by Martin Gibbs
Voltaire's Adventures before Candide
By Martin Gibbs
Do you sometimes sit there, in your chair, wondering what it all means? Why are we even upon this planet? What insane person decided to place us here and give us these meaningless, hopeless, idiotic chores to complete? As if we were blind rats in a maze of corn. This bizarre story about Voltaire before he sat down to write Candide will not answer that question, but will at least take your mind off the screaming hell that is reality.
Warning: The following contains material, which is harmful to the sane.
I am serious. If you value any of your connections to reality, stop right here. This is not some trick to get you to keep reading, like a Lights Out episode, it is a real warning. You probably got this free, and that is a good thing—my other work is not as all-out nutso as this piece of drivel.
Episode 1
February 20, 1679
Voltaire, if that is who truly wrote Candide, was seething when he heard about the alien infestation on Mars. He boarded his sleek spacecraft, engaged the throttle, cursed in Latin, and blasted through Earth's atmosphere in record time. However, after he started investigating the Red Planet, he noticed a deep emptiness inside of him. Somehow a horde of giant rats had sucked out his gallbladder without express written permission from a doctor. He was, in a word, pissed.
These rats harassed our great author to an extent that was very extensive. Later that night, the author slipped out of the back door of a Martian pub—where a lizard assaulted him with a stick and two round steel balls. This was very suggestive, thought Voltaire, as he quickly ran the bully through with a meat cleaver, which Voltaire did not have in 1484. He jogged down the alley in his escape, but quickly realized the mistake of escaping.
A priest, sitting on his hands and knees at the end of the alley, asked him to dance. In Finnish. Voltaire refused and two giant monks lifted him off the ground and made hand signals to Voltaire, which our hero recognized as ancient Egyptian onanism signs. Voltaire went with the men, but he quickly bored of their company. They had become abusive and told him that he could no longer sing or play the flute again.
Asking why, the priest shunned Voltaire for eighty-five point eight seconds, then handed him a bow-staff and challenged him to a dual. Voltaire won and took off down the road at a hurried pace that was fast.
Voltaire stepped aboard his spacecraft and decided that it was far better to return to the planet he loved...
...But Mercury was very warm in June and Voltaire quickly realized that it was now or never—he would just have to marry the princess Wonkie-do, the princess of Land GoBuyBye. Further, she had a degree in Tiki torch construction, and could melt liquid nitrogen just by looking at it.
She grudgingly agreed to wed.
They wed in a cathedral on the outskirts of Iran in 2345, just before the Great War that would destroy the entire three-hundredth level of the world apartments. (Earth's population was now 60 million billion—everyone had been forced into a large apartment complex. The structure was immense, 23,000 stories tall, and it covered nearly every square inch of land and sea. It was too much for Voltaire to be this far into the future; his medieval brain curdled at the very sight of a toaster. He needed an out.
Voltaire and Wonkie-do took off on a space-traveling frenzy.
Soon the speeds in the craft reached 5 times the speed of light, and the heat of Voltaire rose within both the craft and his bride. Voltaire, engrossed in the finite details of the human body, forgot to set the autopilot, and careened into an asteroid 455 miles across.
His bride now out of the way (or so he thought), Voltaire climbed onto the asteroid and looked around him at the blackness. There it was, he presumed, there it was. However, since it was, it was gone, and since it was gone, Voltaire saw something his eye didn't see, but which his mind did.
Consequently, he went crazy and the psychiatrists on Pluto were dispatched to retrieve him. How they knew of his condition was a secret between Wonkie-do and the head physician. They took him to the cold planet where they performed inappropriate experiments upon his writhing form.
Episode 2
February 21, 1678
The previous events were enough to drive our hero on a hell-bent-for-leather ride out to the edge of Mars, near the end of the third century after the failed coming of Christ. Voltaire removed his eyepiece as he scanned the red planet. Mars had somehow been removed of its luster around 3245, when the villain Lawyertogo destroyed most of the planet in his conquest for money on Jupiter. (He used Mars as a landing pad for his giant craft.)
After looking at a blotch on Mercury for twenty minutes, Voltaire gave in to free will and started skipping and singing in a girlish voice. There was nothing left to do. Nothing. As he skipped and danced, his song took on a very high pitch, and he started squealing about the little goblins and his long-lost friend, the Earl of Doncaster.
Consequently, the same psychiatrists from Pluto came and took him to the cold planet once again. He would remain there for another ninety-one years.
Episode 3
February 22, 2494
Having been released from the insane asylum, our great author headed back to earth. Unfortunately, he landed on the outskirts of Tehran, dressed in a silk kimono, and a strange, fleshy band tied around his head. It dripped. Voltaire swore at his surroundings.
Iran had changed after the war. People were very quiet and the violent uprisings were no more. They now had downrisings, in which people drove stakes into the ground and impaled themselves on them in memory of all those that they had lost to insanity.
He thought his world was lost forever, and so he climbed back into his spacecraft and sped out to the far reaches of the solar system. Not thinking, he buzzed by Pluto, but the mental health workers arrested him. Subsequently, he spent another hundred years locked in solitary confinement. Realizing he could travel back in time, he released his bonds and flew back to Earth, hoping to find a time and place in which his home planet was not crawling with maggots.
With a curse he realized he had forgotten his cleaver, which he did not have in 1484.
Episode 4
February 23, 1765
Voltaire once again set out on another mission—this time to the fated planet Zendor, where he planned to meet the famous Fawlty. Alas, the tall and sinewy man had gone to London to see the Queen in all her splendor—a sight that blinded him permanently. For the queen's boil had grown several hairs, an attitude, and a little purple rope of intestine she named Yupton.
The scene was so tremendous, and so completely indescribable, that I will not put details to it. This story is pulp enough. (My fingers aren't moving either...well, at least not along the keyboard. Hmmmm.)
However, as Voltaire raced through the night toward Zendor, a creeping feeling filled him about halfway full. Something was wrong. Very wrong. The stars whizzed by outside the space craft, and he could only squirm in discomfort...finally he removed the snake from his pants.
Zendor approached fast, and Voltaire landed expertly on the blue dirt of the horribly designed planet. There were signs for gatherings posted every twenty feet, decorated with flowers and the bladders of roaming animals.
Voltaire wanted to party so badly he could taste the booze in his mouth. But where to go? There were too many places, too many open bars. He quickly lost sight of his goals and thus succumbed to the burly men who suddenly had him surrounded.
"What you want?" they asked in Hebrew.
"Verpiss Dich," replied Voltaire in profligate German cussing.
The two men knifed him in the gut forty-eight times before Voltaire found the courage to knee them in areas that stung quite a bit.
As he ran down the street, Voltaire noticed a small pub and stopped in for a hot glass of liquid nitrogen. Drinking quickly, he ran off again, leaving his tip in the form of Venetian gestures.
This cannot be happening thought Voltaire, as he hopped into his craft and lifted off.
The mission had gone horribly wrong and the temperature outside the craft crept to a dangerously cold -21K, which was nearly impossible. OK, it is impossible, but my loins itch and I don't have time to look up the science.
"Sugar plum fairies came and hid the streets," the author mumbled intensely as the small craft settled down on Neptune.
Voltaire fell asleep and was unaware of the horrible trick that Fate had stuffed up her flowing sleeve. While he snored, small men dressed in red surrounded him—they were part of the galactic communist conspiracy that emanated from a ramshackle hut on Pluto. That earthly men no longer considered this a planet maddened them to no end; enraged by their lust for destruction and spicy noodles, these red men accosted him violently, and swallowed him completely—just as they do millions of helpless planets around the universe.
However, Earth, ever strong, stood as a bastion and fighter against this rotting conspiracy, a horrible network of cruelty which rotted you away like a cavity does a tooth—so to prevent communist takeover, invest in Earth or use Drixoral toothpaste for that clean, fresh feeling, or even Westover motor oil—
"Stop that, it's got silly!" I, the uncultured lout who has to write this stuff, screamed. I waved my three-finger appendage at Voltaire, and dialed into the famous Monty Python serial, "Blackmail."
Voltaire could only scratch his head.
Episode 5
February 24, 1645
Voltaire then realized that he must start saving some money for his retirement. The thought faded off into the atmosphere of Neptune and our fearless author woke up, noticed the communist men, and realized his horrible fate—they were going to do things to him that were not appropriate.
The brave young Voltaire was much stronger however, as he reached into the dark and came away with a dangerous weapon. With the cleaver that he did not have in 1484, he sliced them end to end and back to front.
Aboard his ship, he revved the big engine, and began singing Cavalry songs. Once he had reached a safe altitude, he danced in the confines of his spacecraft. The autopilot cursed him and damned him for all eternity.
"Then use some Castrol motor oil," he droned.
A voice, hollow and pale, spoke to him from behind. "Now we have you."
Voltaire screamed. He spun around to look at his assailant, but he was too late, and only had a fraction of a second to react to the knife that came thrusting at him...
Now I would like to talk about the nature of knives in 3456. They were constructed to prevent—
"Shuddap!" Voltaire screamed, and yanked the control lever on this craft.
Voltaire was quick, but quick in the wrong direction. Thinking he had evaded an enemy, he crashed his spacecraft—it slammed into another asteroid and his would-be killer impaled himself on his own knife as he went flying from the impact.
Voltaire climbed out onto the asteroid and stared around. He could see the doctors from Pluto coming for him in their large craft, but this time Voltaire had a plan.
Stripping himself naked, he danced on the asteroid and dreamed his little dreamy dream, unaware that soon the galactic communist conspiracy was upon him, disguised as psychiatrists from the cold planet. The planet that was no longer a planet.
Upon seeing the author dancing naked on an asteroid, they turned about and—suddenly a fast-moving red, white and blue attack craft blew them out of existence.
Voltaire jumped for joy upon seeing this, dressed and stuck out his thumb. The Americans picked him up and they sped back for the planet he loved most.
When Voltaire arrived on Earth, he went straight to the second floor and out into the dome-covered ocean. Naked once more, he swam with the dolphins and the fishes for long periods until he grew tired and hungry.
Finding a small restaurant, the author sat down at the bar, ordered an African steak and a cold drink. Dinner was marvelous, but the meat was a bit tender and tasted like chicken.
Belching loudly he urinated on a stool and three men walked in, eyes gleaming with twisted cynicism.
They immediately recruited Voltaire into the Traveling Circus. Voltaire was to be the man with the most knife wounds in one body part (45). Of course, he performed the tricks live, and Voltaire had to recover from the wounds before the next show.
Payment was 4,000 lashings from a wet string of pasta and the medical plan was simple: If it hurts we cut it off.
They led him across the nation on a bus that smelled of pineapples and rotten veal. Voltaire sang songs and they rehearsed for the act that he was to perform.
Voltaire decided that he could not wait any longer. He killed the ringleader and every man who bore any resemblance to the tattooed brute. To be sure, he even killed their cats and their cats' friends. It was time to set off for another time, or another place.
Episode -18
St. David's Day
Our hero gave it all up, let go of his tenuous grasp on anything resembling sanity, and surrendered to his darkest fears. He slipped into a depression that was so deep and brooding that he leapt time once again, but now he found himself in London in 1973.
Bulgarian nationals, sent over on ships by some sadistic lunatic the locals called Eddy Baby, roamed the streets of London.
These nationals roamed the streets with false English-Bulgarian dictionaries. Wandering and wandering, they kept asking people to touch their mothers or to rub them slowly—only in hopes of finding the train station.
Voltaire knew their problem, but he ignored it and went on his way to a gun store. After purchasing a rifle he meandered along the Thames and fired randomly into pubs until that fated blue vehicle came to pick him up. Before they could arrest him, however, he stripped naked. He leapt atop the bar and performed a one-man tango.
The police left him alone and called the psychiatrists.
Voltaire shot each of them dead and jogged away. He ran off and discovered several amazing things, and chronicled them for later. However, later would never come since he was already ahead of where he should not have been. We did find, however, a small piece of paper, attributed to Voltaire. He had written, in shaking script: Hospital X has small animals and large men inside, doing things, I found Anton the beast, Roger is not a wombat but a whelk. What we do know, however, is that he eventually discovered himself in 1973. Apparently he had forgotten to kill off one of his clones.
He lost his mind once again. The psychiatrists came and they were from Pluto—and Voltaire put up little fight this time. The needles plunged smoothly into his chalk-white arm and he smiled dumbly at the doctors...
* * *
Voltaire found himself emaciated and hanging from a pole on Mercury, still woozy from the drugs. Something terrible must have happened, he thought.
One must never give up Hope, because she is very sexy. Moreover, our hero didn't give her up and his mental state of mind worked wonders upon his fractured skull.
Wonkie-do had returned! She had not died! She was still alive and kicking!
Sadly, she stood before him.
Voltaire was furious that the old slug was still alive, but that was the price of freedom. She let him down off the pole and they made passionate love-hate symbols out of dust until they grew tired and left for Venus.
On the way there, Wonkie-do stumbled and impaled herself on a large piece of metal sticking up from the floor of the small craft. Her death was only moments away, for the rod had punched through her heart and liver. She spoke for the first time in this fabricated string of meaningless words:
"My dear Voltaire, these are my last words. Listen."
He leaned closer.
"I know you thought I was dead, but I escaped to Venus and was recruited by blue men from the planet Zendor.
"T
hese men took me to their sulfuric acid-protected hut and it was there that we played cards and ate cheese. After the games we played charades naked. I then escaped after the first attempt by them to turn me into a man. Taking a small craft from them, I sped off through space—God knows where I was going. Soon I wound up as a prisoner on Uranus. They worked me near-death there. I was forced to shovel rocks and split them into powder with spoons. For eight years I endured this awful pain until I was recruited into Management." Wonkie-do wheezed and continued:
"This was no better. I was now in control of the entire prison camp, but they chained me to a furnace. An invisible rat came and helped me escape—then I launched off for Venus again.
"However strange this may seem, it is true. Now these are my dying words.
"Whenever a rain storm came, I ran and hid under huge rocks that stunk of old feet and red things that crawl upon you as the setting sun gleams over Earth after a rain storm. That is a run-on sentence. Not the rocks, what I just said. These things were horrible, but I didn't care; I was as free as a lark.
"When the land was dry, I fished and hiked in the sulfur pools, waiting for my ship to be repaired by the fat old men. The men took eighty years to repair my craft, but I made the best of my time: Going to the mall, going out biking on a broken red bicycle, eating custard and vomiting the poisons out, chewing on dirty underwear, wasting valuable paper resources, open-pit mining coal, and starting tremendous forest fires.
"But in 3452, they had finished my craft and I was free to come home to you, but I had no idea where you were. I traveled to earth and they said you had gone, I checked on Pluto—no one. I even went back to Zendor and was recruited again, escaped, and started looking elsewhere. I remember we had met on Mercury and I checked.