Greegs & Ladders (22 page)

“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.”

Of Beards and
Revelations… but Mostly of Things

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.

“No! No!
Mustn't enter the oviform from here!” Squeaked the most obnoxiously
tiny, shrill and high pitched voice imaginable. “There is no
cleansing station here! This isn't a formal entrance. Mustn't enter
the oviform from here! No! No! Go back and around. Back and around
you must go! Mustn't enter the Oviform from here!”

“H-hello?” I
spun my head around searching for the source of this shrieking
vocalization. “Who are you? Where are you? What are you?”

“Get back! Get
back outside of the oviform. I've worked far too long and hard for
this. You're tracking outside contaminants into the sacred area.
Back I say!”

I felt a small
tickle inside my left ear and reached my finger in to give it a
scratch.

“STOP!”
Shrieked the voice at an unbearable level of decibels, bringing me
cringing to my knees.

“One quick
question,” I gasped, “have I gone completely insane?”

“No you
imbecile, you just weren't very smart to begin with. Now get back
outside the Oviform and I'll explain everything.”

“Okay.”

I got back
outside of what I assumed could be this 'oviform' the squeaky,
mysterious voice in my left ear kept going on about.

“Now move
counterclockwise... No! The other way you twit!”

“I thought you
said you would explain everything once I got outside of the
Oviform.”

“And that's
exactly the kind of instant gratification and self-obsessed
stupidity that leads a species to produce a never-ending pile of
garbage and dump it on an innocent planet like this. Keep moving
until you reach the cleansing station, we'll clean you up and then
I can fill you in on the details you seek at the epicenter
dome.”