My Journey

Chapter 1
Oh so much dust

What a dusty path we must travel down to get anywhere decent. It’s atrocious. I still remember the old days when all you needed to go somewhere was a pastry and some twine. Now it’s trudge here and crawl there, pay here, die there. Not exactly a fun trip to be certain. But where was I? I think I was going to tell you about my journey. It is a long one, a treacherous and perilous journey, and yet tedious to retell. Don’t worry; I’ll spice up the tale for you with fantastic and possibly completely fabricated adventures.
         Ah, aren’t adventures so much more fun than journeys? They’re all dungeons, dangerous animals, monsters of all sorts but ultimately a bountiful treasure. Journeys, on the other hand involve but one dusty road, a long dusty road. One beginning, point A, and one end, point B. So begins my tale, somewhere between point A and point B, I was no longer aware of how long I had been traveling (for it had been all too long). The only part of this journey that I found entertaining was that I had little idea of where or even what part B was. I took a bite of my pastry—delicious. Unfortunately some dust had gotten into the filling and I had to throw it down to the road where it was wholly consumed by the swirling dirt. At least it had not gone to waste.
         Now I was left with only my twine. If only I had not been so trapped in the box of old-fashioned thinking I might have thought to have brought water or real food. From behind me I suddenly heard footsteps. Whirling about with my soldier’s reflexes (for I had been in the army for years), I spotted a man with a name tag. It read: HELLO: My name is Gene of the FCA. He seemed an amiable enough fellow, a bright wide glistening smile that stretched his face and elongated his eyes. His skin was dark and leathery even though he appeared quite young. In spite of his youthful appearance, however, he had a few curious things about him. You see, this man had a long grey beard as well as a gun which he had pointed at me. The ocean of wrinkles upon his face flowed when he spoke through his smile.
         “Good day, partner. Are you aware that it’s a crime in these parts to waste your food?” Damn, he was from the Food Conservation Association and not the real FCA. “The punishment of this crime is death by gunshot to the head upon offense. But you’ll see I’m really a nice man. I’ll give you a few seconds to collect your thoughts before I shoot you.”
         “For that I thank you profusely, stranger, for I have many thoughts which scattered all willy-nilly at the sight of your beard,” He just smiled, as if saying Ah, yes, the beard, everyone wonders about the beard. I decided that I needed to think quickly.
“Please, sir, I was not wasting the food at all, the dusty road upon which we must all tread had already nibbled on it, even though it did not pay even a quarter for it’s share, and I simply figured that I should be the better man and give him the rest.” He rubbed his beard with one hand, the skin around the roots crinkling in an odd manner. He lowered the gun for a second in thought, and I considered running, just for a second. Of course he would think I was lying at that point, and besides the punishment for wasting food I would probably also be imprisoned for a number of years and I did not want to spend the first few years of my death in prison.
         “How can I believe you? How do I know you’re not just a common criminal?” I knew what I had to do. Reaching into my pocket, I felt around for what I needed. I held it in front of me in the glaring sunlight while he fingered the trigger indolently.
         “All I have to prove my innocence is this spool of twine. It is all I have left in the world.” My friend Gene once more rubbed his beard, then reached out and took the spool, nodded, and fired three shots. One went into the offending road, for he knew I was telling the truth, such is the power of twine, one went into the sky ceremoniously and the third buried itself in my shoulder. I smiled; I knew we were friends now. The road slowly faded as Gene had shot it in its heart and we both began to fall in to nothingness. Such was the start of my journey.
         
Chapter 2
A wrong turn for the better

         I woke up surrounded by black. Disorienting, really. Have you ever woken up in the residence of a friend in the middle of the night and had no idea where you were and kept running into things? Well, that’s how it was right now. The only thing I ran into was Gene. I knew it was him, I could feel the warm steel of a recently fired gun.
         “Hail, hunter,” I joked, “I do believe my arm will fall off if we don’t get it patched up soon!” We both had a good laugh at that one. I had always been the class clown back in school. They’d call me a kidder and a fibber and a hoot and a jackass. That last one mostly applies to the nerds who couldn’t understand my art and the rich kids who never had to walk a road in their lives. I realized that Gene had stopped laughing a good minute before I did and suddenly felt very awkward. It was a new friendship, we had much to learn of each other yet.
         I hadn’t realized how confusing nothingness could be. There is no real floor, and yet there are pits everywhere. One simply must choose where to stand and hope that he does not stand on a pit. Gene and I chose to stand on very similar levels, but I think he was slightly higher up than I was. Then again he could have just been a little taller, either way his breath was blowing into my eyes. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I did anyways. “Friend, your wind is blowing in my eyes, which are quite sensitive. If you could please take a step back or lower yourself down, I would be much obliged.” I knew not what he did, for it was pitch black, but the breath was gone from my eyes and I was obliged. I hadn’t much thought of it until then, but I realized that every time I had said I would be much obliged, the person I asked never did what I asked of him. I realized I now owed Gene a favor. “Thanks, I owe you one.” I imagined him waving it off with a smile, though he probably just nodded.
         “Let’s get a move on;” he quipped in his cheery tone, “I tire of nothing.”
         I nodded my agreement and spun on my heel. Unfortunately my first step was right into a pit I sighed as my body plummeted for what must have been hundreds of feet. It was fun for the first few feet, but I grew bored and simply decided to stand right where I was. Gene crashed into my back; I suppose he forgot that you could choose where to stand in nothingness. I fell to what was now my ground and became even more disoriented, almost as disoriented and confused as you must be by now. I stood up and dusted myself off, mostly out of habit because I seriously doubted dust could exist long in Nothing. I was a bit annoyed that Gene wasn’t very aquatinted with the world. Who didn’t understand anything? “Does nothing make sense to you now, friend?”
         “No,” he whined, “nothing makes sense to me.” I had to think about that for a minute.
         “Nothing makes sense to you now but you still fell into me?”
         “I don’t understand you, friend”
         “The feeling is mutual, you can be assured.” A long silence followed. I didn’t want to break it, so I thought about life. I came to some interesting conclusions there with Nothing in mind. Mostly, I figured that people walk in the worst direction they can choose every time that they can. Maybe not on purpose, but they make the worst choices they can. If everyone makes the worst choice possible, and life is all a lot of choices, it certainly is hard to do well unless you mess up. If you mess up you might accidentally take the right path and make the right choice. I sensed the irony, but perhaps it was out of habit because I seriously doubted irony could exist in Nothing. In the silence, I felt around, again out of habit. I have a number of such habits; one of them is feeling out my surroundings when I think upon things for too long.
         I felt three things: Gene standing up in front of me (he was almost exactly my height now), a clear feeling of a path to the left, and a good feeling of a path to the right. “Friend,” I said, “I do believe we can either take a left or a right. I have a good feeling about the right path.”
         “Alright friend, then let us take the right path.”
         In hindsight, I had not remembered that Gene was facing me. He must have still felt awkward when we began traveling to my right instead of his right. Either way, one of us had messed up. This is why it is necessary to have friends in life. When you’re stuck in Nothing with no way out, one of you is bound to mess up. I slowly realized this as I began to see the end of Nothing. It was a crevice into something. I could see light. I could see gold light and as I got closer I could see gold. I sighed again, “Great, we took the wrong turn…”
         “I thought you had a good feeling about the right path.”
         “This is the right path”
         “Yet it’s wrong?”
         I had an epiphany: the only time right can be wrong is when you need to go left. Absolutes are silly. Right can be wrong and left can be right if you think about it. I must have been because I felt warm air through the crevice and the walls surrounding me. I sucked in my gut and inched through the crevice into something and fell into a giant pile of gold. As Gene plopped into the gold right next to me, I had the urge to count all of my new blessings piece by piece. Unfortunately, a Dragon appeared. Perhaps we hadn’t messed up after all.

Chapter 4 (in progress):
What happened after what happened next

         For you to understand at all what happened next, I must first explain what happened after what happened next. A disorienting experience for most, I’ll admit, but no more disorienting than any other part of my journey. My companion and I were now flying through the depths of space in the dragonmobile. We had not yet christened her. That would have to wait.  I suspected we would name her something like… the Matriarch, Sagittarius, or the Flannel Patrick. I am quite fond of all three; I decided to ask my shipmate his opinion.
         “Anton, what do you think of naming this beauty?”
         “I’m a little preoccupied at the moment!”
         Of course he was preoccupied, he was always preoccupied. Back in my prime, navigating without sensors through an asteroid field with a dragon and two FCA agents on your tail was second nature. Anton could hardly do it without talking to me. Spaceflight was so boring without a good person to talk to. The ship rocked with the rain of laser shots being fired at us. The emergency alarms began to sound and a red light began flashing in the cockpit. The color red always made me reflect on things. My arms began flailing about in thought.
         I considered for a moment that in a matter of hours my life had forever changed. I had met a friend, gone to Nothingness for the second time in my life, become my new friend’s accomplice, become an intergalactic criminal and had yet to eat lunch. I was hungry. To keep my mind off of my hunger, I imagined what the two FCA ships must be saying to each other. I did this often, as it helped calm me down. 
         The gruff voice of one of the Food Conservationists would be barking through the intercom of the other ship. “Isn’t this your specialty? Tracking down criminals and killing them?” Captain Romero could hardly stand the Food Conservation Association. Romero worked for the real FCA and really brought about good in the universe and or naught but the simple price of a few meager blessings. Romero groomed his bushy mustache between his index finger and thumb while munching on a bologna sandwich with his other hand. He stopped messing with his mustache just long enough to mash a button on the dashboard. A video screen flashed to life, showing the angry and unappreciative face of the angry Food Conservationist. This man also had a bushy mustache, though it was not nearly as bushy as his own. He wore the standard attire of an FCA agent and had a name tag which read: HELLO: my name is The Real Gene of the FCA. The “real” was highlighted with a bright green marker.
         “Sir,” Romero spat the word condescendingly at the not-so-bushily ‘stached officer, “We are doing our best to capture the criminals. In fact, I believe that we have landed more hits on them than you.” Romero glanced past his pilot, who was expertly and calmly evading the obtrusive space rocks, towards a small screen reading: SCORE: 7.
         “I am far from impressed; you FCA types never were all you’re cracked up to be!” The Conservationist’s face was turning a dark red angry color. Romero puffed himself up in anger and ruffled his mustache.
         “Well, I never! You FCA scum are nothing more than a bunch of hippies with guns!”
         “We’re more hip than you!”
         Romero hated when people underestimated how cool he was. In anger, he threw what remained of his sandwich on the floor and began screaming incoherently at the Food Conservationist Gene. It was not incoherent due to any speech impediment, no; Romero was an excellent linguist and was currently hurling all manner of hip intergalactic trash talk at The real Gene. Unfortunately, only he and the teenagers from around the universe could possibly know what he was saying. I’ve always said that the most insulting insults are those given in an unknown language and Romero was hurling insults from hundreds of different languages and dialects at the conservationist. Needless to say, it left the real Gene quite flabbergasted--Almost too flabbergasted to notice the atrocious crime committed by the real Romero. It didn’t take long for them both to notice the discarded bologna.
         “Captain Romero, you have just committed a crime punishable by death. Please do not struggle.” Romero swore in some dead language. Perhaps there was an irony too it, for Romero could never remain dead. He simply liked being alive too much. As the opposite FCA ship trained its guns upon his ship, he ordered his gunners to reciprocate.
         “Goodbye, Gene.”
         
         I returned to my senses. Anton was still piloting the ship with white knuckles. I glanced in the rear-view space mirror and noticed that the two FCA vehicles had opened fire upon each other. It was odd how what I imagined often came true. Of course there was a good chance that any number of other things may have caused them to attack each other. The mind-eaters that inhabited these asteroids may have captured the consciousness of one of the ships and forced the gunners to destroy each other, or perhaps some systems had malfunctioned in both ships and coincidentally those systems caused them to target each other and open fire or perhaps they had simply gotten bored. It was definitely strange how the universe worked.
         I then remembered the dragon. It slithered through the empty vacuum of space on its magical space wings that must have taken years to grow. Its silver scales shimmered in our tail lights underneath the wicked grill marks that stamped his flanks. It appeared to be trying to roar. It always depressed me to see dragons try to roar in space. It is a true pity that sound couldn’t travel in empty vaccuums. They say a mature dragon’s roar is so beautiful that it caused a human’s heart to stop and their ears to explode. This is something I had always wished to experience for myself. Unfortunately, today was not that day, for precisely as I imagined my ears exploding, our weapon and sensor systems came back online.
         I could feel that Anton understood my reluctance to shoot the beautiful and deadly serpent. He sighed and set the ship to “just don’t kill us” pilot and ran to the back of the ship to the gun turrets. He certainly did have a lot of spunk in him. I walked over to the dashboard and scanned the cockpit. I had never driven in a dragonmobile, but I usually have a good intuition when it comes to dangerous vehicles. I found a small hatch above the pilot’s seat that had a key hole. I remembered the key I had picked up in the dragon’s lair. I fished through my pockets until I found it and extracted it from the ocean of assorted candy wrappers and crumpled greeting cards. Inserting it into the key hole, I twisted it around a complete 360 degrees. After hearing a lock pop out of place, I pushed up on the hatch and it fell out of place. Another barrier blocked my intuition’s path. This one was glass and had some “warning, use only in case of emergency” written on it. I shrugged and took Anton’s gun off of the floor where he had dropped it. Covering my eyes, I pistol whipped the glass and felt it shatter. Finally, I saw the button.  Written above and below it in bright yellow letters was a message: “We mean it: emergencies only.” There was also a “Timmy was here” scratched into the empty spaces around the button. Glancing through the rear-view space mirror, I saw the gun turret fire reflecting off of the dragon’s scales. I sighed at the thought of its song and pushed the button.
         I felt the ship rumble. Then I blacked out. I suppose it was a safety mechanism. If a person knew what the ship did in emergencies and liked it, they may keep doing it. People don’t like blacking out. Genius, really. I woke up to the sound of Anton’s voice.
         “We’re just requesting clearance to land, sir” There was a face on a view screen I hadn’t noticed before. It seemed very pensive behind its pencil-thin mustache. The face was eying Anton like he might be a criminal. Anton had once more donned his FCA uniform and grey beard. What a crafty accomplice I had made! “I assure you that we have plenty of blessings to bestow upon you for this landing,” Anton, Gene, whomever my friend was, held up a bag of gold coins as proof, “if we may do so soon.”
         “I could use some blessings,” the face muttered to itself. He wrapped his mustache around a finger and bit his cheek nervously. “We aren’t supposed to let people land right after an emergency…,” Gene shook the bag of gold blessings as a reminder, “but I’ll make one exception for you, Mr…”
         “Germann, Mr. Gene Germann.”
         “Mr. Germann and your ship…”
         I lifted my head, wearily from the ground, “The Flannel Patrick,” and then all was black once more. In hindsight, I probably should have explained what happened next first.

Chapter 3 (in progress):
What happened next
         
         My first thought upon seeing the dragon was “wow, that thing is beautiful.” Its silver scales glinted in the sunlight pouring through the mouth of the beast’s lair. It was actually bright enough to hurt my eyes which had grown quite accustomed to Nothingness by this point. This was the first dragon I had seen and I must say that I was quite perplexed by its splendor. I imagined it flying gracefully through the clouds, a silver bolt amid a blue infinity. Unfortunately, its first thought was something a bit more down to earth.
         A stench accompanied the rough music of the dragon’s speech. The symphony of bass was destroyed by the rotting of good eggs. I decided I wanted eggs for lunch. “Why have you broken into my home? I have done nothing to you or your kind in ages. I simply wish to be left alone to my hoard of treasure. I can assure you the goods were not ill-gotten, I can show you the time sheets from my last employment. These gold pieces are my only blessings in the world. Now, I’d advise you to leave before I lose my temper.”
         I couldn’t understand a thing it was saying. Perhaps I was a bit out of sorts from my lack of food. I decided that Gene would have to converse with the thing.