INDULGENT SPIRIT
A Totally Crazy Saga in Space and Time
Tom Leonard
Words like 'she' and 'her' are intended (for the moment) to represent all genders.
2.THE ZAZINS RULE THE ROOST
2.1 Meeting in Prahu Hall
Like most other Zazins, Pontiff Sunny Z1 had been born in a test-tube, non-descript and with four tiny arms. When she was fourteen, she was brutally gang-raped, in an austere children's home on Planet Zazov, by a grossly fat politician on a power trip and six Lib Dem sycophants, all under the protection of the three-eyed Lord Raspberry of Belly-Ache Wood, who was watching through the keyhole.
By the age of eighteen, Sunny was living in the floating city of Gagarin way above the ozone layer, from where she descended on an Ionosphere saucer for her evening classes in Divinity in a seminary on Zazov.
Sunny began to experience hallucinatory 'delusions' when she was nineteen. She saw a five-year-old abused human boy with a broken arm shouting 'where's my evil Daddy?' on a rocky mountain, fleshless dogs eating boneless mice in the kitchen, and beautiful manifestations of the vivacious, fair-haired Creator Spirit Ophelia flashing her bright green eyes and scratching the floor with her claw-like toenails.
According to the Word of Cnat, Ophelia, who encapsulated the entire Vorta-Space, created and continuously updated the evolutionary processes in all 778 universes and all creatures thereby evolving. A portion of the Creator Spirit’s brain was said in Beginning, Chapter 4, Verses 10-15 to be omnipresent in Sacred Chapel of the Divine One in Katrina, from where, according to the Prophet It, she issued subliminal instructions to her living incarnates for the purpose of improving the evolution of the species.
The leading Zazins in the Lynx Constellation of Universe 776 were most impressed when Ophelia started preaching pearls of wisdom to Sunny Z1, and when Sunny accurately predicted the arrival of the Holy Comet Hera Tampoff, they elevated her to the exalted position of High Pontiff of the Zazins with the title 'Living Incarnate of the Divine Ophelia'.
Twenty-four years of mental turmoil later, Sunny was 'chosen by Ophelia' to be chairperson of the Grand Council of Katrina. The council was answerable to the Interstellar Parliament of Universe 776, in principle at least. Totally undemocratic, its weekly meetings in Prahu Hall were packed to the rafters with two hundred purple-skinned Zazins; swarthy, single gender creatures with four pincer-like arms, two short legs, a massive ork, that when aroused reached their chins, a revolving wulva-vulva that gaped like an ostroshark's mouth, and remarkably large, interacting brains. Any 'usurpers' looking a bit different were whisked away ASAP by the Walrusian guards.
Following the arrest of the homo sapiens activist Rick Stent, Pontiff Sunny discovered a brand new velvet cushion on the Throne of Pre-Destination when she arrived to chair her weekly meeting in her favourite white silk tunic. The cushion was taken away to be to be checked for booby-traps.
When the High Pontiff ensconced herself on the throne, she was flanked by her second and third bondage wives, both curvaceous human slave girls with unimaginably gorgeous hindquarters that resembled exquisitely indented Lectorian curves. One wife was a vivacious blonde and the other a solemn redhead, each distinguishable as homo sornicus by the dark blue, star-shaped tentricles in the middle of their foreheads. Sunny gave them painful love-bites on their unusually large Adam's apples, and trimmed their delightful pubes with her vibrating, platinum nail-clipper.
Sunny felt a touch of concern for her first bondage wife, a muscular, male homo sapien with unkempt hair, a grizzly face and a distinctly red neck, who was infected with the orang-utan virus and unable to attend the meeting. The tall fellow held rank as the 'First Lady' of Katrina, and increased Sunny's popularity rating by at least seventy percent.
The pontiff peered at the dock, way opposite and by the door of the infamous Green Mould Tolbooth, the jail-house where Lucifer lingers. The wretched prisoner could have been her first wife's kid brother. Rick Stent was secured to the Wheel of Turpitude by coils of barbed wire that cut through her acne-ridden skin and lacerated her boils. Retired Admiral Nimisch stood contentedly by the dock, ready to spin the wheel and rotate Stent through the vertical.
Sunny was lost in a tortuous fantasy about burning human flesh when the Right Reverend Dr. Jip Z2 tiptoed onto the podium, like the leading Bolshoff ballerina she once was.
“All hail to the Creator Spirit, our blessed Ophelia!” proclaimed the dark green, wrinkly-faced Zazin, swirling her three least broken arms. “All hail to Sunny, her Living Incarnate! May their minds forever be as one.”
"All hail to Ophelia and Sunny, two minds as one!" chanted the council members, believers and non-believers alike.
"And the Curse of Splot on the human terrorist in the dock!" declared Jip, with a not-so-delicate pirouette, as Lieutenant Iota Iyola’s pet pumanid Kim Catworthy crept stealthily towards the Wheel of Turpitude. "We'll get around to sentencing the nonce sooner or later. In the meantime, let the inebriate bleed in his smelly sweat!"
The pontiff roused herself and spoke with due gravitas. “Our beloved Ophelia and I came together in our thoughts in the Sacred Chapel of the Divine One last night. She feels that our colonisation of Planet Torus is just a first step in our attempts to colonise all sixty cultivated planets in Universe 777, and suggests that we remain here on Katrina to observe and control the progress of all sixty colonies as their species evolve over the millennia.”
“What a wonderful scheme!” exclaimed Rev. Dr. Splat Z3, taking a sniff of Satan’s dust from her silver snorter.
“Yes indeed!" The pontiff raised her piercing, jet black eyes to the heavens. "With such grand purposes in mind, Ophelia advised me of her intention to super-compress the time-scale on Torus, when compared with the traditional Kepler-based time scale that has prevailed in the Milky Way since the year dot. This time-compression will enable us to curtail the populations of any planets that do not evolve adequately either in the medium term or in their distant futures."
Splat gave her pet squirrel monkey a cursory hug. "Fucking good idea!" she declared, staring into space. "Screw the weak, and evolve the strong!"
The pontiff smiled. “Too true, Splat! People in our colonies will believe that they are living on a normal time scale, unless we are silly enough to advise them otherwise. Now over to Mileza for further details.”
The Noblesse prize-winning mathematician Professor Mileza Erdosa Z4 was sitting behind her platinum mini-desk. Mileza was famous for her search for absolute truth and for finding such incontrovertible truth in the behaviour of irrational and prime numbers, and products thereof. Her favourite number was pi times e times 34,866. Half of her brain had been destroyed by the officially enforced psychedelics of her turbulent youth, but the other half had adapted superbly since.
Mileza's golden eyebrows fluttered like butterflies, her upper arms swayed to and fro, and her skin glistened light purple as she spoke.
“Thank you, Holy One,” she replied. “Mere mortals like us lack perception about the true nature of space and time, and only Almighty Ophelia understands how they interact. According to her latest revelation to Sunny about her proposed time compression, an entire billion Strontian years of evolution on Torus will be observable from Katrina within a time period of 100 Kepler years. During a single Kepler year, we will observe ten million Strontian years on Torus."
"So how long does a Strontian year last in Kepler time?" inquired a prissy Zazin councillor with bifocals and long incisors.
"I'm coming to that, dear. When making such detailed calculations please note that there are only 400, and not 500, Strontian days in each Strontian year, each with 24 hours of 3600 seconds each. All Kepler or Strontian days, hours, or seconds should be labelled according. For example, each Strontian year is equivalent to 4.32 Kepler seconds.”
The prissy councillor frowned, and clucked her incisors. “But how and when will the time-compression come into effect?” she asked. “Will Ophelia conjure up some sort of natural process?”
"Heaven only knows," replied Mileza, looking a touch uncomfortable. "Why don't we wait and see?"
“Why bother?” asked a well-educated midgie wriggling on Sunny's knee.
The pontiff squashed the inquisitive insect with her thumb, leaving a green stain tinged with black on her mottled kneecap.
“I'll tell you why bother, shithead,” growled Sunny. “If we visit Torus after a single Kepler year then evolution will have already occurred there for ten million Strontian years. If the populations have physically or mentally degenerated then we’ll have the opportunity to dread-nuke them or kill them off with some deadly virus or other.”
“All praise to the wondrous Ophelia!” declared Splat, the flencyclidene from her snorter doubtlessly disrupting the dendrites in her head. “It will be interesting to see whether whales and dolphins sprout legs again. Do you have an opinion, dearest? ”
“At least we won’t have to put up with the irrationalities of time travel,” growled Splat's long suffering soul-mate, “and time compression does seems, in contrast, to be a potentially rational way of observing the diverse nature of evolution, as it varies from planet to planet."
Professor Thermus Z5 shook her head. “Travelling forwards in time is perfectly logical,” she insisted, “though going backwards in time is not, because it would be impossible to change other people’s lives if they have already lived them.”
The Living Incarnate nodded in agreement. “I never thought that I’d agree with a Thermite about anything, Thermus,” Sunny replied. “Indeed, if an unfortunate creature travels from Torus to Katrina, and returns after a few Kepler hours, then she will be in for a big shock since she’ll arrive back on Torus way into the future, Strontian time. What an excellent way of punishing rule-breakers! They could be travelling into a hornets’ nest. Maybe we should hot asphalt and emu feather them first."
2.2 High Treason
The vast majority of the six-limbed Zazins on Katrina were religious fundamentalists. However, they were opposed on the council by twenty materialistic Thermites with very agnostic views about evolution. The Thermites thought that creator spirits had absolutely nothing to do with it. Their leader Thermus Z5 was an Emeritus Professor of Materialist Genetics from Planet Strawkins. She regarded herself as a scholar and a gentleman.
Thermus had been censured several times previously, and twice ejected from Praha Hall for trying to challenge the religious fundamentalists' views about evolution. Following the discussion of time-compression, she nevertheless got into yet another fierce debate with the Living Incarnate concerning these divisive themes.
“We don’t need to conjure up Ophelia or any damned Spirit or Creator God,” asserted Thermus. “Evolution happens because of natural selection, genetic nurture, and quick-fire epistogenetics. Just look at what happened to our amoeba, lizards, basking sharks and drakomids! Now we've got starfish, dragon-people, long-tailed carpet sharks, and herculids. Maybe our hominids will soar like eagles in a couple of hundred thousand years or so, but it won't be some religious hocus pocus that causes it.”
That was like red rag to a bull, and Sunny took the bait. “Natural selection?” she howled. “Genetic nurture? Hogwash! Only our much beloved Ophelia understands the mysterious nature of evolution, and she keeps her secrets to herself.”
“That’s not what the great Beagle Z-Gamma thought,” retorted Thermus. “He stood head and shoulders above the likes of you.”
"Who gives a fig about Z-Gamma?” raged Sunny. “He was too demented by the decades of pains in his gut to even know what he thought.”
“I give a whole fig tree,” snapped Thermus, “but let’s return to your crass attitude to time for one moment. I don’t believe that your trumped up Creator Spirit is able to change time at all. I suspect that you’re intending to activate a time-compression filter without permission from the Interstellar Parliament. That would be in gross violation of the inter-universe codes of conduct. You’d deserve summary tortuous execution!”
That was too much for Sunny. For those familiar with her demonic tendencies, the manner in which she flipped her lid was not totally unexpected.
“And you’re guilty of treasonous and blasphemous contempt of this holy council!” she shrieked. “You're a primeval monster! Arrest the bizzom! Take her away!”
At that, two Novogrian police officers rushed in, seized the unfortunate professor by her straggly cauliflowers, and dragged her, squealing like a pig, out of the chamber. The nineteen remaining Thermites leapt angrily to their feet, but were forced to back off when a platoon of Walrusian guards entered Prahu Hall with their sawn-off laser rifles at the ready.
Meanwhile, Kim Catworthy crept stealthily past the guards, out through the marble entranceway, and along the Corridor of the Long Knives. Awhile later, a faceless automaton came back along the same corridor to say that Professor Z5 was being treated well in custody. By this time, the other nineteen Thermites had been arrested by the special police and taken away in ellipsoidal body capsules.
2.3 Zazinian Justice
After taking a third dose of her benzos, Sunny felt safe enough, despite the cellulitis moving up her ungainly legs, to proceed to the last item on the agenda.
“Remove the gag from the prisoner’s throat, give her twelve token spins through the vertical, and let her say a few words in his defence!” she demanded, and a Walrusian guard extracted a megadon tusk from Rick Stent's larynx and wiped the grime off her face with a dirty mop soaked in the prisoner's pish.
Admiral Nimisch studiously pressed the start button, counted out loud to twelve as Rick rotated, agonisingly slowly, in the vertical, grinned, and pressed the stop button. Rick ground to a halt and ended up in the horizontal.
“I stand for the right to...” croaked Rick, writhing in pain, “and to join the struggle...”
“I totally understand,” interrupted Sunny, with a Kafka-resque grin. “We will adjourn for five minutes while I consider the manner of your sentence. It isn’t likely to be nice.”
The Living Incarnate was scribbling sweet nothings in her Summary Execution ledger when a portly Tavar ran in. By sheer time fluke, she was closely followed by Kim Catworthy, at full canter, who leapt like a wild puma onto the podium in front of him.
“Professor Thermus Z5 is dead,” announced the brave pumanid. “The police automata got confused and executed her."
"So what?" snarled Sunny.
"Her execution could be an omen, Holy One. In Ophelia’s eyes, Rick Stent may be as innocent as Thermus. Please do not sentence Rick to die.”
“I bring similarly sad tidings,” added the Tavar. “Your wife the First Lady has perished from his virus. His very last words were 'Tell Sunny that I do so love her'. Before that, the First Lady convinced us that her friend Rick Stent is innocent of any wrong doing. Please spare Rick, Holy One. She's your first wife's spitting image.”
The Living Incarnate’s eyes twisted and turned, and her arms gyrated like four migasoruses on heat. But when the five-year old with a broken arm re-appeared to her in a vision, shrieking, "Not my Daddy!", she returned to relative sanity.
“Case adjourned!” declared Sunny, wiping the death flies off her pock-marked face. “In the meantime, please bring the defendant to my quarters for further inspection. My beloved first wife’s death is an omen indeed, and I'm wondering whether an ingenious sort of accommodation can be reached. This redneck is so like the First Lady, isn’t she?”
“No way!” protested Rick Stent, gritting her well-gnashed teeth.
CHAPTER 3: HALF A STRONTIAN YEAR IN 2.16 KEPLER SECONDS
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