Of course we couldn't see Milt anywhere, so we had to just walk around shouting out his name. Soon I spotted his tiny fluttering a few feet in front of me.
“What are you doing back here?” he asked irritably in his ridiculously shrill voice. “You musn't contaminate the Oviform! Musn't! Stand back!”
“We promise not to make a mess,” I said to Milt. “We plan on staying for as little time as possible.”
“But why are you here?” he asked. “There is nothing you can do here other than ruin my work. You are part of the slovenly species who did this.”
“We're looking for something,” I explained. “Something that might be important. This isn't for our own personal gain like the Beard of Broog. We're looking for something that might help save an entire planet.”
“Continue,” said Milt. The planet-saving bit had sparked his interest.
“A planet has vanished, we think due to Life-to-Planet Totality Quotient. In order to find the planet we must have some of its atmosphere for our tracking beacon. During your tireless and selfless work on this world, have you ever seen anything pertaining to the planet Jupiter? We are looking for the remnants of a museum.”
“I might have seen some stuff labeled Jupiter,” said Milt absently.
“Where?”
“I've already given you a map of the planet. If I've seen it, I've marked it on the map.”
“But we can't read the maps,” I said. “Even the magnifying glass did nothing to help.”
“Surely you have computers on your space-craft that could enhance the image?”
“We do, but we don't have a map anymore. Could we have a new one please?” I asked.
“I only have my one copy left and I'm not willing to loan it out,” said Milt.
“Then could you just take us there? That would be easier.”
“Yes it would,” said Milt. “Easier for you anyway. But I'm afraid I don't have the time. I've got a lot of work to do.”
“It won't take that long,” I said. “We don't have to walk. We have a ship.”
“Look, I just don't want to help you,” said Milt in a surprisingly stern tone for such a shrill voice.
“What if we could help you in return?” I asked.
“How could you possibly help me? Your mere presence damages the atmosphere. The exhalation of your breath is a veritable explosion of toxic carbon-compounds. A minutes worth of your breath sets me back a week of work.”
“What if we gave you something that every minute saved you a month of work.”
“Impossible,” said Milt. “There is no cleaning machine that powerful.”
“Machine, no. But there is a life-form that powerful. They're called Quiggs.”
“A Quigg?” asked Milt. He had read about them many times, always believing them to be mythical. “Quiggs aren't real. I've always wished they were, but they aren't.”
“They were real. But they went extinct. We've managed to clone one from a long dormant tissue sample. Weren't we just talking about Jurassic Park? Nevermind. The point is, we'll give you a Quigg if you help us. You have no idea what this creature can do for the planet. You'll be retired in no time.”
“Let me see it,” said Milt.
I produced the cage. Since we'd stepped off the ship the Quigg had been wide awake and going crazy with the smell of garbage. We opened the cage-door and the Quigg came rolling out.
“Wow,” said Milt as he noticed it had brushes, scrubbers and buffers where there should have been arms, legs and feet.
The Quigg seemed to be going into a spastic fit at the sight and smell of so much garbage. It could not handle the overload of filth. It began shaking so intensely it looked as if it was about to implode. Then the strangest yet most appropriate thing happened. The Quigg split into two Quiggs. It seems one look at Garbotron was enough to set the evolution of the Quigg back in full motion. There was no time for cloning or intercourse. More Quiggs were needed so badly that the sole member of one of the most useful species in existence was at once granted the power of instant replication. Within a few minutes there were half a dozen Quiggs hard at work.
“Amazing!” beamed Milt. “Sensational! Legendary! It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!”
“Enough for us to deserve your help?” I asked.
“Yes, yes, I'll help you find this Jupiter sample,” said Milt as the Quiggs continued to multiply. “Although that might be a problem. At the rate they're replicating and cleaning, we're likely to not find anything! I know where the Jupiter Museum is. It's not far, just across the swamp.”
Milt hurriedly directed us through a complex maze that we never would have been able to traverse without his expert help. At last we caught sight of a charred shell of a building with a sign that read JUPITER MUSEUM NOW OPEN.
“The building is still somewhat intact,” noticed Wilx. “Didn't you say it was bombed?”
“I thought it was,” I said. “It must have just been a fire. It's hard to remember everything when you're immortal.”
“Too true,” agreed Rip.
“Let's start looking,” said Wilx. “Everyone take a different wing of the Museum. Don't fall through any burnt floorboards!”
We walked towards the entrance of the museum.
“Do you mind if I push off now?” asked Milt. “I'm curious to get back to the Oviform and check on the progress of the Quiggs.”
“Go ahead, we should be fine here,” I said.
“Thank you again for the gift you have bestowed upon this troubled planet,” he said as he flew back to the Oviform.
CHAPTER 5
Something Excellent
Afters hours of sifting through the rubble, it was Wilx who finally found an uninjured sample of Jupiter. He had always been the best at finding things.
“Here it is!” he shouted exuberantly. “I found it!”
He held out a clear cylinder.
“It's made of glass,” I said. “Amazing it hasn't shattered after all these years.”
“It can't shatter,” said Wilx, reading the fine print on the bottom of the container. “It's made of unbreakable Jardian mega-prisms.”
“I think we proved that Jardian mega-prisms aren't unbreakable with the whole Chalkboard of Elbereth scenario,” stated Rip.
“Right. Nearly unbreakable Jardian Mega-prisms,” corrected Wilx.
We gathered around the sample. Brownish-red gaseous vapor mixed with itself in an amazingly psychedelic way.
“It's so... hypnotizing,” drooled Rip as he grabbed the container and unscrewed the cap.
“What are you doing?!” shouted Wilx. “You'll let it escape!”
Rip proceeded to drink the entire contents of the Jupiter sample. We then had one of our typical moments of silence as we contemplated Rip's insane decisions.
First he bubbled out his ears. Then his pupils crazily swirled like black ink diffusing in a saucer-full of curdled milk. He began to rant about ridiculous prophecies that he thought were being channeled to him from the missing entities of Jupiter.
“I... understand,” whispered Rip in an usually high voice. He then turned and collapsed in such a manner that made his body look like a twisted heap of cheap rag-doll limbs.
As soon as he woke up a few hours later, we questioned him about why he had done such a thing.
“I don't know,” he replied. “It seemed like the right thing to do. What happened anyway?”
“You kept talking about these prophecies you thought you were channeling,” said Wilx. “Then you said 'I understand.' What did you understand? Did you actually have a connection with some sort of entity? Did it tell you where Jupiter has gone?”
“Yes,” said Rip. “I saw and understood everything about the fate of Jupiter.”
“Well?!” asked Wilx.
“Oh, I don't remember any of it. You probably should have been writing it down I guess.”
“That's it then,” said Wilx dejectedly. “You drank away our only chance of finding Jupiter.�
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“Not necessarily,” said Rip as he covered his mouth. “It's not sitting too well. I think it's on the way up.”
He grabbed the container and threw up.
“Here you go,” he wheezed, before passing out again for a few hours. Rather than wait for him to wake up we just lugged his body onto the ship.
The Quiggs had continued to multiply at an unbelievable rate. From orbit we could see the cleanliness of the Oviform spreading outwards like a meteoric strike. It seemed as if the whole planet would be repaired in a matter of days. Quiggs were saving the planet they had once plotted to help destroy.
How were the Quiggs getting rid of all the garbage, you ask? While Quiggs of the past were excellent cleaners, they still needed a space in which to send unwanted material (hence their former plan to have all the Greeg garbage blasted off the planet), however these new Garbotron-Evolved Quiggs were far more powerful. They had developed the power to break matter down to the point where it took up virtually no space at all. For instance, Diaper Mountain was condensed down to one-third the size of a single dust particle. The Lake of Liquids now wouldn't even fill a fruit-fly's drinking glass, and The Wall of Leftover Cheese-Like Products now took up no more space than one or two of Julius Caesar's left nostril-hairs.
We decided to check back in on the progress of Garbotron after the Jupiter Mission.
CHAPTER 6
Johnny Guitar Says “No Gas Giant Can Stay Lost Forever!”
Wilx fed the atmosphere sample into the tracking system. All we had to do was relax and let the ship take us across the universe to the matching source.
“Earlier, when you drank the atmosphere, why did it make your voice so high?” I asked Rip.
“I don't know,” he replied.
“That's easy,” said Wilx. “One-quarter of Jupiter is comprised of helium.”
“Interesting,” said Rip. “I thought I grew an immunity to helium when I spent a year on that Balloon-World.”
“Ssh, I see it,” said Wilx with awe as the sight of Jupiter appeared on-screen.
A disembodied voice suddenly amplified itself through the computer. It was not nearly as shocking as previously similar events like with Fralgoth on Garbotron or the Stockholm Robot Squad on Hroon. We had become accustomed to the unexpected arrival of disembodied voices.
This time the voice was vaguely familiar to me.
“Now it's time for the traffic report,” it said. “Ok... there's plenty of room in space. If you see a traffic jam... go around it! That forever concludes the traffic report. Next up is the entirety of about 26 progressive rock albums played in a row, as I've been broadcasting for 89 hours straight and am in desperate need of a quick break. We will begin with The Troll-Creatures seminal self-titled debut record, a 224 minute single-track opus based on a mystical myriad of Tolkien-esque fantasies. The inspired free-style album was recorded in one take during a potentially inebriated evening in the Mobile Studio at Mick Jagger's Stargroves, after which Mick casually stated: 'It was a decent jam, the details of which I remember not at all.' Alright, here we go... The Troll-Creatures...”
“It's the voice of the Vapors!” I said. “They're back on Jupiter!”
“What? That isn't the voice of any Vapor-Beings,” corrected Wilx.
“Who is it then?”
“That's Johnny Guitar, Immortal Superstar DJ for Radio Cygnus 85.3, the most popular radio station anywhere. He's been around for centuries and is known for his wild, erratic behavior and marathon bouts of uninterrupted broadcast that sometimes last for weeks on end. Looks like we had the misfortune of tuning in just as he's taking a break.”
“If this Johnny Guitar isn't a Vapor-Being, then how is he inhabiting Jupiter?” I asked.
“He's not,” replied Wilx.
“Isn't the broadcast coming directly from this planet?”
“This station can appear to come from many different worlds,” he replied. “We're hearing it now because planets with heavy radio emission are sometimes known to pick up and broadcast the frequencies of Radio Cygnus, beyond the control of the actual listener/ship-owner. No one knows whether it's accidental, or a corporate conspiracy to force people into listening to the radio. In this case I think it has something to do with Jupiter's Magnetosphere.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Well, Jupiter's Magnetosphere is caused by eddy currents – swirling movements of conducting materials – within the metallic hydrogen core. First the volcanoes of the moon Io emit sulfur dioxide, forming a gas torus around the moon's orbit. The gas torus is then ionized in Jupiter's magnetosphere, producing oxygen ions. These ions mix with the hydrogen atmosphere of Jupiter, forming a plasma sheet in the equatorial plane. The electrons within the plasma sheet produce strong radio emissions from the polar regions of Jupiter, the very region around which we are currently orbiting. I think this is what's causing the sudden broadcast of Radio Cygnus.”
“So when humans thought they'd discovered life on Jupiter, they had merely picked up a passing radio station?”
“It seems so,” said Wilx. “I should have known what you were talking about when you said they sounded like a weird Radio DJ. I guess discovering life on Jupiter is just another thing that humans didn't do.”
“Crazy,” I replied.
We listened for a minute to the dense, intoxicating sound of The Troll-Creatures. Beneath the layered nuance of improvisational psychedelic space-guitar solos, extended brain-warping keyboard excursions, pompously gritty rapid-fire bass licks and the paradigm of deafening rapturous double-kick drum-beats, we could just faintly hear the sound of Mick's footsteps as he wildly danced in the background. This album was known for having accidentally recorded such percussive marvels for the ages.
“So this means there still isn't life on Jupiter?” I finally continued.
“Yes,” said Wilx.
“Then we should try to find some, before the planet vanishes again.”
“A good idea,” jumped in Rip. “Only where are we going to find the life for such a heinous environment?”
“Research suggests any life to spring up on Jupiter would likely be ammonia-based.”
“Ok,” said Rip. “Do we know any ammonia-based life-forms?”
“Not really,” said Wilx. “Have you ever met any ammonia-based life-forms?” he asked me.
“Can't say I have.”
“That solves that problem,” said Rip. “Now let's go find something else to do!”
“Wait,” I said. “What if put out an ad? Urging ammonia-based life-forms to save Jupiter and live in harmony?”
“We'll need to advertise all over the universe,” said Rip. “How are we going to do that?”
“I think that's been answered for us,” I replied. “We'll go to the Radio Cygnus Station and ask Johnny Guitar to place an ad for us.”
“That's a plan!” shouted Rip, suddenly regaining interest in our current adventure. “I've always wanted to go to Radio Cyngus and meet Johnny. I hear it's a paradise, a nonstop epic party-zone located in the most luxurious building made of shiny things.”
Even Wilx admitted using radio was a good idea, albeit a difficult one.
“Let's not get our hopes up,” he said. “Not only have I never heard of Johnny Guitar taking requests, placing advertisements or speaking to his fans, I also hear the Radio Cygnus Station is not at all the idyllic experience that Rip imagines it to be, but rather a heavily guarded bureaucratic wasteland. A very anti-luxurious and boring gray concrete building. It amazes me that Johnny is able to perform so exuberantly within such a stifling, anti-artistic environment.”
“We'll see who's right,” said Rip.
CHAPTER 7
The History of Johnny Guitar
They were both right in different aspects. The Radio Cygnus building was indeed luxurious and made of shiny things, however it was also heavily guarded and annoyingly bureaucratic. It was clear we were going to have to sneak in.
“Here, hold your breath,” Wil
x said as he scanned us with a bizarre looking scanning device.
“What are you doing?” I asked, alarmed.
“I'm going to encase us in Illusion Bubbles,” he replied. “The effect can crush your lungs if you're mid-breath when the barrier seals.”
“Illusion Bubbles?” I asked, before holding my breath.
“You will appear to everyone who sees you as whatever I program you to look like. In this case I have all of us looking like suit-wearing Radio Cygnus executives.”
“This whole time you've had a device that can make us look like anyone... and you're just now producing it?” I started. “Do you have any idea how often this would have come in handy? That whole long bit with us looking for the Beard of Broog and impersonating the Kulmoog Commander Flook would have been totally moot. We could have just disguised ourselves as Flook at any time.”
“I lost this device years ago. I only just found it when I was emptying out all my pockets on Hroon, and it hasn't been needed since then.”
“Oh.”
We looked like a regular group of executives. The barrier of the bubble was visible from within, blurring everything beyond it into a wavy mirage. To myself I still looked normal, but when I looked at Rip or Wilx I saw the illusion.
“Alright, let's do this,” said Wilx as we approached the front door. “Don't attract unnecessary attention.”
The lobby of Radio Cygnus was a vast, brightly-lit room, perpetually clean, dazzlingly shiny, mostly empty except for a marble desk lining one of the walls with a receptionist or two hovering about every few hundred meters, while generally every few meters a squadron of heavily armed guards lurked menacingly. The ratio of receptionist to armed guard was disturbingly off-kilter and instantly tuned one into the fact that Radio Cygnus is not a cool place. They were clearly not interested in guiding you or answering your questions, but did look adept at getting you off the property as soon as possible. The intimidating appearance of each of the guards was so similar that it was obvious they were merely clones of the single perfect warrior.
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