Greegs & Ladders Read online

  “I’m going to the study room to work on my language,” announced Krimshaw randomly. In actuality he was hoping to find something in one of his books about this supposed Greeg planet.

  “No thanks,” said Rip, still entranced by the confusion of the charts and thinking drinks had just been offered.

  “The brakes don’t work on number 3,” burbled Wilx, believing Krimshaw had just announced he was going to ride a sonic-shuttle through a Proto-star, one of more dangerous things you can do in life, brakes or not. Sonic-shuttles go so fast you can drive one directly through the centre of a Proto-star while only suffering severe flesh burns on 20% of your body. However if your trajectory is off by even the slightest of increments you’ll suffer 100% severe flesh burns.

  Wilx had designed a study room at the end of the ship's main corridor. It contained a plethora of strange books which no mortal creature could ever hope to finish reading in one lifetime. No doubt it was one of those collections designed to show off how much reading a person does, or at least how much reading they intend to get around to some day, but probably won't. Krimshaw grabbed an interesting looking book entitled Very Rare Planets. He sat down at the desk and flicked on the laser-lamp. The wasteful energy consumption of the outdated laser-lamp was being supplied directly from the ship’s tank of liquefied Investment Bankers. Krimshaw had no idea the lives of so many useless organisms had been given up for the purpose of lighting this room. He was fond of the lamp nonetheless.

  Krimshaw flipped to the index of Very Rare Planets. He skimmed to the ‘G’ Section. He looked for Greeg. There was a listing for Grebular, the shape-shifting planet, and there was also a listing for Grelk, the planet made of tar pits, but there was no mention of Greegs. Krimshaw thought surely this book would contain the answers he sought. He was frustrated to learn otherwise. He marched back to the main bridge, bringing the book with him.

  “Look at this book,” he said to Rip and Wilx, who were both busily enthralled by the sight of a Proto-star encroaching on their ship, or rather, their ship encroaching on a Proto-star, being that the ship was moving and the Proto-star wasn’t.

  “What’s that?” asked Krimshaw.

  “Just a Proto-star,” said Wilx. “We have to not go through it, or else we’ll probably be melted. We’re getting dangerously close. Rip and I have been busy discussing which direction would be the best to pass around.”

  “Just pick any direction,” suggested Krimshaw.

  “It’s not that easy,” said Rip. “The total freedom of directional choice while in space is enough to freeze anyone in their tracks.”

  “Never mind that for now,” said Wilx, spinning his chair so that he was no longer facing the impending doom. “What’s this book you’ve discovered?”

  “It’s called Very Rare Planets. I thought it would help us find that Greeg planet, but there seems to be no mention of Greegs in the entire thing.”

  The eyes of Wilx lit up like the brilliant luminescence of the dangerously close proto-star. “You’ve found a copy of Very Rare Planets?” he asked excitedly.

  “Is that a good thing?” asked Krimshaw.

  “That book has directions to planets that the ships database has never even heard of. I’ve been looking for a copy for a long time.”

  “What, of that book?” asked Rip. “I found that in a gutter somewhere. Only kept it all this time because there's a blurb about me.”

  “There's a blurb about you?” asked Wilx. “Yeah right.”

  “It’s on page 343.”

  Krimshaw flipped to page 343. He saw a picture of a rare planet known as Pluto. He read the article about the boring planet.

  “What’s so rare about Pluto?” asked Krimshaw. “And I don’t see anything about you in here.”

  Rip pointed to the blurb hiding in fine print at the bottom corner of the page. “Read it,” he said.

  Krimshaw produced a small magnifying glass and proceeded to read the blurb. “Pluto is considered a rare planet because of all the planets that have been visited by Dr. Rip T. Brash, it is the only one in which during his visitation he did not place an outlandish bet.”

  “It’s true,” confirmed Rip.

  “What gives? Why no betting on Pluto?” asked Wilx.

  “Nothing good to bet on. It’s just that boring of a planet. The intelligent species from that star system even stopped calling Pluto a planet. It was removed from the zodiac charts and banned from the school curriculum.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “Is it?”

  Wilx and Dr. Rip shifted their focus back to the encroaching proto-star and the dilemma involved with not passing through it. Krimshaw continued flipping through Very Rare Planets.

  “Didn’t you say this Greeg planet was supposed to be somewhere in the 59 sunned district of Herb?”

  “Yeah,” said Wilx, “have you found something?”

  “There’s a passing reference here of a planet in the 59 sunned district of Herb that has what they call an unexpected creature for its dominant species. That sounds like what we’re looking for. The planet is called Hroon. It is water-based and is apparently the fourth most perfect sphere in existence.”

  “No, that couldn’t be right,” said Rip. “This Greeg planet is supposed to be an unshapely thing made up of random conglomerations.”

  “We should check it out anyway,” suggested Krimshaw. “It puts us in the sunned district of Herb. Maybe the creatures of Hroon can direct us to the Greeg planet.”

  “I suppose that isn’t a bad plan,” agreed Wilx.

  Rip pointed at the window. “I must remind everyone of the encroaching proto-star.”

  “Oh, yeah. Take a left,” said Wilx.

  A left was taken. The fleet of ships veered away from the deadly proto-star. The movement of the entire fleet was controlled solely by the guidance system of the Obotron 1, the finest ship of the fleet and also the ship on which our characters resided. Wilx set course for the planet Hroon. Being that the guidance system of Obotron 1 was the guidance system that Krimshaw had irreparably damaged, the fleet was only on a vague-level course with Hroon, which meant they would one day probably arrive, but only after experiencing an unforeseeable number of ill-fated shortcuts.

  CHAPTER 18

  Aimlessly Bumbling Through Space and Time

  with an Irreparably Damaged Guidance System

  Wilx and Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third, being a pair of well-seasoned space and time travellers, were quite used to unforeseeable numbers of ill-fated shortcuts. In fact, if one were to describe their lives, if they had tombstones or obituaries like you after they died, they would almost certainly read:

  “Here lies/R.I.P. Wilx/Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third… his/her/its life was an unforeseeable number of ill-fated shortcuts.”

  ‘Shortcuts’ is a very misleading term though. Long periods of painfully boring floating would be much more accurate. When aimlessly bumbling through space and time with a guidance system that’s been irreparably damaged by a reformed Greeg with violent Greeg tendencies bubbling just below the surface, one will spend the majority of the time doing nothing. Seeing nothing. Feeling nothing. Anticipating nothing. Nothing, after all, is what most of this Universe is. It is what most of everything is. Nothing.

  Seasoned space and time travellers have developed multiple ways to cope with this. Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third continued building up his tolerance for exotic intoxicants and losing tremendous bets to Wilx, who passed his time writing and reading about every species that has ever existed in the cosmos.

  Krimshaw had no such pastimes to pass the time… or the space. He chose a different method. He went completely insane. He snapped. He flipped. He destroyed a lot of things. He was detained and locked in a Greeg Cage that Rip used for exotic dancers and space whores he wished to especially degrade. Krimshaw felt comfortable here and smashed his face against the bars.

  “Better make sure that Jebidiah fellow never sees this relapse,” said Rip.

  “Died ye
sterday,” said Wilx, not bothering to look up from the latest issue of Creepy Crawly Telepathic Worm-like Flying Fish That Start Off Rather Small but Grow to be Over 600 Meters Tall and Several Thousand Kilometers Long, Grow Feathers and Scales in Weird Patchy Clumps all Over Their Body, Sprout Extra Limbs Which Serve No Purpose and then Try to Colonize Nearby Solar Systems With Astoundingly Innovative Technology and Weaponry That’s Never Been Seen Anywhere Else and Never Will be Seen Again, Only to Have a Sudden Shift In Consciousness and Nostalgia Late in Life, Leave the Battle Grounds and Return to Mate and Raise Young Then Sit Around Talking About How Easily They Could Have Smashed Whatever Hapless and Peaceful Civilization They Happened to Wage War on This Particular Generation.

  This was a fairly average sized title for an Astrospeciology publication. With infinite physical Universes expanding exponentially larger and smaller in a perpetual never-ending sea of possibilities, one had to be pretty specific when classifying all of the species out there. One could never classify something so impossibly infinite to comprehend of course, but one could try. And several did.

  Wilx was reading an interesting story about how all of the surrounding, and once peaceful civilizations now had a massive amount of mind-blowing combat technology that was continuously being abandoned by the Creepy Crawly Telepathic Worm-like Flying Fish in their old age. These once peaceful and simple civilizations had been so savagely and nonsensically brought to the brink of extinction that they now harboured quite a bit of anger and vengeance they otherwise never would have. They also never would have had the ability to communicate with their neighbouring victims, except that all of them now had Telepathic Worm-like Flying Fish Technology, and it was only a matter of time before they all had a chat and realized this wasn’t an isolated incident, united in coalition and waged savage retaliatory hostilities against the Flying Fish’s home planet. The writer was of the opinion that this was just the natural course of events with these creatures and this would somehow eventually lead to the outlying civilizations becoming peaceful again, all of the weapons being destroyed, the Flying Fish being brought nearly to extinction, the outlying civilizations returning to their respective home planets and things starting all over again in a cyclical fashion. This tended to be the way things played out in most universes; they escalated to fevered and catastrophic levels, and then started all over again with a clean slate.

  Wilx somewhat agreed, although he was fairly certain that it was only a matter of time and space before the nearby Solar System Swallowing Swatch he’d read about in the latest issue of Planet Eaters, Solar System Swallowers and Galactic Gobblers would simply inhale the whole lot of them.

  “Good Riddance,” said Wilx aloud, entirely unimpressed with the whole ordeal. He put down his magazine and turned to Rip. “Now, let’s talk about this Greeg.”

  “Former Greeg,” corrected Rip.

  “Well, we’ve obviously still got a lot of work to do before we can call him that. But maybe this isn’t such a bad thing.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, if he’s still prone to Greegian outbursts maybe that could come in handy when we do reach the Greeg planet.”

  “So you really do think it exists?”

  “It couldn’t be any more clear to me that not only does it exist, but that once our little friend sees it and understands who he is and what we’ve done to him, we could very well learn more than anyone has ever learned about Greegs, ever.”

  “A bold statement.”

  “Care to wager?”

  Dr. Rip T. Brash was faced with a predicament he’d never encountered. He had nothing left to wager. Wilx now owned everything he had, ever did have in the past and ever would have in the future. Confused and shaken, Rip looked desperately for a drink. Not a drop to be found. Rip went to his back-up plan. He fumbled with the remote control to bring up the crate-filled liquor ship and sent it flying towards the Obotron 1. Salivating and panting like a dog, pressed up against the glass and staring out at the ship, Rip saw the most horrifying thing he’d seen in his entire life. IBP radicals somehow had located the fleet and set up one of their signature space blockades. In typical radical fashion, an IBP signature space blockade wasn’t a very well thought out endeavour. When you consider these were creatures that have devoted their life to preserving the most useless organism ever to exist, you can’t expect top quality results. This IBP space blockade consisted of locating the Obotron liquor supply ship, well known as the lifeblood of Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third, and when it was called up to the Obotron 1, materializing several thousand ships in front of it full of IBP protesters holding up hand drawn signs to the glass windows and spelling a message with the ships.

  The message was this:

  NO

  The liquor supply ship being full of nothing other than liquor, the IBP radical’s various futile messages reached precisely no one. Then, and here’s the crazy part, then they lit all their ships on fire. The logic being that liquor was flammable and would be destroyed. This is true, and it was destroyed. Mission Accomplished. What else is true is that every single IBP protester was also quite flammable and they too were destroyed. Hundreds of Millions of dead protesters… just to piss off an eccentric alcoholic doofus. What is also true is that the sheer amount of investment bankers required to fuel on stand-by and then materialize the IBP blockade into the ‘No’ formation at precisely that time, was staggeringly more than the entire Obotron 7 fleet could ever consume… ever. It was a curious universal fact that every protestor was inevitably just as, if not more, guilty than what or whoever it was that they were protesting. This is discussed in detail in Karl Von Marxschenhowzer’s infamous “Hypocrisy Inaction: The Plight of the Pointless Protester.”

  Wilx happened to be reading Hypocrisy Inaction: The Plight of the Pointless Protester, as Dr. Rip T. Brash the Third saw his precious liquor supply explode and then evaporate. Rip then did something he hadn’t done for awhile. He went completely insane.

  CHAPTER 19

  the Cycle of Insanity Finally Gives Way to a Bustling Solar System

  Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third awoke in a Greeg cage. He assumed this meant he’d had a damned fine night of drunken sex with a space whore and treated her miserably. He looked out and saw Krimshaw and Wilx staring at him and chatting and remembered this was not the case. He was painfully sober and not remotely hungover. None of his genitals stung like anything. He shook the bars of the cage in futility and screamed.

  “What is the meaning of this? What have I done to deserve this?!”

  “Aside from acting like a common Greeg and causing irreparable damage to the ship's already irreparably damaged guidance system and urinating all over the miniscule remaining food supply… nothing,” retorted Wilx.

  Krimshaw laughed hysterically, thoroughly enjoying mocking Rip and being out of the cage. Seeing how pleasant it was to mock the one in the Greeg cage, and not be the one being mocked in the Greeg cage.

  This pattern would continue for a long time, as the trio floated aimlessly through space. Wilx was next in the Greeg cage after he flipped out on Krimshaw for using his latest issue of Flappy and Droopy Skinned Blob-like Floating Jelly Monsters as toilet paper. Krimshaw thought this was a huge step in his development, which it most certainly was, considering his history of feces related slip-ups. They each took turns being confined to the Greeg cage, and causing irreparable damage to the ship and each other. This was fairly standard for any beings confined to a ship for this length of time. Most luxury fleets had a Greeg cage in them, which the owners claimed to be put there for devious sexual encounters. It was much more often used for this sort of rotating, musical chairs-esque confinement of rogue fellow travellers gone wild.

  Finally, the pattern was broken. An unexpected, unwarranted and un-requested hyperspacial jump landed the fleet smack dab in the middle of the most bustling solar system within five trillion Universes. The New York City of Solar Systems. The China of Solar Systems.

  The Kroonum System.

&
nbsp; CHAPTER 20

  Kroonum

  Kroonum is a blue-spotted Zeta Sun that provides warmth and life for 27 planets. Not one of these planets is mellow or uninhabited. They all suffer major problems of overpopulation and a lack of sleep.

  If New York is the city that never sleeps, then Kroonum is the Solar System that has never even heard of sleep. There are simply too many exciting things to do to even consider the notion of falling asleep. To sleep for even the shortest amount of time while in Kroonum is to miss at least several unprecedented and historically life-changing events in galactic history. The last time someone stepped out for a nap they ended up missing the resurrection of The Beatles, as well as the 12-hour reunion concert that followed shortly thereafter. The seemingly endless show ended with a complete front-to-back rendition of Abbey Road, played against the stirring backdrop of Kroonum’s famous Whizzling-Firebeam asteroid shower (an event that is believed will only happen four times, ever). This was the third time it had happened. The person who’d stepped out for a nap was later informed of the excellence of The Beatles, and was also told he would do best not to miss the next Whizzling-Firebeam asteroid shower. He ended up missing it on account of being dead, as the fourth and final asteroid shower did not occur for hundreds of years (or 89,126.3 zillion Schmickian years, if you want to get precise in the matter).

  “Where are we?” asked Rip.

  Wilx looked around confusedly. “We’ve just undergone an unrequested hyperspacial jump.”

  “I know…but where exactly did we jump to?”

  “I’m trying to figure that out,” said Wilx as he scrambled through the star charts. “Look over there…I see a planet missing its top half. Could that be the legendary Clug Raddo?”