Greegs & Ladders

Chapter 3

                                                           CHAPTER 3

                                          The Resurrection of the Quigg

 

You never knew what you might find in the storage section of our impossible ship.  During our travels we had collected many interesting things.  I had a few secret items stashed away.  Stuff that was much more interesting than frozen Goat's milk.  One of my rarest objects had come from the Planetglomerate. It was an intact skeleton of the now extinct Quigg species.  We were long overdo for a resurrection of these incredibly useful creatures.

I carried a small cryogenic tank back to the bridge and presented the skeleton to Wilx.

“I need you to clone this creature back to life,” I said.

“What creature?” asked Wilx.  “Why?”

“It's a Quigg.  It might be the only way to convince him to help us maneuver Garbotron.”         

“Convince who?”

“Milt,” I replied.  “You know, that nutty little fruit fly.  We'll present the Quigg as a gift.”

“Right,” said Wilx.  “I'll start up the cloning machine in a minute.  First I need to work out some data on the chalkboard.  The machine gets confused when presented with the genetic makeup of an unfamiliar species.”

Wilx walked over to the chalkboard.  The word MEETS had already been written in the middle of the board.  Wilx attempted to erase the word, having forgotten it was permanently etched there.

“Why is the word 'meets'stuckon this chalkboard?”  he asked. 

“I invented that chalkboard during my time on Earth.  It's meant to be used in pitch-meetings between screenwriters and movie-producers.  Often writers pitch ideas by saying is a combination of two other popular movies.”

“I understand the concept,” said Wilx.  “Movie-producers wish to invest with minimal amount of risk by merely reproducing what has already been proven to be a money-maker.”

“Indeed,” I replied.  “I figured if a lot of people are pitching their movie merely by writing blank MEETS blank onto a board, then I could at least save everyone the time from spelling out the word MEETS. The 'Something-Meets-Something Chalkboard' was one of my most popular inventions.  It sold thousands of units in Hollywood alone.  It was estimated I shaved hours off the yearly schedules of those who bought one.”

For someone of Wilx's technological brilliance, bringing the Quigg back to life ended up being a surprisingly easy task.

“Why don't we bring extinct species back all the time?”  I asked.

“Because we don't mysteriously happen to have frozen samples of these hypothetical species on hand.”

“Good point,” I said.

“For the most,” continued Wilx. “If a species sucks enough at living to go extinct... it's probably for the best.”

“Another good point,” I said.

“But throughout the Universe, bringing back species from extinction is a supremely popular activity.  There are entire planets devoted to Extinction Attraction Parks, mostly in the over-commercialized Zenib Quadrant.”

“Oh, you mean like Jurassic Park.”

“Dinosaurs never existed on Earth, silly.  Rip put them there to test humanity's faith in Giant Lizards.”

The now-living Quigg confusedly examined our ship.  After a few minutes it remembered its purpose and began to scrub the floors.

“Oh, don't worry about cleaning the ship,” I said to the Quigg.  “Save your energy for Garbotron, you'll need it.”

The Quigg either didn't hear us, or didn't understand.

“Might as well let it keep cleaning,” said Wilx.  “The ship could use it.”

“Should we wake up Rip for the Garbotron ground-mission?”  I asked.

“Yeah.”

We defrosted Rip from his cryogenic sleep.  He snapped awake with vigor, showing none of the groggy hangover effects common after a long sleep.

“So, what are we up to?”  he asked.  Wilx got him caught up.

“We're on a mission to find the recently vanished planet of Jupiter.  Krimshaw believes the disappearance has been caused by the Life-to-Planet Totality Quotient, and that Jupiter is still intact somewhere in distant space.  Our only hope to find it is to have a sample of its atmosphere for the tracking beacon.  For a time there were samples stored in a museum on Earth, only the museum was bombed and the remnants were sent to Garbotron.  We're now at Garbotron in hopes of finding a surviving piece of the atmosphere.  We plan on once again asking the fruit fly Milt for directions, except we plan on actually getting directions this time by having a bribe in the form of a recently cloned specimen of a Quigg, the once extinct cleaning species.”

During that rant, Rip had generally only noticed the word Garbotron.

“We're there again?!”  he moaned.  “Why did you wake me?”

“Because you might miss something amazing,” replied Wilx.

“On Garbotron?”

“No, probably not on Garbotron.  But later.  If we find Jupiter.”