Greegs & Ladders - By Zack Mitchell and Danny Mendlow

by Zack Mitchell

CHAPTER 30

  Hroon

  Having foreseen the anger I'd be harbouring towards them, Rip and Wilx had prepared for me a decent offering of the most spectacular feast of fish I had ever seen. They were smart to do so. The buffet was impressive enough that it completely subsided my murderous inclinations. There was every type of succulent fish you could think of, freshly prepared with the most exotic alien recipes and expensive sauces. It was only later that I realized my murderous inclinations had not subsided because I genuinely forgave Rip and Wilx, but because Rip and Wilx had laced the fish with a powerful Potion of Peacefulness, a popular Lincran hallucinogenic sacrament also known as the God-Tranquilizer.

  “So,” I said, while stuffing my numb face with deliciously grilled and drugged fish, “what have you two been up to the last 15,000 HL’s?”

  “What’s an HL?” asked Rip.

  “Human Lifetime. I figure 15,000 is the number of those I’ve experienced since you two abandoned me on that strange world.”

  “That’s not too bad. Isn’t the average human lifetime akin to something like the hilariously short lifetime of the common fruit fly?”

  “No,” I corrected. “A Human Lifetime is roughly 80 years, whereas the lifetime of a fruit fly is roughly 1 day.”

  “Hardly a difference between 1 day and 80 years though.”

  “Actually, 80 years is comprised of 29,200 days. Therefore 15,000 HL’s is comprised of something like 438 million days. Quite the difference with the common fruit fly.”

  “I don’t see the difference.”

  I wanted to continue arguing. I wanted Rip to understand the vast and painful difference between the human and the fruit fly. I wanted him to undergo what I had undergone just so he would fully understand. And then, if he still did not understand, I wanted to re-wire his brains until he did.

  But I said and did none of these things, feeling all too effectively the powers of the God-Tranquilizer. I yawned and made an obvious comment about the fish.

  “This fish is fishy.”

  “Yes it is,” agreed Wilx.

  “But you haven’t actually eaten any.”

  “One need not taste the fish to know it is fishy.”

  “So,” I began again, pausing for a long stretch of time while remembering how to speak what needed to be spoken, “I asked what you two have been up to these past 15,000 HL’s?”

  “What’s an HL?” asked Wilx.

  “It's been explained.”

  “I was out of the room.”

  “It stands for Human Lifetime,” said Rip, “It’s a period of 80 human years, and is not very dissimilar to the average life-span of the common fruit fly.”

  “I see.”

  “How come you guys aren’t eating the fish?” I asked.

  Wilx took a piece of drugged fish from the table and pretended to eat it while throwing it under the table. Rip also pretended to eat the fish, only he stealthily spat his bite into a crumpled napkin as he wiped his mouth. At the time I didn't recognize any of the obvious tactical manoeuvres employed by Earth children who wish to hide broccoli and other undesirable green food items. One strange thing I had noticed about the diet of human children is that all of their most stereotypically hated foods were in actuality the healthiest food they could consume, while the food that most excited them was whatever contained the highest amount of carcinogenic chemicals and high-glucose corn syrups. This self-destructive eating phenomenon could be seen as the budding factor of the Human-Greeg transition, and was indeed the inspiration behind my seventh bestseller: Children... Rushing Away to An Early Candy-Filled Grave.

  “So,” I began, for the third or fourth time, “what have you two well-seasoned travelers of time and space been up to these past 15,000 HL’s?”

  “We’ve had many inconceivable adventures that we’d like to tell you about,” said Rip. “Some of them are vital to our current story, while some of them are unrelated but still worth hearing about. But not at this time. We’ve just seen a bumper sticker that reads I'D RATHER BE HERE NOW. It has inspired us to stay in the current moment with a new adventure.”

  “There is plenty of time for stories in a few thousand Schmickian years,” added Wilx.

  “Where are we adventuring to?” I asked.

  “Haven’t decided yet.”

  “What ever happened to us going to that Hroon planet?” asked Rip. “Isn’t it in this star system?”

  “Yes, but the only reason to go to Hroon was to get directions to the Greeg planet, and now we’ve already found the Greeg planet.”

  “We could still go there, check it out and whatnot.”

  “But why?” asked Wilx.

  “Who knows,” said Rip. “Hroon is the fourth most perfect sphere in existence. I guess that’s something worth crossing off the bucket list.”

  “I am curious about this unexpected dominant species that lives there,” said Wilx.

  “What’s Hroon?” I asked.

  “That water-world you read about in Very Rare Planets.”

  “Oh right, I used to love that book. It seemed important.”

  “It is. Everyone buckle in.”

  Wilx chartered the ship for the nearby planet. Hroon was famous for being the fourth most perfect sphere in existence, something not at all worth crossing off your bucket list and really just another normal statistic amidst a considerably more exciting universe full of things like Planetglomerates, Galactic Gobbling Groobins and the ever-surprising Layers of Lincra.

  The slight imperfection in the sphere is a tiny rock island. This rock island is the only so-called ‘land’ on the entire planet. It is about 3 acres of space. Upon these 3 acres dwell creatures known as Grollers. We will meet them shortly.

  From space, Hroon is a beautiful planet.

  The perfection of the sphericality. The azure blue ocean shimmering with the beams of an epic sun. The great ripples of the global tide. The multi-textured atmosphere. Even the sporadic movement of the schools of fish can be seen from space as a darkening streak whizzing around below the glassy surface.

  All is not so beautiful when you’re actually on the planet. Things are fine if you’re an aquatic creature, mind you, for below the surface is a veritable paradise among water-planets, but above the surface is a nightmarish place permanently stricken with storms and hammering downpours. Upon arrival one is generally whipped away with the wind and tossed into a 100 foot tidal wave. There is no refuge. Even the only island is already overcrowded with undesirable creatures.

  “Where are we going to land, considering there isn’t any?” asked Rip.

  “All Obotrons float in water,” replied Wilx.

  “Good. Fly us down to the surface.”

  “You should learn more about these ships, considering that you now own them.”

  “What for? I can just pay people like you to fly them for me.”

  “You’ve never paid me.”

  “I haven’t had the chance.”

  “Quiet,” I said. “We’re crossing into the atmosphere.”

  As we passed through the turbulent atmosphere, all expectations of a beautiful paradise were ruined by the experience of Hroon from close-up. Our ship was immediately thrown 800 miles off course by a thrashing wall of wind. Anything on board that could shatter was immediately shattered. Luckily Rip had already sold, broken or thrown away all of the best shatter-able items.

  “This place is insane!” I screamed over the deafening thunderstorms. “Let’s get out of here!”

  “No,” said Rip. “We have to find the life forms and question them. It’s vital.”

  “Why is it vital?”

  “I don’t remember, but it is.”

  “I’ll do a life-scan of the planet,” said Wilx.

  “Good luck.”

  Wilx sent out a series of laser-emissions that studied the whole planet in under ten nanoseconds. He then sent commands to find out why the scanning program was working so slowly. Speed
factor was a particularly handy thing to have in a place as terrible as Hroon.

  “I'm picking up life signals everywhere underwater,” he announced. “But we probably don't want to go underwater here.”

  “Is there any land at all?” I asked.

  “Let me do another scan, focusing specifically on potential non-watery objects. I hope we have time for all this scanning before the next hurricane hits.”

  Wilx did another scan of the planet. This one only took 8 nanoseconds, and yet he seemed to have grown a little older while he waited.

  “Yes... there is a few acres of sharp rock-conglomerations just a few miles south of here.”

  “Sounds pleasant,” groaned Rip.

  “Something tells me that’s where we’re going to find our dominant species.”

  Once the Obotron got close enough to the rocks, I peered out of the window and saw a mess of lively activity thrashing about all over the place. At first I thought it was one massive blob-like creature with hundreds of arms and legs, then I realized it was a grouping of creatures creating the illusion of a single entity. These were the Grollers.

  Grollers are ridiculously unsuited to live on a waterworld. They have no gills. They are human-like, but are denied even the ability to swim by the unfortunate setback of having only one arm and one leg each. You might think this perfectly enough considering all the oddly-proportioned creatures that manage to keep afloat in water, but Groller limbs were like anti-fins... without another one of them, no amount of flailing could keep them afloat. Grollers mainly just hop and roll around aimlessly.

  Doing nothing but hopping and rolling around while living on three acres of sharp rocks in a perpetually storm-stricken waterworld without even the ability to swim is the least of worries within the Groller community. There is the much greater problem of food.

  The only food on Hroon is fish, yet Grollers are deadly allergic to all types of seafood. Always have been. That being said, there are only three possible endings to the devastatingly limited lifetime of the Groller:

  A Groller will forget it is allergic to seafood. Eats seafood and dies.

  A Groller will forget it cannot swim. Rolls into ocean and drowns.

  A Groller will forget it cannot swim. Rolls into ocean and is eaten by some sort of carnivorous monster.

  Grollers don’t exactly forget these facts, because they never learn them in the first place. No knowledge of any kind is passed down from parent to child. Not even the rudimentary sense of a grunted language. All a Groller has time to do in life is hop, roll, mate, give birth, and then decide if it would rather die of food-poisoning, drowning or monster-attack.

  No one suspects being eaten by some sort of carnivorous fish-monster, although it accounts for 14% of all Groller related deaths.

  Obotron 1 touched down in the water, close enough for us to be able to reach the rocks via the floating elevator. The 2 remaining Obotrons touched down as well. One of the ships looked in amazingly good shape, while the other had landed upside down. Apparently the ship had not recovered from being whipped away by the wind and thrown into a 100 foot tidal wave. The upturned ship continued to float, and would have looked normal to someone unfamiliar with the regular layout of an Obotron (which is most people given how rare an Obotron is) but inside the ship was a state of total ruin. Rather than read the instruction manuals lining the walls of every room, which would have told them to calmly jettison the ship in the escape-pods which also lined the walls of every room, the frightened crew members decided that watching a copy of The Poseidon Adventure would be a more productive thing to do given their current predicament of being upside-down. The melodramatic discourse of the ensemble cast of 1970s Hollywood stars proved to be useless regarding the topic of Surviving an Upturned Spaceship in Alien Waters, but the crew members stood by their choice of action as the ship slowly sank to the bottom of the Hroon ocean. Their entranced eyes were fixated on the flickering pictures. They were totally ignorant of the plethora of aquatic monsters attracted by the new shiny spaceship.

  “Look at those animals,” said Rip as he pointed to the island, not at all noticing the vanished Obotron. “Are you guys sure we want to go near them?”

  Wilx looked up from his annoyingly slow computer. “You were the one who just said it was vital to question those creatures.”

  “Yeah, but that was before I got a look at them. I mean, look at them!”

  “Are these pitiful beasts considered the dominant species of this planet?” I said.

  “Yes,” replied Wilx.

  “How does that work? You said the ocean is full of life. There must be something more plentiful and intelligent underwater.”

  “Of course there is. But these creatures are considered the dominant species because such matters of classification are dictated and controlled by the powerful publishers of Very Rare Planets. And the publishers of Very Rare Planets, in their anti-aquatic manner, decided that 'dominant species' is defined as the most developed land creature. Since nothing that lives in water is applicable for the title, these beasts win by default. The UUIAO, or Universally and Unanimously Insulted Aquatic Organization, has many times unsuccessfully lobbied for the proper recognition of water dwellers. The notorious case of Planet Mrool vs. the VRPPC (or Very Rare Planets Publishing Company) is frequently cited. Apparently the planet Mrool is entirely water, not even a few acres of island like this planet, and the only life form on the entire world is an amoebic plankton with a life-span of several hours. The VRPPC refused to acknowledge the amoebic plankton as the dominant species, despite the fact the plankton owned the title by logical default. The VRPPC even went so far as to try to plant false evidence of a land-creature that didn't or couldn't exist. The planet Mrool was eventually deemed a great waste of space, and its orbital pattern was thus re-directed into the nearest black hole. It's true that Mrool might have been a waste of space. No one lived there to enjoy it. There was nothing swimming in its ocean but some invisible amoebic plankton. It brings up the classic argument about whether or not magma-rain is still hot if there's no one there to get burned.”

  “Do you know what these creatures are?” I asked Wilx.

  “No, but pass me the copy of Very Rare Planets. They might make mention of it in the less-read sections.”

  I passed Wilx my tattered copy of the book. He flipped to the chapter on Hroon and read from the microscopic blurbs bordering the edges of the page. I had never bothered to read those parts.

  “The dominant species,” said Wilx, “are a measly gathering of beasts known as Grollers. All we can tell you about Grollers is to not go near them, under any circumstances.”

  “Ok. Let's get out of here,” said Rip. “You heard the books informative yet anonymous voice from two thousand years ago telling us not to go near them.”

  “Actually,” began Wilx, “Very Rare Planets is even older than that. The first known publication was sometime before--”

  “They look like the puke of a Galactic Gobbling Groobin,” interrupted Rip.

  “No they don’t,” I said. “They look like the guts of a Colossal Snorkling Plitzer!”

  “No,” challenged Rip. “They look like evolution’s cutting room floor.”

  Grollers did not end up on evolution’s cutting room floor. They made the final cut. You might think a Groller is ridiculously unsuited to live on a waterworld because they’re not originally from a waterworld, having possibly re-colonized to the wrong planet. This is not the case. Hroon is the only planet that Grollers have ever existed on. It is simply a case of evolution severely fucking up.

  “Prepare the floating elevator.”

  “And don’t forget the remote control this time,” I said.

  “Way ahead of you,” said Wilx as he patted his jacket pocket, which contained ample spare remotes. “It is a new rule never to leave the ship without ample spare remotes for the floating elevator. We’ve gotten in a lot of trouble from
continuing to forget this thing.”

  Grollers always evoke a strong reaction in visitors. Many people wish that someone would get the whole business over with by dropping a bomb on the lot of them. Others wish that someone would transport them to a planet where they belong. Most are against this last idea, not wanting to risk their own planet being the future home of Grollers.

  “Ugh. Just look at them,” I said.

  “Don’t forgot that you’re a Greeg,” said Wilx. “You’re barely less hideous than those things.”

  “Do you think they can talk?” I asked, ignoring the comment.

  The floating elevator touched down on the island. The Grollers were noticeably scared of the new technology. They hopped and rolled their way to the opposite edge of the rocks. A few remained nearby.

  “Look,” I said, pointing to the close Grollers, “Some of them are brave and want to examine us.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Wilx, inspecting the nearby bodies. “They aren’t moving. I think they were killed by the fire propulsion of the floating elevator.”

  “Oh.”

  Rip promptly rolled the dead Grollers into the water, so as to not upset the rest of the herd. A carnivorous fish-monster promptly ate them and was delightedly surprised by the random introduction of cooked Groller meat as opposed to the usual raw. It was a delicacy the fish-monster had never been treated to. No one else in history had ever accidentally fried a group of Grollers with the propulsion of a floating elevator and then rolled their bodies into the ocean.

  “Not the best way to say hello,” said Wilx.

  “Just look at them,” I repeated.

  “Indeed.”

  All three of us were thoroughly brought down by the sad scene of the Grollers.

  “Can any of you talk?” shouted Rip. “HELLO?”

  Not one sound emanated from the creatures. Not even a slur of gibberish or a brief bout of nonsensical shrieking. Total silence.

  “They can’t talk. Let’s go,” said Rip.

  Wilx threw up over the edge of the rocks. “You’re right. We can’t learn anything from these primitive beasts.”

  “Why did you throw up just now?”

  “Maybe seasickness. Maybe the horrible sight of those creatures, or a combination of the two. Probably just the creatures though.”

  “I’m cueing the elevator.”

  As we were about to climb onto the elevator I happened to glance behind me and take one last look at the Grollers. I could just as easily have not taken this last glance. Sometimes I laugh about how much can change during the millisecond of a trivial decision.

  Of all the Grollers overpopulating this island, one of them in particular was special. Kog shall be his name. Kog was not smarter than the other Grollers. He was not the next link in their evolution. What made Kog special was the fact that he had something in his possession. It was the only object on the entire island, and it was hidden away so that no one else could see it. If any of the other Grollers were to have anything in their possession they would immediately try to eat it.

  “Hey!” I shouted at Rip and Wilx. “Look at that one over there!”

  “Where? They all look the same.”

  “Right there to the left! Do you see it?”

  “No.”

  “One of them is motioning to us!”

  Rip and Wilx looked around the terrain until they spotted Kog. He was waving for us to come closer.

  “I don’t like it,” said Rip. “Could be a trap.”

  “But it’s a sign of intelligence! Maybe that one has learned how to communicate.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “We should at least try to talk to it.”

  “You go over and chat with the monsters. We’ll stay on the elevator in preparation for rapid departure. If these beasts turn on you, don’t count on us waiting around to collect your body.”

  “Ok.”

  So Rip and Wilx (in their occasional cowardly fashion) remained on the floating elevator as I carefully ambled my way towards Kog. I could see that he was now pointing at the rocky floor.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Kog continued to point at the rocks.

  “It’s just more rocks. What are you pointing at?”

  In a fit of impatience, Kog stood on his leg and attempted to jump up and down like a child. He quickly fell over, bruising his face and scraping his arm. He angrily thrashed about, apparently having just discovered for the first time that he only had one leg and one arm. Grollers have no memory at all. Kog was the only living Groller who had any sort of remembered knowledge, and it was merely the location of the hidden object.

  It was at this moment that most of the Grollers became aware that I was food. They began to hop and roll their way towards me. Luckily they were slow and zombie-like, but given the lack of space it was only a matter of minutes before they closed in on me.

  “Listen, you mutant! What are you pointing at?!” I screamed at Kog.

  The sudden loudness of my outburst shook Kog into an awakened state of purpose. He had never felt more alive.

  Kog pushed and kicked away the loose pile of rocks he'd been pointing at. Buried underneath was a book. It looked very old and tattered.

  “Thank you,” I said as I grabbed the book. I raced for the floating elevator.

  Obotron 1 flew away from Hroon. Just one fleet ship now followed behind us (the other one resting at the bottom of the Hroonian Ocean, for those of you who have the memory of a Groller). I could not wait to peruse this mysterious artifact.

  The book had washed up on the island many thousands of years ago. The archaic and brittle tree-fibre pages had survived the ocean by having been rolled up and contained within an airtight canister. This canister was likely the first ever 'message in a bottle' in universal history. The ancient Groller who found the book somehow instinctively knew that it must be kept a secret, so he buried it in the rocks. In his short lifetime he showed it to only one other Groller, this being the Groller who would in turn be the next guardian of the book. This cycle continued down the ages, so that per generation there was always only one Groller who knew the secret. None of the guardians were curious enough to open the pages or to even wonder about the book. They merely kept it safe. This remarkable event reached its culmination with Kog. For whatever reason, Kog knew the book was meant to be given to me.

  It is now my belief that the purpose of the Groller species, the complete reason for their very evolution, was to make sure that this object made its way into my possession.