The Fez Journeys On

  “What do you think I am?”

  “I think you’re evil.”

  “Do you actually have a reason for that?”

  “Quack told me.”

  “And that makes it true, does it?”

  “You’re the one who makes it true or false. And at the moment you don’t seem too friendly.”

  Michael Rowland Daffodil placed his cup under the machine and got some more ice. “You may find, the Space Chicken, that you have sorely mistaken me. You often place the most minor thought out of place – we all do – and this leads to grave misunderstandings. Goodnight, Chicken.”

  Michael Rowland Daffodil brushed past the Space Chicken and made for the door. The Space Chicken caught him just in time. “Why are you here? You could have run away. You have the key to the Speedvan. I wouldn’t have been able to catch you.”

  “I’m not running,” he said, “because I’m not a criminal.” He slurped some more water. “And even if I were I wouldn’t flee.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m here to help you learn.” He put his cup in the bin. “Goodnight, the Space Chicken, and sleep well.”

  The Space Chicken didn’t sleep well at all.

  Chapter 23

  The next morning, all the group members rose individually, of their own accord, except for Clint and Clein, who (being intelligent twins) automatically woke at the same time. Of course, being 17-year-olds, they were also reluctant to get out of bed. When they eventually did so, the Space Chicken joined them in shifting out of redundancy, flapping his feathers into place and cradling Fred Jr in his wings once again.

  Michael Rowland Daffodil made it all look easy. He looked in a mirror, as though his hair really bothered him, but gave one simple sweep of his hand through the big, blonde matt and ended up with a dazzling swish which ran from his forehead to his left ear in one effortlessly maintained do. While the Space Chicken always had bags under his eyes and constantly had to keep flapping to keep his feathers in order and blinking his third eyelids to moisten his eyes, and Clint and Clein had all the marks of lazy youth idleness, Michael Rowland Daffodil simply splashed water upon his young face in order to cleanse himself of all possible ailments, not that he had anything wrong, anyway.

  As they were in BongVe Bong by this point, the same location as the Fez, the group could automatically locate the Fez, and they automatically understood that it was following roughly the same path it had been the last time the four of them had been in BongVe Bong. Now it was slightly farther Nekken.

  Michael Rowland Daffodil drove the four other travellers up the road, but stopped soon afterwards at a diner to buy them breakfast.

  “Have any of you done this before?” he asked.

  “Yep,” said Clein.

  “We do it every day,” said Clint.

  Michael Rowland Daffodil’s blue eyes widened. “How is that possible?”

  “We have breakfast all the time. Morning, noon and night.”

  Michael Rowland Daffodil rolled his eyes. “I meant who’s travelled to the Fez before?”

  “We all have,” the Space Chicken said. “We went there three days ago.”

  “You lot are mental.”

  “We had Dave and Dave with us then.”

  “Who are they? Specifically who is the first Dave?”

  “Oh, Dave? He’s crazy.”

  “What about the other Dave?”

  “Crazy Dave.”

  “No, the other one.”

  “The other one is Crazy Dave. The first one is just normal Dave, but he’s crazy,” the Space Chicken failed to explain. “Crazy Dave is a weird fourteen-year-old we met at FezFans and then later outside eating a cheeseburger from a bin.”

  “He did love his cheeseburgers,” Clint commented.

  “Normal Dave was just your average guy, but he was still equally weird. He’s around your age,” the Space Chicken added to Michael Rowland Daffodil.

  “Why did you decide to search for the Fez?” asked Michael Rowland Daffodil.

  “Quack had sent me on a mission.”

  “What, another quest to abduct an ordinary guy you’ve never met?”

  The Space Chicken made to protest, but realised that this was perfectly true.

  ‘I developed physically on the journey, from a thought to a person, though I imagine I would have had my own reasons to travel anyway.’

  “Did your Egg just talk?” asked Michael Rowland Daffodil. “That’s awesome! I thought he just flew around and wiggled his legs.”

  “Yes. Yes, he is an Egg.” The Space Chicken glared daggers at the twins. “But they’re arms, not legs.”

  “They look like legs.”

  “They act like arms.”

  ‘I’m fine whatever.’

  “You stay out of this.”

  An employee of the restaurant arrived at the table with their meals. The twins had fat bacon, eggs, greasy sausages, mushrooms, slimy beef, hash and dismal toast – what was commonly referred to as a ‘full European breakfast’. The Space Chicken and Michael Rowland Daffodil had a grand compilation of fruits: slices of oranges, apples and pears, some grapes and grapefruits, a lot of peaches, apricots and mangoes, melons of all different shapes, sizes and colours and the finest plums, cherries, berries and strawberries you can think of. Fred Jr had a soup that had been ordered for him by the Space Chicken but he was unable to eat or drink.

  “Are you not having any meat?” Clint asked of Michael Rowland Daffodil, though it was clear he wasn’t.

  “It’s not good for you, you know,” the Space Chicken interjected. “You’re shortening your lives. I feel my lifespan shortening just looking at it.”

  “Why do you care, Space Chicken? You’re pater—”

  “I’m eternal, yes. I am the Space Chicken, as you so rightly say, and so I care about the animals and I take into consideration the deaths caused by your eating that food. If you can call it food...”

  “But you’re a chicken—”

  “I’m a Chicken.”

  “Bacon comes from cows,” said Clint. “It’s not like you’re the same thing.”

  “And anyway,” said Clein, “you’re a prophet, so you’re not even distantly related to them.”

  “But we’re all people,” cried the Space Chicken. “Does it not bother you that, had you been born to different parents, that you could have been what Clein’s eating?”

  “I am Clein. He’s Clint.”

  “Same thing. You could still both have been dead meat.”

  “Well we’re not.” Clint bit into a chunk of flesh and liquid fat dribbled out. “Anyway,” he said to Michael Rowland Daffodil, whose name Clint couldn’t remember, “why aren’t you eating any meat?”

  “I’m a vegetarian,” he replied.

  Clint stopped in his tracks. “Oh,” he said disappointedly. “Why?”

  “For all the reasons the Space Chicken just mentioned and more.”

  The Space Chicken looked at him in awe.

  “Oh,” repeated Clein.

  “The equal rights movement is growing, Clein. It’s the inevitable progression of civilisation.”

  When put in his place, Clein’s only response was a bland and ignorant one: “Do you have to be so argumentative?”

  “I don’t hide away. I don’t diminish my views for the sake of sharing opinions with the oblivious majority. I have no trepidations in answering any questions I’m asked.”

  “Well, there’s one thing you never told us.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why are you travelling to the Fez?”

  Chapter 24

  Dave Gray got a job working at the Carpe Yolan Library. Well, he worked there, although he didn’t require payment. And – strictly speaking – the staff of the establishment weren’t aware of his decision to employ himself there. But, after he had sorted through several dozen books, he became well acquainted with the librarians. He told them the publicly acceptable version of his story (including his journ
ey to the Fez and return to Carpe Yolu, but not including his being from another planet and the talking, time-travelling jam). The people seemed to take pity on him, and allowed him to stay there overnight, which was understandable, given he was homeless and kept talking to his backpack. People always look at a situation and assume the worst. Although it wasn’t the worst. He wasn’t the worst. Or, at least, he didn’t think he was. He didn’t really think of himself as being on any sort of scale. Which led him to wonder how well he was considered to be doing.

  “Jam,” he said as they settled down in a corner under the stars and moons that night, “am I the worst?”

  The jam wasn’t quite sure how to answer. ‘...You don’t seem that bad to me.’

  “I mean, where am I on the scale? I don’t think of myself as being a Glix’n, but they do.”

  “We all have times when we think there’s nobody like us.”

  “Well, I’m an alien and you’re a fruit conserve.”

  ‘Some of us are different. There are those who think they’re different to try to become more like everyone else, and there are those who think they’re different so they try to find other people who are different.’

  “Am I like you?”

  ‘Well, you found me, didn’t you?’

  “No. Oprah found you. You were in aisle 12, along with the breakfast foods. Although I tried to eat you for lunch. How foolish I was; jam is hardly ever a lunch food.” Dave sat up. “Is that why I found you? Was it some twist of fate or the accumulation of the efforts of the universe to create harmony which caused our timelines to converge?”

  ‘I wouldn’t look into that too deeply. There’s nothing there, but you might start trying to imagine there is. On Glix, we call that superstition.’

  “Yeah, we had something similar on my home planet.” Dave sat back down again.

  ‘We are certainly similar, belonging to the same group of people.’

  “What do you mean?”

  ‘I am to have a great many connections with your group.’

  “What group? Do I belong to a group?”

  ‘Of course you do. It’s you and the Space Chicken.’

  “That’s not a group. That’s just a friendship.”

  ‘There are more people, too, but I can’t say in front of you, since I don’t know who you’re expecting.’

  “I’m not expecting anyone.”

  ‘Dave, surely you must know you’ll see the Space Chicken again. Did you think you travel around but never meet him again?’

  “I don’t know what to think. Sometimes I just need a rest from thinking.” He read some more of The Darker Day’s Sun by double moonlight and eventually drifted off to sleep.

  The next day he proceeded in the fashion, organising bookshelves to a scheme he didn’t understand and conversing with those he met. That night he slept in the same manner, reading and pondering whether or not this Oak Tree would be planted any time soon, or if he’d be indefinitely. He wondered if he’d see the Space Chicken again, and – if so – if he’d search out the prophet, or if the Celestial Cockerel would look for him, or if they’d meet by chance. Or if they’d never meet.

  The same happened on the day after, and the day after, and the day that followed that. He began to think more and more about time. It was always an issue. People were always passing through it. Glix’ns – which he may or may not have been one of – travelled around and among it in all different directions. It was becoming all he thought about. Time, and how soon things would happen. He needed to know about time and travelling with it, so he asked a time-traveller. Of course, he started with the basics.

  “What time is it?” Dave asked the jam at 11.74 Haca.

  ‘94th Quinquomber, 2042.’

  “Why did you say the date and not the time of day?”

  ‘Because I knew what you were asking.’

  “I don’t understand the time.”

  ‘Few people do.’

  “You clearly didn’t know what I was asking there. Could you explain the time to me?”

  ‘Time is an illusive concept. Future philosophers believe—’

  “Now you know what I’m asking, but you’re just refusing to help.”

  ‘I’ve got all the time in the world to talk to you about all the time in the world.’

  Dave sighed.

  ‘Okay,’ the jam acquiesced. ‘I’ll explain: on Glix, the year is the time it takes to orbit around the two closest stars, Quil and Romploon.’

  “There are two stars? Is that like my Sun?”

  ‘I’ve never been to your planet. I’ve never left Glix.’

  “Ha! I’ve been to two planets and I’ve only 35. That is, I’m 35 on my home planet. I’ll soon work out how old I am here.”

  The jam got defensive. ‘I can travel in time. Or, at least, I have travelled in time. You’ve never done that.’

  “Of course I’ve travelled in time,” Dave laughed. “I’ve just only ever done it forwards at a consistent rate.”

  ‘Could you be any more smug?’

  “I can try. So, does Glix orbit in an oval? Does it swing round Romploon, then go flying back to Quil, only to be swung back again, like a game of tennis?”

  ‘Yes, basically. There’ll be astrophysicists soon. They’ll go into more detail, if you want.’

  “I look forward to it.”

  ‘The Glix’n year is split into ten equal segments of 20 days, called Ombers. These are: Simber; Bimber; Trimber; Quadromber; Quinquomber; Sexamber; September; Octomber; November; December.’

  “Right. And we’re still in Quinquomber.”

  ‘Yes. Any period of days can also be split into Weeks. There aren’t as important as on some planets, I believe, but consist of five days.’

  “Okay. We have them at home, too.”

  ‘From what you’ve told me, I calculate you arrived here on 77,42.’

  “Have I told you anything?”

  ‘Haven’t you? It may have been in the future that you told me.’

  “And it’s now 94th. So have I been here for nearly a month?”

  ‘Yep.’

  Dave sat down on his backpack. He’d only been expecting to be on the planet for a few days. Well, he hadn’t be expecting to go to the planet at all.

  ‘The Glix’n day has 15 Haca, which can be conveniently subdivided into Decahaca, Centihaca, Millihaca, Decamillihaca, etc.’

  “That’s incredibly confusing,” said Dave.

  ‘How does it work on your planet?’

  “There were twelve months, similar to your Ombers, each with either 30 or 31 days, but sometimes they had a different number of days depending on which month it was, and whether or not the year was a number which could be divided by four and the result be an integer, and additionally by whether or not the year’s number was a multiple of 100, but changed again if it were a multiple of 400. A week has seven days, which have different names, but don’t correlate to the day of the month. There are 365 days in a year. But sometimes more. And there are exactly 24 hours in a day, split up into 60 chunks, which also consist of 60 sub-particles. Well, almost exactly 24.”

  The jam was silent for a moment. ‘What‽ That system makes absolutely no sense whatsoever! 365 isn’t even a multiple of seven or twelve!’

  “Well... It sort of works.”

  ‘No, it doesn’t! None of those numbers have any relation to each other.’

  “Neither do the ones here.”

  ‘200 splits down into ten groups of twenty, which are split into four groups of five. It’s pretty basic.’

  “I suppose you have a point there. How is the day split down into hours?”

  ‘We don’t have hours, we have Haca.’

  “What’s the difference?”

  ‘Haca are metric. We have fifteen Haca a day. You can cut a Haca up however you choose.’

  “Okay, I guess that makes sense.”

  ‘It’s very simple and easy to get used to.’

  “I hope it won’t be too m
any Haca before the Oak Tree gets planted.”

  The jam was silent until he could take it no more. ‘Well, it’s the 94th today, so it shouldn’t be too long.’

  Chapter 25

  After having set off from the restaurant, Michael Rowland Daffodil drove himself and his peers Nekken. The man being an experienced driver of all kinds of vehicles, he soon got to grips with the Speedvan and set it off in flight mode. However, this time the four experienced passengers flew well within the atmosphere of Glix.

  Floating gently through the sky at a phenomenal rate, with the target of the Fez a lot further Nekken than it had been on their previous journey, Clint and Clein took the opportunity to once again discuss the basics of the Fez.

  “So when you press one of the wrong buttons on the Fez, you get transported back home?”

  “Yes, Clint, we established this.”

  “But what if you have no home?”

  The Space Chicken was dumbstruck.

  “Does that mean you’d be able to press the buttons endlessly without being sent anywhere?”

  The Space Chicken was dumbstruck.

  “It would mean that you could continuously attempt to open the Fez without being sent home. Eventually you’d open it, unless somebody else came up with the same idea or you took the Fez somewhere nobody else took it.”

  “If we press one of the buttons,” said Clein, “we’ll just get sent back to our parents’ house. And we made it clear to them we don’t want to go back there.”

  The Space Chicken refound his voice. “Do you know any homeless people?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “I just gave a large vehicle to a group of people for travelling around in. I suppose they would be considered homeless. But, if they pressed a button, they’d probably get sent back to the boat.”

  “Surely they have houses of their own that they would go to.”

  “No. Well, not for the couple who own the vehicle. They sold their house before they set out on their journey. Although they did say they had two teenagers they’d be leaving behind without a place to stay.” A thought dawned upon the Space Chicken. “What are your parents’ names?”

  “Oprah and Calvin.”

  “It gives me great pleasure to tell you, Clint and Clein,” announced the Space Chicken, “that you are now homeless.”

  Chapter 26

  Arthur Cardigan arrived at Gary’s Vehicles in Gord. It was a large building on the banks of a river. And it felt wrong to be asking for a boat that wouldn’t be using the water.