CHAPTER 5
Something Excellent
After hours of sifting through the rubble, it was Wilx who finally found an uninjured sample of Jupiter. He had always been the best at finding things.
“Here it is!” he shouted exuberantly. “I found it!”
He held out a clear cylinder.
“It's made of glass,” I said. “Amazing it hasn't shattered after all these years.”
“It can't shatter,” said Wilx, reading the fine print on the bottom of the container. “It's made of unbreakable Jardian mega-prisms.”
“I think we proved that Jardian mega-prisms aren't unbreakable with the whole Chalkboard of Elbereth scenario,” stated Rip.
“Right. Nearly unbreakable Jardian Mega-prisms,” corrected Wilx.
We gathered around the sample. Brownish-red gaseous vapor mixed with itself in an amazingly psychedelic way.
“It's so... hypnotizing,” drooled Rip as he grabbed the container and unscrewed the cap.
“What are you doing?!” shouted Wilx. “You'll let it escape!”
Rip proceeded to drink the entire contents of the Jupiter sample. We then had one of our typical moments of silence as we contemplated Rip's insane decisions.
First he bubbled out his ears. Then his pupils crazily swirled like black ink diffusing in a saucer-full of curdled milk. He began to rant about ridiculous prophecies that he thought were being channeled to him from the missing entities of Jupiter.
“I... understand,” whispered Rip in an usually high voice. He then turned and collapsed in such a manner that made his body look like a twisted heap of cheap rag-doll limbs.
As soon as he woke up a few hours later, we questioned him about why he had done such a thing.
“I don't know,” he replied. “It seemed like the right thing to do. What happened anyway?”
“You kept talking about these prophecies you thought you were channeling,” said Wilx. “Then you said 'I understand.' What did you understand? Did you actually have a connection with some sort of entity? Did it tell you where Jupiter has gone?”
“Yes,” said Rip. “I saw and understood everything about the fate of Jupiter.”
“Well?!” asked Wilx.
“Oh, I don't remember any of it. You probably should have been writing it down I guess.”
“That's it then,” said Wilx dejectedly. “You drank away our only chance of finding Jupiter.”
“Not necessarily,” said Rip as he covered his mouth. “It's not sitting too well. I think it's on the way up.”
He grabbed the container and threw up.
“Here you go,” he wheezed, before passing out again for a few hours. Rather than wait for him to wake up we just lugged his body onto the ship.
The Quiggs had continued to multiply at an unbelievable rate. From orbit we could see the cleanliness of the Oviform spreading outwards like a meteoric strike. It seemed as if the whole planet would be repaired in a matter of days. Quiggs were saving the planet they had once plotted to help destroy.
How were the Quiggs getting rid of all the garbage, you ask? While Quiggs of the past were excellent cleaners, they still needed a space in which to send unwanted material (hence their former plan to have all the Greeg garbage blasted off the planet), however these new Garbotron-Evolved Quiggs were far more powerful. They had developed the power to break matter down to the point where it took up virtually no space at all. For instance, Diaper Mountain was condensed down to one-third the size of a single dust particle. The Lake of Liquids now wouldn't even fill a fruit-fly's drinking glass, and The Wall of Leftover Cheese-Like Products now took up no more space than one or two of Julius Caesar's left nostril-hairs.
We decided to check back in on the progress of Garbotron after the Jupiter Mission.