2
He was almost, but not quite, like anything anyone from Earth had ever seen. If any old layman had seen him, they would have thought they'd seen hundreds before and had thrown peanuts at one the other day. Layman didn't have much of a clue. However, a person who had studied, or were familiar with, primates for a living would have been flummoxed. They would gibber in bewildered bullishness and, to make sure, consult a barrage of textbooks in the hope that they had just discovered a new species. Fred, however, couldn't care less.
Frjj Edrquell is an Arcturian Space Monkey, known to his friends as Fred. Arcturian Space Monkeys are a smart lot but they can't pronounce Frjj Edrquell. Back on the planet of Arcturia they were one of two highly developed species, although the other liked to think it was far higher up the proverbial 'evolutionary ladder' than anyone else. While Fred's species enjoyed clambering around trees eating fruits and Arcturian Ultra Bananas the other species endeavoured to work at building tools, eventually developing agriculture, weapons, villages, war, governments, cities, space flight, and other such silly notions. If an Earthly zoologist found about any of this he or she would have had a field day with theories of parallel evolution, planetary environments and the dispelling of the 'little green men' notion. Soon most individuals from Fred's brethren species got depressed about all this boring work, threw down their hyper spanners and ripped off their digital/analogue hybrid watches, and went back to playing in the trees. At this point the whole of Fred's species used the opportunity to thank the other species, to the other species' great surprise, and left the planet to meet other space fairing cultures in the hope that they would be a little more interesting. It was like first building the proverbial 'ladder' from bamboo, climbing it all the way to the top to get at those ultra bananas and finding that some foundling gyte had already pinched them.
Fred relaxed cushioned in his specially adapted power chair; the chair being like the petals of a bizarrely coloured lotus that moulded themselves around his body. He was so comfortable he didn't feel as if he was travelling at several billion miles an hour. He'd done a little interior decorating recently. If he had to do what he was doing and had to do it by living in his ship travelling the galaxy then, he thought, he would do it with some style. Others would have said it looked bland, minimalist, baroque (1) if you will, but Fred thought it was homely. The trees contrasted especially well with the excitingly luminescent fruit shaped console panels. And the psychedelic shag-pile carpeting was a personal touch.
What Fred did for a living, or rather to pass the time, might at first seem peculiar. But there is a sane (2) reason for it. Arcturian Space Monkeys didn't advance much further since they left Arcturia, except in interior decorating. They didn't feel as if they had the need to develop technology or culture anymore since every day was a breeze. They had reached a technological pinnacle in which every need, every whim, and every Arcturian Ultra Banana Sundae was catered for. So, as not to suffer the same fate as their brethren species they all did wondrous feats around the galaxy to keep them preoccupied and had them recorded in the 'Guinness Book of Pan Galactic Records and Other Such Stupid Stuff'. Arcturian Space Monkeys are famed for achieving a whole 2 of the records held in the book.
The book was actually virtual in order to store the information and could have been accessed at any time from anywhere for the small fee of being blasted away by adverts. The Guinness company had in fact tried to manufacture real books as publicity stunts but every attempt to make a book big enough to hold a galaxy of records ended up in the creation of new stars as they collapsed in on themselves. Determined somehow to make a profit from all this, as any self respecting capitalist monster should do, they converted them into habitable solar systems and named them after sponsors. Anybody wishing to stay in any of these places, i.e. Flox Detergent V, would have to pay the small fee of being blasted away by adverts every time they looked up at the sky.
Back to what Fred did; he was a restaurant connoisseur in a manner of speaking. Only he wanted to be somewhat original. Someone had already eaten at every restaurant in the galaxy, died not of indigestion but from his bank statement choking him on his bank manager's behalf. No, Fred wanted to travel the galaxy to taste the delicacies of every fast food joint there is. That way he could get his name in the book, not get bored, go to a rave every now and again, and not break the bank all at the same time. Perfect.
He waved at a couple of brightly coloured fruits dangling lightly from a branch. Slowly, gracefully, almost as if it waded through the very essence of space/time, the branch both stayed as it was, swooped in front of Fred, and was always already there in front of him. Display screens appeared inside the broad fruits without the fruits themselves being hollow or transparent. Fred enjoyed this a lot. The whole bridge system was personalised to his taste.
On one fruit, like a crazed melon, was a tactical display of his ship and the hovering labels of the four closest and one destination star system. On another, shaped like a larger than usual banana, a database of all the fast food joints he had been to and yet to get to.
He poked at the banana to wade through the names and general addresses of the restaurants.
D.
The banana loaded an incomprehensibly cluttered list. He was told the name of the next fast food joint but couldn't find it. A bit more wading, some squinting, a bit of poking... nope not under D.
Ah, revelation. M.
There you go; McDonalds. He pointed to it and some text appeared hovering next to his finger which had this to say:
McDonalds. To find one, simply land somewhere and your next to one. For the more daring, wrap a towel round your head, obscuring vision, and set the ship to cruise in the general direction of the planet. Step off the ship just before you hear a big thud and you'll be outside a McDonalds. Earth, ZZPluralZAlpha.
Fred ate the database console.
(1) The Interior Decorator Lexicon's equivalent to a blank Scrabble tile.
(2) Sane a. Of sound mind, not mad; (of views) moderate, sensible. Its hard to pin this word down to an actual intensity of meaning and other words like moderate or sensible just don't help. The galactic census once tried taking the average sanity of everyone in the galaxy and came to the conclusion that, to most people, howling abuse and hurling rocks at a killer troll from Gargleflurt V was a moderate and sensible past time.