The Astral Pulse

The Astral Library => Welcome to Writers Corner! => Topic started by: The Bard on January 01, 2004, 18:46:49

Title: Short story about penguins, time travel and beans
Post by: The Bard on January 01, 2004, 18:46:49
Interesting- Your characters remind me of comic book characters. Have you ever thought of turning them into a comic?

(This is not an insult of your work. I happen to read comics as much as I read novels.)
Title: Short story about penguins, time travel and beans
Post by: Meedan on January 01, 2004, 19:11:52
[:D] Although strange and confusing, I thoroughly enjoyed that, Brilliant. Well done [:D]
Title: Short story about penguins, time travel and beans
Post by: Fenris on December 01, 2003, 23:39:32
Hi ya people, this is a silly story I stayed up and wrote one night to ammuse a friend. It has some swear words in it, and some parts could be offensive to some people as a warning. Anyway I'm posting this in the hope maybe someone will enjoy it, I don't fancy myself a skillful writer by any means, however I enjoy writing so any critiquing is welcome.


It Has a Penguin
A rant in the shape of a story by David



First what the critics had to say

'Not since I was overheard selling my soul to Dairy Queen has the Catholic community been so unhappy' -The Pope in Catholic Weekly

'My garbage disposal unit has produced better quality entertainment and more thoughtful dialogue, I can't wait for the author to either stop writing stupid stories or get killed by a stationary bus' - The man/woman who works at the servo

'It's the string, the string holds us together and pulls us into the bad lands, those cops they try to hold me down and I won't go with the children, It's sad to see children working here get out get out while you still can' - Schizophrenic lady I met once

'David has evolved from having no story line at all and multiple copyright infringements to having something almost resembling a story line and slightly less copyright infringements, I'm sure his English teacher would be proud, well that if she wasn't a vindictive skank obsessed with her own vindictive skankly skankyness. Anyway the important thing is I've been clean and sober for four months now and my kids returned one of my calls the other day, I'm pretty happy with how things are going. Except I have this really bad foot pain, the doctor thinks I'm only attention seeking, but I'm not, its like *TWACK*........ - Guy I had to hit in the head with a phone book to make stop talking  


Without forty ounces of social skills I'm just an arse in the crack of humanity, I'm a huge Manatee

It all started when a penguin crapped on Hojo. It was a typical earth morning, and we were discussing our recent creation of existence over a cool glass of primordial soup, which was the style of the times. As key council supervisors for the state of non-existence, we were celebrating the completion of the existence project - or so we thought. The big bang went off without a hitch, atoms collided, gases formed solids, solids formed planets and a wondrous mixture of things created life. In fact we were drinking some of the first life now. And then out of know where a penguin, in fact a flying penguin, had just crapped all over the key man of the existence project. The citizens of non-existence who had paid so much non-existing tax to fund this project were not going to be pleased. Because first of all penguins weren't meant to evolve for a few hundred million years, and second of all we were pretty sure that unlike the majestic emu, penguins were meant to be flightless.

Like all councils over time the original council just didn't work the way it was meant to. You see originally out of non-existence, all existence was created at once, and then we rigged it up so existence would be experienced from beginning to end, call it time if you will. Created from our non-existing imaginations, life was modelled on our (the creators) images. However this created the slight problem that all creatures we created had similar powers of imagination. For example our flying penguin friend who crapped on Hojo - a bird we shall call Billy.


Billy

A great man once said 'Sunrise sunset the cats in the cradle with the silver spoon yes we have no bananas'. Which has nothing at all to do with Billy the penguins life. Because as cool as they are, penguins aren't that interesting, this is a fact Billy recognised, but Billy was a penguin with a vision.

There he sat perched at the edge of the glacier looking over the artic water; the moment went something like this...

- Billy looked at the sky, looked at his little wings, looked at the sky again, then he jumped off the icy cliff. And then he totally missed the water, Billy even missed time-

With all the grace of a flying penguin Billy careened through time in an almost streamlined fashion. Where would Billy land? To Billy such things did not matter, Billy was a pioneer! But like most uncoordinated journeys back through time, this one ended at the beginning of time - above Hojo - and penguins much like donkeys don't care where they excrement.

At that very moment Hojo decided this reality, this existence thing, really needed some rules. A few basic ones, stuff like life not being able to achieve and create what ever it imagined it could. Hojo put down his drink, brushed the penguin excrement off his shirt, declared he was now called God and set a bunch of rules that made the world a much less exciting place to live.


Heidi the wonder cat!

Please allow your humble narrator to introduce herself, my name is Heidi. Like Hojo, God as he would have you call him, you could say I'm an immortal being, and I can change reality anyway I like. Can you imagine a life where truly anything were possible, and I don't mean the Amway sell dirty products to the people who used to be your friends but are now your customers and make '$1000 a week' kind of possible. I mean want an ice cream and have an ice cream appear in your hand kind of possible, don't like blue sky!? Try purple! kind of possible. What would you make possible dear readers? WELL IT DOESN'T bonking MATTER WHAT YOU WOULD DO WITH INFINITE POWER DOES IT! CAUSE A LITTLE CUTE bonking PENGUIN SHAT ALL OVER GOD AND bonked IT FOR YOU!...Sorry I'm still a little emotional about the whole thing. You see like all councils over time, the first council - the council of non-existence - took the cheapest easiest fix for its problem. You see Hojo couldn't just make the universe follow his rules, all of the power held by life's creatures couldn't be just taken away - it had to be moved somewhere else. Somewhere else happened to be me. Basically all life's ability to make what ever it imagined become a reality was moved into me, and in return life got a bunch of dirty restrictions which include gravity, time and Amway. I have to live on Earth for eternity (earth really is the centre of the universe by the way) and be the one exception to the rule, the polarity that balances against normality.

In the true spirit of being a being of intense creative power against all that is normal I promptly turned into a cat, a purple cat, which lives inside a computer keyboard. Although we are separate a little bit of myself still exists in life, this is why people can still be artistic and imaginative, and a little bit of normal exists in myself, like I still have to sit though rug commercials, the yin yang got it pretty well right. The only thing that stops me from letting it all go and changing creatures achieve what ever their imaginations let them is a little piece of paper that says - I Heidi the wonder cat under the explicit order of God will live for eternity on earth and keep existence really normal like God likes it, Signed: Heidi Witnessed: God.
This is much like a suicide contract, a contract psychiatrists and psychologists make suicidal patients sign saying they won't kill themselves. Or what? Huh, I mean think about it. I am no less a power than 'God', and like a man with a revolver to his head looking at his suicide contract saying 'what if'? Here was me, a very bored pussy cat, saying 'Why not'? So anyway here we are now, the family of the man with the no-suicide contract is tragically still finding pieces of his skull, and the world is slowly changing as people realise their unlimited potential, Billy would be proud. Of course nothing is without side effects, moments after I made the change a rodeo clown turned into a giant colourful butterfly and consumed a nearby herd of lamas, and this particularly amusing thing happened to a few people with no inspiration at all.


This particularly amusing thing that happened

It was raining really hard out side of the KFC in Marsden. Outside is where Michael was, he was jumping all over the stores garden, mainly because it made him feel a little better about it taking thirty-five minutes to get his food, but also it was a little because Michael is a destructive excrement. Inside is where the excitement was though, inside it wasn't raining and a camera crew were interviewing the aptly named Bogan family. The interview was mainly structured around the mother of the family Marcy, she was about to succeed at reverse evolution. Marcy came to fame about a month or so ago when she presented to her GP with a dorsal fin. Since then extensive genetic research had been conducted in an attempt to understand her changing anatomy. Her referral letter to the geneticist read like this.




Dear Dr Batri

Marcy Bogan is a 42 year old woman who presents with bizarre anatomical abnormalities which she reports 'startid when them rains did', which upon further clarification meant the changes began between about fourteen days ago after extensive rain. Marcy's dorsal surface has a large fin like structure protruding from along her midline, multiple musculoskeletal changes, most markedly shorter toad-like limbs, and amphibian like skin.

Marcy has a history of hypercholesterolemia, obesity and alcoholism. She presents difficulty communicating verbally, and will often grunts respond to questioning. In her home environment she appears to communicate with loud piercing screeching noises.

Please review this patient, I hope you find this case interesting, indeed - Why does Mrs Bogan look like a Mexican walking fish?

Kind regards,
Dr Clark

Marcy stuffed another fistful of chicken into her mouth. "So Marcy, would you like to thank anyone for helping you get this far? Surely you can't have overcome several million years of evolution all by yourself?" asked the reporter. "Well Ken I'd like to thank my family....um Holden...and erm especially Corneal Sanders". Marcy's changing respiratory system was making breathing on land stressful, so she instinctively paddled outside into the rain. The garden was a real mess. In a process best described as watching a baby frog grow in reverse Marcy's body rapidly changed as she slivered towards a nearby storm water drain and ultimately the ocean. Following a completely unrelated, albeit more stressful series of events involving rain, a frustrating absence of money and an annoyingly long wait for food the car lovers manager from the next lot then shot dead the entire KFC Marsden staff. Michael saw this on TV and thought it was okay.  

Snowflakes

Hello my name is Snowflake, I'm a panda. Unfortunately Heidi is unable to continue the narration of this story because she was killed by a large disgruntled duck; it seems when she gave the power back to life, she like life became mortal. She really should have planned better, or at least agreed to the ducks terms. Anyway since she was pretty much the driving force behind this story lets turn over to a philosophical conversation about canned goods...

"So the freshly baked beans get placed inside a can and sealed, air tight, the only way we know there are beans inside the can is the fact the can is heavy and has a baked beans label on it, but whose to say the universe, or the beans themselves don't go off and perform some other great function until that point when the can is opened and the beans therefore NEED to exist. Before that point when the can is opened we ASSUME they exist inside the can, but the more fools us. For all we know beans trapped inside cans have saved the world a hundred times over from unseen influences. We do not say grace for some GOD, we say grace to thank the food products, which for all we know may be the only reason we are here" ranted the young mouse.

"I see... quite the abstract thinker you are, if only you were as wise with your life as you are with the world my friend, tell me have you seen the movie The Thin Red Line at all?" replied Natalie the cat.


"Cant say I have madam, I've never seen such a thing, but I do have more thoughts on beans if I may continue?"

"Please...go on"

"...maybe beyond the Hindu's illusion of Maya, all things man, rocks, cats dirt all of the same life force - with the expanding universe and the growing population of man, there is limited supply and demand for the energy required to create souls for living beings, so while in this state of questionable existence the life force of canned beans is substituted for use elsewhere. The combined life energy of several unopened cans of beans might be used to provide the energy for short lived physical beings such as infants who die shortly after birth and animals that are eaten only briefly after hatching. In this way beans in cans are put to use in the circle of life in the ever struggling economy of existence. In fact every time you open a can of beans, forcing those beans into existence again, you're killing some small unfortunate creature".

"Really young mouse, that is fascinating" grinned Natalie the cat.

Natalie's owner opened a can of baked beans

"And now I ask you my young mouse friend, this great evil...where DOES it come from?"