made sense now.
“The palace is in the southern hemisphere,” Murdrum told them. “We’ll do a waste-dump and leave you with the trash, so hopefully you won’t be detected.”
Andi sighed. “It won’t be the first time I was abandoned as trash.”
“No one’s abandoning you,” Noah assured her. “We’re right there in the trash with you—and as soon as we can, we’ll get all your melted parts repaired.”
Although Andi didn’t actually thank him, he could see the gratitude in her eyes. Murdrum commanded his crew as they operated the controls with a slippery fluidity that matched their surroundings. The air hung heavy with a viscous mist, and the gurgling sounds of the ship’s engine filled the eerie silence as they adjusted their approach for the steepest possible angle, hoping to get in and out quickly.
“Reports have been coming in that there’s about to be an official transfer of power to the new planetary owner,” Murdrum said.
“That would be Claire,” Noah told him.
Murdrum nodded. “We’ll get you as close to the palace as we can, but there’s a no-dump zone around it. You’ll have to get the rest of the way there on your own.”
“We can handle that, right, Jad?” said Noah.
“Yeah, sure,” replied Jad, but didn’t seem too confident.
Noah put a friendly hand on Jad’s head, as was the Triastral way. “After what we’ve already been through, this’ll be a piece of cake.”
“Right,” said Jad. “What’s cake?”
Navigating between tottering piles of junk and twisted metal, the Fractillian ship came in for a landing, touching down with a wheezing groan. With a complete disregard for waste inspection protocols, the ship promptly opened its rear refuse aperture, disgorging slime-covered rubbish without waiting for approval from any inspector.
“You took too long,” Murdrum scolded when the inspector arrived. “Our ship is a biological/titanium hybrid, and as such, it can only hold in its waste for so long!”
“I have half a mind to write you up!” shouted the inspector (which was both figuratively and literally true, since the inspector was of the same split-brained species as the two guards whom Ogden and Sahara had encountered).
The unapproved dump, however, was just a ploy to create chaos enough for Noah, Jad, and Andi to climb out from the slime-covered trash without being seen.
Noah and Jad emerged, coughing and spluttering among the miserable miasma—because while both had the ability to breathe underwater, neither could breathe in Fractillian slime. Andi—who only simulated breathing—had no such issues. But her disgust was real.
Jad, having three arms to work with, was free from the muck first and helped the others. Murdrum’s argument with the trash inspector, accompanied by the clamor of other Fractillians chiming in, provided ample cover for the trio to discreetly vanish behind the towering mounds of garbage.
Noah noticed that no two piles looked alike, because every mound was from a different planet. One was full of broken, moaning robots—which made Andi shiver. Another looked like a mountain of half-digested jelly beans, and another seemed to be made entirely of green bones.
“I don’t even want to know,” said Noah.
“Andi, which way to the palace?” Jad asked.
“The palace is due north,” said Andi. “Or due south, depending on the planet’s preferred global orientation. But, regardless, it’s that way,” she said, pointing. “It’s a day’s walk from here by human standards—so I suggest you both engage a fast animal from your respective genetic soups.”
Noah tapped into his inner cheetah, combining it with springbok; predator and prey merged into a single speedy skillset. Jad, although unsure at first, managed to pull up something called a NoseJoy Quickdart—which, in addition to speed, had the added benefit of making Jad smell like freshly baked cookies, a welcome shield against the stench of garbage.
“Everyone smells something different,” Jad explained with a grin. “Whatever your favorite smell is, that’s what you get, times ten!” Which, Noah realized, was a great natural defense mechanism—because the aroma was so delicious and overpowering, it made him forget what he was doing.
“You biologics are so easily distracted,” said Andi, clinging to Noah’s back and steering him like a jockey on a racehorse. “Let’s just stay on task!”
“So… what’s our plan when we reach the palace?” Jad asked.
“First we find my friends, Sahara and Ogden,” said Noah.
“And let’s hope,” said Andi, “that they haven’t made an even bigger mess of things.”
Meanwhile, as Ogden, Sahara, and Forlo neared the palace, the challenge of entry became clear. The entire structure was surrounded by a high wall and a slimy moat. Since most arrivals and departures came by way of spacecraft, there was only one narrow bridge over the moat, which was patrolled by armed guards—because anyone who needed to enter the palace by way of the bridge didn’t have any business being there.
“Don’t bother,” said Forlo, before they got close enough to be seen. “The guards are trained to vaporize first and ask questions later. Even if our hoverlimo hadn’t broken down, we’d have to leave it and approach with greater stealth.”
“But we’re friends with the landlord,” Ogden pointed out.
“True, but I doubt that your vaporized subatomic particles will be able to explain that. There’s a tunnel system beneath the palace. We can get in that way.”
Forlo led them through a tight gap in two rocks, which opened into a much larger, cavernous series of natural tunnels. The smell of garbage was replaced by the smell of mildew, which was an improvement.
Forlo took a double-ended flashlight from its stanchion on the rock wall and turned it on. Apparently, it was designed to show them not just where they were going, but where they had been, for beings that also had eyes in the back of their heads.
“This way,” said Forlo. “Watch your step!” Which was hard with the rear beam of the flashlight shining in their faces. Sahara and Ogden followed Forlo cautiously. The flashlight illuminated jagged formations of stalagmites and stalactites, casting long, distorted shadows all around them. As they maneuvered through the intricate web of stone spikes, they couldn’t help but feel they were traversing an otherworldly obstacle course. Every now and then, Ogden and Sahara stumbled over an uneven rock or narrowly avoided a low-hanging stalactite.
“They almost seem to be reaching for us,” Ogden said, after sharply bumping his head on one.
“It’s your imagination,” said Forlo, curtly. “It’s best if you believe that.”
While the going was tough for the humans, Forlo seemed unfazed by the treacherous terrain, effortlessly navigating the narrow passages. His fluff-ended tail swished gracefully behind him, serving as a counterbalance to maintain his equilibrium. Ogden had to keep himself from grabbing onto it each time he stumbled. He assumed that would be a major social no-no.
The deeper they got, the moister the air became, and the cavern walls around them began to come alive with phosphorescent moss, casting a soft glow. The troublesome flashlight now redundant, Forlo turned it off in favor of the mosslight.
But just as they were beginning to find their rhythm and navigate the treacherous terrain with a bit more confidence, Forlo suddenly halted, causing Ogden and Sahara to abruptly stop in their tracks.
“Something’s found us,” he whispered.
“Is it an oh-how-cute-can-we-keep-it kind of thing?” asked Sahara. “Or an eat-your-face-off kind of thing?”
“We’ll know soon enough,” said Forlo.
And then it skulked out from the shadows.
A huge, shapeless, gelatinous creature.
“Stay back,” said Forlo, although neither Sahara nor Ogden were sure whether he was talking to the creature or them.
“What is it?” asked Ogden, taking a curious step closer. He slipped on the goggles, but the creature looked the same through them as it did in real life—as if the goggles had no algorithm for disguising it. It was decidedly blobby, however it did have internal organs of some kind that seemed to float randomly within its goo like bits of fruit in a holiday Jell-O mold.
“That… that can’t be what I think it is!” said Forlo.
Then suddenly the thing lurched toward Ogden, who was closest, and engulfed him up to his neck in its blob-ness.
Being devoured by a hungry blob was not on the agenda for Ogden’s day.
“Get it off!” Ogden shouted. “Get it off!”
“This is amazing!” said Forlo, overjoyed and not helping Ogden at all. “No one’s seen a Splunge for at least twenty years! They’re supposed to be extinct! This could be the last one in existence!”
“Get if off me!” Ogden cried again. “It’s eating me!”
“Don’t worry—they’re detritivorous. That is, they only eat dead layers of flesh.”
“Oh!” said Sahara. “You mean like maggots?”
“That’s not helping!” Ogden yelped, still convinced the blob would dissolve him, just like the Blob did in the old movie and all its awful sequels and remakes.
For Sahara, though, watching the expression of horror and despair on Ogden’s face was a source of unexpected joy. Of course, if he were actually in danger of being digested alive, she wouldn’t feel that way, but seeing him in misery without him actually being in misery? Well, that was priceless.
“A coronation!” exclaimed Claire. She might miss out on being prom queen one day, but this was certainly better. “I can’t wait!”
Claire looked out the window—not at the distant dumping grounds, but at the palace courtyard below. “Will there be crowds and crowds at the coronation?” Claire asked, envisioning the grandeur of earthly ceremonies.
“Well…” Slash hedged a bit. “The monarchy’s relationship with the planet’s residents is… uh… strained at the moment. It will just be a few hundred of my kind, but I promise you, they will be as enthusiastic as thousands!”
“Hmm, well then, I’ll have to make the masses on this planet love me,” Claire said with her signature confidence. “Because if there’s one thing I am, it’s lovable.”
“You most certainly are, Your Highness,” Slash replied, his voice filled with the real Raymond’s admiration just barely beneath the surface. And maybe a touch of mischievous anticipation. “You are exactly what this sad, sorry planet needs.”
21
Full Bowling Ball
THE EARTHLING PTOLEMY WAS A GENIUS IN EVERY SENSE OF THE word. He wrote grand treatises on astronomy and celestial mathematics. He plotted the movement of planets. He cataloged the stars.
But his genius isn’t what he’s remembered for.
He’s mostly remembered for getting one thing completely and spectacularly wrong.
He believed the Earth was at the very center of the universe and that everything, including the sun and stars, revolved around it. He was wise enough to acknowledge that the Earth was indeed a sphere, but when you see the universe from a geocentric model—that is, with Earth plopped in its center like a plum in a pie—every calculation you make after that is wrong.
Never was this so well illustrated as when Quantavius Kratz and Nell Knell set forth on planet Claire. Because as soon as they left the blue house, they were winding themselves deep down Ptolemy’s path—and not just because Kratz saw himself as the center of the universe, but because he and Knell had simultaneously come to the conclusion that they were still on Earth, just trapped in the distant future.
When they came across their first mound of towering garbage, it only served to reinforce their belief.
“What more proof do you need?” asked Kratz.
And with a sad shake of her head, Agent Knell had to agree. “In the end, we turned the world into more of a garbage dump than it already was. Pity.”
“Do you think humans went extinct?” pondered Kratz.
“Or we were killed by robots, that were then killed by better robots,” theorized Knell. “Either way we’re done for. Sad but not surprising.”
After that, everything they saw and experienced just fed their incorrect assumption. If they had come across the town of B’light, they might have been set straight, but they bypassed it completely and were now heading toward a tall structure on the distant horizon.
“That may be some sort of monument to the fall of humanity,” concluded Kratz. “Maybe we can find out what happened there.”
“I thought we were here to capture Noah Prime,” Knell reminded him.
Kratz waved a dismissive hand. “That miscreant seems like a small consideration when faced with the end of the world,” he said. “And besides, if we find out how the world ended, perhaps we can figure out how to prevent it.”
“And get rich in the process,” added Knell.
Kratz smiled. “My thoughts exactly!”
He had to admit that his admiration for his highly intelligent and like-minded travel companion just kept growing. Clearly, the feeling was mutual because she took Kratz’s hand, and together they made their way toward the monument to the fall of humanity, which was, in fact, the planetary palace.
Sahara, after getting over the initial shock of the sad, sorry planet, began to find herself angrier and angrier. To see these poor people going about their business as if they were not relegated to the trash heap of the galaxy was infuriating. Being angry at them would be displaced anger, she knew—but she didn’t know who to be mad at.
“We get by,” Forlo told her, as they rode in his private hovercar toward the palace, which loomed on the distant horizon. “And sometimes we even forget.”
“And it’s better than our sister city, P’Light,” chimed in their driver. “Our goggles are much better than theirs.”
When they left the city limits, Forlo and the driver didn’t take off their goggles, even though the law only bound them to wear them in the city. Perhaps to avoid having to acknowledge the state of the First Citizen’s car.
“When you speak to your friend Claire, I’m sure you can convince her to help our situation,” Forlo said. “Jobs, infrastructure. With a little help, our dignity can be real instead of virtual.”
Ogden chose to stay out of the conversation. This was not his world, not his problems. He was here to undo his life’s most massive screw-up and get Claire back to Earth. Of course, once he did, they’d have to deal with the fact that her parents were now in diapers, but that was a problem for another day. Right now, it was all about Claire.
He couldn’t help but be distracted by the augmented-reality goggles, though, which he kept slipping on and off, comparing their projected visions to the stark reality of this world.
“If I had these goggles at home,” Ogden said, “oh, the things I could pretend to do!”
“Life is more than pretending,” Sahara reminded him.
“It doesn’t have to be, if you pretend well enough,” Ogden replied.
And to that, Sahara heaved a heavy sigh. “Ogden, you and I were on different planets long before we left Earth.”
No argument from Ogden.
The going was slow. The farther they got from B’light, the less the pothole-ridden road seemed to make sense. It was as if the planners had rolled dice every few hundred yards to decide what direction the road would take.
In reality the road, which was centuries old, had not been designed for travel, but to spell out, in First Spiralese, and large enough to be viewed from space, the phrase: “If you have any goodness in your heart, save us from this miserable place.” Unfortunately, money ran out early in the project, so they only got as far as “If you have any goo.” And since goo was plentiful—especially in the trash industry—captains of garbage scows made sure to bring extra whenever they came to dump.
Their limo had trouble handling the hairpin turns, loop-the-loops, and occasional full stops and reverses of First Spiralese cursive—and while the hovercar looked fine with the goggles on, in reality, it was a rust heap with a faulty rear repulsor that left its back end dragging on the ground, shooting out sparks.
It should have been no surprise, then, that the limo completely broke down before it completed the first half of the already incomplete message, leaving them only halfway to the palace.
“I’ve called for a tow,” the driver said cheerfully, never removing his goggles to assess the truth of the situation. “It should be here shortly.”
“On this planet, shortly could be a week,” the First Citizen told them. “Our best option is to walk the rest of the way. And, truth be told, if we approach in a vehicle, we’ll be a target.”
“A target for what?” asked Sahara.
“Let’s just say, arriving at the palace is best done unseen.”
Giving up on the cursed cursive road, they tried to make a beeline to the palace, which was easier now that they were within the no-dump zone that surrounded it. They were grateful for the relative lack of rubbish, but Ogden was still troubled.
“What if there are wild animals? Do we have anything to defend ourselves?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Forlo told him. “There’s no indigenous life left on this planet. Just what people brought with them. And no one brought anything too dangerous. Or at least nothing that’s escaped.”
Somehow neither Ogden nor Sahara was relieved.
Meanwhile, the universe ejected the Fractillian ship back into normal space, and Planet Claire loomed large and ugly before it.
“That’s where we’re going?” Jad said. “Looks kind of bleak.”
“Funny,” said Murdrum. “That’s the name of one of its cities. B’Leak.”
Noah had to admit Jad was right. The planet looked like the result of a little kid mixing all their paints together. Just a brownish globe of celestial yuck. “Well, you get what you pay for, I guess,” Noah said. Fifty bucks for this planet? Made sense now.
“The palace is in the southern hemisphere,” Murdrum told them. “We’ll do a waste-dump and leave you with the trash, so hopefully you won’t be detected.”
Andi sighed. “It won’t be the first time I was abandoned as trash.”
“No one’s abandoning you,” Noah assured her. “We’re right there in the trash with you—and as soon as we can, we’ll get all your melted parts repaired.”
Although Andi didn’t actually thank him, he could see the gratitude in her eyes. Murdrum commanded his crew as they operated the controls with a slippery fluidity that matched their surroundings. The air hung heavy with a viscous mist, and the gurgling sounds of the ship’s engine filled the eerie silence as they adjusted their approach for the steepest possible angle, hoping to get in and out quickly.
“Reports have been coming in that there’s about to be an official transfer of power to the new planetary owner,” Murdrum said.
“That would be Claire,” Noah told him.
Murdrum nodded. “We’ll get you as close to the palace as we can, but there’s a no-dump zone around it. You’ll have to get the rest of the way there on your own.”
“We can handle that, right, Jad?” said Noah.
“Yeah, sure,” replied Jad, but didn’t seem too confident.
Noah put a friendly hand on Jad’s head, as was the Triastral way. “After what we’ve already been through, this’ll be a piece of cake.”
“Right,” said Jad. “What’s cake?”
Navigating between tottering piles of junk and twisted metal, the Fractillian ship came in for a landing, touching down with a wheezing groan. With a complete disregard for waste inspection protocols, the ship promptly opened its rear refuse aperture, disgorging slime-covered rubbish without waiting for approval from any inspector.
“You took too long,” Murdrum scolded when the inspector arrived. “Our ship is a biological/titanium hybrid, and as such, it can only hold in its waste for so long!”
“I have half a mind to write you up!” shouted the inspector (which was both figuratively and literally true, since the inspector was of the same split-brained species as the two guards whom Ogden and Sahara had encountered).
The unapproved dump, however, was just a ploy to create chaos enough for Noah, Jad, and Andi to climb out from the slime-covered trash without being seen.
Noah and Jad emerged, coughing and spluttering among the miserable miasma—because while both had the ability to breathe underwater, neither could breathe in Fractillian slime. Andi—who only simulated breathing—had no such issues. But her disgust was real.
Jad, having three arms to work with, was free from the muck first and helped the others. Murdrum’s argument with the trash inspector, accompanied by the clamor of other Fractillians chiming in, provided ample cover for the trio to discreetly vanish behind the towering mounds of garbage.
Noah noticed that no two piles looked alike, because every mound was from a different planet. One was full of broken, moaning robots—which made Andi shiver. Another looked like a mountain of half-digested jelly beans, and another seemed to be made entirely of green bones.
“I don’t even want to know,” said Noah.
“Andi, which way to the palace?” Jad asked.
“The palace is due north,” said Andi. “Or due south, depending on the planet’s preferred global orientation. But, regardless, it’s that way,” she said, pointing. “It’s a day’s walk from here by human standards—so I suggest you both engage a fast animal from your respective genetic soups.”
Noah tapped into his inner cheetah, combining it with springbok; predator and prey merged into a single speedy skillset. Jad, although unsure at first, managed to pull up something called a NoseJoy Quickdart—which, in addition to speed, had the added benefit of making Jad smell like freshly baked cookies, a welcome shield against the stench of garbage.
“Everyone smells something different,” Jad explained with a grin. “Whatever your favorite smell is, that’s what you get, times ten!” Which, Noah realized, was a great natural defense mechanism—because the aroma was so delicious and overpowering, it made him forget what he was doing.
“You biologics are so easily distracted,” said Andi, clinging to Noah’s back and steering him like a jockey on a racehorse. “Let’s just stay on task!”
“So… what’s our plan when we reach the palace?” Jad asked.
“First we find my friends, Sahara and Ogden,” said Noah.
“And let’s hope,” said Andi, “that they haven’t made an even bigger mess of things.”
Meanwhile, as Ogden, Sahara, and Forlo neared the palace, the challenge of entry became clear. The entire structure was surrounded by a high wall and a slimy moat. Since most arrivals and departures came by way of spacecraft, there was only one narrow bridge over the moat, which was patrolled by armed guards—because anyone who needed to enter the palace by way of the bridge didn’t have any business being there.
“Don’t bother,” said Forlo, before they got close enough to be seen. “The guards are trained to vaporize first and ask questions later. Even if our hoverlimo hadn’t broken down, we’d have to leave it and approach with greater stealth.”
“But we’re friends with the landlord,” Ogden pointed out.
“True, but I doubt that your vaporized subatomic particles will be able to explain that. There’s a tunnel system beneath the palace. We can get in that way.”
Forlo led them through a tight gap in two rocks, which opened into a much larger, cavernous series of natural tunnels. The smell of garbage was replaced by the smell of mildew, which was an improvement.
Forlo took a double-ended flashlight from its stanchion on the rock wall and turned it on. Apparently, it was designed to show them not just where they were going, but where they had been, for beings that also had eyes in the back of their heads.
“This way,” said Forlo. “Watch your step!” Which was hard with the rear beam of the flashlight shining in their faces. Sahara and Ogden followed Forlo cautiously. The flashlight illuminated jagged formations of stalagmites and stalactites, casting long, distorted shadows all around them. As they maneuvered through the intricate web of stone spikes, they couldn’t help but feel they were traversing an otherworldly obstacle course. Every now and then, Ogden and Sahara stumbled over an uneven rock or narrowly avoided a low-hanging stalactite.
“They almost seem to be reaching for us,” Ogden said, after sharply bumping his head on one.
“It’s your imagination,” said Forlo, curtly. “It’s best if you believe that.”
While the going was tough for the humans, Forlo seemed unfazed by the treacherous terrain, effortlessly navigating the narrow passages. His fluff-ended tail swished gracefully behind him, serving as a counterbalance to maintain his equilibrium. Ogden had to keep himself from grabbing onto it each time he stumbled. He assumed that would be a major social no-no.
The deeper they got, the moister the air became, and the cavern walls around them began to come alive with phosphorescent moss, casting a soft glow. The troublesome flashlight now redundant, Forlo turned it off in favor of the mosslight.
But just as they were beginning to find their rhythm and navigate the treacherous terrain with a bit more confidence, Forlo suddenly halted, causing Ogden and Sahara to abruptly stop in their tracks.
“Something’s found us,” he whispered.
“Is it an oh-how-cute-can-we-keep-it kind of thing?” asked Sahara. “Or an eat-your-face-off kind of thing?”
“We’ll know soon enough,” said Forlo.
And then it skulked out from the shadows.
A huge, shapeless, gelatinous creature.
“Stay back,” said Forlo, although neither Sahara nor Ogden were sure whether he was talking to the creature or them.
“What is it?” asked Ogden, taking a curious step closer. He slipped on the goggles, but the creature looked the same through them as it did in real life—as if the goggles had no algorithm for disguising it. It was decidedly blobby, however it did have internal organs of some kind that seemed to float randomly within its goo like bits of fruit in a holiday Jell-O mold.
“That… that can’t be what I think it is!” said Forlo.
Then suddenly the thing lurched toward Ogden, who was closest, and engulfed him up to his neck in its blob-ness.
Being devoured by a hungry blob was not on the agenda for Ogden’s day.
“Get it off!” Ogden shouted. “Get it off!”
“This is amazing!” said Forlo, overjoyed and not helping Ogden at all. “No one’s seen a Splunge for at least twenty years! They’re supposed to be extinct! This could be the last one in existence!”
“Get if off me!” Ogden cried again. “It’s eating me!”
“Don’t worry—they’re detritivorous. That is, they only eat dead layers of flesh.”
“Oh!” said Sahara. “You mean like maggots?”
“That’s not helping!” Ogden yelped, still convinced the blob would dissolve him, just like the Blob did in the old movie and all its awful sequels and remakes.
For Sahara, though, watching the expression of horror and despair on Ogden’s face was a source of unexpected joy. Of course, if he were actually in danger of being digested alive, she wouldn’t feel that way, but seeing him in misery without him actually being in misery? Well, that was priceless.
