Greegs & Ladders, Zack Mitchell, Danny Mendlow [read with me .TXT] 📗

The Bonus Short Story, or:

How We Colonized Jupiter and Cleaned up Garbotron

As collected from the Cutting Room Floor,

(shortly before I decided to distance myself from Rip and Wilx.)

(with a title full of spoilers at no additional surcharge).

CHAPTER 1

Jupiter

 

“Did you ever watch the movie 2010?” Wilx asked me.

“Sure. Except the first one's better.”

“I know. I've seen it way more times,” said Wilx. “So when did humans actually first make contact?”

“It was 2020,” I replied. “His prediction had misinterpreted Plato's ten-year error.”

“What does Plato have to do with it?”

“Never mind. Humans didn't end up going to Jupiter until 2052,” I added. “And nothing momentous happened.”

“Hmm,” said Wilx. “What's Jupiter like?”

“It's like Rip's ego. Big and gassy. A never-ending storm that looks interesting from afar but can be fatal from up close.”

“How many planets rotate that star again?” asked Wilx.

“Five,” I said. “Used to be nine, then four of them collided with each other and became the Planetglomerate.”

“We will go to Jupiter,” declared Wilx suddenly. “I've seen those movies and read those books enough to have interest in the matters of that planet.”

“It really is just a bunch of gas,” I said.

“There must be something special about it, something that made the prophet Clarke write those stories.”

“He probably just picked a random planet in the galaxy. It could have just as easily been about Saturn or Neptune.”

“No,” said Wilx. “It is a sign. There's something about Jupiter.”

“So you think if we go to Jupiter the movies will come true?”

“Not exactly, but something will happen. You never ignore a sign.”

“What about the time you ignored that 'NO LEFT TURN AHEAD' sign and we ended up being diverted through a gauntlet of Dementia-Mirrors?” I asked.

“That sign didn't say 'NO LEFT TURN AHEAD.' It said 'NO STONE LEFT UNTURNED UNSTONED.' Had we gotten stoned and turned rocks over at the beach we probably would have missed out on the Dementia-Mirrors. Plus we might have seen some interestingly rare aquatic creatures. What did you expect would happen?”argued Wilx.

“I don't know. Anyway, humans already went to Jupiter and nothing much happened.”

“That was a long time ago. We're more prepared than humans were. I've seen 2001 more than anyone.”

As much as I wanted to avoid going near the Planetglomerate, I decided to save my breath. If he wanted to go to Jupiter, that was where we would end up going. Wilx always had final say on the chartering of the ship, being that he actually knew how to run the computers.

Rip had been in cryogenic sleep for the past year, having hidden himself there in order to avoid paying the toll-booth fees of certain finicky dimensional border-crossings. He was only meant to be out for a few hours, but we hadn't got around to waking him up yet. Wilx now saw no reason of it until we reached Jupiter. I think he enjoyed the fact that our situation already seemed to mirror the film, by having a frozen team-member who would (hopefully) be awoken upon arrival at the Gas Giant.

CHAPTER 2

Where is Jupiter?

 

Arrival at Jupiter was anti-climactic. As we arrived, we also did not arrive. Jupiter was gone. Missing. Someone had left a moon-sized post-it note saying: This Gas Giant has vanished for unknown reasons.

“Bastards!” cursed Wilx.

“What do you think happened?” I asked.

“Jupiter might have been stolen to be used in warfare. Sometimes planets are used as weapons, hurled at other planets and the like. Gas giants are frequent favorites. They release the most amount of toxicity. Only uninhabited planets are allowed to be used as weapons, but it's still a barbaric practice. Stealing a planet often throws off the gravitational orbit of surrounding populated worlds.”

“Jupiter isn't uninhabited,” I said.

“Surely it is,” said Wilx. “All gas giants are lifeless.”

“No they aren't. Humans found life on Jupiter in 2052,” I said.

“You said nothing happened.”

“I said nothing much happened. Something happened. I just didn't feel like getting into the whole story.”

“Tell me about these life-forms!” said Wilx excitedly.

“They exist body-less, like pure thought. You see, some of the gaseous vapors floating around actually contained a mildly intelligent consciousness. It was discovered when the vapors telepathically transmitted their collective voice into the computers. I once heard a recording. They talked like a weird Radio DJ.”

“How did such a life-form come to exist?” asked Wilx. He was enthralled and thought nothing of the curious Radio DJ comment.

“Have you ever heard the rhetorical question 'If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?'” I asked.

“Rhetorical nonsense,” said Wilx.

“It suggests that something only exists because a consciousness is present to experience it. This is very true for the life of a planet.”

“Are you talking about the Life-to-Planet Totality Quotient?” asked Wilx.

“Indeed. Based on the human discoveries on Jupiter I began to believe in the theory that an uninhabited planet does not exist anywhere. Even a planet the size of Jupiter has at the very least a species of rudimentary Vapour-Thought.”

“And you believe the disappearance is because of this?”

“Yes,” I replied. “The Life-to-Planet Totality Quotient says that if any planet for some reason does become uninhabited, it will have a limited amount of time to acquire or create new life before it merely blinks out of existence due to its own uselessness. Like the rhetorical nonsense goes, something does not exist if it is not made real by consciousness.”

“You sound like Nickbas.”

“Sometimes he made a lot of sense,” I said.

“Say you're right,” said Wilx. “Why did Jupiter disappear if it had life?”

“The Vapors must have left the planet, whether by their own will or not.”

“So this planet is just destroyed forever?”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “One theory says that a vanished, lifeless planet does not cease to exist, but out of survival instinct gains the ability to teleport itself to a distant part of space, one where it might have a more hopeful chance of picking up some tourist traffic.”

“You believe in this theory as well, don't you?” asked Wilx.

“Yes.”

“So Jupiter is still out there somewhere?”

“It's very possible,” I replied.

“Then it's time for another quest,” said Wilx.

“To find the lost planet of Jupiter?”

“Yes... A Quest to Find the Lost Planet of Jupiter!”

“Ok!” I agreed. This adventure seemed more about scientific exploration than life-threatening peril, so my enthusiasm was genuine. “How do you suggest we start looking? There's a lot of space out there. Infinite amounts, in fact.”

“If only we had a sample of Jupiter's atmosphere,” said Wilx. “Then all we'd have to do is set up a simple tracking beacon.”

“There used to be a whole museum filled with samples on Earth. It was built after the 2052 mission. But all of that was destroyed in the anti-Jupiter terrorist bombing of 2087.”

“I guess that doesn't help us out.”

“Maybe it does,” I said. “We both know where all the garbage from Earth ended up.”

“Garbotron?”

“Exactly. If the Jupiter Museum was destroyed, than the remnants of it must be lying somewhere on Garbotron. Maybe a canister of Jupiter's atmosphere has survived.”

“You really want to go back there after the horrible time you had looking for that beard?” asked Wilx.

“I know someone who can help us. But we'll need some incentive. You charter the ship to Garbotron while I go peruse the deep-storage.”

“Alright,” agreed Wilx, despite having no idea what I was talking about.

CHAPTER 3

The Resurrection of the Quigg

 

You never knew what you might find in the storage section of our impossible ship. During our travels we had collected many interesting things. I had a few secret items stashed away. Stuff that was much more interesting than frozen Goat's milk. One of my rarest objects had come from the Planetglomerate. It was an intact skeleton of the now extinct Quigg species. We were long overdo for a resurrection of these incredibly useful creatures.

I carried a small cryogenic tank back to the bridge and presented the skeleton to Wilx.

“I need you to clone this creature back to life,” I said.

“What creature?” asked Wilx. “Why?”

“It's a Quigg. It might be the only way to convince him to help us maneuver Garbotron.”

“Convince who?”

“Milt,” I replied. “You know, that nutty little fruit fly. We'll present the Quigg as a gift.”

“Right,” said Wilx. “I'll start up the cloning machine in a minute. First I need to work out some data on the chalkboard. The machine gets confused when presented with the genetic makeup of an unfamiliar species.”

Wilx walked over to the chalkboard. The word MEETS had already been written in the middle of the board. Wilx attempted to erase the word, having forgotten it was permanently etched there.

“Why is the word 'meets'stuckon this chalkboard?” he asked.

“I invented that chalkboard during my time on Earth. It's meant to be used in pitch-meetings between screen-writers and movie-producers. Often writers pitch ideas by saying is a combination of two other popular movies.”

“I understand the concept,” said Wilx. “Movie-producers wish to invest with minimal amount of risk by merely reproducing what has already been proven to be a money-maker.”

“Indeed,” I replied. “I figured if a lot of people are pitching their movie merely by writing blank MEETS blank onto a board, then I could at least save everyone the time from spelling out the word MEETS. The 'Something-Meets-Something Chalkboard' was one of my most popular inventions. It sold thousands of units in Hollywood alone. It was estimated I shaved hours off the yearly schedules of those who bought one.”

For someone of Wilx's technological brilliance, bringing the Quigg back to life ended up being