Greegs & Ladders (34 page)

“I... understand,” whispered Rip in an
usually high voice. He then turned and collapsed in such a manner
that made his body look like a twisted heap of cheap rag-doll
limbs.

As soon as he woke up a few hours later, we
questioned him about why he had done such a thing.

“I don't know,” he replied. “It seemed like
the right thing to do. What happened anyway?”

“You kept talking about these prophecies you
thought you were channeling,” said Wilx. “Then you said 'I
understand.' What did you understand? Did you actually have a
connection with some sort of entity? Did it tell you where Jupiter
has gone?”

“Yes,” said Rip. “I saw and understood
everything about the fate of Jupiter.”

“Well?!” asked Wilx.

“Oh, I don't remember any of it. You
probably should have been writing it down I guess.”

“That's it then,” said Wilx dejectedly. “You
drank away our only chance of finding Jupiter.”

“Not necessarily,” said Rip as he covered
his mouth. “It's not sitting too well. I think it's on the way
up.”

He grabbed the container and threw up.

“Here you go,” he wheezed, before passing
out again for a few hours. Rather than wait for him to wake up we
just lugged his body onto the ship.

The Quiggs had continued to multiply at an
unbelievable rate. From orbit we could see the cleanliness of the
Oviform spreading outwards like a meteoric strike. It seemed as if
the whole planet would be repaired in a matter of days. Quiggs were
saving the planet they had once plotted to help destroy.

How were the Quiggs getting rid of all the
garbage, you ask? While Quiggs of the past were excellent cleaners,
they still needed a space in which to send unwanted material (hence
their former plan to have all the Greeg garbage blasted off the
planet), however these new Garbotron-Evolved Quiggs were far more
powerful. They had developed the power to break matter down to the
point where it took up virtually no space at all. For instance,
Diaper Mountain
was condensed down to one-third the size of
a single dust particle. The
Lake of Liquids
now wouldn't
even fill a fruit-fly's drinking glass, and
The Wall of Leftover
Cheese-Like Products
now took up no more space than one or two
of Julius Caesar's left nostril-hairs.

We decided to check back in on the progress
of Garbotron after the Jupiter Mission.

Johnny Guitar Says “No Gas Giant Can Stay
Lost Forever!”

Wilx fed the atmosphere sample into the
tracking system. All we had to do was relax and let the ship take
us across the universe to the matching source.

“Earlier, when you drank the atmosphere, why
did it make your voice so high?” I asked Rip.

“I don't know,” he replied.

“That's easy,” said Wilx. “One-quarter of
Jupiter is comprised of helium.”

“Interesting,” said Rip. “I thought I grew
an immunity to helium when I spent a year on that
Balloon-World.”

“Ssh, I see it,” said Wilx with awe as the
sight of Jupiter appeared on-screen.

A disembodied voice suddenly amplified
itself through the computer. It was not nearly as shocking as
previously similar events like with Fralgoth on Garbotron or the
Stockholm Robot Squad on Hroon. We had become accustomed to the
unexpected arrival of disembodied voices.

This time the voice was vaguely familiar to
me.

“
Now it's time for the traffic
report,”
it said
. “Ok... there's plenty of room in space. If
you see a traffic jam... go around it! That forever concludes the
traffic report. Next up is the entirety of about 26 progressive
rock albums played in a row, as I've been broadcasting for 89 hours
straight and am in desperate need of a quick break. We will begin
with The Troll-Creatures seminal self-titled debut record, a 224
minute single-track opus based on a mystical myriad of
Tolkien-esque fantasies. The inspired free-style album was recorded
in one take during a potentially inebriated evening in the Mobile
Studio at Mick Jagger's Stargroves, after which Mick casually
stated: 'It was a decent jam, the details of which I remember not
at all.' Alright, here we go... The Troll-Creatures...”

“It's the voice of the Vapors!” I said.
“They're back on Jupiter!”

“What? That isn't the voice of any
Vapor-Beings,” corrected Wilx.

“Who is it then?”

“That's Johnny Guitar, Immortal Superstar DJ
for
Radio Cygnus 85.3,
the most popular radio station
anywhere. He's been around for centuries and is known for his wild,
erratic behavior and marathon bouts of uninterrupted broadcast that
sometimes last for weeks on end. Looks like we had the misfortune
of tuning in just as he's taking a break.”

“If this Johnny Guitar isn't a Vapor-Being,
then how is he inhabiting Jupiter?” I asked.

“He's not,” replied Wilx.

“Isn't the broadcast coming directly from
this planet?”

“This station can appear to come from many
different worlds,” he replied. “We're hearing it now because
planets with heavy radio emission are sometimes known to pick up
and broadcast the frequencies of
Radio Cygnus,
beyond the
control of the actual listener/ship-owner. No one knows whether
it's accidental, or a corporate conspiracy to force people into
listening to the radio. In this case I think it has something to do
with Jupiter's Magnetosphere.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, Jupiter's Magnetosphere is caused by
eddy currents – swirling movements of conducting materials – within
the metallic hydrogen core. First the volcanoes of the moon Io emit
sulfur dioxide, forming a gas torus around the moon's orbit. The
gas torus is then ionized in Jupiter's magnetosphere, producing
oxygen ions. These ions mix with the hydrogen atmosphere of
Jupiter, forming a plasma sheet in the equatorial plane. The
electrons within the plasma sheet produce strong radio emissions
from the polar regions of Jupiter, the very region around which we
are currently orbiting. I think this is what's causing the sudden
broadcast of
Radio Cygnus.
”

“So when humans thought they'd discovered
life on Jupiter, they had merely picked up a passing radio
station?”

“It seems so,” said Wilx. “I should have
known what you were talking about when you said they sounded like a
weird Radio DJ. I guess discovering life on Jupiter is just another
thing that humans didn't do.”

“Crazy,” I replied.

We listened for a minute to the dense,
intoxicating sound of
The Troll-Creatures.
Beneath the
layered nuance of improvisational psychedelic space-guitar solos,
extended brain-warping keyboard excursions, pompously gritty
rapid-fire bass licks and the paradigm of deafening rapturous
double-kick drum-beats, we could just faintly hear the sound of
Mick's footsteps as he wildly danced in the background. This album
was known for having accidentally recorded such percussive marvels
for the ages.

“So this means there still isn't life on
Jupiter?” I finally continued.

“Yes,” said Wilx.

“Then we should try to find some, before the
planet vanishes again.”

“A good idea,” jumped in Rip. “Only where
are we going to find the life for such a heinous environment?”

“Research suggests any life to spring up on
Jupiter would likely be ammonia-based.”

“Ok,” said Rip. “Do we know any
ammonia-based life-forms?”

“Not really,” said Wilx. “Have you ever met
any ammonia-based life-forms?” he asked me.

“Can't say I have.”

“That solves that problem,” said Rip. “Now
let's go find something else to do!”

“Wait,” I said. “What if put out an ad?
Urging ammonia-based life-forms to save Jupiter and live in
harmony?”

“We'll need to advertise all over the
universe,” said Rip. “How are we going to do that?”

“I think that's been answered for us,” I
replied. “We'll go to the
Radio Cygnus
Station and ask
Johnny Guitar to place an ad for us.”

“That's a plan!” shouted Rip, suddenly
regaining interest in our current adventure. “I've always wanted to
go to
Radio Cyngus
and meet Johnny. I hear it's a paradise,
a nonstop epic party-zone located in the most luxurious building
made of shiny things.”

Even Wilx admitted using radio was a good
idea, albeit a difficult one.

“Let's not get our hopes up,” he said. “Not
only have I never heard of Johnny Guitar taking requests, placing
advertisements or speaking to his fans, I also hear the
Radio
Cygnus
Station is not at all the idyllic experience that Rip
imagines it to be, but rather a heavily guarded bureaucratic
wasteland. A very anti-luxurious and boring gray concrete building.
It amazes me that Johnny is able to perform so exuberantly within
such a stifling, anti-artistic environment.”

“We'll see who's right,” said Rip.

The History of Johnny Guitar

They were both right in different aspects.
The
Radio Cygnus
building was indeed luxurious and made of
shiny things, however it was also heavily guarded and annoyingly
bureaucratic. It was clear we were going to have to sneak in.

“Here, hold your breath,” Wilx said as he
scanned us with a bizarre looking scanning device.

“What are you doing?” I asked, alarmed.

“I'm going to encase us in Illusion
Bubbles,” he replied. “The effect can crush your lungs if you're
mid-breath when the barrier seals.”

“Illusion Bubbles?” I asked, before holding
my breath.

“You will appear to everyone who sees you as
whatever I program you to look like. In this case I have all of us
looking like suit-wearing
Radio Cygnus
executives.”

“This whole time you've had a device that
can make us look like anyone... and you're just now producing it?”
I started. “Do you have any idea how often this would have come in
handy? That whole long bit with us looking for the Beard of Broog
and impersonating the Kulmoog Commander Flook would have been
totally moot. We could have just disguised ourselves as Flook at
any time.”

“I lost this device years ago. I only just
found it when I was emptying out all my pockets on Hroon, and it
hasn't been needed since then.”

“Oh.”

We looked like a regular group of
executives. The barrier of the bubble was visible from within,
blurring everything beyond it into a wavy mirage. To myself I still
looked normal, but when I looked at Rip or Wilx I saw the
illusion.

“Alright, let's do this,” said Wilx as we
approached the front door. “Don't attract unnecessary
attention.”

The lobby of
Radio Cygnus
was a vast,
brightly-lit room, perpetually clean, dazzlingly shiny, mostly
empty except for a marble desk lining one of the walls with a
receptionist or two hovering about every few hundred meters, while
generally every few meters a squadron of heavily armed guards
lurked menacingly. The ratio of receptionist to armed guard was
disturbingly off-kilter and instantly tuned one into the fact that
Radio Cygnus
is not a cool place. They were clearly not
interested in guiding you or answering your questions, but did look
adept at getting you off the property as soon as possible. The
intimidating appearance of each of the guards was so similar that
it was obvious they were merely clones of the single perfect
warrior.

We figured that asking one of the scant
receptionists for directions was a bad idea, as only outsiders
would need directions. We jumped on the first elevator.

“Do we know where we're going?” I said as I
looked at the number-pad. “There are more than two thousand
floors!”

“No idea,” replied Wilx.

“Floor 952,” stated Rip. “It's gotta
be.”

“How do you know that's the right floor?” I
asked.

“Deus Ex Machina?” suggested Wilx.

“It's a number I saw flash before my eyes
after I drank the Jupiter atmosphere.”

“I thought you didn't remember anything?”
asked Wilx.

“This just came back to me. I remembered the
part I was supposed to remember.”

“It's worth a try,” I said. At times I
suspected some of Rip's mad prophecies were legitimate and not
being given the proper chance to prove themselves as such.

Wilx punched the button for the
952
^nd
floor. We were rocketed upwards at an amazing
speed.

“This is even faster than the floating
elevator from our old Obotron,” remarked Wilx.

“If you jump just as the elevator is
stopping you can experience a moment of weightlessness,” said Rip,
as he did just that. He winced and clutched at his abdomen. “I
think I just displaced one of my stomachs.”

The elevator doors opened. Immediately we
heard the voice of Johnny Guitar.

“Excellent,” said Wilx.

“I've always wanted to meet Johnny Guitar!”
said Rip as he bounded into the room like a starstruck child. “They
say you aren't anybody until you've met Johnny Guitar!”

“Ssh,” said Wilx.

We wandered around the rooms of floor 952.
There appeared to be no one at all.

“Where is he?” asked Rip. “I hear him!”

“We could easily just be hearing a radio.
Did you think of that?” asked Wilx.

“He's here, I can sense it.”

“What are all these tapes?” I asked,
noticing that every room on this floor was filled to the roof with
mini-cassette tapes.

We looked at the tapes. They were all
recordings of past Johnny Guitar shows.

“This must be the legendary archives,” said
Rip. “Johnny has broadcast more hours than anyone.”

We continued looking for the source of
Johnny Guitar's voice amongst the perplexing multitudes of
tapes.

“We must have the wrong floor,” said
Wilx.

“Let's look for a little longer before we
move on,” said Rip.