I felt a tube being shoved down my throat.
"Are you sure you should be doing that?" Kurt's voice muttered. "They don't exactly need hourly nourishment."
I heard him, but saw nothing but the dark space beneath the log cabin porch, and the shape of my mother.
"His nutrient levels are low," said Doug. "If you compare it to the other samples..."
The voices didn't seem real. I just kept staring at my mother.
I didn't know what the conversation meant. Maybe I didn't want to know. I focused my attention on my immediate situation.
Mom was with me.
Under a porch.
In a land populated with puppets and human beings that couldn't be eaten.
I gazed at her glistening facial dome with speechless shock.
"Fine, fine. Just go slow with the saline drip. We don't know how much the little guy really needs."
"Mom?"
Mother said nothing, but heard the sound of her exhalations.
A meaty glop rushed down my throat, and I felt a little less hungry. Good thing because I had seriously considered another attempt at eating Gretchen Goose, which, in her current mutated state, could have been construed as cannibalism.
The voices became hushed, leaving me to continue staring in disbelief at the sleek shape in the still darkness.
"Mom? You're trapped in this crazy place too?"
Mom sighed, a sound like a semi letting air out of its brakes. I've never seen semis in real life, but I've heard that's what they sound like. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik, we are not prisoners here. Why are you distressed?"
"Mom, I am having strange feelings. Everything in this world is inedible. I have killed but gained no nourishment, and the death has left me sorrowful. The human, Maria, was a gentle and friendly individual, but I killed her, thinking I could find sustenance. It brought me nothing but grief. I not only did not become full, I also lost a possible friend forever."
Mother nodded. "It is wrong to kill, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."
I gawked at her. "What kind of trickery is this! You never say things like that! You were the one who first taught me to kill!"
"That is how I used to be."
"What changed?"
Instead of replying, she disappeared like she had never been there.
I shivered with fear from head to tail. It seemed, in addition to putting memories of my kills in Maria's body, turning my memory of grandma into a mutant bird puppet and putting Dug's bible in Maria's living room, this place could also put words in my mother's mouth.
That is, if mom wasn't, as Gretchen Goose said about me, sitting in a lab somewhere with electrodes stuck in her brain. (1)
I could have imagined this whole thing, too. Although I've never had a very strong imagination, there remained a possibility that I had gone crazy due to the confinement.
"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik?" a loud voice called. I stared through the gap in the porch and found Gretchen's eyeless mosquito face peering at me upside down like some ridiculous owl peering in a mouse hole.
"What are you doing in there?" the needle beak cried.
I sighed and shook my head, trembling all over as I crawled out from under the porch.
The dog had not moved. The yellow half Spaniel lab, not a puppet, still lay like a lifeless welcome mat near the front steps.
A bald old man and an old woman appeared at the front door. Both puppets with glasses. The old lady wore the most artificial looking wig a human could possibly wear. The old man bore a white mustache.
Gretchen Goose waved a scaly chitinous wing at them. "Hello!"
The couple stepped out, staring at us.
"I'm Gretchen Goose. This is Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik needs a friend right now. Will you be her friend?"
The two didn't even think about it.
"Of course we will!" the old lady exclaimed.
"Ayuh," the old guy agreed.
The dog lifted its tail and farted, apparently also in agreement. Or maybe disagreement with its dinner.
The old lady gestured to the door. "Well, come in and have some lemonade."
Following Grethen's lead, I complied.
The dog farted as I passed it on my way to the door. I briefly considered eating him, but knew it wouldn't work.
The log cabin smelled of pine and perfume and carpet cleaner. Oh, and dog, of course. The room inside had logs for walls, and leather furniture covered in hand crafted textiles. Thick yellow pile carpet covered the floor, and the antlers of animals hung from wooden plaques on the wall (which I found to be a slight contradiction in morality). Above a fireplace, the disembodied head of a moose, which seemed suspiciously puppet-like.
The dog, becoming curious, stopped being an unmotivated lump long enough to enter the house and sprawl on the carpet to stare at me.
The couple introduced themselves as Omney and Erasmus. The dog's name: Flop.
The old lady, Omney, disappeared down a narrow hallway, returning with a pitcher full of yellow liquid and a silver tray full of a light brown disks covered in white, sprinkle covered stuff.
"Here." She offered the tray. "Have a cookie."
I stared at them suspiciously.
"They're a treat," Gretchen Goose explained. "A snack with special flavoring for entertainment purposes."
I grabbed a sugar cookie, took one bite, and spat it out. I just couldn't understand the appeal.
She offered me a glass. "Lemonade?"
I stared.
"A simple beverage," said the bird. "Made from crushed fruit and a naturally occurring flavoring agent."
Nobody had taught me etiquette, so I just leaned over the glass and lapped at it.
I spat again. To this day, I fail to see the appeal of such things.
Gretchen ate and drank some, seeming to enjoy the substances. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik doesn't have much of a sweet tooth."
Omney nodded. "I understand. Just last week I had a Chinese fellow in here. Xiao Dong, I believe his name was. He didn't like sweets, either. Every culture likes their own kind of food."
"Taste has no real meaning," said Erasmus. "The refinement of such things is a wasteful expenditure of time and effort."
"I suppose you are a program," I said.
He nodded. "Everything around you is a program."
I stared at a framed quotation on the wall, written in a way that resembled needlepoint. "When life gives you scraps, make quilts," I read aloud.
Gretchen clapped her claws. "Very good, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik! That's exactly what it says!"
I frowned. "But what does that mean?"
The old lady puppet shrugged. "It's like, `when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.' You make the best of what life gives you."
"But I don't like lemonade."
She grinned. "That's why I'm telling you about quilts."
"What is a quilt?"
In reply, she showed me one of the many geometrically patterned fabric pieces covering the furniture.
So that's what they called them, I thought. I remembered seeing several around the research facility, but really hadn't thought about it much. "So they are made of scraps?"
Omney nodded. "Yep! Little pieces of cloth!"
All of a sudden, professional grade instrumental music struck up, including, I believe, some sort of trumpet or horn. I looked around for the orchestra, but saw none. Omney broke into song.
"When you spend your birthday all alone,
And no one calls you on the phone,
And you get kicked out of your home,
And you're overwhelmed with sorrow, grief and guilt...
Well don't get all upset
When you lose your favorite pet,
When your bowl of roses browns, fades and wilts...
When life gives you scraps, make quilts."
I'm ashamed to admit it, but my tail bobbed in time with the music.
I thought she'd keep going, but then someone knocked on the door, Flop the dog uttering lazy barks to announce the presence of guests.
Three human women with perms and glasses entered the cabin, a rotund woman with tiny teeth like a goblin, a rail thin lady with a narrow neck and a face like a bird, and a plump Germanic woman whose dark, and much fuller hair hadn't turned completely gray yet.
The dog let out a low growl, which looked absurd because his tail wagged and never lifted his head off the floor.
"How wonderful!" Omney exclaimed. "You're here just in time for the weekly quilter's circle!"
I just stared. The concept had to be explained to me.
Humans actually spent entire days putting little squares of fabric together. I found the idea so ridiculous that I burst out laughing, which would sound to you like a cat purring and the chirping of a guinea pig. Needless to say, few have ever heard such a sound.
"Quilting!" Erasmus remarked. "Another pointless expenditure of time and resources."
Omney responded by giving him a playful swat.
"I wish to see this `quilting'," I said.
The quilters led me into a back room, filled with fabric and all the curious tools you humans use to make textiles with.
The big one thumbed through a pattern book. The dark haired woman threaded needles, and the thin lady unrolled unrolled a partially completed patchwork. All looked happy as they dug out their sewing equipment.
I watched in amazement as they picked up little colorful patches of fabric, sewing them to other bits.
The music came back on, and they all sang.
"When you drive downtown and your tire goes flat,
When someone steals your favorite hat,
When your blood gets sucked by a vampire bat,
And you're really getting tired of that...
Well don't get all upset
When you lose your favorite pet,
When your bowl of roses browns, fades and wilts...
When life gives you scraps, make quilts."
The dark haired one's glasses pointed my way. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik, would you like to add a square?"
You might think it weird for a creature born from a human chest cavity, but the idea actually excited me.
I gave the woman a vigorous nod of my head.
Gretchen Goose handed me a blank piece of fabric. "This is an exercise in using your imagination. I want you to focus. Think of a time when you felt really bad, and pick something out of that experience that was positive."
I paused and thought for several minutes while the ladies quilted.
What came to mind: Galloping around the base on mom's back. Sure, we killed a few humans, but I still treasured that time we had together.
As I thought about it, a little cartoon picture of me and mom appeared on the square.
The ladies showed me how to sew it to the quilt, an activity that made me so overjoyed that I actually hummed their stupid little song.
My little claws shouldn't have been able to hold a needle and thread properly, but a lot of things didn't make sense in that world.
As I contemplated the patch I sewed, I suddenly noticed mom's claw grabbing the corner of the quilt, holding it taut so the stitches stayed straight. When I turned to look at her, she vanished.
We worked on that quilt until the sun went down, and the ladies got ready to leave.
To my surprise, before they went, they handed me a miniature quilt, one perfectly suited to my body size, covered in tiny patches similar to the ones on the big quilt.
I accepted the quilt with a cry of joy, an experience foreign to me as laughter. I rubbed against the ladies' legs in gratitude.
Gretchen Goose offered to take me back to Rosedale Square, that place where I had murdered Maria.
"No!" I protested. "I don't want to go to jail and see that police officer."
"I will hide you in my nest," Gretchen said.
This I agreed to. Gretchen Goose carried me out the door, the dog giving us one last toot in farewell.
Outside, the bird thing clutched me in her claws, the propeller blades shooting out of plates in her back, twirling in helicopter fashion. We took to the air.
Before this, I had spent the majority of my life on the ground. I therefore found the experience of being lifted by four propellers a frightening novelty.
The places below me shrank smaller and smaller. Fearing what would happen if I slipped out of Gretchen's clutches, I crawled up her body, wrapping myself around her neck, but still felt afraid.
I felt glad when we descended into the alleyway near Dumpy's trash dumpster, Gretchen at last secreting me away to the inner alley.
It seemed the program borrowed even more of my memories to construct this little lair, perhaps from some ancestral memories deep within me, for the structures that enveloped the area resembled the fluted metallic veins found in the spacecrafts of the Pale Ones from ancient times.
A colossal bird nest stood in the midst of these things, bordered on all sides by suskjirsaksva, eggs from which offspring forcefully propel and land on victims' faces. Also derived from my mind, slimy streams of webbing connected them to earth mundanities such as trash cans, discarded car tires and broken television sets.
You may think it funny, but this felt like home to me.
Gretchen Goose hooked her rear end to a fidsvsardissar, the lower body of a tribal grandmother capable of laying suskjirsaksva, gesturing for me to enter the nest. I crawled in and slept beside her, curled up in my brand new quilt.
"Whoa," Doug said as I re-entered reality. "He's completely rewritten the program."
I still lay on a lab table, but now had tubes sticking out of me in several places.
"I'm pretty sure if Sarah could see Gretchen Goose's crib, she wouldn't be able to sleep for a month."
"It was your idea," said Kurt.
"Okay, so it's not a total loss. He has learned about sewing. Whether or not he can do that in real life, it's definitely a breakthrough, considering how he was attacking everyone earlier..."
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(1) The only change to this section (Chapter 128) is Big Bird. The other characters are unrelated to the Muppets. See Chapter 128 Section III.