Greegs & Ladders Read online

  “Another thing about the specimen collector,” I said, “is that he invented the Crammington Krish Fortini.”

  “He did not!” shouted Rip belligerently.

  “Everyone knows that George the Robot Technician invented the CKF,” concurred Wilx.

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “Jorf writes about how the drink was stolen by George.”

  “Who’s Jorf?”

  “The guy who wrote the journal. The oblivious dope.”

  Wilx and I sat quietly while trying to deal with the strangeness of existence. Rip went a little loud and crazy.

  “Fully knowing how things came to be is never a good thing,” he said.

  CHAPTER 32

  Suddenly Getting in a Lot of Trouble for Something that Happened a Very Long Time Ago

  “You are under arrest for the wreckless crashing of a fuel-less ship of Obotron crew members into the surface of the planet Lincra, the most populated and popular planet in existence,” blared the megaphone from the suddenly approaching battalion of the Kroonum Civility, Order and Peace Upkeep and Maintenance Division - Deltron Force Strike 9, sporting their spanking new crest and logo, freshly dubbed formal and binding by the Council of Eleven and a Half Thousand Different Colored Robes in the most recent hammering out of the Treaty of Manderbatt. “You’re sure that’s them then?” blared the loudspeaker to someone inside the ship, clearly failing to turn off said loudspeaker.

  “Oh yes, we’re sure,” grumbled thousands of eerie and ghost-like voices.

  “Right, don’t try anything tricky like last time, you’re going in for a hearing, then an indictment, then another hearing, then a formal reading of the latest version of the Treaty of Manderbatt, any new suggestions more than welcome, then a cross hearing, then a formal hearing, then a trial, then a verdict, then a mandatory sentencing, then an even more mandatory re-evaluation of said sentencing, then a mistrial, then a re-trial, then a re-assessment of the whole process under the newest revisions to the Treaty of Manderbatt, then lunch, for us of course, not you; then a grueling 14 day re-enactment of the whole ordeal so far for Kroonum Zoo Legal Wars – Series 19987.34 Part 2, then probably an all out war with those imbecilic crooks over on Persheron 8 and innumerable opportunities for you to escape without serving any actual punishment. But make no mistake, escape again… and you will be caught… again!”

  “Well I’d say it sounds like going through the legal system is punishment enough,” suggested Rip.

  “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.

  CHAPTER 33

  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 were
n’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!”

  “Wait a minute, are you implying that all of this is happening so that you can write a bestselling book?”

  “What else wo
uld this kind of chaos and insanity be happening for!? We’ve got some really unique and unheard of things we’re going to include in just the first couple chapters that’ll really get ‘em hooked. For example, the last remaining Obotron Crew Members in our last trailing Obotron fleet ship… became Greegs! No one could have possibly predicted that! They did so at a staggeringly swift pace, without even having a home planet to reside on. Evidently, in a last ditch attempt to gain control of the fleet, several of them converted themselves into Investment Bankers so as to have an independent fuel source for the ship. Except once they saw how much quick cash could made at the expense of each other in the investment banking field, they quickly forgot all ambitions of gaining control of anything other than more things to invest in and bank on. This quickly caused a complete erosion of what little civility was left onboard the ship and before long they were as Greeged out as the next Greeg. They created Schmold via a large vat of all the evacuated disgustingness they’d collected from being hurtled through time so many times on our exploits to collect more Greegs! It was also likely a factor that the remaining ship they had all been crammed into was increasingly being overcrowded with all of the Greegs we had collected from around the many Universes… so perhaps there is something to be said for the ability of other Greegs to have an affect on non-Greegs become Greegs? We’ll have to wager on that sometime.”

  “Unbelievable,” I said. “Don’t you two have any sense of remorse or consciousness about all the horrible things you have done to all of these innocent creatures and worlds? Just to prove a few points and win a few bets and write a book about it?”

  “No, of course they don’t,” came the spooky sound of thousands of eerie ghost like creatures, seemingly infiltrating our brains and the walls at the same time. “They have no feelings at all. They recklessly destroy and kill on a whim, just to settle a bet or a wager. They care not about the consequences of their actions. This is the curse of the Immortals.”