Greegs & Ladders (3 page)

It is my
fervent opinion that far worse events would have transpired had the
Quiggs' plan to send all the trash to Garbotron succeeded. We have
already learned about the disastrous results of Garbotron pollution
caused by a single cannon blast, so it can be assumed the
phenomenal number of cannon blasts required to rid the planet of
the Greegs' mess would have caused the destruction of countless
other (and better) civilizations. Because the plan failed, one
species died off on a planet that had no use for it anyway. That
is, how you say, taking one for the team.

Over and
over again, great minds have hypothesized and sometimes
successfully proved that time does not exist. Nevertheless, time is
always relevant. And short. Especially if you are thrown into a
schmold pit, as no creature can tread schmold for longer than an
Earth hour (unless of course you’re a metallic tetra-turtle or
weigh less than helium while on the 7
^th
moon of Grebular). In their final hour, the Quiggs
frantically purified as much schmold as they could before sinking
below the surface and drowning. Foolish as it was, one cannot help
but admire their dedication to cleanliness. Unless of course one is
a Greeg.

Quigg
skeletons were henceforth sometimes found in the schmold reserves.
The Greegs never knew it but the bone marrow of the Quigg contained
a powerfully sterile cleansing agent which diffused in the schmold
for years after the extinction, thus making all the latter-day
schmold slightly less filthy. It’s nice to know that even after
their complete annihilation,
the great Quigg species continued to inadvertently clean up
the universe.

TV and Pets for
Greegs

You might be
wondering what a Greeg did for entertainment when not fishing Quigg
skeletons out of schmold reserves, mining for schmold, or taking in
the guilty pleasures of a particularly skeezy Cover Bar while
intoxicated on mass quantities of schmold. Television is popular
with Greegs, but the only show is ‘watching schmold,’ as all Greeg
televisions are merely hollowed out glass cubes filled with
schmold. This does not stop them from wholeheartedly believing they
are seeing something different when they change the channel (an act
that is supposedly done telepathically). A typical Greeg
conversation in front of the TV is as follows:

“Turn on the
TV.” (An act done by removing a blanket placed on top of a hollowed
out glass cube filled with schmold).

“What
channel?”

“5.”

“Ok.”

“Actually not
channel 5. I've seen this episode of schmold before. Look at that
familiar cluster of bubbles in the bottom left hand quadrant.”

“But the
schmold-guide says it’s brand new.”

“It’s a
re-run.”

“I’ll put on
channel 8 instead.”

“Good choice.
The sheen of schmold is brighter on channel 8.”

“I don’t like
it. Let’s watch channel 3.”

“The schmold
movement is too frenetic on channel 3.”

“What channel
do you want to watch then?”

“Channel
8.”

“But I don’t
like channel 8!”

These sorts of
arguments are known to carry on for hours until someone solves the
problem by smashing the television.

A favorite
household pet is a school of shimmer-fish. The fish are kept in
tanks filled with, you guessed it, schmold. Viewing the fish is an
impossible task, being that schmold is the antithesis of clear, but
this problem is quickly averted when the fish die and float
belly-up to the surface. The underbelly is what shimmers the most
anyway, so a floating upside-down dead shimmer-fish is actually the
most entertaining type of shimmer-fish a Greeg can own. If you were
hosting a party you would be most embarrassed to learn your
shimmer-fish had not died before the guests arrived.

The Unbearable
Lightness of Being a Greeg

While our
Greegs freely romp about their own planet trashing the place whilst
drawing blueprints for the next schmold museum, many faraway Greegs
languish miserably in cramped carnival cells. As stated, on most
planets Greegs are a small-numbered population put on display by
creatures of greater intelligence and power. These imprisoned
Greegs have never even heard of schmold, much less seen a drop of
it, yet buried somewhere in their collective consciousness is the
memory of schmold and how wonderful it might be if they had some.
Carnival Greegs dream every night of a tantalizingly unattainable
green substance. They always wake up just before the moment of
acquisition, left with feelings of disorientation and
disappointment. When they’re unable to sleep they gaze at whatever
moons are in the sky of wherever they are and imagine the moons are
green and made of schmold. If the moons happen to already be green,
well, they especially enjoy looking at those ones because there's a
good chance they might actually be made of schmold.

Carnival
Greegs do very little while performing, as the mere sight of these
silly creatures is enough to send even the most freakishly bizarre
alien into a fit of laughter. The most popular carnival attraction
is the viewing of sexual intercourse. Every mid-afternoon the
Greegs are separated into groups of two (or more if you can afford
the tickets) and left to perform for the paying crowd. Most aliens
are fascinated with the process of Greeg intercourse. How and why
do such brutish slobs perform procreation in such a dignified and
sterile manner? The mystery was best discussed by the famous Dr.
Kipple in his psychological think-piece
Purified Procreation: Greeg Sex and
What it Says About Their True Nature
.

Klaxworms and
Flying Grimbat Messengers

As previously
mentioned, Greegs are the most intellectually evolved creatures on
this planet. That does not say much for everyone else. We have
witnessed the folly of the Quigg, but that is nothing compared to
the pure lunacy that are Klaxworms.

A Klaxworm is
a medium-sized slithery type creature with thorns and barbs and
other dangerous things adorning its skin. Klaxworms exist solely on
one of 11 planets containing wriggly, walky, breathy things in the
hopeless, undeveloped but reasonably entertaining to look at from a
safe distance sun system of the 38 planets in the 59 sunned
district of Herb. The Klaxworms' estimated 3.2 trillion populace
lives entirely in a single cave system. It is crowded and
unpleasant to say the least. During the day there’s a stifling heat
so intense it can boil the organs of unfortunately thinner-skinned
Klaxworms, while the sub-zero temperatures of the evening results
in all Klaxworms being frozen to the ground like the tongue of a
foolish human who licked metal in the wintertime. For about 9 Earth
hours every night the Klaxworms are stuck in mid-stride. Once
things warm up in the morning they continue their daily routine of
hoping their organs don’t boil while deciding where they’d like to
end up frozen for the night.

Klaxworms do not want to live in this wretched cave. But
they don’t leave. They are perfectly aware (through aid of flying
Grimbat messengers) that right outside their cave exists all sorts
of remarkable things
like varnished marble, shiny glass windows and freshly
bleached tile floors; in short, the entire surface of a planet for
their roaming purposes. No one is stopping them, yet they cannot
leave. Why is this? A Klaxworm has no great enemy to fear in the
world (except the odd Greeg has been known to wander in the cave
and eat a few of them for a late snack, apparently forgetting
they’re deadly poisonous to everything). A Klaxworm will talk your
ear off about leaving the cave, how in just a moment they’ll
slither right out into the vast fields of polished marble, only
they never quite make it to the exit. Along the way there’s always
a distraction, such as a good discussion about leaving the cave,
the boiling of one’s organs, or the finding of an excellent spot to
be frozen in for the evening.

The squalor of
the cave has no actual relevance with their desire to leave, for
even if Klaxworms had evolved in an oasis paradise they still would
have wanted to be elsewhere. To be displeased with the surroundings
while at the same time attempting no change whatsoever is the
unwavering state of the Klaxworm's consciousness. It is a very
disagreeable purpose to have in life, one that usually results in
not doing anything other than stewing about in a cave waiting for
ones organs to boil.

Are Klaxworms
really this stupid? Not quite. They are merely one of the
universe’s laziest creatures.

Another
mysterious creature on this planet is the briefly aforementioned
Flying Grimbat messenger. The Flying Grimbat messenger looks like a
triplet of tie-dyed Perusian vampire bats mashed up in a quality
vice grip with 3 sets of pterodactyl wings frantically flapping to
keep its monstrous body afloat. They feed on a strict diet of
watered down schmold, making them somewhat of an enemy to Greegs
(who fear the notion of sharing schmold). Luckily the fact that
Grimbats water down their schmold means they don’t use very much of
it. If a Grimbat consumed pure schmold the Greegs would have wiped
them out ages ago. It is also true that for some reason the Greegs
feel a compelling affinity with the Grimbats, as if they are one of
them.
Flying Grimbats
have appointed themselves messengers of the planet, like a
spontaneous organic media. The only problem with this flying
epidemic of mass media is that nobody wants to hear their
mind-numbingly boring messages, making Grimbats possibly the most
useless creature on the planet. Certainly more useless than
Klaxworms, who at least mind their own business and don’t drop
excrement on the recently varnished marble. Grimbats are
confounding blabbermouths. They are heedless busybodies swooping
around the skies, eavesdropping from behind shrubs and sheepishly
claiming it’s for the good of public knowledge when they get caught
doing it. The parallels between Flying Grimbat Messengers and human
paparazzi are staggering. In my eyes, the only blatant difference
is that a paparazzi looks like a triplet of tie-dyed Perusian
vampire bats mashed up in a quality vice grip with 2 sets of
pterodactyl wings frantically flapping to keep it's monstrous body
afloat, as opposed to having the regular 3 sets of pterodactyl
wings commonly found on the Flying Grimbat Messenger.

Like I said,
they are a mysterious creature

The Scam of
Religious Holidays for Greegs

A Greeg
calendar is an interesting collectible to come across in your space
travels. Just the fact that Greegs have invented a calendar is
mystifying, but matters are made more baffling when you discover
there is no semblance of logic or pattern in any of the 473 pages,
all of which are constantly being rearranged and rewritten due to
squabbles about which holidays should be celebrated and which
should never be spoken of again. Random holidays (some enthralling,
some downright shameful) are perpetually coming and going, but the
celebration of one in particular has always been agreed upon. It is
marked on the calendar by every 4.3 rotations of the small moon
Dromos, and it is a day in which all respectable Greegs must pay
reverence to their deity, known by the name ‘
Whatever It Is That Created Everything For
the Sole Entertainment of the Greeg.’ On the day of reverence a
Greeg says thank you to Whatever It Is That Created Everything For
the Sole Entertainment of the Greeg, and prays the supply of
schmold be plentiful for at least the next thousand revolutions
round the sun. The centrepiece of the event is the great tradition
known as
The
Offering of Schmold.
Each Greeg family is expected (nay, commanded by law) to
place a worthy offering in front of a stone altar, where slaves of
the congregation collect the offerings and take them to a secret
volcano that is the living heart of Whatever It Is That Created
Everything For the Sole Entertainment of the Greeg. This was once a
pure act of sacrifice, but over time the Offering of Schmold became
nothing more than an egotistical competition to see who could offer
the most intricately expensive display. Much of a Greeg's time
between days of reverence is spent planning out and constructing
their next offering. Commendable offerings in recent years have
included: a 2-dozen set of schmold candles (a truly rare item
considering the near impossibility of solidifying schmold short of
owning a bottle of Ice-Nine), a flat-screen schmold television
(with all the channels of course), a schmold-multiplier (a
remarkable machine that can increase your schmold supply at a rate
of .03% per rotation of Dromos, assuming you’re able to afford the
astronomically bankrupting task of plugging it in), and the ever
popular schmold-cake (acceptable only when baked to a crispy
charcoal texture and stomped on a little bit).

Long ago it
was made public to the Greeg community that the congregation had
not been taking the offerings of schmold to any secret volcano that
is the living heart of Whatever It Is That Created Everything For
the Sole Entertainment of the Greeg. They were merely putting the
schmold in their own houses. The entire celebration of the Greegian
deity is a scam perpetrated by an elite group of maniacal Greegs,
who for some unknown reason must own more schmold than anyone else.
Was the public upset? Not really. Their desire to compete over who
has the most expensive schmold offering quickly trumped the anger
of being ripped off.

Greegs love
showing off how much schmold they have, even if it results in no
longer having the schmold.