Chapter 7

Coal Processing Plants Are A Lot More Fun Than A Chuck E. Cheese's

Pinky giggled somewhat nervously, his blue eyes showing plainly in the pitch black of the inside of the claw's grip. "WOOOooooOOOOOH!" he chanted in a voice too goofy to be at all eerie. "The claw is our master! We have been chosen! Poit! Troz! Zort! Narf! Fjord!"

The Brain muttered angrily under his breath, and Pinky could clearly hear his companion's jagged tail thumping annoyedly against the metal of their unintentional cage. Visually, his presence was only noticeable by the glow of his bloodshot pink eyes. Pinky stared at the pink orbs of light for a minute, then spoke again.

"Hey Brain, how come I c'n see your eyes even though it's all dark?" he asked.

The Brain's eyes rolled, and the tail-thumping sound grew louder. "Pinky, we're genetically enhanced lab mice. You'd think one of the obvious side effects would be our eyes glowing in the dark."

Pinky ruminated over this for a moment. "Oh," he realized, then lapsed into silence once more.

The claw then decided at that moment to make a sharp heave towards the left—or at least, what the Brain could only assume was the left—and the two tumbled against each other while some of the smaller coal particles leaked out through the gaps between the claw's teeth. Pulling himself out from under Pinky, Brain inched towards one of the gaps and squinted into the tiny patch of light. Maybe they could—

The sight of the sickeningly long distance between the claw and the ground made Brain quickly change his mind.

Finally, after what seemed like an incredibly long time, the rumbling came to a halt and the claw stopped with it, swaying only slightly but enough to make two small mice feel very airsick. The claw opened a fraction wider and some more coal slipped out. Brain's eyes bobbed about in the darkness a bit until they found Pinky's. Then, feeling that the moment of judgment had come, Brain clutched Pinky's arm.

"Pinky," he began strainedly, trying to find the words, "I...I have never tolerated you more than at this very moment."

His companion let out a wail and squeezed Brain in a massive bear hug. "Oh, Brain," he bawled, "I tolerate you too!"

And with that, the giant claw opened and the jumbled heap of mice and coal was sent spiraling down into the depths of a coal processing plant.

Brain landed with a heavy, thudding splash in the water and thought he was dead. This feeling passed, however, when he realized that those who are dead do not feel the imminent threat of drowning, which he at that moment was experiencing. Flailing his arms desperately to keep his considerably-sized head above the water, Brain gasped and looked panickedly around him for Pinky. Finally spotting his companion floating tail-side up some feet to the right, Brain struggled to combat the artificial current as he swam desperately in Pinky's direction.

With his superior frontal lobe, the Brain was well-informed on the subject of the preparation of raw coal; however, the process is not common knowledge, so therefore I shall elaborate. What he and Pinky were now trapped in was something like a gigantic metal upside-down cone with a current of water being pumped upwards from the bottom. A sheet of sand covered the surface of the water, which is what Pinky was laying groggily on when the Brain finally reached him. The purpose of the sand was that all of the pure coal would float on top of it, whereas the heavier, impure compounds of coal, or middlings, would sink to a lower level to be sifted through later. Knowing this, it was on top of one of these pure coal fragments that the Brain climbed, using his paws as makeshift paddles to reach his stunned companion.

"Pinky!" he called over the roar of the water, hauling the mouse up by his armpits. Pinky's eyes were unfocused and his frame limp. Brain began to panic. "SAY something, Pinky!" he demanded as what he knew of Pinky's life suddenly flashed before his eyes. "Say SOMETHING! ANYTHING!"

The lanky mouse coughed slightly, then croaked, "Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Brain?"

He was unable to answer, as at that moment the current whisked them out of the water-filled room and into the chute for the clean coal. Although not a particularly religious mouse, the Brain uttered a small string of prayers as Pinky did the same. When he'd finished, Pinky heaved a sigh and turned to Brain. "Do you think there's a higher being, Brain?" he asked shakily, still attempting to regather his nerves. "Like a god?"

The Brain answered with his normal condescension, but kept an eye out in case of any stray lightning bolts his way. "If there is, I hope they're nothing like your 'Illustrious Crackpot'."

For a moment, let me digress and tell you about Maurice the coal guy. (No, this is not simply because of the Brain's sarcastic remark, I am a very well-rounded person and do not need the approval of one whom I am torturing to further myself in life. For obvious reasons.) ANYWAYS, Maurice was an older man, a bit heavyset, and had the unenviable job of staring at the camera monitors in the L'Acme Coal Processing Plant. Exciting life, that. He sighed ruefully and took a swig from a water bottle close to hand. Maurice had a somewhat normal voice, but what he really liked to do was impressions. He could sit next to a man at dinner and, by the end of the meal, be able to exactly mimic his voice. He'd done the Goodfellows, he'd done Orson Welles, he'd even done the Tasmanian Devil on a particularly slow night. Maurice would have quickly gone into voice acting, but his friends had insisted that there was no future in it and instead signed him up for a job at L'Acme. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to Maurice, and he complained about it frequently. Who was going to care about what happened on the monitors? It was just a bunch of black rocks going down a chute, after all. Plus, the management had slashed his paycheck the last time he'd tried to watch some good wholesome TV instead.

With a groan, Maurice settled back in his chair for another agonizing night. It wasn't even eight o'clock, but it was already beginning to drag. He wished he could have called his friend Rob, the moron who'd given him this job in the first place. That would have at least passed the time quicker. The management banned using their own phones, but if Maurice could sneak out his own cell phone and set it on text, placing it beneath the viewpoint of the security camera...

He glanced about apprehensively, then leaned towards the monitor to casually slip the pocket phone out of his jacket—but then he stopped as he caught sight of something happening in one of the chutes. Maurice bolted back upright in his seat and stared at it again. He was sure of it. In a shocked panic, Maurice slammed his fist on the intercom button at his desk and barked into it in French.

"Mon Dieu, stop the machine! There are two mice in there!"

An alarm blared short and fast, and all the men on duty turned off their pressure valves and completely stopped the machine. All of the pure coal that had been waiting to float into the chute sank to the bottom of the funnel, along with assorted middlings. But not many of the workers cared as they rushed over to free the two captive creatures. Not out of compassion, you should know, but because of the possible union regulations this impediment could allow them to cash in on.

As excited French hands lifted Pinky and the Brain out of the coal chute, Pinky turned to his companion. "What an incredible coincidence!" he remarked. "Zort!"

Brain's eyes narrowed. "Yes...an incredible coincidence..." he mused irritably. "There seem to be quite a lot of them since we arrived in France..." Perhaps the silly "fanfiction" idea Pinky had wasn't quite so illogical after all. Indeed, these sorts of things seemed to happen annoyingly often when amateur authors ran out of ideas.

As for Maurice the coal guy, Pinky and the Brain's unknowing savior, he was simply exasperated that the battery on his cell phone had just died.