“While
we are on the topic of other planets, please allow yourself to drift
off mentally to another planet – not terribly far distant in terms
of space and time, but very distant in terms of reality. Place
yourself on a war-torn field. A field of churned-up mud, debris, and
dead bodies. See a series of trenches facing one another. See two
armies facing one another across the churned up field. See the young
men, huddled in a troglodyte world of mud and fear. See the mist and
smoke rolling across the deserted landscape. Can you feel it?” asked Blaze Raygun.
“Is
this an intentionally undertaken cloquey-overdose?” asked Grogan,
opening one eye.
“It
is often times the setting for an intentionally undertaken
cloquey-overdose, but we are not using it like that right now.”
(Author's
note: the Bezeldan word “cloquey” means, literally, “a confusion”.
When extra-dimensional travelers
would find themselves depressed from having landed in a real heck
of a cloquey, they would travel through the ether of time and space
and take in a little bit of opening day on the Battle of the Somme.
It was cloquey-overdose on a grand scale, and they always felt a
little better about whatever it was that they had previously
witnessed. This whole issue is addressed in another story of mine –
Yerba Maté
– that you should
probably go and read. Right now. Please
report back to this
paragraph when you have done so. Thank you.)
“You
might see some soldiers huddled together in groups, talking in low
voices, and lighting cigarettes in their cupped hands. You can see
the look in their eyes, and maybe you can even feel how uncomfortable
they are in their woolen uniforms. Wool, encrusted in mud and maybe
even some blood here and there. To top it off, there are bugs. Lice.
Little vermin that crawl around and bite the soldiers, just to add a
little bit of discomfort to everything else. If you look further,
there are also rats. Not as numerous as the lice, but probably more
visible. The rats are sometimes feeding on the dead, and the
soldiers know this. In fact, they know that some of the bodies of
men who had been their friends – men just like them with bodies
just like theirs – those are some of the bodies that the rats are
nibbling on. Worst of all, the soldiers know that their own bodies
might be next – they might become the next body that the rats
nibble on. It's just awful.”
“Aside
from the rats and the lice, there is not a lot of wildlife painted
into this picture. No starlings. No bletcher-birds. No bluejays.
No redjays. No anykindjays. The soldiers huddle on both sides of the
trenches, all speaking their respective languages in hushed tones,
smoking cigarettes from their home countries. And one of the things
that the soldiers do on either side of the trenches – something
they do no matter what language they speak or what uniform
they wear – is bond with each other. The men sometimes have
nothing else to keep them going but each other. They become almost
closer than brothers.”
“Okay.
I want you now
to depart this field of horror and death, and come with me to another
place.”
“Gladly,”
said Grogan, wiping sweat from his brow.
“Come
with me to a Frosty-Chill on
a warm summer night in
a small town near the northern pole. Look at the teenagers gathered
around the counter, ordering
Frosty-Chill cones and cylinders and wheaty-milks. Look at
the hormones
coursing through their systems. Well, you can't really see the
hormones, but you know they are there, don't you? Don't answer that.
Look at the boy and the girl sitting at that little table off to the
side. Look at their eyes, and they way they hold each other's hand.
In another time, and in another place there were those who called
this 'puppy-love' but we mostly think of it as the affection that two
young people have for one another when their systems and their brains
are not quite developed yet, and they don't really know what they are
feeling. You can almost feel the sugary, sappy, warm, and wonderful
emotions that they have going on right now, can't you? Again, don't
answer that.”
“Look
inside that young boy's heart. Can you? Of course not, but maybe you
can feel it just a little bit. If you can tell how much he never
wants this moment to end, and how in just 30 or 40 short years into
the future he will wish that he could feel that same feeling once
again, you might get a sense of what I'm talking about. Likewise
with the young girl. She might be looking back in 30 or 40 years and
thinking that there was once a perfect summer evening outside the
Frosty-Chill, and that there was a time when she felt so good and so
young and so blissfully ignorant of what was really going on.”
“This
is very different from the last place we were. Nobody is dying here,
at least not actively, and there is a lot less fear, a lot less mud,
and certainly fewer rats. There might be some lice, but we won't
even bring that into the equation, if you don't mind.”
Grogan
and Rosalyn shook their heads without saying a word.
