3/27/14

Gullible
By Joseph Robert


Frere Tizzavum Krieg-Sensei was lecturing the more opaque of the less sentient crimson jellies of the commissary staff in the lounge that Eve-twi-day-turn. It was a time Nu-Banda Prizaplop Polyanagagos, the paternity cover fifth-shift supervisor, would never forget, because he never could forget anything at all, at least according to his extended warranty carrying neuro-bionic implant’s design’s promotional spec hologram’s three-dimensional fine print. Really, he couldn’t forget even things he wanted to like, for example, how the Krieg-Sensei referred to the jellies on the payroll as “nescient slime balls” behind their ‘backs’ and flying in the face of their statutory rights.
‘But, whatever,’ thought Nuba. Everything on this rock called Nu-Banda Prizaplop Polyanagagos that name, ‘Nuba’, because the jellies couldn’t be bothered to learn his real name properly seeing as he was only on-asteroid for a temporary contract, nonetheless, the fifth-shift paternity cover supervisor liked to think of ‘Nuba’ as an affectionate nickname. He felt for the jellies, the vivid, viscous crimson little lumps and not just with his antennae alone. He should, after all he was there to make sure they were treated in accordance with the law and not served in any manner contrary to The Inter-Galactic Comestibles Preparation Standards Treaty sub-article 2.01, but he wouldn’t go so far as to stick out his most ganglion-packed head-foot a Chica-Xyphilofraudian’s cubit, as the saying goes, to try and take the Krieg-Sensei to task for how that asexual spore colony talked about the jellies in the semi-privacy of the senior civilian staffs’ ultra-violet barium baths.
Frere Tizzavum Krieg-Sensei paused the slow, hovering rotations of the bell-shaped mass, amorphous and sponge-like, that served as its main body before clearing the pseudo-throat in that gigantic horsehead of its. Two black lobes weeping purple ichor vibrated wildly in what would have been the nostrils of a real horse. It looked like those semi-spheres might even explode at last. There were no eyes. (Nuba scanned feeds from deep space exploration probes as a hobby, so he knew what a horse’s head looked like and all sorts of other things too, like the fact that that Krieg-Sensei was ugly as sin by any imaginable standard, as in fact were most asexual species, at least in his experience.)
‘Can you believe this drama colony?’ Nuba telepathically commented to his fourteenth daughter’s son via biological tachyon pulse. ‘Wish I was there for the festival orbit. Give my regards to the molted hatchlings. Love you too. Bye bye. Oh, are you still there, Lugal Plippoplunk Hypohoplites? Great. Can you please put that sister you swallowed intra ovum but who still manages well enough by parasitically leeching the nutrients you ingest from that cyst she lives in growing beside your non-fluidic, gaseous digestion pouch’s vapor-bile gland on the tachyon pulse. I need to talk to her’
At last Frere Tizzavum Krieg-Sensei began rotating about two perpendicular axes once more to conclude its lecture in that awful million mega-hertz drone of its. It really out did itself this time, reaching a new all-time low in its grandiloquence:
“Jellies and Jellymen, one consciousness should never be amused by the gullibility of another as that amusement in and of itself distracts from the real universal problems that need solving. Problems such as remembering to deionize the dismemberment platform surfaces after allowing carbo-milk mites to defecate upon them after they get loose twice in one phase-drive supply drop schedule. No more joking about in flesh-prep!”


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Questions answered about Joseph Robert by Joseph Robert negate themselves more than inform you that he is married to poet and writer Leilanie Stewart.