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

'THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL POLICE ORGANIZATION – INTERPOL, HAS EXPRESSED ITS CONCERN ABOUT MOTION PICTURE AND SOUND RECORDING PIRACY TO ALL OF ITS MEMBER NATIONAL POLICE FORCES. RESOLUTION ADOPTED AT INTERPOL GENERAL ASSEMBLY, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, SEPTEMBER 8, 1977.”

The guards bearing down on us were curious enough to stop pursuit and look around for the origin of the amplified voice. Hadn't all the microphones had been thrown into the ocean by Prollk?

A parked spaceship de-cloaked itself. A door opened. A ramp extended. A squadron of 24 robots emerged.

The robots were met with incredible bouts of laughter from the crowd. After all, the technology that had created them was of vastly poorer quality than anything the crowd had ever seen. They looked rickety and harmless, yet they were programmed to be able to uphold their strict orders with extreme force. All looked identical, about 3 feet tall and capable of motion with dual wheels. Each were emblazoned with the S.S.R.S. logo across their chest.

Also, each of them were installed with their very own nuclear bomb.

“It's the S.S.R.S!” someone screamed. “Run!”

“What's the S.S.R.S?” asked Wilx.

“We are the STOCKHOLM SWEDEN ROBOT SQUAD!” answered the robots.

They seemed to speak with a collective voice. “We have been alerted to a gross perpetuation of movie piracy! Where are the criminals? Where are the ones who had unauthorized film screenings?”

“We don't understand!” said one of the reporters.

“Our piracy homing beacon led us to this planet. The data shows that for the last several thousand years there have been films playing through Sky-Projection Mode to an entire civilization of nonpaying creatures,” said the robots. “The initiative set forth by our creators on September 8, 1977 in Stockholm Sweden declares we are owed royalties and interest for this grievous theft. Now where are the ones who played the movies?” asked the robot again.

The crowd was silent.

“If the criminals do not come forth,” said the robots, “we will be forced to punish everyone here by way of nuclear detonation.”

“What's nuclear?” asked the reporter.

“We'll blow you all up,” clarified the robots.

A legion of fingers pointed at the specters.

“It was them!” cried the crowd.

The robots turned to face the specters. “Are you the ones who had unauthorized screenings of the following films?” they asked. A long list of many popular motion picture titles suddenly appeared on the big-screen.

The specters, being dead and with nothing to fear, pled guilty to the charges.

“You will come with us,” said the robots. “We are taking you to the prison planet known as Plorix III. You will spend the remainder of eternity in a soul-crushingly grey atmosphere of concrete walls and anti-nutritional, overly-microwaved meals served on pink plastic trays. There will be no screenings of any films, authorized orunauthorized.”

The specters explained how they weren't going anywhere, and that they were free to watch whatever movies they wanted.

“If you do not comply, we will detonate the nuclear bombs.”

“Now might be a good time to leave,” I whispered to Wilx.

“Can you swim?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Good, grab one of these laser-guns,” he said, at last finding a useful item.

“Why do I need a laser-gun?” I asked.

“Ocean-monsters. We're going to have to swim to our ship. It's the only chance of escape.”

“It is?”

“Yes. None of these nuts are immortal enough to survive the Hroon Ocean. Now be prepared for the shock in temperature change. The water here is as cold as it gets.”

“It is?”

“No more questions,” said Wilx as he pushed me into the freezing ocean.

We swam rapidly, shooting at the mass of monsters who currently wished for nothing more than to savagely dine on our exotic flesh. The monsters were easily deterred. They quickly sent out word to all other monsters that we were not worth the effort or the severed tentacles.

Wilx was a genius for suggesting we swim. We were much safer in the water than on the surface. Anyone alive wouldn't dare to follow us, from fear of freezing or monsters, as well as their problem of needing to breathe underwater. All these factors did not apply to us immortals. The only real threat came from the specters, who were able to telepathically heckle the most vulnerable part of our subconscious. It took everything we had to hold off their indomitable will.

My limbs were jelly from the vigorous swimming. For a moment I thought I might just give up and sink to the bottom. Wilx grabbed my arm and dragged me the few remaining meters. He immediately set the ship to Get-Us-Out-Of-Here-Right-Now Mode. Our ship, in its impossible ways, decided to create a diversion by materializing an exact replica ship (complete with ultra-realistic robotic mannequins strategically placed in front of the windows) in our place The real ship turned invisible and took off.

For hours after the press conference ended, various groups of curious people tried to enter the fake ship. The specters were of course particularly intent on entering. When this proved impossible, they compromised by taking up the hobby of shouting carefully crafted threats and insults from outside the partially frosted windows. They took turns rotating between doing the heckling or floating around a writer's table brainstorming the best jokes. The duplicate ship went on to perpetually drift through space, always being trailed by a least a few Specters heckling the subconscious mind of robotic mannequins.

Who are the Movie Police?

On a side note, the nuclear bombs were not set off. Although the robots were fully capable of performing such an act, they were still feeble things who could only perform about a half dozen different physical movements with zero fluidity. One thing they didn't have was a turning neck. Someone from the crowd noticed this, then merely crept up behind the robots and pushed them into the ocean. Their brain functions and nuclear detonating capabilities were immediately shorted out. The crowd wasn't exactly sure what they had survived or why, but they applauded nonetheless.

Back on the ship, Wilx asked me what the robots were all about. I was well-informed on the subject.

“Those robots came from Earth,” I said.

“Really?”

Rip was not here to bemoan another lengthy info-dump, so I told the story freely.

“Yes, they were invented in the Earth year 1977 by a group of anti-piracy movie moguls. The plan was to set loose a free-roaming squad of robot police to make sure no one watched a movie without having paid through the teeth for it. Naturally, criminals were to be rounded up and placed on a secluded island prison. One of the inventors foolishly pitched the idea of intelligent robots with speech-boxes that claim to be equipped with nuclear bombs in order to frighten criminals into utter compliance. Everyone else agreed it was too great a lie to believe, so instead the robots were to be issued with more practical measures of force like machine guns and pepper-spray. However somewhere in the path of paperwork the orders were completely misinterpreted, and the robots were not only programmed to say they have bombs, but they were actually installed with fully functioning nukes, the detonation of which was entirely up to the whim of the robot.

'The whole program was scrapped once news of the doomsday-bots reached the investors. The robots were turned off and safely put under a tarp in the basement of a building where government scientists create evil things that require permanent hiding. But the robots had been given too much freedom and hardware control, including, apparently, the ability to turn themselves back on. They took to the streets and began filling out their original orders. Anyone caught stealing a movie was seized and transported to a random, uninhabited pacific island. Eventually the problem went away, for the signals on the Robot homing beacons went flat as soon as everyone stopped illegally watching movies. The plan to end piracy worked. The robots lay dormant for centuries. Every child on Earth was raised with utmost seriousness to never steal a movie or they might reawaken the Stockholm Sweden Robot Squad. To make sure no one ever sneaked into a theater, ushers and ticket-takers were only the most intimidating of CIA secret agents with the right to execute even the vaguest of suspects.

'Except one day, in the late 23rd Century... the inevitable happened. A rebellious child successfully sneaked into an R-rated movie theatre. It was a great enough offence to send a blip out on the Piracy Beacon. When the robots awoke they were surprised to see the technology of the world had long since passed them by. They found themselves to be laughable antiquities. The problem was, through more ill-conceived notions and shoddy paperwork, the Bots had also been mistakenly programmed to have a dangerous desire for change and growth. Wishing to fit in with the world and travel about with more speed and efficiency like all the other futuristic cyborgs, the Bots demanded a space-craft be put in their possession. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to get rid of the Bots, so a space-craft was promptly handed over. It was first installed with a special inhibitor clause that ensured during the first flight it would be sent randomly into space and henceforth be unable to come anywhere near Earth ever again. The Bots were sent off. Everyone on Earth was happy to once again be free to steal as many movies as they wanted.

'The only problem was, many other beings on other planets in the universe have either made their own films or have discovered and enjoy watching human films. The Bots, unable to distinguish between human films and alien films or human viewers and alien viewers, were pleased to see their Piracy Beacon pinging off the charts once they were away from Earth. I don't know too much else, but I do know the Bots have been causing a nuisance all over space, using the uninhabited planet Plorix III as the new prison for captured movie-criminals.”

“Hmm,” said Wilx. “Plorix III? I've never heard of that planet, sounds like an adventure for another day.”

I silently agreed, and we continued on with our original plan.

Grebular

When we finally arrived at the shape-shifting planet Grebular it was in the form of a sheet of paper. It promptly shifted into a paper-airplane and glided three orbital patterns to the left.

We found Rip patiently waiting with his newly formed friends, the Proto-Star hoppers.

“Thanks for the help!” he yelled to the extreme-sports junkies as they transferred him