4. TIRED OF PROLOGUE'S PROLOGUE? GOOD, SINCE NOW WE SHALL AND OUGHT TO TURN TO THE REAL PROLOGUE ALREADY. THUS, LET US PROUDLY PRESENT: THE ONLY AND ONE REAL PROLOGUE

The sun shone vaguely through a silver mist. The sky had been more than just blue still half an hour ago, but the cruel winds reigning on this planet had just brought there a radioactive smog cloud all the way from Moscow. Nobody yet saw its fatal effects as it hovered there glistening so brilliantly as the sun's rays filtered through it with a halo that had almost religious ecstasy in it. The billow would have no effect whatsoever to anything that was beneath or above or on its side –or in the possible fifth dimension that three-dimensionally crossed it. But alas, if you enter that frolicking and glimmering mist of platinum-like vapor! It will instantly peel you like a banana and then squish the rest into spongy radioactive snot. Then, with all the regular odds (Unless a random cloud of improbability matter will, with an improbability factor of 30532511424242*e^50789, turn you into Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's left foot sock (initials included in embroidery) before it.), you will be accelerated by the planet's gravitation and start your rectilinear drop towards the ground below. Then you will splat onto the pavement and become the instant wonder-target of the day: you will be addressed with quotes like "Did you see, it came down from the sky!", and "What the heck is that?", or "It's a message from the heavens!", or something alike. You would not be distinguished by your former form any longer, since you would have indeed become something amoeba-like and distinctly brown, classically of course having the ability to glow in the dark due to your new radioactive outer shell.

Actually, a couple of such amoeba-like lobs already decorated a grim backstreet which had all the needed features for it to become a grim backstreet: a brick wall with graffitis on it, a leaking pipe beside it, and an amount of rusty trashcans embedded in the slight darkness. However, as these lobs are observed more closely, we can conclude that they are rather more made by the local stray dogs than this newly appeared sparklingly dazzling silver mist. Actually, there was nothing any more in the sky. Meanwhile the narrator explained all this scientific and highly useful information, the cloud took a hike, fluttered over the Gulf of Bothnia, and was shimmering initially over Stockholm.

Q Gamma had reached an important achievement today. She had actually been able to heave herself up from the bed and drag her lazy legs to the roots of the long outdoors staircase that leaded up to the hill where the local university was built.

She took a gait. A step made of rough stone appeared under her sneaker. A hideous memory instantly appeared in her suddenly darkened mind. There were three hundred similar steps to ascend before she would reach the yard up there. And then a few hundred more to get to the classroom where her lecture about Advanced AI Methods was supposed to be.

She took a second step.

And a third one.

A fourth one.

A fifth one.

A sixth one.

A seventh one.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

As fantastic as it would be to continue this count, we must ask you to remember that a few sentences ago it was said that the steps were around three hundred. If you are not satisfied by this unabsolute mathematical measure, please visit the town yourself, find the university, and go up the steps yourself. Consider it as an on-the-scene adventure and be thrilled by the excitement of finding out how many steps there actually are.

So, the girl known as Q had eventually approached the top. A wide campus yard spread in front of her sharply shaped nose.

At least if this was an anime movie, it would be sharply shaped.

And we are talking about her nose, not the yard.

But since nobody is speaking Japanese, and her nose seems to be bit more unsharply shaped, this is probably not an anime movie.

The yard made of gray stone slabs looked ominously quiet and empty. This was of course because all the duteous and assiduous students were inside the buildings, their pens diligently writing lecture notes. Inside the buildings which were craning tall and majestic towards the sky where the Russian Smog Cloud had an instant before been.

A battered AM/FM radio stood on the table of an assistant that had already half an hour stood petrified gazing at his 98% percent done Ph.D. Thesis, which had a smoldering black hole just right in the middle of it. The man resembled someone who had just eaten a great lump of solid bedrock and had swallowed it, noticing afterwards that he could not move any longer since the rock was too heavy for him to lift it. But the radio was still in condition and rattled something about a horrid cloud that was making a near massacre in Stockholm.

Q's mind wandered and soared in the odd happenings of this very morning. First the pigeons, and then…

Something had happened to her fridge.

Something ghastly peculiar that would win all the dark galactic secrets lurking in the shadows and put them grow pale and obtuse in front of it. However, Miss Gamma could not understand the meaning behind and unanteriorly this odd phenomenon. She was merely left to wonder.

The fridge had been completely empty.

And she recalled that all the half-rotten food she had forgotten there, had been there still yesterday. The roasted chicken leg she had not remembered to eat a month ago. The broccoli that had lulled there three weeks. The margarine that had achieved an extraordinary shade of green. It was truly enthralling that someone was able to make normal margarine mildew. But obviously Q's fridge was controlled by some ambiguous physical law that the scientists had not yet discovered. Something equal that was controlling her highly unlikely desk.

Yet… all those had been gone as she this morning had scampered up to see if there was anything eatable left. It was a futile measure since there had not been anything eatable left even yesterday. Actually, the last eatable foodstuffs that needed cold space, had been enjoyed last week. Because the girl was badly out of money, she had been satisfied to consume crackers and ryvita the last seven days. And since coffee was not an arctic resident, there had been no real need for a fridge anyway.

Fact of the day: students are almost all the time out of money. They are often very unrich.

Yet, with an instinct-like habit, she had still peeked inside the fridge this morning. And grown silent. Everything had been gone –even the glass bowl where the chicken leg had slumbered its half-eternal dream.

But… something similar had occurred five weeks ago.

And then the pigeons had been there too…

Her hackles rose up. She recalled the odd green goo that had splattered her minuscule foyer. Five weeks ago the fridge had also emptied itself from all the putrid food. And that after this first peculiar night, there had been also traces of that ectoplasmic slime in her lobby. That time she had happily though that the fridge probably was a self-cleaning device, and neglected the essence of the goo and its relation to the extraordinary amount of pigeons that had blurbled and glubbered ----

***********************

Hereby we must make a note that the author has obviously enjoyed too much caffeine and is creating words that do not exist in a Tellurean language called English (a subclass of Latin and a few Celtic languages that later were developed into it, also forming such oral means to communicate as German, Swedish, Norwegian, and so on. Chinese is not included in this category since it has basically nothing to do with Latin and nothing to do with this story either).

However, as a few Altairian linguists ponder the vast dilemma of these expressions, they admit that those words describe rather well the phonetic sounds of pigeons. Hence a semi-official pardon is granted to the author and this short but unfutile break in the story flow ends.

Now.

**********************

--- in the wobbling trees behind her window. They had left right after that night.

And now the pigeons were there again. The fridge had emptied itself. There were lumps of green goo in Q's foyer. There was a connection.

Had something emerged from the fridge and wandered out of the door…?

This sole, menacing phantom rose in her mind as she let her regard swivel across the empty university yard.

There had been a green tacky mark even in the door's inner handle…

Q felt her mouth growing dry, and a hazily unserene emotion filled her chest.     

To be continued…

Even if nobody ever in this space-time-frame reads it. Muwahahahaha.