Zeno's Last Grain: A Hilarious Sci-Fi Space Comedy (The Galaxy Marshals Book 1) by Jay Gaskell

Author:Jay Gaskell [Gaskell, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simulacrum Press Publishers
Published: 2021-09-22T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

‘I’m getting a blister on my index finger,’ says Charles. ‘And my arm is aching in places I never knew could ache. I think I have a chronic R.S.I. problem.’

Ever the contrarian, Arthur is enjoying the chore—lying on his back with his hands behind his head, pressing some of the lower buttons with his big toes.

‘You may be right,’ says Arthur nonchalantly. ‘The problem is, you still think you’re a bureaucrat, but in actuality, you’re just a regular unemployed Joe now. Your Residual Self Image does indeed not correlate with your current predicament. Nice insight there, dole-ee.’

‘R.S.I.—Repetitive Strain Injury—you moron. Did you learn to do that in monkey school?’ asks Charles, gesturing towards Arthur’s dexterous toes.

Arthur claps his hands limply like a primate and makes some chimpanzee-like noises.

‘I miss working,’ says Cuthbert, getting all misty. ‘The routine and order of it… it made me feel like I had a purpose.’

‘We all have a purpose,’ says Arthur, ‘at all times. The universe is a mystical place. Oh, yes…’

‘Arthur, do you have faith?’ I ask, suddenly curious. ‘Do you think the ancients were on to something?’

‘Oh, I have faith in many things,’ says Arthur. ‘Take these big toes for example,’ he says, pointing down at them. ‘They’ve got me out of more than a few scrapes, I can tell you.’

‘Not that kind of faith,’ I say smiling. ‘The spiritual kind.’

‘Oh, that. Didn’t I mention? I am God,’ he says theatrically, before grinning that stupid grin of his.

‘Delusions of grandeur,’ says Charles. ‘Mental note: add that to the list.’

‘When I travelled through time, I—’ Arthur says, but then stops as if someone has flicked the channel in his brain. ‘Oh, my…’

‘What is it, Arthur?’ I ask.

‘Does God need a break?’ asks Charles.

‘Oh, my… oh, my…’ he goes on. I look up and see an army of Zulons wandering into the central hub, moving towards us. ‘We haven’t been turning the switches off,’ he says. ‘I just remembered. How could I forget? We’ve been turning them on. ‘Quick, flick them back. Hurry!’ says Arthur, sounding unusually flustered.

‘What’s the hurry?’ I ask. ‘They’re holograms. They can’t harm us. Not without the cooperation of the charybdis; and he is playing on our team, remember?’

‘Umm… I may not have mentioned before,’ says Arthur, still manically resetting the switches, ‘but they do have the ability to interact with biological organisms, at least temporarily anyway, through the use of advanced haptic technology.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a drain on their power supply, but they can be contiguous with beings that have a sense of touch, when they need to be.’

Charles stops what he’s doing and approaches Arthur with fire in his eyes. ‘So what you’re saying, in your non compos mentis, opposable-toed, below the bell curve, simian kind of way, is this hoard of angry Zulon-clones can attack us. They can rip us to pieces like a posse of hungry, flesh eating carnivores and then juggle our eyeballs afterwards, just for fun. Would that be accurate, Oh Wise One?’

‘Well, not exactly.

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