CHAPTER 34
The Trial
It’s true.
Reg, my former carnival Greeg-keeper, was now an official first-rank judge for the Kroonum Courts of Law. I suppose that’s justice. Or not.
Reg was still very much a scary goblin-like creature with fangs and claws and red eyes, yet in recent years he had somehow succeeded in making himself far more frightening. I think it had something to do with the black hooded robe he wore whilst perched atop a throne made from the skeletal fragments of the convicted. He was the embodiment of fear, so much so that hundreds of film scripts were being pitched to Reg on a daily basis, all of which requesting he fill the inimitable role of the Grim Reaper.
Thinking himself too short for the role, Reg had yet to reply to any of the filmmakers. He was also worried his carpel-tunnel syndrome would prevent him from being able to hold the heavy scythe prop during tedious hours of re-shoots, as there were sure to be requests for many unneeded hours of re-shoots made by the group of perfectionist auteur student filmmakers busy competing for the honour of directing Reg's first Vehicle Movie. Reg was unaware that height is now a minor inconvenience solved by the art of trick-photography, and that his scythe prop would be made of feather-lite Styrofoam.
Reg eventually accepted his calling as an actor. He would go on to star in countless blockbusters. Only he wasn't acting. He played himself in every film. All he did was show up on set and improvise some of his characteristic creepiness. Nowadays his name frequently tops the charts of magazine polls concerning topics like “the scariest movie villain of all time and space” and “the #1 cause for sleep deprivation amongst children.”
This all happens, of course, in another dimension where Reg is not dead by the end of this novel.
Reg had only earned the status of a Kroonum judge because of the illegal wrangling and bribery performed by the Algreenian Fog-Specters.
The Specters did not want Reg to become a film star, so they filled his mind with all sorts of ideas to cause low self-esteem. For the success of the Specter's revenge plot it was imperative that Reg stay in the courtroom. Algreenian Fog-Specters (or anyone else that is dead) are unable to perform tasks on a physical level, hence the reason they didn’t just kill Rip, Wilx and I and call it a day. They are, however, adept at using their mental prowess to influence the actions of the living. The Specters ensured our judge was someone who personally hated us, so that we would be sentenced with the most brutal of verdicts regardless of the evidence. Reg had been promised several million dollars worth of invisible money that he would never see, literally or figuratively.
It is good that Specters cannot personally harm anyone. Many specters are dangerously angry about being dead. They cannot control their jealousy towards the living. Their scene usually degenerates into a violent revenge plot. Reg was now in control of our fate. Each unappealing scenario seemed to cancel out the last.
“I said you probably want your Greeg back now don’t you?” repeated Rip.
“No,” said Reg from his skeletal perch. “I have hundreds of Greegs locked up in the chambers. That doesn’t mean I feel any less angry for being ripped off.”
“But this Greeg is intelligent,” said Rip.
“And immortal!” added Wilx.
Reg was thoroughly against the idea of an immortal Greeg. “Who wants an immortal Greeg? My favourite part of Greeg-keeping is watching them drop dead from the slightest of parasitic infections. And besides, once he's intelligent doesn't he cease to be a Greeg?”
“Great question,” said Rip, sensing an opportunity for stalling. “Let's debate that with lengthy philosophical discourse.”
“Why don’t we get started with the trial instead?” suggested the Specters.
Reg pounded his gavel. It shattered into fine crumbs.
“Why has my gavel shattered?” he angrily bellowed.
“Er… it is made of Crabbit skulls?” replied a Specter.
“So? I make everything out of Crabbit skulls.”
“They have weak bones, your honour.”
“Why do they have weak bones?”
“I believe it comes from a dietary deficiency of vitamin A.”
“Why are Crabbits so low in vitamin A?”
“We’ve recently figured that out, your honour. It seems Crabbits follow a strict diet of cannibalism. The only thing they would be caught dead eating is each other.”
“And?”
“Well… Crabbit meat does not contain vitamin A. Therefore if you only take sustenance from Crabbit meat you will merely continue to weaken yourself. It is one of those annoying Catch-22s. The evolutionary cycle of the Crabbit has long been disastrous... a story of ill-fated choices, mutated genes and easily broken bones that is rapidly reaching its necessary crescendo. I expect the Crabbits will have killed themselves off within the next few seasons.”
Reg pointed to a group of Specters in the far corner. “You! Go out and present alternative food to the Crabbits. I want this cannibalism stopped immediately. And then introduce a source of vitamin A into their diet. I’ll not have their weak bones causing my brilliant inventions to shatter so easily!”
“I protest, your honour,” replied the specter. “Doesn't it seem right to let the Crabbits die off naturally? I don't think the Crabbits will respond to other food anyway. They are not forced into Cannibalism. Apparently there is an abundance of natural food surrounding the Crabbit population, yet they choose to dine on each other based on palette preference.”
“Palette?” asked Reg.
“You know... taste, texture, consistency. All the factors that determine a meal as good or bad. I personally died before ever having tried them, but I've heard Crabbits are superb.”
Reg pondered. He did not like the taste of Crabbits at all. The only food his species enjoys is Gahooleb. On Reg's home-world, the only place where Gahooleb can be harvested, it is merely the word for 'food.' It is a demonic sustenance not entirely dissimilar to Schmold, a gloppy green sludge that isn't properly defined as either a liquid or a solid. Most creatures would be horrified to find it resting on their dinner plate, and further horrified to find themselves stone dead after having been curious enough to taste a tiny morsel. When an open container of Gahooleb is mixed with the wrong planetary atmosphere it turns into pure sulphuric acid, which incidentally has no effect whatsoever on Reg's digestive system or general health.
“Besides,” continued the specter, “We can't introduce Vitamin A to the Crabbits. We've not got any reasonable source of it at the moment. All we've really got is dead Crabbits.”
“Then go find some milk or something!”
“No milk-producing creatures on this planet at all, your honour. Probably explains this whole dilemma.”
“I have an idea,” I said, butting in.
“Silence!” shouted Reg.
“It's just I think I can fix your problem somewhat effortlessly.”
“Every minute of our time you waste is another year of imprisonment I will add to your sentencing. Now explain your plan with meticulous detail.”
“Brown-noser,” whispered Rip. I ignored him.
“You see,” I began, “I have for a considerable amount of time lived on a world that was overly abundant in milk. You wouldn't believe how many milk-producing creatures freely roamed about the surface of this planet. These creatures were called Mammals. Of all these mammals, humans were the only ones who drank the milk from a different mammal. Some mammals produced desirable milk for humans. Others produced milk that for humans to consume would be considered a gross offence. The centrepiece of the desirable milk-producers was a quadruple-stomached creature known as a Cow. A blundering beastly sort of animal. So many humans wanted cow-milk so regularly that it only made sense to take full ownership of the Cow species. It was decided to transform the Cow from a creature into a tool of productivity. Once institutionalized within a cramped environment of dim lighting and abrasive mechanical structures,
Cows soon lost their zest for life and became indiscernible to the eye from a clunky scattering of assembly-line equipment. They even lost their ability to speak, not that anyone remembered how Cows had once amused the world with their whimsical coffee-table anecdotes. The only word from Cow language to have survived in their brains was the resonant “Moo!” The Cow's word for the most rudimentary and primal verbal expression of emotional displeasure, similar to the universally accepted form of protest via loudly yelling 'Boo!' Anyway, in my time on this planet I sought to preserve certain alien rarities that I thought were worth preserving, one of which was a few hundred gallons of milk. Of course, at this point, Cows milk had become advisedly indigestible due to a few generation too many who indulged themselves in scientifically tampering with the hormones of the already sufficiently naturally-functioning system of the Cow, in hopes of greedily producing 'Super-Cows' that pumped out more milk than ever thought possible. Quantity over Quality was the popular motto of the era. Any semblance of nutrition had been genetically modified right out of the cow. I didn't see the logic of it being preferable to have 1000 gallons of rotten milk as opposed to having 10 gallons of good milk, so instead I acquired milk from one of the surrogate producers, an organically fed, free-range, non-genetically tampered quadruple-legged beast of the Capra-Hircus genus, otherwise known as a farm goat. This milk has survived my travels, and is laying dormant in the deep-freeze section of our spaceship. I have kept it's presence unknown by the rest of my party, for any liquid material that finds its way onto our ship is usually immediately consumed in a marathon of manic alcohol-brewing experimentation. I donate this milk to the courtroom, should it heighten our chances of leniency.”
Reg did not at first reply. Often he appeared to not be listening. He was in fact doing more than listening. He was reading. Whenever someone says something lengthy or above his intelligence level, as in whenever someone speaks at all, Reg is forced to observe the words as automatically printed out to him by his desperately needed Smart-into-Dumb Translator. This gadget also provides Reg with a suitably intelligent example reply that he does not always choose to follow.
“You give milk? We feed to Crabbit?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” I said.
The previously chosen Specters were sent to round up the few hundred gallons of milk from our ship. As part of their courtroom duty, Specters are given the ability to physically move items of low weight through the technological aid of telekineto-beams. They are only able to move what Reg instructs them to, otherwise they would have just tossed a grenade or two in my general direction and retired to the afterlife.
“I can't believe you gave away all our milk,” whispered Rip.
“You didn't even know we had it in the first place,” I replied.
“Exactly!”
“Shall we continue with the trial?” urged one of the Specters.
“Yes,” said Reg. “Wait. No.”
“No?”
“I’ve not got my plate of Crabbits. How can I expect to be cruel and heartless without some dead flesh to toy with? Someone get me a fresh plate.”
“Right away, sir.”
A Specter promptly vanished from the room and returned with a tray of Crabbits. Reg took one look at the plate and threw it against the wall.
“What is this?” he angrily shouted. “Where are all the bones?”
“These Crabbits have been specially de-boned for you, sir.”
“What for? Everyone knows I collect the bones for making furniture and other useless doohickeys with. It’s the only reason I kill these things. They taste like Band-Aids.”
Rip looked confused.
“What’s a Band-Aid?” he whispered in my ear.
“Something you would need wrapped around your brain, if they made them small enough.”
“We thought it would be a more pleasant dining experience without the bones,” replied the specters. “You’ve been rapidly losing teeth from biting down on sharp fragments. We thought you’d like to retain some teeth for the purposes of eating. It is another annoying catch-22.”
“If Crabbits have such weak bones, then why are they causing my teeth to break?”
“Your weak teeth have something to do with a lack of vitamin A in your diet.”
“Why aren’t I getting any vitamin A?”
“All you eat are Crabbits. We’ve just gone over several times at length how Crabbit meat contains no vitamin A whatsoever. This is all overly simplistic.”
Reg looked infuriated. “Is my whole life just made up of catch-22’s?!”
“It seems so.”
“Then somebody get me some of that damn milk!”
“Right away, sir.”
A Specter frantically floated off to get some milk. He momentarily returned empty-handed.
“There’s no milk left, your honour. It’s all been taken down to the Crabbit beach, at your recent request that we introduce a source of vitamin A into their diet.”
“Well then get down to the beach and bring me a Crabbit that has ingested milk.”
“Ok,” said the specter as he headed to the beach. He again momentarily returned empty-handed.
“Sorry, your honour. It seems the Crabbits don’t like milk. The ones who tried it were instantly putrefied. The rest then knew to stay away.”
Reg slammed his fist down, shattering the table and spilling his drink onto the crowd. Some of it splashed onto Rip’s arm, causing his skin to slightly bubble as if the drink had been concocted from pure sulphuric acid, which in fact it had.
“Ok,” said Reg, feeling a little better after his violent outburst. “Let’s carry on.”
“May I have a glass of water?” asked Rip. He was desperately hoping to stall the trial in any way he could. The ingestion of water is actually lethal to Rip’s internal organs, but he had learned about the diversion tactic of asking for a glass of water many times in American movies with trial scenes or police interrogations. Other than his familiarity with dramatic courtroom movies, Rip didn't know anything about America. The reason he even knew about those movies was because they are the only human achievement to transcend the barrier between planet Earth and Rip's own home planet. American trials were so compellingly dramatic to Rip's people that they henceforth made it the basis for their own legal courts. Not because human legality was considered efficient or fair, but simply because all the shouting, crying, cheating, gavel-banging and opportunities for rousing speeches, applause, more crying and other histrionics were about as entertaining as justice could get.
“What the hell is water?” asked Reg.
“Fair enough.”
The lights were dimmed. The compilation disc of ambient courtroom music was ritualistically stomped on. The broken disc was then swept up and thrown out the window. The wind sent the shards drifting into the open door of a nearby apartment, where someone with too much time on their hands spent years inventing the technology capable of repairing the disc. Once finished, this person was severely disappointed to learn the disc was a mediocre compilation of ambient courtroom music. The mysterious character then shattered the disc and proceeded to fix it all over again, just for something to do.
The fragments of the broken Crabbit gavel were also swept up. The trial had officially begun.
“You three are on trial for the reckless crashing of a space-ship into the surface of Lincra, the most popular planet in existence. How do you plead?”
“Guilty by necessity,” replied Rip.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. “They’ll have us chopped up and made into tables or something.”
“Ssh. They already know we did it.”
“Guilty by necessity?” asked Reg.
Rip stood up. “Yes. We had to crash that ship. It was a clear case of us or them.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Well… it’s a long story. But while my friends, I mean acquaintances, and I were exploring
Lincra, our ship was descended upon by savage thieves who stole our fuel. We didn’t notice we were out of fuel until we’d already flown away, and by that point it was too late. Fumes allowed us to take off, but the instant we reached orbit it was clear we were about to crash back into the surface of the planet. So it was us or them. We were forced to drain the fuel out of one of our fleet ships, and if that meant the fleet ship would then in turn be the one to crash, well, so be it.”
Reg consulted some important documents that had been placed in front of him. “Yes, except the fleet ship contained 492 crew members, all of whom perished in the crash. And the ghosts of whom are now inhabiting this courtroom,” he added as he pointed around at the Specters.
“And we're not the only ones!” shouted a Specter. “Many other ships filled with crew have been lost in their suicidal adventures! I don't even think there's any ships left at this point!”
“Yeah!” joined in another Specter. “We're only a small percentage of the lost Obotron crew. Many of the dead could not be here, for the manner in which they perished left them in a suspended state of eternal limbo without any hopes of achieving Spectral Finality.”
“How so?” asked Reg.
“There were some ships that got swallowed by a Galactic Gobbling Groobin. They were sent spiralling through a time-travelling wormhole into an irreversible dimensional gateway. We've never seen any Specters from those particular crew members. And a more recent devastation had an entire ship sink to the bottom of the Hroon Ocean. Haven't seen any Specters turn up from that ship either. We suspect they're trapped down there, living out a claustrophobic existence with nothing for entertainment except their minimal collection of VHS tapes. The fact that we were supplied with movies modified from their original version says everything about the sort of barbaric working conditions we were expected to tolerate. We would attempt some sort of rescue mission for our lost brothers, if it were not for us being dead and therefore having no means of retrieving a ship from the bottom of an ocean. We can't even get anyone alive to go into the ocean for us, because everyone knows Hroon is populated by dangerous monsters.”
“And some of the crew were actually cooked and eaten by that unholy trio!” another Specter randomly added.
“Is this true?” asked Reg. “Did you cannibalize your crew members?”
“Yes,” answered Rip.
“I regret cannibalizing the crew,” I said. Indeed it wasn't one of my finer hours.
“You're right,” said Rip. “None of the crew deserved to be cooked with such low quality standards. Who wants to be remembered as the too-chewy, over-salted dinner that somebody else had to choke down at the risk of offending the chef?”
“No. I actually regret it. We could have gone hungry before resorting to savagery.”
“Resorting to savagery?! But that's your nature!”
“It was my nature,” I said.
“Yes,” said Reg. “Except the death of the crewmembers is not the issue here. Everyone knows those crewmembers were expendable. All they had ever done was fold the towels once.”
“Not even,” corrected Rip. “For the towels were always folded, having never left their factory sealed packages.”
“Point taken. The real issue at hand here is the property damage done to the surface of Lincra.”
“Uh-oh,” whispered Rip. “I was worried about this part.”
“Someone bring me... The Report!” bellowed Reg.
A Specter appeared, producing a stack of paper several feet high.
“This is only an account of the most expensive damage, your honour. The report on trivial damage is being housed in our underground warehouse.”
“We have room for that in the underground warehouse?” asked Reg incredulously.
“No,” your honour. “We were forced to extend the warehouse into a virtual higher-dimensional plain, one of the ones capable of bypassing the standard laws of physics by existing within spatially infinite parameters.”
“I see,” lied Reg. He was confused. The last paragraph had been translated to read “We made more room by combining science and magic!” Reg had been left cold by this translation. To begin with, the word 'combining' had a syllable more than his usual maximum preference of two. There was also the disturbing presence of the word 'science,' which suggested far too many intelligible subjects. Reg told the Translator to dumb things down a few times until finally the last paragraph merely read “Magic!” He was pleased with this all-encompassing explanation of how the crowded warehouse had been able to store such a detailed damage report.
Reg consulted the damage report for several minutes, during which he was brought a new plate of Crabbit meat. He was also brought a fresh glass of sulphuric acid. Rip backed his chair away, not wishing to undergo any more third degree burns should Reg suddenly have a violent outburst.
“Hmm,” began Reg, “it seems the ship struck the planet in a way that maximized the potential amount of damage. The rapid speed of the plummeting ship alone ensured it would not have even slowed down until it had crashed through at least ten subterranean layers, and yet it perfectly fell into the Master Ladder Tunnel, allowing the ship to chaotically free-fall until it collided with the fiery core. Many layers were destroyed. Considerable damage was done to Subterranean 12, the Layer Where Nothing is Done Except For Cutting Onions. The entire surface of Layer 12 disintegrated when a breach was caused in the conjoining Layer of Uncontrollable Highly Explosive Things. Chunks of onion were scattered all over the planet.”
“So?” argued Rip. “It’s just a bunch of onions! Did anyone die because of these onions?”
“179 trillion creatures. The explosion of onions caused so many beings to cry that collectively their tears made up a great washing flood that swept through the planet. A big-budget disaster film is still in production. I believe the working title is: The Great Flood of Tears: A Musical Chronicle into the Devastation of Lincra.
“Will the box-office proceeds go to the families of the victims?” blurted Wilx, who had thus far remained relatively quiet.
“1% of the gross will be donated to the families. After taxes it will be something more like .0001%. Another 2% will go the screenwriters. The rest will be spent on badly needed new leather chairs for the studio fat-cats.”
“Why do the studio fat-cats need new chairs so badly?”
“People tend to go through a lot of chairs when they sit around all day doing no work of any kind.”
Reg cleared his throat. He didn’t actually have a throat to clear, but he made a wretched sound not dissimilar to what one would expect if he did.
“Let’s hear from our first witness. I call to the stand Mr. Nickbas L. Turkey.”
“Who’s that?” said Wilx.
“No idea,” said Rip.
Nickbas entered the courtroom and sat down at the witness bench.
“Oh no, not this guy,” groaned Rip as he noticed that Nickbas was in fact the unkempt map vendor from the Lincran parking lot. The one who made maps so terrible that Rip had been compelled to rip them to shreds?
“Do you swear to tell the truth, etc.?” Reg asked Nickbas.
Nickbas looked puzzled at the question. “Truth? What is truth?”
“Truth is what is real. It means you will not lie.”
“Isn’t truth and reality just my opinion or something?” asked Nickbas.
“No. Truth is fact.”
“I disagree. Truth is subjective. If I were to say at this very moment that I’m seeing many translucent Specters floating around the room, would you not tell me I’m crazy and hallucinating? Yet seeing the Specters is my truth. Does your inability to see the Specters change that? Are dreams not as real as waking life? Does the imagination not create what it wants to see?”
“You are seeing the Specters,” said Reg. “This courtroom is full of them.”
“That explains a lot,” muttered Nickbas. “I knew this stuff couldn�
�t be that strong.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“So you witnessed the crashing of the ship into the surface of Lincra?”
“Yes, I saw the whole thing. It was a disturbing event. Many fine maps were destroyed. I remember seeing a flood of tears and thinking it was a perfect metaphorical image created by my brain to help justify the energy vibes of the destruction.”
“The flood was also real,” corrected Reg. “We just talked about how 179 trillion creatures were drowned in the salty tide.”
“Yes, that also explains a lot.”
“Objection, your honour!” shouted Wilx. “This person has clearly been drinking the boiled juices of psychotropic Lincran leaves. Everything he says is gibberish.”
“I’ll allow it,” said Reg, as his translator explained the word 'psychotropic' via pictorials of humanoid creatures ingesting fungus while viewing strange visions of melting coloured lights. “Carry on Mr. Turkey.”
Nickbas gathered his scattered thoughts. “I was sitting at my booth drawing up some new maps--”
“Pfft, maps,” interrupted Rip. “Those aren’t maps.”
“Silence!” bellowed Reg. “I’ll have you tossed into a proto-star before you can break a tooth on a Crabbit bone.”
“No big deal, I’ve been successfully jumping proto-stars since before I was immortal.”
“Anyway,” continued Nickbas, “I was drawing up some maps, and I saw a great shadow spread across the parking dome. I turned around and saw that a spaceship was about to crash into the planet. I tried to freeze time, but sadly my time-freezing powers were drained that afternoon. If I’d been in a stronger mental state at the time of the crash, I believe I would have been able to successfully freeze time long enough to have evacuated the entire planet before the ship crashed.”
“You heard him!” shouted Rip. “It’s his fault, not ours! He said he could have frozen time if he’d been in a stronger mental state! Maybe if he’d visited the Layer of Transcendental Levitation more often he would have had the relaxed mental energy required to freeze time!”
“If he’d visited that layer more often,” said Reg, “he would have drowned. The Layer of Transcendental Levitation was among the first areas of Lincra to be washed away by the flood of tears.”
“Too bad.”
Reg took a bite from his plate. “Besides, there's no actual proof as to the witness having any actual time-freezing capabilities. Perhaps a demonstration is in order?”
“Are you eating Crabbits?” asked Nickbas, promptly avoiding the subject of his dubious time-freezing powers.
“Yes.”
“You do know they’re endangered right?”
“Yes.”
“Crabbits have a problem with cannibalism. Also someone has been hunting them to the brink of extinction.”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“You?”
“Me.”
“How can you be so evil?”
“It comes involuntarily.”
“You also know there isn’t even any nutritional value in eating Crabbits?”
“I know. I only eat them because I collect their bones for crafting thingamabobs.”
Nickbas looked thoroughly disgusted. He stood up and took a deep breath. He turned to face Reg. It was clear he was about to make some sort of moralistic speech. The type of speech so epically moving and grandiose that it would go down in history as the defining moment of his life. Statues of Nickbas would be carved and placed all over the galaxy, to commemorate the life of he who saved Crabbits from extinction.
This all happens, of course, in another dimension where Nickbas is not dead by the end of the next paragraph.
Before he could speak even a single word, Reg poured his drink over Nickbas' head. He promptly melted, being just another typical creature who reacts poorly to contact with pure sulphuric acid. He was now but a pool on the floor of the courtroom.
“I don’t think we needed to hear any more from him,” said Reg. “Now someone sweep that up so we can continue.”
A Specter tried to sweep up the puddled remains of Nickbas. The dustpan melted. The specter then left to get a new and impervious steel dustpan. The new dustpan also melted. The specter didn't worry about it, for at this point the puddle of acid had eaten through the floor and dripped into another courtroom below. The still dangerously volatile remains of Nickbas and the two dustpans were now the problem of someone who will not be in this novel. Maybe the sequel, though.
“That’ll be us soon enough,” whispered Rip. “I bet you wish you had your bearded disguise now, eh?”
“What was that?” asked Reg.
“Oh, nothing.”
“I thought I heard something about a beard.”
“I was just saying to this Greeg that I bet he wishes he had his bearded disguise, so he could slip out of here unnoticed before he winds up a puddle being swept off the floor.”
“What beard is this?”
Rip was puzzled over the sudden interest in the beard. “Oh, it’s just when we dumped this Greeg on Earth we gave him an attachable beard to disguise himself with, but he threw it out.”
Reg frantically flipped through a bunch of files he had stored underneath his skeletal perch.
“Aha!” he said as he produced a very old looking picture. It was cracked around the edges, with many defined fold marks as if someone had stored the photo in their wallet for a few hundred years, which they had.
“What have you got there?” asked Rip.
Reg showed the photo to the courtroom. “Was this the beard you had?”
“Why, yes, that’s it.”
Gasps of shock radiated from all around the courtroom. It seemed everyone except Rip, Wilx and I were familiar with the random image of the beard.
“Are you sure this was the beard?” asked Reg.
“Of course. Pretty recognizable beard, isn’t it? What’s the big deal? It’s just a piece of junk I bought off a black-market merchant.”
“So you didn’t realize you were purchasing the Beard of Broog?”
“The what?”
“The Beard of Broog. One of the most revered and mystical objects you could possibly own. It grants many powers to the one that wears it.”
“I just thought it was a costume piece,” said Rip.
Reg produced another picture, this time of a bizarre-looking alien. “Was this the black-market merchant you got the beard off?”
“Yes, that’s amazing! You know him too?”
“His name is Fralgoth, the notorious intergalactic thief of voodoo-antiquities.”
“He said his name was Thomas, the underground merchant of party pranks and other innocent joke props.”
“He lied.”
“Apparently.”
“So you said the beard was thrown away?” asked Reg.
“Why don’t you talk now?” said Rip as he turned in my direction.
I worked up the nerve to face my old Greeg-keeper.
“The beard was horribly itchy, so I threw it in the trash.”
“Where did this trash end up?” asked Reg.
“I suppose on the planet of Garbotron. All of our trash was blasted out of cannons onto the surface of Garbotron.”
“Excellent,” said Reg. “Then I see no point in this trial continuing any longer. I find all three of you guilty of the heinous crime of crashing a ship into the surface of Lincra, causing irreparable damage to much of the planet.”
“Not to mention the death of all those who were aboard the space-ship,” added a Specter in the background.
“I thought we agreed you lot were expendable?”
“Yes, your honour.”
Reg stood up. “I hereby sentence Rip, Wilx and Krimshaw to recover the lost Beard of Broog from the planet of Garbotron. Even if it means you must dig for eternity through the rotting heaps of waste. When you find the Beard, you will deliver it to this court, or else yo
u will be found and disposed of. We have ways of getting rid of immortals.”
“That’s impossible!” shouted Rip. “You do realize that no creature can breathe on the surface of Garbotron!”
“I am aware of this fact. At least you’ve got the eternity aspect on your side, if you are indeed as immortal as you claim to be. But even immortals need to breathe, don’t they?”
“I don’t know, never tested that fact.”
“Now you have the chance. THE COURT IS ADJOURNED! Someone get me another plate of Crabbits.”
THE ENDING
Of Beards and Revelations… but Mostly of Things
Greegs & Ladders - By Zack Mitchell and Danny Mendlow Page 36