Royal Pain glared, and for a moment, Red worried that her plea might backfire. Then, the glare melted into a smile of fiendish inspiration.
"The universe, eh?" Royal Pain nodded. "Maybe you're onto something." With that, he cupped his hands together, and they started to glow.
"What are you planning?" said Baldy.
"A new challenge," said Royal Pain. "How would you like your own universe?"
"Who wouldn't?" said Beardnik.
"To what end?" said Baldy.
"Leave it to you to look a gift horse in the butt." A patch of inky shadow and glittering cloud swirled in Royal Pain's hands. "Look, are you happy with the current universe? With everything in it?
"Why not try to do better?" Royal Pain parted his hands, and the swirling patch of light and dark grew bigger. "Why not design a more perfect universe, a universe you can believe in?"
"I like it." Beardnik approached and gazed into the swirling patch. "But why haven't you done this yourself?"
"Who says I haven't?" Royal Pain rolled his eyes from side to side and nodded slowly, encompassing the universe around them. "But seriously," he said, "it takes special souls to make something truly worthwhile."
"We know all about that," said Red, throwing her arms around Beardnik and Baldy's shoulders.
The rest of the group converged on Royal Pain, gathering close to watch the expanding sphere of a newborn universe pulse and swirl between his hands.
"Well?" Royal Pain sounded annoyed. "Are you going to do this or what?"
"Of course." Red slid a hand into the swirling sphere. "Who else is in the game?"
Beardnik followed her lead. "Deal me in."
"I'll play a hand." Four-Eyes reached into the sphere after Red and Beardnik.
"I'm feeling lucky," said Princess as she added her hand to the mix.
Mannequin also reached into the growing matrix. "I will sweeten the pot."
"I will raise you all," said Dragon as he plunged his hand in after the others.
That left only one of them on the outside.
"What are you waiting for?" said Royal Pain. "Why must you always be difficult?"
Baldy stared into the glittering, whirling sphere. "This will take all of us?"
"Yes, you spit-polished nincompoop!" said Royal Pain. "As you well know, it takes seven stars to make a new creation."
Baldy smirked. "Then by all means," he said, "let's put all our cards on the table!"
With that, he plunged both his hands into the newborn universe.
And a blinding flash of light engulfed them all.
*****
One trillion years later...
Quillid Fason opened the window of his spaceship, the Prisenter, and stared into the twinkling white distance.
The sweet, fresh air of outer space caressed the ever-changing flickerflesh of Fason's face as he frowned. He had hoped that sticking his head out the window might give him new insight...but looking directly at the star patterns seemed to be no more helpful than looking at them on a viewer inside the ship had been.
The Prisenter was still lost.
Suddenly, his copilot, Angla Runch, popped up beside him. As bad as their situation was, she still had a big smile on her shimmering, kaleidoscopic face. "Some of the greatest discoveries happen when people are lost, you know."
"We're the first of our kind to travel in space," said Fason. "If we get lost and don't return home, they might never send out another ship. It could mean the end of space travel for our people."
"Think positive," said Angla. "We're still alive, right? The ship was knocked off-course by a flock of stargeese, but it wasn't damaged, was it?"
"That's true." Fason heard the melodic cries of stargeese echoing in the reaches of space, mingled with the chiming, booming songs of solar whales and the howls of racing warp-dogs.
"We have enough supplies to last a while, right?" said Angla. "And when those run out, we can harvest star-manna and wild ambrosia from passing asteroids. So what's the worst that can happen?"
"We stay lost forever." Fason gazed into the whiteness of space, watching the multicolored gem-stars glitter and flash. "We'll be doomed to wander forever, drifting through the endless universe without a home or reason to live."
"That won't happen," said Angla. "We'll find our way."
Fason sighed as he watched the unfamiliar constellations dance around them. "You really think so?"
"It'll all work out." Angla patted his back. "After all, they're looking out for us."
"Who's that?" said Fason.
Angla pointed a finger at a bright violet star that was off to one side and far away. "There's one of them." She moved her finger to another star, a blue one, that was up a little higher. "And there."
Next, Angla pointed at a green star, and a pink one. "Another and another." A gold one and a silver one. "There and there." Finally, she showed him a red one, glowing warm and serene in a distant corner of the ivory sky. "And there."
Fason scowled, eyes darting between the stars she'd pointed out. "I don't believe it." All along, he'd been looking right at them, but he was used to seeing them from his homeworld. Now that he was deeper in space, seeing the stars from a different angle, the constellation they formed was nearly unrecognizable.
Except to someone like Angla, who saw things from a different point of view all the time.
"It's them." Fason put an arm around Angla's shoulder and gave her a squeeze. "The Seven Great Stars."
"They'll take care of us," said Angla. "They'll guide us home."
"Yes." A single tear slid down Fason's flickering cheek. "They always do."
*****
Star Trick:
The Slow-Motion Picture
“Frglsnit, korfu kindar mikt!” snarled the angry Pingpong leader, strangling several bridge crew as he spoke.
“Mikar filok singlak DOM!” shouted his first officer in reply, quickly ducking beneath his station as the commander approached.
The commander was shocked. A furious growl echoed deep in his throat. “DOM? DOM? Meenork Tiktac! Grok!!!” Without hesitation, he drew the meat cleaver hanging from his belt and hacked the first officer to shreds. “DOM?!” He then went on a rampage, systematically severing the heads and bodies of the remainder of his bridge crew.
As a new crew shuffled fearfully onto the bridge, the Pingpong leader again turned to stare at the viewscreen. On it appeared the cause of the leader’s anger, a huge, black thundercloud floating ominously through space. The cloud rumbled fiercely, and incredibly huge lightning bolts arched from its hovering dark body. Framed against its imposing, powerful bulk, the other two ships of the Pingpong Imperial Fleet resembled tiny, bald trubbles from Charmin’s Planet. The cloud was terrifying, and made even more so by the huge, nasty grin stretching across its malignant surface.
“Laftrak mikle martor scrapple,” muttered the leader, turning from the screen to his new first officer. “Ecuador scritch scratch rubik smurf?”
The first officer gulped audibly, slowly tightened his safety helmet, and answered the leader’s question. “Porker fallout miktar scoobydoo. Dom-dom-dom.”
Enraged at his answer, the leader whirled, booted him in the teeth and casually threw him out a porthole. He then turned to his weapons officer, who had already scrambled hastily underneath his station.
“Parsley haddock disco nixon,” he commanded, pointing to the cloud displayed on the screen. “Sweathog!”
At his command, twin beams of concentrated water spurted outward from the massive squirt-cannons mounted on the ship. Their target, the enormous thundercloud, simply hovered in space, awaiting the beams’ arrival, its immense, morbid grin growing noticeably wider.
“Kaymart,” mumbled the Pingpong leader, rubbing his hands together nervously, using them to pummel several engineers insensate. “Kaymart roebuck...” He anxiously watched the viewscreen, where the deadly Pingpong squirt-beams had almost reached their target.
Then, suddenly, just as the
beams were about to strike, the cloud’s grinning maw began to open up. When the beams finally reached the cloud, they were swallowed up by its enormous, cavernous excuse for a mouth. The sight of the massive, monstrous cloud-lips closing behind their all-powerful squirt-beams reduced the Pingpong crew, already quaking in fear from their commander, who was starting another tantrum, to blobs of quivering jelly.
When the cloud’s mouth opened again, displaying for all to see its massive, shining bridgework and horrendous overbite, the Pingpong crew, whatever was left of it after the commander finished his rampage, lapsed into senseless whimpering. This time, the cloud had opened its maw in response to squirt beams fired from the other two vessels of the Pingpong fleet. Again, it swallowed up the beams, but this time it also began moving; swiftly, it overtook the Pingpong craft, and within a split second, had effortlessly devoured them as well.
For a moment, all was silent on the sole remaining Pingpong ship; then, terribly, ominously, a piercing, disgusting belch rang out over the vessel’s audio amplifiers. On the screen, the huge, amorphous cloud/thing slowly licked its lips.
“Dom,” stammered the Pingpong leader, exhausted after having decapitated and castrated his entire crew in a final fit of fury. “Brahms kraft endive septic dom. Dom.” For an instant, he looked defeated, beaten, and broken. Two of his three ships were gone, his crew was dead, and the smiling cloud was again advancing on his lone vessel. Tears welled in his eyes. Then he was freaking again, ripping angrily with his bare hands into the bleeping, sputtering control panels filling the bridge, kicking in the viewscreen, tearing out huge sections of the walls with his teeth.
*****
“Commander Blanch, we are receiving a top priority message,” reported Lootenant Biltwell, communications officer of the deep space station Epsilot Deadwood. “It’s from the Pingpongs sir.”
Commander Blanch, Deadwood’s captain and standup comedian, whirled around in utter shock, tripping over an extension cord and ramming his skull into a bulkhead in the process. “The Pingpongs, Biltwell? The last time they called us was to make ugly faces at the Fodderation Council. The blackguards, they hung up when they couldn’t transfer the charges.” Blanch snarled in remembrance. “Oh well, put it on the screen, Lootenant.”
Biltwell flicked a switch and the viewscreen on the Deadwood’s bridge flared to life. On it, a pattern of lines appeared, straight, vertical lines of varying thickness which filled the entire screen and marched across it in a continuous flow. For a moment, Blanch stared, flabbergasted at the mysterious signal playing across the viewscreen. Then, realization hit him, and he quickly moved to deliver a swift kick to Biltwell’s control panel. The lines disappeared as soon as Blanch connected, and the screen filled with an image of a Pingpong bridge.
“Blasted vertical,” sputtered Blanch, checking his boot for smudges. “I thought it was a new Pingpong code.”
Biltwell grimaced, partly at Blanch’s stupidity, and partly from the pain her left foot, which he was standing on. “Commander, I’m picking up an audio signal, but I can’t understand it. It’s in Pingpong sir, and since we don’t have a Pingpong dictionary...”
Blanch nodded, recalling how, only a week before, the Pingpong dictionary, subtitled “1001 Curses for Every Occasion,” had been banned by the Fodderation Nice Language Commission.
“How are we going to translate this, Commander?” asked Biltwell querulously, gently shoving Blanch on the floor to remove him from her foot.
“My dear Biltwell,” replied Blanch condescendingly, slowly struggling to his feet, “all you have to do is read the uni-language subtitles at the bottom of the screen.” Blanch reached for a chair to sit down on, tripped over another cord and tumbled unceremoniously into the engineering console.
Biltwell, this time embarrassed at her own stupidity, blushed a deep crimson. “How silly of me,” she stammered, swiftly turning her attention back to the viewscreen in an effort to conceal her mistake. “Commander, this is from the captain of the Pingpong cruiser K’rud. He says that a massive...would you like expletives deleted, sir?”
Blanch, sprawled awkwardly on the floor after slipping on a crew-member’s skateboard, nodded in approval.
“He says that a massive, uh, cloud has entered Pingpong space. It’s already...eaten...several of the ships under his command. The...,” Biltwell blushed again, embarrassed this time by the Pingpong’s choice of descriptive adjectives. “...thing...is about to swallow the K’rud as well, sir.” Suddenly, the screen went blank. Biltwell gasped. “Correction, sir, the K’rud has already been swallowed.”
For a long moment, the only sound on the bridge was the distant thud caused by Blanch’s header down the inter-deck stairs.
Unaware that her commander had clumsily exited the bridge, Biltwell resumed speaking. “Commander, we have one final transmission coming in from the K’rud. It reads 'The cloud is heading for Earth. Ha Ha Ha.’ “ Biltwell slumped back in her chair, shocked, confused, and wondering where Blanch had disappeared to.
“What a day,” she muttered disgustedly. “Not only is Earth about to be destroyed, but now I’m working into my coffee break.”
*****
A hot wind gently stirred the sands of the blistering Sulking desert. Spook, roasting in his heavy, ceremonial robes, wished he were elsewhere, anywhere but in the blazing heat of his home planet, waiting for the know-it-all Sulking Masters to approach. Boy did he hate those three show-offs. They were the three wisest beings on all Sulking, possessing most of the knowledge in the universe, and they never hesitated to let everybody know it. Spook, himself not exactly a pushover in matters intellectual, felt like dirt around the Sulking Masters, and the three boobs never let him forget it.
“Oh zitpop,” exclaimed Spook suddenly, catching sight of several figures in the distance. “Here come the snobs now.”
Indeed, the figures approaching Spook were the Sulking Masters. Clad in black caps and gowns, the traditional attire of Sulking intellectuals, the three Masters were the picture of dignity, intelligence, and high-salary jobs. On their chests, each master wore the inscription “T’non, T’lal, T’sil,” the ancient Sulking slogan which roughly translates “Brains R Us.” On their right hands, each wore a beautiful, glittering ring, inlaid with precious gems and bearing the sacred words “Class of '26.” Truly, the elderly Masters were awe-inspiring.
As they neared, Spook’s blood pressure rose. For ten long years these three slave drivers had tutored Spook in the Sulking ritual of Kallmenerd. They drove him mercilessly, day after day, forcing him to study the ancient rites, to engage in grueling tests of physical endurance, to take a bath every Saturday night. Still, after ten years, Spook hadn’t attained the final goal of Kallmenerd, he hadn’t driven away his emotions and achieved total sarcasm. Total sarcasm, that was Spook’s goal and the goal of all Sulkings; before its conversion to the philosophy of sarcasm, Sulking had been at war. Now everybody just sat around calling each other names and insulting one another, and Sulking was finally at peace.
Shortly, the three Masters, T’Smart, T’Smarter, and T’Smartest, had reached Spook, and stood before him regally. Spook gave them the proper greeting, thumbing his nose and sticking his tongue out at each one, and received the Masters’ traditional response, the ancient Sulking razz. Then, one of the Masters, T’Smartest, spoke.
“Spook, you stinking idiot, you lousy bum, you spineless worm, you have stupidly blown it. Here we are, spending ten of the best years of our lives trying to make you a sarcastic son-of-a-crud, and you flunk your final exam. Now you’ll never attain Kallmenerd, you twit.”
Spook glowered fiercely. “Well excuuuuuuuse me, miss perfect. Pardon moi for imposing on you like this. These past ten years haven’t been a bed of roses for me either, sister.”
“Face it Spook,” said T’Smartest, “you just don’t have what it takes. You’re inferior, unteachable, weak and have very bad breath. Also, you’re being distracted by something. What is it, you flake? Your thoug
hts, give them to me or I’ll break your neck.”
Spook submitted to T’Smartest’s request, and soon the Master had initiated a Sulking mind-mold.
T’Smartest, probing Spook’s thoughts, began speaking slowly. “Spook...your brain to my brain...your thoughts...Spook, I have found it...the distraction...I sense great pain...waves and waves of searing piercing agony...pain...pain...pain....” T’Smartest grimaced, overwhelmed by the sensations flowing through the mold. “You are in pain...”
That is because your finger is in my eye, O' oafish one,” replied Spook angrily.
T’Smartest, heavily embarrassed but not about to show it in front of Spook, expertly covered over her mistake by applying the ancient Sulking stomach pinch to his gut. Spook, stunned by the pinch and still smarting from the finger in his eye, dropped to the ground like a ton of thermo concrete. However, aided by his years of arduous physical training and a sudden, driving urge to punch T’Smartest’s lights out, he quickly recovered and stumbled to his feet.
Once Spook was again standing, T’Smartest began speaking. “Spook, you are truly a boob. You have no resistance to the stomach pinch, none at all, and besides that, you’re gaining weight.” Ashamed, humiliated and looking for a good place to lay into T’Smartest, Spook lowered his head. “Before you so gracefully collapsed, though, I did learn one thing through the mind-mold. Something calling itself T’Jerk is summoning you. Its telepathic cries are part of the distraction which caused you to flunk Kallmenerd. The other part appears to be a young brunette at the temple snack bar named T’Fox.”
Spook, now ready to beat T’Smartest into pulp, stood fuming before the Sulking Masters. “Your mother sucks slime slugs,” he shouted furiously, in a last-ditch attempt to save face.
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