by James Gault
Chapter 9
Ogg is an extraordinary creature, and perhaps even unique. He has his trinity of powers – instantaneous travel in time and space, ability to transform himself into whatever he pleases, freedom to roam around in the thoughts of every human being. In wisdom and intelligence he has no equal. Do you seriously think that, faced with the imminent demise of the whole of mankind, he would dump all his eggs in the basket of a teenager previously remarkable only for the wearing of eccentric frocks? If so, I am sorry to have to tell you that you are unlikely to make it into the ranks of Ogg’s correct thinkers.
As any sensible person would have guessed, while Ogg was pursuing his researches with Antonia at his side, he was also buzzing around in time and space, having meetings and conferences with his many friends spread throughout geography and history. Due to his special powers, he could pursue all these different lines of enquiry more or less simultaneously. (Readers with a mathematical bent and a knowledge of convergent infinite series will understand this; others will have to take my word for it.)
Not all of these meetings and conferences were either fruitful or interesting. Ogg, as has already been said, moves in mysterious ways, and one of these ways requires him to have a large number of friends – call them followers if you like - who are usually ordinary to the point of boredom. But there was one of his friends whose behaviour was so odd and whose appearance was so bizarre that Ogg felt he could always get a good laugh out of a visit to him.
His name was Peregrine Pratt, and this was the least of his troubles. He had a body that could only be described as long and thin. He was so tall that he was constantly afraid of damaging his head on the ceiling, so he adopted a semi-crouching posture. In a standing position he looked exactly like an old knotted wooden walking stick. It was worse when he sat down. In an attempt to avoid damaging contact with furniture, he splayed his spindly arms and legs in preposterous directions, and when seated he looked like he had just been stolen from the Tate Modern. To accompany his long gnarled body he had a long gnarled nose in a long gnarled face. All of this was topped by a sprawling bush of matted greasy black hair. The overall effect was that of a badly damaged old mop abandoned in a corner. Fate, feeling that she had not yet been sufficiently unkind to him, had bedecked his face with prurient acne. And while is was her normal procedure to remove these disfiguring spots around the age of twenty, Peregrine Pratt still had his mottled face, five years beyond the usual term. But even his appearance wasn’t his biggest woe. He had no friends – except Ogg – as any who were either brave enough or short-sighted enough not to be revolted by his virulent ugliness had long since been frightened off by his vicious bad temper.
Most people would totter and collapse under the weight of such a hazardous load of misfortunes, but Peregrine Pratt was basically a happy man. He had his friendship with Ogg and he had a satisfying job designing computer fantasy games. It was the ideal profession, he could work alone – fortunately, as no-one would work with him – and it suited his clear logical mind to a ‘t’. He was almost a perfect correct thinker, except of course when he was in a bad mood, which was most of the time. In fact, it was exactly the frequent oscillation between lucid clarity and dark rage which made him so successful in his job. His computer games publisher called it his creative genius.
Peregrine Pratt had in fact one other friend apart from Ogg. He was a diminutive robot and he lived in the top right hand corner of his computer screen. From time to time, he would offer unwanted advice like ‘you are obviously writing a letter, would you like some help’ or ‘I have detected you are typing in Swahili and you’ve misspelled the last twenty words.’ These comments always drove Peregrine Pratt into a fury. Then, in a blind rage, he would produce some of his most creative ideas, and, when finished, he would feel extremely grateful and warm towards his annoying robot. It was a love-hate relationship.
One day, while he was typing extremely complicated and creative fantasy things into his computer, he heard the robot speak.
“Can I have a quick word?”
“Oh, shut up, would you? Can’t you see I’m trying to work?” Peregrine Pratt screamed in response. But virtual beings are like Great Beings and such wanton displays of emotion have no effect on them.
“Can I have a quick word?” it repeated.
“Listen, you horrible irritating grey creature, if you don’t fuck off and stop annoying me I’ll go into Task Manager and wipe you out of memory.”
The virtual creature’s response to this threat was to jump out of the computer and sit in the chair beside him in flesh and blood (or metal and wire in its case).
“Your temper doesn’t get any better, does it?”
“Oh, it’s you Ogg,” Peregrine Pratt replied, softening. “What are you looking for this time?”
“Have you had any more thoughts on the end of the world, Perg?”
Why did Ogg have this infuriating habit of shortening names to one syllable? Some people might find ‘Peregrine Pratt ‘ a bit of a mouthful, but it was his name and he was entitled to have it used in its full resplendent form. He clenched his fists, and promised himself once again that he wasn’t going to lose his temper with the only Great Being to choose him as a friend. Better to ignore the slight.
“Aliens,” he replied. “Spacemen. Invaders from another planet.”
Ogg sighed. ‘Perg’ was a great guy – bad temper apart – and his logical thinking ability was almost perfect. His one flaw was that his thinking had been conditioned by his job, and his mental machinations were achieved using computer logic. For him everything was in binary. With him it was zero or one, yes or no, black or white. Zero point five or various shades of grey were not to be tolerated. He could never accept that a person who was not happy may not necessarily be sad.
“Why do you think that?” Ogg asked, dreading the answer.
“We cannot say for certain that these extra-terrestrials do not exist, therefore they must exist.”
This is the worst kind of logic error you can make and unfortunately it is all too common, especially among politicians trying to justify wars or tax increases. Ogg should have thanked him politely and moved on, but there was a problem. Peregrine Pratt was right in saying that we could not disprove the presence of clandestine visitors from another part of the universe. So it was possible, although not certain, that they may indeed be the threat he and Antonia were seeking. It was a line of enquiry that could not be ignored.
“In your opinion, Perg, where would be the best place to look for these aliens?”
“They’re everywhere Ogg. They take over our bodies, and there’s no way we can recognise them. Any of your friends, or colleagues, or your family might be one. Personally, I suspect everyone.”
Ogg resisted the temptation to ask Peregrine Pratt to explain the reasoning behind his theory. Better to concentrate on the practicalities.
“But, if they hide themselves so well, is there any way we could catch them with their guard down?”
“The best would be to get hold of them at their point of entry into the Earth.”
“And do we know where that is?”
“Well yes I do, as a matter of fact. It wasn’t easy to work it out. It involves some equilateral triangles, the history of the crusades and the Holy Grail, and the angle of the sun at the summer solstice. Even then a fairly large computer needs about three days to do all the calculations. But I can tell you that these aliens land by spaceship at a location in the middle of the Nevada desert in America.”
Peregrine Pratt reached into his office drawer and took out a small hand-held GPS, which he handed to Ogg.
“The exact coordinates are in here, as waypoint ‘ENTRY”.
“I think we should go and check it out. I’ll send you on ahead, and I’ll follow a couple of nanoseconds later with another of my friends who’s helping me on this.”
“No! Don’t bri
ng anyone else. I’ll end up quarrelling with him all the time. I won’t mean to, but I can’t help it. It’ll be terrible. Couldn’t we just go by ourselves?”
But before Peregrine Pratt had got half way through his list of moans, Ogg had vanished and Peregrine was standing alone under a hot sun in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in North West U.S.A