Chapter VI
.1347759007842239785600610325701668403282911029344745443213110.
Shnibbidy Bob Joe put down his pen for the six-hundred and sixty- first time that day and listened intently to the conversation taking place at the Dark Lord's dining table, a few feet away from his refrigerator.
It was highly unusual for him to interrupt a long day's work of pi- calculating, seeing as the Dark Lord spend most of his time puttering around the greenhouse, far away from the kitchen. But there was no denying it now: for the first time in forty years, something interesting was happening in Lord Vader's residence, something that caused him to routinely hold loud arguments with grand admirals, which Shnibbidy Bob enjoyed listening in on. Not that he understood much of what was being said, but it was a bit of a respite from endless numbers, anyhow. A lot of gibberish about enchanted root vegetables, parallel dimensions, and controlling the universe through enhanced horticulture. Also something about a nine and three quarters that worried Vader quite a bit. In other words, nothing particularly important.
Shnibbidy Bob Joe listened until the yelling stopped and the grand admiral's corpse hit the floor. Then, as Vader stomped off, bellowing for the janitor to come and clean up; he needed to tend his turnips and didn't have time to do it himself.
Turnips. Whatever.
Pi was existence.
Scratch, scratch, commented Shnibbidy Bob Joe's pen as it scrawled across the top of the paper.
All of a sudden, the dingy back alley and the dumpsters weren't there.
Nor was anything else, as far as Luke could tell. The world had suddenly and disturbingly dissolved into a whirling tunnel of puce fluff, rather like vomit-colored cotton candy. Pink heart-shaped confetti was falling from the top of the tunnel, and little alligators with golden wings were fluttering all around them strumming miniature harps with their teeth. Ahead there was only darkness, but the area around them was lit brightly with the strange parsnip-colored radiance of the root vegetable, which was hurtling down the tunnel just ahead of him.
Wind whistled in Luke's ears as he plummeted downward, mingled with the annoying twang and snap of the harps as the little alligators broke the golden harp-strings on their formidable fangs. Luke's eyes were beginning to water. Quickly he closed them.
And then they shot open again.
He closed them.
He opened them.
There was still a handsome Whirlpool dishwasher barreling along the tunnel alongside him, emitting quiet sloshing and clinking noises. Not even his watering eyes could explain that.
"Beatrice?" he called uncertainly. He was getting a sudden manic craving for lemon juice; not for the first time he regretted having left his little pocket canteen at home.
"Hello, Luke," the dishwasher replied. "Nice claws."
Luke looked down at his feet as best he could while careening along at eighty miles per hour. He gasped in horror. Where his nice brown cowboy boots should have been there were furry gray paws with long, curved daggers sticking out from the front. Anxiously he felt his arms-furry-his head-furry, with two large round ears. His nose was big, black, and wet. There was a strong odor of eucalyptus that seemed to hang around him.
"Blast it, Beatrice!" he yowled. "I'm a bloody koala!"
"Yes, well, it's better than some things you could have been," the dishwasher said briskly. "Once I got turned into a giant magnet. I exhibited a disturbing tendency to turn towards the north for weeks afterward."
"I'M A BLOODY KOALA, BEATRICE!"
"Well, you don't have to get so upset." The dishwasher spun around in midair, sounding distinctly miffed. "Honestly, you normal mortals can be such wimps when it comes to travelling between times. You're perfectly safe with me."
"YES, I'M A PERFECTLY SAFE KOALA!!"
"Will you shut up?" hollered a bat with Leia's voice. "You're hurting my ears, and besides, I can't hear my CD."
Luke shut up and sputtered for a few minutes.
"So anyway, Beatrice," said an electric blue octopus, which was industriously stealing gold threads off an ornate pillow. "What on earth are we doing here, and why are we all dramatically altered?"
"Hey!" protested the pillow, flopping away from the octopus to protect its threads. The oversized sprocket wrench behind it shifted uncomfortably and muttered something threatening in a strange metallic voice.
"We are in a Tunnel of Irrationality," the dishwasher began patiently, "the only method of travel between times. You see, the only way one can do something as physically irrational as travelling between times is to distract the Powers that hold the universe together, and the best way to distract the Powers is to formulate something so incredibly, wildly, maniacally irrational that they simply don't notice you're travelling between times. Of course, the very balance of nature depends on people staying in their own dimension, in their own time, so only the Ancients truly know all the skills of time travelling. At least, until the Dark Lord and his vegetables. And that is why you are here."
"Oh," said the octopus and the pillow in unison.
"We all live in a yellow submarine," hummed the bat.
"I'm a koala," Luke wailed.
"Don't worry," said the Beatrice-dishwasher. "The trip is almost over, and we'll be in ancient Greece before you can say 'Jack Robinson.'"
"Jack Robinson," said Luke.
"You weren't meant to take that literally," Beatrice-Dishwasher snapped. "But anyway, all of you, get ready for a rough landing. The light at the end of the tunnel shineth upon mine eyes, or what would be mine eyes, were I not a dishwasher. Greece opens up before us. Hello, Herculeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssss.."
They abruptly picked up speed and plummeted the rest of the way down through the tunnel, faster, faster, their stomachs rising into their mouths.
And then, all of a sudden, the puce cotton candy, the hearts, the alligators, all vanished, and the giant, lace-gloved Hand of Fate dropped the dazed and bewildered six onto a dirt floor with a monotone "Have a nice day."
The parsnip landed with a sad wet thud a few feet away from them, its mysterious glow gone.
It took Luke a few seconds to realize that he was no longer hurtling along at a stomach-wrenching speed, and that the ground was suddenly solid and not fluffy. His relief at discovering these things, however, was completely eclipsed by his relief at discovering that he no longer had fur.
He still appeared to have a wet black koala nose, however, although he figured he wasn't the worst off. Beatrice was still emitting faint slosh and clink noises, Aragorn was wearing a pillowcase over his regular clothes, and Princess Leia's ears were still immense and pointy. Han had one arm too many. At least all the people crowding around don't seem to mind, Luke thought, trying to reconcile himself to the remaining vestiges of koalaishness on his person.
Wait a bloody second. There are people crowding around us.
And these people are carrying swords.
And wearing togas.
God (Adonai, Allah, Vishnu, Buddha, Manitou, Reverend Son Yeong Moon) help him, Beatrice had been serious. They were in Greece, ancient Greece.
Okay, maybe it wasn't Greece. Maybe it was some other dimension, because giant hero-type men definitely hadn't been walking casually around in the normal-dimension Greece. At least, as far as Luke knew, although on Tatooine you didn't hear much about ancient Greece, or anywhere in the other dimensions, for that matter.
But Luke had run out of thinking time. At that moment, Beatrice leapt to his feet with a delighted slosh-clink and extended his hand to the stocky, red-haired man standing just to his left. The man stepped forward with an matching smile and pumped the offered hand vigorously, simultaneously clapping Beatrice on the shoulder.
"Beatrice, old friend!" he exclaimed. "Haven't seen you in a couple of milleniums! Still knocking the ladies dead over in the old Lucas Dimension?"
Princess Leia sighed and began to keel over backwards, then emitted an injured squeal as Han grabbed her large bat-ear to keep her upright. Luke snickered; he had run out almost all the time on his Snicker Clock and if he didn't find some excuse to snicker soon, he would likely explode.
"I'll guess so," the red-haired man continued, eyeing Leia with amusement. "Lucky you, you have to put up with the swooning all through this thing. I assume she's one of the Walkers?"
Beatrice opened his mouth and sloshed a couple of times, but with intense concentration managed to get his next words out.
"Yes, she's a slosh Walker. The One from clink Dakota. She's obsessed with the Beatles slosh clink. And isn't it good to see you, slosh Odysseus! It has been a couple of millennia, but I clink swear that you don't look a year older since I last left you on Vuebegon Seven. What's your line these days?"
"Oh, same as usual." The man-Odysseus-shrugged. "Adventuring. Monster-slaying. Going right now to fight some sort of war over in Troy. You know how it goes with mortals, always killing. Anyway, it shouldn't take too long; Penelope made me promise to be home for our kid's birthday. Just a couple weeks.
"Ah. Very nice. Well, look, Odie, You-Know-Who's gone and made the You-Know-What's after all-" he exchanged a meaningful look with Odysseus, who gasped in horror-"and the time has come for the Walkers to Walk the Walk. We're after the first Root Vegetable to be dropped into this dimension, Odie, and it's supposedly guarded by a one-eyed giant. You don't think you could bypass the war in Troy and lift us straight to the giant's island, do you? I hate to take up your time but."
"Iggle Xanx, my old friend, as we would say on Vuebegon." Odysseus smiled merrily and clapped Beatrice on the shoulder again. "No problem. Heck, they probably won't even notice if I forget to show up for the war. Interdimensional matters are far more important than the quarrels of kings. The fleet is waiting."
Odysseus spun on his heel and addressed the large group of thick, sinewy men behind him.
"Whaddya say, men?" he roared. "Skip the war and tackle the Cyclops instead?"
There was a moment's silence. This was not quite the reaction Odysseus had been looking for.
"Whaddya say?" he repeated, sounding rather crestfallen.
Then, the burly man in the lionskin briefs stepped forward and crossed his tree-limb arms over his tree-trunk chest.
"Which," he demanded, "holds more glory and danger in the undertaking?"
Odysseus thought for a moment.
"Well," he said reluctantly. "I guess the war, in the end."
The burly man uncrossed his arms and nodded slowly.
"So be it," he said. "We will go to the Cyclops's island."
The men exploded into cheers, shaking long pikes and swords, and throwing a couple of wildcats over the heads of the six bewildered otherworlders.
"See!" Odysseus turned on his heel and smiled brilliantly. "Told you they'd be all for it! Go on, Beatrice, and you, the Walkers, my fleet awaits you."
Odysseus shouted something Greek at his men, and they all scuttled off down the trail, behind the row of hills. Beatrice started cheerfully after him, then abruptly noticed that none of his five companions were moving.
"Well, come on, then," he said snippishly. "What are you five waiting for?"
"Well," said Aragorn slowly, with a bit of a growly edge to his voice. "You haven't told us anything about where we're going or anything about that Odysseus tramp, and you're still expecting us to follow wherever you lead like little sheep on strings?"
"Well, yes, actually." Beatrice shrugged. "You see, you don't need to know what you're doing exactly, you're just there to fill in numbers in a prophecy while the Ancients do the work of getting the Root Vegetables away from the hands of the Dark Lord. And we still need to find the Sea Squid and the Siren (I figured Odie might be able to help with that one, he seems to have a knack for attracting monsters.) Oh, also the Reckless Elf- Maid."
A funny thoughtful look crossed Aragorn's face.
"If it weren't impossible, I might know where to find the Elf-maid," he muttered under his breath. "Although I'm sure she's not the only Elf out there who's broken nearly every bone in her body at least twice. Maybe."
"WHAT?" Princess Leia shouted. Her ears had since decreased to normal size, and it seemed she was having to readjust to normal hearing capabilities as well. "I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER MY BEATLES MUSIC!"
Aragorn turned geranium-red about the ears.
"Nothing," he muttered. "Don't interrupt the music."
"OKAY," said Leia, and cranked up the volume on her headset a few more notches.
"So anyway," said Han, his right hand neatly stealing a handkerchief from his left. "You were talking about the quest, Beatrice?"
"Oh.Just come on, Odie's waiting. All of you. I'll tell you on the boat."
"Well," chirped SOS-180, for the first time since leaving the Yoshimoto Sushi Bar. "This will certainly be an interesting experience."
"Yes," Luke said dryly. "Very interesting."
"Off we go then!" chirped SOS-180.
"Yes," Luke said dryly, "Off we go."
"Kill.the King." hissed SOS-180.
"Yes," Luke said dryly, then realized what he was saying, and promptly shut his overlarge trap.
As the first six of the Nine and Three Fourths stepped proudly (or shuffled, or clanked) down the dirt path that led to the ships and their destiny, a sudden spark of pride wormed its way into every lunatic heart, a sense of pride at the great works they were involved in.
Luke, however, found himself thinking only of lemon juice.
.1347759007842239785600610325701668403282911029344745443213110.
Shnibbidy Bob Joe put down his pen for the six-hundred and sixty- first time that day and listened intently to the conversation taking place at the Dark Lord's dining table, a few feet away from his refrigerator.
It was highly unusual for him to interrupt a long day's work of pi- calculating, seeing as the Dark Lord spend most of his time puttering around the greenhouse, far away from the kitchen. But there was no denying it now: for the first time in forty years, something interesting was happening in Lord Vader's residence, something that caused him to routinely hold loud arguments with grand admirals, which Shnibbidy Bob enjoyed listening in on. Not that he understood much of what was being said, but it was a bit of a respite from endless numbers, anyhow. A lot of gibberish about enchanted root vegetables, parallel dimensions, and controlling the universe through enhanced horticulture. Also something about a nine and three quarters that worried Vader quite a bit. In other words, nothing particularly important.
Shnibbidy Bob Joe listened until the yelling stopped and the grand admiral's corpse hit the floor. Then, as Vader stomped off, bellowing for the janitor to come and clean up; he needed to tend his turnips and didn't have time to do it himself.
Turnips. Whatever.
Pi was existence.
Scratch, scratch, commented Shnibbidy Bob Joe's pen as it scrawled across the top of the paper.
All of a sudden, the dingy back alley and the dumpsters weren't there.
Nor was anything else, as far as Luke could tell. The world had suddenly and disturbingly dissolved into a whirling tunnel of puce fluff, rather like vomit-colored cotton candy. Pink heart-shaped confetti was falling from the top of the tunnel, and little alligators with golden wings were fluttering all around them strumming miniature harps with their teeth. Ahead there was only darkness, but the area around them was lit brightly with the strange parsnip-colored radiance of the root vegetable, which was hurtling down the tunnel just ahead of him.
Wind whistled in Luke's ears as he plummeted downward, mingled with the annoying twang and snap of the harps as the little alligators broke the golden harp-strings on their formidable fangs. Luke's eyes were beginning to water. Quickly he closed them.
And then they shot open again.
He closed them.
He opened them.
There was still a handsome Whirlpool dishwasher barreling along the tunnel alongside him, emitting quiet sloshing and clinking noises. Not even his watering eyes could explain that.
"Beatrice?" he called uncertainly. He was getting a sudden manic craving for lemon juice; not for the first time he regretted having left his little pocket canteen at home.
"Hello, Luke," the dishwasher replied. "Nice claws."
Luke looked down at his feet as best he could while careening along at eighty miles per hour. He gasped in horror. Where his nice brown cowboy boots should have been there were furry gray paws with long, curved daggers sticking out from the front. Anxiously he felt his arms-furry-his head-furry, with two large round ears. His nose was big, black, and wet. There was a strong odor of eucalyptus that seemed to hang around him.
"Blast it, Beatrice!" he yowled. "I'm a bloody koala!"
"Yes, well, it's better than some things you could have been," the dishwasher said briskly. "Once I got turned into a giant magnet. I exhibited a disturbing tendency to turn towards the north for weeks afterward."
"I'M A BLOODY KOALA, BEATRICE!"
"Well, you don't have to get so upset." The dishwasher spun around in midair, sounding distinctly miffed. "Honestly, you normal mortals can be such wimps when it comes to travelling between times. You're perfectly safe with me."
"YES, I'M A PERFECTLY SAFE KOALA!!"
"Will you shut up?" hollered a bat with Leia's voice. "You're hurting my ears, and besides, I can't hear my CD."
Luke shut up and sputtered for a few minutes.
"So anyway, Beatrice," said an electric blue octopus, which was industriously stealing gold threads off an ornate pillow. "What on earth are we doing here, and why are we all dramatically altered?"
"Hey!" protested the pillow, flopping away from the octopus to protect its threads. The oversized sprocket wrench behind it shifted uncomfortably and muttered something threatening in a strange metallic voice.
"We are in a Tunnel of Irrationality," the dishwasher began patiently, "the only method of travel between times. You see, the only way one can do something as physically irrational as travelling between times is to distract the Powers that hold the universe together, and the best way to distract the Powers is to formulate something so incredibly, wildly, maniacally irrational that they simply don't notice you're travelling between times. Of course, the very balance of nature depends on people staying in their own dimension, in their own time, so only the Ancients truly know all the skills of time travelling. At least, until the Dark Lord and his vegetables. And that is why you are here."
"Oh," said the octopus and the pillow in unison.
"We all live in a yellow submarine," hummed the bat.
"I'm a koala," Luke wailed.
"Don't worry," said the Beatrice-dishwasher. "The trip is almost over, and we'll be in ancient Greece before you can say 'Jack Robinson.'"
"Jack Robinson," said Luke.
"You weren't meant to take that literally," Beatrice-Dishwasher snapped. "But anyway, all of you, get ready for a rough landing. The light at the end of the tunnel shineth upon mine eyes, or what would be mine eyes, were I not a dishwasher. Greece opens up before us. Hello, Herculeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssss.."
They abruptly picked up speed and plummeted the rest of the way down through the tunnel, faster, faster, their stomachs rising into their mouths.
And then, all of a sudden, the puce cotton candy, the hearts, the alligators, all vanished, and the giant, lace-gloved Hand of Fate dropped the dazed and bewildered six onto a dirt floor with a monotone "Have a nice day."
The parsnip landed with a sad wet thud a few feet away from them, its mysterious glow gone.
It took Luke a few seconds to realize that he was no longer hurtling along at a stomach-wrenching speed, and that the ground was suddenly solid and not fluffy. His relief at discovering these things, however, was completely eclipsed by his relief at discovering that he no longer had fur.
He still appeared to have a wet black koala nose, however, although he figured he wasn't the worst off. Beatrice was still emitting faint slosh and clink noises, Aragorn was wearing a pillowcase over his regular clothes, and Princess Leia's ears were still immense and pointy. Han had one arm too many. At least all the people crowding around don't seem to mind, Luke thought, trying to reconcile himself to the remaining vestiges of koalaishness on his person.
Wait a bloody second. There are people crowding around us.
And these people are carrying swords.
And wearing togas.
God (Adonai, Allah, Vishnu, Buddha, Manitou, Reverend Son Yeong Moon) help him, Beatrice had been serious. They were in Greece, ancient Greece.
Okay, maybe it wasn't Greece. Maybe it was some other dimension, because giant hero-type men definitely hadn't been walking casually around in the normal-dimension Greece. At least, as far as Luke knew, although on Tatooine you didn't hear much about ancient Greece, or anywhere in the other dimensions, for that matter.
But Luke had run out of thinking time. At that moment, Beatrice leapt to his feet with a delighted slosh-clink and extended his hand to the stocky, red-haired man standing just to his left. The man stepped forward with an matching smile and pumped the offered hand vigorously, simultaneously clapping Beatrice on the shoulder.
"Beatrice, old friend!" he exclaimed. "Haven't seen you in a couple of milleniums! Still knocking the ladies dead over in the old Lucas Dimension?"
Princess Leia sighed and began to keel over backwards, then emitted an injured squeal as Han grabbed her large bat-ear to keep her upright. Luke snickered; he had run out almost all the time on his Snicker Clock and if he didn't find some excuse to snicker soon, he would likely explode.
"I'll guess so," the red-haired man continued, eyeing Leia with amusement. "Lucky you, you have to put up with the swooning all through this thing. I assume she's one of the Walkers?"
Beatrice opened his mouth and sloshed a couple of times, but with intense concentration managed to get his next words out.
"Yes, she's a slosh Walker. The One from clink Dakota. She's obsessed with the Beatles slosh clink. And isn't it good to see you, slosh Odysseus! It has been a couple of millennia, but I clink swear that you don't look a year older since I last left you on Vuebegon Seven. What's your line these days?"
"Oh, same as usual." The man-Odysseus-shrugged. "Adventuring. Monster-slaying. Going right now to fight some sort of war over in Troy. You know how it goes with mortals, always killing. Anyway, it shouldn't take too long; Penelope made me promise to be home for our kid's birthday. Just a couple weeks.
"Ah. Very nice. Well, look, Odie, You-Know-Who's gone and made the You-Know-What's after all-" he exchanged a meaningful look with Odysseus, who gasped in horror-"and the time has come for the Walkers to Walk the Walk. We're after the first Root Vegetable to be dropped into this dimension, Odie, and it's supposedly guarded by a one-eyed giant. You don't think you could bypass the war in Troy and lift us straight to the giant's island, do you? I hate to take up your time but."
"Iggle Xanx, my old friend, as we would say on Vuebegon." Odysseus smiled merrily and clapped Beatrice on the shoulder again. "No problem. Heck, they probably won't even notice if I forget to show up for the war. Interdimensional matters are far more important than the quarrels of kings. The fleet is waiting."
Odysseus spun on his heel and addressed the large group of thick, sinewy men behind him.
"Whaddya say, men?" he roared. "Skip the war and tackle the Cyclops instead?"
There was a moment's silence. This was not quite the reaction Odysseus had been looking for.
"Whaddya say?" he repeated, sounding rather crestfallen.
Then, the burly man in the lionskin briefs stepped forward and crossed his tree-limb arms over his tree-trunk chest.
"Which," he demanded, "holds more glory and danger in the undertaking?"
Odysseus thought for a moment.
"Well," he said reluctantly. "I guess the war, in the end."
The burly man uncrossed his arms and nodded slowly.
"So be it," he said. "We will go to the Cyclops's island."
The men exploded into cheers, shaking long pikes and swords, and throwing a couple of wildcats over the heads of the six bewildered otherworlders.
"See!" Odysseus turned on his heel and smiled brilliantly. "Told you they'd be all for it! Go on, Beatrice, and you, the Walkers, my fleet awaits you."
Odysseus shouted something Greek at his men, and they all scuttled off down the trail, behind the row of hills. Beatrice started cheerfully after him, then abruptly noticed that none of his five companions were moving.
"Well, come on, then," he said snippishly. "What are you five waiting for?"
"Well," said Aragorn slowly, with a bit of a growly edge to his voice. "You haven't told us anything about where we're going or anything about that Odysseus tramp, and you're still expecting us to follow wherever you lead like little sheep on strings?"
"Well, yes, actually." Beatrice shrugged. "You see, you don't need to know what you're doing exactly, you're just there to fill in numbers in a prophecy while the Ancients do the work of getting the Root Vegetables away from the hands of the Dark Lord. And we still need to find the Sea Squid and the Siren (I figured Odie might be able to help with that one, he seems to have a knack for attracting monsters.) Oh, also the Reckless Elf- Maid."
A funny thoughtful look crossed Aragorn's face.
"If it weren't impossible, I might know where to find the Elf-maid," he muttered under his breath. "Although I'm sure she's not the only Elf out there who's broken nearly every bone in her body at least twice. Maybe."
"WHAT?" Princess Leia shouted. Her ears had since decreased to normal size, and it seemed she was having to readjust to normal hearing capabilities as well. "I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER MY BEATLES MUSIC!"
Aragorn turned geranium-red about the ears.
"Nothing," he muttered. "Don't interrupt the music."
"OKAY," said Leia, and cranked up the volume on her headset a few more notches.
"So anyway," said Han, his right hand neatly stealing a handkerchief from his left. "You were talking about the quest, Beatrice?"
"Oh.Just come on, Odie's waiting. All of you. I'll tell you on the boat."
"Well," chirped SOS-180, for the first time since leaving the Yoshimoto Sushi Bar. "This will certainly be an interesting experience."
"Yes," Luke said dryly. "Very interesting."
"Off we go then!" chirped SOS-180.
"Yes," Luke said dryly, "Off we go."
"Kill.the King." hissed SOS-180.
"Yes," Luke said dryly, then realized what he was saying, and promptly shut his overlarge trap.
As the first six of the Nine and Three Fourths stepped proudly (or shuffled, or clanked) down the dirt path that led to the ships and their destiny, a sudden spark of pride wormed its way into every lunatic heart, a sense of pride at the great works they were involved in.
Luke, however, found himself thinking only of lemon juice.
