Goopa sailed the Risky Business towards Keltarr. She'd learned the controls quickly enough: there was a wheel for turning, and a lever for altitude, and another to change speeds. None of the other trolls onboard could have figured it out, which was why she was Captain and they weren't. Now that she'd finally got it going the way she wanted it, she had a chance to meet her newest passenger.
"Bring the hostage!" she called.
Two burly trolls tossed him onto the deck.
"Here now," he said, getting up. "Is that any way to treat a guest?" Herbert Bunt was short and tan. He had blond hair and green eyes. If Goopa hadn't already known that he was a dreg - a very special dreg - she probably would have thought he was human.
"I'm sorry, sir," she said, and mentally kicked herself for the habitual show of respect. Those days were over with, and besides, he wasn't human, despite appearances.
"Well, it's quite alright. You know I really have to thank you for this opportunity, young lady."
"What opportunity?" she asked suspiciously.
"My latest book," he explained, pulling out a small notebook and a pen. "Bunt's Guide to Hostage Survival! Now, should I be holding my hands up, or lying down on the ground, or what?"
"I don't know!" she said. "Just sit there, I guess."
"Great, great. Now, if I don't - and I'm just checking here, for a footnote, you understand - if I don't, will you have someone tear my arms off or something?"
The man was utterly serious. "Shut up!" she said. "I'm asking the questions here."
"Oh, that's a good point. Rule one: the captors ask the questions. Got it. I'm catching on to this thing, eh?"
Goopa unfolded the paper Ralphie had given her to read to her captives. "You are now a cap.. captive. You are now a captive of the New Troll Empire. We de... demand your complete and... ultimate surr.. surren.."
"Surrender?"
"I can read just fine!" Goopa snapped. "We demand your complete and ultimate surrender. Do you agree to serve trollkind for the rest of your lif?"
"My what?"
"Oh. Life. Do you?"
Bunt scribbled something down in his notebook. "Um. How about you tell me a little about it?"
"What?"
"You know. The New Troll Empire and so on. What's it do? What are the benefits?"
Goopa began playing with the end of her tail, as she often did when she was thinking. "Hm... Let me think. What was the question again?"
"What good is this troll empire?"
"Oh, yeah. Well, it's important."
Bunt jotted it down. "Im-por-tant. Got it. Now, why is it important?"
"It just is, that's all. Trolls have been picked on long enough."
"Sure, sure, by biots... Not human beings... Although if you've ever read my Guide to Self-Improvement or The Biot Conspiracy, you may be familiar with my thesis that human beings and biots and even trolls are pretty much identical genetically."
"Yeah we're really human," she said sarcastically.
"Genetically you are, discounting a few variations."
"Don't talk like that."
"It's the truth."
"I mean don't use those big words. I don't know them yet."
"Oh, right. Right. Sorry. All I meant was that there's really not much difference between the two of us."
"That's stupid. You're a dreg. I'm a troll. Plus I'm a girl and you're not."
"Okay, let me see here. I'm a dreg, right?"
"Right."
"But I'm wearing a suit."
"Right."
"And I look like pretty much any biot in a suit."
"Don't use that word. It's a bad word."
Bunt sat down. "It's just a word. Who said it was a bad word? They did. Look. They call us dregs and we call them biots. We each call ourselves human. Why do you suppose that is?"
"Because dregs are stupid and don't know any better."
"And how do you know that?"
"'Cause the humans are smart and they told us."
"Oh, and they can't be wrong?"
She hadn't really thought about that. A human wrong? "No," she said. "Never."
"Then why do you need a New Troll Empire?"
"You're making my head hurt. Be quiet."
Bunt leaned back against the short wall of the ship and wrote something down.
"Are you writing about me?" she asked.
"Just that you don't know your own potential."
"What are you talking about?"
"I just asked you a lot of tough questions. Most trolls would have passed out or started crying or something. You lasted a lot longer than I expected. That's good. You seem pretty smart. It's just that you lack education."
"You mean I could be as smart as a human?"
Bunt laughed at this. "Biots, or the ones you call humans, really aren't that smart. They've got the education, because they go to school eighteen hours a day for twelve years. it's part of their system, but not the creativity to apply it. Some trolls, like you, developed the creativity, because you don't have the education, and have to figure things out for yourself. Real humans, or dregs, as you call them, usually have a little of both. In most cases, very little, I'll be honest, but the potential is there. You have the potential to be a real human - a dreg, if you insist on using that word."
"Dregs are bad!" Goopa said.
"Hardly. Why, any biot who saw you captaining a ship and acting of your own free will would say 'eeww! It's a dreg! Squish it!'"
Goopa was about to answer, when the lookout who'd been riding in the crow's nest above the balloon climbed down the rope latter and swung itself onto the deck. "We almost there," it grumbled.
Bunt stood up and looked over the bow. "Keltarr!" he said. "I wrote a book about it, City of Boredom. Perhaps you've read it?"
Goopa stared transfixed at WorldCorp Tower. It was tall and silver in the afternoon light, so beautiful that she caught herself bowing her head in homage. She was glad that Mr. Bunt hadn't seen her do it.
But the Tower was not her destination. J.C. Frockeneller would be far too easy to replace. Taking his daughter, though, would put him right where Ralphie wanted him.
She pushed the altitude lever forward. They landed with a thud outside a large building marked "EASTERN VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL".
"Bring me the princess!" Goopa yelled. Twenty or so trolls leapt from the airship at lightening speed, storming the school.
---------
Princess Vob took another drag on the joint she was smoking, held it in a few seconds, and exhaled. Wow. She smiled at Big Eddie across the classroom. He nodded. That kid sure sold good stuff.
She looked around. Everyone else was either talking, throwing paper, or asleep. No one was working, but Mrs. Gladberry was halfway through a romance novel, and paid no attention whatsoever. The clock on the wall showed half an hour till the end of class.
She was bored, but happy, thanks to Big Eddie. Biology was probably the worst class because it was such a joke. There wasn't an intelligent thought going on in the room - and she'd been listening.
Vob turned her mind to Mrs. Gladberry.
Ember turned and looked at her young lover-
Ugh! She got out of that mind quickly. Another stupid Embers of a Burning Heart book. Couldn't that woman find anything better to read?
Neil, the only kid with any brains at all in the class was absent today. She briefly considered listening in on Theron's thought processes. He was the kid in front of her, and while stupid, he was very imaginative in some areas. But she wasn't in the mood for pornography.
Then there was always the new girl. She was incredibly sexy, but slower than traffic at rush hour. Not Vob's kind of girl.
She tried next door... No sign of anything new there, either... But.. What was this? There was something... She concentrated. It was another unenlightened mind, but violent.... There were several of them. Very stupid. Very angry. Was it a fight in one of the classrooms? The football team?
Trolls! There were trolls storming the building. They were looking for someone... Her!
"Cool," she said aloud.
Theron turned around and leered at her. "Thanks, baby, but I know I am."
She flipped him off.
He rolled his eyes and turned back around.
The trolls were sticking together, charging down hall after hall, looking in all the doors. Here I am, guys! Anything was better than another half hour with Mrs. Gladberry. She called again mentally, but they were about as psychically receptive as the average brick.
It was another five minutes before they found her. She took another drag and stood up right before the door burst open.
"Me found girl," a nasty looking thing with plaid hair said. Nineteen other trolls rushed in and surrounded her. She waved to the class as they hauled her out of the room.
A thought struck her, and she checked psychically to find out. Nope. Mrs. Gladberry hadn't even noticed. But that was high school. Emphasis on high, as the joke went.
They carried her outside to a huge fishing boat with a balloon on top, and tossed her right over the side and onto the deck. "Watch it!" she yelled to the hulking thing that had thrown her and was even now leaping onto the deck. "I could have been killed!"
"Report!" a female troll demanded from behind. Vob spun around.
She was gorgeous: shoulder-length brown hair, little sharp horns sticking out of her temples, and a long slender tail that wrapped around her long, bare legs.
The girl was a knockout.
She was about to say so when a weasel-like little troll stepped forward. "We had to kill the librarian," she said. "She started casting spells at us and tried to eat Fooglam. Other than that, it went off without a hitch."
"Good work!" the troll-girl said. "It's time to see Ralphie."
She pulled back on some lever sticking out of the floor, and the airship began to rise. The various trolls that had accumulated on the deck scurried off to their respective posts, leaving Vob with the troll, and some other guy, but she was too spellbound to notice him.
"Hello gorgeous," Vob said to the girl. "Thanks for the rescue... You don't know how tiring school gets after about the first twelve hours... of kindergarten..."
Vob had to know more. She listened in:
She certainly looked like the girl in the picture Ralphie had given her : thin and fairly pretty with blue eyes and short, black hair. Except that she was dressed all in black, with powder-white makeup and blood-red lipstick. Perhaps it was a school uniform.
Goopa. Her name was Goopa.
"Oh, look!" said a male voice.
She glanced to her side. It was Herb Bunt, her favorite author, of all people! Wow, was this her lucky day or what?
Bunt put away a small notebook he'd apparently been writing in. "Another hostage! Oh, and it's Princess Vob... Long time no see, kid!"
"Heyya Herbie," Vob said. They'd met once or twice at those stuffy WorldCorp parties, but she'd never gotten a chance to get close to the man.
Looking at them, Goopa was thinking, it was hard to remember which was the human and which was the dreg. No matter, really, since they'd soon be out of her hair.
Vob switched over to Bunt, but she couldn't pick up a thing.
After all, I am an agent, and no simpleton in the field of psychonics, he thought to her.
She winked at him, and took another drag on her roach.
Suddenly, the universe stopped. God appeared out of nowhere, leaning back in a brown office chair without any wheels and a computer keyboard in His lap. He was seventeen years old, tall, fairly average looking, with glasses and short brown hair. He appeared to be generally angry.
"Hey," Bunt said. "It's God!
Vob wondered if maybe Big Eddie had slipped a little something extra into the happy stuff this time around. Usually she had to really work at it before she could start talking to God.
He was sighing. "This just isn't working. I'm already a day behind schedule, and you feebs are giving Me a headache." He stood up, tossing His keyboard aside.
"You," He said, pointing at Goopa, "are not supposed to be so stupid. Ralphie's already shattered your belief system, and you... Well, maybe you should be holding on to your old beliefs, just to keep sane... But you're doing a crappy job of it!"
"I'm sorry," said Goopa. Vob picked up her thoughts: A lot of stuff had happened to her in her lifetime, but never once had God personally insulted her. She didn't even believe in Him.
Neither did Vob, come to think of it. What was He doing in her hallucinations?
"And I'm the viewpoint character now!" He said. Sheesh, some mortals just didn't show any respect.
"Excuse me, Sir," said Bunt. "But I believe this is a highly exaggerated form of author intrusion... Now, in my book, How to Write Like a Writer, I explained all the pitfalls this can lead to. Perhaps You've read it?"
"Shut up!" said God. He sighed. "At least you've got the general idea of how you should be acting. But what was with all those questions? Where was the point?!?!?!?"
He left Bunt to jot that down, and turned to Vob.
He stared at her.
"Heyya God," she said.
He shook His head.
She smiled.
"Um," he said.
She took another drag on her joint.
"You're fine for now," he said.
She threw a thumbs up sign and blew a kiss at Him.
"Don't do that," He said.
He closed His eyes, and the infinite reaches of time and space vanished into thin air.
"Here's the thing," He told the Void. "This chapter is really, really bad so far. But I can't take it out, and if I try and struggle with it now, I'll get so far behind that I'll never finish this by the twentieth, and then-"
"Who are you talking to?" Bunt asked.
Perhaps the infinite reaches of time and space just weren't working today.
God opened his eyes, and saw them staring at Him expectantly. "Alright," he said. "This is what I'm going to do, for now. We'll get up a little higher, as planned, and then your little lookout is going to shout that there's another ship behind you, and it's not a troll ship, so you're going to have to try and fight it. I'll come back to you in the second section of "The Final Frontier," and see if you can do any better. I doubt it. But, hopefully by the time I get the second draft done, I'll be able to rewrite all this and you'll all be living, breathing, natural characters."
Being omniscient, God could tell that none of them had any idea what he was talking about. Didn't matter.
"Look," he said. "You're all great, just try and shape up a bit, okay? Herb, you're a good man. Don't talk so much."
He went back to Vob. "There's a very pretty girl named Gwildiana who's going to be here in an hour or so. I think you're going to like her."
"Cool," she said.
"And Goopa," he said. "You are just so damn cute... Well, later kids. I've got work to do."
He vanished in a puff of smoke, taking his chair and keyboard with him. His head appeared a second later, and said to Goopa, "Don't forget to demand Vob's surrender." He kissed her and vanished again into nothingness.
---------
Goopa looked around, wondering if perhaps something had just happened. She couldn't remember. In any case, they were slowly rising into the atmosphere, getting ready to return home to Little Keltarr. But first, she had to demand her new captive's complete and ultimate surrender.
"You are now a captive of the New Troll Empire. We demand your complete and ultimate surr... What is it?"
"Surrender," Bunt said, helpfully.
"Your complete and ultimate surrender. Do you agree to serve trollkind for the rest of your life?"
"No," said Vob. "I'm not into that. You know, he's right... You're so damn cute.."
"What?" said Goopa.
"I think she's stoned out of her mind... You did just take her out of a high school. She could be talking about anything."
"She'd better not start trying to kiss me or I'll smack her," Goopa said.
"I'd like that," said Vob.
Suddenly, the lookout returned. "Captain! There's another ship approaching!"
He pointed towards WorldCorp Tower. It was getting dark now, but she could still see the bright red balloon of another airship.
"Dammit!" said God, reappearing and pointing at Bunt. "You're supposed to have zenned! Do it!"
Herbert Bunt keeled over and began floating a few inches of the ground.
God vanished.
This wasn't part of Ralphie's plan! She had no idea what she was supposed to do. Mr. Bunt was unconscious, Vob wasn't exactly clear-headed, and none of the other trolls had even half her brains. It was all up to her.
"Attack!" she yelled.
Next: Business As Usual
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