[-Blip - coordinator of writers - tall - ancient but sharp - beady eyes - large square steel-rimmed glasses attached to fake giant bird's beak covering the nose - executive fashions - trendy judges wig on a bald scalp -]
...comes in and starts talking at me, says, 'Moulin, got a big one for you', the usual way he blah-blah-blahs on, melodramatising everything. He only barely remembers to acknowledge my work on Tau-Ceti, and tells me about Mintaka. 'I think you can handle it', he says. 'This job demands a disinterested individual. Moulin, you're the most disinterested individual I know', he drones at me. 'I look at you and all I see is disinterest'.
What the hell is that anyway?
Believe me my friend, I tried to talk to him, tell him that this arid planet work was no good for my health and that maybe someone else should do it.
Bad for your health how?
Oh, I don't know exactly, just very draining. I've always had this strong feeling that my body can't cope with it. Blip ignores me, and tells me this story. Here, listen, I'll do my Blip impression....
[- Moulin's face, once stone-like serene Scandinavian features - high cheek bones - long sandstone hair - bitten to a constipated, parody of the former self. He becomes animated - is sitting - barely - edge of couch -]
'Nine years ago a writer by the name of Rocky Treats working for Magellan's Guides went to Mintaka to write it up, see. Mintakans reacted like a bunch of naive school boys, offered Treats kickbacks and favours by the bucket load. Even their fool king got in on it. Thought the tourism'd make up for the outlay. And Treats misjudged them, fucked up royally, see. Didn't make good on his promises, see. Publicised them as the suckers they were. Called 'em toothless peasants. A month later Treats' girlfriend finds him nailed to the ceiling with shards of the pottery he'd accepted off of them - stuck up there for ten hours before he finally bit it. You probably know the rest. Media made a martyr out of Treats and the Alliance spat Mintaka out like curdled bean curd
Ha ha ha aha ahaaaa!
Nurse! Nurse!....Yeah, better sedate 'im again...
[- Skip gets wacked with liquid Vhl351 - facial muscles relax - eyes slide to close - sleepy time - the sound of water droplets falling to a bucket - the sound runs through high-pass filters - elongated - reversed - fading -]
.....strung out as cat-gut 'e is. Better leave it for a couple more days.
[-Later - straightened - after basket-weaving workshop - Skip writes - destination - Animal Quarantine Farm - other side of the complex -]
Jiggers,
The court case marches closer by the day. Don't think I can handle it. Am planning escape. Have a plastic shovel and will dig my way out. You break out too! Meet you in full moon's light.
- Skip
Sorry, no time for
haikus, someone is coming,
must hide the shovel.
Hey, Joe, can I call you Joe?
No.
Have you ever seen the insides of your teeth?
No, I-
Well, because I'm in this quarantined environment, and it's just doctors and medicos everywhere - with nothing to do - they've been shunting me around from one examination room to the next, taking a look in here, poking an instrument down there. And yesterday this dentist stuck a little camera in my mouth and took a picture of the inside of my bottom front teeth, you know? Y'know how you look at yourself in the mirror and pull your gums up and see you teeth gleaming back at you and you think, 'Yep, everything okay there', well I saw what the other side looks like, and man... It was sickening . Reminded me of once when I dropped a tea pot, and it broke - that colour inside - yeeech!-