Greegs & Ladders (32 page)

On the busiest
recorded day in Blue Splotch Diner #1790, Blok Mardem reached his
breaking point. Recordings indicate it was so busy that Blok, the
only dishwasher working that evening, was completely unable to keep
up with the onslaught of dishes. The sinks were brutally clogged
with soggy, half-eaten food. There was no time to unclog the
drains, so instead Blok let the sickly, orange-brown 'water' full
of unknown congealed matter mercilessly overflow onto the floor,
creating a deadly skating rink on the tiles. The dirty water also
poured into the dishwasher. Now that the water in the dishwasher
was of this variety, the dishes were coming out dirtier than when
they went in. Behind Blok there were several walls lined with deep
sinks, all of which were full to the brim with piping hot pans
scalded with blackened over-fried teriyaki sauce and metal inserts
horribly caked with burnt-on, chunky tomato soup. The serving
staff, in their frantic busy-ness, had lost all interest in sorting
the constant wheelbarrow loads of plates and utensils that were
being cleared from the tables. Despite there having once been a
time when each different type of plate was sorted into its own
separate stack, they were now being tossed together in random,
teetering card-house piles of butter-slathered glass, coated with
crusted cheese dips and half-devoured, soggy, broccoli, all of
which was routinely splashed into Blok's face from the required
high water-pressure of the rinsing hose. Blok made the classic
mistake of spraying into a ladle, the perfect tool for water
rebound. He was struck square in the eyes with the scalding water.
A server then viciously threw a handful of spoons into a cutlery
bin, effectively splashing Blok with industrial-strength, corrosive
chemicals. He was partially blinded for the remainder of his shift,
and probably suffered some sort of life-long side effect.

Blok was going
to have to stay late for hours after the restaurant closed if he
had any hopes of finishing. He was expected to do exactly that,
only he didn't feel like it. He wished there was some way he could
get rid of the dishes. Not just the dishes at Blue Splotch #1790,
but all the dishes on the planet. He liked the idea so much he
devised an ingenious plan which he thought would allow him to get
away with the non-washing of all dishes forever. Some say he took
his plan too far. Your opinions on the sympathetic qualities of
Blok Mardem will be one of the primary essay topics on the final
exam.

When not
washing dishes, Blok Mardem was aspiring to be one of the leading
alchemical-scientists in the galaxy. He had become especially adept
at the conjuring of vortexes. What was beyond the gateway of the
vortexes he created was unknown, but one thing was certain, if you
threw something into the vortex you would never see it again.

Blok
dispatched his plan only to the dishwashers. The plan went like
this:

The dishes
were to be deposited into a series of tunnels, all of which would
flow into the underground of the northern hemisphere. This
particular dish-filled half of the planet would be amputated and
aimed into the vortex. How exactly this half-a-planet would be
separated is a point that we are nearly arriving at. But first, how
Blok rallied together the dishwashers:

More of Blok
Mardem's hobbies and skills included computer hacking and a
knowledge of coded languages. He used these skills to hack into the
system of the Blue Splotch payroll distribution program. Through
this program he arranged for a coded message to appear on the backs
of the Blue Splotch pay-cheques for the Dish department.

Blok's message
announced his plans and gave an address in which the dishwasher
could reply if interested. The response was unanimous. Every
dishwasher on Clug Raddo agreed it was a very good idea to banish
the dishes. Blok sent out charts, time-lines and blueprints,
instructing each of the dishwashers to begin digging a tunnel
system beneath their respective Blue Splotch restaurants.

This was not
an overnight rebellion. It took years for the dishwashers to work
out a properly functioning tunnel system. Amidst maniacal
delusions, Blok did not think about how the population of people
living on the northern hemisphere would be affected when they were
sent careening into a black hole.

He also did
not realize that getting rid of the dishes was a ridiculously moot
point, as new dishes could be immediately delivered from Glassvexx
on any day of the solar revolution.

An
epic-scale vortex was conjured just outside the orbit of the
planet. As impressive a display of Blok's talent as the vortex was,
many of the dishwashers were still sceptical he could
succeed
.
Luckily Blok
had another hobby that would prove useful.

Aside
from Blok's skills in vortex conjuring, computer hacking,
dishwashing and message coding,
he
also had
knowledge of Zhoteps, the name for the type of frightening bombs
used only during mass-planetary reconstructive surgery. Blok had in
his apartment a highly illegal collection of such
explosives.

The
dishwashers then set in motion wiring the entire equator of the
planet. This was followed by prompt detonation. The blinding flash
of the blast-wave can still be seen travelling through space, only
just now arriving at locations untold light years away.

The
dish-filled hemisphere detached and drifted into the nearby vortex.
As of this writing, it has never been seen again. Miraculously,
against all logic, the southern hemisphere of Clug Raddo does not
careen into oblivion but continues a functional orbit with
life-sustainability.

There are many
myths regarding the apparent locations of the missing half of Clug
Raddo. Some say the two halves were made to be the parts of a
universal, god-like skeleton key, and that if the planet was ever
repaired it would bring about either great prosperity or terrible
doom, depending on which camp of conspiratorial-crazies you belong
to.

How We Colonized Jupiter and Cleaned up
Garbotron

As collected
from the Cutting Room Floor,

(shortly before
I decided to distance myself from Rip and Wilx.)

(with a title
full of spoilers at no additional surcharge).

Jupiter

“
Did you
ever watch the movie 2010?” Wilx asked me.

“Sure. Except
the first one's better.”

“I know. I've
seen it way more times,” said Wilx. “So when did humans actually
first make contact?”

“It was 2020,”
I replied. “His prediction had misinterpreted Plato's ten-year
error.”

“What does
Plato have to do with it?”

“Never mind.
Humans didn't end up going to Jupiter until 2052,” I added. “And
nothing momentous happened.”

“Hmm,” said
Wilx. “What's Jupiter like?”

“It's like
Rip's ego. Big and gassy. A never-ending storm that looks
interesting from afar but can be fatal from up close.”

“How many
planets rotate that star again?” asked Wilx.

“Five,” I
said. “Used to be nine, then four of them collided with each other
and became the Planetglomerate.”

“We will go to
Jupiter,” declared Wilx suddenly. “I've seen those movies and read
those books enough to have interest in the matters of that
planet.”

“It really is
just a bunch of gas,” I said.

“There must be
something special about it, something that made the prophet Clarke
write those stories.”

“He probably
just picked a random planet in the galaxy. It could have just as
easily been about Saturn or Neptune.”

“No,” said
Wilx. “It is a sign. There's something about Jupiter.”

“So you think
if we go to Jupiter the movies will come true?”

“Not exactly,
but something will happen. You never ignore a sign.”

“
What
about the time you ignored that '
NO LEFT TURN AHEAD'
sign and we ended up being diverted
through a gauntlet of Dementia-Mirrors?” I asked.

“
That
sign didn't say '
NO LEFT TURN AHEAD.'
It said '
NO STONE LEFT UNTURNED UNSTONED
.
'
Had we gotten
stoned and turned rocks over at the beach we probably would have
missed out on the Dementia-Mirrors. Plus we might have seen some
interestingly rare aquatic creatures. What did you expect would
happen?”
argued
Wilx.

“I don't know.
Anyway, humans already went to Jupiter and nothing much
happened.”

“That was a
long time ago. We're more prepared than humans were. I've seen 2001
more than anyone.”

As much as I
wanted to avoid going near the Planetglomerate, I decided to save
my breath. If he wanted to go to Jupiter, that was where we would
end up going. Wilx always had final say on the chartering of the
ship, being that he actually knew how to run the computers.

Rip had been
in cryogenic sleep for the past year, having hidden himself there
in order to avoid paying the toll-booth fees of certain finicky
dimensional border-crossings. He was only meant to be out for a few
hours, but we hadn't got around to waking him up yet. Wilx now saw
no reason of it until we reached Jupiter. I think he enjoyed the
fact that our situation already seemed to mirror the film, by
having a frozen team-member who would (hopefully) be awoken upon
arrival at the Gas Giant.

Where is
Jupiter?

Arrival
at Jupiter was anti-climactic. As we arrived, we also did not
arrive. Jupiter was gone. Missing. Someone had left a moon-sized
post-it note saying:
This Gas Giant has vanished for unknown
reasons
.

“Bastards!”
cursed Wilx.

“What do you
think happened?” I asked.

“Jupiter might
have been stolen to be used in warfare. Sometimes planets are used
as weapons, hurled at other planets and the like. Gas giants are
frequent favorites. They release the most amount of toxicity. Only
uninhabited planets are allowed to be used as weapons, but it's
still a barbaric practice. Stealing a planet often throws off the
gravitational orbit of surrounding populated worlds.”

“Jupiter isn't
uninhabited,” I said.

“Surely it
is,” said Wilx. “All gas giants are lifeless.”

“No they
aren't. Humans found life on Jupiter in 2052,” I said.

“You said
nothing happened.”

“
I said
nothing
much
happened.
Something happened. I just didn't feel like getting into the whole
story.”

“Tell me about
these life-forms!” said Wilx excitedly.

“They exist
body-less, like pure thought. You see, some of the gaseous vapors
floating around actually contained a mildly intelligent
consciousness. It was discovered when the vapors telepathically
transmitted their collective voice into the computers. I once heard
a recording. They talked like a weird Radio DJ.”

“How did such
a life-form come to exist?” asked Wilx. He was enthralled and
thought nothing of the curious Radio DJ comment.

“
Have
you ever heard the rhetorical question
'If a tree falls in the woods and no
one is around to hear it, does it still make a
sound
?'” I
asked.

“Rhetorical
nonsense,” said Wilx.

“It suggests
that something only exists because a consciousness is present to
experience it. This is very true for the life of a planet.”

“Are you
talking about the Life-to-Planet Totality Quotient?” asked
Wilx.

“Indeed. Based
on the human discoveries on Jupiter I began to believe in the
theory that an uninhabited planet does not exist anywhere. Even a
planet the size of Jupiter has at the very least a species of
rudimentary Vapour-Thought.”

“And you
believe the disappearance is because of this?”

“Yes,” I
replied. “The Life-to-Planet Totality Quotient says that if any
planet for some reason does become uninhabited, it will have a
limited amount of time to acquire or create new life before it
merely blinks out of existence due to its own uselessness. Like the
rhetorical nonsense goes, something does not exist if it is not
made real by consciousness.”

“You sound
like Nickbas.”

“Sometimes he
made a lot of sense,” I said.

“Say you're
right,” said Wilx. “Why did Jupiter disappear if it had life?”

“The Vapors
must have left the planet, whether by their own will or not.”

“So this
planet is just destroyed forever?”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “One theory says
that a vanished, lifeless planet does not cease to exist, but out
of survival instinct gains the ability to teleport itself to a
distant part of space, one where it might have a more hopeful
chance of picking up some tourist traffic.”

“You believe in this theory as well, don't
you?” asked Wilx.

“Yes.”

“So Jupiter is still out there
somewhere?”

“It's very possible,” I replied.

“Then it's time for another quest,” said
Wilx.

“To find the lost planet of Jupiter?”

“Yes... A Quest to Find the Lost Planet of
Jupiter!”

“Ok!” I agreed. This adventure seemed more
about scientific exploration than life-threatening peril, so my
enthusiasm was genuine. “How do you suggest we start looking?
There's a lot of space out there. Infinite amounts, in fact.”

“If only we had a sample of Jupiter's
atmosphere,” said Wilx. “Then all we'd have to do is set up a
simple tracking beacon.”

“There used to be a whole museum filled with
samples on Earth. It was built after the 2052 mission. But all of
that was destroyed in the anti-Jupiter terrorist bombing of
2087.”