Greegs & Ladders (11 page)

“What Greeg?”
asked Krimshaw, terrified, looking around him for this rogue and
permit-less savage.

“Indeed, what
Greeg?” faked Wilx and Rip, using the opportunity to smash and pull
and twist and pound on any and all of the guidance levers, knobs
and buttons they could in order to get the hell out of this
mess.

“Right,” said
one of the ever growing mob of ships surrounding the Obotron 1.

“I’m going to
count to three,” they all said, miraculously in unison.

“One.”

“Two.”

“FIRE!”

The night sky
exploded in a display of fireworks unrivalled by even the most
famous Whizzling-Firebeam asteroid shower. Delighted tourists from
the Lincran parking lot and the light beam highway cheered
enthusiastically, completely oblivious to the fact that they were
not witnessing a planned light show but instead the instant death
of many prominent organizations and their representatives. If they
had known that, they would have cheered much louder, considering
most of them were members of the militia, or surely would be
soon.

One Obotron
space ship packed full of napping employees was also blown to
smithereens. If the tourists and Lincran parking lot dwellers had
known that, they would not have cared all that much.

14 other ships
and an Obotron 1 with smashed-in windows suddenly materialized far
away in what appeared to be some sort of ridiculous maze.

“Who’s this
loose Greeg they’re looking for?” Said Krimshaw, frothing at the
mouth.

“Shut up,”
said Wilx and Rip. “We’ve got to get through this maze now, that’s
what’s important.”

the Maze

In vain
Krimshaw searched the floor for crumbs.

Standards had
long since been lowered to the eating off the floor of any random
morsel that slightly resembled a particle of what was once in
another lifetime food.

They had been
inside the maze for a long time, and for good reason.

An
Abducted-Ship Maze does not exist on the surface of a planet. Mazes
are free-floating in space, being the combined size of 3.7 medium
quadra-level planets.

Over the many
ages since its inception, Abducted-Ship Mazing has risen and fallen
in popularity. To ensure the public is still getting fresh
entertainment, Mazes are carefully designed to be the definitive
representation of danger. Nowadays a maze consists of thousands of
deadly, twisting corridors branching out like brain synapses from a
spherical centre. There is only one exit, hidden deep in the outer
realms. Most ships are unsuccessful, as along the way to the
impossible-to-find exit are innumerable traps like time-travelling
wormholes, squadrons of well-funded Plutonian nuclear-eels, or the
recently invented Dementia-Mirrors (drive through one of those and
you’re only able to make a right turn for six weeks). It has
reached the point where being the victim of a Maze is probably the
greatest fear in the galaxy. Every time the average Joe Alien
starts up his space-cruiser his brain flashes on the very real
possibility that he might suddenly vanish from his proper dimension
and reappear inside a Maze surrounded by jeering spectators and
Plutonian nuclear-eels.

Miraculously,
only one Obotron ship had, as of yet, perished in the Maze. 13
fleet ships followed the main crew down corridor 973L.

Scores of
spectators were gathered on viewing platforms scattered around the
exciting parts of the maze. Galactic Wranglers & Wobblers were
in charge of selling the crazily overpriced tickets. Tickets were
especially popular for the area in front of the monstrous minotaur
that devours ships in a single bite. The minotaur then regurgitates
mechanical shrapnel over top of a cheering crowd that abruptly
stops cheering when it begins getting rained on by mechanical
shrapnel.

Another
prominent platform was the headquarters for The Trilateral
Commission on Hearings of Importance. Nothing much occurs here
except the repeated hammering out of The Treaty of Manderbatt,
followed by hostile disputes over what is meant by the cryptic and
vague language it was written in. The arguments are simultaneously
resolved and renewed by yet another good hammering out of the
Treaty.

Directly
beside the platform for The Trilateral Commission on Hearings of
Importance is an area sanctioned off for those who wish to protest
and boycott everything contained within The Treaty of Manderbatt.
This group is better known as the Civilian Organized Militia For
The Restoration of Peace, Order and Civility to the Kroonum System.
Placing these two platforms beside each other inevitably causes a
state of miniature warfare. Members of each side are constantly
being bombed into space, all of which is part of the master plan
devised by the Kroonum Civility, Order & Peace Agency to have
both parties wiped out while avoiding scandalous involvement
charges. When things get too heated, the Council of Eleven and a
Half Thousand Different Coloured Robes is called in from their
sitting perch located at the only exit of the maze. There are only
two possible verdicts one can receive while facing trail with the
Robes. Execution, or be put inside the maze. So it’s really just
one possible verdict.

The same exact
person who designed the impossible-to-navigate mazes had also
designed the legal treatise of the Kroonum System. Each system was
more labyrinthine and convoluted than the last. Successful
navigation is not meant to be a viable option. These mind-bending,
logic-defying structural designs were from the painfully twisted
imagination of the Grand KULMOOG Commander Flook. We will hear
about him again later in the story.

The corridors
of the maze act as a sort of one-way window. The ships inside the
maze cannot see outward, yet the spectators can see inside the maze
with the aid of x-ray glasses (should you choose to visit a Maze
Shop and purchase the glasses at a price so astronomical that you
will assuredly have no money left over for the fuel home,
effectively stranding you and forcing you to rent your crew and
ship out as Maze participants, with the promise of a decent pay
cheque that would never arrive even in the rare chance that you
escaped anyway).

“How long have
we been here?”

“Check the
calendar,” said Wilx as he hit the brakes, barely avoiding
collision with a minefield of boiled proto-stars placed at the end
of corridor 973L.

“Looks like
corridor 973L is another perilous dead-end,” groaned Krimshaw.

The
words of the now familiar sounding phrase ‘Looks like
corridor
blank
is another
perilous dead-end’ passed into the nearby ears of the languid Dr.
Rip. His brain processed the meaning behind these words, yet he
didn’t understand what was said at all. This type of phrase had
been spoken so many times by everyone in the last 19 months (being
the approximate amount of earth time they’d spent in the Maze so
far) that Rip wouldn’t listen to any more of it. He’d gone through
all the stages of insanity and mental breakdown one can go through,
and was now currently reverting to a state of catatonic
silence.

“Were you
listening?” said Wilx to Rip. “Add 973L to the list of corridors
we’ve tried.”

Rip wrote down
some miscellaneous letters and numbers, none of which were 973L. In
a moment of poor life decisions, the task of writing down the names
of the perilous dead-end corridors was specifically delegated to
Rip. It was understood he couldn’t handle anything more difficult.
Wilx and Krimshaw sat him down in a chair, gave him a clipboard, a
few pencils and a stack of blank paper, and told him to merely
write down exactly whatever they told him. It was a task he had
miserably failed at from the very beginning. Not one of the numbers
or the vitally important corresponding letters of the corridor
names had been marked down properly, the result of which being that
the fleet of Obotrons had needlessly gone through many corridors
more than once each. It is likely they would have escaped the maze
in a matter of sheer weeks if anyone else had been writing down the
numbers. Wilx was completely unaware that he had steered the ship
around the same time-travelling wormhole at least 11 times.

Writing down
the names of the perilous dead-ends may have been the easiest task
on the ship, but it was also the most important. Assigning such an
essential job to Rip was a more insane act than anything Rip
himself had done, including the time he bolted all the furniture to
the roof in an attempt to flip the universe upside down.

Dwellers
of Earth may be interested to know that almost every single boat or
airplane that has vanished while in the area known as ‘The Bermuda
Triangle” has in fact been the victim of Abducted-Ship Mazing. Any
other reported vanishing from that area is merely a sinking caused
by drunken pilots. The Wranglers & Wobblers enjoy seeking out
species that haven’t invented vehicles qualified to operate in a
space-maze, and in an act of mockery transport whatever primitive
vehicles they do happen to have into the maze anyway. Spectators
love seeing an earthbound vessel appear midair in space, only for
the vessel to immediately spin out of control and crash. If you
wasted your money and are wearing x-ray glasses, the explosions and
the writhing of the victims will be made much more exciting through
automatic digital-enhancement. The floors of all the maze corridors
are lined with the ancient wreckage of missing WWII
bomber-submarines and tourist filled float-planes. Back on earth
(in a moment of far too common irony) it is considered ridiculous
and ruinous to your reputation to go around saying that aliens are
the cause of the Bermuda disappearances, whereas the respected
individuals who receive government grants and media coverage are
the truly ridiculous lot, being the ones to have foolishly named it
“The Bermuda Triangle”, when in fact it is blatantly rectangular in
shape.

“Hey!” yelled
Wilx. “Do you see that up ahead?”

“See what?”
asked Krimshaw.

“Those two
ships in front of us.”

“What about
them? Fire a couple bombs at them and get them out of the way.”

Krimshaw’s
idea to blow up the unknown ships did not shock anyone. Competition
between fellow ships is a frequent part of life inside the maze.
Long ago a rumour had been spread that if you destroyed a ship you
would later be granted a clue about the Maze exit. The rumour is
completely false. Help is never given to a Maze-goer. Being that
ship battles are among the most exciting things to happen inside a
Maze, the Trilateral Commission on Hearings of Importance were
perfectly happy when the rumour permanently stuck around. After
all, they were the ones who started the rumour and continually
worked to maintain its upkeep.

“Don’t fire
any bombs!”

“Why not?”
asked Krimshaw. “You know the rules. Anyone who destroys another
ship will later be granted a clue. Just think about when all our
clues finally arrive... we’ll have no problem finding the
exit.”

“There’s no
clues.”

“You don’t
know that. Fire the bombs!”

“Look,” said
Wilx, “those two ships are Obotrons!”

Krimshaw
looked out the window and saw he was right.

“How did they
get ahead of us? I thought all the fleet ships were programmed
never to go faster than Obotron 1?”

“That’s
correct,” said Wilx. “Those two Obotrons were already in the maze
without us.”

Krimshaw took
a moment to add everything up. “You mean those are the two ships
that never made the hyper-spacial jump into the Kroonum
system?”

“Yes. Two of
the slower ships in convoy. They must have fallen behind during
hyperspace, allowing them to be picked off by the net-wave of the
Wranglers. Nobody seemed to notice, probably because the slower
Obotrons have always been considered highly expendable. Then the
Wranglers caught up with the rest of us after we left Lincra.”

“How have they
survived all this time without us?” asked Krimshaw. “I thought you
said without our guidance system the rest of the ships would be
destroyed by the nearest object of dangerous proportions.”

“Normally,
yes. These two ships are lucky. It looks like their system went
into shock upon the sudden disconnection with the guidance program
of Obotron 1. The ships were somehow locked in place the minute
they appeared inside the Maze. I don’t think they’ve moved an inch
the entire time they’ve been here.”

“Good thing
they got stuck in an empty corridor,” said Krimshaw aptly.

‘
Keep Moving
’ is
probably the best survival motto one can have regarding a Maze.
‘
Never, Ever
Remain Motionless For Longer than 3 seconds
’ would be a more helpful elaboration on
the previous vital piece of knowledge. To stop your ship in the
maze is to assuredly be chomped by a monstrous minotaur or
gravitate into a solar whirlpool.

Obotron
1 accessed the rusty databases of the missing ships and
re-programmed them to follow along with the fleet. Soon enough the
number of Obotrons was increased from 13 to 15. It wasn’t a proper
fleet, but it was still a belligerently high-priced set of
technological waste. Wilx was delighted at having found the missing
ships.

“I feel as if
we’ve already passed that wormhole,” said Krimshaw.

“Check the
list. We’re on corridor 193P.”

Krimshaw
consulted the list. Corridor 193P was not there, despite this being
the 12
^th
time
the fleet had passed this particular wormhole.

“It’s not on
the list. I guess I’m hallucinating.”

“Good
chance.”

Suddenly a
broadcast appeared on the telescreen. It was showing a large group
of Obotron crew members facing the camera.