Greegs & Ladders (23 page)

“Um,
okay.”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

Never before
had I felt so much anger, fury and justified dominance from such a
seemingly small source. I was at once humbled in awed reverence to
whatever was emitting this tiny voice. It commanded respect and
demanded appreciation for the work it had done. I felt I had
personally done it wrong, and owed it whatever it asked of me.

After a trip
through the ingeniously designed cleansing station, I was
instructed and bullied through the clean area towards the epicenter
dome, a half submerged bubble containing slightly less filthy air
and little else. The little else it contained consisted primarily
of a large, glass-like, telescopic lens pointed at the floor.

“Look in the
lens and put the ear piece in.”

I noticed
there was a few cables attached to the side of the lens, and
assumed one of these must be the ear piece.

“
Not
that
ear piece
dumbass.”

A few more
insults and I had the correct ear piece in and was looking in the
lens at what appeared to be a fruit fly, sitting in a fruit fly
sized rocking chair, speaking into some sort of micro-voice
amplification device. Behind the fruit fly was a giant scale model
(giant only in comparison to the fruit fly) of the Oviform and
surrounding filth, with diagrams and plans outlining the next
phases of clean-up and organization.

“So, what are
you doing here contaminator?”

“Um, well, I
was sentenced to come here and find a beard if you must know.”

“Yes, I must.
Aren't you curious what I'm doing here you selfish thing?”

“Very much so
actually. Did you do all of this yourself?”

“You bet I
did. Hardly made a dent yet, but I'll get it all cleaned up
eventually. I've got the perfect system designed. No thanks to
nitwits like you breaking the sacred perimeter and setting me back.
No matter, time matters not to me. Results. Results are what
matters to me.”

“Forgive me
for being blunt. But can you tell me how this is even possible? How
are you alive? The average fruit fly only lives...”

“
Does
anything
about
me
seem
average
?” The
stinging reality of his inflections actually hurt my brain, further
humiliating me.

“Well, no, but
I just thought...”

“Shut it.
Nobody cares what you just thought. Certainly not me. Kick back and
listen to my story, you owe me that much at least.”

“Okay,” I
sheepishly replied. “Can I sit down?”

“No.”

“Okay,” I
sheepishly replied again.

The remarkable
little fruit fly began to weave the most serendipitous little tale
I'd ever heard. I couldn't believe a word of it at the time, but
before sitting down to write this story of mine, I used my
immortality combined with time travel to go and research all of the
details of these events to make sure I got everything right and
understood it myself. Everything the little fruit fly said happened
exactly as he/she/it said it did.

After me and
Herb had injected ourselves with the immortality formula back on
earth, we had carelessly tossed the seemingly empty syringe into
the garbage. In the same garbage bag was a banana peel. In the
white part of this simple, decomposing banana peel, there was a
cluster of fruit fly eggs. In one of these eggs hatched a small and
thirsty fruit fly. It would one day call itself Milt.

“The first
liquid I came across was a drop at the needle end of a syringe,”
reminisced Milt. “As soon as it entered my bloodstream I knew that
I had been changed drastically forever. I felt such an overwhelming
surge of vitality and immunity. After watching about five million
generations of fellow fruit flies hatch and decease, I began to
figure out that I wasn't the same as all other fruit flies.”

Oblivious to
what was happening, one day the poor little thing was crammed into
a rocket ship with rotting piles of slop and blasted off to the
surface of Garbotron. One of the first rocket ships to arrive on
the planet, Milt would witness the complete transformation of the
untainted sphere into the abhorrent, festering museum of human
discharge it would become. And I thought watching humans become
Greegs was despicable! Milt had seen the unseen. The byproduct of
humanity. The sheer, unconscionable, non-stop, never-ending
accumulation of pure, useless, never had to exist in the first
place, garbage.

“Why have you
taken it upon yourself to clean this all up yourself? You didn't do
any of this!” I wept, feeling nothing but pity and admiration for
the gritty, determined fruit fly.

“
Whether
I like it or not, this is my home. This is the situation I was born
into, or ended up at, these things I cannot control. What I can do,
is my part to set things right. What good is done by moping about
who is 'responsible' for this mess? What the human being will that
accomplish?” Milt stressed
human being
with the utmost of vehemence, making it the nastiest of
curses I've ever heard. “The mess is here, and so am I. I can
either live in it, and whine about how nothing can be done, how it
isn't my 'responsibility', or I can get to work tackling the thing.
What have I got to lose?”

I thanked him
profusely for his story. I told Milt he was an inspiration and
perhaps the most remarkable little creature ever to exist. Milt
told me to shut up and that my silly beard was in bin #897432 –
GLPOA357%&11.FFF and gave me a magnifying glass, a map and
insisted I piss right off and never return as Milt had work to
do.

I understood
completely.

Psycho-Fans in
the Most Unexpected Places

Finding bin
#897432 – GLPOA357%&11.FFF was as difficult as it sounded. The
map proved to be useless, for it had been written in a font-size
meant for the vision of a fruit-fly. Even the magnifying glass did
nothing to improve readability. I wandered around following the
misleading signs that had been planted around the intertwining
pathways between the heaps of garbage. I paused to wonder what
living creature had been here to craft the signs and make the
pathways. The skyline was a bleak collection of filthy peaks
against the darkness of space. The dirtiness of the landscape was
greatly enhanced when placed alongside the purity and cleanliness
exuded by the vast emptiness of space.

At one
point in my long journey through the winding maze of garbage, I was
surprisingly approached by a human-like alien. He was strangely
carrying a book I recognized as one of my own. It was a copy
of
Children:
Rushing Away to an Early Candy-Filled Grave.
One of the more popular bestsellers I
wrote on Earth, but not one of my personal favourites. Upon
re-reading it I remembered how all the quotes and statistics had
been lies. The sudden appearance of the alien shook me
up.

“Who are you?”
I asked.

“I'm Wendell.
I'm a fan of yours.”

“Yeah, I see
you've got one of my books there. Quite a fantastic coincidence
that you'd be at the same place as me, especially in a place in
which no living or mortal person can survive.”

“Oh, this
isn't a coincidence,” said Wendell. “I heard about your trial. I
knew you'd been sentenced here. I figured this was my chance to
finally get the book autographed.”

I began to
feel uneasy. Only a psycho-level fan would risk coming to a place
where no mortal person can survive, just to get an autograph on one
of my worst books. I expected a crazed assassination attempt to
occur at any moment.

“So, will you
sign my book?”

“No.”

“You won't
sign my book?”

“I don't want
to sign it. Not really into signing stuff. How do I know you aren't
going to sell that book and retire?”

“I swear the
book is for my own collection.”

“I'm busy. I'm
trying to find a beard.”

“I've come all
the way to Garbotron and you won't sign this book? I braved the
surface of a planet in which no one can survive just so I could
meet you!”

“You aren't a
real fan if that's your favorite book,” I said.

“This book has
a lot of good insight into the degenerative eating habits of the
human child.”

“But it's
pointless now!” I argued. “That book was a bunch of trumped-up lies
written in hopes of scaring humans into changing their degenerative
eating habits. But it didn't help, the humans became Greegs many
years ago.”

“It's still a
good read.”

“
It's
one of my worst books. Maybe the worst. What about
Through Savagery
and Back: The Life and Times of a Stranded Greeg
? Didn't you read that one?”

“I didn't like
it.”

“What!? The
critics called it my masterpiece, my central opus, the summation of
not only my own creative career but a perfect representation of the
universal human experience.”

“It was a bit
long and wordy.”

I was finished
talking to the random fan. I continued walking down the path, but
the fan persisted in following me.

“I know where
this Beard you seek is. You're looking for the Beard of Broog,
aren't you?”

“That's
right.”

“Yep, I know
where it is. I might be convinced to trade the location of the
Beard for a personalized autograph on this book.”

I sighed,
letting Wendell know that I was going to autograph the book, but
that I was not happy about it. I signed a quickened, rather lame
signature.

“What's this?”
asked Wendell. “Sign your name properly! Spell it out! That's just
a few randomly connective lines that no one could read.”

“
You
want the book signed twice?”

“No, sign this
one,” he said, producing an entirely different copy of the same
book from his backpack.

“You brought
two copies of that book?”

“Of course.
One has to be prepared on Garbotron. You have to account for the
destruction of at least half your personal possessions. I didn't
think it would be wrecked by you though.”

“I didn't mean
to wreck it. Can you just tell me where this beard is?”

“After I have
a proper autograph.”

I signed the
double copy, this time writing out my full name with a flourish,
even adding in some letters that weren't supposed to be there. The
starstruck fan began salivating over his newly acquired
collectable.

“Yes! It's
mine! I finally got the prize! I'm rich! Hahahaha!”

I felt
sorry for this sad creature. His entire purpose in life was based
on wanting to get my autograph.
Mine. Me
. Was I so important? Was I even interesting at
all?

“I can tell
you where the beard is now,” he said.

“Please.”

“
Continue on the path until you see a sign reading
This way to the
Southern Continent of Plastic Wastelands
. Do not follow that sign. Instead take a turn at
the
Wall of
Leftover Cheese-Like Products
. Follow the cheese until you reach
The Lake of
Liquids
.”

“What kind of
liquids are in the lake?” I asked.

“Nobody knows.
But if it's garbage and it's liquid, then it's in there. Do not
touch the lake.”

“Did I mention
I'm immortal? Touching the lake probably wouldn't hurt me.”

“You must
cross the lake. There is a seaworthy canoe fastened to the nearby
shore. I've been using it to commute across town.”

“Town?”

“There isn't
an official town yet, but I've been trying to make a society of
sorts in my spare time. I've been naming places according to what
type of garbage they're made up of. All the street signs and maps
you see along the path were made by me. For transportation I've
crafted the aforementioned canoe, as well as some decent miniature
models of push carts and other rudimentary devices made of broken
glass and twisted metal that I hope to see into fruition in the
future. There is a lot of broken glass and twisted metal here. Was
stuff like that popular on the planet where this garbage came
from?”

“Unfortunately
so.”

“There is a
lot of work to do, turning all the metal and wheels into usable
objects.”

“You should
team up with this fruit fly named Milt. He's obsessed with cleaning
up the planet. Could use a little help. He might take to your ideas
of a society.”

“
A fly?”
Wendell suddenly looked at me as if
I
were the insane one. Perhaps we were both right.

“Yeah.”

“Anyway... was
I still giving you directions?”

“You were
telling me where to go after the lake.”

“
Yes.
After the lake, that's a good part. You will blindly stagger
through the
Swampy Maze of Visionless Wandering
. You may find yourself disturbed by the
fact that you cannot see through the hazy ground-clouds. You might
find yourself falling face first on the uneven terrain. The swamp
is always shifting and rolling, like the great tides of the Hroon
ocean. The swamp shifts because the garbage has turned alive over
the years. A landscape with an agenda of its own. The original
surface of this planet is but a forgotten core miles beneath the
ancient onslaught of undesirables. Do not despair. There is a way
out of the swamp. All you have to do is follow the call of the
Garbage-Demons, for they only feed in the evenings on the north
side of the swamp, and the north is where you must go if you would
find the Beard of Broog. After you cross the swamp you are very
close.”