R.S.V.P.
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Slimeworld & Galaxy Magazine -- All rights reserved -- |
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Chapter XIX
by General (Uncle Claude) Xxaxx
& General (E.J. Gold) Nunan PFC 1st Class Ret.
Complaining to the only nearby sympathetic party, Drak walked along the downtown sidewalk muttered to himself, “One would think that after all these centuries of practice I would get used voguing as a human — no way. How can they stand being in these things. The body’s tight, off balance and my back hurts.” If anyone along the sidewalk heard him mumbling under his breath they didn’t show it. And, even if they had, Drak’s complaint is not much different than every human’s — they just don’t know of any other option, in the body department.
Drak surveyed the sidewalk. It was full of vacationers and local color.
Asocial Anthopology (Subhead: Definitions) — Local Color: the name created by marketing agents on behalf of Chamber of Commerce for indigenous riff-raff that hangs about in any tourist town. (Cross-reference — User Commentary: Marketing Agents)
User Commentary (Subhead: Marketing-Agents) If the devil had the equivalent of saints they would be drawn from the ranks of attorneys and marketing agents. (Cross-reference — User Commentary: Attorneys)
User Commentary (Subhead: Attorneys) — What do you say to the Cownsil when you discover a plague that could wipe out the 90% of the human population 5 billion people including 3 million attorneys? Answer: I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.
Bubblers, in bright pink and blue, were busy bumbling up and down the street. Sometimes avoiding Drak and sometimes jostling into him. Drak was voguing as an egghead. And, as an egghead the daily shoppers weren’t particularly concerned about his well-being and they certainly weren’t concerned about showing him any curtesy. Wearing a bubble, even a pseudo-bubble, was not worth the relative respect. It was yucky enough to Drak to touch the bubbles on the few occasions when Citizins bumped into him. It would have been more than he could take to actually wear one of those contraptions. He’d sooner live on a diet of carrion orchids.
Judging by the stickers and bags, couldn’t help but notice that none of the Citizins and goobers have missed the opportunity to see the home of Gronkomatic’s Automatic Vegetable Masher or the home of vidi’s hottest show All My Money! Even without a vidi Drak was not unacquainted with global communication uplinks and the fact that a vidi studio can be located anywhere on the planet and still be available for viewing anywhere else. Haven’t the dragons been forced to move lae-lines often enough?
User Commentary (Subhead: Citizins and Vidi) — In profound contrast to every other industry on the planet many if not most of the jobs connected with the television industry are actually bubble run. It’s the old Sixty Minutes concept. (Cross-reference: Murphyological Studies [Subhead: Sixty Minutes Concept]) When someone is highly motivated he or she can come through in surprising ways. In the case of vidi, every Citizin is highly motivated — to the extent that they have been willing to learn even technical maintenance in an effort to keep All My Money! on the air.
Murphyological Studies: Sixty Minutes Concept — You can’t teach someone until you have his or her attention, you can’t get someone’s attention until you have his or her interest and you can’t get his or her interest until you get his or her interest.
As Drak walked, trying to ease the pain in his back the best he could, he looked — scanning the sidewalks for Littler Roy, the goober unknowingly brought to him by Professor Woo. The yellow and green awnings along the street made a curious contrast with the blue and pink of the vacationing bubblers. As one would expect only a few eggheads were on the street. Rarely did eggheads travel for pleasure, too expensive and difficult, only an egghead traveling under the sponsorship of a research cownsil could afford the expenses. This made them vulnerable, since there was no legitimate reason one could claim for being away from one’s home town.
Continuing down the street, Citizins persisted in bumping into him on the few occasions that he failed to effectively avoid yet another bumbling citizin. On those occasions the feel of the pink and blue gelatinous balloons against his skin was almost unbearable. It’s not that Drak is unused to strange and unusual sensations, it’s the psychic vibrations of voluntary idiocy and extreme self-indulgence that was so hard to take. Just another one of the draw backs to being a contact sensitive.
Fortunately the smells of the surrounding jungle were present enough to afford Drak some relief even if it was just barely enough to make it tolerable. “Gad, why could I have just simply flown over to the Notel and found the goober there? If these bumbling maggots insisted on using my body for a bumper cushion, they’ll find out just how protective a gelatinous shield is against burning hydrogen and oxygen. But, alas, too many prying eyes.”
Making rough hand manipulations in the air, Drak was far more familiar with using a tail for magic gestures, Drak managed to create a small force field around himself. Thereby preventing further contact with clumsy passerbys, thereby forestalling the test of their combustibility. “Damn pink and blue, two-legged maggots. And no scales to-boot.”
Nearly at the hotel, Drak noticed a smell on the wind that he recognized off Professor Woo’s clothes. A smell not unlike a combination of ginger and chalk. He hadn’t expected to find this until he arrived at the hotel. It was the smell of Woo’s goober — Little Roy.
Bubbler Physiology — Goobers have an order describable as ginger and chalk — spicy and dusty. It is hypothesized that because of the reduced level of hismones and hermones the characteristic goober smell wasn’t quite as bad as the characteristic smell of a bubbler — week old fish and roadkill.
Venturing a guess that the approaching goober was the specific goober that he was looking for, Drak addressed the young goober.
“Excuse me young sir. Are you aquatinted with a certain Professor Woo?”
“Maybe I am and maybe I’m not. What is aquatinted?
“Are you perhaps a friend of his?”
Little Roy hadn’t thought about it like that before. He was Professor Woo’s goober, assigned to keep an eye on him and prevent him from xpeariminting.
“What is a friend?” Little Roy asked the rather large stranger.
:”One could say a friend was someone that one spent time with and did various things together.”
Littler Roy thought about it a moment suddenly lite up and responded, “Professor is my friend.”
This was better than Little Roy could ever hope for. Here he was on his way to the market square in search of something neat-o-keen to take back to his Mom and now he finds out he has a friend. Boy, life can be big. He knew this morning that it would be good to make the adventure into town. At first he was afraid to go so far from the hotel. At least there he had the swimming pool and fish in the twisty pond to keep him company. But every hour, actually 56.443801 minutes, a man would come on the great vidi by the pool and invite everyone to come down to the market and buy things. The things that all the bubblers were buying in the vidi looked so fun. Then the straw was lain upon the camels back of Little Roy’s promise to stay at the hotel. The man on the vidi invited everybody to visit the home of Gronkomatic. The Gronkomatic was the machine for cooking. It made everything, especially mashed vegetables — they were his favorite food.
After two days tantalizing ads promising fun filled tours of the Gronkomatic factory, , Little Roy couldn’t resist. He just had to go to town — no matter what he promised Professor Woo. Beside it would be his job to check up on Professor every now and then. She was downtown shopping, his bossperson would be proud of him for doing his job. No that was not a truth telling. The bosspersons seemed to have only one reaction to what ever a goober did — hate. If they did have another reaction to a goober it would be something like ‘more hate’.
And all of this by way of explaining how Little Roy came to be talking with Drak in the midst of a busy street with bright pink and blue citizins scurrying this way and that just outside the home of Gronkomatic, ‘the fun way to cook.’.
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R.S.V.P.
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Slimeworld & Galaxy Magazine -- All rights reserved -- |
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