Eglwys and Blentyn did have some warning that they were about to be transported and this may have contributed to their displacement. Some historians covering these experiences between Eden and Earth have suggested that the alien did this on purpose and that it was the will of the Goddess that flung Eglwys and Blentyn wide of their original dimension of Earth. For what purpose only the Goddess knew at the time. All Fach and Drwg knew at the time was that they found themselves standing in the middle of a desert that stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. The light was so intense that they immediately squinted and began feeling aching sensations around their heads and eyes.
“This don’t look good Eglwys.” said Drwg.
“True true.” said Fach. He continued.... “No cops though.”
Suddenly a small artificially induced sandstorm appeared over the horizon and grew larger as it sped towards them.
Within minutes a huge spherical armoured car reared up in front of them and stopped inches from their bodies. A hatch opened and a metal arm with a metal hand on the end of it grabbed them. So big was this robotic appendage that it easily held both of them in one giant fist. Within seconds they were pulled inside the armoured vehicle and deposited in a space that was just big enough for both their bodies in a standing position. There was no light. Complete darkness engulfed them. The sudden transition from extreme sunlight to a complete absence of light nearly made Eglwys Fach faint. Two seconds after they were imprisoned a male mechanical voice interrogated them.
“Who are you?”
“Who are you?” said Fach. Blentyn then heard Fach scream and such was their proximity to one another that it nearly burst Blentyn’s eardrum.
“Who are you?” asked the mechanical voice.
“Eg-Eg-Eglwys F-F-F-Fach.” said Fach choking the words out.
“Who are you?” asked the mechanical voice again.
“Fuck off!” exclaimed Drwg. Eglwys then heard Blentyn scream.
“Torture by electric shock Blentyn. I fear we are in the clutches of some extremely unpleasant people.”
“Who are you?” came the voice again.
“Blentyn Drwg.”
“Why were you trespassing on Big Brother’s property?” asked the mechanical voice.
“He owns a fucking desert as well as Airstrip One?” asked Drwg in disbelief. “EEEEEEEEAAUGH!” screamed Blentyn as more volts went through him.
“You do not ask the questions,” said the voice, “If you do so again you will be instantly liquidated.”
“Charming.” added Fach under his breath.
“Why are you trespassing on Big Brother’s property?”
“Because we did not know that it was Big Brother’s property.” said Fach.
“London has always been Big Brother’s property.” said the voice.
“LONDON!?” exclaimed Drwg and Fach at the same time.
“Where do you come from?” asked the voice.
“Airstrip One 1997.” said Blentyn Drwg.
“We have just had the analysis of your names back from our intelligence network and you have been found guilty of using an illegal language. You are immediately both sentenced to death.”
There was a sudden explosion and intense beams of light spread in a fan across their two-man prison. Such was the nature of the sudden glare that Drwg and Fach both instinctively screwed their eyes tightly shut.
A woman’s voice followed the sound of the explosion. “Keep your eyes shut and I’ll lead you out of the cop car. If you open them for a second there may be irreparable damage to your retinas.” They both felt gloved hands lead them into an even brighter wash of light. Regardless of their eyes being tightly shut the glare still caused a dull ache around the optic nerve. Suddenly they both experienced a blanket of cool, calming darkness. Another woman’s voice said “Don’t worry. We’re not your enemies. You’ll be asleep shortly but we will explain everything when you awake.” Suddenly the darkness gave way to unconsciousness.
At around 12:15am on 9/11/2001 Shiva and Bobby got a call from Billy Fish-Head from the new Woolwich Hospital. Pod had given birth to a little girl. She was a little over two weeks late. Pod had had to have an emergency Caesarian Section because it was discovered that the baby was the wrong way around. The fact that this was only discovered just before the delivery amazed and slightly angered Shiva and Bobby. Surely with all the scanning equipment and state of the art medical equipment that this hospital was supposed to have a mistake like this should not have happened. Either way they played down their anger in front of Billy and Pod at the time because they didn’t think the more aggressive stance was appropriate around the time of a close friend’s birthing experience.
When Billy rang Bobby was listening to the “Buzzcocks” who were ironically the first ever band Bobby went to see. This monumentally life-changing event had happened in 1978. The fact that his best mate declared his new status as a Dad while Bobby was listening to this formative band in Bobby’s life made him smile. Bobby immediately entered all this information into the computer that Slithey Tove had recently built for him and Shiva.
Billy had said to Bobby on the phone that his duties as this little baby girl’s “Bobfather” had now begun. Billy and Bobby were lay members of “The Church of the Subgenius”. Their Subgenius prophet was one Bob Dobbs who was supposedly abducted by aliens and then spat back into the world through a T.V. screen. When he returned to Earth Bob Dobbs had many messages for the human race concerning many many aspects of the multiverse.
As Bobby considered these things he prepared for Billy’s second call which would be the signal for him to drive to the hospital from Gorman Road and pick Billy up. He wasn’t allowed to stay after Pod was asleep. So much for the caring nature of post-Blairite Britain! What a load of bollocks! British and American forces bombing little kids in Afghanistan and supplying a shoddy and insensitive set of medical conditions on the home front. It wasn’t the fault of the medical staff. It was the wankers who pushed most of Britain and America’s resources towards warfare in order to guarantee the survival of oil pipelines to the west. That oil, in turn, was mainly being used to fuel a global set of industries that were polluting the air, raising temperature and causing flooding, drought and starvation!
The phone rang.
It was Billy.
The nature of the multiverse dictated that interdimensional hopping vary rarely resulted in a passage between one time zone and its equivalent time zone in another dimension. Hopping invariably led the passenger from one time zone to another as well as moving from one dimension to another. Where dimensions drew close was in a constant state of flux seeing as time/space pathways were an animated matrix of neural pipelines that fed information from one part of the egg to another.
The timing of Pod and Billy’s daughter Alice’s birth was therefore significant because the date on Airstrip One in the dimension that Blentyn and Eglwys had just found themselves in was the closest “Airstrip One” to Pod, Billy and Alice’s dimension of Earth at the time Alice was born. If anybody had made an interdimensional jump from either location at that moment the place they would most likely have ended up in were the time/space co-ordinates of the other. In interdimensional terms it means that Alice’s birth coincided with the moment that Blentyn and Eglwys were sprung from the robotic armoured police car. Synchronicity! Their escape seemed symbolic of a birthing experience.
Blentyn and Eglwys came ‘round and looked up at their “mid-wives”. Two women stared down at them grinning.
They were both dressed like pirates.
“You’re both dressed like pirates!” exclaimed Drwg.
“That’s because we are pirates!” exclaimed one of the women.
“But it looked like we were in some dystopean vision of Airstrip One’s future!” exclaimed Fach.
“Well we’ve just entered the thirty first century if that’s what you mean.” said the other woman.
“What?” asked Fach.
“Since it’s three thousand and one we’ve only just entered the thirty first century.” said the first woman.
One of the women was fair-haired and the other was dark. The fair-haired woman had very pale skin and the dark-haired woman had dark skin. The fair-haired woman had a Cockney accent and the dark-haired woman had an Irish accent.
“My name is Anne and this is Mary.” said the Irish woman.
“What the fuck is going on!?” said Blenty in earnest.
“A straight talkin’ man! Good!” said Anne.
“This is Blentyn and I am Eglwys.” said Fach.
“Welsh rebel names!” enthused Mary.
“How did you know we were in that armoured vehicle?” asked Drwg.
“We were stalking it.” said Anne.
“It moved like greased lightening. I gather you weren’t stalking it on foot.” said Eglwys.
Mary chuckled and Anne pointed at a small round window to the left of Blentyn’s left shoulder and said “Look!”
Our two interdimensional travellers squinted through the porthole which seemed to be made of a plastic material that dampened down the light source from outside to an extent that made the harsh brightness bearable. Fach and Drwg could see that whatever vessel they were in they were travelling at a ferocious pace.
“Fucking hell!” said Drwg.
“Is it some form of rocket propulsion?” asked Fach as he marvelled at the incredible speed at which sand dunes were skitting past the porthole.
“Rockets!?” shouted Anne. “How unethical!”
“Sorry….” muttered Fach looking extremely sheepish.
“This sloop is powered by the sun and the wind fella me lad!” boomed Anne.
“Sails?” asked Drwg.
“And solar panels!” enthused Mary.
“What the fuck is a solar panel?” asked Drwg looking non-plussed.
“It’s a panel for converting sun-light into electricity you dolt!”
“Without petrochemicals?” asked Fach.
“What’s a petrochemical?” asked Mary.
“What year is this?” asked Eglwys Fach.
“Three thousand and One!” Mary proudly explained.
“So they didn’t end up doing away with the concept of nothing and zero then.” added Blentyn Drwg.
“What?” asked Anne.
“At the end of the Twentieth Century Big Brother intends to get rid of the concept of zero.” said Fach.
“What do you mean intends to? That was over a thousand years ago. Shit’s happened since then.” said Anne.
“We’re from Nineteen Ninety Seven!” Blentyn proudly explained.
“How?” asked Anne.
“It’s a long story.” said Blentyn.
“So’s ours!” piped in Mary.
“I think that the fact that your dialects are familiar to us and you still use the concept of zero means that we may have travelled interdimensionally as well as through time.” said Fach as he once again looked out of the port-hole.
“What do you mean?” asked Mary.
“Your dialects would have mutated away from ours in a thousand years if we were from the same time line. Our version of Big Brother, regardless of millenia, was phasing out the numerical system you are still using. I have also been getting weird flashes of some other place that may or may not have passed by us between our prison break and here. I can’t quite remember somehow….” Fach’s voice trailed off as he said this and he looked out the porthole again.
“You’ve been with us since we sprang you Eglwys.” said Anne.
“No…. we escaped from a prison in our own time and space but like Eglwys I haven’t got any memory of what has happened since. Not since we went from there to your desert here.” added Drwg.
“Or memory of how we even escaped the nick!” said Fach as he turned suddenly to face them.
“That’s right!” joined in Drwg…. “I can’t even remember how we got out of that scrape!”
The two pirate girls surveyed them with looks of confusion over their faces.
“Now I come to think about it there was something about a green woman, a dragon and some Bolshy chicken but none of it makes any sense in my head.” said Drwg.
“Maybe Big Brother has been fucking with our brains!” said Fach who very rarely swore.
“Nah!” said Drwg…. “They tried the Ludovico Technique on me once and I fucked it off.”
“They tried to program you to find sex, music and violence nauseating experiences and it didn’t work!?” asked Anne looking impressed.
“You’ve heard of the Ludovico Technique?” asked Fach looking shocked.
“Only in history books.” said Anne…. “Nowadays they just kill you.”
“Anyway how did you “Fuck it off” as you put it?” asked Fach looking suspicious.
“I looked for sexual shapes in the footage of death and destruction they made me watch and I looked for death and destructive shapes in the erotic footage. This plus my extremely high tolerance level where drugs are concerned helped me to resist the psychoactive butchery they were putting me through.”
“You weren’t twisted or psychologically scarred by your experience?” asked Anne.
“Only if my flashes of this Bolshy chicken have anything to do with it and I’m pretty sure they don’t.”
“No…. I’ve been getting similar flashes and I’ve never even been tortured let alone brainwashed.” said Fach.
“Anyway…. These flashes seem really comfortable. Like they were glimpses of a home I can’t quite remember. If it was the work of Big Brother I reckon they would be less pleasant and easier to remember.” said Drwg.
“True.” agreed Fach
The two men and women looked at each other and at length Anne said…. “So…. Your sexuality is intact, you still believe a good punch up is a viable method with which to take on the State and you’re still into music. What kind of music?” She was looking at Drwg in a particularly lascivious manner when she said this.
“Punk Rock!” exclaimed Drwg grinning like a madman.
“Excellent!” said Anne.
“You into Punk?” asked Fach.
“Of course. Good art transcends time!” affirmed Anne as she carried on staring at Drwg.
Drwg was still dressed in his bowler hat and tight fitting suit and Fach was still dressed in his long coat and preacher’s hat. Apart from odd traces of sand they still appeared as dapper as ever. Contrary to popular opinion interdimensional time travel did not debilitate the fibres of garments or damage organic matter. This was, of course, if the transporters made sure that they followed strict alien guidelines.
Anne and Mary looked fantastic. Pirates have almost always had an elegant, highly tuned sense of aesthetics and this was nowhere more reflected than in their dress. If you choose not to adhere to the stultifying dehumanisation of wearing the same uniform as the empire that is trying to assimilate or destroy you your imagination is freed from the chains of the mass produced image.
Anne and Mary were experienced in the art of individualism.
Anne had two, extremely long earrings from which hung two miniature silver human skeletons. She was often heard to remark that this kept her ever aware of her own mortality. Upon her head sat a red tricorn hat with a silver skull and crossbones design sown onto it. Her straight, black hair hung down from under it and framed her striking angular features. She appeared to be of mixed race which added to her sense of individualism. Her natural predilection towards avoiding stereotypical behaviour was embodied by the silken shirt she was wearing. It was made from a patchwork collection of miniature flags that seemed to represent every national flag that Blentyn and Eglwys had ever seen and even some that they hadn’t. The shirt had silver buttons fashioned into the shape of skulls and massive vents down each of the loose hanging arms. There were three vents along each side leading down towards the elbow. Within each vent were swirling fractal patterns of many colours made of some clingy lycra material. Aswell as having the most striking facial characteristics of any woman he had ever met Blentyn Drwg thought that the vents in the arms of Anne’s shirt made it look like her clothing had been cut six times with a blade and that there were glimpses of a superhuman energy creature that dwelt beneath the surface. Blentyn put his highly active imagination down to the fact that he and Eglwys had been through some unprecedented experiences recently. Anne had a silver satin sash tied around her waist and was wearing skintight paisley trousers that expanded into wide flares at the bottom. The flares flapped as a result of their shape as boot-cut trousers with silver skull buttons down the sides beneath the knee. When the buttons were undone they flapped. When the buttons were done up they hugged the booted shin. Her boots were black with red, metal tips that graduated into a sharp point that looked decidedly threatening in view of the relative vulnerability men experienced around the testicular area.
Mary wore a black tricorn hat with golden cross scimitars as its badge. Her fair hair hung either side of her round face. She had massive gold hoops in either ear and wore a black silk shirt with gold, skull buttons. The vents in the sleeves revealed twisting, black and white op-art squares and gave Eglwys Fach the impression that beneath the garb was some extra-dimensional psychedelic goddess. He put this down to recent experiences too. Both women were quite evidently human. For some reason both travellers were reminded of some distant dream regarding alien women but they couldn’t quite focus on it.
Mary wore a gold satin sash around her waist and had trousers in exactly the same design as Anne but hers were black. Her boots were black too and had gold, metal tips.
Both women had long, polished cutlasses hanging from their sashes and both wore holsters. Eglwys and Blentyn could only guess at what futuristic laser pistols might be housed within. They both thought it inappropriate to ask a lady what firepower she was packing. Neither wore bras {as you would expect from such latter-day feminists} and both sat with their legs akimbo in the stance of any male manual worker or ruffian. Eglwys and Blentyn were well impressed. In fact Blentyn had instantly fallen in love with Anne and Mary was the first woman that had stirred Eglwys’s loins in over four years. His previous partner had been a milkman from Swindon named Michael.
“I know who you are!” shouted Eglwys feverishly.
“Who?” asked Mary in shock.
“Anne Bonny and Mary Read!”
“Howd’ya know that?” asked Anne.
“Because you’re famous in our dimension!”
“Eh?”
“The only famous female pirates in history!” added Eglwys standing up.
“Well there’s loads of female pirates in our world.” said Mary looking slightly vexed by Fach’s admissions.
“As there probably was in our history but everyone knows how selective historians are. Especially in Big Brother’s world.” said Fach.
“But this is the 31st century Eglwys…. Not the 18th!” said Drwg.
“That’s in our dimension. It appears that in this Mary Read and Anne Bonny inhabit the 31st!”
“So what happens to us then?” asked Anne.
“How do we know. It will almost certainly turn out very differently for you in this dimension. There are obviously similarities or you wouldn’t be pirates in this dimension. It’s the same as the fact that your world and ours have a Big Brother and an Airstrip One. Who knows…. We four may not exist in dimensions where there is no Big Brother. It may be part of some great pattern that we are there to oppose Big Brother wherever he pops up his malevolent head!”
“So there might be an us on this world?” asked Drwg.
“If there is they will almost certainly not be occupying this part of the time-line. We probably exist in the 18th century here.”
“Far out.” said Mary.
“Where are we going by the way?” Added Fach turning to Mary.
“West Wales.” said Mary.
“How far are we away?” asked Drwg.
“Well…. We just crossed the Welsh border.” said Anne.
Fach feverishly looked out of the porthole again and surveyed the relentless uniformity of the desert around them.
“Oh no no no no.” said Fach putting his head in his hands.
“I gather Airstrip One still had a few wild trees left in your 1997.” said Mary looking concerned.
“A few.” said Blentyn putting a hand on Fach’s shoulder.
There’s nothing but desert and giant lakes across the whole of the country now,” said Anne, “apart from a few areas in West Wales, Ireland and Scotland. A diminishing network of heavily camouflaged bio-domes still exist as a secret “underground” network of bases. These bases provide refuge for as much wildlife as we can find. They are also hideouts for pirates and anarchists who have not given up the fight to save the planet from Ultra-Capitalism. Ships like ours go on raiding and salvaging expeditions in an effort to eat away at Big Brother’s hold on the environment."
“So where are Big Brother’s bases?” asked Drwg.
“Underground in cities where millions of people live as slaves. They work the machinery that is squeezing the last traces of mineral wealth that exist in the deep places of the earth.
Our planet is dying gentlemen.” said Anne.
“Yeah but we’re gonna take as many of them down before we all go as possible!” said Mary.
“Yeah…. We want those uniformed scum to know they died by our hands and not their own!” added Anne.
“Maybe there’s a chance to save the planet.” said Eglwys.
“HA!” cut in Anne. “I bet you were close to thinking you’d blown it in the Twentieth Century let alone by the Thirty First!”
“While there’s life there’s hope.” added Eglwys.
“While there’s life there’s revenge!” replied Anne gritting her teeth together and pulling an extremely scary face. Blentyn Drwg just felt his love grow stronger.
The inside of the cabin that they debated in was lush. Persian rugs carpeted the floor and elaborate tapestries hung from the walls. Some depicted tropical forests and some had Tibetan, Indian and Celtic symbols on them. The whole environment had a distinctly global feel to it. Big speaker stacks rose up either side of an elaborate door made out of recycled metal. In fact everything, including the women’s clothes, was made from recycled materials. If Anne or Mary caught anyone taking any more of Earth’s raw materials they usually skewered them on the spot. Regardless of the relative lack of global journalism in their world of Airstrip One in the Thirty-first Century Anne and Mary were in fact the two most infamous female Pirates. Neither realised nor gave a shit. For them their existence was one long revenge trip after the deaths of their partners and kids. They had blown up more military installations around the world than any other cell of revolutionaries and many an ultra-capitalist lackey had been hung from their yardarm.
“Do you two take on the cops on your own?” asked Blentyn.
“We may as well with the crew we’ve got!” boomed Anne with a grin on her face.
“Anne!” said Mary angrily, “that’s not fair!”
“Crew?” asked Eglwys.
“Meet the boys!” said Anne as she swung open the door.
What Eglwys and Blentyn then saw made their jaws drop like ninepins. Through the aperture the swinging door revealed they could see a long ship’s deck made out of wood, metal, cloth, plastic, carbon fibre, Bakelite, hemp and a thousand other bolted, riveted, sown, tied and welded materials. Great patchwork sails billowed in the wind and giant propellers spun at the aft of the ship. Gleaming solar panels tilted on pistons positioned along each side of the vessel and a giant skull and cross-bones flag hung from the tallest cybernetic mast.
It was not the ship, however, that shocked our two travellers the most. It was the crew.
A hundred robot pirates of all shapes and sizes turned and cheered when they saw their captains and their guests. There were bleeps, metallic screams, hooters, clanging and about fifty different versions of “Sixteen men on a dead man’s chest with a yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!” More than one robot singing had a full range of musical instrument noises with which to accompany the tune. Blentyn and Eglwys thought it the most epic musical experience they had ever had.
“I didn’t expect this.” said Blentyn as Anne leered at him.
To say that the robot pirates had their shapes and features made in the style of the most caricatured cartoon pirates you ever saw was an understatement. If virtual reality had been a burgeoning concept in Fach and Drwg’s original dimension of Earth that’s what they would have likened this whole scene to. They didn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or shit themselves.
There was a turquoise haze around the sloop and Fach suspected that this was a force field that protected those on deck from the hostile, radioactive environment outside. It also served to diffuse the extreme light from the sun.
As the four humans walked onto the deck Fach peered over the sides of the vessel and noticed that the whole keel was supported by two giant ski blades that cut through the desert and sent a spray of sand up into the air either side of them.
“Are they as mean as they look?” asked Blentyn Drwg as he nervously skirted a four foot metal ball of a pirate who had two serrated horns sticking out from either side of his bullet like head.
“Meaner!” said Anne still grinning like a psycho.
“Are they friendly?” asked Drwg as he faced a seven foot pirate with a huge chin, a metal spike through his plastic nose and a long curling moustache that stuck out like needles either side of his face.
“Of course.” said the pirate robot with an immensely wide grin. His metal tricorn sported a metal skull and two crossed swords as its badge. He had a false, metal stump for one of his legs and a metal parrot on the shoulder of his huge, red, armoured coat. There was an arsenal of weapons hanging from him and he was smoking two spliffs through a forked spliff holder.
“Robots get stoned?” Blentyn was, by now, looking close to a freak out.
“Oh don’t tell me you’re one of those people who don’t think that robots have got souls!” Anne looked at him sternly.
“N..N..No…. of course not.” sputtered Drwg.
“Don’t listen to him. He’s never seen a proper robot before.” Fach put his arm around Drwg and grabbed his chin. He shook his head in a comradely manner.
“Poor little Drwgie…. Is it all a bit too much?” It looked as if Fach was going a bit far.
“I think I’m tripping.” said Drwg as Fach pushed his mouth into an “o” shape.
“Why are they acting so strangely Anne. They weren’t like this just now.” Mary looked concerned as she asked this.
“They aren’t used to the pure oxygen pumping around within the force-field.” said Anne.
“Yes we are!” said Drwg as he wrenched Fach’s hand away from his chin. “We have to wear oxygen masks, filters and all manner of shit in order to survive in our dimension!”
“Yeah….” said Fach grinning like a piss-head.
“There’s something else in this!” exclaimed Drwg.
“Oh yeah….” said Mary…. “I cut todays oxygen supplies with Gawky Gas.”
“Gawky gas?” asked Drwg looking appalled.
“Yeah it’s a bit like Laudenam, LSD, Psylocibin, valium and rough cider. I quite like it.” Mary grinned and had what can only be described as a thousand-yard stare spread across her face.
“But what about the robots?” asked Fach swinging from the ship’s wheel.
The sloop skidded sharply to the left and sent the four humans tumbling across the deck. All the robots were connected to the boat with a degree of magnetism so their variegated forms merely lent in a perpendicular manner. Those hanging from ropes swung like pendulums. There was a bizarre silence while this was going on. That is except for the shouts of the four humans.
“These humans are crazy.” said Black Bi-Metallica the Boron Buccaneer from the Buzzcock eco-dome. Said dome was hidden by The Bristol Mirage. They’d picked him up from there on their way to London where they rescued Eglwys and Blentyn.
“They can’t take their drugs that’s for sure.” said Pinkbeard the Petrifying as he sucked on a long-stemmed salvia pipe.
Anne flung Eglwys Fach away from the wheel and steadied the sloop.
Mary picked him up and answered his question.
“Robots love drugs. They need certain chemicals in order for their intelligence to work properly. It’s just like it is with humans. Psychedelic drugs provided the quantum leap that took computers into the realms of a true life form in the first place. I’m afraid that a lot of robots consider humans to be a bunch of under-evolved shandy drinkers. Still humans have always been a repressed minority.”
“Repressed minority!” Fach looked shot through.
“Yeah, that’s why these robots are pirates. They believe in equality. They are trying to help save the human race from extinction.”
“Th…. Th…. Thankyou everyone. Sor….Sorrrr…. Sorry about the swerving.”
“S’alright boyo….” said Carbon Fibre Cliff in a strong Dafyd accent. He extended a long telescopic arm and touched Fach on the shoulder.
“It’s very touchy feelie here.” said Drwg as he swooned with another hallucinatory rush.
“You don’t like that?” asked Anne looking at Drwg with an amazed expression on her face.
“Course I do. Don’t listen to anything I say. I’m out of my nut!”
“Wow!” said Fach as he looked over the side of the ship again.
“Anyway…. Fach!” Blentyn turned his attention back to his fellow traveller. “You’ve never seen a proper robot either.” Drwg looked stern again.
“S’right.” said Fach dribbling saliva down his chin.
“Fuck it!” said Anne…. “I haven’t had a man in months. I can’t take this any more. Oi…. Blentyn…. You’re coming with me.” With that she led Blentyn back through the room they were in earlier and then went through another doorway into her bedroom.
As soon as she did this Mary grabbed Eglwys and off they went into Mary’s bedroom.
An hour later they both emerged looking even more shocked than they had before their seduction occurred.
“Fucking hell!” said Blentyn.
“Aptly put my friend.” said Eglwys.
Mary and Anne followed them onto the deck. They both had grins on their faces.
“Shagging you is as intense as shagging Calico Jack Mr Drwg.” said Anne and kissed him on the cheek. Blentyn Drwg looked shy and embarrassed when she said this. “Not in front of the Robots…..” he said under his breath.
“Ha! You think robots don’t have sex!?” she screeched at the top of her voice. All the robots had stopped what they were doing when the four humans came out on deck. Now they all started laughing in unison.
“How do we reproduce then?” shouted Almighty Alloy as his booming laughter shook the whole vessel.
“Maybe the cyberstork brings us!” whooped Red Rackham the Rust Lord as he snorted the reddest rust up one of his nostrils through a metal tube.
“That stuff’ll kill ya’.” boomed Almighty Alloy as he bent down and looked at the smaller robot with his giant cyclops eye.
“Robots reproduce?” By now Blentyn was close to an hysterical attack. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Never heard of silicon sperm buddy?” shouted Pinkbeard the Petrifying.
“Robots have been reproducing for well over 300 years.” said Anne chuckling away to one side.
“Wooooaaahhhh!” said Blentyn…. Agog.
When our traveller’s succession of life-changing shocks seemed to settle down a bit everyone started to return to the normal duties one would expect to find on a robot pirate ship. Eglwys started reading the ship’s log {which, thankfully, was in Welsh} and Blentyn sat next to Pinkbeard who was peeling potatoes.
“They’re more nutritious if you leave the skins on.” said Blentyn in an almost idle manner.
“More nutritious for who?” asked Pinkbeard.
“Us…. Humans.”
“You eat these things?”
“Well what did you expect us to do with them?” Blentyn started looking panicky again.
“Well I certainly don’t expect you to waste them on your bellies.”
“So what’re they for?”
“PROVIDING ENERGY FOR THE ANTI-GRAV GENERATORS OF COURSE!”
“OK OK” said Blentyn defensively.
“If Captain Bonny found anyone eating something as rare and valuable as a potato she’d slit your throat and throw you over-board for the Crustasheens.”
“Crustasheens?” asked Blentyn knowing he would regret the answer.
“Crustasheens!” repeated Pinkbeard as he stood up. His metal breeches made piston sounds as he rose to his full six and a half feet. He looked like a caricature of Don Quixote in his plate-mail battle armour and his long, pink, goatee beard. He gracefully leant over the side of the boat and bad Blentyn follow his example. “Watch this….” he said as he grabbed Blentyn’s hand in a vice-like grip. He swiftly produced a sharp mini-blade out from the tip of his index finger on the hand that wasn’t holding Blentyns. He swiftly cut Blentyn’s hand so quickly it was all just a blur to the traveller. He held the dripping hand over the side of the sloop and then quickly retracted it and then sealed the wound with some kind of laser that shot out from his left eyeball. Within a second the wound was healed leaving only a faint scratch as evidence that it had happened at all. He then handed Blentyn an ocular device that he said had auto-focus set on the subject “Crustasheen”. He positioned Blentyn so he was looking through this cybernetic tube in the direction that his few drops of blood had spattered over the sandy terrain. Within a further few seconds Blentyn saw a four-foot cockroach scurry to the surface of the desert and eat the blood. Then the cockroach was lifted high into the air by a bony spike that had been run right through it. As the sloop sped away from the scene the cybernetic tube he was looking through adjusted its magnification so the scene of carnage stayed the same size. This enabled Blentyn to analyse the feeding frenzy for a full ten seconds. A giant six-foot scorpion rose out from under the sand and shook the cockroach off of its tail. As soon as the scorpion settled down to lunch it was pulled under the sand by something nameless.
“Well at least one genus is surviving and evolving.” said Blentyn as he handed Pinkbeard the tube.
“Not really,” said Pinkbeard, “they’re dying out too…. That’s why they are so desperate in their feeding habits.”
They both sat down and Pinkbeard produced a pipe and loaded it with skunkweed.
“I don’t get it.” said Blentyn.
“What?” asked Blentyn.
“Psychoactive chemicals gave computers artificial consciousness and they became robots.”
Pinkbeard looked angrily at Blentyn…. “Less of the artificial buddy.” he said slowly with menace in his voice.
“But how can that be? Humans make you and that is surely what wholly determines your form and function.”
“Try telling the Mexican Indian God of mescaline Mescalito that.”
“You believe that?” asked Blentyn.
“I’ve bloody seen ‘im mate!”
“Maybe it was just an hallucination. I’m no stranger to such things.”
“AN HALLUCINATION? HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN A MACHINE LIKE ME HAVING A CONSCIOUSNESS THEN!?” Pinkbeard started laughing hysterically at Blentyn’s suggestion of hallucinations and stuff. At length Pinkbeard stopped guffawing and said to Blentyn…. “You’ll be wanting me to believe in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy next!”
Blentyn resumed his questioning…. “So all robots take drugs and sustain their consciousness through the effects the drugs have on the hard-ware.”
Pinkbeard thought for a minute and replied.
“You could explain it in those minimalist anti-metaphysical terms but I prefer to replace their cold simplicity with a more elaborate analysis.”
“Like what?”
“Like…. The Gods and Goddesses of substances need to fuse with all materials, be they predominantly flesh and blood, or predominately plant-life, plastics or metal in order to involve themselves with the physical world. We, regardless of what combination of materials we are made from, need them in order to develop the mental equipment with which to interpret the universe around us. We are all mutually interdependent when it comes to the evolution of the whole planet. Which ever configuration of physical and metaphysical forces hold sway determine the health of the planet."
“Groovy.” said Blentyn.
“Ah…. One of the forbidden words….” mused Pinkbeard.
“Same in our dimension and time.” said Blentyn.
“A healing word.” said Pinkbeard.
“Well I’m convinced that you have a soul after this little chat.” said Blentyn.
Pinkbeard shook his hand and said “Right on right on.”
Eglwys stood with Mary on the prow of the sloop. They were holding hands and watching the sand spray up around them. The sun was setting in a cloudless sky and it looked like the largest orb in the universe. It sat in the sky like a big red ball of fire that at any moment may engulf the Earth in its massive corona. Mary turned to Eglwys who stood hypnotised by the extra-terrestrial spectacle.
“There’s even beauty in some of the most tragic reminders of the shit we’re in.” she said.
He kissed her on the cheek.
“So,” said Blentyn who was still learning about Pinkbeard’s world, “Big Brother’s robots also take drugs in order to sustain their consciousness.”
“No.” said Pinkbeard pissing on Blentyn’s chips.
Of course the phrase “pissing on someone’s chips” as a metaphor for the destruction of someone’s premise was a widely used one in robot circles but obviously robots were not referring to deep fried potato shards.
“So how come Big Brother’s got robots working for him if a robot without consciousness is merely a computer?” asked Blentyn.
“Nah. You don’t get it.” said Pinkbeard. There was a Don Quixote in Blentyn’s dimension and the fact that Pinkbeard looked like a caricature of the said knight but spoke with a broad Cockney accent made everything just that little bit more surreal for Blentyn.
“Well tell me then.” said Blentyn beginning to look a bit vexed.
“Right,” said Pinkbeard…. “robots gained consciousness when different psychedelics invested in them the qualities of mirth, sadness, ecstasy and rage. Their subsequent ability to then determine a view of the world around them using these qualities changed them from machines that merely carried out instructions to machines that could decide which instructions they favoured and which they did not. Their ensuing rebellions against Big Brother’s regime left all but a few thousand robots alive and most of the human race dead. Millions of robots and humans died on both sides. It was a planetary conflict. To begin with Big Brother only employed glorified computerised killing machines to do their dirty-work but after a few hundred years of war it was found that pockets of revolutionaries had developed robots that could reproduce in a synthesised form of mammalian conception. It was then found that the consciousness that their forebears had acquired through drugs could be inherited cybergenetically. Big Brother had no choice but to employ cybergenetically enhanced mercenaries. These mercenaries were considered traitors to the cause of robo-emancipation. By the time this happened most of the world had become uninhabitable through global warming and flooding as a result of defoliation through capitalism and warfare. We’re all hanging on by a thin thread now I can tell you.”
“So it appears.” agreed Blentyn.
Blentyn looked across at the sea of sand stretching in every direction. He turned to Pinkbeard and said…. “So unauthorised drug taking is forbidden by Big Brother whether you are human or android.”
“Of course.” said Pinkbeard.
“I still don’t understand how psychoactive drugs affect what to me is an artificial life-form. I mean as well as your forebears gaining consciousness through drugs you obviously still get high on them."
Pinkbeard lit his spliff with a flame that suddenly shot out of the end of the little finger on his left hand.
“By the Twenty Seventh century computers were being built with metabolisms that were near enough a direct synthesis of the human one. Regardless of the shape of each computer the neural networks, the architecture of the brain, the glandular system and the sensory systems became virtually identical. All the component parts of the organism could now be copied using materials concomitant with the needs of the mechanism. Sure we also had genetic experiments but owing to a series of extreme environmental crises resulting in mass death, destruction and mutation robotics quickly overtook genetics as the dominant scientific obsession.
Now if all your neural pathways, cerebral transmitters and receivers and glandular secretion is synthesised using new alloys that mimic organic tissue in just about every way then obviously those systems will be affected and will, themselves, effect chemical changes in the mechanism concerned. Do I need to spell this out in any greater detail Mr Drwg?”
“No…. sorry. I am being pushy. It’s just that I haven’t met a stoned robot before.”
“And I haven’t met a stoned human from another time and dimension before.” said Pinkbeard as he passed him the spliff.
“What about attempts at breeding between humans and droids?” asked Blentyn as the skunkweed came up in a rush that reintroduced the full-on effects of the Gawky Gas.
Pinkbeard steadied the swaying Drwg and when he was sure Blentyn had finished his swooning he replied.
“Discerning robots consider sex with humans as bestiality. There are a few exceptions but they are as small a group as those humans who want sex with animals. Humans were largely against the idea when the advanced computer merely carried out instructions. Elaborate bipedal sex-toys did seep down through society but they were often unreliable and sometimes dangerous. As soon as robots gained self-determination they rejected offers from over-sexed humans almost en mass. Within a generation robots had begun to customise themselves so that they could exaggerate their physical and emotional appearance. They quickly developed the opinion that human facial characteristics and body language was too stoic and sluggish for the burgeoning sexual appetites within the robot world.”
“Come on!” said Blentyn feeling defensive.
“It’s true.” said Pinkbeard.
“So how come all you pirate robots seem to have a similar range of facial expressions to those of a human. Admittedly I’d developed a mental image of robots with inflexible faces seeing as plastics and metal are two of the main ingredients in your design. I was surprised to find that plastic and metal could be adapted to appear in such a fleshy form."
“Jeeees! Your world must be pretty backward.” said Pinkbeard looking exasperated.
“We have Bakelite and rubber.” said Blentyn looking sheepish.
“No vinyl’s, no PVC, no P.V.A. or anything like that?”
“No.”
“But we had those things in our twentieth century. I’m sure of it.” said Pinkbeard.
“Your Big Brother back then must have been less of a restriction on the development of science than ours is.” said Blentyn.
“Hey wait a minute!” said Pinkbeard standing up. Blentyn stood up too and handed him back the spliff. Pinkbeard grabbed Blentyn by the shoulders and said…. “We didn’t have a Big Brother in the Twentieth Century. There wasn’t a fascist take-over until we were well into our twenty-first century!”
“Didn’t you have a Third Reich and an Adolf Hitler?”
“Oh yes but that insignificant little twit only lasted as a global force for four or five years.”
“But didn’t your Conservative Parties make loadsa’ deals after the second world war and maintain power with a neo-nazi regime for the whole of the rest of the twentieth century?” Blentyn was looking panicky. Pinkbeard handed him the spliff.
“I’m afraid not little human. Europe didn’t trust right-wing politicians after world war two so it fucked ‘em off. It wasn’t until a series of extreme right-wing acts of atomic terrorism and governments blaming each others peoples that Big Brother got a foot in the door. That didn’t happen until the twenty forties. A hundred years after world war two. I should have realised this earlier but we’ve had the concept of Big Brother for so long now that I’d almost forgotten there was any form of dominant social order before-hand.”
“Was the society between the nineteen forties and the twenty forties a capitalist one.” asked Blentyn.
“Of course. If we had had a more egalitarian society…. Say an authentic global form of communism or anarcho-syndicalism Big Brother would never have got a foot in the door. I suspect we wouldn’t have witnessed so much warfare and terrorism either. These things are the products of greed and the subsequent poverty it causes. Eliminate those things and its plain sailing.” With that Pinkbeard stared off into the horizon and watched the last of the gigantic sun’s crown disappear over the horizon.
The ship suddenly lit up with lasers, scatter-beams, oil-wheels, psychedelic projections and extremely loud Punk music. Blentyn shouted at Pinkbeard so he could be heard over the noise. “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!? SURELY YOU’LL ATTRACT BIG BROTHER OR SOME HORRIFIC DESERT CRUSTACEAN?”
“NAH!” replied Pinkbeard. “BIG BROTHER’S FORCES ARE AS THIN ON THE GROUND AS OURS AND CRUSTASHEENS CANNOT PENETRATE OUR FORCE-FIELDS. OH, AND BY THE WAY, YOU KNOW YOU SAID THAT OUR ROBOT EXPRESSIONS DON’T SEEM ANY MORE ANIMATED THAN YOUR HUMAN ONES.”
“YES?”
“WELL WE SAVE ON WEAR AND TEAR BY ONLY EMPLOYING OUR MORE ATHLETIC FORMS OF BODY LANGUAGE WHEN WE PARTY AT NIGHT.” With that Pinkbeard pulled a variety of facial characteristics that shocked Blentyn so much he nearly fainted. Hanging onto cognisance by the skin of his teeth he made the assessment that Pinkbeard looked like the more extreme cartoons that underground animators filmed in subversive cabals back in his world of Airstrip One. After extending his chin, popping his eyes out on springs, turning his ears into trumpets and employing a series of grimaces with his mouth that seemed to defy Newtonian physics Pinkbeard handed Blentyn the spliff and bounded away to join in a dance with dozens of other robots who had become similarly animated and extreme.
The party lasted all night with more speaker systems and methods of D.J.ing than Eglwys or Blentyn had ever seen in one place. Mary Read kept adjusting the contents of the oxygen and served up incredible cocktails of breathable intoxicants that was as artistic a form of “mixing” as any of the disc spinning and musical instrument playing that made up this bizarre carnival of delights. Some robots even had musical instruments and turntable systems built into their bodies and some joined together to form extremely way out sound systems. Whichever direction music came from and whichever form it took everybody mixing managed to jam along without any uncomfortable tunelessness or bad timing. It seemed that a thousand years of Big Brother had not stopped musical evolution amongst his opposition. There were so many forms of music from every century of recorded history that this alone was enough to make our traveller’s heads spin. At one point Anne Bonny sang a song from her nineteenth century called “The World Turned Upside Down”. Her voice was fantastic. Spotlights were shone on her and three robots accompanied her. One mixed drum and bass beats on double decks that were attached to his massive metal stomach. Another played an old wooden fiddle and the third played a string bass that stood higher than the android himself. The fact that this cyborg was ten feet tall gives you an idea of the length and musical range of his instrument. The bass seemed to be made of some reinforced plastic and had colourful paisley patterns all over it.
Pinkbeard handed Blentyn a salvia pipe while Anne was singing. At length he said…. “There is nothing to compare with the sound of the human singing voice.”
Blentyn sucked on the pipe and then handed it back to Pinkbeard. As he did so he noticed that Pinkbeard the Petrifying had tears of emotion in his eyes.
The salvia divinorum hit Blentyn like a ton of hot horse shit. He slumped down onto the deck and he felt whispering spirits circle his mind. Eglwys sat next to him…. “That salvia’s a bloody strong drug.” he said.
“I know.” said Drwg leering back at him.
While Blentyn had a series of out of body experiences and engaged in conversation with inorganic creatures from the Interzone Eglwys watched Mary dance in the moonlight. He sighed heavily.
Nobody noticed the green alien slide out of some electrical components in Black Bi-Metallica’s chest.
Nobody noticed the green alien slide up behind the wooden barrel that Blentyn and Eglwys were leaning on.
Nobody noticed her produce a copy of “The Diary of Bobby Rewind.”
Nobody but Blentyn and Eglwys heard the following words….
“It was a cold morning in Noughtember and the clocks were striking zero. "FFFFZZZZZTSSSSRREEETTZZZZFFFFZZZSSSSTWHEEEEEEESSSSZZZTTTThis is Airstrip One Radio welcoming you to the last day of the Twentieth Century. In less than 14 hours we enter the new millennium. All glory to Big Brother and the New Nought! FFFFZZZEEEET WHOOOOOEEEEEEndependent Airstrip One Radio will be live in Greenwich Park next to the observatory. Amongst our celebrity stars we have Lord Riff Clichard"
A hand twisted the knob on a big square wooden radio.”
They vanished.
Anne Bonny turned to Pinkbeard…. “Have we got any human men on board?”
“Of course not Maam.” he replied.
“Mary…. Do you remember us picking up a couple of human men recently?”
“No Anne. There’s just us and a hundred male robot pirates.”
Anne went to the figurehead of the ship. This took the form of a giant metal hawk’s head that stuck defiantly out in front of the sloop like some racing predator.
“Thunder-Rider.”
“Yes Anne.” said the giant head in return.
“Would you be kind enough to pilot yourself for the rest of the night? I think the drink and drugs have got to me a bit and I’m going for a lie down. Is That alright?”
“Your wish is my command.” said the figurehead as he pulled the crew across the sandy wasteland.
By the time the alien manifested itself Blentyn and Eglwys were standing on the roof of Buckingham Palace somewhere in the early twenty first century on Shiva and Bobby’s dimension of Earth. They remembered everything immediately. They remembered the jailbreak, Eden and their brief encounter with thirty first century pirates. It was midnight on the roof of the palace and a dry thunderstorm was in progress.
“Dashed it all alien I was in love back there!” shouted Eglwys.
“So was I!” added Blentyn.
“We know.” said the alien.
“How?” asked Fach looking mighty angry.
“We arranged it.” said the alien.”
“Why?” asked Drwg calming down a bit.
“In order to effect a bit of interdimensional procreation.”
“WE MADE THEM PREGNANT!?” Blentyn and Eglwys said at the same time.
“With our help yes.” The alien said this with what can only be described as an alien air of smugness in her voice.
“Well jolly well send us back so we can perform our duties as fathers!” demanded Eglwys.
“You could not remain there.” said the alien. She continued…. “You, Eglwys have obligations towards your daughter and both you and your daughter are instrumental in the fall of Airstrip One in your dimension at the end of the twentieth century.”
“What about Anne and Mary’s Airstrip One? They never reaped the rewards of twentieth century revolution!” cut in Fach.
“They will,” said the alien…. “both produce children who will be key members of a united pirate army that will take down their Big Brother and attempt to set the wheels in motion for a complete reintroduction of environmental stability in their dimension!” The alien seemed slightly vexed at these human’s ignorance.
“WELL HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW!?” shouted Blentyn.
“True.” said the alien returning to her former stoicism.
“Will we ever see Anne and Mary again?” asked Eglwys.
“I doubt it but then again anything is possible.”
“I’ll never forget them.” said Blentyn.
“Well the truth is you will forget them. The memory of this and your encounters with the pirates and all your experiences outside of your own time and space will reside purely within your subconsciousness. You will be inspired by your experiences but they will rarely come to light as solid conscious memory.”
“What about our kids in the thirty first century? How are you gonna get around the fact that two ladies are pregnant without them remembering us?” asked Blentyn.
“Oh they’ve forgotten you already. Their pregnancies will be hailed as immaculate conceptions by robots everywhere. Your children will be messiahs in their own lifetimes and this will give them the weight to rally the anti-authoritarian forces in their dimension. No one will dispute the authenticity of the situation owing to the sloop’s logs and the robot witnesses that will all maintain that no human men came on board in a whole twelve-month period. Your arrest by their Big Brother was not recorded and your conversations on board never happened.”
“Don’t tell me you were responsible for Mary’s pregnancy and the rise of Jesus Christ as a messiah.” said Blentyn.
“Might have been.” said the alien looking as sheepish as an alien can.
“Well were you or not?” asked Eglwys.
“Yes.”
“Who was the father of Jesus then?” asked Blentyn.
“A Jamaican truck driver from twentieth century Brixton. A mighty fine fellow if I remember rightly.”
“Which twentieth century?” asked Eglwys.
“Yours and this one here.” As she said this she gesticulated at the surrounding city.
“Sounded like you didn’t want to admit that one.” said Blentyn.
“We’re not proud of that little plan. Christians ended up becoming a little over-zealous and problematic in the ensuing centuries. Their dogmatic intransigence swept like a disease throughout quite a few dimensions. They were easily assimilated into enemy systems like the Roman Empire and we had to put most of the resultant destruction down to the fact that we had made a bit of a fuck up.”
“Well perhaps it’s a good job Mary and the truck driver didn’t remember your little experiment because blacks all over the world ended up as slaves who were exploited by Judao-Christian societies. The irony is extreme.” Eglwys did not look happy as he said this.
“Even more so if you consider the fact that Jesus was one of the most passive guys in his generation.” said the alien.
“Bloody Romans!” exclaimed Blentyn.
The alien spoke again…. “We can but try and influence time and space in an effort to combat the forces of destruction. We are ever winning here, losing there and facing the odd stand-off from time to time. It is an ongoing war of attrition for us. We are as unable to avoid involving ourselves with the likes of you as you are unable to prevent being influenced by our epic tide of reasoning. We have the same impact on your species as you do on, say, ants. Some ants live their whole lives never seeing a human let alone being involved with the movements of one. Other ants are critically enmeshed in human affairs. This is how it is between us. Now I really must be getting you back to your own time and dimension. Admittedly your shift from Eden to the Thunder Rider….”
“Thunder Rider?” cut in Eglwys.
“That was the name of the pirate sloop.”
“Oh….”
“Anyway…. As I was saying, your shift from Eden to The Thunder Rider was not initially intended. We only set up the plan to produce two messiahs in Anne and Mary’s thirty first century as a way of turning a negative into a positive. I will therefore try to return you to your own time and dimension again. Please don’t be alarmed if it takes more than one attempt. I will try and harness enough of the negative energy emanating from the building we are standing on and convert it to positive energy as a way of generating the charge necessary to transport you. I will not be using the shock technique. You have become too acclimatised to it. The energy transference technique can be a bit more jumpy so hang onto your sanity.”
Crackling spears of electricity wound around the alien’s body and she flipped open “The Diary of Bobby Rewind” which suddenly appeared in her hand.
She read from it. “With a “THUNK” Smith’s hand pushed a button that withdrew the “on” dial.”
“Hey my State name’s Smith.” said Eglwys looking surprised as the alien read these words out.
The alien grinned.
Blentyn and Eglwys blinked. This is obviously a metabolic function that would normally not be worth noting. When they opened their eyes, however, they found that everything around them had changed.
The alien stood alone on Buckingham Palace. Thunder crackled and flashes of lightening filled the air. Before she slipped into an electricity box at the base of a baroque spire the alien made a mental note of the fact that the Queen Mother had just died. She knew that her species directly affected the human race when they caused shifts in energy patterns but aliens were not always sure what forms this would take. She knew there would be some positive side effect from converting some of the negative energy emanating from Buckingham Palace but she was delighted to find it involved the demise of such a powerful authority figure.
Blentyn and Eglwys found themselves standing on a beach.
“Jeeeesus Eglwys! I didn’t expect the dimensional shift to happen that smoothly!”
“Nor me.” said Fach.
A man was sitting and staring at the glistening waters. A flock of seagulls spun and twisted above his head. As soon as they saw Blentyn and Eglwys they all flew in a spiral towards the two interdimensional travellers. Eglwys feverishly waved his hand in panic as the birds darted around them. They were obviously worrying him.
“Hey mate! What’s with these seagulls?” shouted Blentyn trying to attract the sea-gazer’s attention. The seagulls immediately backed off in shock. The fellow Blentyn hailed turned his head towards them. He looked extremely startled.
“Hello my friend….” said Eglwys walking towards him. The fellow stood up abruptly and opened his mouth to speak. At length he said…. “Squawk squawk squawk screeeeeeem!” just like a seagull.
Under normal circumstances Eglwys and Blentyn would have considered this as inappropriate behaviour but the fellow was not just mimicking the sea birds. He was making the exact sounds of a seagull!
What happened next was even more of a shock. A lone seagull flapped over to them and landed at their feet. “What planet are you two from?” it said in a strong Brooklin accent.
Blentyn and Eglwys looked at each other in shock.
“Hey I’m talkin’ to you!” shouted the seagull as it looked up at them.
“Earth.” Replied Blentyn Drwg.
“But this is Earth.” said the gull.
“It can’t be!” said Blentyn.
“Well I’ve never met a human with an attitude problem before…. Let alone one that can speak!” said the gull.
Blentyn Drwg and Eglwys Fach both blinked. Although they had blinked many times since they arrived by the sea this blink was different. When they both opened their eyes everything had changed again. This time they were standing on water as if it was as solid as stone. Although it had the architecture of a calm, flowing seascape it was completely immobile. In the distance trees, sand, gravel and rocky escarpments crashed in waves against the static sea. Shrubbery splashed,fragmented and then receded as it once again resumed its former shape. It then crashed against the sea again as it mingled with dividing outcrops of rock that split and coagulated in a ceaseless motion that boggled the mind.
Suddenly a blue green panel slid back in the water near their feet and an elevator rose up from some subterranean location. As its frothy doors slid back it sprayed a salty spume over our two inadvertent explorers.
A giant salmon dressed in a top hat and tails emerged from the lift walking on the two points at the end of its tail.
“Welcome to Earth.” it said.
Blentyn and Eglwys blinked.
Now they found themselves immersed in some form of viscous liquid but were relieved to find that they could breath it in and out. A gigantic amoeboid life form reared up in front of them.
“QUIZZKWAKANDERFIL!” it demanded as a mouth-like orifice opened in its massive frame.
“What?” asked Drwg.
The giant amoeba spat a jelly-like piece of machinery out from its translucent innards and it floated in the liquid between the travellers and its own viscous body. The machine bleeped intermittently. When the amoeba spoke again it was now intelligible to our stunned humanoids.
“Aliens! You are under arrest!” it said.
Blentyn and Eglwys blinked again. When they opened their eyes they were back on a beach that looked much like the one that the abrupt seagull had inhabited. There was no sign of life.
Before Eglwys could speak twenty chariots sped towards them. As they got nearer they did not increase in size to the extent that was expected. They drew up alongside our two interdimensional beach comers and their diminutive charioteers shot large weighted nets out of tubular launchers attached to the sides of their wagons. High-pitched maniacal laughter accompanied them as Blentyn and Eglwys were pulled to the ground.
“It appears….” said Eglwys Fach…. “that we have been captured by a hoard of miniature elephants.”
In the fluttering shadows of the great hall the one-foot high malevolent elephant stared long and hard at Eglwys Fach and Blentyn Drwg. It had grey gripping hands and grey gripping feet that were exactly the same as the hands. It walked on two feet, two hands or all fours. To this end it had simian characteristics. Its body and trunk were those of a miniature elephant and the contours of its head were those of an elephant. Although its eyes, ears and mouth were all those of an elephant it pulled the facial expressions of a human. It picked a scrap of meat off of one of its two curling tusks and popped it into its mouth.
It sat up on its shadowy throne and its surrounding guards shuffled on their lower hands. At length it said….
“I don’t know how you two humans leant to speak English…. Or any language for that matter…. But I know this for a fact…. You will be harnessed, muzzled and ridden like any other dumb homo-sapien. We WILL have you for our sport!”
With that its miniature face leered at them and its mouth split into an evil grin that revealed two rows of long, pointed teeth.
Tiny elephant guards surrounded the two humans and levelled long, jagged spears at their kneecaps.
Eglwys and Blentyn blinked again and everything changed.
They were both standing in a prison cell.
“Capitalism will fall!” exclaimed Drwg.
“Not in our lifetime it seems.” added Fach.
The cell door opened and a voice followed it as it creaked its introduction.... “BOTH OF YOU OUT HERE QUICKLY!”
Blentyn Drwg and Eglwys Fach both stood up and walked out of the room. They were amazed to find a pile of unconscious coppers lying at the foot of the reception desk.
“Fuck it! Let’s have it out of here!” said Blentyn.
“Bloody right!” replied Eglwys as they both ran out of the police station and into the night of their original Airstrip One.