Greegs & Ladders (27 page)

We had the
ship make an unscheduled stop. When we arrived at Hroon the scene
was a state of complete chaos. Countless visiting ships filled with
reporters, scientists and generally nosey folk were parked in
orbit. Down on the surface, an epic hovering stage and seating
arena for millions had been constructed for the purpose of a
universally broadcast press-conference with the specters. The show
was about to begin.

For reasons we
did not at all understand, the finding of our Obotron ship was a
very big deal. We were likely experiencing Rip's 'current-event
syndrome,' a total confusion of the grand picture caused by wild
and continuous leaping about through time and space. Thousands of
years had passed. The finding of this ship was likely as exciting,
bewildering and important as the feeling felt by humans when they
first discovered dinosaur bones or the tomb of King Tut, or those
dead scrolls. That or the standards of what is deemed
groundbreaking or newsworthy had been drastically reduced to
nothing in this particular part of this particular universe.

We left the
ship floating in the water, parked far away from any visible
congregation of sketchy spider-like creatures and found ourselves a
few discreet seats in the back row. Worried about being recognized,
Rip was now wearing an incredibly poor Specter costume that he had
just minutes ago fastened together from various junk that was lying
around in the broom closet. The specter costume wasn't much better
than the generic human costume for a ghost, consisting of a white
sheet draped over one's head with a few eye holes cut into it,
depending on how many eyes one has. In his gait, Rip even attempted
to imitate the ethereal sliding motion of a Specter's movement, but
only succeeded in looking like a lunatic or something performing a
'silly walk' sketch.

“Why are there
seat-belts on the chairs?” I asked. “Is this whole platform going
to start flying around?”

“I would put
that seat-belt on right away,” said Wilx. “Or the force of the wind
might whip you right out of your chair.”

Just as Wilx
said that, a nearby creature who had neglected to put on his
seat-belt was suddenly launched several hundred feet straight up
into the air as if pulled by a rope. The creature yelled a
surprised and sustained “Whoa!” as he uselessly flailed. The
“Whoa!” could be heard echoed long after the creature vanished into
the clouds. This now-famous final last word happened to be recorded
by a lucky sound-technician with a top-notch recording device, who
in turn sold the sound effect to a major film studio, who in turn
used the sound-effect over and over in thousands of well-known
blockbuster movies, making it the staple, 'go-to' sound-file for
any time a character needs to yell “Whoa!” in surprise. It has been
used in more movies than the legendary Wilhelm Scream.

Suddenly an
alarm announced the Specter-Grimbat press-conference was about to
begin. Everyone in the seating area quieted down as an
important-looking Grimbat approached a podium. No one onstage could
be seen by most of the audience (considering the amount of seats in
the seating area ranked in the millions) so their images were
displayed on a backdrop screen roughly the size of 23 combined IMAX
screens.

“What is your
name?” asked the important-looking Grimbat to the specter that was
currently on stage

“Janet.”

“And what did
you do aboard this ship?”

“I was a lowly
room attendant. It was my job to fold linens for the guests.”

“So your ship
was a housing vessel of sorts?”

“Yes, except
we never had any actual guests.”

“Not very
popular with the cruise market, were you?” asked the reporter.

“Our whole
fleet of ships had been assembled merely to enhance the status
image of the leaders who occupied Obotron 1, our primary fleet
ship.”

“So your
leaders were great at wasting resources?”

“Yes.”

“Who were your
leaders?”

“There was a
Dr. Rip T. Brash the Third, and his sidekick the Astrospeciologist
Wilx. They had with them a reformed Greeg they called Krimshaw. We
have come to know their names and faces well. And to loathe
them.”

“Interesting.
Why did your leaders bring you to Hroon?”

“We don't
know. Our ship was programmed to fly wherever the leaders wanted.
We were rarely in contact with them and weren't allowed to ask
questions about our mission if we were.”

“And what
exactly caused your ship to sink?”

“The hurricane
wind force of the Hroon atmosphere threw our ship into a 100 foot
tidal wave. The ship remained intact, but the engines died when
fuel tanks of Investment Banker were flooded with ruinous
sea-water. As dead weight we sank into the abyss.”

“Exciting,”
said the reporter. “Did you see any monsters? There are supposed to
be a lot of them swimming around in the Hroon Ocean.”

Janet didn't
answer this question, but the frightened look upon her face
suggested she had seen her share of ocean monsters. The reporter
moved on.

“How long were
you alive at the bottom of the ocean?”

“It varies,”
said Janet. “I only lasted about 9 years, but some of the other
specters will brag about lasting nearly 5 decades.”

“Wow,” said
the reporter. “Even 9 years is incredible. I can't fathom anyone
surviving in that environment for up to 50 years. How did you not
perish right after the sinking?”

“
We were
lucky to have certain educational survival literature stored within
the ship. Two books that were of particular use were entitled
'
Cannibalizing Your Crew After Sinking in an Alien
Ocean
' by Horaticus Neil
Travensenzel, and '
How to Have a Long Life, Volume 219: Maximizing Your Use of
Airlocks While Shipwrecked at the Bottom of an Alien
Ocean.
' We also had a
collection of VHS tapes with a copy of '
The Poseidon
Adventure
.' We took
great inspiration from the courageous exploits of those
characters.”

“VHS tapes?”
asked the reporter.

“They were a
method of watching movies. Do you still have movies?” asked
Janet.

“Yes. But
jumpies are more popular. They're more realistic.”

“Oh,” said
Janet.

“Why did you
not transcend into the dimension of the dead? Why did you remain on
Hroon in your spectral state?”

“We have been
prisoners of the Limbo Projection Mode.”

“Refresh my
mind on what the Limbo Projection Mode is,” said the Reporter. “Try
to remember that everything from your life became obsolete
thousands of years ago.”

“The Limbo
Projection Mode was a powerful method of trapping someone in a
spaceship. Say somebody stole your ship, the on-board computer
would automatically recognize the intruder and thus enter a state
of Limbo Projection, an existence in which exit from the ship is
completely impossible under any circumstance. Then all you'd have
to do is find your ship and you'd have a pre-captured
criminal.”

“Why did the
ship go into this Limbo mode? The ship was not stolen, you are the
rightful crew, am I correct?”

“There was a
malfunction, probably during one of the monster attacks. The
computer entered an unprecedented high state of Limbo, causing the
system to affect not only living creatures, as it is supposed to,
but to also have the power of trapping specters, spirits,
elementals and other non-living entities.”

“After all
these thousands of years you haven't figured out how to turn it
off?”

“No, there is
no way to turn off Limbo Projection Mode.”

“What about
when the power died? Wouldn't it turn off then?”

“The power
never died,” replied Janet. “Within our ship's cargo was several
thousand years worth of battery cells. It was only the
flight-engines that needed IB. Besides, the ships power had no
relevance here. The Limbo Projection operates under rules of its
own voodoo mysticism. Escape is only possible with help from
someone outside the ship.”

“Ah,” said the
reporter. “I'm glad we've reached that part of the story. Everyone
is wondering about your rescuers. It seems the Grollers, one of the
longest running jokes in the universe for being a non-swimming
creature on an all-water planet, went ahead and evolved into
swimming creatures while no one was looking these past years. A
Groller is what swam to the bottom of the ocean, discovered your
ship and freed the trapped specters.”

“Yes,” said
Janet. “We believe their evolution into an aquatic creature was
directly caused by our presence on the planet.”

“Why would you
think that?” asked the reporter.

“They knew we
were down there. The spark of the inevitable next phase of their
evolution was their intense curiosity to find us.”

“How would the
Grollers know you were there? Isn't it likely they never knew about
a single event that ever occurred off their measly 3 acres of rocky
conglomerations?”

“There is an
explanation for this,” began Janet. “Aboard our ship is a device
which enables the entire population of a planet to simultaneously
watch the same movie, by way of having the image of the movie
projected onto the entirety of the sky. It is simply called
Sky-Projection Mode.”

“There is that
word 'projection' again,” said the reporter. “We all find your
descriptions of technology fascinatingly crude.”

“Yes,” said
Janet. “Anyway, we were prone to re-watch the movies in our VHS
collection rather frequently, so we decided to have the image of
the movies projected up through the water and onto the sky. Might
work out as a great rescue signal. Over time the Grollers evolved
to worship the mysterious flickering images in the sky. Yet they
were not content with mystery. Their curiosity to peak behind the
curtain is surely what prompted the Grollers to learn how to swim.
The projection leaves a trail of luminescence in the water. They
would have known the picture originated from in the ocean.”

“How do you
know what the Grollers feel?”

“Specters,
being nothing but pure consciousness, have the ability to sense
what speechless creatures would wish to say. A sort of drifting
into their minds.”

“Telepathy?
With those beasts?”

“Indeed. But
our powers are weak compared with the great Elemental Tele-Specters
of the Invisible Dimension.”

“I'm going to
interrupt you Janet,” said the reporter, as a scientific looking
creature materialized on the stage. “The historical biologist Dr.
Julmook is here to speak to us about the evolution of the Groller.
Hello, Dr. Julmook.”

“Hello,”
replied the doctor.

“What can you
tell us about the Groller transitioning into an aquatic
creature?”

“
We have
deduced the Groller gained the ability to swim because of a great
sacrifice that was had amongst the population. As we know, Grollers
generally have only one arm and one leg each. But now they have two
of each. How did this happen? The only logical explanation is that
half of the population at some point amputated their own limbs and
reattached them to other Grollers, thus out of two useless bodies
creating one capable of life on this world. The reattachment
procedures were unsuccessful for a long time, but they stuck with
it and it clearly worked out in the end. All the currently living
Grollers now have symmetrical amounts of limbs. As soon as swimming
was possible, the ability to breath underwater naturally followed
in their evolution. Just look at this Groller,” said Dr. Julmook as
he pointed to a cage that suddenly materialized beside him. The
crowd were in awe of the new looking life-form. “You can clearly
see this Groller has an advanced gill system and a more resilient
exterior hide capable of withstanding the pressures of unknown
depths. We have not found any other Grollers with gills, but there
will surely be more. Finding this Obotron ship was the first action
ever undertaken by an ocean-worthy Groller. Until this point, all
they did was drown or be eaten. It is then likely that Janet's
theory is correct. They evolved so they could find out where the
pictures in the sky came from.
The new aquatic Groller finally found the source of the
sacred movies.”

“Yes, that
sounds accurate,” concurred Janet. “The only thing we are confused
about is why no one else but the Grollers ever saw the movies in
the sky?”

“That is
easily explainable,” said the reporter. “No one ever comes to
Hroon. It is a terrible place to visit.”

“Ah, I
see.”

“Just one more
hole in the story needs filling,” said the reporter.

“What's that?”
asked Janet.

“After you lot
had died, how did you continue operating the movie watching device?
How did you change the battery cells? Everyone knows specters can't
perform physical acts.”

“A good
question,” replied Janet. “You have not yet met Prollk, the last
living crew member of our Obotron ship.”

“Living? How
could anyone still be alive after thousands of years.”

“
Prollk
discovered within the cargo bay a hypodermic needle filled with a
strange glowing substance. The needle was marked
“
Immortality
Quik-Shot:
Inject into Eyeball and Live Forever.”

“Prollk became
immortal?”

“Yes. It was
Prollk who was the one who performed all the physical tasks we
needed done, such as replacing the battery cells, rewinding and
playing the VHS tapes, making sure the Sky-Projection Mode was
always turned on during a movie, etc.”

“We should
like to meet this Prollk,” said the reporter. “Is he around?”

“Yes,” said
Janet as Prollk arrived on stage with perfect timing.

“Excellent,”
said the reporter. “Please sit down, Prollk.”