Greegs & Ladders Read online

  “Not just any investment bankers!” cried out Rip in his defence. “The most diabolically inter-spliced species of investment bankers ever devised! I isolated strains from the genome of Torniolic Speculation Gnomes, sprinkled in the potent and unrivalled Remorselessness and Lack of Care for Consequences DNA from the Ruthless Ruddigerian Financing Board, and countless other infinitely impressive bits of investment banking biology. Then I found a simple little hairy beast and injected it with the formula.”

  “What possible bet could involve such diabolical and pointless activities?”

  “Well that much even we don’t quite know,” said Wilx, punching information into his gigantic and confusing looking computing machine, which did all sorts of things other than computing, like spitting out dissolvable mind history tablets… which it did as Wilx stroked a large red button emphatically. “Here, eat this.”

  “What are they?” asked Krimshaw and Rip.

  “Dissolvable mind history tablets.”

  “What do they do?” asked Rip and Krimshaw.

  “Instantly bring us all up to speed on the information I just procured regarding the details of Rip’s bet. Rather than research extensively and explain my findings to all of you, I simply encrypted the necessary information from The Complete and Unabridged Historical Records of All Things, into this tiny tablet which, once dissolved in our mouths, will send the information to our respective brains without all your annoying questions making it take forever for you to understand.

  “That sounds like a splendid way to avoid endless and painfully detailed explanations and move on with things.”

  “It sure is.”

  The trio swallowed the pills. Krimshaw saw and processed a full BBC Documentary series worth of information instantly and was shocked and awed… awed, and then shocked. A quick look around at the other two showed they were fairly shocked as well, but not nearly as awed as Krimshaw. They were more amused by the details of events they had buried under a pile of other equally insane events in their memory banks.

  “Let’s compare our unique takes on the information received to make sure we’re all on the same page,” suggested Wilx. “It appears to me that Rip bet… er, someone, that he could hop into a wormhole, pop out in a random solar system, refrain from betting on the furthest planet from the sun, then cultivate a species of investment bankers on the one planet capable of sustaining life. He insisted that investment bankers were not only a great source of fuel, but that if unchecked by another more intelligent species, they would take over and dominate every square inch of the surface of the planet, destroying and polluting everything in sight, but leaving a fair amount of tasty fish buried deep in the ocean, untainted by the savage recklessness of the Investment Bankers. Then he would return from his time travels to reunite with… er, someone, and one day him and… er, someone, would randomly stumble out of a sideways time travelling worm hole in desperate need of both investment bankers and fish with a fully reformed Greeg named Krimshaw.”

  “So just to recap,” said Krimshaw, “Basically Rip destroyed the potential of a decent planet and all of its decent life forms to evolve naturally by introducing this savagely over aggressive population of Investment Bankers… and he won this horrific bet and that’s why there’s a perfect gas station waiting for us in this solar system as we emerge from a time travelling worm hole?” asked Krimshaw, for the first time seeing Rip for what he was; a reckless, pathological maniac.

  “More or less,” said Wilx.

  “That’s pretty much what I got,” said Rip. “Except that the anonymous person I made this preposterous bet with was you Wilx.”

  “Dammit, you blew my cover!”

  “How could you possibly not remember all of this?” said Krimshaw, in a way that implied not remembering this would indicate insanity like this happens all the time. “Does insanity like this happen all the time to you two or what?”

  “Well we didn’t actually know it had happened until just now, why else would we bet on it?” Wilx said calmly. “At the time, I was likely certain we would never see the planet again, and besides, there's a very good chance the incident and the bet hadn’t actually happened until we came out of the wormhole. It just means we've travelled sideways in time.”

  “What?”

  “Very common phenomenon. Happens all the time. Look, we flew into a time travelling worm hole, and when we emerged a series of completely incomprehensible coincidences occurred. That’s what tipped me off that it was time for some mind history tablets. It’s very simple, with well seasoned time travellers like me and Rip always recklessly jumping through hyperspace, the Universe couldn’t possibly make sense of all the reckless and potentially catastrophic things that well seasoned time travellers like us do, namely setting off destructive and nonsensical chains of events rippling throughout space and time… generally screwing things up for everything and everybody. So Universes, being clever and rather flexible things, will simply alter events in the past and present, re-aligning themselves so they can make sense of things.”

  “Completely lost.”

  “When we first met you and picked you up in the Greeg cage, oh by the way you were a Greeg before, an especially dumb and savage one too…”

  “I was a what?!”

  “Please, let me finish. So when Rip made his bet about turning you into a normal, intelligent being and all that other jazz that led us up to this point, he and I had never even remotely made a bet involving genetic splicing and investment bankers and fish. However, when we shot through the time travelling worm hole, the only possible way for the Universe to make any sense of us arriving here was if we had made such a bet, and were approaching such a planetary gas station. Without such constant re-alignments of reality, things would never make any sense in any of the Universes. It’s just the way things are.”

  “I see,” said Krimshaw, only barely comprehending the significance of all of these nuggets of information. “So I was a Greeg at some time is what you’re saying? That’s what those officials were after before we hyper-jumped into the maze? That’s what those spidery creatures were really angry about? I’m nothing but a good for nothing Greeg that you taught how to read and behave somewhat normally just so this jackass could win a bet, which it turns out was just a minor piece of a much larger and more confusing bet, that never actually happened until we just recently shot out of a worm hole, because the Universe doesn’t like to be confused?”

  “Close enough,” said Wilx.

  “Oh look we’re here!” said Rip, failing to change the subject since they were quite clearly just floating past Neptune. Realizing it didn’t remotely work, he tried a different tactic. “Well, hey, look pal we still like you just the same… friend.”

  “You don’t like me all, I’m not your friend, you just used me in a bet.”

  “I use everyone in a bet, it’s kind of what I do.”

  “That doesn’t make it okay!”

  “Sure it does!”

  “Alright you two, that’s enough, cut it out, etc.” interceded Wilx. “The important thing here is that the bet now exists, and Rip has won it, which changes things around here quite a bit.”

  “Damn straight it does,” exclaimed Rip. “This is my fleet again, and I’ve got all sorts of other belongings and possessions back in my gambling arsenal. I’m back baby!”

  As the information overloaded Krimshaw’s brain, he reeled and collapsed into a heap, slipping into unconsciousness. The telescreen flickered.

  “Congrats on regaining control of the fleet Doc. We’ve always liked you more than that Astro-whatever-the-who-cares-ologist sidekick… you usually send us on much wilder and unpredictable adventures.”

  “I bet you every one of my superfluous internal organs you can’t fly into the giant rings of that planet and survive,” said Rip, unable to contain the ability to make bets again.

  “You’re on boss,” happily replied the soon-to-be-dead, self-appointed leader of Obotron 4, Krimshaw’s last memory
was the cheer erupting from Rip as the ship exploded immediately upon coming in contact with the rings of Saturn. Krimshaw passed out.

  CHAPTER 26

  Recklessly Abandoned

  When he awoke, Krimshaw was not on a space ship at all, he was on a park bench on the planet Earth with a piece of paper stuck in his beard. He didn’t have a beard, quickly remembered this and ripped off the fake beard fastened to his face. He read the note:

  We popped by to fuel up the space ships.

  Ate some tasty fish. Left you behind.

  Might be back some time. Do not, under

  any circumstances, remove your beard.

  “Hey there stranger, have I got a great deal for you! Invest now and in five years you’ll double, no, triple, no scratch that, triduple your money! Is triduple a word? For you it is! Oh dear god, what happened to your face?”

  Somehow, Krimshaw instinctively knew that this man was the most useless organism that could ever exist. He promptly ate him. This didn’t go over well with some folks in blue uniforms, who promptly threw our friend Krimshaw in a jail cell.

  ***

  There’s not much point in keeping up the illusion that I am not Krimshaw, so let’s just get on with it and have the big reveal.

  I am Krimshaw.

  There, now it’s official. Of course, I am not really Krimshaw, as that is just a name made up by a madman in order to win one of a series of ludicrous bets. I have no real name. At this point in the story, I just know that I was once a Greeg who had travelled sideways in time and that Universes were capable of shifting around like a Rubik’s cube, changing the way things had occurred so it could make sense of them. Fresh with this knowledge having knocked me unconscious, I awoke on a park bench and devoured an investment banker. Then I was thrown in prison. I did not realize at the time that the people of Earth treated their investment bankers with such reverence. In the rest of the Universe, it is common knowledge that investment bankers are the most worthless organisms ever to exist, so I saw no reason for me to refrain from snacking on one. In fact, I distinctly remembered reading in Gary Oldenhammers' Scrounging for Grub in 11 Trillion Solar Systems: “Important! If the vast amount of pointless energy stored in even a single investment banker can fuel your spaceship, it can surely provide you with necessary sustenance in a pinch.” This would be the first of many times my knowledge, research and understanding would get me in trouble on Earth. It would be the first of many times I would be incarcerated, put on trial, questioned, injured. My initial time on Earth could very well be described as:

  The People of Earth VS. The Former Greeg Formerly Known as Krimshaw, (Formerly Known as Zook.)

  But no one would ever bother describing such things.

  I was asked a lot of questions by people who were not prepared to accept the very honest answers I had for them. First by the police officers who arrested me, then by the judge who prosecuted me; then the senate, the President, and finally various talk show hosts and tabloid magazines. In that order. That is, apparently, the hierarchy of human importance. You know you’ve really got something interesting if the talk shows and tabloid magazines are interested. These various questioning sessions often ended up with me turning the tables on my various interrogators, and them not having good answers for me.

  One particular Q&A in the court room went like this:

  JUDGE: You cannot simply go about eating people.

  ME: It was just an investment banker.

  JUDGE: His occupation does not matter, in the United States eating people is strictly forbidden.

  ME: What is the United States?

  JUDGE: A country.

  ME: What’s that?

  JUDGE: A sovereign union of states, what are you an alien?

  ME: What’s an alien?

  JUDGE: Someone not from Earth.

  ME: Oh yes, that’s me. I’m not from here.

  JUDGE: Yes you are! There is no such thing as aliens!

  ME: Then why did you bring them up?

  JUDGE: Silence!

  ME: So what were those countries you spoke of?

  JUDGE: Countries are… countries you idiot! Sections of land that our forefathers fought and died for so that we could have them.

  ME: They sound stupid.

  JUDGE: Countries are not on trial here mister, your cannibalism is!

  I soon realized it was simply not possible for you human beings to accept that I was not a person or that all of the silly things you believe are in fact quite stupid. When faced with a barrage of overwhelming proof and logic, the automatic response of any human is to become violently angry. They will conjure up all sorts of indignant, ridiculous arguments to justify and defend their outdated beliefs. It is much easier for humans to defend what they know, then entertain for a minute what they do not. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to endure much of this. Because I was born and raised on a planet with such a massive orbit, I live quite a bit longer than the average human. Okay, a lot longer. So while the judge thought he had really stuck it to me with his sentence of ‘life in prison’ – the reality was that I quite enjoyed being able to kick back for the length of a human lifetime, get interviewed a lot, tell people how stupid they were, write some bestselling books, and become a sort of cult figure. In the first human lifetime, or HL (a unit of time I invented, measuring approximately 80 years) that I was on Earth, I was able to read every book ever written by a human, and graced the cover of every magazine there was. Not a lot of good books written by people, and the only decent ones were dismissed as fantasy, science fiction, comedy or satire. The best ones contained elements of all of these. The most ridiculous ones were by far the most popular and most revered. These tended to be ones that unequivocally reinforced stupid human beliefs. They were the literary equivalent of patting themselves on the back and saying “See, I told you we were right.” They were never right.

  One thing I found quite amusing was a pattern of behaviour I like to call 'the circle of idiocy.' Despite the fact that every generation loves to laugh at how primitive their ancestors are with one hand, at the same time, they continue to behave exactly the same way and never learned any lessons from the past. To me, it was kind of like watching someone point and laugh at another for walking into a tar pit and drowning; then proceeding to walk right after them into the same tar pit as yet another pointed and laughed at the two of them, and so on, and so on. The circle of idiocy continues.

  No matter, not my species. When it became obvious that I wasn’t ageing, and they couldn’t kill me, there was a lot of discussion as to what should be done. They tried to kill me many times rather unsuccessfully, thanks to the evasive survival techniques I had learned from numerous readings of Cannibalizing Your Crew After Emerging From a Time Portal: How to End Up Eating Dinner Rather than Becoming It.

  Evidently, no conclusion could be reached, so they decided to release me. Turns out, their fears were unfounded, as nobody really cared. By the time another half HL had passed I might as well have never come to Earth. Anyone who talked of me like I actually existed was thoroughly mocked. The story about the cannibal Alien was a stupid myth, and only nutty fringe drug addicts believed a word of it. Many movies were made, and I entered into folklore along with Vampires, Dragons, Werewolves and Zombies... all of which I now can only assume must have been alien visitors themselves. Masks were circulated with my face, and were a pretty popular little Halloween seller for a few seasons, but then were quickly relegated to thrift stores. If you tried to tell people 150 years after I came to Earth about the massive unexplained disappearance of investment bankers and fish that occurred, they would most likely tell you it never happened. Some of the homeless folks would give you an accurate description of what transpired, but they were ignored completely and treated with the utmost disdain. I never could understand the way humans treated the homeless. The very fact that there was homeless people is baffling, when you consider the vast amount of unused hotel rooms, and rich people owning multiple properties, cottages, e
tc. The homeless were also some of the only people able to fully understand and listen to the facts I presented to them about the universe and humankind. A lot of them had even figured out much of the truth on their own! Truly remarkable creatures, completely misunderstood and unnecessarily cast aside by much more ignorant, less decent individuals. So quick was the rest of mankind eager to forget and suppress the ramifications of my arrival, that if you asked people 15 years after Rip and Wilx liquefied over three million investment bankers and nearly obliterated the supply of ocean dwelling fish, the humans had mostly invented various “Scientific Explanations.”

  “Scientific Explanations” are things that humans like to use when something doesn’t make sense to them. What it translates roughly as is “We don’t like that thing that just happened, so this is what happened instead.” It is much easier for them to accept this new, completely made up explanation, rather than try to wrap their heads around something new. They put their unwrapped heads down and kept making their investment bankers money. Investment Bankers were no longer merely the covert rulers of mankind. They were now the blatant and unquestioned dictators of the species. In a staggering series of events, their callous actions had bankrupted every country and government on the planet, and yet through their control of information and news, they were easily able to convince everyone that they were the only ones who could lead people out of the mess they had created. Pretty much everyone knew there was something decidedly evil and wrong with this concept, but they couldn't quite articulate it. For fear of becoming homeless, they kept their criticisms to themselves and did what the Investment Bankers told 'em to.

  At first I was frustrated, and delusional. I thought I could actually get people to see the errors in their ways. It was an impossible task. Eventually, I just started telling people the truth and yelling at them. This was how I became a very successful stand-up comedian... and homeless. The audience thought I was playing a character of an alien who had been trapped on Earth for a long time and was fed up with things. Of course, I was really just an alien trapped on Earth for a long time who was fed up with things. They laughed and laughed as I shouted and yelled at them. I invented a whole new genre of comedy. It was dubbed Alien Impersonations, and sometimes Human Critics. Lots of college kids who had eaten magic mushrooms and had long hair got into it, but it was wholly dismissed as pointless and counterproductive by anyone who made lots of money. I would find out the longer I stayed on Earth that Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies were all in fact permanent residents of the orb. They would pop up and slink away as they saw fit, depending on world events and how well they figured they could blend into the background. Dragons, on the other hand, said 'fuck this' and flapped off to other solar systems. This world was beneath them.