Greegs & Ladders Read online

  Reg consulted some important documents that had been placed in front of him. “Yes, except the fleet ship contained 492 crew members, all of whom perished in the crash. And the ghosts of whom are now inhabiting this courtroom,” he added as he pointed around at the Specters.

  “And we're not the only ones!” shouted a Specter. “Many other ships filled with crew have been lost in their suicidal adventures! I don't even think there's any ships left at this point!”

  “Yeah!” joined in another Specter. “We're only a small percentage of the lost Obotron crew. Many of the dead could not be here, for the manner in which they perished left them in a suspended state of eternal limbo without any hopes of achieving Spectral Finality.”

  “How so?” asked Reg.

  “There were some ships that got swallowed by a Galactic Gobbling Groobin. They were sent spiralling through a time-travelling wormhole into an irreversible dimensional gateway. We've never seen any Specters from those particular crew members. And a more recent devastation had an entire ship sink to the bottom of the Hroon ocean. Haven't seen any Specters turn up from that ship either. We suspect they're trapped down there, living out a claustrophobic existence with nothing for entertainment except their minimal collection of VHS tapes. The fact that we were supplied with movies modified from their original version says everything about the sort of barbaric working conditions we were expected to tolerate. We would attempt some sort of rescue mission for our lost brothers, if it were not for us being dead and therefore having no means of retrieving a ship from the bottom of an ocean. We can't even get anyone alive to go into the ocean for us, because everyone knows Hroon is populated by dangerous monsters.”

  “And some of the crew were actually cooked and eaten by that unholy trio!” another Specter randomly added.

  “Is this true?” asked Reg. “Did you cannibalize your crew members?”

  “Yes,” answered Rip.

  “I regret cannibalizing the crew,” I said. Indeed it wasn't one of my finer hours.

  “You're right,” said Rip. “None of the crew deserved to be cooked with such low quality standards. Who wants to be remembered as the too-chewy, over-salted dinner that somebody else had to choke down at the risk of offending the chef?”

  “No. I actually regret it. We could have gone hungry before resorting to savagery.”

  “Resorting to savagery?! But that's your nature!”

  “It was my nature,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Reg. “Except the death of the crew members is not the issue here. Everyone knows those crew members were expendable. All they had ever done was fold the towels once.”

  “Not even,” corrected Rip. “For the towels were always folded, having never left their factory sealed packages.”

  “Point taken. The real issue at hand here is the property damage done to the surface of Lincra.”

  “Uh-oh,” whispered Rip. “I was worried about this part.”

  “Someone bring me... The Report!” bellowed Reg.

  A Specter appeared, producing a stack of paper several feet high.

  “This is only an account of the most expensive damage, your honor. The report on trivial damage is being housed in our underground warehouse.”

  “We have room for that in the underground warehouse?” asked Reg incredulously.

  “No,” your honor. “We were forced to extend the warehouse into a virtual higher-dimensional plain, one of the ones capable of bypassing the standard laws of physics by existing within spatially infinite parameters.”

  “I see,” lied Reg. He was confused. The last paragraph had been translated to read “We made more room by combining science and magic!” Reg had been left cold by this translation. To begin with, the word 'combining' had a syllable more than his usual maximum preference of two. There was also the disturbing presence of the word 'science,' which suggested far too many intelligible subjects. Reg told the Translator to dumb things down a few times until finally the last paragraph merely read “Magic!” He was pleased with this all-encompassing explanation of how the crowded warehouse had been able to store such a detailed damage report.

  Reg consulted the damage report for several minutes, during which he was brought a new plate of Crabbit meat. He was also brought a fresh glass of sulphuric acid. Rip backed his chair away, not wishing to undergo any more third degree burns should Reg suddenly have a violent outburst.

  “Hmm,” began Reg, “it seems the ship struck the planet in a way that maximized the potential amount of damage. The rapid speed of the plummeting ship alone ensured it would not have even slowed down until it had crashed through at least ten subterranean layers, and yet it perfectly fell into the Master Ladder Tunnel, allowing the ship to chaotically free-fall until it collided with the fiery core. Many layers were destroyed. Considerable damage was done to Subterranean 12, the Layer Where Nothing is Done Except For Cutting Onions. The entire surface of Layer 12 disintegrated when a breach was caused in the conjoining Layer of Uncontrollable Highly Explosive Things. Chunks of onion were scattered all over the planet.”

  “So?” argued Rip. “It’s just a bunch of onions! Did anyone die because of these onions?”

  “179 trillion creatures. The explosion of onions caused so many beings to cry that collectively their tears made up a great washing flood that swept through the planet. A big-budget disaster film is still in production. I believe the working title is: The Great Flood of Tears: A Musical Chronicle into the Devastation of Lincra.

  “Will the box-office proceeds go to the families of the victims?” blurted Wilx, who had thus far remained relatively quiet.

  “1% of the gross will be donated to the families. After taxes it will be something more like .0001%. Another 2% will go the screenwriters. The rest will be spent on badly needed new leather chairs for the studio fat-cats.”

  “Why do the studio fat-cats need new chairs so badly?”

  “People tend to go through a lot of chairs when they sit around all day doing no work of any kind.”

  Reg cleared his throat. He didn’t actually have a throat to clear, but he made a wretched sound not dissimilar to what one would expect if he did.

  “Let’s hear from our first witness. I call to the stand Mr. Nickbas L. Turkey.”

  “Who’s that?” said Wilx.

  “No idea,” said Rip.

  Nickbas entered the courtroom and sat down at the witness bench.

  “Oh no, not this guy,” groaned Rip as he noticed that Nickbas was in fact the unkempt map vendor from the Lincran parking lot. The one who made maps so terrible that Rip had been compelled to rip them to shreds.

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, etc?” Reg asked Nickbas.

  Nickbas looked puzzled at the question. “Truth? What is truth?”

  “Truth is what is real. It means you will not lie.”

  “Isn’t truth and reality just my opinion or something?” asked Nickbas.

  “No. Truth is fact.”

  “I disagree. Truth is subjective. If I were to say at this very moment that I’m seeing many translucent Specters floating around the room, would you not tell me I’m crazy and hallucinating? Yet seeing the Specters is my truth. Does your inability to see the Specters change that? Are dreams not as real as waking life? Does the imagination not create what it wants to see?”

  “You are seeing the Specters,” said Reg. “This courtroom is full of them.”

  “That explains a lot,” muttered Nickbas. “I knew this stuff couldn’t be that strong.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So you witnessed the crashing of the ship into the surface of Lincra?”

  “Yes, I saw the whole thing. It was a disturbing event. Many fine maps were destroyed. I remember seeing a flood of tears and thinking it was a perfect metaphorical image created by my brain to help justify the energy vibes of the destruction.”

  “The flood was also real,” corrected Reg. “We just talked about how 179 trillion creatures
were drowned in the salty tide.”

  “Yes, that also explains a lot.”

  “Objection, your honor!” shouted Wilx. “This person has clearly been drinking the boiled juices of psychotropic Lincran leaves. Everything he says is gibberish.”

  “I’ll allow it,” said Reg, as his translator explained the word 'psychotropic' via pictorials of humanoid creatures ingesting fungus while viewing strange visions of melting colored lights. “Carry on Mr. Turkey.”

  Nickbas gathered his scattered thoughts. “I was sitting at my booth drawing up some new maps--”

  “Pfft, maps,” interrupted Rip. “Those aren’t maps.”

  “Silence!” bellowed Reg. “I’ll have you tossed into a proto-star before you can break a tooth on a Crabbit bone.”

  “No big deal, I’ve been successfully jumping proto-stars since before I was immortal.”

  “Anyway,” continued Nickbas, “I was drawing up some maps, and I saw a great shadow spread across the parking dome. I turned around and saw that a spaceship was about to crash into the planet. I tried to freeze time, but sadly my time-freezing powers were drained that afternoon. If I’d been in a stronger mental state at the time of the crash, I believe I would have been able to successfully freeze time long enough to have evacuated the entire planet before the ship crashed.”

  “You heard him!” shouted Rip. “It’s his fault, not ours! He said he could have frozen time if he’d been in a stronger mental state! Maybe if he’d visited the Layer of Transcendental Levitation more often he would have had the relaxed mental energy required to freeze time!”

  “If he’d visited that layer more often,” said Reg, “he would have drowned. The Layer of Transcendental Levitation was among the first areas of Lincra to be washed away by the flood of tears.”

  “Too bad.”

  Reg took a bite from his plate. “Besides, there's no actual proof as to the witness having any actual time-freezing capabilities. Perhaps a demonstration is in order?”

  “Are you eating Crabbits?” asked Nickbas, promptly avoiding the subject of his dubious time-freezing powers.

  “Yes.”

  “You do know they’re endangered right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Crabbits have a problem with cannibalism. Also someone has been hunting them to the brink of extinction.”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “You?”

  “Me.”

  “How can you be so evil?”

  “It comes involuntarily.”

  “You also know there isn’t even any nutritional value in eating Crabbits?”

  “I know. I only eat them because I collect their bones for crafting thingamabobs.”

  Nickbas looked thoroughly disgusted. He stood up and took a deep breath. He turned to face Reg. It was clear he was about to make some sort of moralistic speech. The type of speech so epically moving and grandiose that it would go down in history as the defining moment of his life. Statues of Nickbas would be carved and placed all over the galaxy, to commemorate the life of he who saved Crabbits from extinction.

  This all happens, of course, in another dimension where Nickbas is not dead by the end of the next paragraph.

  Before he could speak even a single word, Reg poured his drink over Nickbas' head. He promptly melted, being just another typical creature who reacts poorly to contact with pure sulphuric acid. He was now but a pool on the floor of the courtroom.

  “I don’t think we needed to hear any more from him,” said Reg. “Now someone sweep that up so we can continue.”

  A Specter tried to sweep up the puddled remains of Nickbas. The dustpan melted. The specter then left to get a new and impervious steel dustpan. The new dustpan also melted. The specter didn't worry about it, for at this point the puddle of acid had eaten through the floor and dripped into another courtroom below. The still dangerously volatile remains of Nickbas and the two dustpans were now the problem of someone who will not be in this novel. Maybe the sequel, though.

  “That’ll be us soon enough,” whispered Rip. “I bet you wish you had your bearded disguise now, eh?”

  “What was that?” asked Reg.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “I thought I heard something about a beard.”

  “I was just saying to this Greeg that I bet he wishes he had his bearded disguise, so he could slip out of here unnoticed before he winds up a puddle being swept off the floor.”

  “What beard is this?”

  Rip was puzzled over the sudden interest in the beard. “Oh, it’s just when we dumped this Greeg on Earth we gave him an attachable beard to disguise himself with, but he threw it out.”

  Reg frantically flipped through a bunch of files he had stored underneath his skeletal perch.

  “Aha!” he said as he produced a very old looking picture. It was cracked around the edges, with many defined fold marks as if someone had stored the photo in their wallet for a few hundred years, which they had.

  “What have you got there?” asked Rip.

  Reg showed the photo to the courtroom. “Was this the beard you had?”

  “Why, yes, that’s it.”

  Gasps of shock radiated from all around the courtroom. It seemed everyone except Rip, Wilx and I were familiar with the random image of the beard.

  “Are you sure this was the beard?” asked Reg.

  “Of course. Pretty recognizable beard, isn’t it? What’s the big deal? It’s just a piece of junk I bought off a black-market merchant.”

  “So you didn’t realize you were purchasing the Beard of Broog?”

  “The what?”

  “The Beard of Broog. One of the most revered and mystical objects you could possibly own. It grants many powers to the one that wears it.”

  “I just thought it was a costume piece,” said Rip.

  Reg produced another picture, this time of a bizarre-looking alien. “Was this the black-market merchant you got the beard off?”

  “Yes, that’s amazing! You know him too?”

  “His name is Fralgoth, the notorious intergalactic thief of voodoo-antiquities.”

  “He said his name was Thomas, the underground merchant of party pranks and other innocent joke props.”

  “He lied.”

  “Apparently.”

  “So you said the beard was thrown away?” asked Reg.

  “Why don’t you talk now?” said Rip as he turned in my direction.

  I worked up the nerve to face my old Greeg-keeper.

  “The beard was horribly itchy, so I threw it in the trash.”

  “Where did this trash end up?” asked Reg.

  “I suppose on the planet of Garbotron. All of our trash was blasted out of cannons onto the surface of Garbotron.”

  “Excellent,” said Reg. “Then I see no point in this trial continuing any longer. I find all three of you guilty of the heinous crime of crashing a ship into the surface of Lincra, causing irreparable damage to much of the planet.”

  “Not to mention the death of all those who were aboard the space-ship,” added a Specter in the background.

  “I thought we agreed you lot were expendable?”

  “Yes, your honor.”

  Reg stood up. “I hearby sentence Rip, Wilx and Krimshaw to recover the lost Beard of Broog from the planet of Garbotron. Even if it means you must dig for eternity through the rotting heaps of waste. When you find the Beard, you will deliver it to this court, or else you will be found and disposed of. We have ways of getting rid of immortals.”

  “That’s impossible!” shouted Rip. “You do realize that no creature can breathe on the surface of Garbotron!”

  “I am aware of this fact. At least you’ve got the eternity aspect on your side, if you are indeed as immortal as you claim to be. But even immortals need to breathe, don’t they?”

  “I don’t know, never tested that fact.”

  “Now you have the chance. THE COURT IS ADJOURNED! Someone get me another plate of Crabbits.”

  T
HE ENDING

  Of Beards and Revelations… but Mostly of Things

  CHAPTER 35

  On Garbotron

  Unfortunately, immortals don't need to breathe, otherwise they would only be 'immortals until something trivial like a lack of oxygen comes along and kills them' which isn't terribly immortal at all. It sure is a nice bonus though, breathing. The last thing I remember is seeing the noxious green vapours surrounding Garbotron from 8 light years away, immediately before we were sedated by some faction of Kroonum officers and blasted toward the aforementioned noxious green vapours. We were awoken quickly after crash landing upon the surface of Garbotron. The Trintaniamite Clorin-Phrasfate enforced space pod melted immediately from the horrific fumes encased in the 'atmosphere' of the rubbish heap of a planet. Essentially, we suffered the immense pain anyone else would upon entering the Garbotron atmosphere, without the luxury of having the heinous scent and toxicity instantly killing us. Instead we writhed and wriggled and gasped and choked and vomited and cried and urinated and, upon realizing our tears and vomit and urine were the closest thing to fresh liquid on the planet, we began collecting it like raindrops in the Sahara and trying to get it back into the wretched dust bags our bodies were becoming. When I say we, I really mean me. At the time I assumed we were all going through the same ordeal. We weren't. After what seemed like another 15, 000 HL's of pain and suffering my eyes and organs and body finally adjusted to the horrific surroundings and I was able to see and hear and do what could only be described as 'breathe' the soupy, filthy, disgusting 'air'. Rip and Wilx were nowhere to be seen. I swam through a lake of feces. I climbed a mountainous range of assorted, useless and flimsy plastic things labelled 'made in china'. I charted a path through razor sharp ravines of pointy rocket ships. Suddenly, emerging from an intricate cave and crater system created by cannon blasts, I saw what I was certain must be the new dwellings of Rip and Wilx. Miraculously, amongst all of the filth and rubbish and refuse, there was a swath, an impressively large swath at that, of clean and organized terrain. Tiny, miniscule bins with wheels had been crafted around the perimeters of the area. Each bin was meticulously sorted by classifications scribbled in impossibly too small to read handwriting. The arrangement was simply, astonishingly, perfect. If ever a creature were to be dumped upon this planet and dedicate their existence to cleaning the place up, this was the way to do it. But not a creature could be seen. I gingerly weaved my way through the dense, bin based perimeter and stepped foot on the first patch of clean ground I had seen since arriving on this horrible, forgotten waste dump of a planet.