Greegs & Ladders (12 page)

Wilx was
startled by the appearance of the image, especially considering it
now blocked his view of the Maze corridor.

“Who are you?”
asked Wilx.

“We are the
crew members of the two Obotron ships that have until recently been
missing,” replied Ralph, one of the nighttime janitors who suddenly
took it upon himself to be spokesman for the group. It was not
known whether Ralph had been voted into leadership, made himself
leader because he genuinely felt he deserved the job, or fell into
the gig by chance having been conveniently standing both nearest
the microphone and best framed in the foreground of the camera.

“We’re busy,”
said Wilx.

Ralph felt the
pressure to skip to the point. “We just wanted to express our
sincere and heartfelt thanks for the recent rescue of our two
vessels, as well to send our regretful apologies that we were ever
lost in the first place. We dread to think what would happen to us
without the guidance system of Obotron 1. We look forward to
sustaining a lifelong career out of following you around on your
adventures. We would also like to say---“

Wilx cut off
the broadcast. “That’s enough.”

“About the
wormholes in the Maze,” said Krimshaw, “aren’t they time-travelling
wormholes?”

“Of course
they are,” replied Wilx. “Have you ever known a wormhole not to be
a time-traveller? Fly into one of those and you’ll be transported
to any random time in the past or the future.”

“So isn’t that
our way out?”

“What?”

“This maze
tours around the galaxy. It’s constantly moving. So if we fly into
one of those wormholes we’ll reappear outside the maze no matter
what, because during any other time it won’t be here.”

Wilx thought
this over for a minute. It seemed like a foolish plan, but they had
nothing else.

“It’s a
brilliant plan!” he said.

It actually
was a brilliant plan. Flying into a time-travelling wormhole is the
only way to escape the Maze. Even the official outer exit is not at
all a means of escape. As mentioned before, the official exit is
also the sitting perch for the Council of Eleven and a Half
Thousand Different Coloured Robes. Anyone who finds the exit is put
under trial by the Robes to decide if they are truly worthy of
leaving the Maze. No one is ever deemed worthy. The ships are
placed back at the starting point instead of being set free like
the usual logical rules of finding the exit of a Maze.

“Time-travel
is frightening. Everyone prepare yourself,” said Wilx as he set the
guidance system for the nearest wormhole. He then roped himself
down with unbreakable Tjurdian Rope.

“Hey,
where’s
our
magically
unbreakable rope?” asked Krimshaw.

“There isn’t
any more. You’ll have to prepare yourself for the horrid act of
time-travel in some other less logical way.”

Krimshaw
prepared himself by gnashing his teeth, even breaking some of them.
Rip didn’t move at all. The fleet of Obotrons flew directly into
the center of a time-travelling wormhole. When they re-emerged on
the other side of the obligatory mind-bending psychedelic
light-show, the Maze and all of its war-faring spectators were
nowhere to be seen.

“It worked!
We’re free!”

“But where did
we travel to?” asked Krimshaw. “Or when?”

“I don’t know
yet,” said Wilx. “So far all I know is that two of the Obotron
ships are no longer with us. They’re either still inside the maze
or they’re forever trapped in the purgatory of the wormhole. One
thing is certain, we’ll probably never mention or think of them
again.”

of Things that
are neither the Beginning

nor the Middle,
nor the End… Sort of

Emerging from a
Wormhole with an Empty Stomach

The thing
about hurtling through time is that there are far too many things
about hurtling through time to even begin attempting to convey to
you in a manner that won’t take up several human lifetimes. So I’m
just going to try and keep you up to speed on the more important
things pertinent to our journey and hope you don’t get too lost.
You will almost certainly get too lost. Don’t worry, this is your
fault, not mine nor the fabric of space and time’s. But try your
best to keep up will you?

The
first thing that happens when you emerge from a time travelling
wormhole, no matter who or what you are, is that you start
evacuating whatever body you happen to have in a rather disgusting
manner. It is inevitable that after you have done so, for a
ridiculous amount of time, you will pretend as if you have not done
so, and go about some sort of mediocre task avoiding eye contact
with your fellow time travellers. This is not difficult, as thanks
to the obligatory mind-bending psychedelic light-show you’ve all
just experienced, your eyeballs will be twirling about like a
pinwheel or one of those lollypops you get at Disneyland. Then
(always at the exact same time as your fellow travellers) the
guilt, shame and sloppiness is finally outweighed by the tremendous
need to eat. When you have no food, the need to eat is a dangerous
need indeed. This is discussed in detail in Horaticus Neil
Travensenzels classic
Cannibalizing
Your Crew After Emerging From a Time
Portal: How to End Up Eating Dinner Rather than Becoming It.
Unfortunately all of the
members of Obotron 1 had indeed read this book several times by
now, and had stealthily thwarted the other two’s relentless
attempts to eat them. When alas it was realized the stalemate would
not be broken, and treaties began to be drawn up rationing out each
others smaller limbs and not so vital organs in a timely manner, a
simpler solution presented itself.

The telescreen
flickered and the crew members from a trailing Obotron stared
desperately and hungrily into the screen. They were in fact trying
to very rationally explain the situation they were in and help
solve the problem of feeding everyone and cleaning up all the
evacuated fluids and such; but good luck trying to get Wilx, Rip
and Krimshaw to listen to a word of it. All they heard was “Hey,
look at us, a whole expendable and not terribly important to
anything or anyone ship chock full of tasty morsels that’ll stop
you from having to ration out each others limbs and not so vital
organs in a timely manner.”

“Splendid good
point,” praised Wilx. The crew members beamed with pride.

“Stellar work
team,” exclaimed Rip. The crew members patted each other on the
backs and smiled and laughed, ecstatic to have contributed
something to anything for the first time in their existence.

“I’ll have the
one on the left with all the fat hanging down,” salivated Krimshaw.
The crew members dismissed this is as nonsense. What did he know,
he was just a silly Greeg all dressed up, not a respectable leader
of a fleet of Obotrons like Wilx and Rip.

They
would have re-examined that last line of thinking if they had any
frame of reference to do so. They would have had a frame of
reference to do so if they hadn’t been savagely devoured in a
chaotic and wholly shameful display of spit roasts and improvised
marinades made from the evacuated ickiness of other crew members.
But sadly, they had. None of them had the good fortune to have
brought a copy of
Cannibalizing
Your Crew After Emerging From a Time Portal: How
to End Up Eating Dinner Rather than Becoming It
on board with them. This was a rather
silly move, considering the amount of time they’d spent doing
nothing at all after realizing there were no towels to fold. But
the kind of folks that are crew members in luxury fleets are not
great independent thinkers. They tend to just follow the orders of
whatever seemingly intelligent being is at the helm of the main
ship and not ask too many questions, no matter how ridiculous or
perilous they may be, or how clearly they are being influenced by
his gambling drunkard of a co-pilot. After all, if he can afford to
fly around a priceless fleet of Obotron 7 space ships and idly fill
them up with crew members, clearly he must know a great deal more
than the crew members about all sorts of important things. The crew
members could never dream of owning even one ship, let alone the
whole fleet. Even if they pooled all their salaries together, they
could still only fill up a half a tank of investment bankers at
best. The way they looked at it, they should feel lucky to be
involved in anything as expensive and theoretically important as
whatever it was that Rip and Wilx were up to. This knowledge of
their own lack of importance and self worth kept most of them
going, not just in this job, but in their lives as well. Blissfully
thinking they’d scored a sweet gig and not wishing to rock the
boat, they’d remain dedicated and content right up until the moment
things got a bit dicey for the fleet. When things got a bit dicey
for the fleet they were the first expendable pieces of cargo that
the trio in charge had no issues with throwing overboard or, in
extreme circumstances, eating.

12 fully
crewed ships and a very heartily overstuffed crew of three in a
shiny Obotron 1 drifted on into the nearest galaxy searching for a
place to fuel up on investment bankers and restock their food
supply, completely unaware when they were. One ship, devoid of
crew, and thus useless, was set on fire and lost forever. Not by
the crew of the Obotron 1, but by angry protestors of the recently
formed Obotronian Crew Members Who Demand The Right to Not Get
Eaten By The Three Nitwits Running This Fleet If There’s No Food
About and We’ve Just Emerged From a Time Travelling Worm Hole. They
organized their movement from within the ranks of all the Obotron
ships and brought their coalition to the scene of the heinous
massacre. They decided the most poignant statement they could make
was to set the ship on fire in protest and martyrdom, quickly
ending the newly formed movement and annihilating any of the small
amounts of crew members in all the remaining ships who could be
stirred to fight for themselves and their fellow crew.

Incidentally, this series of events would be the opening
chapter of the upcoming Revised, Rapple Skin Bound, Flexy Covered,
Extra Limited Edition of
Hypocrisy Inaction: The Plight of the Pointless
Protester.

All About
Time-Travel

It is
one of an astoundingly large and plentiful number of human
misconceptions that time is linear. That is to say, that there was
a beginning, then there is a middle, then there is an end. This
stems from the human desire to make everything about them, and the
ridiculous human trait of being completely unable to see things
from a perspective outside their own. Time is so much more
infinitely complex than this that it is an insult to time to even
suggest it is only capable of going in one direction. Even the idea
of time going in one direction at all is disgustingly simplistic.
To suggest that you can only go forwards and/or backwards in time
may be one of the most ridiculous assertions of all time.
Literally. But even getting your average human to accept you can
move throughout time at all, is dismissed as science fiction
nonsense... much like everything that is true and universally
accepted as fact. As such, when a human being on Earth writes up a
novel about time travel, they tend to go backwards in time or
forwards in time. Never, in the history of Earth stories, has
anyone ever truly
gone
sideways in time. Shocking really, since time-travelling wormholes
are the number one source of time travel, and sideways travelling
accounts for over 79.43% of all wormhole related travels through
time. There is absolutely no point in trying to explain sideways
time-travel to you, because your brain simply will not allow you to
understand it. Just let it be known that our trio has travelled
sideways through time; not backwards, and not forwards. Thanks to
blatant propaganda perpetrated by Michael J. Fox, this may lead you
to think of parallel universes. There is no such thing as parallel
universes. There are lots of universes, none of them are parallel.
They are Universes, vast conglomerations of swirling galaxies, not
gymnastics bars.

Another human
misconception about time travel is that when someone travels
through time they do not at all physically move in distance. That
is to say, if you plant yourself on a green bridge on fifth street
and set your time travel machine (another falsity we will arrive at
shortly) for 100 years later, you will appear on the exact same
green bridge 100 years later, fully undisturbed from a century's
worth of passersby who never wondered about the strangely dressed
person frozen in the middle of the bridge. This could not be more
false. Real time-travel is not so whimsically perfect. A
time-traveller instead appears in an unplanned and random location
that will likely turn out to be a dangerous place completely unfit
to inhabit. Time-travelling while on the surface of a planet is not
so worrisome, as you are limited to reappearing somewhere on the
surface of that planet (like if you time-travelled out of Hawaii
and ended up bobbing around in the South Atlantic), but if you
time-travel while floating around in space then you suddenly have
no limitations on where you might reappear. It could be anywhere
else in space.

'
Machine’ is a
word that has not much business being applied to the art of
time-travel, unless one is a death-craving daredevil. As noted,
time-travel is predominantly a naturally occurring event, whether
one is simply passing through a wormhole, or leaping through a tear
in reality caused by the sharp claws of Eagle Gods, or even looking
at the sacred waters of the Seladorian Pools, said to be an act so
incredible that it sends one spinning diagonally through time.
These are the types of things that cause time-travel. Only about
.004% of time-travel is achieved with the invention of a
technological device or machine, and it usually turns out badly.
Death-craving daredevils who invent faulty time-travel machines
usually wind up the victim of a nuclear explosion. Time-travel is
simply not meant to be invented. Let it happen in nature to the
unfortunately dumb people who can’t avoid stumbling through tears
in reality, but never try to control its spontaneous
power.