Snippets

                                                                            The Oidenoids

T WAS CLEAR that the other Oidenoids in their group did not think much of Ebnetter, as a couple of them exchanged looks and rolled their eyes when he so quickly volunteered for the job. The disrespectful exchange did not go unnoticed by their leader, Borden, and it was met by his stern gaze and an admonishing shake of the head. These creatures did not tolerate insults or bickering amongst themselves, and the two guilty Oidenoids were immediately contrite.
     Feeling slightly more relaxed with Ebnetter out ahead, they rounded the next bend and came upon a waterfall that spilled not water, but thousands of small white beads, pearl-like in appearance. The beads flowed out over their heads toward a pond of real water on the other side of the canal, bursting open in midair like popcorn, to become brilliant butterflies that looked neon in their vibrancy—each of them an enchanting azure or a brilliant red. The butterflies fluttered about for a moment and then flew off over the limpid pond, where they were swept into a swirling funnel of air that drew them down into an opening at the center of the water.
     The sight of it left Lily breathless. She reached over and held Warren’s arm. He looked at her hand as she did and smiled. 

FROM THERE, THE canal twisted into a dark tunnel with a high ceiling, where magma had cooled thousands of years earlier as it slithered down the tunnel’s walls, forming huge bulbous gobs that hung now like thousands of sagging bellies. 
     As they emerged from the tunnel, they nearly stumbled over Ebnetter, crouched behind a small rusted barrel, holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes. He was intently studying something that lay in the path ahead of them.
     “What’s it?” Hammet whispered as he crouched down beside Ebnetter and signaled the others to stay back in the tunnel.
     “We has almost certain a Blobalobb der.”
     Hammet took the binoculars from him to look for himself. “Sure yeah ta dat. Is a Blobalobb der is.”
     Ebnetter nocked an arrow and drew it across the belly of his bow. “Ya stays here,” he said in a sharp whisper, and then moved quickly along the edge of the canal like a S.W.A.T. sniper, until he was standing over a flat creature that looked to Warren and Lily like a throw pillow. The little animal did not run, of course—had no legs to do so—but it did growl most audibly just before Ebnetter let fly his arrow into its center (though “fly” is perhaps not the right word here, since he was merely inches away). He stepped back from it, nocked another arrow, and moved in again to send it into the animal’s middle, just to be sure it was completely dead. When he was certain it was, he turned and gallantly signaled to the rest that it was safe to approach. The other Oidenoids stepped over to look at the dead creature.
     Warren and Lily peered over their little shoulders.
     Ebnetter took out a small bowie knife, flipped the animal over like a pancake and sliced it open so he could remove the skin.
     While this was going on, Warren saw that Hammet was looking at the map again, and stepped over to ask him some questions. “So that’s a Blobalobb, huh?” he said, nodding to Ebnetter and the creature.
     “Sure yeah ta dat,” Hammet said without looking up.
     “Well… it doesn’t have any legs… so it couldn’t really move, could it?”
     “Nah. But dem is wigglers dem.”
     “Right,” Warren said, still confused. “But… that guy just hunted an animal that couldn’t move.”
     Hammet looked up from the map then, rubbed his chin a moment and said finally, “Hmmph. Didn’t never thinks much of it like dat. But, growlers dem, an’ gad is dey wigglers.”
     “Right,” Warren said, realizing the conversation had come full circle.

                                                                Downtown Nuldoid

HE NEAREST STAIRWELL into Downtown Nuldoid was between Duskville and Sunset Mountain in the early evening region. Since they were in Morning Heights, the Harvesters figured the quickest way to the stairwell would be through nighttime, rather than dealing with the daylight communities.
     Both Snorbleton and Snoozeville were quiet as usual with only a few Nuldoids here and there going home to bed or waking and heading off to daylight. The group trudged through the cities using the sidewalks’ running lights, where they existed, and the Harvesters’ shoulder lights where they did not. They were yelled at thrice for the squeaky wheel that was developing on Mishkin Hobble’s grocery cart. Each time, Mishkin Hobble merely smiled and said, “Boy, is dey crabby blabbs.”
     And, each time, Kyle yelled back at the complainers, calling them yuddle stubs and stinkin’ droibs, and that he and the others were on “genuine, official, fida-boned business of dat Crystal!” adding, “Ya stinkin’ drobbs horkels!”
     At one point, an annoyed party shouted from a dark window that Kyle and the others should use the Crystal in a very unpleasant, and frankly, improbable way.
     When they’d passed through Duskville and could see Sunset Mountain in the distance, they came upon another small park—there were many parks in Nuldoid—with a small brick building that looked something like a public restroom.
     A sign was posted on the grass in front of it that said:

Before they entered the building, the Harvesters pushed their shopping carts to the side of it, where there was a large opening in the lawn, surrounded by a concrete lip and a small gate. Another sign, suspended from an arch above it said, “HARVESTERS YAS CARTS.”
     After Orskin, Fiske and Mishkin Hobble strapped thin canopies over the tops of their shopping carts, Orskin opened the gate and pushed his into the hole, where it dropped straight down. There was no crash, though. It did not hit anything. And Orskin seemed not in the least concerned or worried that anything bad would happen to his precious shopping cart.
     Fiske next pushed hish cart into the hole, and then Mishkin Hobble did the same with his.
     Warren stepped over then to look down into the opening and saw, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet beneath him, the underside of Mishkin Hobble’s cart, it having flipped completely over, as it floated at the bottom of the hole. The other two carts, having flipped upside down as well, were floating below it.
     “Hey, toids!” Kyle yelled from the opening of the building. “Goes we here!”
     The humans followed Kyle into the little brick building that housed the stairwell and, while Warren had had his share of unusual experiences since this whole adventure began, he experienced nothing more unusual than he did in the few moments it took to walk down the stairwell from Outer Nuldoid, up into Downtown Nuldoid.
     When he looked down at the first of three flights of stairs, he did not find it particularly unusual, didn’t think it looked any different than the countless stairwells he’d seen in, say, parking garages all over San Francisco.
     The second flight of stairs, however, twisted away from the landing and appeared to continue downward to the next landing. But the peculiar thing was this: As Warren descended the second flight of stairs, at some point, he found that he was no longer walking downstairs, but up. He felt only a brief moment of weightlessness, an odd sensation like his weight had shifted slightly, but he felt nothing profound—it was not a significant sensation.
     And though he never stopped moving from one step to the next, his downward steps, away from Outer Nuldoid, became upward steps, toward Downtown Nuldoid. But he couldn’t tell how, or when exactly, this had happened.
     He realized then, as he stepped onto the second landing, that he was looking up at the third flight of stairs. He felt as though he had walked into an Escher drawing, where one absolute perception had shifted seamlessly into its exact opposite. (M. C. Escher made the trip to Nuldoid in 1923 and was greatly influenced by the stairwells into downtown.)
     A moment later, he found himself emerging from a similar brick building inside Downtown Nuldoid. And though he was now upside down, relative to where he’d just been, he was, in fact, right side up and standing in one of the city’s small and rather pleasant parks.
     As the others stepped out of the brick building, the Harvesters quickly scuttled over to retrieve their shopping carts from the opening in the lawn beside the building. They, the carts, were floating right side up now and waiting for the Harvesters—Orskin’s cart on top, since his was the first to have been dropped through from the other side. 
     And there they were. In Downtown Nuldoid.
     Warren, Lily and Leo were flabbergasted as they stood and looked up and around themselves and saw the magnificent city that surrounded them… because that’s exactly what it did—it surrounded them. While Outer Nuldoid rested on the outside of an enormous sphere, Downtown Nuldoid rested inside the sphere on its concave wall—like a colony of ants blanketing the inner skin of a basketball. And while gravity pulled Outer Nuldoid down onto the outside of the “basketball,” inside the basketball, gravity pushed out in all directions, so that one could look right straight up overhead and see—perhaps a couple of miles away—the exact opposite side of the city. From where they stood, they could see an “aerial view” of Downtown Nuldoid’s opposite side: its streets weaving throughout business and residential areas in a circuitous and often circular route, connecting to nearly every other street and forever ending back at their own beginnings.
     It was absolutely stunning.

                                                                        The Ancient Slide

HEN THEY APPROACHED the opening of the slide, Hammet gathered the other creatures and instructed Beatrice and Roggo to hand out the last of the beer froote from their knapsacks. He took off his helmet then and knelt on one knee to recite a poem he had written while everyone was napping (as you’ve probably already surmised, these creatures were very fond of songs and poems):
       
        Off for dat Crystal goes we…
        Inna dat hole we jumps!
        An’ flies we down its gullet!
       ’Til dat other end we dumps,
       An’ hopes we isn’t pellet!  
 
It was not much of a poem, as poems go, though it seemed to rhyme well enough. The “pellet” thing was peculiar though, since it seemed to be a fuzzy reference to their becoming waste. And, if that was the case, the whole of the poem vaguely compared the Oidenoids to food down a “gullet,” to be dumped out like so much, well, pooh.
     But still, the others complimented Hammet, while some made mental notes to discourage him from coming up with more poetry.
     Beer froote was passed among them, and, as they partook and passed it on, they wiped their lips, touched their bellies and their crotches, some reciting the beer prayer as they did.
     When the last creature, Fitz, had done so, Hammet repeated “Hib nobb del noid,” and then moved to the opening of the ancient slide where, quite unceremoniously, he leapt into the void.
     Warren and Lily watched as one Oidenoid after the next did the same, until all of the creatures had vanished down the dark hole before them. He turned to her then and tried to sound casual. “Ladies first?” She certainly would have laughed if she had not been so scared, but she smiled and took his arm and together they jumped into the slide.
     It was both exhilarating and terrifying as they flew down the tube, neither knowing if at any moment they would be crushed by the jaws of a ravenous Fishing Worm, or sizzled by a waiting pool of hot lava.
     The Oidenoids, on the other hand—who did not seem to fear a quick death—screamed with glee and whooped at every violent twist and turn. The tube shot them left and right, up and down, through one sinewy breathtaking curve to the next, at times even looping up and completely around before whipping them off in another direction altogether. All of it at dizzying speeds that became apparent when they careened past the occasional light bulb from ancient times, still dimly glowing.
     There too were sections of utter darkness that made them feel motionless. In another, especially long section of the slide, the ancients—anticipating the boredom of the journey—had drawn lines that seemed to move as they were passed, wiggling back and forth, then from side to side, becoming wide and then narrow, until the lines began to twist and swirl and gradually form vague images. It was an antiquated movie of sorts, created by the movement of the viewer. The images soon became characters, creatures like the Oideniods, that evolved from rudimentary figures to detailed warriors who marched toward their enemy in battle. But, as the troops moved closer, one of the warriors dropped a ring, and the others stopped to help him search for it, as did the enemy. And when the ring was recovered, there was no battle. Instead, handshakes and smiles all around, then both sides returned home and executed their leaders.  
     Warren tried to lift his head, but could barely do so as they were moving so rapidly. Fifty, sixty, maybe seventy miles an hour! Down, down, down they went, thundering along on the slide’s smooth inner surface. The entire ride took more than a couple of hours, so Warren had plenty of time to notice that the inside surface of the tube was not greasy or wet, yet it didn’t burn the skin from friction. Though he never found out what the material was, he knew it was not something that existed on the surface of the earth.
     It was an exhilarating ride that everyone but Warren enjoyed.
     Lily got a kick out of it, but only after the first hour, when she began to trust that she would not be killed in the process.
     Finally, they were spat out into a pile of squirming bodies on a landing some thirty feet away from an opening to the Great Big Canyon.
     In total, eleven Oidenoids shot out of the ancient slide. Hammet, Beatrice and Roggo. Then there was Obbman, Mully and little Elo. Hazel, Borden, Merle, Fitz, and Owen. Lily and Warren came flying out last, landing on the stack of little creatures, causing a number of “uhhhg!”s and “oooof!”s and “ach!”s and “is sorry!”s and “aw, croib!”s.

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Copyright © 2008 by Russ Woody

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