The balloons floated slowly, rising higher and higher into the sky. Down below laid grumpy hills covered with spruces, like huge and lazy hedgehogs, bristling with brown spikes. The balloons, initially bright, red, orange, and yellow, were becoming more translucent and pale, coalescing with chilly and moist top layers of the sky, where the eternal drizzle was suspended in the air.
From this height the landscape below looked like it was covered by a thin misty veil, making the outlines of hills and ravines vague and blurry. From this height, spruces looked miniature like matches covered in brownish fur, and their individual shapes merged into a solid prickly coverlet.
The surface of the balloons was covered with a thin layer of dew. Smoky mist converged into small water drops that slid slowly and silently down slippery walls and disappeared inside the drizzle. Sometimes the balloons twitched abruptly, disturbed by a quick gust of wind; then, after returning to equilibrium, they continued floating, lazily following their momentum in a direction determined by this short-lived burst of force.
Between the slopes of hills far below in the mist, a metallic gray narrow serpentine of the river undulated and twisted. From the sky it looked like a metal string, its slow motion manifested itself in changing patterns of its glimmer. Among the dense fur of the dark gloomy forest, the river stood out, casting a bright shiny reflection of the sky.
At one point near the river, the solid dark fabric of woods had been brutally torn apart, and in the hole among rough edges and shreds of the forest emerged several scruffy miniature matchboxes of huts. Their coloring wasn't that different from dull, subdued hues of the landscape around. They looked ragged and somber.
In those huts lived the last descendants of several generations of clowns, who survived, after the plague killed everybody else. During about hundred years after the event, the roaming circus kept moving through empty steppes and forests, along dusty roads, performing before the audience that wasn't there, accompanied by howls of wind rushing through empty plains. They interbred until every one of them wore obvious signs of multiple diseases, partly hidden under the clown makeup. Noone of them was sane. They kept moving, doing performances, looking into the infinity of empty space with their bright eyes, where merrily danced flashes of craziness. They laughed loudly, their amusement was strange, mixed with horror, a bitter-sweet mix. Like the ultimate and final bitterness of poison stuck in the throat, when you try to get rid of it, pouring into it sweet drinks until you realize; it doesn't work, and the horror takes over, brutally ripping to shreds reason and sanity, like a piece of flimsy paper.
The last generation of clowns lived in those scruffy and gloomy huts on the river bank. They gave up and decided to stop this long and senseless carnival and that endless motion, trying to run away from something they always carried with them. They were sick, tired, and crazy. They were going to die, and it was a relief. They still wore their clown makeup - weird white masks and red noses. The sight that summed up and symbolized the ultimate weirdness of humans, of civilization, of everything that passed away, leaving behind just several traces, several tokens, something just not to be forgotten. Something that would show that all this wasn't a dream, that it really existed. And the weirdness of the clown makeup and insane laugh manifested this reality in the ultimate moment of despair. It hadn't been dreamt up. It was too weird to be dreamt up. It was real.
The river was real too. It flowed slowly and monotonously among the unmoving brooding spruces, showing how everything could be permanent and unchanging day after day. And the spruces, dark and gloomy, stood on its banks, still, except when their branches were occasionally touched by wind, and they rustled silently and calmly.
Just woke up in the middle of the night with a fresh recollection of a dream I just saw, and I decided to quickly sketch it out, while it's still fresh in my memory. Because It's already fading while I'm waking up. It's not very coherent because I'm slightly dazed, slightly drunk, and a bit spooked. Anyway, just a sketch.
He listened to this radio. At some point, he realized that he didn't know where it came from. Then he realized that it came from a book. But he wasn't sure. And he didn't know how to turn it off. Or, maybe, it wasn't even that book. He liked that radio at first, but then it began to feel somewhat spooky. Especially the fact that he never turned it on in the first place. But it continued. There was a story about the model of Earth with maximum spots placed on it. It was called the ultimate model of places. It claimed to map more places than anything ever before. Total precision. He pictured it like a huge sphere, hundred meters in diameter. People could crawl around it on scaffoldings and study various stuff on its surface. The strange thing was that radio said that this model was created in some small village, and he didn't even have any idea about that village, but somehow he knew that last people died there a while ago. It was empty. So wtf was that about that giant sphere and stuff?
The radio kept playing. Sometimes it was soothing, but sometimes he wondered if he could turn it off. Once it played a program where somebody got disemboweled. He kinda considered this a scary way to die because it was kinda slow and painful without a clear timeline, including the moment when the process was going to end. Like your intestines fall out of you and it just continues on and on indefinitely. And you observe all this and your internals and wonder what you are supposed to do in this situation. He thought that he would prefer not to get in such kind of situation.
Sometimes he thought that some evil Pennywise clown lurked in his apartment, sometimes producing some rustles or tapping his shoulder when it was dark, and he couldn't see. He thought that one day the clown was going to jump at him at some moment, giving him a heart attack. He remembered being in a different city full of cars and diesel exhaust, and there were some people he barely knew, who pretended to be his relatives. And a guy who thought he was his father also thought he gave birth to him. At least his belly was that big. He wanted to point out that he could, just as well, give birth to his mother with him in her womb. Because his belly was that big. He thought that if it happened, it likely happened that way. He felt so alone and lost, although, it was the sunshine and warmth. But the sunshine was slightly blurred by a haze of smog.
He thought that he came up with a conclusion to his play, it was all about compassion he strived to express. Like, he needed to express some compassion in the final scene where everybody died. From disembowelment. Or not. He worried about that radio that came from a place he couldn't spot. He wanted to turn it off, and he didn't know where it came from. It worried him that he wasn't able to turn it off. And he thought about the Pennywise clown that lurked in the darkness. Maybe, he created this radio to somehow direct the flow of his thoughts. In any case, he thought about the ways to turn off the radio and scratched the book with needles in a place where he thought the chip might have been implanted.
"It looks like they started building something" Andreas, the young biology assistant studied the dish with curiosity. There the old professor Antonio conducted his experiment with some new kind of bacteria that was characterized by an extremely quick cycle of reproduction and frequent mutations. Its DNA simply couldn't hold together.
"Yes, this is really what makes me wonder too," Antonio said distractedly. He pushed the microscope closer to the dish, and Andreas pressed his eye to its eyepiece with fascination.
"Well, at some point, they started to connect themselves into some sort of colonies. Which then started to act like a single organism. And all the new cells seemed to know somehow that they were supposed to merge into colonies as well. And with each generation those colonies are becoming more and more complex" the old professor went silent for a minute, ruminating. Andreas saw a boiling mass, restless goo seething with activity, Pulsing translucent balls kept splitting with frightening frequency. New cells quickly and purposefully swam to a wobbling cluster of their compatriots and attached themselves to it, becoming part of some bigger unity.
"But what is this construction?" Andreas asked, pointing the microscope to a thing that initially caught his attention. It looked like some strange modernistic sculpture made of tiny wires.
"I don't know, really," Antonio admitted "the life cycle of this culture is really short. They reproduce non-stop, live less than a minute, then die. There is a lot of dead cells in this dish. At some point, clusters of live bacteria started to move dead cells, sticking them together in those shapes."
"You mean cluster operates as a single conscious organism?" Andreas exclaimed incredulously
"They might have developed some sort of primitive hive mind," Antonio agreed "you see, they reproduce really fast, and they mutate constantly. It turned out, in this setting, being in clusters allows them to live and reproduce longer, so from the beginning those cells that learned to form clusters survived more often. Now each new cell has in its DNA an idea of some cluster it is going to be part of. It's a preprogrammed instinct of acting as a part of a group. Like with ants. But due to constant mutations, this idea is always altering as well. New bacteria join existing clusters with fresh ideas about how it should be. And each newborn cell comes with better ideas."
"Though it doesn't explain, why they build these constructions," Andreas said pensively, adjusting microscope to get a better look at this strange wireframe sculpture, produced by the colony of microbes. He noticed that the sculpture became bigger, with an increasing number of smaller wires branching from the central wire. He could see how this strange construction grew and developed before his eyes, with a seething mass of bacteria fussing around it. For some reason, this sight looked creepy and unnerving. Andreas raised his head from the microscope, feeling a slight prick of unease.
"Ok, anyway, all the work for today is already done, and it's getting late, so we can finish this evening by catching some beers" the professor offered, absentmindedly glancing at his watch. He looked tired and distracted. When a bit later they sat in a nearby cafe, sipping beers, Antonio, still deeply in his thoughts, suddenly returned to the question of the strange construction made by bacteria "You see, the conditions of this experiment are created in a way, that they cannot multiply indefinitely. They reproduce really fast and have an insanely high metabolism. When there are too many bacteria in the dish, part of them is pushed to the side. The flow of nutrients cannot reach those areas in time, so they die. From what I've seen of those contraptions, they present in some way the systems of small pipes. From the mechanical point of view, they might accelerate the flow, and more cells can survive. Although, it would require a high level of intelligence to come up with such an idea, and you wouldn't expect a colony of bacteria to have intelligence, would you?
Andreas vigorously shook his head, indicating that the idea seemed insane to him.
"Although," the old professor continued, "our brain technically is the same cluster of cells. Apart from that, it has a certain architecture, very complex architecture, which blueprints are stored basically in each cell of our bodies. You can take a piece of fingernail, take one cell from it, and there in its DNA stored all our complexity and all our intelligence. In a single cell."
Andreas nodded wondering why the old professor talked like this. Meanwhile, the professor came out of his reverie and realized that he left in the laboratory some papers he wanted to have a closer look at. He briskly said goodbye to Andreas and headed back to the lab. Several minutes later Andreas, still sitting in the bar, got a phone call.
"You need to come to the lab immediately and see this!" the professor now he sounded wide awake and excited.
When Andreas approached the lab, he bumped into a police cordon, blocking the road. "You cannot go there, there is a sort of... accident...there" the policeman answered with poorly concealed nervousness in his voice, when Andreas asked what was the matter. At this moment the ground below them started shuddering.
Speaking of the writing block. So I wrote this post about my inability to write, and I got a lot of positive feedback ❤ and Christian Saunders said something that sounded like a writing prompt, and I realized that, while I wrote answer to his comment, I didn't feel like I was actually writing, so my block didn't apply in this situation. So here's what has eventually come out as a result.
So actually I planned to visit a dentist that day. Actually, this was something I was planning to do for a month already. But something inside my head was telling me that I wouldn't succeed, that it would be a disaster and most likely I'd end up dying. In pain and convulsions. So I postponed this visit for as long as possible.
But it was that day in early spring when I told myself "I cannot put it aside anymore. I'm trying to start a new life, learn a new profession. I'm really excited about it. Let's make a move. Starting with this visit to a dentist."
In fact, I wasn't in a particularly excited state of mind at that moment. I'd rather describe it as an exhaustion coupled with constant anxiety about how the things were going to turn out for me. In fact, I was on the verge of nervous breakdown. Also, this thought of visiting a dentist and likely dying from an accident during the procedure didn't add any optimism. Actually, I thought that the dentist would just look in my mouth and say something like, "Oh, we cannot do anything about that. You are doomed. The most we can do, probably, is to help you mentally and physically prepare for your inescapable doom."
Something like that. Or it would be a deadly accident. So it was in this state of mind when I finally decided that it was time to overcome my fear and, like a savage warrior with smears of blue on my face, run toward my destiny.
A night before I watched a number of videos about various dental procedures, so I could prepare myself a bit for what awaited me. I picked the most complicated and bloody ones. In one of them, the jaw of the patient was somewhat distorted, and there were spurts and gushes of blood, and I watched it thinking like "well, it probably isn't going to be THAT bad."
So the next morning I was walking to the dentist. It was the early spring, and the cold wind made me swaying a bit from side to side. The horror videos still played in my head, making me shudder and stumble all the way there. Finally, I approached the door of a small dental clinic in the neighborhood, and, when I realized that I arrived, and there is no duration of time separating me from my doom, a dull horror enveloped me, and my feet, following some deep reptilian reflex, quickly carried me away with an amazing speed.
When I found myself approaching a railway bridge several blocks away from the clinic, I felt embarrassed by my cowardice and asked myself, "What am I going to do next?" As a diligent follower of many generations of Epicureans, including those who knew what this word meant and those who didn't, I simply decided that my nerves were too strung up and frazzled, and I needed a drink. And after that, after regaining my sense of balance and internal harmony and tranquility, I would go to the dentist and accept my fate.
So I thought. So I went to some fancy Chinese restaurant, (which was empty because it was obviously too fancy and too Chinese, or rather it was too fancy for a Chinese restaurant, or maybe just due to the fact that it was the middle of a workday,) and ordered a glass of wine. Several minutes later I sipped this divine mix of ethanol and water, feeling how it streamed through my overheated nerve endings, dousing the flames burning on them due to overheating caused by overload, I guess. So I felt good and confident. I could go to the dentist and die if this was something I was supposed to do.
To solidify this feeling of confidence and resolve I ordered another glass of wine. My resolve was never stronger. I realized that it was about time to face my destiny. So I drank several more glasses to add some steel to my courage and went outside.
It was night, and I couldn't remember what I was supposed to do. The themes of courage, destiny, and resolve buzzed in my mind, as well as images of brave Scottish warriors flashing their buttocks. But I wasn't sure what this all was about. So I decided to take a stroll. Although at first, I needed to equip myself because I thought it might've turned out to be an arduous and dangerous expedition through the night. So I came to the nearest kiosk and asked for a can of Jaguar. I wasn't sure that I vocalized my intentions good enough to be understood properly, and the kiosk girl looked at me with irritable incomprehension. So I repeated, mumbling and slurring, the concepts I wanted to convey. I don't remember exactly how this dialogue proceeded further, but I remember that at least I had my can of Jaguar in the end. So, probably, it was successful. Actually, I remember, later I approached this kiosk and repeated my philosophical exchange with that girl, who looked at me with a mix of pity and scorn in her eyes. Probably it was similar to those conversations Plato had with his disciples; I'm certain it had some depth in it.
The following I remember as a sequence of disjointed and disorganized flashes. I remember some alley with benches along it. It was submerged into the darkness of night, and I thought how strange and haunted it looked.
At some point, my perception of reality became somewhat clearer, and I noticed that it became lighter. Obviously, it was morning. I walked down the street, and I had a recollection that I took a bus just before that. Although there were two questions that disturbed me: first, I had no idea where I was, and the second, and most vital, I failed to understand the whole context of what was going on. I walked down the street. It was light; so I concluded it was either morning or day. What I needed to know was why I walked in this unfamiliar part of the city, and couldn't remember the purpose of this walk. Also, I had a bit distorted perception of time. I vaguely felt that something wasn't particularly right with the fact that it was morning. And also with the fact that I couldn't remember myself leaving the house this morning. And the fact that there was a horrible mix of an excruciating headache, nausea, and fog in my head...
Is it usual to see a bear walking around in Moscow? Yes, what's interesting, they also vary in size, shape, and color. There are bears, huge like dragons, who emerge from the river at night. They immediately ascend to the sky, and nobody ever sees them again.
There are small bears of different colors flying around. They have wings like those of dragonflies. So they buzz back and forth, sparkling in the sun. At night they emit light, which makes them look like multiple colorful specks, flying merrily in the air.
Some bears wear horns on their foreheads. According to the legend, they can only be approached by a virgin. Therefore most often they hang out around campuses of tech universities, or in the vicinity of anime conventions.
Some bears wear a human appearance during the day and turn into bears at night. When the sunset approaches they become restless, and the dense hair begin to grow on their legs and armpits. The life of those half bears - half humans is difficult and embarrassing at times. They avoid social gatherings in the evenings. Especially if they are supposed to wear stockings.
Some bears just roam the streets under a disguise of pigeons, looking people in the eye with a silent question "do you have some spare breadcrumbs, dear sir?" When their hunger exceeds their patience, they turn into bears and simply mug people.
Some bears are so infinitesimal that people accidentally inhale them. The bears are getting into their bloodstream causing bear-flu, and people spend days coughing, sneezing, and spreading around green snot.
Some people say that there is a golden statue of an ancient bear, hidden in the depths of the subway. Many daredevils went underground in attempts to discover it and never came back. Some say they were sacrificed by bear worshippers to the bear god.
While I'm writing it, I see how a school of bears traverse the sky, heading to the south. They do it whenever it's autumn, and from the movements of their paws, I can conclude that it'll be raining soon.
Adam stood on a picturesque bridge in this romantic evening of International Women's Day, holding a huge chocolate rabbit in both hands. It was a pleasant day of early spring, with a gentle breeze ruffling the snowdrifts and rocking construction cranes.
Adam stood, holding this chocolate rabbit called Alyonka, bought in a souvenir kiosk for a money equivalent of the monthly salary of the kiosk salesman. Who immediately, after pulling off this transaction, jumped on a train and with a jubilant whistle rode to his home village in steppes, where with that amount of money he was bound to become a chieftain or something.
Adam recalled the words of his father that one doesn't choose to be born a woman, or rather being a woman is not a skill, and all this is bullshit, and we shall not celebrate the possession of a certain set of genitalia. Adam thought that it made sense, but, just in case, he consulted his friend on the matter. His friend, after he understood what this all was about, like, INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY and stuff, and feeling slight prickles of approaching panic, swiftly transferred to Adam a hefty sum of money, supplementing it with an advice to strictly follow traditions, in order to avoid a potential bloodbath.
Seeing a foreigner, walking down the street and pensively brooding about the strangeness of local customs and gender equality, a Bright Merchant from Steppes promptly erected a souvenir booth right on his path. The booth carried a cheerful sign "March 8!" and featured a giant chocolate rabbit called Alyonka. The rabbit held a bouquet of chocolate flowers, wore a dumb smile, and had an inscription in big red letters "Honor Russian Traditions!"
Adam decided that it was kind of a sign of fate or something. Also, he knew that Russian women preferred locally manufactured stuff because it didn't remind them of Nazis, so it was kinda perfect present. One, that would allow avoiding an awkward situation, maybe with potentially lethal consequences, who knows.
So, it was this nice day of early spring, the blizzard calmed down, leaving the city buried in snow and traffic jams. Adam stood under relentless wind on the bridge, and the Expat Community commentators observed him from different vantage points through optical sights, just to make sure that the traditions were abided.
Cries for help became more shrill and desperate. I threw a glance at her. She dropped her cigarette, now there was a glint of urgency in her eyes. She exchanged glances with her best friend, and I could see a mutual understanding in their eyes. His face took a bit haggard and concentrated expression. He pulled his hands from the pockets of his long trenchcoat and clenched and unclenched his knuckles, producing a strange clicking sound. He gave me a quick glance and nod, urging me to follow. I looked at her. For half a second I saw her eyes on me, anxious and questioning. There wasn't much time. Her best friend already swiftly moved into the darkness. I ran after, trying to gather scattered thoughts; everything was unfolding too quickly. The shrill, frightened cries for help became clear and audible now, and I could distinguish vague figures in the darkness. I could hear male voices talking, some muffled laughter. To my distress, there were so many of them. I held in my field of vision the trenchcoat of her best friend to avoid getting lost in the darkness or trip over something. I felt a pat on my shoulder. She was behind me, giving me some sign I couldn't understand. Her best friend turned back and cast a glance at me, giving me some signal with his eyes, which I couldn't understand either. I suddenly saw something like a blade clutched in his bony palm. It was awfully long. There was no time to think about any of this; I just kept running. In the next moment, we were among some people. Her best friend darted forward in front of me as a ghostly shadow. I heard a hard thud and surprised yell of pain. Somebody pushed me sideways, I could hear shouts of surprise and rage from all sides, I felt a smell of pepper spray, and my eyes started itching. Suddenly I was in the center of the commotion; a guy pinned me with a cold, furious stare. I struck, he dodged, then a bolt of lightning exploded in my head, I felt a sharp debilitating pain, my jaw took some unnatural angle, my mouth was filled with something salty, I felt empty space on the right side where my teeth used to be. There was another blow that I couldn't feel, except everything before my eyes became hazy. I saw the silhouette of her best friend moving frantically and gracefully in some wild dance, his blade darting swiftly like a deadly snake back and forth, plunging into intestines and pulling back, dripping black, drawing screams. Then I was on the ground, and somebody crushed my palm with his boot. I didn't care much at that point.
Her best friend looked at me from above. He was messed up, and one of his eyes was missing; the eye socket was filled with some bloody goo. His other eye looked at me with a hint of sympathy. He asked me if I was ok, and I couldn't answer because my jaw was stuck at a strange angle and didn't move. I thought about giving thumbs up, but there was something wrong with my fingers as well. So I just looked at him. Somebody touched my cheek; I saw her looking at me with curiosity and a hint of pity and recognition. I felt better.
They stood solemnly observing how the effervescent sun slowly sunk over the horizon, painting the purple sky around it with a bloody red color. He looked with his eyes, black and shiny like seeds of cucumber, at her lovely mane of gray hair covered with golden rusty stains, which streamed down until it touched the ground and stuck to it. She was absolutely irresistible, and he felt like blood pumped through his veins and accumulated in his penis. He had an awesome body, slick and muscular like a carcass of dried lizard, and he was aware of the effect the sight of it produced on everybody who saw it. He looked at her face tenderly, noticing all the small imperfections and the weird shape of her nose that looked like a ripe mango, accidentally smashed by an elephant suffering from anxiety. He realized, once again, how lovely and unique she was.
"Manambua skauoza," she said with a slightly concealed worry in her voice. Her eyes darted back and forth, taking in various details of the landscape. Then she looked at him questioningly. He frowned and focused his eyes on a small yellow dot on the other side of the river. He was concerned about skauoza.
"Maramba skauoza pupotapu" he blurted absentmindedly, his fists clenching and unclenching. He looked uncertain.
"Pupotapu zamakuku agauoo !" Her eyes were fixed on him, and there was a hint of anger in them. Her pupils dilated and contracted. Her teeth produced disturbing screeching sound, and her muscles involuntarily convulsed in spasms. He concluded that she was angry. He pondered skauoza. He thought that she was right and pupotapu wasn't a solution. It was a foolish thing for him to say. His eyes spun while he tried to figure out an appropriate answer.
"Zamakuku pupu, skauoza mogomago," he noticed how a colorful bird plunged from the sky, capturing a massive boar in its talons, and flew away. The squeals of hairy piglet pierced the evening tranquility. The river muttered and rustled calmly, crickets cricketed among reeds, and splashes of bloody red on the horizon dissolved into nightly purple. Above his head, the sky was vast, black, and mysterious with myriads of faint sparkles shimmering uneasily in its depths. He thought about skauozo, nervously sucking his thumb. His long mottled beard, populated by small insects, slowly vibrated, betraying his uncertainty about skauozo and whether she should have been pupotapu or not.
"Guoouoouoo," she said wistfully looking at some spot far away, her eyes took a dreamy expression, and she started muttering some obscure incantations under her breath. He decided to change the topic. Skauozo could wait. "Fuck skauozo," he thought. Plus it galled him that she called him agauoo. It wasn't how he used to be treated after he became the most successful mushroom gatherer of the tribe. "Maramba" he muttered inaudibly under his nose. His vexation kept increasing while he thought about it. He wanted to punch her in the nose, but she carried an ax. It was a massive rusty ax, designed out of a manhole lid by sharpening its edges and attaching it to the front axle of a tractor. The ax passed from one member of the clan to another when the former was murdered with the ax. It looked like a formidable, graceful, and time-honored indispensable tool for mushroom gathering.
"Manambua zuouou" he said, unsuccessfully trying to conceal his irritation and to add some resemblance of affection to his voice.
"Manambua zuouou gaga" She said a bit absentmindedly, anger gradually evaporating from her eyes. She shook her hair, and pieces of bark, acorns, and small rodents flew in all directions with squeals.
"You know what? Fuck scauozo" he said with determination, looking firmly into her eyes. Her look wavered, her eyes darted back and forth in indecision, her pupils dilated and contracted with an increasing frequency. Eventually, she made up her mind.
"Ok, fuck scauozo."
They looked dreamily at the horizon where the last bloody smears dissolved into the purple fabric of night. The sky above was black, deep, and mysterious with multiple faint sparkles sparkling in its depths. Skauozo was fucked.
The Emperor of the Galaxy sat on his glossy obsidian throne, absentmindedly sucking a dried capricorn. He lifted his heavy eyelids with irritation when the Advisor rushed to his throne panting and sweating.
"The Space Mice arrived, your majesty," said the Advisor obsequiously and started backpedaling surreptitiously in an effort to disappear.
The Emperor threw a cursory glance at the enormous hall with its marble walls, stretching to the sky, where fluffy pieces of clouds floated right below the ceiling. Along the walls stood statues of hedgehogs, holding baskets with almonds and raisins.
"Let them in" screamed the Emperor on the top of his lungs, and the Advisor jumped as if he had been bitten by a snake, spread his scaly wings, and slowly hobbled toward the entrance. Several hours later a group of mice gingerly approached the throne.
"Who are you, and how dare you enter this sacred place?" the Emperor asked with curiosity.
"We are the scientists on a mission to conduct research in this part of the galaxy," answered the mouse standing in front. " By some strange accident we turned into mice, and now we are stranded on this planet, because our spaceship turned into cabbage, and we ate it because our food supply had been stolen by a gang of space cats,"
The Emperor pondered the situation. He remembered some old prophecy about space mice visiting his kingdom. The prophecy told that they were bound to overthrow him, in other words, it was going to end up badly. At the end of it was placed a recommendation: in case of such an incident, get rid of space mice as quickly as possible by throwing them into the pit of hell.
"I see," the Emperor said "I'm not sure how I can help, but I'll try to do something. What do you want me to do?"
The mouse in front unrolled some big scroll covered in some writings and diagrams and started poking at it with a pencil.
"If you can supply us with approximately four point three six thousand billion megawatts of energy, we would be able to bend the space at this spot," the mouse pointed at some bizarre star-like shape at the center. "Then we'll drill a hole in space-time and transport ourselves to our segment of space."
The Emperor sucked his thumb thoughtfully. "So you need some energy to drill some hole to reach the place where you live?" The mice vigorously nodded. The Emperor clicked his fingers, and from depths of dark corridors appeared the scaly shape of a scrawny lizard. "At your service, your Majesty" the lizard croaked, clumsily waddling toward the throne.
"This is my minister of Energy, Irbiz," the Emperor explained, "he knows where the Energy comes from and where to get more. Irbiz, you need to help these fellows to drill a hole to their, well, whatever,"
"My pleasure, my Master" croaked Irbiz "The configuration of stars is particularly favorable for producing energy at this particular moment, so if we decide to start extracting the Energy immediately, we will be able to achieve maximum results. We will have enough surplus energy to blow up something as well."
The Emperor twitched his fingers, ruminating. His fingers produced spooky sounds that echoed through the halls, filling the air with spookiness.
"Yes, I want to blow up something," the Emperor decided eventually "It would be fun," the Emperor clicked his fingers one more time, accidentally broke two fingers, screamed in frustration and started running back and forth through the hall, punching the walls with his good hand. The mice beckoned to the lizard, intent to show him some specifics written on the scroll. After some thinking, the lizard exclaimed "Erika," jumped in excitement, hit the ceiling with its scaly head, broke it and disappeared in the sky. The Emperor kept running through the hall, punching the statues of hedgehogs and shouting incantations.
The Emperor woke up with a start. He sat on his obsidian throne, holding a glass of sulfuric acid in his hand. He drank it and relaxed. He realized that he nodded off and saw a dream about space mice. The Advisor rushed, panting and swearing, through the hall toward the throne and fell in front of it in horror and submission.
"What's up?" asked the Emperor "How dare you to break my contemplation in this our of cosmic synchronization."
"Your majesty, I'm pregnant" announced the Advisor "or no, I mean, you are pregnant," the Advisor briefly consulted the tablet in front of his beak. "Oh, no, I mean the universe is about to be destroyed," The Emperor clicked his fingers in frustration and saw a translucent figure emerging in the air and bowing its turbaned head.
"Ready to serve, my Lord!" the translucent figure exclaimed, slowly floating in the air. The Emperor spread his wings and rushed through the hall toward the exit screaming. The statues of hedgehogs ran after him, throwing almonds at his back. The throne slowly rose in the air and disappeared among the clouds.
