CHAPTER 16
Planetary Relativity, Astrospeciology and Fleeing in Haste
It was now 1.7 years after Rip had made his outlandish bet that he was about to win. It should be noted that Rip, being the clever bloke he was, had actually duped the audience considerably. As any seasoned traveller of time and space can tell you, a year is a very relative term. On the planet Schmick for example, a year is about the time it takes you to read:
This.
There you go, another Schmickian year gone by. By the time you next see a period a whole decade will have gone by. The planet Schmick is about four inches away from the sun it revolves around. Well, it doesn’t actually revolve around it so much. Not all planets revolve around their suns. Not all go in circles, or ellipses, or ovals. Some make boxes, zig-zags, figure 8’s, loop-dee-loops, jittery slaloms, loping spirals, corkscrews and spastic shuffles. Some planets interact with one another as they go about their sun; performing doe-see-does or bumping and jostling as they go. Others go directly at their sun, these are called “suicidal planets.” Some don’t move at all. They are referred to as “Lazy Planets.” Some super intelligent, lazy planets have risen up against their sun, banded together and made the sun revolve around them. These are called “Union Planets.” Others, like Schmick, disappear and reappear in multiple places around their sun at a dizzying speed. This makes it appear as if they are actually occupying every single space around the sun at all times. They are doing exactly this. Schmick is not really a planet and its sun isn’t technically a sun. But there’s no point in trying to explain that to you.
Other planets crawl at a pace that would make Grovulant Sloggerz look like Riptulating Froppers. These planets never use the year as a standard of time. Instead they prefer to time things out in general, ballpark phrases like “When that thing happens later on.” These planets are absolutely useless to anyone looking to fuel up their space ship, as clearly no investment banker could ever thrive in such a lackadaisical environment.
So, being that the only sort of creatures who would travel to a remote planet to watch Carnival Greegs with a notorious, gambling drunkard are not the sort of creatures who know an awful lot about the relativity of time and space, and being that Dr. Rip T. Brash was acutely aware of this fact, and that 2 years on this particular planet was longer than the lifespan of most of the witnesses at the Carnival… he was right on schedule to keep his priceless fleet of Obotron 7 Space Ships. That is, had he not already lost them in a much wilder and exotic bet to an Astrospeciologist ‘friend’ of his the next night… which he most certainly had.
It was all in good fun for Rip. He obtained and lost priceless items at such a staggering pace it barely even registered. What did register was that he was now sitting at the bar with his Astrospeciologist ‘friend’ and a former Greeg. The Greeg had no memory or recollection that he was once a lowly, degenerate Greeg. The Astrospeciologist was a specialist in Greegs. He was fascinated by them. As was Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third. The Astrospeciologist was telling Rip his latest theory on The Greegs. Through his constant reading and research of seemingly infinite sources of information, he had come to the conclusion that there was a planet buried deep in the 59 sunned district of Herb where Greegs were the dominant species. Through absolutely no knowledge whatsoever, and a desire to contradict anything for the sake of a good drunken wager, Rip proclaimed this was both ridiculous and impossible. Rip immediately and loudly bet all of the possessions of a fellow named Jim he was about to own that such a place did not exist. The Astrospeciologist, whose life work and lavish lifestyle had been entirely funded by being a ‘friend’ of Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third, agreed wholeheartedly to the wager. They would leave in the morning in a shiny fleet of Obotron 7 space ships in search of the mystical All Greeg Planet. Or as Rip put it “To search for yet more proof that you're an idiot, and I am right.”
The planet they were currently drinking on being the planet that it was, the morning was quite a bloody long time away. The former Greeg formerly known as Zook being the former Greeg formerly known as Zook that he was, reacted strangely to the news of possibly going to a possibly existing All Greeg Planet. He picked up the bar tender with one hand and hurled his body across the bar into a group of very surprised Meditating Mockriffs. This unprovoked outburst of violence was unheard of outside of a Greeg cage, and so the reaction from the other creatures in the bar was a combination of shock and anger.
“Hey, how about we leave right now instead?” said the Astrospeciologist.
“Damned fine idea,” said Rip, stealing several bottles of Crammington Krish Fortinis from behind the bar for the trip. As they ran away from the angry and hotly pursuant mob, Rip turned to the former Greeg formerly known as Zook and asked, “Why’d you do that back there old friend?”
“Must be that last CKF,” said the former Greeg formerly known as Zook.
Nowadays he was known as Krimshaw, the only real, actual friend of Dr. Rip T. Brash The Third. As the priceless fleet of Obotron 7 Space Ships took off in haste, Krimshaw took a peek out of the window and saw Naddy making his eighth attempt with the female Greeg. For reasons unbeknownst to him, this inspired him to inflict serious and irreparable damage to the ship’s guidance system, sending it rocketing through space and time blindly. Generally, this is not a good idea.
This time was no exception.