Cat continued, “Let me explain further and as simply as I can, for obvious reasons. It’s like this. Mud Lizards in Jurassic times started out as pretty ‘thick’. Like everything in the Jurassic period really, and like Intergalactic Tax Inspectors in modern times.”
I glared at him after that last remark and would very much liked to have throttled him. However with Joosthava present I decided a better approach was to be uncharacteristically less violent to the little monster, and so I asked as politely as I could, through very gritted teeth, if he could just explain a bit more maybe.
The Zygote Crystal
Cat continued, “At some point during the Jurassic period, the Mud Lizards started to evolve rapidly. Their brains enlarged and they developed advanced reasoning capability very quickly. Soon they were developing machines and tools, well before history tells us such things came to be on Earth. Pretty soon they realised that their increased intelligence was linked to a crystal that was in their possession. This was a so called Zygote Crystal, which can facilitate rapid development of any organism through a process known as AccEvolution.”
Cat continued, “Due to their rapid advance in a wide range of capabilities they became the dominant species on Earth at the time. They managed to do all sorts of things including training the carnivorous dinosaurs, like T. rex, to work for them. Despite their dominance they remained quite benign from what we know. Even with T.rex for example, they tried hard to be kind and educate the beasts to stop eating everything they could get their jaws on. As time passed, the Jurassic period, under Mud Lizard rule so to speak, became quite a civilised world.
The Zygote Crystal did not affect any other species significantly as the principal habitat of the Mud Lizards probably had a natural environmental screen, which effectively shielded the crystal’s emissions off from the rest of the Earth. The Mud Lizards, when they realised what the crystal did, were also careful to ensure they kept it well hidden.”
Cat paused for a moment and then added, “Perhaps Joosthava would like to continue, now that I have explained about the Zygote Crystal, and tell you what she found out about all this from her reconnoitering. I really need to get on with plotting our time course. Joosthava?”
Joosthava picks up the tale
I know I had a very bewildered look on my face as I looked towards Joosthava and said, “OK, so what did you find out?”
“Well,” said Joosthava, at some point after the Zygote Crystal started to have an effect, the Mud Lizards realised that the Chicxulub Impactor was heading for Earth. They realised that this meant essentially the end of most life on Earth for a while. Though at the time they had not tried space travel, they rapidly developed a ship that could theoretically escape the Earth’s atmosphere. The plan was to leave Earth before Chicxulub hit and colonise another planet. Eventually they settled on Plasmolidium, which of course you have heard of. Over time on Plasmolidium, the Mud Lizards’ character changed significantly, moving from friendly and benign to the more aggressive Mud Lizard we know in the 23rd Century.
In short, we are here to find and meet the friendly Jurassic Mud Lizards because we want to ensure that modern day Mud Lizards can’t get their hands on the Zygote Crystal. Imagine what they could do if they had the crystal in modern times, and went through another phase of AcceEvolution. They could develop new powers that could make them invincible in their quest to dominate the Universe. We have to stop them.”
“Hang on, why do they have to go back in time to find this crystal? Surely the Mud Lizards would not have lost such a precious thing after escaping Earth in the Jurassic period? Why can’t they just find it in the 23rd Century?” I asked.
“That is a puzzle,” said Joosthava, “I actually don’t know why they are having to do this. We can only assume that they did in fact lose the Zygote Crystal at some point after arriving on Plasmolidium. Perhaps Mr. Cat might know about this?”
“Yes,” I said, “He seems to know everything about everything doesn’t he?” I looked at him and said, “Well?”
Cat’s head noticeably recoiled into his neck and with pursed whiskers he said “I know nothing about how or why the Mud Lizards might have lost the Zygote Crystal.”
I was genuinely shocked, as for Cat to say he knew nothing was absolutely unheard of. Before I could speak further however he quickly added “Enough of this chitter-chatter, we need to get going and find our friendly Mud Lizards before Mud Lizards from our own time period get to them first.”
With immense reluctance I agreed, having made a mental note that Cat was keeping something to himself for sure. As Krokus Joe opened the eMDaDD hatch so we could get out, I also wondered what on Earth the ChickenClub Impacter was, or whatever Joosthava had said was going to hit Earth. Was it a dance craze I wondered? Surely not. I mean normally they don’t kill anything.
Stepping out of the eMDaDD
Bright light and cool breeze rushed in through the opened hatch and as Joosthava moved towards the exit I stepped forward, put my arm out in front of her and somewhat foolishly said,
“No, no Joosthava, I think one of us should go first.”
Very unfortunately, before I could volunteer Cat for this dubious honour, I stepped full on to a wet patch on the floor created by me chucking water at Cat earlier. I skidded, stumbled and then fell forward, straight out through the hatch. On the fortunate side, or so at first it seemed, the eMDaDD had not materialised on top of a cliff, so there were only a couple of metres between the bottom of the hatch opening and the ground. Once again I landed pretty much headfirst but as it turned out the landing was quite soft. I rolled over and sat up, my hands and upper body covered in what at first I thought was brown mud.
In the poo
I realised quite quickly however that this was not mud, as the bright light and cool breeze were rapidly supplemented by the rich scent of something that made Cat’s gaseous expellations seem attractive.
Cat floated down to me using his new hovering capability and said “Wow, whatever did that must be a big beast.”
As my nose screwed up in response to the intense smell, I tried to stand up. Sadly, again I slipped in what I’d landed in and effectively slapped face down into the massive pile of excrement once more. I was now not only smelling it but very close to tasting it. I managed to lift my head as a Joosthava hawser, as I had come to call the hardened lassoes of her hair, wound around my left ankle and dragged me out of the quite slushy mess. I lay face down on a clean patch of grass and contemplated my situation.
I was in a place several millions of year before I was born, inhabited by, amongst other creatures, T.rex, friendly Mud Lizards and possibly not so friendly visiting Mud Lizards from my own time. As if that wasn't sufficient, I was now covered head to toe in dinopoo. What else could happen I wondered as I felt the poo on my face begin to slowly slide off, to be replaced by a feeling of warm dampness. Almost immediately the poo smell that had been abusing my olfactory lobe was suddenly mixed with the pungent scent of ammonia. Even before I could realise what might happen next, it had.
Taking the urine
A sombre looking four legged beast, about the size of a Rhinohorse, was standing on three legs to one side of me and peeing. A thick fast stream of urine splattered up and down along my body, from head to toe and back up again.
“Ah,” said Cat as he hovered above me, “That is rotten luck.”
Before I could start to cry, Joosthava shooed away the Rhinohorse thing and tried to help me to my feet. I held my hands up and said “No no, please don't trouble yourself. I'll be fine. Cat, I don't suppose you have a portable sonic cleaner on you by any chance?”
Cat looked down at me and said somewhat wryly, “And where exactly do you think I might have a portable sonic cleaner about my body? I'm a Cat. I don't have pockets you know.”
I stared back in my dishevelled and rather ruined state and said, “I thought you might have something built in.”
“I'm not a cleaning company,” he responded rather tar
tly, “But, come to think of it, I do have something sort of built in that might help here.”
And he did. Oh, the ignominy of it. There I stood for the next few minutes, dripping dinopee and poo, whilst Cat hovered over the top of my body and high pressure ‘gaseously expelled’ in an attempt to blast from my soiled body as much of the excrement as he could.
A brief moment of cleanliness
A minute or so later I was a lot cleaner, and still alive, having held my breath whilst Cat had performed his somewhat foul smelling cleaning magic. I had also by now recovered some of my senses and so enquired whether anyone knew exactly how we were going to find our friendly Jurassic Mud Lizards.
Cat was the first to respond and he said, “Unfortunately my detectors don’t seem to work too well outside of our own time, or at least they don’t seem able to specifically detect Mud Lizards. This might have something to do with whatever is also screening the Zygote Crystal off from affecting life on Earth more widely. However, don’t worry, we believe that they will find us.”
There he was with that ‘we’ rhetoric again I thought, when in fact ‘we’, i.e. me, hadn't been involved in any discussions about ‘beliefs’. I was now totally fed up with not being fully in the loop but I let it go and said, “So, do we just stand here and wait then?”
With those fateful words yet another ‘experience’ started for me, as once again my feet and legs disappeared from under me. My reactionary scream at suddenly finding myself face down once more, was rapidly cut short as my head followed the rest of my horizontal body back through the dinopoo heap I had only recently finished flirting with. This time it was worse and my nose and mouth were momentarily filled, before I concentrated on less screaming and more coughing and spluttering. I was dragged at high speed, which probably saved me from drowning in poo, and Cat, Joosthava and Krokus quickly disappeared from view, to be replaced by vegetation as I vanished into the undergrowth.
The disappearing inspector
Back by the eMDaDD, Joosthava moved to follow me but stopped immediately as Cat said “No. Leave it. We’ll follow, but slowly. I have a tracker on him. He’ll be fine, this lot won't hurt him.”
“Ah,” said Joosthava, “So the friendly Mud Lizards have found us. Or rather they found the Inspector. How clever of him.”
Cat looked at her with a scrunched up face and said, “I’m not absolutely sure he does clever really. At least not intentionally. I suspect the main reason they’ve ‘found’ him is because he was basically covered in excrement the minute we disembarked. Mud Lizards from the Jurassic age consider dinosaur droppings to be a delicacy. They are probably intrigued as to why something that doesn’t look like anything they’ve seen before smells so delicious to them.”
“Oh my goodness,” responded Joosthava, “that doesn’t mean that they’re going to eat him does it?”
“Oh no, when I say delicacy, I mean it’s just something they adore. It’s a bit like catnip is to domestic cats on Earth, a sort of neurological stimulant that drives them a bit crazy really. The worst that is likely to happen is that they’ll rub themselves against him and lick him a lot. He’ll be fine till we get there and we start communicating with them.”
“Oh well, that’s a relief. Nonetheless, perhaps we’d better get started after him though,” said Joosthava.
“No rush my dear. No rush,” purred Cat.
Jurassic Mud Lizard abuse
Meanwhile, I had finally stopped moving and was in the process of being licked, yes licked, by four very zealous Jurassic Mud Lizards. Whilst this was not in any way at all painful, it was a tiny bit strange, given my previous experience of Mud Lizards. In addition it was somewhat ‘yucky’, especially when they attended to bare parts, such as my face. However the licking did have the effect of removing almost all of the new dinopoo that had enveloped me during the first few moments of being dragged off from outside of the eMDaDD.
In between licks, I became aware that I was in quite a large cavern, with rough unfinished walls. There were no windows and therefore no natural light. Despite this the room was quite well lit through some means not immediately obvious to me. Apart from the 4 Mud Lizards licking away at me, I could see another group of the creatures about 5 metres away, huddled in a circle gesticulating in a very animated fashion. It looked very much as though they were having some sort of argument. I lay there as floppy, drooling tongues lapped away at my face, hands and outer clothing. I hoped fervently that the ‘non-licking’ group were not arguing over which bit of me to cut off first.
Suddenly the Mud Lizards surrounding me stopped all the licking. Presumably, I thought, I must be clean. Before I could sit up however or protest in any way, shape or form, my boots, thermo-trousers and tunic top were whipped off leaving me in my underclothes. I grasped and gripped rather desperately at the waistband of my shorts, determined to make one last stand before my final fate unfurled. I remember thinking that for beasts with paws and claws, their manual dexterity was second to none when it came to removing a fella’s clothing. The next moment I was lifted into the air and then, before I knew it I was under water. I remember thinking at that point, finally, Cat the little mechano-beast, had let me down. I was finished. The end.
As water filled my cavities and I felt that numbing of senses that happens when you go underwater, I started to panic and thrash my arms and legs. They were drowning me before eating me. Probably some sort of weird Mud Lizard food preparation technique. Well I wasn't going down without a fight I decided as my upper body rose up out of the water ready to take them on.
Cat to the rescue
The first thing I saw as my eyes cleared of water and opened, was Cat. He was just to the side of me and above my head. My undervest was stretched from the front left of my body upwards where it was firmly hooked into the claws of his left paw.
He looked at me and said “You’re in a bath. The water is no more than 10 centimetres deep. You’re safe you moron.”
He was absolutely right. I was indeed sitting in a circular stone container in quite shallow water. I personally would not have called it a bath. As I looked down at the top part of my body I realised I was now very clean, with no trace remaining of the dinopoo. I looked up at Cat as he hovered just above me and said,
“Well I must say this is quite nice. But what was all the licking about? That was just so invasive at times, not to mention quite threatening. Couldn’t they just have dumped me in the bath in the first place? And, how come you’re prepared to get your paws wet to drag me out when you so hate water?!!”
Cat replied in his driest tone ever, “First, they like dinopoo. It’s like Baffleberry juice is to you. Second, you drowning would simply be a waste of water that someone else might find very useful.”
“Oh I see,” I said.
Then I sighed, content in the realisation that I was not about to be eaten or dismembered. As I realised that the water actually smelled lovely and was also gorgeously warm, I decided to launch myself backward into the water in joy. As I shot backwards though, I cracked my head hard against the opposite edge of the bath and once again Cat had to drag me up.
As I shook my head groggily he said,
“Please, just climb slowly and gently out of the bath so we can get you dried and dressed before we talk to the Mud Lizards. Don’t talk now. Don’t think. Don’t do anything else.”
Joosthava helped me out of the bath and I was wrapped in a ThermoGel blanket. I was dry in an instant and then quickly dressed.
Joosthava congratulates me
As I stood now fully clothed and poo-less, Joosthava gripped my arm and said rather excitedly,
“So glad you’re ok Inspector. And how clever you were to find the Mud Lizards. What would we have done without you?”
Before Cat could say anything, like ‘A lot better’ I quickly responded,
“It was nothing Joosthava. All in a day’s work. You don't deal with danger as often as I have without picking up a thing or two. I knew that the Mud L
izards would fall for the old dinopoo trick and reveal themselves.”
Cat’s ears started to twitch at this but I carried on regardless, determined as I was to rescue some of my damaged pride. After all, so far in this latest misadventure I had been exposed in a SaniDroid, waved around in the air by Joosthava’s hair and had then fallen out of the eMDaDD into a pile of poo. Subsequently I’d been cleaned up with the assistance of a power farting Cat and then dragged face first back through the same pile of poo, before being slobbered over by several over friendly drooling Mud Lizards.
“So,” I continued, “Now I've got us safely here we need to communicate with these friendly Mud Lizards and find out what's been going on with the not so friendly Mud Lizards from our own time.” I paused for a moment and then added “Guys, this really is very confusing you know, having two types of Mud Lizard, one good and one bad. Is there any way to tell them apart other than through the fact that one type tries to lick you into extinction, whilst the other goes straight for ripping your head off?”
Cat sighed heavily again and said impatiently, “Are you done? Can you stop rambling on pointlessly so that we can get on?”
“I am not rambling on pointlessly,” I said indignantly. “Alright, now come on smarty Cat, how do we communicate with these Mud Lizards?”
All the while we'd been bickering, a group of about 6 Mud Lizards had been watching us from a few metres away. Though they all looked generally the same, I thought I recognised some of the tongues that flicked constantly in and out of their gaping mouths. They in turn seemed to recognise me and the tongue flicking became noticeably faster, as I became marginally separated from Cat, Joosthava and Krokus. Accordingly, I moved quickly back up close to my colleagues.
The Zygote Crystal Page 14