by Hercules
'Okay, you know what you have to do. I'm going to take these humans to get their friend back before they kill and eat us all,' Nigel said, which caused some of the newly conscious Quokkas to almost pass out again.
'I thought you said humans are cute,' Tits said. 'Why are you so scared of us if we're so cute.'
'Quokkas are a foot tall and the favourite snack of nearly every meat eater in the galaxy. We're scared of everything with sharp teeth and a hungry look in its eye, even if it looks like a round-headed human,' Nigel said.
'Is this all of you?' Skip asked. He'd been eyeing the Quokkas in the panic room suspiciously since he'd first seen them. 'What about all them aspirationals wandering around Rosetown? There were tons of 'em.'
'Robots,' Nigel answered. 'We couldn't have houses being empty, now could we?'
'What I don't understand is why normal people stopped coming to Rosetown,' Metho said.
'Um, yeah, we're kinda to blame for that as well,' Nigel said, and twitched his ears nervously. 'We set up an expulsion field around Rosetown to discourage humans from going there.'
'You did what?' Metho said, and there was anger in his voice. 'What for?'
'To keep the investors and speculators away from the auctions,' Nigel said. 'The Melbourne property market is so hot that some people are even thinking of buying into Rosetown.' He seemed about to add something, but paused. 'Ah, the ship's here so the tour will have to wait,' he said brightly, and turned to the Quokkas in the panic room. 'Get to work you lazy fuckers. I want a new crop planted by the time I get back.'
Amidst the groans and whispered mutterings of 'slavedriver', Nigel hopped onto his golf cart and darted off through the door. A moment later, he came back through. 'Are you coming or what?'
'Yeah, lead the way,' Metho said.
'I was,' Nigel muttered and turned his cart back around. 'Humans are so stupid.'
Nigel led them back through the mushroom cavern and into the blue corridor, where he paused for a moment, as if listening to voices in his head.
'What are you waiting for?' Metho asked.
'The ship to land. Basset said he'd tell me when it's safe to enter the dock.'
'Oh, right.'
'Okay,' he said, and led the Crew into a room that was much smaller than the last time they had visited.
'It shrunk,' Metho said.
'Oh, we could only afford a small ship and, as you can see, there's hardly any room for cargo,' Nigel said. 'We're still five or six crops away from getting a proper cargo ship, I'm afraid, but when that happens we'll upgrade the dock. No more shitty little shroom runs for a niche clientele when we get a decent ship, I can tell you. We're gunna go mainstream and that's when the serious money will start to roll in.'
'You mean we're on a space ship now?' Tits said, and looked about in awe. 'Fucking awesome.'
'This is a shitbox that's even shittier than the ship Terry stole,' Nigel said and drove his buggy through a wall. A moment later he reappeared. 'Well?'
'We've only got one chip between us,' Tits said.
'Then how did you get into the den?'
'We held hands,' TS snapped.
'Okay, okay, no need to get angry,' Nigel said. Three small robots shot off his vest and affixed themselves to the foreheads of Metho, Skip and TS. Tits giggled at the ridiculous sight, then squealed when his robot skittered out of his pocket and made its way to his forehead, where it attached itself with a strange "bong" noise.
'That one sounds a bit defective,' Nigel said.
'A more discrete place for them to be attached would be nice,' TS said sharply.
'Fine,' Nigel said and the robots relocated themselves to sit behind the left ear of their respective human. 'Better? Now come on.'
The Crew followed Nigel through the wall, but were underwhelmed when they got to the other side. They had been expecting space age decor with self-opening doors and bizarre alien art on the walls.
'Wood panelling? In a fucking space ship?' Tits said.
'All the rage at the moment,' Nigel said. 'Earth fashions from the era you call the seventies have become quite popular in the galaxy. Consider yourself lucky that this is a cheap rust bucket and there aren't any speakers in the corridors. What galactic civilisation has done to seventies Earth music is criminal.'
'Talking about criminal, I don't get how Quokkas have such a bad reputation in the galaxy when they faint at the first sign of danger,' Tits said.
'Oh, that started on our home planet and sort of stuck,' Nigel said. 'To a Quokka, everything is a threat and our philosophy has always been that the best way to handle a threat is to eliminate it. That's why we developed disintegration rays early in our evolution. You can kill things without all that horrible gore and gristle.'
'That's not criminal, though, that's just psychotic,' Tits said.
Nigel stopped and spun around on his buggy to face the humans. 'We're just good at being bad, okay?' he said crossly, 'and if you want to survive, don't ask Basset those sorts of questions. He might lose his temper and disintegrate you despite your monetary worth.'
'Okay, okay,' Tits said, surprised at the Quokka's reaction. 'I was just curious, that's all.'
'Look, Quokkas enjoy the good life but we don't like to sweat, you understand? Selling mushrooms is easier than being an accountant.'
'I reckon they is criminals for the same reason we is criminals,' Skip said. 'It's good money for not much effort, an' everyone is always happy to see you. An' anyway, how is what we do an' what the Quokkas do any different to what lawyers or bankers do? Or those fuckers what brew beer and make cigarettes? It's all just labels, Mr Multicultural Man, just a way to demonise and marginalise. Some professions got good labels but do bad shit, while other things, like selling mushrooms to eager customers, has got bad labels but don't do much badness.'
Nigel preened his ears approvingly. 'Maybe you humans aren't that stupid after all. Your friend has worked it all out. Now come on and let's get my harvest back from that shroom-fucked bastard Terry,' he said, then paused as he saw the look on TS's face. 'And human Basset as well, of course. The main reason we are going is for human Basset.'
'Keep away from the flabby, Skip mate,' Tits said as they began to make their way along the corridor again, 'I reckon you ain't that far off from spouting poetry.'
'It's too late,' Nigel said. 'If a mammal takes flabby for long enough, the increased cognitive ability becomes permanent. My advice is to keep him away from books.'
'Is that why I has a headache? Is my brain got too big for my head now?'
'Of course, just because someone has an increase in cognitive ability, it does not necessarily follow that he or she will be noticeably more intelligent,' Nigel said.
'So wot you're sayin', an' correct me if I'm wrong, is that it's not an absolute increase in smartness, but one based on a fucker's already existing cognitive abilities?' Metho said.
'Metho's been reading books,' Tits said, and took his Multicultural Man mask off. 'This is getting too weird. Alien Quokkas from outer space I can deal with, but Metho and Skip being all insightful and shit? That's way too much to swallow.'
The wood panelled corridor was quite long, but eventually ended in a timber frame door, painted white and inset with frosted glass panels at top and bottom and on either side of the frame. While quite pretty, it wasn't exactly high tech and left the Crew feeling like they'd been metaphorically robbed. Their first time in a space ship, and it felt like they were visiting someone's grandmother.
'Now remember, Basset is quite tense and the line between fainting and blowing you all to dust is quite a thin one,' Nigel said, and tapped Tits on the kneecap. 'That means no stupid questions from you, okay?'
Tits nodded and put his mask back on.
'Okay, let's go,' Nigel said. He pushed open the door with his buggy and led the Crew into the very essence of what the human's believed the interior of a space ship should look like. There were huge screens on all the walls, although they were all blank at the
moment. In between the monitors were all manner of dials and twinkling lights. The cabin itself was huge and cavernous, which made the Quokka-sized controls at the centre of the room seem strange and out of place. Basset was sitting at the controls, fiddling with knobs and looking at dials. Beside him sat another Quokka that the Crew assumed was his brother-in-law. Both were wearing metallic pants and vests so shiny and intricate that they would have been right at home at the Brazilian Mardi Gras parade. While Nigel's vest was also shiny, it looked more appropriate for the German Fasching parade, or possibly even the English Shrove Tuesday pancake race.
'Where did you get the money for those battle vests?' Nigel said, sharply. 'They're not even in the forward estimates!'
'They were borrowed, sir, if you catch my meaning,' Basset said. The Quokka beside him was staring at the Crew with eyes wide and mouth open.
'Oh, that's all right then,' Nigel said, in a relieved voice. 'Humans, this is Gary. You should repay his generosity with a token. Some human faeces would be ideal because Gary here is an enthusiastic amateur mushroom grower.'
'No worries,' TS said, 'Get me a bucket and I'll fill it up for him.'
Great,' Basset said, and a bunch of tiny robots created a bucket under a computer terminal beside Gary. 'That should also cover what we owe him for his help acquiring these battle suits.'
TS, who had been trying to be sarcastic, was taken aback by the Quokka's enthusiasm. 'Um, maybe a bit later.'
'Give me the bucket,' Skip said, 'and show me where I can has some privacy.'
A cubicle appeared at the far end of the room, created almost instantly by hard working micro-robots. Skip grabbed the bucket by the dinky wire handle at the top and walked into the room. He emerged a few minutes later, looking like he'd seen a ghost. 'They cleaned my arse for me,' he said, in response to the quizzical looks he got from the rest of the Crew. 'Then they took the bucket away through a hole in the floor and sprayed me with lemony stuff.'
A moment later, the impromptu privy vanished and the robots that had created it melted into the floor.
Basset looked at the computer panel and let out an amazed whistle. He nudged Gary, who looked at the screen and burst into tears.
'That's enough to pay for a new ship and still leave enough over to fertilise his next two crops,' Basset said. 'Amazing. Do humans usually shit that amount? I mean, you're big and everything, but that that's a serious amount of material you've just expelled.'
'I been a bit constipated lately,' Skip said, and blushed.
'See, Gary, working with us can be very profitable,' Nigel said, 'now let's get going.'
'Cheeky selfie before we go?' Gary said. He jumped out in front of the Crew, extended a furry arm around Skip's knee, and whipped a tiny mobile phone out of his vest. There was a flash of light but, judging from the look on Gary's face, the result wasn't to his liking. He held the phone out again, but this time a bunch of tiny robots from his vest formed a stick that pushed the phone three metres from where he was standing. There was another flash. Gary inspected the result, cooed with delight, and returned to his seat.
'Let's go,' Basset said, and fiddled with the controls. The screens on the walls lit up with all manner of interesting images: oceans, landmasses, the entire Earth, the moon, and empty space. Amongst the images was a planet that Tits—who had been a secret geek when he was younger—had never seen before.
'What planet's that?' he asked, then felt a sensation of movement. One of the screens showed a huge and sleek space ship burst out of a storm ridden ocean and climb into the heavens at an incredible speed.
'That's our destination,' Basset said, 'but it's an old image. That part of space hasn't been mapped for ages.'
There was silence as the three humans watched a space ship fly out of the solar system that had housed them and their ancestors since before they had even been human.
'Fucking hell, is that us?' Tits asked.
'Basset looked up. 'Yep. I know it's not the best-looking ship, but it'll get us where we're going.'
Chapter 6
Space flight soon lost its appeal for the Crew, and not just because the Quokkas greedily collected their waste products, weighed them, and then told the humans what they could buy with the proceeds. It was also that the only meals served on Quokka ships were leafy greens.
'Isn't there some place we can stop at and get some real food?' Metho asked after they'd been travelling for what his telephone—which should have run out of power ages ago but hadn't, probably because the annoying and omnipresent tiny robots charged it when he wasn't watching—told him had been four days. 'There's only so many lettuce sandwiches that a human can take.'
'Nonsense,' Nigel said. 'Those leaves have been specially formulated to provide all the nutrition that you need to maintain good health. You're not the first humans to have been guests on a Quokka ship, you know.'
'But you've been the first that haven't been probed first,' Basset quipped from the control chair.
'Yes, well there are some unsavoury characters in the galaxy,' Nigel said, and his distaste was evident. 'Do you mind, lad? Let's keep it out of the gutter, please. We don't want to give our friends the wrong impression.'
'After telling me that I've produced more than a kilo of, um, waste products since I've been on board, I don't think it's possible for me to think less of you,' TS said.
'What she said, but with more fucking swearing,' Metho said.
'I'm just saying that there are better ways to dose humans with flabby than those weird probes,' Basset said.
'Would you be quiet, please,' Nigel snapped. 'We all know that Terry was becoming ... unusual towards the end. There's no need to go on about it.'
'How much longer are we gunna be?' Metho asked, and peeled back the leafy-green bread of his sandwich in order to inspect the leafy-green filling. His appetite deserted him and he threw the offending foodstuff onto the ground where the tiny robots, which had been doing a job of work as a plate, became a pan and brush and cleaned the mess up.
'Not long now, human,' Nigel said. 'A couple of hours at most. May I challenge you to a game of chess while we wait?'
'Okay, but I don't want the pieces to actually fight. It's kind of creepy.'
'They have to fight! It's part of the experience,' Nigel said and a chess board appeared beside Metho, complete with human chess pieces on one side and Quokka pieces on the other. The Crew gathered around and spent the last few hours of the space flight watching Nigel's Quokka's disintegrate Metho's humans in a variety of amusing ways.
One of Nigel's rooks had just blown the head off Metho's king for the umpteenth time when Basset said the words that the Crew were all desperate to hear. 'We're here! If you look at the big screen, you'll be able to see Terry's landing site. It looks like he hasn't unloaded anything yet and the sensors are telling me that the ship is still operational and ready to go.'
The Crew looked up at the biggest screen on the wall and were amazed by what they saw. A huge, needle shaped space ship was nestled in a clearing in a lush forest, near a series of low buildings. The forest was so Earth-like that even Metho—who had spent his entire life with the concrete confines of Melbourne—was having doubts.
'You're not taking the piss, are you?' Metho said. 'Not the physical piss, I mean cos I know you take that. Are you making fun of us is what I want to know? That looks a lot like Earth.'
Nigel looked at Metho in the same way that an astrophysicist would look at a Flat-Earther. 'There are millions of planets in the galaxy that look exactly like Earth. If it weren't for humans and super-shrooms, the Earth would have been just another shithole in the middle of nowhere.'
'Really?'
'It's weird that humans still think that Earth is the only place with life in the entire universe,' Gary said.
'The galaxy is lousy with life, human, and a fair bit of it is sentient,' Nigel said. 'Stupid, but sentient. And it's all pretty much the same wherever you go. On every planet but one, the dominant sentient spe
cies are either Chickens, Cats, Lizards, or Quokkas, with the odd Dog here or there. You got local variation, no doubt, but nothing all that different. On some planets, the Quokkas grow a bit taller while on others, the Chickens are fiercer, but that's about as far as difference goes. The one planet that's different is Earth, which is the only place where humans have evolved, and none of the other species are anything like what they are elsewhere. Earth Chickens are scared of everything and hardly ever fight. It's freaky, and no one can figure out why.'
'I heard it had something to do with your star's radiation,' Gary said.
'Nah, that's all crap,' Nigel said, 'it's just a plain old G2V. The latest theory is that it's something in the water and it affects all the life forms on the planet. Which is why the shrooms are so good and the chickens are so stupid.'
'That means we really are special,' Tits said, and struck a heroic, multicultural pose. 'Let's go an' get Small Spaz back.'
'That's the plan,' Basset said. 'It looks like we've arrived a lot sooner than Terry expected and he hasn't had a chance to unload the ship yet. Gary, you'll drop us off and then wait in this ship. I'll let you know if I can get the Terry's ship back into space again. If I can, we'll meet up on the moon around Earth. If I can't, you'll wait until we've got Small Spaz on board...'
'And had a look for our crop,' Nigel interrupted. 'We can't forget our crop.'
'Of course we'll have a look for the crop,' Basset said, smoothly. 'We'll even try to get it back.'
'Whether we get the crop back or not, Terry has to go,' Nigel added. 'He's too shroom-fucked to let him just rattle around the galaxy telling everyone he'd been a mushroom pirate on Earth.'
Basset got out of his chair and, as he walked towards the Crew, his vest robots built a fearsome machine around him. By the time he was standing beside Metho, he'd gone from being a cute Quokka in a shiny vest to a fearsome, ten-foot-tall war robot-thingy with lasers for eyes and rocket launchers on his chest. 'I'm going to turn Terry into fertiliser,' he said. 'Let's go.'