Through The Wormhole, Literally

by David Winship

  "Yes, of course, literally. But to be honest, you have to get a bit, y'know, hardened to it, especially at this time of year. It’ll be Christmas soon.”

  “When?”

  “Not sure. I think Christmas is on a Friday this year."

  Smolin9’s eyes widened. "Let's hope it's not the 13th then."

  Melinda thought about explaining, but then decided against it. “So charities, yeh,” she said. “They say a child dies every minute from drinking dirty water. Well, you can't cry every minute, can you? And as for these dogs, hmm, I think you have to be aware that these charities kinda construct sentimental distressing stories just to squeeze sympathy out of people. And sympathy is the key that opens wallets! It may be a bit harsh, but if these charities can afford a TV ad campaign, they've probably got quite a lot of dosh already. I mean, be serious! Have you any idea how much a campaign like this costs? So, shouldn't they be spending that money on the dogs?"

  "I don't know. Shouldn't your leaders, your government, do something?"

  Melinda smiled. "Well, that would certainly be a bit off the beaten cloud," she said. "We've got government ministers for all kinds of eccentric things, like homosexuality, diversity and Morris dancing, but I don't think we've got a minister for mutts! I guess dog welfare is just not considered a very high priority."

  "I can't believe you're saying that. You've got a dog of your own."

  "I know," Melinda said, puckering up her lips. "Who's a sweet cutie poochie, then? Come over and give me a big licky kiss!"

  Smolin9 unfolded his legs and leaned towards her.

  Melinda chortled. "I was talking to the dog!" she said. "By the way, speaking of sad stuff and dogs, you know the Lewis family two doors down? Their Labrador had a seizure on Sunday and had to be taken to the vet. Their son, Michael, told me about it when I was putting the bin out this morning. He seemed very upset. S'funny, he never struck me as the sensitive type. You can learn a lot about people by the way they interact with their dogs. Literally." Replacing the cap on the nail varnish, she regarded smolin9 with a look of mingled tenderness and amusement. "Do Mortians keep pets?"

  Smolin9 shook his head. "No, we don't have anything suitable really." He cocked his head to one side. "Thousands of years ago, we had the goopmutts, of course."

  "What exactly are goopmutts?"

  "I suppose they're like a cross between earthling dinosaurs and, yeh, dogs. We shared the planet with them for several millennia. Together we discovered new worlds and helped create amazing civilisations throughout the observable universe. The goopmutts needed us for the technologies we developed and we needed them to do all the construction work. I suppose you could say we were the brains and they were the brawn, although eventually they became the dominant species and almost wiped us out."

  Melinda looked baffled. "But if you were the smarter ones, how come they were dominant?"

  "Well, they started to kill us and eat us."

  "Yeh," said Melinda, nodding. "That would do it." Smolin9 was disappearing through the front door. "Where are you going?"

  "Back in a minute!"

  Driven in equal measure by his newly acquired compassion for dogs and his disgust at Melinda's apparent indifference, smolin9 went straight round to the Lewis's and pressed a ten pound note into Michael's hand, gushing incoherently with sympathy and compassion. The money came from an allowance Melinda had given him for personal expenses and transport costs (wormhole travel was fine for travelling vast distances, but, curiously, tiny hops caused all manner of physiological problems). On his return, he immediately set to work on a couple of campaigns of his own. One of them was snappily entitled 'Dogs Are Entitled To Welfare Too You Know' and the other, in keeping with the theme of his mission on Earth, was concerned with the melting polar ice caps.

  By lunchtime the following day, smolin9's research had left him confused and baffled by all the earthling paranoia concerning global warming. He described his findings to Melinda, who had always taken man-made global warming as a given. "I don't get it," she said. "You say the met office people have significantly lowered their prediction of how much hotter the planet will get in the next few years?"

  "Yes, and that's all rather inconvenient, not to say embarrassing, for the plethora of scientists, politicians and policy makers who spent the last decade issuing dire warnings of melting ice caps, dying polar bears, flooding coastlines, heat waves and all the rest of it."

  Melinda frowned. "Yes, but you also said global temperatures stalled fifteen years ago and have yet to rise again. So, what's going on? That's totally bizarre. Surely they couldn't have been lying about it?"

  "I don't know about lying, but the experts are now backtracking like frightened lobsters.”

  "Erratic."

  "Yeh, it seems they've been trying to create a better world for nothing," smolin9 concluded. "It's really annoying because I've ordered a whole bunch of printed t-shirts, polo shirts and sweatshirts based on the global warming science being settled beyond dispute."

  Melinda glared at him. "What?" she screeched. "How much did that cost me? What's printed on them?"

  "Okay, well..." Smolin9 shrugged and looked at the floor. "It's a great slogan: 'Save the Arctic. Donate ice!'"

  Smolin9's reading of earthling body language left a lot to be desired, but it was sufficient to prompt a rapid retreat into the bathroom. Throwing a tight smile over his shoulder before slamming the door and locking it, he waited until Melinda's venomous tirade had abated. Then he re-emerged with an expression of innocent asininity and risked her further wrath by asking for a supplement to his allowance.

  "You're joking, aren't you?" said Melinda, exasperated. "God knows how much these blessed t-shirts have cost me. And now you want more money? I gave you nearly a hundred pounds yesterday. Where's it all gone?"

  Smolin9 flashed one of his disarmingly artless smiles. "It's gone to good causes," he assured her. "There are a lot of sick dogs in this neighbourhood and I've been helping the families cope with the distress."

  Melinda was bewildered. She obviously knew about the Lewis's Labrador, but, as far as she was aware, the only other dog owners in the street were the Liveseys at No. 8, who had a perfectly healthy poodle, and Melinda herself. The root of her confusion lay in her not knowing that young Michael Lewis had shared the news of his ten pound windfall with several of his mates. This had prompted a sudden and inexplicable increase in the number of dogs in the vicinity and a commensurate decline in their health. Naturally, smolin9 had responded with unhesitating magnanimity in each and every case. It turned out that Michael himself had suddenly acquired two other dogs, both of which, tragically, had succumbed to illness almost immediately.

  As Melinda was fond of saying: you can learn a lot about people by the way they interact with their dogs (both real and imaginary).

  . . .

  As smolin9 prepared to make an on-location broadcast from an ice floe somewhere in the Arctic and while polkingbeal67 probed and scrutinised the Milky Way whilst wrestling with his inner turmoil, nipkow4 persevered in his efforts to persuade yukawa3 to take the Niffis crisis seriously.

  More than fifty chilloks had died in fresh violence in the city after Naaffab protesters loyal to the ousted President Keshiak had clashed again with security forces. The latest trouble had started with a gruesome dismembering in a busy market place in the Muqu quarter of the city, when a mob, dragging the bloodied antennae of a prominent Naaffab cleric, had been allowed to parade through the trading archways while security officials stood by.

  "It's times like this when ambitious, enterprising young reporters should roll up their sleeves, crack the story and go down in journalism history," nipkow4 enthused.

  "Yeh," said yukawa3 lugubriously, "but what should we do? If I had sleeves, which I don't, I'd keep them rolled down so there'd be less chance of getting any of these pesky ants on my skin."

  Nipkow4 persisted. "Come on," he said. "When the time comes and your life flashes before your eyes, you'll
want to see something worth watching, won't you? When you breathe your last and people gather around to reflect upon your contribution to Mortian history, wouldn't you like to be esteemed by your peers and hear them say 'he was a ground-breaking journalist' or 'he touched the lives of the people with his famous scoops'?"

  "No," said yukawa3, "I'd like to hear them say 'wait, don't bury him, he's still moving!'"

  The city of Niffis, a giant chillok mound, was the only obvious evidence of 'pesky ants' on the vast expanse of parched, arid soil where the MMBC crew was stationed. To most observers, the dilapidated column, rising in bizarre isolation out of an otherwise flat landscape of red sand, could have been dismissed as nothing more than a big inoffensive pile of dirt. Expert examination, however, revealed a cauldron of street riots and seething hatreds. It was a city in torment - ravaged, ransacked and looted.

  The MMBC myrmecam, a highly sophisticated device that combined visual inspection fibrescopes with a stunningly effective real-time language translator, enabled the crew to observe and interact with the chilloks in an astonishingly effective way. On arrival, the crew had been given a warm reception by Keshiak's Naaffab-led interim government. A short trek across the planet's smooth, sweeping landscapes had been followed by an illuminating guided tour of the city. But Keshiak had been toppled within two days and all pretence at diplomatic niceties had been abandoned. Representatives of the minority Muqu and Mishah communities clamoured for a coup while military chiefs and leaders of secular parties struggled to keep the peace. Every time MMBC technicians pointed a myrmecam into the labyrinthine tunnels of Niffis they were greeted with a hostile shake of the antennae and slogans such as "We will eat the antenna beads of the infidels!" and "Walk the death spiral!"

  Well aware that their Mortian visitors had influence with the Intergalactic Commission, spokesmen for both the Naaffabs and the Muqus were keen to give the impression of being reasonable, tolerant people who accepted contention and dissent. The evidence of nipkow4's eyes, however, was conclusive - the chilloks were peaceful creatures only when they were not snapping off the antennae of their opponents! Their take on democracy was to insist they were the people's choice and then kill any chilloks attempting to conduct a popular poll to prove or disprove that claim. Intrigued, nipkow4 tried to conduct a poll of his own and inserted microscopic flyers with detachable slips into the city tunnels. He was confident the words were translated correctly, but film from the myrmecams just showed chilloks tearing along the dotted lines at top speed.

  The MMBC crew worked around the clock, monitoring and documenting the violations of chillok rights that continued to be perpetrated on an appalling scale, when suddenly, one morning, an urgent bulletin was received from Mortian Headquarters. All MMBC personnel were to return home to attend a briefing by the Mortian leader.

  "He's going to announce his successor!" nipkow4 concluded, visibly upset. "I'm really annoyed about this. We're doing ground-breaking work here! And we all know who the next leader will be anyway."

  Yukawa3, by contrast, was like a dog with two tails and could not contain his excitement. Hopping from one foot to the other, he tried to keep his voice under control but eventually erupted in a series of barely decipherable bleats: "It is spoken. What it is! What it is! What it is!"

  Like nipkow4, yukawa3 was convinced his former mentor, polkingbeal67, was a shoe-in for the leader role. Most Mortians were equally sure. But I can reveal to you now, dear reader, the true account of the event that gave rise to this expectation (you were bound to find out eventually anyway).

  When the Mortian leader visited the medipod shortly after the heart swap, he had indeed spoken to a groggy and drowsy polkingbeal67. He had not, however, discussed the appointment of his successor, at least not directly. The main thrust of his message had been a lengthy discourse bemoaning the loss of gender identity on the planet, an evolutionary development that had occurred millions of years ago. According to his theory, prompted by his observations of Melinda during her short sojourn on Morys Minor, the primordial shift towards agamogenetic reproduction had left the Mortian species with an imbalance of hormones and a dearth of female attributes. He was now persuaded that all Mortians should try to rediscover their 'inner woman' in an effort to connect more empathetically with other beings. When polkingbeal67 disputed this and protested: "But we have smolin9, so we cannot possibly be accused of having too many male hormones!" the leader launched into a rambling tirade against belligerence and warmongering. Citing Melinda's caring, sharing nature, her capacity to bond with others and her ability to curb her aggression, he denounced the tendency to elevate one's own species above other beings and told polkingbeal67 of his great ambition to spread "emotional glue", as he described it, all over Morys Minor and beyond. Much to polkingbeal67's displeasure, he ended the conversation by pointedly remarking that he expected his vision to be endorsed by future leaders. "These," he said, "are the thoughts and qualities and characteristics I seek in my successor."

  Exasperated, confused and frustrated, polkingbeal67 had therefore spent his recovery becoming more and more embittered and hostile towards earthlings, while the source of his anger lay on the adjacent bed, smiling blissfully at him. To his great credit, he harboured no personal hatred or animosity towards his friend's wife and refused to contemplate any notion of revenge against her. Nevertheless, his general antipathy towards earthling human nature simmered and festered inside him.

  In view of what the leader had told him, polkingbeal67, unlike everybody else, had absolutely no expectations of being appointed as the next Mortian leader. When he received the summons to attend the official briefing, he completely ignored the call.

  If anyone suggested to polkingbeal67 that Mortian civilisation was going down the drain, he would disagree and insist it was way, way worse than that - it was coming up the drain. In his view, the leader's vision of the future threatened a regression to primeval feebleness, a bubbling up of long-dormant histrionics that would render Morys Minor ungovernable and vulnerable to hostile aggression. He felt impotent and out of control, and his knee-jerk reaction to take out his anger on earthlings had not abated in the slightest. We do not know if he considered heaven a real place or a state of being or a figurative concept - the pandemonium in his mind ensured it made no difference whatsoever. Heaven represented the pinnacle of earthling aspiration and, by inference, God the Mother defined everything that irked him about earthling people and the Mortian leader's veneration for them. We can be sure that polkingbeal67 would have been intent on causing as much mayhem as possible on Earth itself, had he not been saddled with a heart that could not function there. Clearly, there was little scope for him to cause too much trouble in heaven. Ionisation blasters are woefully ineffective against figurative concepts.

  Nevertheless, he soon developed an itchy trigger finger and fixed his sights on a large rogue asteroid hurtling around in the vicinity of Jupiter. Unfortunately, having zapped it with the ion blasters, he managed to steer his craft right through a shower of debris, inflicting serious damage to plasma turrets, the tractor beam emitter and a large section of the primary hull. Worried that the fusion propulsion systems had been compromised, he further compounded his problems by impulsively jabbing at the superluminal thruster without properly resetting the destination coordinates. He found himself in the vicinity of the Ring Nebula, helplessly ensnared in a thick viscous goop, like a bug stuck in jelly. Now he really was in a predicament. The space jelly, often referred to by cosmic travelers as the 'rot of the gods', adhered like molasses to the hull of the spacecraft, making both superluminal velocity and fusion propulsion impossible. Polkingbeal67 shook his head. "Yeh," he muttered to himself. "This could ruin my day." Resigned to his fate, he turned to the console and sent out an intergalactic distress call.

  When the call was received on Morys Minor, all MMBC personnel, including smolin9 and Melinda, were already back home anticipating the big announcement by the planet's leader. Although polkingbeal67 had transmitted
precise hyper spatial coordinates, two-way communication with him was out of the question, not least because of the growing impermeability of the space jelly. The leader was in a quandary. Should he send a rescue party and postpone his briefing? Or should he go ahead as planned and inflict a little more solitary confinement on the hapless war veteran? While he was wrestling with this conundrum, another fly appeared in the ointment. Actually it was a chillok; and it was not so much ointment as a dish of the leader's skin oil.

  To explain that, we must turn the clock back to yukawa3 and nipkow4's final day on the planet Oov. The conflict in the city of Niffis had escalated in the hours immediately preceding the departure of the MMBC crew. The Naaffab leader, Keshiak, had been reinstated as President and was being held accountable for killing dozens of Muqu rebels in a formic acid attack on one of the main rebel-held sections of the city.

  In accordance with the provisions and stipulations of the Intergalactic Charter, all chilloks were obliged to be routinely vaccinated with compounds that neutralised their formic acid. Keshiak was alleged to have authorised the suspension of these vaccinations for his troops in the lead-up to the current unrest. When nipkow4 challenged him about this in the course of a private interview via the myrmecam, he freely acknowledged the offence had taken place.

  "Don't you have any principles?" nipkow4 asked him, incredulous.

  "Of course," Keshiak protested. "But I don't let them get in the way."

  "In the way of what?"

  Keshiak paused for a moment to consider his reply. "In the way of doing what's right," he said. "For the record, I must tell you that I did not authorise the use of formic acid and, furthermore, all my troops have been neutralised. I have nothing to hide and I welcome inspection by any observers approved by the intergalactic community."