| Chap
1.5
- Page 3 |
frangles:
Skip book 1: Writer's Bricks |
..
Skip & Skiff
Urgg & Nerds
Ed & Eagle
Xwoa Griters
Static Nish
Cliffharnger |
The following brick (continuous scene)--i.e. Writer's Bricks
/153--will be about 30 paperback-lengthed reading pages (PLP) long when
it's fully posted. You may have noticed the bricks getting much longer
since /111. This is because originally we intended each brick/scene to
be 1 PLP long, but when writing realized that some scenes would
naturally be much longer than others (like a brief scene in a film vs a
very long one). Hence, the only purpose
of the divisions to the left is to allow you to resume your place if
you don't read the entire brick in one sitting. They are not re-arrangeable
nonlinear brickfageblahblahetc pieces. /153 is a brick like any other
you've read so far, it's just very very long (a balance we'll just have
to work on).*
Also note that this brick/scene--as with all bricks/scenes--are
works in progress. Be assured any issues you might have with it
(continuity, flow, terminology, etc) are known and being worked on, but
can often take great time as Frangles requires a totally unorthodox
writing/reading/editing process than standard linear fiction (writing a certain book before tweaking another, etc.)
[*Note that that structure of bricks/scenes,
of which /153 is one like any other, will eventually be "sevthed" to
1/7 of its previous announced size. All this means is that there will
eventually be fewer bricks than previously announced, not that any
posted material will change much. Just note that this page will
eventually be called 13.153 rather than 131.153. That is, Writer's
Bricks will be Frangles book "13" rather than book "131".]
|
-- -- --
The alien entered the bar with
the look of exhaustion from a long day of executing uncooperative
humans. While Skip was sure he'd never seen a space alien before,
he somehow knew how generic it was. It was greenish, slimy, ugly,
had two small fidgety antennas atop its head, and a crude ray gun and
uniform that suggested its race had gone to space before it had evolved
sufficient weaponry and tailors.
"Ah, my worthy nemesis! We meet at last! I hope you brought
your wits and most accurate vaporization gun, for you are about to meet
your doom."
"Not today, you ugly waste of an unevolved puddle of swamp lard!
It's you who I hope has brought your wits and most accurate slime gun,
for now is the moment you will pay for the destruction of the Excalibur
and the death of my father!"
"Father? Ha! You demean my prolific skills as a
cold-blooded murderer. Need I remind you I've also eliminated
your sister, brother, mother, crew, first born, extended family on your
late father's side, the other side, and everyone you've ever known or
loved? If I die today I will die knowing your defeat is total and
complete."
"Except for your own death, old foe!"
"Ha! We shall see! En guard!"
Skip's Write or Flight mechanism suddenly accelerated into high
warp. While he might have a decent chance of reaching the door
without getting shot or vaporized, his writing career was in the same
danger if he didn't start taking some serious mental notes. A
climax dual between a mighty protagonist and his nemesis (which was
which, he wondered?) would certainly award him material to jump start
his vast and timeless frwoa about the vacuum of space beyond Earth,
especially since the frwoa's non-manifestation by the end of the day
would almost certainly result in his death anyway, and perhaps that of
the known universe. It was pretty much a no-brainer for Skip to
stay, which of course was totally inconsequential to Skip's lunge for
the door. Only when he realized no one in the bar had done the
same did he realize the plush chinchilla and toy rocket had been
reciting lines from a science fiction screenplay they'd pulled out.
Skip walked nonchalantly back to his stool, and the sitting bar alien
simply yawned and ordered a Rum and Coke. One of two youths at a
diner booth in tight, futuristic military uniforms couldn't stop
staring. Only when Skip saw a handful of action figures and a
book labeled "Wars Trek" did he realize the two were probably visiting
the time line for a Fue-fi convention. The very real-life alien
gave a subtle "urrrgmmf.." as if expecting something inexorable and
annoying from them any time soon. The excited one tapped his
buddy on the shoulder and pointed, who gaped as if laying eyes on the
greatest being in the known universe.
"Oh my god! It's a V--"
"I'm an *urgg*, youg primitive twerp. Gret your frwoas
straight. Flgurth is the most important frwoa in the entirety of
your mgeasly ku, ngot some vrague idea for a flagranded friretale
story." At the word "urgg", Skiff had aimed his device toward the
alien and begun tapping it. The second Wars Trek nerd whispered
to his friend.
"('Flatlanded fire tale story'?)"
"(It's alien sarcasm. He's mocking NASA's early progress in space
travel, like we might as well think the Earth is flat if we haven't
fully explored Sol yet, never mind the Milky Way.)"
"Try nerber mind the rgest of your *ku*, worm." The urgg answered
without turning as if the insult came like breathing and required no
actual focus.
"('Ku'?)"
"(Likely urgg slang for 'known universe'. He probably says he's
from another one and his race's sciences have advanced so far that
they've managed inter-universe travel, when he probably just licked the
wrong swamp frog and passed out into a fantasy where he has more than
10 brain cells.)" Their comments faded into techno-babble, and
the urgg gave a bored sigh. He looked to Frank for a standard
barkeep shoulder to rant on, but as he was busy doing barkeep things,
turned to Skiff. Skiff seemed too busy scanning him, so finally
he turned to Skip, who looked boring enough to have time to shrug and
nod at his life's story.
"Why is always 'V'? I don't look like any alien of your
frwoa space that starts with 'V', and yet it's always 'V'. I've
gotten Vulcan, Vorlon, Vorta, Vorc, Vorcoran, Vorcacorian, Vinean,
Venek, Versus..."
" 'Versus'?"
"I thgink someone saw 'Alien Vs. Predator' and thought 'Vs' was an
alien, and somehow frigured I lgooked like one."
"An alien?"
"No, a 'Versus'."
"I don't think you look like a 'Versus'. I mean a 'versus' seems
like he would have more of a--"
"Oh! And 'Vogon'. That's the wgorst! And the only 'V'
alien I even resemble. I'm big, sluggish, and ugly, so of course
I'm a mgember of stgupidest race portrayed in 20th century 188th
billennia Earth fiction. Wgorst frwoa ever written. Makes
all big ugly aliens look like brgainless retards. I've had fgour
people actually recite award-winning poetry atg me just for the
igrony. In fact that entire frwoa is just braignless lard mush as
far as I'm goncerned."
The second Fue-fi fan spooned his ice cream and mumbled to his
friend. "I dunno what he means. I rather *liked* Hitch--"
There was an utterly nonvogonic sound as the urgg vaporized the
defenseless Wars Trek nerd. The gun intentionally paused for
effect at the other, who took the hint and bolted for the door.
Optimistically, the scene foreshadowed only a half-tragic ending...
until the urgg vaporized him anyway. Skiff--oblivious to both
executions--was still blmeeping his siff device at the urgg, tapping it
with almost android relentlessness. The urgg treated the scan
like a harmless swamp fly doing its thing and turned to Skip again,
whose Write or Flight mechanism had now fully kicked in, booted,
crashed, and frozen.
"Art
what point in yourg evolushun do youg humans mutate some braigs in your
heads?
As if to demontrate his question was
either rhetorical or unanserable, two exceptionally regular and
*literally* bird-brained pigeons interrupted it by awkwardly fluttering
into the bar. The crash landing snapped Skip out of his cryogenic
stance.
"Ed? Eagle?"
"Skip! What are you doing
here! Boy, are we glad to see *you*!" The one Skip had
called Ed flew up to the bar table next to him in a pseudo-clumsy
manner that Skip as if he'd only recently learned to fly. Since
it didn't seem like there was any verb he knew of that could describe
the action just right, he decided to call this "fluplupling".
Eagle fluplupled in place and got just as excited.
"Yah! We found some white
breadcrumbs by this raggety guy with an empty cup but we still haven't
figured how to get them into our mouths yet. He looked like was
enjoying them so you gotta come back and help us pick them up before
they're gone!"
"I don't think those were bread crumbs, guys."
"See! I *told* you it was E!"
Skiff--who'd forgotten the
dangerous alien and stolen Skip's cryogenic terror--quickly regained
enough of his wits to move. His device dropped to the ground as
he yanked the urgg's ray gun from its holster and slashed it towards
the pigeons point blank. Skiff flicked his thumb and the device
gave a charging sound like it was preparing to nuke a small
starbase. Out of Skiff, Ed, Eagle, himself, and almost everyone
else in the bar except Frank and the urgg, Skip couldn't tell who was
more scared. He might have lunged for the door now if the
opportunities for collecting Future Fiction material hadn't been
increasing exponentially by the mot. Soon Lt. Freckler fully
unfroze and stared the pigeons down in a deadly anger.
"Wretched beasts! Back to hell from whenst you--"
In a single motion, the urgg
took a last swig of his drink while plucking the gun from Skiff's hand,
flicking back the thumbswitch as he lifted it, which charged down as if
it remembered it had something to live for and martyring itself for
whatever cause it was turned on for wasn't worth the self-sacrifice.
Frank--seemingly oblivious to everything that had
happened since the urgg walked in--now looked up from his cleaning,
gave a brief frown of concentraion as he mentally replayed the scene,
decided there wasn't anything currently worth worrying about, and
resumed his tasks, which included dumping an Athlorian Ale one of the
now-late nerds had ordered. At the same time, one of the
non-kino, non-toclafane, non-ISN-camera ball-things got distracted and
hovered down to the scene as if turning on a fairly new soap opera it
had only just now discovered. It could only watch for a moment
before the other yanked it back to its terminal with a slinky-thin
tractor beam despite a disgruntled bleep of protest.
"So, Skgrip, see angrything wgurth writing about
yet? Wgouldn't blame you if you didn't, this whole bgar is a
pretty unorganized lump of mush for a writer to gret any kind of
cohergence from." The urgg chugged another drink and ordered a
third.
Lt. Freckler, two pigeons, and soon Skip looked as confused as if
someone had asked them to render an infinitely dimensioned fractal on
an inverse abacus, filter it through a trumpet ostrich difibrulator,
then pick one pixil to unclog the local blacksmith's garbage
disposal. Even Frank raised an eyebrow, and Skip thought he heard
one of the non-kino, non-toclafane, non-ISN balls above emit some sort
of "fatal error" sound at its terminal. The reason Skip's
confusion took long to register was that his alone was about why
everyone else looked so confused. When you're a distractable
person and a conversee references something unfamiliar, you should just
poliely seek clarification about whatever you haven't been paying
attention to.
"Who's Skgrip?"
"'Skgrip'! 'Skgrip'! *Ygou*, you bird
braiged warm blgooded idiot!" Now everyone could put their
confusion aside of why Skip hadn't looked as confused as they had, but
the now-unanimous bafflement of how the alien knew the clueless
novelist remained. Eagle, upon hearing the strange new phrase
'bird-brained', flipped from confused to insulted, and began
contrasting the sizes of the humanoid heads in the room with that of
his friend's to see if the insult had any credibility. Lt.
Freckler--still in full primal survival mode--was just beginning to
mask his adrenaline and sweat. The pigeons and the urgg still
hadn't yet shown signs of mauling him, so perhaps the best play would
be to join in on their strange mind game and act casual. Skip was
too confused to worry about any non-immediate dangers.
"I don't believe you and I have met."
"I wrould reply 'nort yet' if it didn't risk
steering the moment too closely to an Eargth frwgoa scene I'm thinking
of. Fgrank here is the only bgartender in your blroody race who
actually has the decengry to respect local frgwoa space infringement
laws. So I'll just quote an old urgg grwoa and say, 'Aint
amnersia a britch'! Hga!"
Frank took a moment let himself enjoy the campfire
that had materialized inside a timeless black hole of customer cruelty.
"Alright, lgook. I'll do youg all a fravor and
explain this all bluntly, as grajully revealing to spgare you the
surprice is jgust going to grive me a headache."
At the promise of a story that might enlighten them
to the mirthful complexities of the universe, the pigeons instantly
forgot their long-gone life-threating assault and fluplupled over to
the urgg as if joining the cozy campfire it had started for
Frank. Ed landed six inches in front of it, and Eagle landed
himself on the urgg's shoulder for a front row seat. The urgg
took a drink of his fourth Rum and Coke while politely flicking him
off. Lt. Freckler--now better masking his increasing terror given
the finalized alliance between his local nemeses--slowly took a seat a
few stools away. He now seemed sure an elaborate mind was game
being played on him, and joining in by acting completely nonchalant
seemed the best way to get to the bottom of it. He ordered a
bottled water, picked up his multi-siff device, and tapped it
deceptively lightly as if texting or playing Tetris.
"My name is Glorg. As your braigless officer
over here probably suspurgs, I'm from vrery farg away: a ku called
Blorkk. I was--"
"What's a ku?' Eagle pipped in. Skiff raised
his eyebrows a tad.
"A univerg. The whole giant mulgmush of
galashies you can sree out there in space, except a whole seprate
mulgmush of them. Yourg ku is Okuaka, and I'm from Blorkk.
Grot it?"
Blink. Flupluple.
"Angryway, I was heading for--"
"What's a galashy?" Ed butt in.
"Galashy! A whole big bunch of solar shystems
of stargs, bird braig. You should knowg this sgr@#."
"We just sort of got here," Ed defended.
"Yah, I suppose we beamed in or something, we're not
sure. Maybe we're from another one of these ku things."
"Pigeon Vs Predator: The third known universe!"
"And anyway we're pigeons; I don't see how much
theoretical quantum astrophysics you expect our little *'bird braigs'*
to absorb without forgetting it a couple days later."
"...Or a couple minutes."
"Grood points."
Beam. Flupluple.
"Sgo, I was headring for--"
"What's a 'starg'?"
Glorg slammed his slimy fist on the metal bar table,
slightly denting it and rippling minor frowns of worry through the
room. Frank shook his head at the dent with the acceptance of a
barkeep who--by the time the future's rolled around--had experienced
enough bar damage not be overly bothered that sort of stuff. He
simply returned to his cleaning and mumbled a solitary lingering
agitation.
"Formula for adamantium my *ass*."
Everyone in the bar glanced at Frank as he hadn't
said anything since Skip and Skiff had entered the room. Even the
distracted non-kino / non-toclafane / non-B5 ISN cameras beeped and
noted the incident for future reference. Eagle--long over Glorg's
outburst--fluplupled back up on his shoulder as a dog might put its
comforting head on its masters lap. Skiff was mock-texting even
more casually as if forwarding last year's wedding pictures to a thrice
removed grandmother.
"*Sgo*..."
There was a feeling of a puppet theatre darkening,
complete with the sound of an adult audience member annoyingly beeping
buttons on a cell phone he'd not turned off when the sock frog asked
everyone to.
"My name is Glorg..."
"We covered that," Ed pipped in.
"--and I was on my way back to Urgg Prime, when I detected--"
"Where were you before that?"
The urgg gestured a reach for his gun. Frank
glanced at the vaporized doorway, and the pigeons fluplupled just a
couple meters away as they might to a teenager holding a loaf of bread
who might feed them as soon as he got exhausted from trying to shoo
them away.
"I was on my way back to Urgg Prime when I degrected
a massive flugonic anomaly in this sector of grwoa space, which I
brelevie you call Flutonia, here."
"How did your sensors detect an anomaly in another
ku?" It was Skiff who'd spoke up, having blackbelted his
nonchalantless to the point of being capable of casual
conversation. The pigeons seconded the question by blinking
quickly, hoping it didn't count as interruption.
"There's a vrery simple ashiom you humans will
disgover the morg space you explorg: The furtherg point U is to point
G, the greater the chances of some twerp physicist thiging up a
shortcut to skgrip the distance. Hence we disgrovered that some
univergs sit on torp of other univergs. And if yourg lucky, and
you loog long enough, youg can find a slurmhole and slursh from one to
the other."
Eagle instinctively pitched in without
thinking. "Like the isomorphic light and dark worlds in 'Zelda: A
Link to the Past'!" The evereavesdroping Frank gave a defeated
frown at something and kept cleaning.
"Did you just make that up, Eeg?"
"I don't think so."
"I think you just made that up."
"Didn't."
"Did too."
"Did not."
"Did--"
"Sorg, I degrected this anormaly in a swamp nebula
near Rgorlg 7. Then I followed a slurmhole I found nearby, and
landed here this morning. I frigrued I had something intereshing
to do for the day, but so farg I harven't made any progress locating
the anormaly's source. At leagst, until I walged into the barg
and noticed Skgrip ."
"How do you know Skip?" Eagle asked. He
fluplupled away the last gram of memory that interrogating an urgg was
a potentially fatal activity.
"Well duh, he probably heard us say his name when we
flew in and picked the rest up from context." The insult worked,
as Eagle looked ashamed at his unintelligent bird brain. Of
course, this effect was quadrupled on everyone else in the room who
until now been confused for the exact same reason (only slightly
lessened by what Glorg said next).
"Ngo. I recognized him rgightwhen I walged in."
All listening--which now included the chinchilla,
rocket, and the distracted non-kino/non-etc-etc bot orb--who'd either
taken a lunch break or quit its job in order to watch the show--showed
various signs of Exedrin depletions and oncoming seizures. And
yet, all were curious enough to table their orders for pain relievers
and anticonvulsants indefinitely.
Skip took a deep, introspective moment out to
glance at the future clock and wonder why time wasn't flying by
properly. While the events since he sat down with Skiff didn't
intrinsically reek of taking a long time--in fact, they seemed
perfectly punctual given the polarization of the bizarre and unlikely
clash of characters in the vicinity (which didn't seem unlikely at all
actually given it's the general purpose of a bar)--he still got the gut
feeling that something was *relatively* wrong about the progression of
it all. In the past, his talks with friends here seemed to take a
drink or two. In the present they seemed to span more of them,
and now by the future his stay here seemed to be taking even longer
than the present which was already longer than the past. This
could only mean one thing: Skip was developing an increasing resistance
to alcohol over time.
This didn't seem *too* traumatic a crisis in and of
itself, but the question now was what was to be done about it.
Supposing time is infinite and that the axiom that the simplest answer
tends to be the correct one holds in any capacity, then it seemed
correct to assume that one has zero resistance to alcohol at the dawn
of time, and as time progresses one develops a resistance the more one
drinks on the grand journey to infinity, at which point total tolerance
will render the accomplishment of producing infinitely-fermented wine
useless. Since Skip didn't care for this idea at all, the only
solution was to move on from the present, past, and future, to whatever
might come next. (This might also have the benefit of escape from
his supposed destiny of writing the future fiction frwoa that would
change space and time as everyone knew it, because he was also
developing a resistance to *that* idea as well). Skip made a firm
mental note to get out of the whole general area of the future as soon
as soon as he had the chance.
Of course, already new to the *future*, Skip had no
clue how to procure the plutonium and temporal physics degrees he'd
likely need to *get* to after the future. Since the urgg was the
most likely one in the room to have any sort of knowledge that might
help, it would probably make sense to inquire about the matter.
It would be tricky, though, since he'd have to subtly imbed his inquiry
with the question that everyone who was now staring at him had been
expecting him to ask since he'd got distracted and glanced at the clock
(which was now feeling quite awkward that someone in the bar kept
staring at it). To boot, since any inquiry on *either* matter
would likely raise some interesting story-telling techniques from the
urgg (useful if his plan to eschew his novelist responsibilities by the
time he got to beyond the future failed even if he managed to get there
at all), it was a no-brainer (though a challenging one), to ask the
urgg anything vaguely to do with anything, as those that were staring
at him patiently just a moment ago were now themselves staring
introspectively at the clock, which was becoming even more nervous at
why the hell everyone was staring at it
"Go on, Glorg."
"Hgnuh?"
"How did you recognize me?"
"Oh. Well, you, Mr. Skgrip, are the most
infamous xwoa griter in the history of the urgg race."
This of course torpedoed Skip's hope for
importance-eschewal tactics into a black hole of eternal
unattainability.
Eagle gave a few hard blinks and an uncomfortable
flupluple in supressing an urge to ask Glorg what a "xwoa griter" was
and whether or not Glorg was pronouncing it correctly. Sensitive
to the birds' moods by now, Glorg stirred the mushy swamp mulg he'd
ordered with an estranged sigh. His expression said he deserved
more faith by now that he wasn't the type of urgg who would simply
abandon them to drown in a mush of confusion of the same texture (just
yet).
"A xwoa griter is a--"
"(Wait does he mean 'frwoa writer'?)" Eagle
excitedly asked Ed to confirm his epiphany.
""(I think so, Eag, shhh.)"
"Ngo, I mean 'xwoa griter'."
"But how do we know you're pronouncing the word
right if you can't pronounce it to confirm that you are?"
"Brut I *cgan* pronornce it gright."
"Well, we trust your honesty, Glorg, but honestly,
how can we be sure you're not trying saying 'frwoa writer' every time
you say 'xwoa griter'?" Glorg gave a tiny frown of shame that not
just his alien accent but his ability to argue logically were shut down
by a brainless rodent. Skip spoke up in a logical nitpicking
voice passionate only for its own sake and not for the court-worthy
defense that it inadvertanetly provided the urgg.
"Because he can obviously *hear* you say 'frwoa
writer', and if he's talking about something else, he's going to
correct you whether or not he can pronounce his own phrase
correctly. If he actually *meant* 'frwoa writer' then he wouldn't
bother making a distinction because talking pigeons naturally have
exponentially higher phonetic ability than sluggish, slimy aliens."
Glorg gave a triumphant sludgey sigh akin to
saying,"Sgee, bird braing?", but then noticed that Ed's flupluple was
one of offense rather than defeat. He seemed focused only on
Skip's last words. It was a look that Glorg's expression soon
mirrored as he mentally replayed Skip's comment and deteremined that
*both* of them had been mocked, rather than either vindicated.
Both urgg and pigeon changed their minds, however, when Skip
indifferently yawned in place of gloating. Perhaps he hadn't
meant to offend them at all, which was even worse, because if so, his
superior objective third-party logic had proven them both idiots
*intrinsically* witout any room for argument.
Finally, in an unsual harmony, the urgg and pigeon
shrugged off the matter via very similar vices: a oversized sluggish
brain, and a tiny hyperdistractable one (respectively).
Glorg gave a cathartic swig of his drink and decided
to attack the explanation from a different angle. His antennas
twitched and fidgeted as he spoke like a coral reef fungus who'd seen a
dolphin swim by and was trying to mutate itself into one.
"Lgife, is like... uh..."
Pause.
"Lgife! Is lig! Uh..urgrhrgr..."
"A swamp?"
"A swamp! Lgife is like a swamp!"
Eagle fluplupled with philanthropic pride.
"And if ygou live there, you..yughgh.."
"You'd be home by now??"
Glorg's face crumpled in fierce calculation for a
moment and gave up. "Sgure! Great. And, if ygu're
horm, then horm is wghere...whughrr.. urghh..." Glorg surpressed
a pleading glance at Eagle while Skip's hope of obtaining creative
ideas from the urgg sank further into oblivion. He had become the
passing dolphin, now pulsing a distress whistle at the fungus stressing
the importance he obtain directions to the Grand Canyon as soon as
possible.
"Ygou'd... grupflug? Ygogug.. Urrh..."
"I take it your universe doesn't offer any graduate
Creative Writing classes." Lt. Freckler sarcastically yawned,
coming out of a long nap of boredom with the adventureless pub
events. The pigeons' heads flicked toward Glorg in anticipation
of a reprimand, who surprisingly just lowered his in shame.
"Yges, that's it exarctly."
"What do you mean, Glorg?"
"I jgust mean, that, well, urggs in general aren't
very, ugh... you know..."
"Creative?" Eagle rushed to help, expecting a metal.
"Yges, that's the... the--" Glorg sank
solemnly into his cold guacamolish mush. Eagle took a step
forward to comfort him but didn't want to risk falling in. Skip
already sympathized so well he assumed he already *was* the mush and
that actually moving toward it would create a black hole and implode
Frank's bar.
Glorg opened and closed his mouth a half dozen times
as the evesdroppers gave up on their hope for an immersing story.
They gravitated back to their original positions like Red Sox fans who
knew there would be a grand slam in the final inning but were too tired
of losing to bother sticking around. Skip glanced at the clock
with the feeling his whole *life* had been unnecessary extra innings
after losing the game at birth. Frank's sigh said he agreed that
Skip's stay at the bar was no imperfect microcosm as he hadn't had
anything but a cup of filtered water during his recent life as a
customer. Skip sighed in agreement but for slightly different
reasons. He debated whether a gut feeling he was late for
something important was a good enough excuse to disrupt the flow of
conversation and allow him to exit before the scene properly contrived
itself to let allow him to do so naturally (if it was even kind enough
to try).
"Alright, well, it was very nice meeting you,
Glorg. I wish I could stick around and chat but I'm afraid I'm
already late for--well, for..." Skip's full attention was
suddenly focused on whether the death ray facing him point blank could
have been avoided if he'd simply been born a better liar. Lt.
Freckler and the pigeons weren't sure whether to freeze, fight,
flupluple, or flee to the other side of the bar where the possibility
of a violent death didn't seem so worrisome to those there. They,
in contrast, seemed more fearful of the expression by the cash register
that was already firing a few warning shots around the room.
"Mrove," the urgg ordered.
Skip broke most of his focus to figuring out where
Glorg wanted him to move if he hadn't been trying to say another word
entirely. A good chunk refused to unleech from the previous issue
as Glorg nudged up the power knob, now emitting a nails- on- nuclear-
chalkboard engine hum.
"Move to where?"
But in twisting to look for safe ground, Skip had
already shifted enough for Glorg to fire a beam of molton energy out
the window. It peirced a surgical-precise hole in the glass and
obliterated a skinny four-eyed teenager three blocks away pointing
excitedly toward the bar. When all heads in the bar turned back
from the cinema-worthy mushroom cloud, none could deduce whether Glorg
had even turned away from his sludge to look where he was firing.
"Let's sree a Vgogon make *that* one."
Everyone in the bar now looked confused about
whether they'd lucked out and caught the ninth inning slam, or had died
in the explosion and been accidentally sucked into Skip's nirvana
afterlife of infinite situational irony. (No one could quite
figure what type of irony was involved, but the air certainly seemed to
reek of its stench.)
"...A xwoa griter," Glorg continued near-non
sequiturly from further back than anyone listening could remember
(further evidence they'd gone to Skip's Nirvana, as a being who can't
finish the phrase 'that's the word' shouldn't be able to outclass their
collective short-term memories), "is the most important being anyone
amorng my people can imargin exersting. In farct that's about
*allg* we can imargin, so it's up to the xwoa griters to think up
everything else."
This made decent sense to Skip, partly because he
was very logical, but mostly because he was more or less the only one
listening, as no one else in the room was blessed with the world view
that your life is a grade B filmscript that can't harm you no matter
how many innocents are killed on paper. The pigeons--who'd never
read any type of filmscript at all, let alone Alfred Hitchcock's The
Birds--fluplupled a prompt for Glorg to continue. His
two-sentence definition fully covered what a xwoa griter was and why
one was important, and it was time to move on to the rest of the story. (The urgg didn't share their haste.)
"Xwoa griters--"
"How's *Skip* a xwoa griter?"
"Is Skip an alien?"
"Is Skip an urgg?"
"Are *you* a xwo--" Frank's bar table suddenly
recieved a denting fist slam and a splotch of terrified pigeon
excrement.
"Xwoa griters sgee the worlg like a... like a
*bgook*, like a xwoa, urshually a *bad* xwoa, beguz who in hrell would
bother sitting around allg day and write about me eating a bowl of
crappy mulg," Glorg deeply spoke into the introspective depths of
his crappy bowl of mulg. Although the recursive definition of
"xwoa" by mentioning it twice did clarify what one was for Ed and
Eagle, it was still largely excessive information, and they were
getting more antsy for saga-worthy entertainment. The fact that
they couldn't *express* their frustrations due to fear of death wasn't
helping Glorg hurry up either. It was quite calming to have a
friend who wasn't as high up on Glorg's hit list.
"Glorg, I'm afraid I'm confused," Skip
approached. This was an understatement, as the usual rate of
expansion of Skip's bafflement had been accelerating more than usual
since Glorg walked in. "I'm not sure if... well... wait, *am* I
an urgg?"
Frank, evereavesdropping, looked surprised at the
stupidity of the question, but examined Skip's head for green antenna
just to be sure, while the vindicated pigeons catwalked the bar table
by the dent, displaying their pride that their ostricized questions had
been seconded by the greatest xwoa griter to ever exist.
"Ngo. If ygou were an
urgg, you wgouldn't be a xwoa griter. Sgee, we need outsiders to
help us thig up whateber we carn't, which is jgust about
ervrything." There was a brief pause as the more studious
non-kino/etc bot orb floated non sequiturly down to the group and
emitted a momentary flash as a policeman might photograph a suspicious
pedestrian who'd been standing in the middle of the road for twenty
minutes but was right on a crosswalk and not technically doing anything
illegal. Skip glanced at the chinchilla and rocket's booth who'd
had abandoned their screenplay to examine the wreckage Glorg had caused.
"Glorg, I hate to inform you, but I
developed impenetrable amnesia this morning. Most of my... my
*griting* skills seemed to have stuck, but no memory of anything that's
ever happened to me. Since then everyone around here has been
telling me I'm the most important this or that in the whole huuuge
whole of the entiiiire slomp mush of all infinity. I was finally
starting to develop a tolerance, but that I'm just as important in the
universe next door is something I just don't have time for today.
I have a xwoa due tonight that's so self-important it's literally
impossible to exaggerate it in order to mock its inflated ego,
and the more I learn about the world and my place in it, the
further away I seem to get from my eventual topic, my skill in writing
it, my ability to solidify my ideas to tangible reality, and why any of
the former are worth acquiring! That's probably why I'm here in
the future, to see if any of it worked out, how it did if it did, why
it mattered if it did, and whether I should bother to go back to the
present and relive the useless ordeal! And so, I'm afraid I
haven't a sludge of a a second for your ploys for an autograph from the
most important living artist in two known univi, because for the
record--to be dually galactically rhetorical for any being with more
than 40 brain cells, which I see doesn't include yourself or you
wouldn't have to ask--"
Skip raised his voice to the room as if god was hiding under a table somewhere.
"My plate is swamped!"
TO BE CONTINUED. . .
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