Greegs & Ladders (16 page)

With knowledge
transference deteriorating, a curious thing happened to the belief
systems and religions of humanity. As the ability to read and write
lengthy texts faded away, all of the major religions became
progressively more watered down and simplified, eventually
culminating with one, simple, accepted religious philosophy to
explain everything. The basic tenant of the new, global religion
was this: “Whatever it is that made everything for us, thanks for
that.”

In their
relentless construction and expansion efforts, the de-evolving
humans found that there were all these silly trees and green things
in the way, blocking perfectly good potential surfaces and/or
structures. Naturally, they cleared all of the obnoxious greenery
out of the way and dumped them into pits. They dumped their nuclear
power plants, their nuclear waste, their gold and jewels in the
pits too. Lastly they set up massive siphoning pipelines to drain
the oily oceans and fill up the pits. They couldn’t remember the
details, they just knew that these were all things of immense value
and worth, and therefore good things would happen if they were all
to be mixed up together. They spent a few human lifetimes doing
just that, and thus, the great schmold pits were born. A few more
HL’s after the creation of the great schmold pits and nobody on
earth had the slightest idea that indeed they had created these
pits. The sub-humans simply revered the supposed mystical powers of
the glowing, greenish goop, and chocked up their origin to whoever
it was that made everything for the human being. They didn’t know
they had created schmold any more than they knew they’d created the
clean planet full of meaningless surfaces and
structures
.
Even though I
witnessed it all, it is difficult to say when the exact transition
was complete. But sometime around these last few events were surely
the final days of human beings as you know them, and the beginning
of The Greegs, as I know them. As a cherry on top of the
evolutionary cake, human paparazzi grew one more set of pterodactyl
wings, and the Flying Grimbat Messengers were born.

One day, I
took a small Greeg aside and told him some very simple facts. I
figured if Rip had made me intelligent, maybe one by one I could
make them intelligent too. The young boy’s name was Groolfh. We
know what happened to him, and what became of Herb’s Utopian
society on Mars. Thanks to his injection, Herb survived, and would
go on to have the entire star district named after him. Not via any
election, just because the space mapping space mappers found he was
the only notable and worthy being in the whole place.

After Groolfh
was murdered and the only decent remnants of humanity destroyed, I
mostly hid in the caves of the Klaxworms. It was clear that nothing
in Greegland was going to change. Once a species has fully become
Greegs, once they have hit rock bottom, they simply cannot go any
lower. Even if a single Greeg like me can be civilized, the Greegs
as a whole are hopeless. They are far dumber in groups. They feed
off of each others ignorance and stupidity. This is why I can now
understand why Carnivals keep them in small numbers only. Despite
my best attempts to remain ignorant and sealed off from Greegs, I
was kept abreast on things with nauseatingly frequent updates from
Flying Grimbat Messengers.

In about 15,
000 HL’s after they'd first left me on a park bench, Dr. Rip T.
Brash The Third and Wilx appeared on the planetglomerate. Only 2
Obotron ships trailed them.

“Hey old
buddy, great news! After extensive research and adventures, we’ve
figured out where all these planets and suns came from! Turns out
this whole galaxy was swallowed by a Galactic Gobbling Groobin!”
Unable to speak any of the many prepared speeches I had conjured up
over the years for this precise moment, stunned by the audacity of
Rip, my jaw merely hung open like a common Greeg. “Yeah, so,
basically this thing's digestive system is just an intricate series
of time travelling worm holes and the like that’ll send whole solar
systems shootin’ diagonally, sideways, arching, skittering,
riveting and spiraling through time and space. All these planets
and stars came from all over the vast expanses of time and space to
form this new star system in the equivalent of the Gobbling
Groobin’s large intestine. His small intestine was the maze we
escaped from by the way. Wilx says it happens all the time, neat
hey?!” I sputtered and drooled and shook violently. “Come on aboard
the ship, we still have some fish left, we’ll tell you all about
where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to.“

I boarded the
ship, devoid of any explainable emotion. One thing was for certain,
I definitely harboured a deep desire to murder both Rip and
Wilx.

Hroon

Having
foreseen the anger I'd be harbouring towards them, Rip and Wilx had
prepared for me a decent offering of the most spectacular feast of
fish I had ever seen. They were smart to do so. The buffet was
impressive enough that it completely subsided my murderous
inclinations. There was every type of succulent fish you could
think of, freshly prepared with the most exotic alien recipes and
expensive sauces. It was only later that I realized my murderous
inclinations had not subsided because I genuinely forgave Rip and
Wilx, but because Rip and Wilx had laced the fish with a powerful
Potion of Peacefulness, a popular Lincran hallucinogenic sacrament
also known as the God-Tranquilizer.

“So,” I said,
while stuffing my numb face with deliciously grilled and drugged
fish, “what have you two been up to the last 15,000 HL’s?”

“What’s an
HL?” asked Rip.

“Human
Lifetime. I figure 15,000 is the number of those I’ve experienced
since you two abandoned me on that strange world.”

“That’s not
too bad. Isn’t the average human lifetime akin to something like
the hilariously short lifetime of the common fruit fly?”

“No,” I
corrected. “A Human Lifetime is roughly 80 years, whereas the
lifetime of a fruit fly is roughly 1 day.”

“Hardly a
difference between 1 day and 80 years though.”

“Actually, 80
years is comprised of 29,200 days. Therefore 15,000 HL’s is
comprised of something like 438 million days. Quite the difference
with the common fruit fly.”

“I don’t see
the difference.”

I wanted to
continue arguing. I wanted Rip to understand the vast and painful
difference between the human and the fruit fly. I wanted him to
undergo what I had undergone just so he would fully understand. And
then, if he still did not understand, I wanted to re-wire his
brains until he did.

But I said and
did none of these things, feeling all too effectively the powers of
the God-Tranquilizer. I yawned and made an obvious comment about
the fish.

“This fish is
fishy.”

“Yes it is,”
agreed Wilx.

“But you
haven’t actually eaten any.”

“One need not
taste the fish to know it is fishy.”

“So,” I began
again, pausing for a long stretch of time while remembering how to
speak what needed to be spoken, “I asked what you two have been up
to these past 15,000 HL’s?”

“What’s an
HL?” asked Wilx.

“It's been
explained.”

“I was out of
the room.”

“It stands for
Human Lifetime,” said Rip, “It’s a period of 80 human years, and is
not very dissimilar to the average life-span of the common fruit
fly.”

“I see.”

“How come you
guys aren’t eating the fish?” I asked.

Wilx
took a piece of drugged fish from the table and pretended to eat it
while throwing it under the table. Rip also pretended to eat the
fish, only he stealthily spat his bite into a crumpled napkin as he
wiped his mouth. At the time I didn't recognize any of the obvious
tactical manoeuvres employed by Earth children who wish to hide
broccoli and other undesirable green food items. One strange thing
I had noticed about the diet of human children is that all of their
most stereotypically hated foods were in actuality the healthiest
food they could consume, while the food that most excited them was
whatever contained the highest amount of carcinogenic chemicals and
high-glucose corn syrups. This self-destructive eating phenomenon
could be seen as the budding factor of the Human-Greeg transition,
and was indeed the inspiration behind my seventh bestseller:
Children... Rushing
Away to An Early Candy-Filled Grave.

“So,” I began,
for the third or fourth time, “what have you two well-seasoned
travelers of time and space been up to these past 15,000 HL’s?”

“
We’ve
had many inconceivable adventures that we’d like to tell you
about,” said Rip. “Some of them are vital to our current story,
while some of them are unrelated but still worth hearing about. But
not at this time. We’ve just seen a bumper sticker that
reads
I'D
RATHER BE HERE NOW
. It
has inspired us to stay in the current moment with a new
adventure.”

“There is
plenty of time for stories in a few thousand Schmickian years,”
added Wilx.

“Where are we
adventuring to?” I asked.

“Haven’t
decided yet.”

“What ever
happened to us going to that Hroon planet?” asked Rip. “Isn’t it in
this star system?”

“Yes, but the
only reason to go to Hroon was to get directions to the Greeg
planet, and now we’ve already found the Greeg planet.”

“We could
still go there, check it out and whatnot.”

“But why?”
asked Wilx.

“Who knows,”
said Rip. “Hroon is the fourth most perfect sphere in existence. I
guess that’s something worth crossing off the bucket list.”

“I am curious
about this unexpected dominant species that lives there,” said
Wilx.

“What’s
Hroon?” I asked.

“
That
water-world you read about in
Very Rare Planets.
”

“Oh right, I
used to love that book. It seemed important.”

“It is.
Everyone buckle in.”

Wilx chartered
the ship for the nearby planet. Hroon was famous for being the
fourth most perfect sphere in existence, something not at all worth
crossing off your bucket list and really just another normal
statistic amidst a considerably more exciting universe full of
things like Planetglomerates, Galactic Gobbling Groobins and the
ever-surprising Layers of Lincra.

The slight
imperfection in the sphere is a tiny rock island. This rock island
is the only so-called ‘land’ on the entire planet. It is about 3
acres of space. Upon these 3 acres dwell creatures known as
Grollers. We will meet them shortly.

From space,
Hroon is a beautiful planet.

The perfection
of the sphericality. The azure blue ocean shimmering with the beams
of an epic sun. The great ripples of the global tide. The
multi-textured atmosphere. Even the sporadic movement of the
schools of fish can be seen from space as a darkening streak
whizzing around below the glassy surface.

All is not so
beautiful when you’re actually on the planet. Things are fine if
you’re an aquatic creature, mind you, for below the surface is a
veritable paradise among water-planets, but above the surface is a
nightmarish place permanently stricken with storms and hammering
downpours. Upon arrival one is generally whipped away with the wind
and tossed into a 100 foot tidal wave. There is no refuge. Even the
only island is already overcrowded with undesirable creatures.

“Where are we
going to land, considering there isn’t any?” asked Rip.

“All Obotrons
float in water,” replied Wilx.

“Good. Fly us
down to the surface.”

“You should
learn more about these ships, considering that you now own
them.”

“What for? I
can just pay people like you to fly them for me.”

“You’ve never
paid me.”

“I haven’t had
the chance.”

“Quiet,” I
said. “We’re crossing into the atmosphere.”

As we passed
through the turbulent atmosphere, all expectations of a beautiful
paradise were ruined by the experience of Hroon from close-up. Our
ship was immediately thrown 800 miles off course by a thrashing
wall of wind. Anything on board that could shatter was immediately
shattered. Luckily Rip had already sold, broken or thrown away all
of the best shatter-able items.

“This place is
insane!” I screamed over the deafening thunderstorms. “Let’s get
out of here!”

“No,” said
Rip. “We have to find the life forms and question them. It’s
vital.”

“Why is it
vital?”

“I don’t
remember, but it is.”

“I’ll do a
life-scan of the planet,” said Wilx.

“Good
luck.”

Wilx sent out
a series of laser-emissions that studied the whole planet in under
ten nanoseconds. He then sent commands to find out why the scanning
program was working so slowly. Speed factor was a particularly
handy thing to have in a place as terrible as Hroon.

“I'm picking
up life signals everywhere underwater,” he announced. “But we
probably don't want to go underwater here.”

“Is there any
land at all?” I asked.

“Let me do
another scan, focusing specifically on potential non-watery
objects. I hope we have time for all this scanning before the next
hurricane hits.”

Wilx did
another scan of the planet. This one only took 8 nanoseconds, and
yet he seemed to have grown a little older while he waited.

“Yes... there
is a few acres of sharp rock-conglomerations just a few miles south
of here.”

“Sounds
pleasant,” groaned Rip.

“Something
tells me that’s where we’re going to find our dominant
species.”

Once the
Obotron got close enough to the rocks, I peered out of the window
and saw a mess of lively activity thrashing about all over the
place. At first I thought it was one massive blob-like creature
with hundreds of arms and legs, then I realized it was a grouping
of creatures creating the illusion of a single entity. These were
the Grollers.