Category: Science fiction

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 3.7

A Tall Tail……..

“What!! What!!” I retorted like a very grumpy parrot, “what are you going on about you blathering Jabbertwit.”
s
“I am not a a Jabbertwit you moronic a….” Cat failed to finish his sentence as all of a sudden he sailed through the air a good 20 metres at least, before bouncing several time like a flat stone ricocheting off the surface of a pond, before coming to a stop. This obviously unexpected ‘Cat flight’ had coincided with me turning around as sharply as I could manage, given the strange mobility problems I was having.

“What happened to you?” I said to Cat, “stop mucking around or did some mysterious force throw you across whatever space we’re in?”

By now Cat was back on all fours and approaching slowly. In a voice bristling with indignation he said,

“I was not kicked by any mysterious force. There is no mystery here. Your blasted tail imparted the force that sent me flying. You’re going to have to learn to control that thing whilst I work out what’s going on.”

“Huh? What do you mean tail you, you, you…. “ I struggled for a sufficiently abusive term to use to describe Cat finally settling on ending my sentence rather lamely with,

“You creaTURE!!!!”

“That’s a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, if you don’t mind me saying,” said Cat.

“What are you on about?” I yelled.

“Well,” said Cat, “I know I have a tail but I’m a Cat. I’m supposed to have a tail. Humans are not supposed to have a tail. So I suggest that before you start calling me a ‘creature’ you take a good look back behind you and listen carefully to what’s coming out of your mouth.”

At that I froze, which wasn’t too difficult given the lumbering nature of my current movements. I looked over my right shoulder and forced my eyes downward as far as I could. I could see a metre or so of a slightly glistening and quite thick tail. It had a sharply pointed end. I then turned around clockwise  as quickly as I could, which basically required about 7 steps sideways with my right foot, whilst my left foot followed with small forward stepping movements. As I looked behind and down once having completed the turn, I realised that the tail was still there, behind me. I blinked slowly and then Cat said,

“Looks to me like you’re getting it. Let me help the dawn spread further though across that barren desert that makes up your brain.”

To be continued……..

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 3.6

It Begins to Dawn……

“At last’” I said, “some sensible words out of that whiskered rubber ‘mush’ of yours that should get me off this thing.”

With that I tried to roll my body to the right but found I could only go sideways a little. I tried again, this time with a bit more effort, and managed to get almost onto my side, but still my body couldn’t quite fully turn and duly rocked back to its position with my back against the floor. Or rather, against the Mudlizard I should say.

“I must be glued to this ruddy Mudlizard,” I said to Cat.

“Errrrr, ummm, yes, you could say that,” he responded.

“Well don’t just hover there pointlessly. For goodness sake help me get off this thing and up,” I yelled.

“As you wish,” mewed Cat.

Cat floated down to one side of me and then pushed with all his mechanical strength to roll me over onto my front. I immediately lifted my elbows so as to be able to push against the palms of my hands to finally heave myself upward from the floor. I managed to get to my knees with some difficulty. I seemed to be a little heavier than normal. Maybe the gravity was different here to Earth? Strangely I found that if I tried to now push up with my knees so as to stand up, nothing much happened. There was real resistance as soon as I leaned backward even slightly, in any effort to be able to complete the standing up movement.

Cat moved to hover directly above me and said, “Let me help,” at which point he moved down through the air and grabbed the collar of my tunic top before thrusting upward. Somewhat unceremoniously, I thought, I was pulled to my feet though whilst finally up and vertical so to speak, I found myself having to stand with an unnaturally wide-legged stance. I couldn’t understand it but it felt like there was a heavy weight attached to my backside. Surely it couldn’t be the Mudlizard?

I tried turning my head to look behind me but found that I could barely move my neck without pain. I must have damaged it on my abrupt and somewhat hard landing at the bottom of the hole. By this time Cat had hovered to be by my side but he quickly disappeared again from view behind me.

“What are you doing back there,” I asked in an irritated tone.

“Just looking,” responded Cat, “it’s really quite amazing. You can’t see any join.”

To be continued……….

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 3.5

Identity Crisis or What?!!

I tried to stand up but the tail wouldn’t let me and kept pulling me back. It was almost as if it was attached to me.

“Don’t panic,” said Cat suddenly, “it won’t help.”

“What do you mean don’t panic. I can’t get up. This thing, this Mudlizard, is holding me down. Or am I attached to it? I mean I can’t feel it moving. Is it dead?” I said, again in that strange gobbledegook language that Cat seemed to manage to understand. I was at this point assuming that something associated with the shock to my body as I had landed, was causing my wordsto sound the way they did to me.

“Hmmmmm,” started Cat before continuing,”it’s not dead as such.”

“Oh my God, you mean it’s still breathing,” I gasped alarmingly.

“In a manner of speaking,” responded Cat, “yes, it is breathing.”

“What do you mean,” I replied in an exasperated manner, “in a ‘manner of speaking’?”

“Well,” responded Cat, “your breathing so it’s breathing.”

“Huhhh,” I said, getting increasingly frustrated, “are you suggesting that if I were not breathing the Mudlizard wouldn’t be? I mean what? Am I so poisonous that if a Mudlizard ate me it would die?”

Cat looked at me with furrowed whiskers and said, “Your mind works in the strangest of ways. No, I was not suggesting you were poisonous to Mudlizards, though it would actually be quite handy if you were. Rather, I was trying to point out the connection.”

This explanation was no better and I made my exasperated-ness plain with an extra loud HUHHHH!!!!! To which Cat responded,

“Perhaps rather than me trying to explain further could I suggest that you roll over on to your tummy and then stand up?”

To be continued………..

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 3.4

What is all this Dribbling?

What did he mean I wondered as I moved my hand to touch my mouth and felt the wetness on my face. As I pulled my hand away long thick stringy bits of gooey saliva came along too, one end attached to my hand, the other end to my face. Suddenly two of the stringy strands of goo, having stretched so far, snapped under the tension and splattered back into my face. Why was I dribbling so much? I mean I knew that when I slept or watched Carlah McBee in Phantoms of the Cosmo-Universe I drooled a bit. But not this much. This was more flood than dribble. Very strange.

I felt suddenly strong enough to roll over onto my back, which I duly did. As I looked down my body I could see that my abdomen was much higher than my chest. I was clearly sitting on something and could definitely now feel something under my backside. I sat up partially, inclining my head and neck up and forward as I tested the integrity of my upper body on my forearms and elbows. I looked down my body and saw, sticking out from between my legs a tail. I recognised instantly that it was a Mudlizard’s tail. I had been close enough to these unspeakable beasts enough times in the past to know a Mudlizard’s tail from your average tail I can tell you. Even their tails exuded evil, foul, dastardly and devious plans for anyone encountering them. And that applied especially to me since I was on their ‘Most Wanted in Itemised Pieces’ list! So, how had I managed to land on a Mudlizard in my fall to the bottom of this hole? It was not actually the first time that I had landed on a Mudlizard. However, at least last time I was expecting to encounter them in some way, given that I was on board one of their spaceships at the time. This, was more of a surprise.

Anyways, as I sat up further I naturally wondered a)  what a Mudlizard was doing here, wherever ‘here’ was, b)where was the rest of it and c) why was I dribbling so much?

To be continued………

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 3.3

Ouch and Gibberish

Now it was definitely my turn to stare.

“Are you mad,” I said. “I don’t speak Mudlizard. How could I? I am not a Mudlizard nor am I a Mudlizard interpreter.”

Cat held one paw up and said,

“Watch this replay.”

He then aircast in front of my nose a recording of me saying ‘I don’t speak Mudlizard. How could I? I am not a Mudlizard nor am I a Mudlizard interpreter’, only in the recording what I heard was,

‘Scheukk gorbu blup falloopu grardge bhnnahhah’.

“That can’t be right,” I said, “your just applying some filter to make it sound like that. Really Cat, this is not the time to play mildly amusing jokes. I really think you should be focusing on finding a way to get me out of whatever it is I’m in.”

And lo and behold, right then, just as the word ‘in’ finished, I stopped floating. Abruptly. I kind of saw it coming in the sense that the extent to which I could see around me rapidly extended moments before the collision. Literally from between the ‘ih’ and ‘nuh’ of ‘in’ I went from being just about able to see Cat’s face in front of me to being able to see clearly all around. At that very moment I also just about had time before impact to realise I had not been floating around, but actually traveling quite fast.

It’s hard to describe in one word the sound that my body made as it slammed into what I presumed was a floor or the ground. Possibly ‘bang’ sums it up best. I lay very still, face down. My eyes were open and so was my mouth. I held my head up at an acute angle to the floor, my eyes widening as I felt warm wet stuff running from the corner of my mouth and down my chin. Blood. Oh my cosmos, it was blood. I was damaged. Internal bleeding. I was going to end here, crumpled, broken and bleeding to death on some floor down someone’s hole.

As I stretched my chin further away from the floor, Cat’s voice cut through the air with,

“Goodness me, that must have hurt. Lucky I broke your fall a little by going reverse thrust with my hovering as best I could.”

I tried to say thank him sarcastically but it came out as ‘Mkrggug’ and I thought this must be linked to the blood that was probably gushing from my mouth due, doubtless, to myriad internal injuries.

“If you’re going to thank me try not to use such a sarcastic tone,” said Cat.

How did he know I was being sarcastic I thought, I’d only managed to emit the sound ‘Mkrggug’ after all. I spoke again as more warm wetness flowed from my mouth and tried to say ‘I’m injured, bleeding, help me Cat’ but it came out as more gibberish and I heard ‘Cungryeka nutcdh bhachda’.

Cat instantly responded saying, “Well I can’t be sure until I’ve done some scans, but you don’t look that injured to me.”

I was really puzzled. He was clearly understanding my gibberish and I was obviously speaking gibberish because of the injuries I had sustained from my fall. I had to make him understand that so that he could help me. I tried to do this and heard from my own mouth,

“Rahkkhah pooeya nshjuds percumbhh fyuta,”

“Trust me,” said Cat, “you are not seriously injured. That isn’t blood flowing from your mouth, it’s just dribble. You are however possibly slightly changed by your recent journey……”

To be continued………..

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 3.2

Sprechen sie Mudlizard?

At this point I felt like I was drifting slowly through whatever space or location I was in. Shapes continued to appear and disappear, some flying by me and, bizarrely, some passing right through me. Or at least that’s how it felt. When that happened I could feel my entire body, which was still slightly distended, vibrate rather alarmingly. Over time, wherever I was had grown appreciably lighter and I could see around me quite clearly as I continued to drift like a grain of pollen in the wind. My voice had also recovered and when I spoke now what came out was at a normal speed, or so it felt to me.

“Where exactly are we?” I said to Cat, who was still hovering by the top end of my body.

He had been silent for a while and remained so, staring at me in quite an intimidating manner I thought. His whiskers twitched noticeably.

“Well,” I said, “cat got your tongue?”

Of course in normal circumstances I would have thought saying that to him was quite funny. But I was close to delivering my last 3 meals at explosive pace through my rear end right then, so I didn’t laugh.

Once again he just stared at me, transfixing his green eyes on my mouth and then finally, he spoke, “Say ‘what’ again,”

“What, what, WHAT?” I yelled at him.

“Anything,” said Cat.

“I didn’t say ‘anything’,” I replied somewhat testily.

“No, no. I don’t mean the word ‘anything’. I don’t mean just that word. I mean just say ‘anything’, said Cat.

Now it can was my turn to blink and stare. I mean what did he mean by ‘say anything’?

Suddenly Cat shouted, “JUST REPEAT AFTER ME, ‘THE BAFFLEBERRY JUICE HAS DISAPPEARED AGAIN’

“Eh? Are you nuts?” I yelled back as best I could. “What’s wrong with you? Have you gone deaf? Can you not hear me you rubberised tin can?”

“Oh I can hear you alright. I’m just a bit stunned that’s all,” responded Cat.

“By what?” I queried, “by the situation? If so, join the club.”

“Not so much by the situation,” answered Cat, “more by the fact you are talking to me in fluent ‘Mudlizard’ as opposed to the usual Earth bound language you normally use.”

To be continued…….

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 3.1

Oh No, Not a Mudlizard…

Whilst I remained unable to speak properly my other senses began to kick in. I could feel myself beginning to slowly shrink back to a more normal length. Of course I could see, and though at first everything had been pretty dark, things had brightened up substantially coincidentally since Cat had first spoken out of the darkness. What I could now see was however hard to describe. Well, apart from Cat that is, who was hovering right by my face. He looked just as irritating as he always did.

There were floating objects all around me, none of which had a consistent shape really. Sometimes they were round but then square or oblong or very long and thin. And sometimes an object that was at one moment an amorphous lump would magically assume a discernible living shape. Sometimes a clearly human form, other times another life form. I was sure I had already seen a Silurian silkworm, a Commsterr and, I wasn’t certain, but possibly a Mudlizard!!!

It was the smell that gave the Mudlizard away. Those creatures were really foul. And they hated me. For absolutely no good reason I have to say. I had been on the Mudlizard Leadership’s ‘Wanted in Itemised Pieces’ for several years ever since Cat’s Father, Cat, had caused me to get into their bad books by twarting one or two of their maniacal plans to destroy Earth and conquer the Universe. They really were very unpleasant creatures with an unsavoury fixation on dismemberment, amongst other things. What was one of them doing here I wondered? Wherever ‘here’ was. Had I finally been captured by these beasts?

To be continued………

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 3

Was I now a Klingfilm?……..

As I was drawn downward, panic began to build in me. Not only was my body stretched already to what felt like at least twice it’s normal length, I was disappearing through the apparent floor of the Drome. On top of that I couldn’t actually say anything intelligible. I couldn’t even scream. ‘What was down there’? ran through my racing mind, over and over again. This was surely one of my worst nightmares.

Suddenly, my head, now feeling really long and pointed, was sucked through the floor. Everything went dark and totally silent. Oh my, I was trapped. Buried. Destined to live on, breathe on, in this isolated, immobilised state. Until of course  I starved to death. Or died of thirst. Which of those came first I thought. It was thirst. I was sure that would finish me before starvation. But how long would that take?

Suddenly I could hear again as Cat’s somewhat hissy voice spat,

“About 7 days you Splart.”

I was so pleased to learn that my auditory senses were working again. So pleased, that the fact that Cat was yet again comparing me to the only organism in the Universe thicker than an amoeba, failed to annoy me as it usually did.

I couldn’t however speak. Well, or at least it didn’t sound like I could speak normally. I was definitely trying to ask Cat what in Captain Crack’s Universe had happened but all I could hear was something like ‘Wurrghh nah Carpa Crarrgghh Ubisserghh blah harghhhh’. I wasn’t Earth’s foremost Captain Crack afficianado you understand, but it did sound a little like I was speaking Klingfilm. Or whatever that race with the rock like heads was called in the 20th Century episodes of Star Trick.

“That’s remarkably like Klingon you know,” said Cat.

“Krarghhuh,” I said in apparently near perfect Klingfilm.

“Exactly,” responded Cat, who seemed to be enjoying this. He then added,

“And if you think I’m enjoying this, you would be quite wrong.”

I began to wonder again whether his latest upgrade was allowing him to hack into my Cortex Thought Assistant. There had been so many times recently at home, when I had decided to boot his butt, that he had moved well out of booting distance before my thought had even started its journey from ‘brain to boot’.

To be continued…….

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 2.16

That Sinking Feeling…..

As I had stepped through the entrance doors to the CombatDrome though I did feel a distinct downward pull on my body, generally everything looked fine and actually quite normal. There, right in front of me, was the floor as one might expect. Ok it was checkered, a bit like a chessboard, and made my eyes go a little funny when I first looked at it, but it did look exactly like a normal floor. However, I quickly discovered that stepping onto it was more like stepping into it.

As I put my front leg forward and my foot down, I felt my body begin to fall away from me. My right leg seemed to stretch to a very abnormal length as the floor became concave beneath my feet and also expanded in all directions, distorting the black and white squares immediately beneath me. I sensed myself being sucked into the floor as my body grew even more, extending the distance from my mouth to my feet most alarmingly. Surely, I thought, I would soon distend some part of me so much that I would break into two somewhere along my body.

As ever, my training for unexpected emergencies like this kicked in instinctively, as one would expect. Accordingly, I freaked out totally as panic engulfed me and I tried to scream ‘HELPPPPPPPPP CAAAAAT’. Unfortunately not much more than a long groaning guttural grunting noise emerged from my mouth, as my body continued its expansion and I slowly but surely sank down into the floor.

To be continued in Chapter 3……

The Sequestran Dilemma – Chapter 2.15

A Hole is a Hole, or is it?

As I stood up I accidentally stood on one of the Prorex’s hands but she didn’t stir. Cat had certainly sent her into dreamland, which would be a nightmare I thought for anyone unfortunate enough to be in one of her dreams. Anyway, we needed to get on I decided and sort out this Drome hole now that the Prorex was thankfully out of the equation.

I stood tall, now that Cat had fixed the sensors in my shoes before straightening my tunic, determined to recover my poise and dominance over the situation.

“Right,” I said to Cat in the authoritative tone I normally reserved for circumstances when I was about to do something stupidly brave, “I’m going to take a look at this blasted hole. I want to get away from this mad place as soon as possible. And definitely before she wakes up,” I said, accidentally treading on her other hand as I walked away.

“I would strongly advise against that,” said Cat.

“Why?” I queried, “is there a problem? You’ve  been and looked. Surely it’s safe enough. And it is just just a hole, right? It’s simple and straightforward in my view. It’s a hole, probably caused by some sort of air subsidence, and we just need to advise it to be filled in. Don’t know really why I was called in the first place. Or why I’m going to look at it now. But I’m going to, if only to show that potty Prorex that I’m in charge here,” I ended triumphantly.

“I really would strongly advise that you leave this hole well alone. It is no ordinary hole trust me,” said Cat.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped at Cat.

“About what?” enquired Cat.

“Suggesting firstly that I trust you and secondly that this is no ordinary hole. A hole is a hole. Well, so no long as it’s not a black hole of course. It’s not a black hole is it?” I asked as I momentarily paused my determined march to the Drome, thinking obviously if it was a black hole, well, that was different.

“No, it’s not a black hole,” said Cat, “definitely not a black hole. Buhhh….”

Cat’s intended ‘but’ was cut off by the instant return of my new found determination to get on with it kicking back in, as I responded,

“Well there we are then. If it’s not a black hole then I can go and have a look at it can’t I? You have after all”

“Yes, but you don’t understand. It’s no ordinary hole,” blustered Cat as he hovered up beside my head. “For one thing, it’s really really big and…..”

I cut him off again mid sentence as I reached the main doors to the Drome with,

“Ok, I get it. It’s a big hole. I’ll be careful. Like I said before, a hole is a hole. If it’s not a black hole. And as it’s not, what’s the worst that can happen? As long as I don’t fall in I’ll be alright.”

With that line, which, assuming I survive will be a stand out one, I fell into the hole having wrenched open the large double entrance doors to the Drome. This was despite Cat’s last minute efforts to stop me, by hooking one of his paws into the belt of my trousers and slamming his hovering capability into sharp reverse.

Cat was absolutely right. This was no ordinary hole. For a start, it wasn’t really a hole at all or at least not a hole that looked much like a hole.

To be continued…….