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Soylent People is Green
One Clone's Journey Into the Realm of Snack Food
by: Garth Thompson
Posted on: Monday, January 6th 2003 2:31 PM
Written: Friday, July 19th 2002
“It wuz on the ferst dae uv the nou year thaat the anownsment wuz maed, aulmoest siemultaeneeuslee frum three observatoreez, thaat the moeshun ov the planet Neptoun, the owtermoest uv aul the planets thaat weel abowt the Sun, haad beecum vairee earaatic. A reetaardaeshun in its velositee haad bin suspected in Deesember. Then, a faent, reemoet spec uv liet wuz discuverd in the reejun uv the perturbd planet, At ferst this did not cauz enee vairee graet ecsietment. Sientific peepuul, however, fownd the intelijens reemaarcabuul eenuf, eeven beefor it beecaem noen thaat the nou bodee wuz raapidlee groeing laarjer aand brieter, aand thaat its moeshun wuz cwiet diferent frum the orderlee progres uv the planets.”
The Star (H.G.Welz)
Translated into Inglish by George Lahey.
Once upon a time in the distant future, the Earth was in a period of turmoil. Not from any war because there was peace across the land due to the new 'even look at us the wrong way and KABOOM' policy. The turmoil also wasn't due to a lack in presidential leadership, because the newly elected Earth President Vagrond the 2nd was well received by all peoples of Earth, having been elected with a 97% margin of victory over the Republican and Democrat candidates, which were a jar of mayonnaise and a piece of string respectively. (The jar of mayonnaise was seeking a seventh term).
No, the turmoil, which threatened the very planet itself, originated from that oldest of problems, overpopulation. Yes, ever since the second fish crawled up on land and said, "Hey, what is that guy doing here?" overpopulation has been a major issue. Yet in the future, it had become so bad that in the city of New York no one could park anywhere because the streets were jammed with people. When the streets were too full they began stuffing people into the subway, then using the tops of buildings, and once this was no longer sufficient they began piling people up in layers atop the people who were already there. At first there were some complaints but the people at the bottom had been consoled by the fact that they had a more convenient commute and the people at the top were told they had 'penthouse suites'.
A person, probably someone very much like you only smarter, might wonder how it got so bad. After all, none of the other cities on Earth were overpopulated; in fact most were severely under-populated. There were numerous Bobvilles and Billvilles known to be scattered across the planet and because a large percentage of the population were giant space lizards who could just choose not to sit on eggs, birth control was no longer a world issue.
New York's problem, however, had begun in the year 2997 when the Reverend Steve McCatholic was elected as mayor. Using clever bills to get by protestors such as banning all public devices that dispense plastic products, putting a large tax on all things that must be taken with water and having a humungous fine for stains on anything, he was essentially able to force people to produce 1 baby every time they had sex.
The liberals, led by Representative Steve O'Pothead, decided to get revenge for these conservative political moves by pushing immigration. They were able to get the New York congress to pass the "Move to New York and win $500" act and the "We don't check for green cards" bill. Now not only was the birth rate providing 40-50 new people per person (ppp) every year, but immigration upped ppp to 250.
Unfortunately in 3002 when the cloning craze captured the hearts and souls of the populace, and everybody was copying everybody else because it was so much fun, the ppp index went up to well over 3,000.
However, even though New York in the year 3,092 had a population of well over 14 billion and the people-stacks stretched miles high, it really wasn't so bad. Because the firm of Johnson&Johnson&Kellog&GM&Stevens&Mustaine&krazedfun4u.com had just released their new product, Soylent Peepuul and, much like when "Frito-Lay Munchies" were released in 2001, a new snack makes everything better, right? RIGHT?!?
THE STORY OF SOYLENT PEEPUUL
Chapter I
When Gry woke up on that fateful Thursday morning he found himself suddenly full of vigor. After throwing the two people who were lying atop him off he walked over to the artificial mirror. At first it didn't want to start, but the third time he pulled the choke the artificial mirror started up with a loud sputter, displaying an image of Gry's hair on a recent celebrity's body. Gry combed the celebrity's hair and with a big smile on his face climbed up the three people high tower so he could make his way to the kitchen.
With a lot of protesting from the people underfoot, Gry made his way into the kitchen. He sat down at the breakfast table and said to the man sitting across from him, "Good morning, Sal."
"Good morning, Gry. I love you," said Sal.
"I love you too," said Gry.
Gry reached down and ripped the shirt off the back of one of the people below him. He then folded it and began to read it like a newspaper.
"Say Sal?" he said.
"What?"
"How come we're both males living together, and we're unrelated, yet we constantly exclaim our love for each other?" asked Gry.
"I've thought about that some, but more I've thought about what life was like in the before-time," said Sal.
"Really?" said Gry, "because that was before I can remember."
"How is that?" asked Sol, "You look about 30 and it was only 5 years ago."
"Correct, except when you consider that I was just created last night by Cloner Frank as a drunken bet."
"OH! I should've realized that when I noticed you still had the feeding pod and yolk sack attached to your belly."
Gry looked down and saw the yolk sack. With a red face he pulled it and the feeding pod off and said, "Sorry. How embarrassing! But you were talking about the before time?"
"Yep, things sure were better back then."
"Tell me about it, pops!"
"It was gurrrrrrrrrrrr-eight! At night when the sun set the smog in the atmosphere would give off all sorts of pretty colors. Now there're too many people to even see the smog. And the when the rising sun would hit the dumpsters there would be this lovely aroma of burgers and fries. Now all I ever smell is filthy, filthy humans."
Gry, with his eyes wide because of hearing about the past, said, "Gee wilikers! Tell me more!"
Sal continued, "And we got to eat so much unhealthy food that everybody got real fat. It was wonderful, the whole city was like some sort of Overeater's Anonymous convention or something!"
Gry had now lost the wonder from his eyes. "Well, I for one don't think that modern food is bad. Just look at this!" Gry reached down and pulled a box out of the mass of the people below him.
A faint protest from below was heard, "Hey, I was eating that!"
The box was painted bright BLOOD red and had a big picture of a man who looked curiously like Jeffrey Dauhmer smiling and giving a thumbs up on the front. The back had a 'help the witch get Hansel and Grettel' fun-time maze and the large "Soylent - made from the most evolved stuff on earth!" slogan.
"Yep," said Gry, "this Soylent Peepuul had to be just about the best thing I've ever tasted!"
"Since you've only been alive for 17 hours or so it's probably the ONLY thing you've eaten so far," countered Sal.
"Nope!" said Gry, "I also ate some dust and I've got to say that this is like 2, maybe 2.5 times better." Gry then reached into the box and pulled out a piece. "Ooooo!" he exclaimed, "this is the special edition where they're shaped like little gingerbread men! I like to bite off their heads!"
Gry bit the head off the people-shaped Soylent Peepuul and, after finishing the entire box in an odd silence, got up and headed for the upper top of the door.
"Where are you going?" asked Sal.
"To get my job that was assigned to me by the government that has nothing to do with communists or communism," answered Gry.
"Oh, OK. Just remember that I love you," said Sal.
"Yup, and keep some of that sweet, sweet loving warm for me until I get back!"
Sal nodded and Gry opened up the door, or the very top of the door anyway as the people underfoot had pushed everyone up 12 feet, revealing a swarming mass of men, women and children, all wearing hats and business suits on their way to work or school. Gry put his hands together, bent over and dove into a small opening between a thin man and a 6-year old girl, and began squirming his way to the police station.
Sal walked over to the coffee pot, poured a cup, then set it down on the "floor". The person who the pot was on screamed in pain and stood straight up, knocking the pot over, shattering on the head of the next person below.
"Damn it!" said Sal, "They haven't made those since the before-time!" Then Sal, so-named because he was actually a giant space salamander (a distant cousin of the previously mentioned giant space lizards) grabbed the man who spilled his coffee and ate him in two big bites.
Wiping his mouth off, Sal said, "I guess I could go over to Albany and buy a new one, but I do so love it here. And man that Gry guy is going to go so good with some potatoes and lettuce. Those new clones are so tender, kinda like veal."
Chapter II
When Gry entered the police station he noticed that there were two policemen having a lively political debate.
"I don't know about this new president," said one of the policemen who was dunking a large Soylent Peepuul cookie into his coffee, "He doesn't have a proven track record like the jar of Mayo."
"What are you talking about?" said the second policeman who had a moustache so long that literally a foot or two of it sat on the table, "That had to be the most corrupt administration ever. Every single person in his cabinet is now either in jail or was executed. The only person working in the Earth-capital who wasn't arrested was the jar of mayonnaise itself!"
"But no matter how far you stretched the stories the jar of Mayo wouldn't break. That's why we called him the nylon president," said the first policeman as he grabbed a piece of the second policeman's moustache, dunked it in his coffee and took a big bite out of it.
"Hey!" said the mustachioed policeman.
"Sorry," said the other, "I guess I mistook it for some of this Soylent Peepuul I've been eating. Pretty silly confusing Soylent Peepuul for a human body part, huh? Unless..."
The two policeman sat there speculatively for an hour or two at which time Gry amused himself by batting around a bit of fuzz on the floor. Finally the bit of fuzz was knocked up onto the table and spilt into two even parts that bounced into the coffee of both policemen.
"What is the meaning of this?" said the second policeman.
"AAAAAAAAAA! It burns!" said the first.
"My name is Gry and I was assigned a job here by the government that has nothing to do with authoritarianism or authoritarian control," said Gry.
"Well, let me tell you this, you couldn't have picked a better job to get randomly assigned to!" said the moustache man, "look below you and what do you see?"
Gry looked down and got a giddy smile in amazement, "is this a...floor?" he asked, staring at the tiles below.
"I'll sure say it is."
"I've heard stories about these, but I've never actually seen one!" said Gry who was now happily rubbing his face all over this 'floor'.
"OH GOD SOMEONE HELP ME!" yelled the first policeman as he was now also enjoying rolling on the floor.
"Do you have a visible floor because the government which has nothing to do with socialism lets only a few select people come in here?" asked Gry.
"Nope," said the second policeman, "But the government did provide people-hooks where we could hang the excess people while we're not using them." And with this he gestured towards the side of the building that was, in fact, swarming with people, all in police outfits. Kinda like a roach-infested apartment in the modern world. Now is that symbolism or what? Answer me!!!!!
"And a floor is just one of many perks. As a policeman you'll also be privy to secret knowledge such as when people go into those euthanasia parks they're turned into..." The second policeman suddenly stopped, interrupted by a mission being sent to him apparently by a telegraph in Morse code. Fortunately since this was the future a robotic hand transcribed the message in nice cursive script and handed it to the man, who threw his moustache over his left shoulder so he could read it.
"Hmmmm," he said, "looks like old Mr. Barp has been murdered. I'll really miss him, even though he was only one of about 40-50 Mr. Barps I know so not very much. I could go get a policeman down off one of the hooks but since you're already down I think I'll assign this one to you. What's your name again?"
"My name is Gry Vayos Misdemeanor."
"Odd name. I suppose that's why they made you a policeman, though," said the policeman as he rolled the report into a scroll and put a wax seal on it and handed it to Gry. The seal barked strangely.
"I won't let you down, sir!" said Gry as he saluted the policeman and goose-stepped out of view again.
"Well," said the mustached policeman, "now that that party-pooper's gone we can get back to talking about your last operation where your internal organs were replaced by Ice Cream. Byl?"
Byl, the first policeman, lay motionless while his partner looked one way, then the other, then began moving slowly towards the abandoned box of Soylent Peepuul.
Chapter III
Gry, after being outfitted with his police trench coat and pistol (a laser pistol because this is the future, remember?) made his way quickly to the apartment of the late Mr. Barp. His journey through the 2-person-per-cubic-foot density of the city went much faster when he discovered the magic of the pistol-whip, and with a large amount of the hitting and the screaming, he climbed the stairs up to the premium penthouse suite of Whores-n-Whomes apartments.
Gry smartly shot off the doorknob on the door, and was greeted by a call of "it's open" from the inside. Pulling the smoldering remains of the door open, while at the same time kicking back three people who tried to rush in, he was greeted by a large man and a medium woman.
"Hello, you must be the investigator," said the medium woman, "I'm Yok and I was Mr. Barp's personal...er...'duty performer,' and this here is Mr. Barp's former bodyguard, Bobbi, ‘The Pill' Neckbreaker."
"The pill cures what ails ya!" said the large man as he smacked his fists together.
Gry, having never been before threatened in his 19 hour existance didn't know what to make of this so he immediately put both of his hands on 'The Pill's head and began jumping up and down yelling "Wu-oop, wu-oop!" Bobbi simply grabbed Gry and threw him into Mr. Barp's personal collection of credit cards which were all stacked into a pile about ten feet high. They were so well balanced that Gry's impact didn't knock them over, his torso absorbed most of the blow. Bobbi simply wiped off his hands and did a flying kick into the outside world, weaving away through the swarms of people.
"Nice man," said Gry, "kinda reminds me of a creature I know named Sal whom I love with the deepest part of my loins." Gry then got up, walked over to a cabinet that was covered with priceless works of futuristic blown glass, and began throwing them into his overcoat at a rapid rate. "It's a nice place he had here," he said to Yok, "Mr. Barp must have been fairly wealthy."
"He was," said Yok as she watched Gry drain the apartment's large fish tank into his overcoat, "It's because he was a major executive at Johnson&Johnson&Kellog&GM&Stevens&Mustaine&krazedfun4u.com."
"Really? I love their products, but that's probably obvious to you by now," explained Gry as he was emptying box after box of Soylent Toorkei into his overcoat from the kitchen.
"Yes, in fact he designed the Soylent Toorkei product and many others. He was very proud of them," said Yok.
Gry, now loading his massive coat with the contents of Mr. Barp's refrigerator, asked, "Did he have any record of this?"
"Not that I know of," said Yok, "As far as I know he only kept track of how many times I...um...provided services so that he knew he wasn't getting ripped off by the Whores-n-Whomes apartment complex."
Practically glib from thinking up such smart of questions, Gry asked, "Did he have anything else, a journal perhaps?"
"You mean like the one you're shoving in your overcoat right now?"
Gry very slowly looked down at what he was stealing, and saw that right after he had put the bedspread into his coat, he had grabbed the journal and was taking that also. In a very serious manner he walked over to the tuba with a board placed on it that acted as a table and laid out the journal. Turning back the title page, which read "Epitome" (Here pronounced "Ehh Pih Toam") he began reading, or rather tried to but then remembered that he hadn't learned that yet. "Why couldn't he just use a sound recorder like everybody else!" lamented Gry.
"Do you want me to read it to you?" asked Yok.
"No, no, just give me a moment," said Gry as he reached into his swelled coat and began feeling around for something. After a ten minute interlude during which Yok just remained motionless Gry produced a syringe labeled 'Learnitol'. After a quick check for bubbles, and another ten-minute hunt to find a vein, Gry injected the Learnitol into his bloodstream. He immediately stood straight up and screamed, "Captain Gry to space command, space command flum vin!" After this he stretched out his arms like an airplane and began to jump around the apartment until he ran face first into the perfectly balanced card stack again and fell down, rewarded for his efforts with two black eyes.
"There we go, I'd like to see one of those non-clone-based schools give THAT kind of a rush. But what do we have here," said Gry as he read the first page aloud, "Soylent Toorkei. Hmmm, that's all it says for some reason."
"That's just all the title says," said Yok, "apparently you can currently only read the really big words and not the small print."
"Well then that's just what I'll do smarty-pants," said Gry as he turned and read the second page, "Soylent Dahug. Hey, I see a pattern here, Soylent Toorkei was the first Soylent 'meals on the grindin' wheels' released, and Soylent Dahug was the second. I remember that one; it was white with black spots. And then came," said Gry as he turned to page 3, "Soylent Kæt. That one was real good, kind of calico colored. And finally we come to," he said as he turned the next page and was surprised, "Soylent Moonkay. What's this? Another name for Soylent Peepuul?"
"I think it's a prototype that was never released," said Yok, "Just turn the damn page."
Gry did, revealing the page for Soylent Peepuul in full detail. "Hey," he said, "The little black squiggles get cut off about halfway down on this one."
"That's because he died when he was writing it," said Yok.
"What does it say?"
"I'll read it for your 'better-than-non-clone ears'. It says, 'The Soylent Peepuul recipe is highly controversial. To make it pre-heat the oven of the future to 450 degrees of the future. Line the pan with some chopped hemp for flavor, then prepare the main ingredient which is AAARGH!"
"Holy secular being, he actually wrote aaargh? Was he a pirate or something?"
"No, he actually didn't write it, I just improvised that because he died before he could write anything more than some scribbles which run down the side of the page, in red ink of course," said Yok as she pointed at the blood drips.
"Oh, that reminds me, I should probably look at the body," said Gry as he shoved the journal into his overcoat and began attempting to rip up the carpet.
Stealing the carpet as he went, Gry followed Yok into the bedroom, where there was the corpse of a man with the head cleanly bitten off. The tooth marks were at least five inches wide each and it appeared that the attacked had finished Mr. Barp in one bite. Gry wasted no time, but instead ran up and began stealing Mr. Barp's shoes, saying, "Wow, these are nice, made out of some old-fashioned version of modern leather-like material..."
"Leather?" suggested Yok.
"Yeah, that's it. Mr. Barp must have had a lot of money!"
"He sure did. Just look at the walls."
"What walls?" asked Gry as he gestured at the rows of people that encircled them.
"They're not real people," said Yok, "They're just an artificial mural to make people born..."
"Ahem."
"People CREATED IN A TUBE such as yourself feel comfortable in a room that's not crowded. Observe as I lower the setting. Tell me if it's going too fast."
"Wuh-all you say," said Gry as he bravely poked it with a stick he’d stolen.
Yok wokked over to a dial on the wall and turned it. Immediately the congestion painted on the walls lowered to be equivalent to a 20th century crowded subway station. Gry nodded, and Yok continued to turn the dial until the congestion lowered to about some sort of public event or political caucus. Fewer and fewer people were on the walls until it was about the level of an Iowa county fair.
"I'm feeling pretty nervous," said Gry as he began disassembling and taking the furniture, including the pile of credits cards which crashed down noisily into his overcoat.
"Almost there," said Yok who, with a final turn of the dial, turned the walls into...walls! "Doing OK?" asked Yok.
Gry did not answer, as he was passed out on the floor.
He came to a few hours later, and found himself out of his overcoat, which he then quickly put back on.
"Oh," sad Yok, "you're up. While you were unconscious I took the liberty of having sex with you a few times."
Gry looked disappointed, then said, "I see. While I guess there's no harm done..."
"Yeah, except I probably gave you Gonorrhea and the Clap," said the completely calm Yok.
":-(" Said Gry in a somber tone, which then perked up, "hey, that magical wall stuff is expensive, right?"
"I suppose..." started to say Yok, but before she could finish Gry had got up and was trying to take the wall down without much luck. Remembering his laser he shot it at an edge and, after the screaming from the other side of the wall ceased, began removing the wall and placing it inside his trench coat.
Chapter IV
Gry, wearing the trench coat that was now at least five feet in RADIUS squeezed somehow through the doorway back into his, Sal's and about 500 other people's apartment. Noting more whining below him as he walked in due to his increased weight, he simply pointed at his new laser, which caused most of the whining to stop.
"Wow," said Sal, standing on his hind legs and balancing using his long tail, "how did you get here so quickly from work?"
"I used this thing!" said Gry, pointing at his laser again, "I know they call those big ploughs people-movers, but this think should also be a serious contender for that title."
"Did you bring back something?" asked Sal.
"Lots of stuff," said Gry, "floor, walls, food..."
"Food you say?" said Sal, "Did I mention I love you?"
"I love you too Sal," said Gry.
"Enough of the damn love-fest already!" screamed a voice from below.
Sal quickly stomped his rear right foot down, putting the complainer out of his misery.
A few hours later, Gry and Sal sat down to have a nice dinner. They had placed the floor down atop some of the people below, and had put a table and chairs made out of the stolen credit cards atop that. Around this setup they put the stolen wall, naturally set to show the picture of the massive crowd. Sal took a stolen CD from the apartment and flipped it over, carefully placing the needle of his record player on it, amazingly playing a nice soft French love song (not as amazing as if it had played the Motley Crüe songs that were actually on the CD).
Gry sat down at the table, placing a large, metal, covered dish in front of his own self. Sal sat down across from him, also with a large covered dish. Removing the cover Gry revealed his first course, a bit of the plastic water piping from Mr. Barp's apartment grilled to perfection. Taking out his laser gun, he used it as a knife to cut off a circular section of the piping and, spearing it with his fork, took a heaping bite.
And what was on Sal's platter? As he took the cover off it revealed one of the people from below, bound and gagged, surrounded by stolen lettuce and just as stolen rich juicy cherry tomatoes. The person struggled vainly as Sal jabbed the human equivalent of those little things you use to hold corn into either side of him, and, well you can probably guess the rest.
From beneath the table, on the "floor" which was probably the cleanest thing they had to store food on, Gry produced the second course, a large piece of insulating Styrofoam. As it was quite soft Gry just used a fork to take a large bite of it. He held up his finger to stop Sal, who hadn't finished his first course yet, as the delightful delicacy before Gry needed something to spruce it up. Finding a box of Soylent Peepuul, he scattered the cracker-like food items around the Styrofoam then blew a kiss at the meal like a saucy French chef to show that it truly was "Le Package Total."
Gry offered Sal some Soylent, but the giant salamander being shook his head. After finishing eating the man from below, Sal threw the bones to the side and began eating carrots out of a jar marked "property of Yohann S. Barp". One of the people below quickly grabbed the bones and hauled them off for a night of drunken cloning. As Sal finished the crunchy carrots and Gry worked on his chunk of insulation, the soft violin music played away into the night.
Later that evening, as the people below had fallen asleep causing the wall/floor setup to sink slightly, and Gry had collapsed from synthetic shock due to eating too much garbage, Sal slowly got up and looked through the large overcoat which was hung over one of the "walls", causing a person painted on that “wall” appear to wear it. Finally finding the Epih-toam, Sal sat down to read it.
"Hmmmm," wondered Sal, "I wonder why I didn't find this when I ate Mr. Barp's head?" Sal then proceeded to look through the journal, until he got to the very last page. "The wording on this page just trails off into smudges, unless..." He turned the book on its side, "Of course! What Gry thought were smudges are actually words written sideways. Well, Gry was never really the smartest clone in his brain-reduced class anyway. It says that the main ingredient in Soylent Peepuul is...oh my god...oh dear lord."
Sal just sat there motionless for a minute with a blank look on his elongated amphibian face, then said, "Well, I've had a good run," and sadly left the apartment building forever. FO EVA!!!!!
Chapter V
When Gry woke up he found Yok lying next to him in bed.
"What are you doing here?" asked Gry.
"I came here to tell you that while you were asleep, I saw your friend Sal going into one of those suicide-themed parks. Oh, and while you were unconscious again I had sex with you again," said the placid Yok.
"Well, I guess that since I already have everything you have that couldn't make my situation much worse."
"Actually, in order to get over here in any reasonable amount of time I had to 'sleep' my way over here, contracting Herpes Complex and Hepatitis in the process, which I imagine I've given to you by now."
"Do you have a last name?"
"Dudley. Why?"
"Oh, nothing. But now I've got to go find Sal before it's too late!" said Gry, and with a quick strike with his laser to the back of Yok's head, making her the unconscious one for a change, he pushed over the "walls" surrounding them and got up off of the "bed" which was actually the table made out of credit cards, and ran towards the door. Jumping off a particularly fat person below to get good spring, he did a spinning cannonball to the mass of people outside of his window, sending the men and women outside crashing in every direction.
Fortunately, every-other building in the town was now a euthanasia park (creating a checkerboard pattern on the street of suicide buildings and normal ones) so Gry only had to go next door, a mere 1-hour trip.
Upon arrival at the euthanasia park, a man wearing a long black robe with a purple triangle on it greeted Gry. He offered Gry some Kool-aid, but Gry declined and followed him into the building, where he immediately noticed that there were only 1 or two people per cubic yard and began to hyperventilate until the man in the purple robe gave him an oxygen mask. The man began to turn another black knob on the oxygen tank while giggling maniacally, but Gry set down the oxygen and began talking before the dark gas started coming out of the mask.
"Thanks but I think I'm feeling better now, but I don't understand why you don't have some of that wallpaper with pictures of lots of people on it," he said.
The man turned off the black valve, pounded his fist in anger, then said in a voice resembling a cross between Vincent Price and someone who'se had a few too many seizures, "While, you seeeeeeeeeeeeee, we want them to be cooooooooooomfortable in their last momeeeeeents."
"So why change their settings, right before they die, from what they've known all their lives? I know I want to die as I lived, so I can be smug in the afterlife."
"Yeeeeeees," said the man with a light chuckle, "aaaaaafterlife."
"Anyway," Gry said, "I'm looking for my be-LOVE-ed friend Sal. Have you seen him?"
The man gestured for Gry to walk towards a large doorway. Gry got up and took a step forward, but then remembered he might be in danger in this situation, and as such would need to know Karate. So he stepped back, reached into his overcoat (still fairly large as he and Sal had only emptied about half of it) and pulled out the syringe required to learn it. At the same time he stepped back the floor in front of him dropped away revealing a pit lined with numerous syringes pointing up.
"How diiiiiid that geeeeeeet there?" said the robed man, "I'll have to speeeeeeeeak with our cleeeeeeaning lady!"
As they both ignored the impaled skeleton of the cleaning lady in the pit below, Gry then followed the robed man carefully around the edge of the pit and into the main room of the euthanasia park. It resembled a small town carnival, that is if that small town carnival happened to be run by the Taliban. There was a merry-go-round that reached speeds of 30 mph, randomly uncoupling the attached stuffed horses that people were sitting on and flinging them into a wall of the same hypodermic needles. There was a ride similar to the spinning room where people inside are pushed up against the outside wall by the G-forces, however in this ride the outside wall had been replaced by a cheese-grater like metal. The longest line, however, was for the ride that required the most tickets, the bungee-less jump.
Gry, after buying a $20 roll of tickets from a booth, and then very carefully putting them in his overcoat so that he wouldn't be cut by the razor-sharp, poison edges, said to the robed man, "this is all very well and good, but I don't see Sal anywhere?"
The man, startled, said, "Oh, you're stiiiiiiiiil there? I thiiiiiiiiink that your Friend went into a private suuuuuuuuicide booooth."
Gry followed the man into one of the private suicide booths, which was a curiously sterile setting compared to the outside, which had to be covered with a layer of sawdust to soak up the intestines. The "walls", which Gry had now finally adapted to, were white and there was a large plate glass window in them, through which Gry could see Sal laying on a bed surrounded by nurses, in front of him a cyclopean movie canvas.
"I want to see my friend," said Gry.
"OK, that's fiiiiiiiiine, I'll just preeeeeeeeeess this button letting you iiiiiiiin," said the man.
"I SAID I WANT TO SEE HIM, DAMN IT!" yelled Gry who quickly injected himself with the Karate-learning serum he'd been holding the whole time. He then dropped to his knees and made the "devil sign" with both of his hands while banging his head into the floor at a rapid rate. The serum then took effect, and Gry flipped himself off his back to his feet, standing on one foot and gesturing at the man while making a strange whooping noise. The man simply stood motionless in confusion until Gry landed on both feet and cowboy-punched the man in the face, knocking him clean out. Gry, still filled with blood-lust, smashed his fist into the control panel sending sparks flying, then, taking a few steps back, did his patented cannonball jump into the window, sending glass flying everywhere as he landed a few feet behind Sal.
Sal got up slightly and looked at Gry, saying, "Oh, it's you. As if life weren't annoying enough now death has to be also."
"I came to rescue you!" said Gry, standing up and only slightly bloody.
"But I don't want to be rescued," said Sal, "this is the way of the world, with the birds and the bees and the big oak trees."
"Oh," said Gry who got such an extremely sad look on his face that his nose was probably enveloped by his bottom lip.
"I guess you can stay and watch my final seconds if you want, though."
"Yay!!!" screamed Gry as he clapped his hands together happily.
One of the nurses put a needle into Sal's arm-slash-front leg, then turned the dial on the poison-ometer the needle was connected with to "low". She then also pushed another button on the bedside table, and some light classical music began to play.
"Hey, don’t I get a choice of music? Can’t I get like Judas Priest or something?" asked Sal.
"I'm sorry sir," said the nurse as she held up a sheet of paper, "you put Bach on your application and I'm afraid it's too late to change it now."
"But I don't remember any application," said Sal, "oh well, it's OK I guess."
The nurse then turned another dial on the table, but nothing happened. She scratched her head and tried it a few more times, but there was still no result. "I'm sorry sir," she said, "But for some reason the movie projector, situated outside of this room, has been smashed, so we can't show you the nice pastoral scenes of deer and bunnies that were requested."
"What request, what?" asked Sal.
"So instead," said the nurse, "we'll have our on-staff artist, Furbara, do an interpretive dance of trees, grass, deer and rabbits."
"WHAT?"
A panel opened and a slightly heavy-set woman entered, wearing a brown robe made out of potato-sacks, covered with many strings of beads, draping all the way to the ground. She also had beads in her hair, which was cut in a style that really only men should wear (and even then only with much forethought) and dyed dark green. To the beat of Bach she stepped outside onto one tiptoe and put both her hands above her head.
"The squirrels dance, they are happily learning of freedom," said Furbara as she pranced around and eventually spread her arms wide. "The grass grows, it knows of no upward sky's limiting," she said as she did a pirouette and jumped forward into the position of a runner in mid-jog, "the frogs chirp, singing the songs of the infinite infinitiveness." Furbara then waved her arms slowly in front of herself, saying, "The tadpoles know nothing of the white male oppressor who holds females down to..."
"Damn it, why isn't this thing killing me faster!" said Sal, angrily striking where the needle was hooked to his arm.
"The delicate dance of the deer represents the delicate struggle of the trans-gendered individuals," said Furbara as she pantomimed a deer.
Sal grunted angrily at all the crap then shoved the nurse out of the way, reaching for the poison-ometer on the table. He then turned the dial all the way to the full setting, labeled "Maximum - DANGER (may be lethal)", then lay back on the bed with a look of pure relief on his face, saying "Oh yeah, that's the stuff."
Sal sat motionless for a moment, but then motioned to Gry for him to come closer. Sal said in a quiet rasping tone, "oh yeah, Gry, there's one thing I gotta tell you before I pass. The Soylent Peepuul snack. It's it's..."
"Yes, yes," said Gry.
"It's made out of pe..." started to say Sal, whose eyes then closed as he fell backwards, the life having left his body.
Gry shook Sal a little and then held him tightly muttering, "lub, lub?" He slowly got up and at this time noticed that the two nurses and Furbara were also closely listening to Sal's last words.
"What did he say?" asked the first nurse?
"I think he said that Soylent Peepuul is made out of pee," said the second.
"Holy cuh-ow!" said Furbana in a totally different, more valley-girl voice than before, "did he just say Soylent Peepuul was made from, like, urine?"
"I believe he did," said the second nurse.
"This is terrible! All those crackers I ate, they were made out of pee pee? We've got to let the world know about this!" said the first.
The three women rushed outside into the main area of the carnival, and then they all began screaming, "Soylent Peepuul is pee pee, it’s pee pee!" The people outside, upon hearing this, all turned to the women and responded back, "Soylent Peepuul is pee pee?" then each started yelling it repeatedly, spreading the word. Most people outside just yelled this again and again, running around in circles waving there arms, but a few started chanting wildly, tearing pieces off the poorly-build amusement park rides and using them to smash everything in their field of vision, which was mostly other people. A massive riotous noise could be heard outside the private suicide booth where Gry still was with Sal.
Gry, much against his true nature, did not join the riot outside but instead waited until two men entered the booth to take Sal's body away.
"Are you the closest living relative?" asked the larger of the two men, wearing a white sleeveless t-shirt and a lot of hair.
"If I say yes, do I get the death bonus?" asked Gry.
"I suppose so, even though we'd know you were lying because you're not a giant salamander thing."
"Then yes, yes I am."
"Well…here you go then," said the first man sarcastically, handing Gry a lollipop.
"Huh, I always thought that the death bonus would be money or something," said Gry.
"Yeah, most people think that," said the man as he and his buddy loaded Sal's heavy body into a garbage bag then dropped the bag on the floor.
Gry was curious, however, because it wasn't at all like Sal to not finish his sentences without some sort of hidden insult, so he knew that Sal's last words were incomplete. Soylent Peepuul wasn't made out of pee; it was made out of something else. Something far more sinister, and Gry was destined to find out what that something was. He asked the man, "May I follow you to where you're taking my friend?"
"Go nuts," said the man.
And so, Gry followed the two men as they dragged the garbage bag containing Sal's body to the city limits. And if you can't handle all that symbolism, then maybe you should just skip the next chapter.
Chapter VI
The riot that had started inside the euthanasia park had spread outside to the massive, tightly packed stacks of people that filled the streets. The piles upon piles of men, women and children were now all yelling, poking each other and tearing away at what remained of the buildings, fomenting tsunamis and committing other crimes. From the police station the constable with the large moustache and his partner (in life as well as on the force) Byl were watching what was happening outside on a 1970's style 13 inch black & white television. Well, Byl was trying to watch but since his melted organs had been replaced at the hospital with Doritos and Slim-Jims, half of his energy at any given time was dedicated to staying alive. The station's robotic arm was giving the mustached officer a shoulder massage.
"Well, it looks like the people are having some kind of fit," he said, “you think we should intervene, Byl?"
Byl just kind of grunted pathetically.
"That was EXACTLY what I was thinking!" said the mustached officer as he pushed the robotic arm back to the telegraph, flipped a switch on it and began dictating while the arm punched out dots and dashes, "Dear Mayor stop there is a situation in downtown Manhattan stop I believe we should intervene to get the crowd under control stop recommend immediate deployal of the PEOPLE SUCKERS stop hugs and kisses your pal Constable Em."
Due to the miracle of telegraph only a few seconds later, at the scene of the riot, the people on the upper layers (the "Penthouse Suites") started screaming because they saw, approaching, a two-hundred foot tall bag hooked to a massive, twenty-feet around hollow metal tube. The end of this tube, spread out so that it could suck more in, raised towards the people who tried to run but hit a solid mass of their companions. Yes, the PEOPLE-SUCKERS had arrived!
Five more gigantic vacuum cleaners wheeled into the vicinity and a police-officer (selected from one of the many ones hanging on people-hooks) jumped up and down on the equally massive on switch to turn it on. Immediately people below screamed and tried to hold on to their friends or the ground, but were helplessly sucked into the vacuum. See the people were like dirt, see, SEE? What's the matter, can't take all the hardcore metaphors, huh? Anyway, as rows and rows of human beings got enveloped by the people-suckers, one officer accidentally jumped on the wrong switch, setting his to reverse, and the thousands of people in his bag were shot out, rapidly striking the wall of humans like rain into the ocean.
Seeing his mistake and wanting to cover for it, this officer radioed headquarters and said, "It's not working! Send in the PEOPLE-BRUSHER!"
At that instant a massive dust-broom towering at least 800 feet into the sky was wheeled in, swung far back, then began immediately striking people with its massive metal bristles.
Meanwhile, outside the edge of the town, all this was visible. The New York city-limits could be clearly demarcated as such by the fact that the towering mass of people stopped suddenly and opened up to a vacant green pasture. Into that pasture walked an older, farmerin-type who looked up at the massive vertical wall of people and saw what was happening to them.
"You know what I don't understand?" yelled the farmer up at the wall, "Why don't some of you come over here to New Jersey. Plenty of room here in Jersey!" The man spread his arms wide showing that in the three directions away from the wall of people it was, in fact, a vacant plain.
"Are you nuts!" yelled one suitcase-toting, four-piece-suit-wearing man in New York, right before he got a hit in the behind from the broom and went flying into a fifty-foot dustpan.
Meanwhile, while all this was happening, Gry had followed the two men dragging Sal to the city limits. He exited into the open field without too many problems because he was now used to "walls" and assumed that the grass on either side of him was just painted on one. Brushing the grass beneath him aside he thought to himself, "Man, the people below me must be having wicked bad hair days."
As the dragging men passed by they waved at the farmer, "Hey John Smith."
"Hey Sos, hey Vorpanorpagorp. Looks like you're havin' a bit bad weather in the city," said the farmer, pointing to the people-suckers, people-brushers and people-depillatorators.
"Well, it may be hard sometimes but it's worth it, to live in the best city on Earth!" said Sos.
"Damn straight!" added Gry.
"Oh, you're still there," said Sos, mildly surprised but not really showing it, "Well, look in front of you, it's our destination. Downtown Johnsmithingrad and the main factory for Johnson&Johnson&Kellog&GM&Stevens&Mustaine&krazedfun4u.com.”
Sos pointed forward and Gry looked up at the factory. Appearing much like the abandoned oil refinery that it was, Gry grunted oddly in amazement at its metal towers, and rubbed his eyes all over his shoulders in disbelief. Even more to his amazement it got even bigger as they got closer, as basically all objects in our universe do, and all kinds of horrible screams were coming from the towers. Gry, however, either chose not to respond or didn't know how to respond to the cries, so marched forward with a massive smile on his face.
Finally they arrived at a door. Sos pushed a button on it, and what looked like a metal doorknob emerged. Sos opened his lips wide and put his entire mouth around the metal thing, which then buzzed until the door's lock clicked.
"Saliva-test passed. Access granted," came a metallic voice from the inside.
Sos, Gry, and Sos' Scandinavian friend Vorpanorpagorp opened the door and walked down a long corridor to a small office inside which a man was sitting at a desk, petting a monkey (the monkey was wearing a T-shirt that read "Soylent Moonkay") The man got up, straightened his FIVE-piece-suit and then walked up to Gry with his right hand outstretched.
"Greetings Mr. Gry," said the man, "I have been expecting you. My name is Gamble. Proctorn Gamble. I am the CEO and owner of Johnson&Johnson&Kellog&GM&Stevens&Mustaine&krazedfun4u.com."
Dun dun duuuuuuuuuun!
Chapter VII - Secret Agent Man (also the only chapter with a name)
Somewhat later, Mr. Gamble was sitting down to eat dinner at a table in the factory. All rooms and furniture in this factory were a sterile white, a very odd color for somewhere that produces food. Across the room from Mr. Gamble a door slid open and Gry was pushed in, wearing the neo-futuristic outfit that Mr. Gamble had created for him. Of course since this story is already set in the future it represented the future version of futuristic, so the outfit was basically just a very small male bikini with a picture of the Parthenon in Ancient Rome on it.
"Hello again, Mr. Gry," said Gamble, "sit down, sit." Gry sat down, and Gamble continued, "You look hungry from your long journey. Please, would you like some...Soylent Peepuul?" He pressed a button underneath the table and on Gry's side the table opened up, a plate containing delicious square wafers of "peach"-colored Soylent Peepuul rose to the top.
"I really want to eat those," said Gry defiantly, "but I won't until you tell me what they're made of!"
"Ah, and that I will. Because you see, before I kill somebody I like to show them how civilized I am by telling them my deepest secrets. I figure, what the hell, they're dying anyway, right?" asked Gamble.
"That's actually really good logic," said Gry, who you'll remember ate a large piece of plastic tubing.
"It's like this," started Gamble, "I'm the one who started the whole cloning craze. You see, first it was because I couldn't produce children the normal way."
"Really?" asked Gry.
"Yes," continued Gamble, "why do you think my first name is Proct-torn? It's Latin. Anyway, I suddenly got a great idea to start a food company and produce the delicious Soylent line of products. The key was the secret ingredient. You see, by promoting cloning as recreation, I ensured that there would always be a steady stream of 'clients' for Soylent Peepuul," saying this he made the little quotation marks with his fingers at the word "clients", "Soylent Peepuul's sales are currently excellent, but production is low. In order to be able to make more Soylent Peepuul I have to get more people to go into the euthanasia parks, for a reason I will explain in a moment. First, let me tell you how I plan to get more people to go into the suicide parks, the how not the why." Gamble cracked his knuckles, licked his lips and continued, "I have discovered an ancient actor, from well over 1,000 years ago, whose movies were all hidden in the depths of the massive Clinton Presidential Library-slash-pyramid. This actor's name is believed to be Ahknheston and he was apparently a great pharaoh of a country called Nurah. However the mummy of Ahknheston was never found and these tapes were terribly cursed so that everybody who viewed them would have to commit suicide or go insane. Observe."
Gamble pressed another button underneath his desk, and a hidden one-sided window opened from one of the walls. Inside was Vorpanorpagorp, strapped to a chair with his eyes held open by little clamps. Automatic restrainers held him down, however they apparently couldn't automate wetting his eyes because a man in a lab coat stood there with a little eyedropper. His aim with the eyedropper was very bad, however, due to the blindfold and earplugs he was wearing, and Vorpanorpagorp was complaining about this just as the window opened.
Vorpanorpagorp just sat there for a minute, watching, then began talking again, "Hey, what the hell is going on in this movie? It makes no sense? And now there's snowplows or something, and they're all fawning over some stupid lettuce? If there's such a demand for the raw foods, then why does the big company bother to process them at all? And that video game they showed, it would be pathetic for when this movie was made, much less the 'future' it's supposed to be set in. And can't that lead guy deliver any lines without sounding like he's yelling about damn dirty apes? And that montage...this is supposed to be one of the classics? You can let me out now, I'm ready to kill myself."
"See, the curse took action in a mere one showing!" said Gamble as he laughed maniacally.
"You'll never get away with this," screamed Gry, "this is EVIL!"
"Well, duuuuh," said Gamble, "Oh yes, I was going to tell you what the secret ingredient in Soylent Peepul was. The secret ingredient, AND the reason I need people to kill themselves to make more Soylent Peepuul is..."
Suddenly he was interrupted by the door, through which came a large henchman, wearing a bright silver spacesuit, which happened to be considered a very current fashion that year. The henchman said, "Operation Omega is all set to begin, Mr. Gamble."
"Excellent," said Gamble, who then pointed at Gry, "Kill him in some way, any way at all. Use your imagination."
"Can it be really slow with plenty of escape opportunities?" asked the henchman.
"I would expect nothing less," said Gamble, who left the room as Gry yelled to him.
"Wait, you didn't say the secret ingredient..." but Gry was cut off when he was grabbed by the henchman who carried Gry out another door, and through a long white hallway into a cylindrical room, threw Gry into it, then walked over to the door and stood attention. Gry slowly got up and looked around for a way out, but the guard was blocking it. Suddenly, the fifty-foot-high ceiling began to slowly open, and from the opening fell crackers. The crackers were a color Gry had never seen before, or, in reality so our readers can know what color to imagine them, blue. At once Gry was overcome by the smell of the crackers. Though he tried, but he couldn't resist putting one of them in his mouth.
The cracker was the best thing that Gry had ever tasted. He was unable to stop himself from falling to the floor and eating the crackers as fast as they came from the ceiling. "What are these," asked Gry with a muffled voice due to a mouthful of crackers.
"They're Soylent Heroin! Once you start, no one can stop eating them! You'll eat them until your stomach disgorges and you die!" said the henchman.
"Well you weren't counting on one thing," said Gry, stopping eating momentarily, "I was grown in a tube, and due to my artificially shortened lifespan it only takes me a few seconds of going 'cold turkey' to kick the habit, and, this little distraction you've provided was long enough!" Gry stood up triumphantly, ignoring the falling blue crackers.
"NO!" screamed the henchman, shaking his fist angrily, "but if you don't eat them they'll keep falling until you are totally smothered by them!" The henchman then did a Ray Charles laugh.
Looking around Gry could tell that he was in a situation that it would take the carefully trained skills of a secret agent to get out of. Knowing this, he pulled out the "Secret Agent" training syringe (which he had managed to conceal in his bikini in a way we won't think about) however one of the falling Soylent Heroin crackers hit him on the hand, knocking the syringe flying into the henchman's leg.
"Hey what's this?" the henchman barked, and then bent over to pull it out of his leg. Before he could finish, however, the serum took effect and he immediately began to do the polka bird dance (also known as the crazy chicken) while at the same time humming the unforgettable polka music that goes along at the top of his lungs. While the henchman pecked his hands, flapped his arms, twisted and clapped, Gry took the opportunity to run out of the danger-filled room.
Gry quickly made his way to the main chamber. It was filled with instrument panels being manned by a number of henchmen. More henchmen stood guard on platforms and Gamble sat on a large metal throne on an upper platform. Everybody, including Gamble, was wearing the stylish silver outfits. Gry pulled out the laser that had been his trusted friend for the last part of his 46-hour existence.
"Game's over, Proctorn Gamble!" yelled Gry.
"I don't think so," yelled Gamble from his high platform, "BEGIN THE COUNTDOWN!"
Gry, looking through the windows to the outside of the complex, saw a massive white sheet, at least as long as the very large oil refinery they were in, raising very, very slowly, in time with the countdown.
"TEN!" yelled a monotone voice from out of nowhere.
"You're too late, Mr. Gry!" yelled Gamble, "A massive screen will raise outside and when the countdown is completed, begin playing the cursed movies of Ahknheston. The screen is large enough to be clearly visible by the entire upper layer of people in New York, and once they kill themselves the next layer will see it, and so on, until I have an endless supply for my means! Nothing can stop the process, well, nothing except this button," Gamble pointed at a big red button on the panel in front of him, labeled "Cancel Evil Plan" so large so that even Gry could read it. Gamble continued, "which if pressed will automatically shut down and destroy the entire project including this whole factory, basically ending my evil reign, but I can safely have this button here, because you'll never get to it alive! Guards, KILL HIM!"
"Damn his logic," yelled Gry.
"NINE!"
The guards all pulled their AK-47s up, AK-47s still being the cheapest gun to mass-produce and thus still the choice for minions, and instantly began shooting at Gry. Gry fell back, cowering, but after a few seconds looked up, surprised to be alive. A quick look to the right for Gry explained his situation, there was an area blasted out in his exact shape, perfectly five feet to his right. Gry yelled, "yippee!" and brought his laser to bear on one of the towers.
"EIGHT!"
Gamble just looked at this, shocked, then grabbed the guard closest to him and pulled his concealing space helmet off. Underneath it the guard's eyes both pointed in radically different directions.
"Damn it, when did the eye deformity make its way into the henchman cloning process, and why wasn't I informed?!?" yelled Gamble at the guard.
"What eye deformity?" asked the guard as his left eye looked at Gamble's left forehead and the right eye looked at his own right foot.
"SEVEN!"
Gry, unlike the over-trained henchmen guards, decided not to bother with any fancy-pants aiming and just turned his laser permanently to "On" and started waving it around in the air. As Gamble had hundreds of henchmen in the room, and they didn't really seem to care about dodging, this killed several in the first second he did this.
"SIX!"
Waving the laser around a bit closer to the ground, Gry's beam knocked out the foundation of one of the towers that the guards were standing on. The tower didn't fall over but instead twisted sideways. As the guards made no change in the angle or amount of their shooting they accidentally killed all of their companions on three nearby towers.
"FIVE!"
By now Gry had become distracted and was trying to get a drink of water from one of the drinking fountains, but it didn't like his crumpled up dollar bill. Suddenly waking up and realizing that he had to save the day, he aimed his laser up at the roof and was shooting at the rafters. The surprisingly powerful and large payload police laser began knocking several beams down, one of which hit the ground and bounced into the already twisted tower, causing it to fall on its side, and also causing the guards on it, who still had made no modification in their shooting, to exterminate four more towers of their companions.
"FOUR!"
Gry had now slowly made his way to the only tower still standing or with any living guards, conveniently the one that Gamble was on. He began to climb the stairs on the bottom, made out of ancient license plates from each of the states of Mexamericanada.
"Stop him!" Gamble yelled at the remaining guards on his tower, "don't even try to shoot him, just go hand to hand or something! There's six of you and one of him, he has no chance!"
"THREE!"
Immediately the six guards on the tower got in a straight line going down the stairway, so that no more than one of them would face Gry at any given moment.
"Karate syringe, do your stuff!" said Gry.
"Why do I even bother?" said a very dejected Gamble, who just shook his head slowly.
"TWO!"
Gry took out the first guard with a KARATE KNEE TO THE GROIN, dispatched the next two with a KARATE HEADBUT, then pulled his arm way back and did a KARATE COWBOY PUNCH to the fourth guard in the little line.
"VUN!"
Gry’s KARATE BITCH SLAP eliminated the fifth guard, and then Gry grabbed the last guard by the neck with his left hand, by the butt with his right, and jumped in the air doing the KARATE ROCK BOTTOM!
Gamble, at this point, began climbing down a separate ladder attached to the side of the platform. Why Gry didn't just use this ladder in the first place is a matter of history now and may never be known.
"ZERO! BEGIN SHOWING MOVIE!" yelled the voice from nowhere.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" yelled Gry as, in KARATE SUPER SLOW MOTION, he bashed his forehead into the big red button labeled "Cancel Evil Plan".
Outside, the gigantic projector had only begun to display, "Filmed in Metrocolor", and a few people on the upper layers of the people-piles had only got mild depression, when the well-designed self-destruct system took effect, sending a series of explosions up the two sides of the screen, tearing the canvas apart. Inside the factory Gry pulled out an air-horn he'd also concealed in his bikini...somehow, and let out a few victory honks.
"You think you've won?" yelled Gamble at Gry as he slowly backed away.
"Huh?” said Gry.
“I'll be back, just you wait!"
Gamble then bumped into someone behind him, the henchman who had been jabbed with the "Secret Agent" Learnitol Syringe! The henchman looked much as he did before, except now he was wearing a black suit, black socks, black tie, black sunglasses and black sorfghut (it's a future thing girl, I'll tell ya later), as well as a little wire going into his ear. He quickly raised a pistol with a silencer and shot Gamble right in the stomach, dropping Gamble forward, dead.
"Thanks guy!" said Gry to the former henchman.
"No problem!" said the former henchman, "you're the one who turned me into a secret agent, which I gotta say is a big advantage over being an evil henchman. I mean, wheras before the hero just had to punch me once, nothing'll kill me now!" As he said this he pointed the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, causing it to jam.
"That's great," said Gry, "What's your name?"
"Well, Proctorn Gamble liked to name all of his henchmen after his various products, and he called me 'Soylent Orange'. But now that I'm my own person I think I'll just go by 'Orange'."
"That's great, Agent Orange," said Gry as the audience of this story would boo if wasn't just a figment of the author's imagination. Gry climbed down the ladder to meet Orange and asked him, "Where do you think I can find the corpse of my friend, Sal? I think wherever they're taking him has something REALLY IMPORTANT to do with the secret ingredient in Soylent Peepuul, but I just can't figure out what."
"If I remember my life before," said Orange, "We took them to a real big room, then did something to them. God, I wish I could remember. You are right, it was something nasty, though."
"Well," said Gry, "why don't we go there now. Heck, we can drag Proctorn Gamble's body there too, maybe get some use out of him after all!"
Gry and Orange laughed at this very morbid joke and gave each other a high five.
Chapter VIII
Gry followed Orange into a storage room about the size of an aircraft hangar. Due to its large size the room had its own atmosphere and weather patterns, and a light rain was falling. Across the floor of this room were laid hundreds of bodies, each removed from its garbage bag and covered with a white sheet. Men and women wearing white uniforms were walking around carrying a variety of sterilized instruments.
They walked into this huge room very slowly, Orange walking carefully to avoid stepping on the motionless corpses and Gry making a special effort to walk atop them, as for the vast majority of his 47 ½ hour existence he'd walked on people and he found it much preferable to the floors.
Suddenly a voice was heard from beneath Gry, "Hey, that's my face, buddy!"
Gry was so startled at this sound that he jumped up into Orange's arms. Orange just dropped his arms a moment after this happened, and Gry fell to the floor. One of the white-suited women walked up to the body that Gry had just been standing on, and injected something into it with a surgical device that strongly resembled a pastry-filler.
The body suddenly got up and threw the sheet off, revealing a balding, middle-aged man who quickly yelled, "What's going on? Why ain't I dead?!?"
The woman said, "You were only knocked unconscious in the euthanasia park. Fortunately the nurses over there are dumb so if you close your eyes they pretty much assume you're dead."
"What?" asked the man as the woman helped him up.
"You're now an official employee-slash-slave-laborer for Johnson&Johnson&Kellog&GM&Stevens&Mustaine&krazedfun4u.com, and we'll be sending you down to Mexico to work in the fields harvesting vegetables."
"This can't be happening," said the now very distraught man, "I wanted to die!" The man then looked down at the clothes that the operatives had dressed him in, the tattered denim overalls, striped flannel shirt and broad straw hat and screamed, "Nooooooo!"
"Well, you don't always get what you want," said the woman, "life isn't fair and all that philosophical crap. And if you even TRY to escape from your life of picking crops, or kill yourself, then we'll make sure your relatives don't get the death bonus."
Gry began to tell the man what the death bonus really was, but the woman quickly silenced him by handing him a square of Soylent Heroin, which he proceeded to chow down.
After finishing his snack, and having the requisite thirty-second withdrawal period complete with the bags under the eyes and the modeling contract, Gry said, "Hey, if they're not actually killed in the Euthanasia Parks, then Sal is here somewhere, alive!"
"Yeah," said Orange, "but where?"
"We'll have to determine some sort of searching algorithm to find him, I suggest we use a binary depth-first..."
"He's over here," said Orange who had walked over to the only covered body in the entire room that happened to be ten feet long, four feet high and shaped like a giant salamander.
"Damn you U of M computer science syringe!" said Gry as he walked over to Orange, who had used his amazing secret agent powers to palm one of the pastry fillers and was injecting it into Sal's foreleg.
"I'm glad that it turned out Soylent Peepuul wasn't made out of Peepuul," said Orange.
"Yeah," said Gry, "It would be silly for anyone besides Sal to eat people, and for Sal it's not cannibalism anyway because he's not a people!"
"You know what else is silly?" said Sal as he slowly got up, taking off the sheet that was covering him, "these goofy clothes they put me in. Don't they know that amphibians have internal genitalia and have no need of garments?" As Sal said this he tore off the farmering outfit of overalls, flannels, straw hat and sexy peek-a-boo underwear, throwing it to the side.
"They were probably just too embarrassed to look," said Orange.
"Hey Sal," said Gry, "I just saved the entire city from committing suicide and now I just realized that they wouldn't have died anyway!"
"Yup, the whole culture of death slash distopia thing was a crock," said Sal, "I just got sick of the taste that people got in the city from eating the various Soylent Whatever products. This seemed like as good a way as any to exit the city, so I went for it."
"I love you Sal," said Gry.
"Oh, and another reason I left the city was so I wouldn't have to deal with all of that 'love you' garbage," said Sal, "so NO MORE!"
Gry reluctantly nodded as suddenly the woman who'd woken the other "suicide case" walked up and said to Sal, "I'm sorry sir, but you need to come with me and take a trip to Mexico."
"And I'm sorry also," said Sal, "because you need to take a trip into the stratosphere!" Sal then grabbed the woman with one hand and flung her like a Frisbee into the air. The building was so large it also had its own ozone layer too, and the lady hit this and burst into fire, appearing to Sal, Gry and orange on the ground as a shooting star.
"Ooooooooooo, pretty," said Gry, "however we STILL don't know what Soylent Peepuul is made from!"
"I do," said Sal.
As a shocked Gry and Orange looked at Sal, he continued, "I've known it since you brought back that Epih Toam from the apartment, and I realized why all you clones who only ate Soylent Peepuul were so scrawny and unappetizing."
"No more beating a round bush," said Gry, "Tell us what it is!"
Sal was silent, however pointed his finger up at a humungous sign whose five foot tall letters were just barely within Gry's reading capacity. The sign read;
SOYLENT PEEPUUL
IS
PEAS, LETTUCE, BROCCOLI, BRUSSEL SPROUTS AND SPINACH
NOTE:AS ALL PLANTS HAVE BEEN ON EARTH FOR THE EXACT SAME AMOUNT OF TIME AS ALL ANIMALS THEY ARE EXACTLY AS EVOLVED AS ALL ANIMALS THUS OUR FAMOUS TAGLINE
"I started to tell you it was made from Peas," said Sal, "but there was a wee bit too much estrogen in the room for me so I had to increase that so-called poison level. Anyway, the Johnson&Johnson&Kellog&GM&Stevens&Mustaine&krazedfun4u.com corporation is infringing on your basic pathetic human right to end your own pathetic human lives. They're turning all of these people who tried to kill themselves into migrant workers, farming the raw materials for Soylent Peepuul."
"The truth must be told," said Gry, standing up and spinning his arms rapidly in counterclockwise determination.
"Yes, so get out there now Gry, and tell everyone, SOYLENT PEEPUUL IS GREENS!"
:-o
Gry took a few steps towards the door to spread his awesome message of power, but it was at this point that he reached the end of his pre-determined 48-hour lifespan. As most VD's do, the six to eight that Yok had infected him with took effect at the end of his life. He grabbed his groin in pain and collapsed to the floor.
As this happened he looked at the round glass dot on his right hand, which was now blinking rapidly. Gry adjusted the vertical hold on the dot and an image came into view, a man who was the spitting image of Gry himself, except he was wearing a television rabbit ears on his head, covered in foil.
"What up Gry," said the image, "yous a talkin to yous maker, Clona Frank!"
:-O
Gry tried to say something to Frank but the syphilis had affected his vocal cords and he could really only gurgle. Frank spoke as if he understood.
"Yah I understand that dawg," said Frank, "youse a playa. Anyway, I bet if ya could youse a be axing me what up with your creation and shit. Anyhow a few days agos me an my homies were playin a little pickup basketball. A little one-on-one you knows what I'm sayin. Anyway ol Koriji beats me like total, like shut out, dawg, then he has the balls to go and he sez that he could even beats two of me, two-on-one if you knows what I bean meanin. Anyway to pah-rove his thizeory we'z a headed for tha lab and made you. He was gonna name you after hiz food like hizamburger or something, but Ah was wanting just tah give yah an ezizy handle like Buddy or Man. In tha end we did tha compromizin thang and named yah Gry which kinda wuz like Guy but also a combizination of tha words Greasy Fry. After thats we'z jest kinda got some twisted up and bole ass just fergot all abouts youse. Nah I'm priz-out though, cuz you did tha shit with your life man, I mean saving tha whole hood from some evil FOD and shit. You did wiz-ay more with your terrifyingly short life than I did with my wondrafully lahng one dawg. Ova and out from yo mutha, and have a nice afterlife."
The image of white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, Frank went to static and Gry took his last breath and fell limp. Orange and Sal stood above, watching the whole spectacle.
"Afterlife..." Sal started to say. There was a slight pause while Sal and Orange just got big smiles on their faces and broke out laughing. Still giggling, they walked off into the building's miniature sunset.
Meanwhile, millions or tens of light years away, in the Eskimo Nebula, Vule walked down a long corridor to his master. Carrying a long printed report in his heavily gloved hands, Vule had to walk carefully to avoid slipping on the ice that was the corridor's floor. Much more than the floor, the ice was the entire building as Vule and his master were true Esquimeaux and as such would only live in Igloos.
Vule entered the chamber of his master Nukinuki and Nukinuki turned to face him. Nukinuki had been chowing down on a raw fish and wyped the guts off his face, which was barely visible through the heavy furs of his hood. "Who DARES to disturb Subcommander Nukinuki?" he yelled, staring down from his twenty-foot throne of solid, clear ice.
"I bring important information..." started Vule.
"HOW COULD IT BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN FISH!" screamed Nukinuki.
"It's from Earth, subcommander," said Vule.
"Earth," Nukinuki was now reminiscent, "The planet where billions upon billions of white men enjoy themselves having fun in the sun on land that is rightfully that of the Eskimo?!?"
"The same," continued Vule, "apparently a plan by one white man to enslave some other white men has failed."
"Fool, why do you speak only of the internal doings of white men which are cruel and pointless?"
"One of the beings involved in the plan was not a man, it was a giant salamander being. I was wondering if the Eskimo people may have an ally in this species," Vule said this in the same deadpan manner he delivered all of his lines.
"Ally?" said Nukinuki, raising his voice once more, "the Eskimo will never ally with a land-stealing white man! White men who just happen to be giant salamanders get no special treatment, for they are in fact even worse! GUARDS! PUT WALRUS HUNTER VULE IN THE ICY OCEAN OF DESPAIR!"
With this statement four slightly larger Eskimo guards, otherwise indistinguishable from Vule and Nukinuki in their parkas, grabbed Vule who said in his same monotone voice, "No. Please don't." as the guards dragged him out of sight.
Subcommander Nukinuki bent over and picked up a penguin from next to his throne and placed it on his lap, stroking it while oblivious to the whole which-pole-is-which thing. He talked to himself.
"Yes, white men of Earth, continue as you are. Reproduce like maniacs filling the planet with the result of your fornication. However you must bide your time, for we are coming. The mighty Eskimo fleet will soon attack your pathetic space defenses and then the Eskimo will descend with harpoons and slings to claim all of the land that is rightfully ours!"
Nukinuki laughed an evil laugh as this short story fades to black somehow.
The Moral: While you might think it's fun to dress your salamander, frog, toad or caecilian up in cute little outfits, as demonstrated here, it is unnatural. Please, please, let your pet amphibian remain naked. They will be much happier that way.
For more information contact us at "The Assignment: Clothes Off Salamanders" or TACOS. You can find one of our booths at any county or state fair and, if our representative pretends not to know what you're talking about, give him the secret handshake by rubbing the top of his head while chanting the mantra "AHM MAD ILL DOE" repeatedly. Then he'll know where to send yah
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