Strange Tails

To Potbelly’s dismay she found a room even darker than the first. They’d invented space travel, she thought, conquered worlds, defeated the human race, but, apparently, couldn’t figure out the light bulb. A beep and a bop and a bippity-boop played around the room, but to no one in particular.

Then that same no one moved.

“What are you?” it asked.

The voice was liquid, like its movement. Viscous, dark, oily. Potbelly couldn’t quite make out where the movement started or ended.

“I’m not sure how to answer that question,” she replied.

“Did they create you?”

“The humans?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Then who?”

“Well, when a mommy dog and a daddy dog love each other very much, or at least drink heavily on a Friday night—“

“Dogs do not speak. Dogs do not think. They created you. You are clever. This ship is under your control. What is it that you want from me?”

“Well, this really wasn’t my idea. I’m just here for a friend.”

“If I kill you now, do you release me?”

“It’s worth a try. Wait, no. There are others. They’d be cross.” Potbelly stepped back and realized she could—no more sticky springs.

“You do not know what you have, do you?”

“Unfortunately, yes I do.”

“This power is not yours. It was the humans’, wasn’t it? Did you find it?”

“For all I know they collected enough bottle caps. Look—“

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Several hamsters and a squirrel appeared.

“Aha, the others made it through the outer quarantine. Maybe they’re smarter than you, no?”

“If they’re not we’re all in big trouble.” Potbelly addressed her returning companions, or at least, in the gloom, to the origin of the popping sound. “What kept you?”

“Out of the way,” replied the commander, shoving against her leg.

“Oh right, sure, no need to thank me.”

“In the name of planet Earth,” articulated the commander, not reading from a script but sounding very much like he was. “I order you to land this ship and surrender to our forces.”

A low chuckle tickled the bottom of their feet.

“Your interference signal will not work for long. There’s no power source on this planet capable of sustaining such a transmission. It’s only a matter of time. What shall I do with you then? How would you like to die? Slowly, very slowly, or look how much fun I’m having?”

“Are there any other options?” asked Squirrel. “With maybe less dying in them?”

“We want you to land peacefully and surrender. I am not afraid to use my device.” The hamster waggled something.

“Device?” the voice rumbled.

“You will crash and burn!”

“Crash and what?” cried Potbelly.

“Burn,” replied Squirrel, helpfully.

“I heard that!”

“Then why—“

“Let me off this spaceship!” yelled Potbelly again, this time specifically to the commander, and then repeated her plea to the brain, but she wasn’t sure who cared the least.

The brain chuckled. “So this is the finest you have?”

“We’ve brought you down before and we’ll do it again,” replied the hamster, not cracking in his bravery. He waggled his something again.

“Yes, you were clever before, but you won’t fool us again. Soon I’ll be out of range. I suggest you kick back and relax. After all, these are your last moments alive.”

“Then you leave me no alternative!” The commander waggled his something even more defiantly than before, if that were possible.

“Oooh I’m scared,” replied the brain.

The commander pressed against the device a few times.

“The suspense is killing me. It might be the only thing that does.”

“It’s still not working,” hissed the commander. A colleague examined it.

The brain rolled out another chuckle. “I said, you will not fool us again. Do you think we achieved all this yet remain unable to patch a system bug? All you did was create overtime for IT support. They are not happy, by the way.”

The commander continued to press frantically against the device. The brain let out a jaunty whistle. Squirrel recognized the tune. It was Madonna’s Holiday.

The brain continued. “You know, the one thing I miss about the human race is its flair for the pointless. Pop music. Utterly useless, utterly addictive. How’s the device hacking coming along there boys? Think you’ll have it done before the interference beam runs out of juice. You know, I’m finding this quite exciting.”

“Will you take us into space?” asked Potbelly.

“Would you like that?”

“Not really.”

“Then don’t worry. I’ll probably just kill you.”

“You won’t let us leave?”

“Of course! It was very nice to meet you. Enjoy your return to Earth. Sorry about the whole hitting it at terminal velocity thing. Hope that won’t spoil your journey too much.”

“Can’t you just let us down with your laser beam thing?”

“I could do that, but there’s a problem.”

“There is?”

“I believe the operator may be uninterested in your request.”

“But aren’t you the operator?”

“Why, so I am.”

“You are quite mean, you know that?”

“Ha! I could have fried you all with the internal defense grid the moment you arrived.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because, deep down, I’m a nice guy.”

“No you’re not.”

“Fair enough. Truth is, I have instructions to analyze you. That work is nearly done. Actually, I could do with a few material samples, do you mind?”

“Ouch,” yelled the group in chorus.

“You stung me!” cried Squirrel.

“Just a little needle, sorry about that. Should’ve warned you. But I’m kinda mean etc. etc.”

“Are you in contact with your leader?” shouted the commander. “We demand to speak to him!”

“To her,” corrected the brain. There was a pause for a beat or two. “We don’t have a leader” it added.

“You just said it was a her!”

“No, don’t think so.”

“We all heard you!” The others nodded in agreement.

“My mistake. By the way, you three brown things, are you clones?”

“What if we are?”

Zap. Zap. Two of the hamsters, who had hitherto not been the commander, disappeared in two puffs of smoke, which probably guaranteed they never would be. The commander, whose night vision was keen, noticed their absence immediately.

“What did you do with them?”

“They were unnecessary for the evaluation.”

“What did you do with them?”

“I put them down with a laser beam.”

“You said you didn’t want to do that!” cried Potbelly. “Put me down too!”

“You may wish to reconsider your request.”

“Oh … ” Her voice trailed off. At that same moment she felt a small tugging inside her pudgy belly as the spaceship seemed to change altitude.

“Well, what do you know,” declared the brain. “Seems like the old joystick is coming back online. Shame about the mission fellas. Not much time left to earn those medals.”

“Why did you do it?” asked Potbelly. “Why did you come to earth and kill everyone?”

The brain seemed to consider this for a moment. “Because she … someone said to. Anyway, I fail to see why you care. You have the place to yourselves now, and all the computers you need to make more pop music. By the way, small fat one, your name tag says Lucy, what do you know about the one in the sky with diamonds? Your 1960s was fascinating. Tell me, who shot JFK? It’s been driving me crazy. None of the humans seemed to know. At least, none of the sane ones.”

“So you did kill them all?” Potbelly persisted.

“Can’t say.”

“Can’t say or won’t say?”

“There’s a difference?”

“OK,” said Squirrel. “Time out. Let’s agree you did kill all the humans. Fine. No hard feelings. We all have hobbies. But what that means is we have no one left to save, right? So you can just let us all go. We’ll say no more about it.”

“Yes, soon you’ll be saying no more about it.”

Squirrel recognized the inference. “Alright, how about this: you said something about wanting to know who killed JFK. If we tell you who did it, will you let us go then?”

“Intriguing. Maybe. Who was it and I’ll decide.”

“Doesn’t work like that. Quid Pro Quo. You have to promise to release us.”

“OK, sure, I promise.”

“This is wasting time,” declared the commander, who had taken to wandering around in the near-total darkness until Potbelly and Squirrel had given up hope of seeing him again.

“OK, so you promise—we’ll tell you who killed JFK, and you’ll let us go?”

“Sure, why not.”

“It was,” Squirrel announced, taking a deep breath for extra effect. “It was Marvin!”

“Marvin who?”

“Marvin … Tinklebaum. With a pipe. In the library.”

“You don’t know do you.”

“I do! It was Marvin. He had an argument with the chamber maid and … ”

The brain chuckled.

“Would you like to know who shot J.R. instead?”

“Not especially. Was he a politician?”

“I don’t think so. Though he did have a big hat.”

“If he wasn’t a politician, who cares who shot him?”

“Some would argue the opposite.”

The ship leapt without warning, like a frog to a pond. A whirring sound spun up, and all around lights powered on.

“Ah, how nice,” said the brain. “Almost back to full control.”

Squirrel and Potbelly gaped.

The lights that came on were not the blinking lights of important spaceship consoles, nor the low glow of computer screens, and not even the green lasers they’d seen before. They were amber, gentle, globular undulations, rising from floor to ceiling, rather like a lava lamp. The lights were pretty enough on their own without needing the frilly lace and soft-pink decorations draped from floor to ceiling, but they got them anyway, and they set them off rather nicely. Potbelly certainly didn’t mind a bit of chintz.

“It seems like I’m climbing back in the saddle,” continued the brain. “You still fancy that trip into deep space? Or a spot of slow death beforehand?”

After they’d finished admiring it, Potbelly and Squirrel realized they’d been speaking the entire time to a wall—this oozing, undulating motion wasn’t in fact the brain. They spun around.

In the middle of the room, and within a transparent orb, floated a squid-like creature, roughly the same as the one in the Aldi, though, sadly, still alive and wrapped as before in silver foil, as if it was being presented to a hungry drunk by a dubious food truck. Around it were dark slabs. Potbelly assessed them quickly—spaceship-flying thingies, she deduced.

The brain floated to the front of its orb. “Hmm,” it said, the voice still rumbling from somewhere. “I tell you what. I’ll give you a meaningful choice, after all, you do seem somewhat sentient. This ship contains cryotubes. You can sleep in them until we arrive at our destination. If you take this option, you will live.”

As far as they could tell the small beak movements at the side of the alien’s head were the source of its voice. They stared, transfixed.

“And if we don’t?” replied Squirrel.

“You may recall the bit about a slow death.”

“Can’t we just sit here and read a book or something?”

“That depends on how well you do it underwater.”

“Underwater?”

“You don’t think I navigate a complex course through interplanetary space entirely from within this bottle, do you? I’m here because you rude creatures, in your Africa, as you call it, though nice name by the way—ooh, and I liked the song—attacked me. My little safe space in case I need to excuse myself from an exploding ship. In a moment I shall reflood the room. A quick look at your breathing apparatus suggests you may not be too keen on that event.”

“And no way you can just drop us off at the next island or something?”

“As touched as I am that you’re appealing to my better nature, my sad confession is I do not have one. OK, I changed my mind, you want to die, so be it. It’s just so inconvenient having to flush out your bloated carcasses, but, you know, don’t mind me, I only live here.”

“Try it and you’re calamari,” declared a small voice from atop the orb. It was the commander. Somehow, amongst the gyrations of the ship and their conversation, Potbelly and Squirrel had lost track of him.

“Oh please,” said the brain. “I sensed you sneaking about ages ago. This dome has tensile and compressive strength beyond anything your planet has ever known. And I scanned you for weapons. What are you going to do, gnaw through?”

“Did you scan for chemical weapons?”

“Hmm?”

“Liquids that combine to explode?”

“Well, not exactly.“

“So you didn’t scan for liquids contained inside a body, separate, sealed, to be combined when needed?”

“I wouldn’t say the scanner goes quite that far, but—”

“Then maybe you’re not as smart as you think you are.“

A thin blue light sparked, like lightning that had to be somewhere in a hurry, and the small golden hamster became a small golden mushroom cloud. An invisible force impelled itself into the midriffs of Potbelly and Squirrel, flinging them against the pretty wall so hard they felt like crockery at a Greek wedding. The whole episode ended in a moment.

“Oh great,” said the brain. “Now I’m going to have to wipe that off.”

Through one half-opened eye Potbelly watched it float to the top of the large orb.

“Any more of you creatures wearing exploding underwear? If so, please step nearer something easier to clean.”

Potbelly winced trying to right herself from the latest blow, her neck still not fully recovered. She felt a Squirrel-shaped bruise welting on her hind leg, and it dragged her back down. “I can’t stand,” she said. “Squirrel?” She nudged him with her nose. A small groan indicated life signs amongst the concussion.

“We can’t bear it anymore,” she said to the brain, a tremor in her voice. “Just do whatever it is you’re going to do and be done with it.”

“Giving up so easily? Tsk, just like the humans. OK, assisted suicide it is. No more zaps though, too icky. Flooding it’ll be. Painless, I suppose—at least, after the horrible choking and asphyxiation. Maybe I’ll say a word for you when I flush you out. How about gusset? Yes, gusset, that’s a nice word.”

“You are a cruel and evil species,” cried Potbelly, defiant at the last. “If you are what it takes to win, then we’d rather lose.”

“I grant you your wish. Here goes. Don’t forget to pink underwear your elephant.”

“One day someone like me is going to—pink underwear my what?”

“Hmm, strange. I said … bippity … and don’t forget … the cat gives oranges to its friends.”

“Is this some kind of death poem?”

“Poem? No, I … scribble … trousers in the doo wop city … “

Squirrel came to with a groan. “Stay down,” whispered Potbelly, a deep sadness in her voice. “It’ll be over soon, old friend.“

“Ford Anglia’s … should assemble under greeeeeaaat biiiiiggg umbrellllllllll.” The brain choked and coughed. “Assemmmbbble … Kumbayah … Lord, kumquat arrrr … hey you guys, it’s me!”

“What’s going on?” asked Squirrel. He was groggy but aware enough to be confused. “Am I hallucinating?”

“Hey, Potbelly, it’s me, Stinkeye,” said the brain.

“Stinkeye?”

The brain still floated where it had floated before, in its orb, but now it twitched erratically, like it was following written instructions on how to dance the rhumba.

“I sensed the vibrations, the noises you lot were making. I followed them through the ship. Where did you all get to? Man, there are some weird color schemes back there. I tried to shout at this squid thing but it couldn’t hear me. Then the telepathy started weirding it out. I think I have control of its mind.”

The small fluttering creature alighted on top of the orb. “I can think through it somehow. Totally cool. Let me try something.”

The brain twitched out a limb. It waved.

“Coo-ee, look at me, I’m a waving squid thing.” The other limbs twitched out their dance. “I feel like one of those Indian deities with all the arms. Go forth, my people, and make interesting sexual positions!”

Potbelly struggled against the throbbing in her hind leg. “Stinkeye, listen. Can you get us out of here? Is there some way to land this thing or beam us off?”

“Sheesh, now you’re asking. Interstellar spaceship driving instructions. Do you think there’s a manual somewhere? In the glove box maybe?”

“We don’t have much time. We don’t even know where this thing is flying us to right now. How can we get out? Can you poke around in there, inside its brain?”

“I’m no expert but it doesn’t seem to work like that. Should I get out and let this thing do its thing again?”

“No!” they both yelled. “It’ll kill us in a heartbeat,” continued Potbelly. “There’s some kind of ray gun in the ceiling. It’s already fried the hamsters. It was planning to flood us out and I didn’t bring my snorkel.”

“OK, so what do we do?”

“We think.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. Do we have any better options?”

“I have an idea,” said Squirrel, with it now and finally vertical. “Potbelly, can you climb up to the base of the orb, the flat part, there at the bottom?”

“I think so, my leg hurts like mad, but yes.”

“We know it’s some kind of escape pod, right? If we both climb on, and Stinkeye presses anything he finds in the brain’s … brain, then sooner or later he’ll hit something that’ll crash the ship and pop us out, like it did back in Ohio. All we have to do is just hang about on this pod.”

“That is the single worst idea I’ve ever heard. What if we’re in deep space? How long can you hold your breath in absolute zero?”

“It’s just an idea.”

“I have a better one: ignore you.”

“So what do you suggest then, Captain Jerk?”

“I say nothing. Either this spaceship is headed somewhere, in which case we get there in one piece, or it’s headed nowhere, in which case we have all the time in the world to figure out how to fly it.”

“All the time in the world?” snorted Squirrel. “OK, so what are we going to live on in the meantime? How long before this place turns into the cannibal holocaust? Who’s first to go, Potbelly? The carnivore with the big pointy teeth, or the herbivorous rodent? You see any Twinkies around here? Do you? Do you?”

“I never thought of you as the hysterical type.”

“I am not hysterical. I am constructively panicking.”

“Wait a second, she could be right,” interrupted Stinkeye. “Doing nothing could be exactly what we need to do. Or not do, as it were.”

“Easy for you to say flutterby, you won’t be first in the bap.”

“No, listen. The brain just got control of the ship, right? So what would it do next?”

“Who knows, go shopping at Bloomingdales? Why don’t we ask it?”

“Do you think it’d go straight home? No, it was on a mission. It’ll head to the facility it was talking about, I heard that part, the one in Africa. Probably destroy it, like the Silence.”

“But what about the interference beam? Wouldn’t it want to avoid that again?”

“Looks like the beam is running out of juice. Even so, it’d surely have a plan. It doesn’t have one right now because it’s dreaming of little alien squids in little alien bye-bye land. But either way, we’re heading to Earth.”

“What if there’s another hamster trap, a trap meant to destroy the ship and not capture it?”

“We’ll have to bet on alien technology defeating human technology, or hamster technology, or whatever it is they’ve got breeding down there. Based on previous form, who has the highest odds of success?”

“What if you’re wrong? What if we’re heading to some distant planet of the squids? What then?”

“Then we learn how to swim.”

“Erm, stubby arms,” said Squirrel, gesturing. “Not much of a floater here.”

“Then you will be sacrificed, I guess,” said Stinkeye.

“So either we wait until I get eaten by Potbelly, or we wait until I get eaten by squids. May I refer you back to Plan A. It featured a distinct lack of me being eaten. I say we start pressing stuff.”

“We can’t just press stuff. What if we press the flooding button? Or we get zapped again?”

“At least Potbelly wouldn’t be eating me raw.”

“Will you quit it! I’m not eating anyone!”

“Oh you say that now.”

“Just be cool.”

“I’m cooler than a box fan in a fridge, sweetie. I’m just pointing out the obvious to the incredulous.”

“We’re all in this together. And when we get out of this, no more horror movies for you. In fact, no more movies at all, including the ones Michel hid under his bunk. Don’t think I didn’t see them.”

“So I pinched some. What of it. They were educational.”

“Oh really, mind sharing what you learned?”

“Are you just trying to get me to sit down and do nothing?”

“Ordinarily, that is your super power.”

Squirrel tried to fold his arms, but for the millionth time found they didn’t reach.

“I agree, we wait,” said Stinkeye.

“OK, OK,” replied Squirrel. He sat down huffily and looked about the cavernous room. Potbelly joined him, along with an awkward silence.

“So, what shall we talk about?” asked Stinkeye, after the awkward silence made its way over to him. “Maybe … what about this Michel’s movies?”

“Oh no, there’s no need—“

“Well you brought it up,” interrupted Squirrel, sensing a sort-of revenge. He twitched his rear end to demonstrate settling in. “Stinkeye, for one thing, humans took way too much interest in their wobbly bits. Also, baby oil is not used for cooking babies. And, there’s a very good reason why washing machine repair men arrive much later than expected. Then there’s this interesting preoccupation with bananas. And then—“

“Maybe this was a mistake,” said Potbelly.

“At least while he’s talking he’s not whining,” noted Stinkeye. “And we’re not being ejected into the vacuum of space.”

“There’s also this thing about rhubarb and rubber gloves that’s really rather intriguing.”

“OK, OK … go on.”

***

“ … and then they just sort of wrap it around a hose pipe and start sliding up and down … ”

Squirrel paused as the spaceship lurched back and forth. It hiccupped and then hiccdowned. They grabbed onto what they could.

“What the hell was that?” asked Potbelly.

“I don’t know,” said Squirrel. “It’s like we crashed. Or were hit. Or were put on a heavy soil wash.”

“Thanks for the clarification.”

“Could that be them? The place in Africa?” Excitement crept into Stinkeye’s voice.

“Thank the gods!” cried Potbelly. “One more use for Vaseline and I’ll be sick. This turbulence is actually making me feel better.”

“It is interesting, though,” noted Stinkeye, his voice channeling through the suspended brain. “Who’d have thought you could do all that with just cream cheese.”

“Sounds like a lot of cleaning up to me.” Potbelly scooched into a corner to prevent herself rolling in rhythm with the craft. Stinkeye fluttered in free space and Squirrel held on as best he could. “They usually put cloths down,” he advised.

The room shook violently. Potbelly’s breathing quickened. Something was up. Again it shook and the room dropped, just as she’d imagined the roller coasters used to at Cedar Point. Horrified, she saw Stinkeye tumble down the orb, no longer fluttering, but falling.

Potbelly rolled onto Squirrel and they tumbled along a slanting floor while the ship reared upwards. Lights flickered, the lava lamp came and went, doilies flew about, and chintz ruffled as if by a strong breeze. Potbelly’s injured leg stung again, this time in response to a flash of zapping light.

“What did you do to me?” rumbled the brain.

Potbelly’s three good paws scratched against the smooth surface and then another bolt narrowly missed her tail, striking the space between Squirrel and her, sending them spinning.

“Stinkeye? Where are you?” she cried. “Stinkeye? Stinkeye?”

“The moth! Of course! An insect! How embarrassing. I must report this to command. Telepathic dissonance, no doubt. But I have what I need. Time to die everyone.”

A zap sizzled down. Potbelly managed to find a small space behind a metallic unit and dragged Squirrel in with her. Another zap. She felt the heat pass through the unit. A rolling sound suggested the zapper was repositioning.

“Stinkeye!” she hollered.

“He’ll be a crispy bite soon. You prefer medium or well done?”

Zap came a further blast, this time with enough angle to singe Potbelly’s ear. The source of the blast sought a new position. Zap again.

“Hmm,” said the brain. “This is causing some unsightly pitting. Oh, and look, I singed a doily. Wait, I was going to flood the place. I forgot. What a good idea. Give everything a rinse.”

A clank and a kind of a whirr began. A hiss followed, then a grind, a clang, an assortment of knocks, a strange eruption that could only be described as an urk, and it all ended with a small but very annoying eeeeeng sound.

Then silence.

Then a pop.

Potbelly looked out from behind her barricade. She saw at the other end of the circular atrium a comparatively small, though really rather huge, orange and hirsute mountain. It was Snodberry.

“Snodberry!” she cried. “I have never been so happy to see so much fur!”

Potbelly leapt out from behind the metallic unit, ignoring the pain shooting through her rear quarter, running and skidding into the base of the hairy edifice. She looked through his slightly parted legs to see an exploded mess of pipes, tubes, electrical conduits, and many other things that used to blink but probably wouldn’t be blinking very much anymore.

The squid, for some reason, floated upside down. Then she noticed, in the clear fluid with him, some intently occupied fish. Potbelly looked back up to her savior, full of joyful admiration. He shrugged.

Only now did she notice the other creatures filling up the interior with a pop! pop! pop! sound, clambering up to the orb where the unhappy brain resided, tapping on the glass, examining the outside workings, and generally looking like an army of clipboards. A spindly, gray-haired macaque strolled over, removed the tracking device from Potbelly’s collar, intoned a brief well done, and rejoined the others.

Squirrel limped up next to Potbelly and nuzzled into the warm, welcoming Snodberry. Soon they’d have to look for Stinkeye. Again.