(13) Luck


"It's May Day," the President said, so this is a big prank."
"That's April Fool's Day, Mr. President," Jukebox said. There was a long pause. "We're used to him," he added. "Too much fluctuation in the serotonin levels." There was a release of tension in the spacecraft, which had been experiencing turbulence in the form of raised anxiety levels. "Ah," Legggs said. "So that's it."

"What's it?" Speedy asked.

"He's breaking apart again," Legggs said.

"Who is?" asked Archer Prax.

"I was actually referring to the serotonin levels," Legggs said.

"You are," Jukebox said. "You made a deal with us that if we'd tell you when you were breaking up you'd release us on your way out of here."

"Have you ever thought about being with another woman?" Eva asked Cici.

"Be quiet," Hans said. "She doesn't know she's a woman."

"What's a woman?" Cici asked.

"What's Archer talking about?" Speedy asked.

"But if it was me breaking up," Archer Prax said, "I wouldn't still be here in my usual form. I would be diminished in some way, and I am not."

"Hey, you just asked us to tell you when it happens," Jukebox said. "What you do with the information is up to you."

"Who's breaking up?" the President said. "My god who's breaking up?"

The saucer lurched crazily into an intersection of calculation in the mathematical field through which it navigated along lines of logic. When two lines of logic conflicted it caused turbulence. The President's exclamatory question was separated from a total collapse of his nervous system only by inflection. The field registered both an exclamation and a question but he was only conscious of it as a question?

As a question it carried only fear and concern? As a statement it described the arc of the energy upward to a point, then the collapse and dispersal of the energy back into its separate component parts.

"Of course," Archer Prax said. "I can being either monotheistic or polytheistic."

The sensation of hearing Archer's voice was that of becoming the place to which the ear is speaking.

"What are we going to do with the little guy?" Speedy asked.

"Beam him back down," Archer said. "He's making the ship jump all over the place."

The team of three secret service agents decided to have one more look in the bunker. "It's been three hours," the team leader said. "We've checked this bunker thoroughly and it was completely empty."

"In some strange way he was just stolen," another agent said.

The third agent was entering the code. The door slid smoothly open. "Mr. President!" the team leader shouted.

"I have risen," Snatchel said. He smirked and added, "Go and tell the Vice-President." He looked down at his naked body. "And get me a robe or something."

"Where's Commando Cannon?" the head agent asked, then blushed and quickly added, "your sparring partner."

"He ran into a little bad luck," Snatchel said. "It happens in cage fighting."


Posted: Tue - June 21, 2005 at 11:05 AM