Brutally Haggard, Part 2

Analgesic Backlog

Kiplough’s hobby, digging a tunnel through the back wall of the spare bedroom, occupied most of his time when at home. The dirt excavated, a black, breadlike substance, he transported in grocery bags to the city’s pump facility and dumped into the recycling pit. He emerged from the tunnel one day with a strange look in his eyes.
“What is it?” The Bird asked.
“I’ve broken through.” Kiplough sat heavily down on the much repaired chair in the room.
“To what?”
“I don’t know. Another tunnel it looks like.”
“You mean someone else has been digging out too? What are the chances…” The Bird stopped talking as Kiplough looked at him with disdain.
“Well, let me look at it.” The Bird begged.
“Let me pee first, then we’ll go together.” Kiplough got up and left the room. While he was gone, the Bird poked his head into the tunnel. It’s opening was large; Kiplough could easily walk into it upright. It narrowed somewhat further in, but remained high enough for Kiplough to stand. This had been necessary during the digging process because Kiplough’s back hurt often enough, even without the hard work. The Bird had avoided the tunnel all this time (it had taken nearly nine months) because of the gloom, but now, from far away came a faint glow.
“Wait for me.” Kiplough ordered, coming back into the room with a battered old kit bag over his shoulder. The Bird had wandered several steps into the opening. He now hopped out and allowed Kiplough to go first.
The trip through took only about twenty minutes. At the end they emerged in a linoleum-floored corridor lit overhead by fluorescent bulbs in commercial fixtures. The walls were sheetrock painted popcorn white. Here and there hung small framed photographs.
“Is this part of the apartment complex?” The Bird asked.
“I doubt it.” Kiplough examined the photographs which were of celebrities he was not familiar with.

Fallen Dog

The city of Shedge consisted of one immense building. It extended on one side into the waters of the sea and on the other into a dense forest. Mr. Groaf, the current Director General of the city, was enjoying an amateur play on the day that Kiplough made his breakthrough.
During the intermission between Acts one and two Mr. Groaf was introduced to Mavez Abuelia.
“Just here in a strictly dramatically appreciative sense, I hope?” Mr. Groaf joked, trying to keep from staring at Ms. Abuelia’s impressive chest.
“Well, a journalist can never completely relax, but I’m trying. It’s a very good play.” The woman’s teeth were on display with every word.
“We’ll see.” Mr. Groaf could afford to be cynical and dismissive. One was not elected Director General and as Director General he had no time or luxury for women, no matter how multidimensionally attractive. “It’s started well.”
“Director, I’d like you to meet Ned Feese, the chairman of the theater company.” Said one of Mr. Groaf’s friends in the crowd. His attention refocused on the newcomer and it wasn’t until he was back in his seat that he thought of Mavez Abuelia again.
The second act moved the scene of the action from a kitchen in the house of a family of bears to a watchtower overlooking the glaciated pass into the forgotten valley. Mark, hoping to find the solitude he needs to finish his book, discovers that he has been duped; the watchtower is a veritable beehive of activity (or so he describes it in an angry speech). During a trip to the nearby trading post Mark runs into Mrs. Cumberson, his creative writing teacher from his freshman year in college. As she revealed to Mark that her encouragement of his talent had been influence by her heavy marijuana use at the time, Mr. Groaf turned to his companion for the evening, Walt, one of the officers in the cultural liaison department, and said.
“I’m leaving after this act. This is bullshit.”
Ms. Abuelia casually looked about for Mr. Groaf during the next intermission, but said nothing. She made some notes in the toilet.

Rain of Milk

The slow shield penetrates the blade. A keening awareness of one’s own limits is laid out on a long scroll of smudgy blue paper. The device, mounted on a tripod framework over a deep pit filled with a greenish-yellow emanation, was black, bulbous, egg-like. Red, domed lights ringed it twice, once near its somewhat pointy top, and again around its squat equator. In between these lights a hundred or more intricately articulated mechanical arms, also black, ringed the device. They passed pieces of paper endlessly among themselves while faint tinny music came out of a grilled, octagonal box on the very summit of the device.
As Kiplough and the Bird stood with their hands up, surrounded by a dozen centaur-like creatures holding short black plastic pipes that bore buttons and switches along their exteriors, more than an hour passed. Kiplough attempted to communicate with these creatures, but they made no response, nor did they make any sound at all. The creatures did not attempt to harm the two from the tunnel, but would not allow them to leave the middle of the circle they formed.
“What are we going to do?” Kiplough asked. “Stand here all day?”
“Why don’t I try to fly out of here?” The Bird suggested.
“Why?” Kiplough said. “Well, to tell the truth, I did think about that, but where would that leave me?”
In speaking thus these two characters that we identify with took the chance that the creatures around them did not understand their words. At this point I would also like to point out that the Bird, far from being a little tiny bird like a robin or something, was over halfway as tall as Kiplough, although he was proportioned like a smaller bird, maybe a bluebird, for that is what his coloring indicated.
“You know I’d come back for you.” The Bird promised.
“After all the times I’ve tried to thrash you?” Kiplough asked.
“I’d forgotten about that.” The Bird said. “Distract them now.” He told Kiplough, who dropped to the ground while his companion jumped up.

I Simply State the Facts

Mundig, a technician employed by the Bolsis to overseer forward operations, was returning home on the miniature train. He was seated next to Radny Grober, a broadcast analyst with the commercialization corps.
“So, how’s it going?” Grober asked.
“Pretty good.” Mundig replied in a subdued voice.
“You got the weekend off?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’ve got permanent weekends off.” Grober was jealous. He would have been somewhat deferential as well, had Mundig anything to do with his department, but the commercialization corps and the frontline boys were totally separate.
“Yeah.” Mundig and Grober knew each other vaguely. They had each attended the same training session once and been teamed as study partners. Mundig had no hard animosity towards the guy, but was happy he didn’t have to work with him on a daily basis.
“What can you tell me about your end?” Grober dropped his voice.
“Nothing that you can’t guess.” Mundig looked up into Grober’s eyes. “You’ve probably got as much, if not more, insight into the overall campaign.”
Grober responded noncommittally, edging into dubiety, and eventually the talk drifted into commonplaces for the remainder of Mundig’s ride. Mundig got off at the entrance to a residential area for executives and other personnel with high security clearances. This area was full of small, mobile housing units. The one Mundig and his family had been assigned was on the second row. As he fitted his key in the door he heard his children’s feet pounding towards him.
“Daddy! Daddy!” They greeted him. He divided his attentions between them and his wife, who stood smiling nearby. When he had a moment for more than mere pleasantries, Mundig told her something he could not tell Grober.
“Phase three is complete.” He said quietly. Even the children must not hear what they might repeat to unauthorized ears.
“How soon can we move out of this trailer?” Were the woman’s first words.

Guess Who Doesn’t Care

“I got that sore in my nose again.” Bedlans Primo called from the table where he was eating his dinner to his wife Nances, who was peering out the window. She had watched carefully for Mundig’s arrival.
“He just got home.” Nances announced.
“It means I can’t pick my nose without pain.”
“His children meet him at the door—how nice.” Her tone was far from appreciative. The Primos’ unit was on the front row of the orderly arrangement of units; Bedlans Primo was a supervisor-in-chief of postal operations and as such deserved to have his housing unit in such a position.
“Why don’t you stop staring at those people?” Bedlans demanded. “And listen to my problems.” Is what he wanted to add, but wouldn’t, because he knew that if he did, Nances would only dish out her own list of problems. A fine dessert that would be.
“It’s not fair that that man and his cutesy little family is right up behind us on the second row, here in the first quadrant.” Nances turned back to face her husband of six years. “He’s just some technician.” She flung one of her long, bony hands up by her face where it quavered like a hovering dragonfly. “I don’t know how he got assigned one of the class 11B units. Did you know they have a Distrainto TV system? He didn’t buy that on his salary. That was requisitioned for them!”
Bedlans Primo glanced at the ceiling and the walls.
“What kind of unit is this?” He asked with his eyebrows together.
“We’ve only got a… oh, the unit? This is an 11A; the B has an extra sink.” Nance’s tone indicated what an outrage it all was.
After dinner the couple settled down in a calmer mood in front of their TV to enjoy Still Life Surprise, a spin-off of the old Tracy Governor Show, which, it was rumored, was generated directly from the dream cycles of Paraftylloben itself, the gargantuan sentient computer whom the Bolsis was organized to serve.
“So they have a Distrainto, eh?” Bedlans mused, looking carefully at the frame that surrounded the TV screen.

Still Life Surprise

Tracy Governor, too old now to play the adventurous Dr. Haggaring, the role she had made famous on The Tracy Governor Show, had taken on the part of the introducer on Still Life Surprise, a program that delved into the mysteries of everyday existence and speculated upon other possible configurations of life. Unbeknownst to anyone in the Bolsis, she had made contact with Mr. Goosen of the city of Shedge far ahead of the scheduled invasion the Bolsis planned of that city. Angered and depressed that she had been shunted aside in favor of younger actresses, she wanted to see if Goosen could give her another shot at stardom. Live theater had long ago died out among the peoples of the Bolsis; everything was films now. Her blood quickened as she thought of Mr. Goosen’s dramatic productions
In order to make contact with Goosen, in face the method by which she learned of the theater aspects of Shedge and the famous playwright’s existence, Tracy Governor had used the services of Margravine Revich, a lady Hurrer (those six-limbed creatures a dozen of whom held Don Kiplough and the Bird prisoner) and teletechnipeptic seer. This old lady Hurrer, older even than Tracy Governor, lived in a modest tower in the Unelelands, a region the Bolsis forces had annexed sixty years before, and which bordered Double Assembly Zone Five, the region where the Bolsis were preparing for the invasion of Shedge. On the day Tracy Governor hoped would be her last episode of Still Life Surprise was broadcast, Margravine Revich was working in her small garden. A servant appeared at the door to the balcony where the garden grew.
“Madam, your nephew is here.” He announced.
“Is he?” The Margravine asked, looking around. “Send him up here.” She turned back to the series of heavy buckets that contained the asymmetrical stick plants and randomly selected iron ornaments that formed he garden. A minute later her nephew joined her.
“Aunt Revich!” Geoffrey Porter hailed the margravine from the doorway. The two embraced briefly and then the lady asked,
“Would you like some soup? It’s almost lunchtime.”

Soup is Good Food

“Mmm, corn chowder!” Geoffrey Porter, still boyish-looking despite his forty-six years, tasted his first spoonful of the soup.
“Have you noticed, Geoffrey, that the best foods are the ones that come in many different varieties?” Lady Revich asked. They were sitting at a table on the balcony on the other side of the tower from the balcony holding the garden.
“Do you mean ‘good for you’ in the nutritional sense or ‘good-tasting?’” Porter asked. He was dressed in a gray suit of what is called an Ivy League cut (tailored, of course, for the unique Hurrer body design). On the lapel he wore a button with a picture of Captain Beefheart on it.
“Both.” Answered the Margravine, though she had not. She had ony meant most elemental or most satisfying, but saw on reflection that the ideas Geoffrey brought up were valid as well. “I mean, look at soup, bread, cheese, and… apples.” She had run out of examples sooner than she expected.
“Apples?” Porter snickered. “I know what you mean. Yes. Take pasta, for example.”
“Yes! Pasta! That’s another one.”
“Of course, you couldn’t really say there were a wide variety of lasagnas.” Porter was finishing his bowl of soup by dabbing out the last remainders with a piece of roll.
“‘Were’ a variety?” Lady Revich questioned. “Wouldn’t it be ‘was’ a variety?”
Porter considered.
“Yes, possibly. But the lasagnas are plural and the word ‘variety’ is essentially standing in for them.”
“But ‘variety’ is singular, no matter if it is indicating a plethora of choices or a variety of something, such as a variety of some plant.”
“But that would be a varietal, wouldn’t it?” Porter took up the coffee that had been placed before him by one of the servants and glanced casually over the squalid village of Lambuth below.

Labuthine Laborer

The small town of Lambuth consisted of a host of little buildings crowded together and distributed over four hills that were nearly as close together themselves as the town’s narrow streets. The post office in Lambuth was charged with the task of delivering mail to each of these little buildings, including the margravine’s tower. One of the post office’s employees, a clerk named Brindel, happened to be married to one of Lady Revich’s servants. They lived in on the buildings closest to the tower.
“Willoughby tried to cheat me of one of my breaks.” Brindel announced to his wife, Darnana, as she returned home from the tower.
“Really?” She replied, not that interested. She put down a hamper of fresh parsnips on a chair and announced her own news.
“Well, let me tell you what happened at the tower today.”
“What?” Brindel folded his monthly issue of the Laborer, a union newsmagazine, and threw it into the fireplace.
“Lady Revich’s nephew Geoffrey Porter, the one that lives in Domicilia, visited with her today.”
“Yeah?” Brindel resented being referred to as a “laborer.” He dreamt of being self-employed, making a living selling his wood sculptures. This would never happen, though, because everything he carved was hideously distorted and had nothing to do with the mundane thought life of the average person.
“We overheard them talking and apparently the Bolsis are going to extend the reach of Paraftylloben into the next world they’re invading.” Darnana said this as she took off her shoes and put them on a rack.
“If it weren’t for our boys they wouldn’t be invading.” Brindel groused.
“It’s not our fault.” Darnana protested. “They made us…”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” Brindel interrupted. He got to his feet, not out of strong emotion, but to psychologically hurry the dinner preparations along. “I mean that they wouldn’t be able to invade if we weren’t providing the backbone of their army.”
“If that’s true, then it’s the only backbone I’ve ever heard of that faces to the front.” Darnana staggered her husband with her cleverness.

Speaking of Our Boys

As the Bird flew back up the tunnel and the circle of guards tightened around Kiplough, another person entered the large chamber where these events took place. His name was Frank Hurdle, as he almost immediately informed Kiplough. He was Mundig’s assistant.
“And who are you?” He asked the prisoner.
“My name is Don Kiplough. And I’ve got to pee.”
Hurdle addressed the guards. He asked them details of their actions.
“This unauthorized person entered the facility from the office. He was accompanied by a large bird that escaped just as you entered.” One of the guards answered.
“So you can speak!” Kiplough interjected.
“Two of you take this man to the restroom.” Hurdle directed.
In the large, well-appointed, and surprisingly clean restroom Kiplough was diverted from the first stall he chose by one of the guards.
“Those are for Hurrers only.” The guard said. “Use this one.” This guard then prevented Kiplough from closing the door to the stall.
“Can’t I have some privacy?” Kiplough whined.
“I thought you had to pee.” The guard retorted.
“Fine.” Kiplough turned to his back and, though it was hard for him to summon the urine while being the presence of others, not to speak of being watched by them, managed to do so.
“So they make you use separate toilet fixtures, do they?” Kiplough asked as he peed, as much to make himself feel more casual than for any attempt at gathering information.
“We pretty much have to, since we’re built so different from you.”
Kiplough wondered if their penises were larger than the average human male’s. If so, that would probably make them huge compared to his. Perhaps it should be explained that Hurrers are not “animals,” and although centaur-like, do wear clothing. Kiplough finished with tears in his eyes and backed out of the stall.
“Come on, man, flush the toilet.” The guard urged. Kiplough did as he was asked, shrugging his shoulders.

Mundig Receives A Message

In the middle of Red Gallimanfry’s Sleepover, a TV program not popular with the general public, who, for the most part, were too stupid to get the jokes, the doorbell to Mundig’s housing unit sounded.
“Who is that?” Mundig’s wife Ellen asked.
“I’m not psychic, Ellen.” Is what Mundig wanted to answer, as sarcastically as possible. Instead he let a silly-voiced “I don’t know” suffice.
At the door was a uniformed trooper, a human one.
“Message for you, sir.” The man handed over a small piece of blue paper folded in half. After Mundig had begun reading the man asked,
“Will there be any answer, sir?”
Mundig sighed deeply.
“No. Thank you.” He nodded at the soldier and closed the door on him.
“What was it?” Asked Ellen.
“Frank says he’s caught an intruder. He’s holding him at the office.” Mundig resumed his seat on the sofa. He was thankful that the interruption had come during the middle of a commercial break.
“An intruder.” Ellen repeated.
“He says he’s from Shedge.”
“From Shedge?!” Ellen said sharply. Not too sharply, though; the children were asleep. “How does he know? How did he get here?”
The show had come back on. Mundig watched it carefully.
“Turk!” Yes, that was Mundig’s first name. “How does he know?”
“The man told him so.” Mundig replied distractedly, irritated. He wanted to watch the program.
“He has to be lying.”
“No, he tunneled down. He showed Frank the tunnel.”
“He tunneled?”
“Ellen!” Mundig reproached her. “Red Gallimanfry.” He pointed at the TV.
“This is more important than TV. Shouldn’t you do something?”
“Frank wants me to come down there right now.” Mundig confessed.
“Don’t you think you should?”
“I’m off the clock. So, no.”