Greegs & Ladders (19 page)

“Indeed,” said
Wilx. “Merely your summary of the possible preliminary aspects of
it is enough to make me have nothing but regrets for the whole
affair.”

“Hmmm, that’s
a good suggestion. I’ll ensure that makes it into the next version
of the Treaty. But for now, the law’s the law, so you’re coming
with us.”

An
Eealiotronic Wave Net was immediately cast forth from the
battalion, encircling the Obotron 1 and its lone trailing ship.
After an inspection of the contents of the trailing ship and some
more murmuring from the mysterious hoard aboard the battalion
commander ship, the trailing ship was cast free in orbit around the
planetglomerate, the contents as of yet… unknown.

Revelations in
a Holding Cell

They may
have been joking, but Rip and Wilx were 100% right. Every second of
watching the painful Kroonum legal system attempt to move forward
was surely double, even triple, the punishment that same system may
one millennia get around to dishing out. I begged to be abandoned
back on earth watching entire organisms mutate, it surely would
have been a more agreeable time. Torture is common practice in the
first phases of incarceration. Nothing brutal and primitive like
human torture, they use the much more effective method of boredom.
Boredom, I would keep learning, is the most torturous thing that
exists. The three of us were kept in confinement with recording
devices all around. No attempts at subtlety here, they wanted a
confession on tape. Genuinely not knowing what was going on and
what it is they wanted us to confess to, I sincerely questioned Rip
and Wilx again and again, but they honestly couldn’t remember a
thing they’d done wrong to anyone. This was most likely because
nearly everything they did was something wrong to someone, so
pinpointing one particular offence was impossible. This was a
common phenomenon discussed in great detail by Kleb Globberchov in
his mildly amusing
It Aint Easy Bein' a Sociopath.
Rip and Wilx were genuinely stumped as to who
could still be pursuing the cause of incarcerating those
responsible for destroying a measly ship load of Obotron Crew
Members, barely above Investment Bankers on the list of creatures
that are cared about. Surely crashing into Lincra is so frequent an
occurrence that there could be no merit in chasing them this long
and this vehemently after the incident. It was presumed that all
this would be revealed during the trial, should it ever come to
pass. This presumption was enforced by a booming announcement over
the P.A. system in the cell that “All this shall be revealed during
the trial, should it ever come to pass.”

And so we
waited. And so, my drugs began to wear off. And so, I remembered
that I had an awful lot of questions that needed answering. What
better time to get them answered than being stuffed into a cell
with the two bastards who held the answers to most, if not all, of
them.

“So what the
hell have you two been up to for all this time? What the hell was
the point of leaving me on that planet and watching those humans
become Greegs? What was the point of any of this?!”

“Oh, that,”
mumbled Rip. “Wilx, you wanna take this one?”

“Perhaps.
First, I’d like to hear some of your stories old chap. Please do
explain, in detail, everything you witnessed on that planet you
were on.”

Time was
most certainly not of the essence. Time was not even remotely
approaching anything that could be mistakenly construed as the
essence. So I complied. I told them of everything I had been
through, of everything I had seen. A lot of it they seemed to have
heard before, or at least expected, with many a ‘of course, yep,’
sort of reaction coming from their face like things. The small
details are what seemed to interest them most. They were especially
tantalized by my descriptions of human religions and absurd
conspiracy theories on the origin of man. I had dismissed them all
to be ridiculous of course, but would be surprised to find out
almost all of them were nearly 100% accurate. The only thing that
made them inaccurate was small typos and distortions of the
original truth, and the replacing of the word/concept “God” with
“Rip and/or Wilx and/or a careless fellow named Jorf.” I now
believe that Rip and Wilx are the basis for the idea of God and
Satan, with Wilx’s influences on the planet being mostly good, and
Rips being most certainly evil. When I explained what I thought was
the foolish notion of creationism to them, it turned out to be
true, with one minor exception that Rip casually explained: “Well
no, it wasn’t all done in 6
consecutive
days, that would be ridiculous.” When I told them that
there was endless debates whether or not there was a creator or
there was a big bang and evolution, Wilx said something very
interesting. “What, nobody ever thought it might be all
three?”

One after
another, all of the engrained stories, myths and theories of
mankind began to be explained by Rip and Wilx’s unabashed,
uncaring, and casual meddling. Jesus really was the son of God (if
you take God to be the creator of the universe… as Rip was the
creator of this particular one. “A long story involving the fission
of a neo sub-quark to win a bet,” as Rip put it. “Not a very long
story at all is it?” As Wilx put it.) The Virgin Mary story checked
out, as Rip merely used one of his many other sexual organs to
impregnate her, while leaving her hymen untouched. “And so that
makes me God?” howled Rip with laughter. “More like a deadbeat dad!
Great night of ear sex though I must say, and equally good times
with her belly button.”

They found it
all to be hilarious. Turns out they had returned to Earth
frequently in a manner all to similar to the way in which they kept
going down the same corridor in the Maze.

One by one Rip
and Wilx chopped every human conspiracy theory or unexplained
phenomenon down to size. The Pyramids weren’t built by slaves at
all, they were dropped in one night just to see how the humans
would react. They reacted by devoting much of their civilization to
drawing paintings and explanations as to how alien 'gods' had
dropped them in one night from the heavens. After extensive
studies, centuries later, “scientific explanations” let it be known
that humans had clearly built them and that was that. Eventually,
when Rip and Wilx had squeezed all of the laughs they were going to
out of my tales of humanity, I demanded my explanation.

“I demand my
explanation,” I said.

“Right right,
I suppose I ought to. Listen old pal, it’s quite simple,” said
Wilx.

“Every time
you tell me something you say that it’s quite simple, and it never
is. Stop saying that.”

“Right,
whatever, well here’s the thing. We kind of thought that, well I
did more, I, well I bet Rip here…”

“
Another
bet?!”

“Yes,
countless of them, but this one in particular, well no, I suppose
we’d better start from the beginning. You see when Rip bet whoever
the hell that was that he bet on the planet where we found you that
he could take a carnival Greeg and have them, er you, pass as an
intelligent, decent being, etc. he was really just procuring a pawn
in a much larger bet with me involving Greegs in general.”

“So I really
have been nothing but a pawn this whole time?”

“Well not
entirely. Rip did genuinely want you to be his friend. But that was
only because he wanted to win a bet I placed with him that he
wasn’t capable of friendship and that’s how I won this nice pair of
boots.”

“Well what
about you two, aren’t you friends?”

“Not really.
Gambling partners perhaps, but not friends. Rip and I were space
mapping space mappers in a much larger order of magnitude than
these universes on which you dwell. Just as many galaxies make up
one universe, many universes make up one Richtolhoffen.”

“Ok, I think I
follow you.”

“Right, so
imagine if you were shrunk down to the cellular level, then you
would be both relatively immortal, because of your ridiculously
long life span in comparison.”

“And don't
forget almost immediately bored to tears,” piped in Rip.

“We were
shrunk down to miniature proportions to map out a few universes and
return,” continued Wilx, ignoring Rip. “However, once we were
shrunk down with the Grambling Magnitudinal Decreaselating
Prokrelator we decided that we could have much more fun ditching
our duties as space mappers and roaming this puny plain of
existence. I chose to pass the time acquiring knowledge, while Rip
spent it mostly getting drunk. We both kept ourselves sane with the
endless gambling.

“
Small
bets became intertwined with larger ones and insanely complicated
super series of bets,” said Rip.
“Wagers, you see, are all we have to live
for.”

“Why is
that?”

“Because we
are immortal,” said Wilx. “Being born of an upper order of
magnitude, our lifespans are longer than any Universes on your
level of existence. We have been alive for so long, that we no
longer have any emotional connection to anything. To us, all of
your worlds are merely a game board for us to wonder about and
place wagers on.”

“So what about
Earth, and me? How do I fit into all of this?”

“Which one is
Earth again?” said Rip.

“The one that
you abandoned me on for hundreds of thousands of...”

“Oh right, The
Greeg planet, I was getting to that,” said Wilx. “You see, Rip bet
someone that he could turn you, a hopeless and savage Carnival
Greeg, into a decent being so that he could then bet me that such a
reformed, decent Greeg, once placed on a planet full of Greegs,
would then simply return to being a Greeg. I was of the opinion
that not only would you not revert to being a Greeg, but that you
would have such a unique perspective, having formerly been a Greeg,
that watching the entire process of Greegification unfold would, if
anything, strongly solidify your desire to help other Greegs become
unGreeged, perhaps even leading to a cure for Greegs. Like some
sort of Greeg psychiatrist of sorts. As it turns out we were both
kind of right. Call it a draw.”

“But why did
you knowingly allow the whole place to be devoured and overrun by
Greegs? Wilx, surely you must realize now, after hearing the tale
of Jorf, what a horrible act that was? Considering that the planet
was a completely unique blending of such a large array of plant and
animal species. Don’t you have any regrets about it being
destroyed?”

“Yes, well I
did what I could. I bet Rip that the plants and animals would be
victorious over the heartless ambitions of his measly hoard of
Investment Bankers. I underestimated the strength of his most
potent concoction, “The Chosen People” as he called them, and lost
the bet. They were particularly determined to continue investment
banking and worshipping money at all costs, no matter what the
consequences.”

“
Remarkable creatures,” confirmed Rip. “Much better than the
first batches of spliced genes I tried to cook up. I believe you
said the humans called them 'natives' and 'aboriginals'. What
miserably useless Greeg fodder. They barely concerned themselves
with investment banking at all!”

“So now the
planetglomerate will become the first ever Planetary Greeg
Carnival, instead of the hub of biological diversity and wonder I
had hoped for it,” shrugged Wilx, unconcerned. “Such is the way of
things. You win some, you lose some. Besides, when the humans
became Greegs, we settled another bet about the role investment
bankers play in the role of Greegformations. It also gave us the
playing field with which to drop you off and settle our other bet.
You see it just keeps going on like this.”

“
And
what a Greeg Carnival it shall be!” chirped up Rip. “Full of the
finest Greegs from all corners of many universes. To answer your
original question old friend,
that’s
what we’ve been up to all this time! We’ve been scouring
Universes far and wide collecting Greegs.”

“What do you
mean collecting? There are different kinds of Greegs?” I spun on
Rip, exhausted.

“But of
course! Greeg is merely a sort of classification for any species
that has given up on progressing and evolving, and degenerated
completely to the lowest possible rung on the ladder. No matter
what the origin of the species, the same basic characteristics and
general failures are always arrived at: The worshipping of Schmold,
the building of and keeping clean of meaningless structures, the
wilful ignorance of all things that are not Greeg centric, the
sexual coverings. It’s all status quo! But the origin of the Greeg
and their journey to Greegdom is as varying as the stars and
planets themselves. Any species can become a Greeg, and many of
them have. Greeg conversions are on the rise exponentially in
recent times, as more and more species fail miserably to cope with
the ever changing realities of the universe around them.”

“
These
facts have been common knowledge for a long time,” casually added
Wilx. “But what Rip and I want to understand is
how
this happens, and
why
this happens. Can it be changed? Will it ever be different?
Can Greegs be changed back to their original form en masse? Is
there a more effective way of stopping them from degenerating into
Greegdom and keeping their Greegeromody under wraps than the
current method of dividing them up into Carnivals? These are the
sorts of bets we hope to settle on the Ultimate & Grand Greeg
Carnival. You’ve provided us with much insight into the forces that
initially lead a species down the path to Greegery. We long
suspected that the domination of Investment Bankers of the species
was a major catalyst on the road to Greegeration, but have learned
so much more from your observations; such as the role that this
‘religion’ plays, and sexuality and unexpectedly having your solar
system thrown into chaos by a Galactic Gobbling Groobin. There is
still so many things to sort out before we can write our definitive
scholarly volume on Greegs. But when we do, it will surely outsell
Dr. Kipple’s pompously under-researched
Purified Procreation: Greeg Sex and
What it Says About Their True Nature
as the definitive work on all things
Greeg!”