Greegs & Ladders (29 page)

'The whole
program was scrapped once news of the doomsday-bots reached the
investors. The robots were turned off and safely put under a tarp
in the basement of a building where government scientists create
evil things that require permanent hiding. But the robots had been
given too much freedom and hardware control, including, apparently,
the ability to turn themselves back on. They took to the streets
and began filling out their original orders. Anyone caught stealing
a movie was seized and transported to a random, uninhabited pacific
island. Eventually the problem went away, for the signals on the
Robot homing beacons went flat as soon as everyone stopped
illegally watching movies. The plan to end piracy worked. The
robots lay dormant for centuries. Every child on Earth was raised
with utmost seriousness to never steal a movie or they might
reawaken the Stockholm Sweden Robot Squad. To make sure no one ever
sneaked into a theater, ushers and ticket-takers were only the most
intimidating of CIA secret agents with the right to execute even
the vaguest of suspects.

'Except
one day, in the late 23
^rd
Century... the inevitable happened. A rebellious child
successfully sneaked into an R-rated movie theatre. It was a great
enough offence to send a blip out on the Piracy Beacon. When the
robots awoke they were surprised to see the technology of the world
had long since passed them by. They found themselves to be
laughable antiquities. The problem was, through more ill-conceived
notions and shoddy paperwork, the Bots had also been mistakenly
programmed to have a dangerous desire for change and growth.
Wishing to fit in with the world and travel about with more speed
and efficiency like all the other futuristic cyborgs, the Bots
demanded a space-craft be put in their possession. This seemed like
a perfect opportunity to get rid of the Bots, so a space-craft was
promptly handed over. It was first installed with a special
inhibitor clause that ensured during the first flight it would be
sent randomly into space and henceforth be unable to come anywhere
near Earth ever again. The Bots were sent off. Everyone on Earth
was happy to once again be free to steal as many movies as they
wanted.

'The only
problem was, many other beings on other planets in the universe
have either made their own films or have discovered and enjoy
watching human films. The Bots, unable to distinguish between human
films and alien films or human viewers and alien viewers, were
pleased to see their Piracy Beacon pinging off the charts once they
were away from Earth. I don't know too much else, but I do know the
Bots have been causing a nuisance all over space, using the
uninhabited planet Plorix III as the new prison for captured
movie-criminals.”

“Hmm,” said
Wilx. “Plorix III? I've never heard of that planet, sounds like an
adventure for another day.”

I silently
agreed, and we continued on with our original plan.

Grebular

When we
finally arrived at the shape-shifting planet Grebular it was in the
form of a sheet of paper. It promptly shifted into a paper-airplane
and glided three orbital patterns to the left.

We found Rip
patiently waiting with his newly formed friends, the Proto-Star
hoppers.

“Thanks for
the help!” he yelled to the extreme-sports junkies as they
transferred him over to our ship and zoomed off in search of the
Next Great Cosmic Ride.

Wilx was the
first to confront Rip.

“You selfish
frazzleplork!” he yelled. “You left us there without a word!”

“I did leave a
note.”

“You shouldn't
have ditched us. You wouldn't believe what we went through... there
was these robots, and--”

“Does it
matter? We're all here now, so it worked out. Let's just carry on
with our mission... what was our mission again?”

“We're here to
collect Crabbits,” said Wilx. “So we can use them to kill Reg, who
is ridiculously undeserving of being the king of Lincra.”

“Oh yeah,”
said Rip. “I knew we were on a good mission. Why don't we send out
some pods with vacuum function to collect the Crabbits? That way we
don't have to go to the surface and risk the planet shifting into a
slide or something that sends us drifting into open space. Either
way, I need a rest. We seem to only be capable of visiting the most
grueling planets.”

No one spoke
of the events we had just seen on Hroon. Instead Wilx programmed
some pods to scour the surface of Grebular for at least a dozen or
so of only the hungriest looking Crabbits. The planet shifted into
a swinging pendulum and dodged the arrival of the pods.

“Did you see
that?” said Rip. “This planet is cursed.”

“We'll try
again,” said Wilx.

The pods once
again attempted to land but the planet chose that moment to
randomly morph into a stale tortilla shell laden with the visage of
Jesus.

“It's one of
those Jesus tortillas I always heard about on Earth!” I said
excitedly. “You can sell them for a lot of money.”

“Maybe you
could have sold them for a lot of money on Earth a million years
ago,” said Rip. “But here in present time, in the rest of the
universe, everybody has seen a Jesus tortilla on more than one
occasion. That same face has been appearing on tortillas ever since
their invention. Nobody can figure out why, or who the face truly
belongs to.”

The planet
shifted into a blueish spherical shape.

“Look!” yelled
Wilx. “The planet has shifted back to its original state! Quick! We
only have a short window of time before it changes into something
incomprehensible!”

Wilx sent the
specimen-collecting pods to the momentarily normal surface of
Grebular. The overly efficient pods collected up a baker's dozen of
the most aggressively hostile Crabbits on the entire planet. We
spent no more time at one of the many planets Rip still believes to
be cursed.

How to Kill
Your Former Greeg-Keeper

(and
Unsuccessfully Raid His Refrigerator)

We put the
Crabbits in an indestructible cell. I gazed at them through the 12
feet of mega-Jardian glass.

Despite what
you may imagine based on the names of particular animals from

Earth,
Crabbits are not named as they are because they resemble a hybrid
cross between Crabs and Rabbits
.
They look nothing like either of these animals. Crabbits
are a slithery type of creature, a horrid land-eel that looks like
an inside-out stained sock-puppet harvested from the depths of
Garbotron, complete with cracked googly eyes and burnt orange
troll-doll hair.

They
also have a row of sharp carnivorous-like teeth.

“Back to
Lincra!” shouted Rip. “If there's anything left!”

The state of
things on Lincra had gotten far more intense during our quick
Crabbit Collecting/Current Events mission. By now the bonfires had
started to spread beyond the desired perimeter of burning. Much of
the planet was to be engulfed in the hasty flames. Some of the more
perceptive peasants had tried to stop the initial lighting of the
fires, for they realized not only was the atmosphere of Lincra
already being pushed to the brink of destruction by the daily
influx of Investment Banker-guzzling space cruisers, but also the
valuable wood the ladders were made from could be broken down and
turned into useful, entirely non-ladder related stuff. Everyone
else agreed the ritualistic cleansing of the bonfires was a more
appealing thing to do. The fires were lit and the dancing and the
chanting began. Reg's parking dome compound was the only safe haven
from the wild blaze. We found the old goblin drunkenly passed out
beside a half-eaten plate of Crabbits. He must have been fairly
wasted to have not finished the meal.

A multitude of
surveillance technology encircled Reg's compound, and yet our ship,
being one that does impossible things, went completely unnoticed as
we hovered silently outside Reg's window plotting our revenge.

“How do we get
the Crabbits from the ship to the room?” asked Rip.

“Someone takes
them over,” replied Wilx.

“Who?”

“I don't know.
You?”

“But how?”

“Just knock
them out and put them in a bag. Then dump the bag into the window.
The Crabbits will probably reawaken before Reg does.”

“How do I
knock them out?”

“Hit them with
a bottle or whatever you find lying around.”

“I don't think
it'll be that easy,” said Rip. He was noticeably scared of the
Crabbits. “Have you seen how quick they are? They'll just slither
up and gnaw my legs off. I won't have a chance.”

“Reg has been
hunting these creatures all by himself for years and he's still
alive.”

“Yeah, but Reg
is tough. He's a seven foot tall goblin with fangs and claws and
red eyes. I can't do the things that a seven foot tall goblin can
do!”

“
That's
not true!” said Wilx. “Think of all the impossible things you've
done in your many lifetimes! Aren't you the guy who successfully
orchestrated the orbital direction of eight different proto-stars
just so you could line them up in a row? And then didn't you jump
through all of them simultaneously? You set the new universal
record for
Least Amount of Severe Burns After Leaping Through the Most
Amount of Proto-Stars
.”

“Maybe.”

“And aren't
you the guy who successfully impregnated the Virgin Mary?”

“Yeah, that
was me.”

“Can't forget
about when you slayed a Galactic Gobbling Groobin, armed only with
your conversational routine of droll witticisms.”

“True.”

“What about
the time you found that mildly interesting fossil?”

“What's your
point?” asked Rip.

“It had part
of a shell.”

“I didn't mean
about the fossil. What's your point to all of this?”

“My point is
that you're better than Reg! If he can survive hunting these
creatures then you can do the same. Now go collect those
Crabbits... and don't let them gnaw your legs off!”

“Why can't we
have the specimen pod deliver the Crabbits the same way we
collected them on Grebular?”

“All the pods
are broken.”

“I see.”

Rip took a
moment to muster up the courage to face the deadly Crabbits. Just
as he opened the door and ran in screaming and flailing his arms,
all the Crabbits mysteriously dropped to the floor.

“Hah!” laughed
Wilx. “I already drugged them to pass out for the next hour! You
never would have stood a chance against their speed. Only someone
like Reg could do that!”

“
You
mean, I'm not as tough as Reg?” asked Rip.

“No. But I
give a pretty good morale-boosting speech, don't I? Plus there's
still time in the story for you to prove otherwise. Let's get these
Crabbits out of here.”

We delivered
the momentarily unconscious Crabbits into the window, which had
been foolishly left open.

Reg had hunted
Crabbits from nearly every world they inhabited. Except for
Grebular. Yet when these Grebularian Crabbits woke up, they
immediately desired revenge against the stranger. With all of his
endless hunting expeditions and plans for general extermination,
Reg had done so much damage to the Crabbit species that the image
of his face had been naturally downloaded into their collective
consciousness and transmitted across distant galaxies to all other
living Crabbits. That way should any of them be unfortunate enough
to cross paths with Reg they will at least be given a heads-up
about the whole matter. This particular baker's dozen of lethal
abominations were the Chosen Crabbits. They were the summation of
everything their species had lived (but mostly died) for.

The first
thing they saw was Reg's furniture, crafted from the skeletons of
their universal kin. Other Crabbit bones swung from the ceiling,
hanging on thread made of Crabbit-sinew and waiting to be turned
into easily breakable tools. Through the immensely powerful
collective consciousness of the Crabbit, they vividly remembered
every detail of the lives of each of the Crabbits who now swung in
pieces in the compound of an insane goblin on a half-destroyed
world. This only sent them into a greater rage.

The first
Crabbit gnarled a leg. Reg was so knocked out that it took him a
moment to wake up and feel the pain.

“Hey, what's
going on?” he finally asked the darkness.

Reg clicked on
a light and saw that many Crabbits had gnarled away his limbs.

“Is the age of
Reg over?” he asked. “But I only just became a god a few days
ago.”

The vitamin A
factor might have saved him, for once the Crabbits had chewed to
the bone they conveniently broke all their weak teeth and were
unable to continue attacking. This proved to not matter whatsoever,
for the gnarling required to reach the bone was more than
sufficient enough to kill Reg in less than a minute.

We raided his
refrigerator, but only found a foul type of fermented Crabbit
liqueur. Against our warnings, Rip drank it anyway. He was sick for
awhile. Wilx chartered the ship toward the next crazy venture.

Overdue
Intentions

Meanwhile...
something was happening amongst a group of aforementioned
creatures. Something within the cave systems of the
Planetglomerate.

The Klaxworms
were stirring, having unfrozen from their nightly freezing,
prepared to begin another day of overpopulation-induced heatwaves
and boiled organs. Yet this was a day unlike any other in the
history of the Klaxworm.

Conversation
in the Klaxworm cave is usually about the idea of exploring the
rest of the planet.