Greegs & Ladders by Zack Mitchell, Danny Mendlow (top 10 ebook reader txt) 📕

“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 honor. 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 has 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 honor. 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 honor. 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 sulfuric 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?!