Chapter – First of the Winter Moonshine

Odin sat on the office swivel chair nervously turning one way and then another. He involuntarily kept playing with his tie, it was itchy and he knew it didn’t suit him, but it was the self appointed[1] Rulers of the Universe, AKA The Immortals[2], AKA the busy gits, AKA the we’re not doing the paperwork for this collective, fortnightly meeting. He took another tentative sip of his dust flavoured supermarket cheapest brand tea and contemplated if dunking a rich tea biscuit in it would make it taste any better, he figured not, as this brew was beyond redemption.

“OK, so the speed bumps on the star belt into Acuna” began Thea who had drawn the short straw and was chairing the meeting again. Thea hated chairing the meeting, as it meant she had to actually pay attention to what other people were saying. What she really wanted to do was sit at the back of the room and keep her head down doodling. And when you have twenty five and a half tentacles like Thea did, you could do some impressive doodles. Her smiley faces were amazing. “Zach have you actioned them? Zach…Zach!”

“Huh?” Zach snorted in a half woken state and said something that sounded suspiciously like “I’ll take you all on!” raising his fists and vaguely waving them around in front of his face, before gaining full consciousness “sorry, what was the question? I was busy making detailed notes from the last agenda item.” He lied through his forty foot log teeth, an impressive feat all considered.

“Have you actioned the building of the speedbumps?” Thea said impressively patiently. She wished she’d pulled a sicky before the meeting, but being one of a group called The Immortals somewhat exposed the lie of that.

“Have I ‘actioned’ them?” Zach paraphrased back. “Do you mean have I done them?”

A sound like a hot water pipe springing a large hole and sending torrent of steam filled the room. Turned out it was Thea sighing. “Yes. The speedbumps. Have you done them?”

“Yes I have.” Zach confirmed sitting back feeling rather pleased of himself. At this point Odin started to think about what he’d like to have for his tea when he got in. Something with chips to reward himself, he thought as his head suddenly jolted up, realising he’d fallen asleep Odin quickly looked around to see if anyone noticed, on scanning the room everyone was still in the same positions and talking away. Rubbing his chin the bristles told him he’d been asleep for a couple of days. They appeared to be still be on the agenda item that had immediately followed the speedbumps.

“So, all in favour of that show your hands?” Thea was asking. Odin had no idea what was going on, but this was no exception to most meetings he attended, so he adopted his usual strategy; he voted in favour as fewer disagreements meant maybe the meeting would finish sooner. He remembered that he might once have voted for the unilateral destruction of his sisters home planet Placemat, but on the plus side, he did get home in time to watch Nebulon 5 Eggheads[3].

“Next item; labelling of sun visors…” Thea was starting. Odin noticed an orange glow emanating from behind the flip chart (so called as anyone disruptive in the meeting was placed on the board and flipped into the nearest passing vortex). Odin raised unsteadily from his seat, most of his limbs having fallen asleep, or at the very least having had a light restorative snooze. Behind the board the glow was brighter still, an luminescent pool that tantalised with visions of possibilities, Odin was pretty confident it was a temporal warp. Conveniently, Odin had read up on these recently. Once entered, the portal could take you to long lost or parallel dimensions, take you to a new place in time, or equally as likely, atomise your entire body leaving behind a fine sherbet. Odin thought about it for precisely a second, stepping immediately in, reasoning full body disintegration still got him out of the meeting.

Odin’s body felt a flush of white heat, half imagined images of people and places he had known, or may one day know, or another version of him had known danced in his eyes. A music that sounded suspiciously like ‘Electric Dreams’ played through his mind and also through his bowels. He pushed on through the warp, each laboured step meeting more resistance, sending more strange visions firing to his synapses, the portal was clearing, he was nearly through. One more step. The light faded, Odin took in his new Eden, the new possibility offered by this tear in the fabric of time. He found himself back in the same meeting room albeit ten minutes earlier “Drat!” he cursed managing a not very strong swearword all considered.

“Sorry.” The portal seemed to reply in a surprisingly rich voice. Odin took his seat and cursed the knitting gods he worshipped.

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Aeons and a couple of Ice ages later…

“So” Thea started “we’re at AOB.”

“Any Other Bollocks.” Jennifer muttered under her breath, deciding to use the mouth on the back of her dorsal fin lest anyone could lip read.

If Thea had heard this slight she was applying the time honoured meeting protocol of ignoring it for now, but sending a whole heap of passive aggressive E-Pigeons the way of the perpetrator over the coming months.

“Well there is this apothecary clove…” Odin began. It was his big moment, that he’d been specifically sent by his advisory council to raise this dire warning. Odin had written the word ‘apocalyptic glove’ on his hand to remind him, though this had become a little smudged in the heat of the meeting room.

Unfortunately, Simoon (two Os at the end, no one knew why, much less cared to ask) said, more loudly (easy to do when you’re a walking giant pit), “I’m not happy with the risk rating on the new intergalactic bank account, I want to revisit this.” So after four hours of arguing, it was agreed that the risk colour of the bank running out of paying in slips in the immortals names was ‘orange with a dash of crimson and some bule flecks to give it a modern feel’, rather than the ‘setting sun on the dying husk of a planet’ redncolour they’d agreed to earlier.

“Any other AOB?” Thea asked with a hint of dread travelling down her spines and totally ignoring the tautology.

“Odin!” Jennifer nudged Odin who had dozed off again. Considering Jennifer was made of rock and plaster of paris this caused Odin considerable ouch. “Didn’t you have something?”

“Huh….I’ll fight you all…oh yeah. There is this one thing, there is this…err…apoplectic…power…cove…no…glove thought to be able to empower the glove wearer with the power of all the universe’s power in the glove, its called ‘the hand warmer of control’. We found it on the Gerlaxon bypass. In the wrong hand the whole universe and all life could be destroyed and…”

“…Where did this glove come from?” Simoon interjected.

“Its origin? I don’t know you see…” Odin began.

“…Whats it made of? Has it been PAT tested?” came another voice.

“I’m not sure that’s the point, as…” Odin tried to carry on.

“…Has it been risk rated?” Came another question, probably Simoon.

“It’s a glove that can destroy all known life. I’m risk rating it red. Fucking deep red. Now can we…” Odin spat out, his patience truly gone at this point and Odin wasn’t much of a doctor to start with.

“Look you’ve not come here with enough information, so I suggest we carry this over to the next meeting so Odin can deliver a full PowerPoint presentation on it” Simoon stated.

“No, no that’s not necessary” Thea reasoned with one eye on getting to the gym, the other 7 eyes she kept on the room. “If this glove is of such power, we must hide it beyond the wit of any mortal. It must be placed in as safe a place as possible and all knowledge of it hidden. The Guardians of this secret must be the bravest, most intelligent, dedicated, single-minded, willing to sacrifice themselves creatures in the known universe, and maybe we include the unknown parts of the universe, just so we cover that angle.”

“So who do we give it to?” Jennifer asked.

“Who didn’t turn up to the meeting today?” Thea responded.

“The Quizzicals representative.” Replied Simoon.

“Give it to the Quizzicals to deal with.” Thea confirmed.

Seeing his role done, or near enough as far as he was concerned, Odin made his excuses to go to the toilet strolling out of the room and as soon as he was out of eyeshot legging it in the nearest direction away from the meeting.

A number of questions still ran through his head as he also ran; 1. Where did that glove come from? 2. How did it end up in a bush on a bypass, had someone treated it like a niche interest magazine? 3. Why didn’t his leaders just destroy the glove? Were they worried about putting it in the wrong recycle bin? 4. Why do the immortals hold fortnightly meetings? Why does anyone hold meetings? 7. Why couldn’t Odin count?

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Meanwhile on planet Quizzical, home of the Quizzicals, believe it or not.

The throne room (the posh toilet) of the principality Quizzical palace was shining in its newly polished resplendent glory. A poorly paid Quizzical intern sat on a stool waiting to administer cheap aftershave and lotions in exchange for copper pennies and toffees.

Steph charged in looking flustered. Turned out she just needed to…make ‘a call’. After ablutions were completed, she walked over to the biggest poshest cubicle. She knocked on the door and a voice from within beckoned her in. Steph entered the cubicle it was a bit of a squeeze with her and supreme leader lady Rhat in it together, but this was the Quizzical protocol. “Lady Rhat, I have the minutes from the last immortals meeting, apologies for the delay but given the size of the attachment I had to delete all my emails to receive the message.”

Lady Rhat made a gesture as if waving away these details. She may have been wafting a toilet smell away in hindsight. “What news?” lady Rhat asked. “Did we cop for any actions?”

“All of them, my lady.”

“Bollocks” Lady Rhat cursed. “Send them to the work placement Quizzical to deal with.” And with that she yanked hard on the chain.

[1] Never trust anything self appointed [2] Debate rages about whether the Immortals are called such as they live forever, or as they have the ability to last through the regular meetings. [3] A show where five aliens with actual eggs for heads must combat a team of challengers in a fight to the death with oversized T-spoons.