Chapter 18

Within a couple of hours the entire room was filled with people. Considering the fact that the room wasn’t commodious enough, a body of seven people made it look like some AA meeting! Much to the surprise and relief of Baro and Sageroloi they were made to sit around the table. They were joined by Toddy, another ugly looking man thing by the name Gruakach, a not so bad looking lady by name Clementine, a man of questionable character with a questionable name of Warthog and last but by no means least Grapo himself, sighting whom the teglicans almost swooned with shock and disbelief. They had no idea that the commander himself would be there, well neither did the commander anyway!

After what was a very awkward introductionary session the party of seven settled themselves about the table obviously to wait for the arrival of the 8^th member who must be a person of pretty high power given the fact that the seat at the head of the table was empty!

After approximately 783 seconds by Baro’s calculation they could hear footsteps coming up the passage outside, before they knew the door was opened and to the collective bewilderment of all the people assembled there, in ambled a figure in the most outlandish costume ever seen. To the teglicans, it was the great Gumba himself, looking natty albeit a little travel worn. He looked resplendent in his traditional purple raiment with 21 folds. They greeted him, teglican fashion, left foot first, right hand behind their necks, and a bow to the waist level. The earthlings were more astounded to see the much hated Mathau Blinger – he of the anti-graft movement – stride into the room in what looked like a sorry excuse of a saree! Needless to say, he wasn’t greeted by the latter lot!

“Good evening gentlemen and my lady! A nice cozy gathering we’ve got here. All set for the convention I presume?”

Neither species cared to respond which seemed not to deter the new entrant at all! He walked over to the head of the table and seated himself comfortably with not a trace of discomfort with regards to his many tentacles.

“Well then gentlemen and my lady, now that we all are assembled here a few things ought to be straightened out before proceeding with our mission. Although I had planned out a clean sweep I must add that the presence of the teglicans slightly complicates things a bit. Never mind that, human species is nothing if not adaptable. I can certainly circumvent their presence or insert them as quotients in my equation.”

At this point, Frampy recovered enough of his senses to put forth the most important question of all that was burning in everybody’s tongue, “Er? Who are you? I mean I know you are Mathau Blinger and all that but who are you in the current context of things? And what are those tentacles for, been to a fancy dress party?”

Blinger a.k.a Gumba smiled the smile of a benevolent uncle and said, “Yes I believe a lot of explanation is required. School is in session boys and girl, you better listen up!”

Chapter 19

Blinger a.k.a Gumba’s lecture:

The earthlings are pretty much aware of the NC and the reason it was constituted. For the teglicans here’s how the NC came into being. This NC, short for the New Connivance, was constituted by a group of scientists who saw that the only way to govern any large mass of the human species was to biologically doctor them to remove the source of craving itself rather than address the issues rising out of the cravings. This we achieved after almost the entire population on earth was abolished by the spread of a rather disgusting sort of disease that spreads via copulation.

“Serves them right” muttered Baro and all that the earthlings could manage was a collective look of hatred searing enough to melt the fabled Mt. Everest!

So, on getting the other scientists to agree to such a cultured way of governance we set about implementing the same among whatever masses that were left by forceful means. Only a handful were left anyway and after collecting enough samples pertaining to reproduction we culled the earth off the last few remnants who would live to tell the tale of “before!”

There was now collective grinding of the teeth along with the collective smoldering glare from the earthlings.

Life then was a cakewalk. We had every technology at our disposal and we were literally GOD to the populace… blah de blah … tra la la la and say tra la la lee! Anyways, we built the human race from scratch. We did have our failures, yes, but we didn’t let those deter us! I instated the anti-graft committee to free the society from the illegal greasing- to- get- work- done culture. We had succeeded in structuring the human want of procrastinating but not the human nature of greed and gloat. It seemed to run in the family as people used to say! This last posed quite a Yorker but I rose to the occasion. I could instill enough terror in the minds of the minions so that the word bribe was not to be heard of. Well, when things settled down a bit and when everything started looking like a routine that you could complete while sleeping we started throwing our glances on means beyond our earth. We had been avidly interested in space travels and planets beyond our reach that we began contemplating interstellar travels.

He stopped right there and for the first time began to look nervous probably because at the mention of interstellar travels he snagged the attention of the teglicans too who seemed to be wondering at their relevance in the current scheme of things. The entire gathering took on a gloomy and closed atmosphere. The tension was so palpable that you might as well have hacked it away with a chain saw and even then would have found the going a bit tough!

- posted by Swetha @ 1/17/2005 11:00:00 AM 1 comments