Chapter 4

"Apart from the smell and the constant shedding, the Orfine is good company." Several times that thought had crossed S117's mind now, while he was trying to teach his new pet some tricks. The fact that the Empire was at war, and loosing faster then strictly humanly possible, seemed not to have reached his mind yet. How could it, after all, that manual on how to work the computer console on his desk was much too complicated.

"Besides, teaching my new friend tricks is much more fun then what was it called again?" A couple of moments of mental silence as S117's facial expression contorted a bit: his left eye started to bulge out of its socket, his mouth fell half open and a noise quite similar to "uuuuhhhhmmmm" escaped his vocal chords. All with all the Terran Commander looked pretty silly. "Reading, much more fun then reading!"

Proud of himself, he turned to the canine at his feet once more. The doglike creature had been sitting there waiting with eternal patience and unexplainable loyalty for his master to play with him some more.

"Ok Womble," Womble reacted by panting heavily and literally sweeping the floor with his fluffy tail.

"Look Womble, ball!!" Said S117 while he was holding a tennis ball in front of Orfines snout. Womble went near crazy by the mere attention he got.  "Womble! Fetch ball!" S117 said while he threw the ball across the small room.

Womble barked happily, and sped away to grab the ball. His mind was filled with hopes of petting when he returned his prize to the kind man with the funny eyes that had just thrown that pretty ball away.

The ball was bouncing off the walls, crashing into furniture and nearly missing priceless centuries-old art. Womble, in contrary to the ball, was quite a bit bigger, and took up a bit more space to adjust his heading. As a result, by the time Womble had the ball clenched between his teeth, the room was in ruins.

As the ceiling light came crashing down just next to S117, he took the ball out of his pets saliva-filled mouth, and petted the fur happily. "Vacation is fun." He said slowly with a big grin on his face.

Napster came into the room doing some sort of bunny hop, and bumped into Kal, toppling her over while she was reporting on the unsurprising complete success of her last mission.

Walt didn't seem to notice, as he was too busy throwing rocks through John, who was hovering just before a picture of Greeny, Emperor of the Terran Empire. Kal had just presented this picture as a gift to Walt, after capturing it in the ruins of a settlement in Dubhe. Walt had pinned it to the wall of his entertainment room; which spanned roughly the entire ship, because Walt liked to have fun, and had started to throw rocks at it because he was bored. John appeared moments later on the exact spot where he was now, making the game much more fun.

As Napster was giggling like a schoolgirl and continuing to hop around as if he was a bunny, Kal got up and resumed the end of her debriefing: "With all the Terrans dead or captured, we now have enough food for another few days, so I'll cook you a big feast tonight. Our scientists are studying the prisoners. Their behavior is strange; they keep trembling and shaking when they see us. I think they are what the Terrans call "scared". It's a fascinating thing to see. Maybe I'll have one of them perform tonight at dinner."

"I'm a bunny! YAYNESS!" yelled Napster, slamming into one a wall. "I wanna be an invisible bunny." He cried, tears rolling down his miss-formed face and creating a puddle of lemonade on the ground.

Kal looked at Napster before she walked away, and threatened Walt, pointing a finger at him: "But he's not getting any! He can eat scraps, just like the rest of your pets." And she stormed out.

Walt's face had a puzzled look as he wondered out loud: "We have scientists?"

John, thinking Walt wanted him to answer to the best of his abilities started to lecture Walt upon the importance of scientific advancement, not to mention good government funding to ensure continuous research into something like dishwashing machines, paperclips and off course, THE most important scientific discovery a civilization could make: a machine that could make cookies.

As John kept rambling on, not noticing his audience had lost complete and utter interest in anything he could ever say, Walt went over to the still crying Napster.

As he bent down over the crazy little mutant, he said: "That's no way for mutants to behave. If you'll be good I will give you some pirates to play with." "But, but, I wanna cookie!!!" yelled Napster on the top of his childish voice, crying even harder. By now the floor was completely covered in at least five centimeters of lemonade, resulting in the guards, stationed at the door, starting to splat around in it and having a blast, laughing and yelling.

Walt saw the guards, and smiled. He had always allowed his people to have fun in centimeters of lemonade whenever they were standing guard. He found it was good for morale.

John had noticed nobody was paying attention to him and his brilliant thoughts on the importance of science, and was in need of some attention. He made his mutebat appear out of nowhere  nobody ever figured out where that he kept that thing, or how for Tea-sake he had gotten a hold of it  and swung it around in the direction of the guards, causing their mouths to tie up with absurdly large shoelaces being sown through their lips.

"Fun is not allowed! Muted!" He yelled, making both Napster and Walt roll over with laughter at the ridiculous sound of his high-pitched three year old Terran-like voice.

"That's unfair! Abuse! Abuse! Bad moderator, bad moderator! You're not a nice person John, you abuse your powers!" screamed Yooper, who had somehow managed to appear out of thin air on the Genus ship, causing disarray with his uncontrollable yelling of: "ABUSE! ABUSE!!"

"You got a problem, file a Report but stop yelling monkey brains." John simply said. By now Walt and Napster were gasping for air as they saw Yooper's hysterics and were laughing uncontrollably.

In the commotion, Leader of Darkness had snuck into the room and was now standing behind Yooper, facing Walt and Napster and doing bad impersonations of the said Terran, before he himself got it too bad and fell down on the floor while letting out booming laughter.

"But John, the Customers Service of the Moderators is closed, its past five o'clock!! You know that! Damn you bastard. I hate you, I hate you! I will never forget your evilness! I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to" Yooper went completely insane, yelling, shouting, flailing his arms left and right, stomping his feet, slamming his fists into the wall and jumping up and down in furious insanity.

While Yooper was screaming and yelling, John calmly said: "That's not my problem Yooper, now calm down. Oh, hello Bob." The last few words caused a smile appear on the light bulbs face, even though he neither had a mouth or a face to start with.

A giant light filled the room, as Bob Dylan appeared, with his loyal puppy by his side. As the puppy ran off to lick up the lemonade and bark at Napster for being a bunny, the giant bobble-head resembling Jay Leno that was Bob Dylan appeared.

After hitting himself over the head, making his giant head bobble wildly, Bob simply said with a booming god-like voice: "John is a good moderator, he cleans his room. Yooper, you shall not be angry at John. John is good, John is nice, John is wonderful."

"Bull! John isn't nice, he's mean, John isn't good, he's evil, John isn't wonderful, hes horrible!!" "Exactly, that's what I said." Boomed the bobble-head. "What? But, but ARGH I hate you Bob! I hate you, I will ban you from this game!" Yooper took out a Terran pocket pc. Since the device was Terran, it did not contain anything that could cause confusion, no text, no strange messages, just big pictures. He clicked on the picture resembling the device itself, and accessed a folder called IW Admins. Then he clicked on a file called "Bob Dylan, Bobble-head Admin" and clicked on the big trash-can icon after having to read most of the manual to operate the small pc.

While Bob and John smirked at the Terran struggling with the pocket pc, Walt wondered out loud to nobody in particular: "Life's a game?" and went back to laughing.

As the file disappeared into the trash can, the enormous bobble-head figurine disappeared just like he had appeared: into thin air. Only the barking puppy was left, which had Napster pinned down in a six feet tree, standing in the corner of the small low ceiling room. The previous leader of the Brood had commissioned this ship, and had abused bugs while doing so, making it possible for a twenty foot tree to stand in a six foot high room. Off course, he had been banned.

Walt drawn his tank barrel of a gun by now and was pointing it at Yooper. As a pair of overly cool shades appeared over his eyes, he suddenly gained an Austrian accent and said: "You will not be back" before pulling the trigger, blasting a stuffed animal towards Yoopers head. As the stuffed animal gently hit his skin, Yooper was thrown back against the wall as if he had been hit by a speeding starbase which was off course utterly impossible. After all, starbases don't speed.

Just before he died, he said to John with his dieing breath: "John, you bastard! You will. be promoted for this."

"Yes I know." Said the lightbulb with a huge grin while lovingly stroking his mutebat.

As S117 walked up the ramp to the thrown of the Emperor in the Thrown room with Womble running  though the room behind him, changing direction ever two seconds; being unable to choose between all the amazing new smells his nose picked up

"You're late!" Greeny shouted downwards from his plastic Ikea-retainer chair marked "Emporer Greenie's Throvn" - Narses had never been a great speller - as S117 approached.

"Yeah, uhm, I got lost trying to find the map-thingy you had installed on the walls to help us find our way through the base. Then I found it, and I followed the yellow line, but that lead me to the hangar. Then I followed the green line..." "All very interesting, just shut up and listen."

As S117 closed his mouth Greeny started to explain why he had sent for the Commander. "We have reason to believe the Matrix have planted a bomb somewhere in Utopia." A very annoying whine resonated through the room as Boby could not contain his fear and was now loudly whining. He would have cried if he had working tear ducts. But he lost those after he had threatened a Preserver to install Microsoft-built software on its system during the last war with the Preservers, while he had been imprisoned.

"Shut it!" Greeny yelled, drawing his pistol and firing in the approximate direction of Boby, missing five out of six shots, and having the sixth shot hit not Boby but remarkably someone on the exact opposite of the room. As the victim casually bled to death in his own misery, Greeny continued: "We have to find the bomb, otherwise even our indestructible home base will be destroyed. I don't want that, cause then I don't have anywhere to hide my three million subjects from those twenty four Brood and twelve Kolari out there anymore."

"A bomb?" S117 asked while the silly look returned on his face. "You mean, one of those things that goes BOOM?" he suddenly yelled, causing most Terrans to duck for cover, a few others to cower in fear, and for some reason Womble barked at a table leg.

"I think so." The Emperor answered nodding his head. "That's bad, we need to find that thing, before it goes BOOM!"

Again, the ducking, cowering and strangely enough the barking at the moment S117 yelled. "Stop that! Why did I even allow you to become an officer! You make an average Terran look like they actually have brains!" Greeny was starting a tyrade, while suddenly a transmission came in on the impossibly large view screen above the door, where until now had been the still screen of a paused game of Bob the Builder© as Greeny had been busy explaining the workings of the game to his Council just moments before he had gotten the news.

On the screen appeared a pirate with puppy eyes the size of planets and as it turned out the most annoying voice ever to have existed. "Greeny, mate, can I have an Invincible please?" "NO!!" yelled the Emperor at the screen while slamming his hand into the biggest of the huge brightly colored buttons on his console, ending the transmission.

"Will that Raggy never learn?" he asked rhetorically, causing everyone in his presence to ponder on the question in order to find an answer.

A second later, Raggy appeared on the screen again: "An Invincible please mate, pl-" "NO you dumbass pirate! You cannot have an Invincible, you cannot have anything! And I am not your mate!!" shouted the angry Greeny, dangerously waving his gun in literally every direction. Again, he ended the conversation, and chose the option to ignore any incoming transmissions from Raggy.

"Now, about the bomb any idea's?" "Yes, Emperor" said S117, patiently waiting for something to happen while Greeny eyed him utterly out of patience. "And???" Again the waving with the gun.

"Oh right, well, I was thinking. Fetch..." At that moment Womble raced out of the room, barking like a crazy little Chihuahua.

"Fetch the bomb" S117 continued after a moment of silence "and disarm it, so it won't go BO-" Greeny's eyes almost exploded upon hearing that S117 was going to shout again. "So it won't go boom, and we all be safe and can go eat ice cream with the Brood." Muffled giggles sounded as the Terrans present realized that S117 didn't know they were at war with the Brood.

"And you came up with that utterly brilliant plan, all by yourself, right here on the spot?!" Greeny shouted, his words filled with sarcasm.

S117, mistaking the sarcasm for pride, straightened his back and held his chin high, expecting a medal for ingenious thinking, grinned from ear to ear, making himself look utterly ridiculous.

Another transmission came in, again it was Raggy: "Please, can I have a Dominator and a Grimmtooth and an Invincible and a Rift and a Fortress and a cookie please, please mate. I'll be good." The whining tone of his voice was unbearable, and Greeny started to pull out his hair while the puppy eyed pirate kept begging on and on.

"SHUT UP RAGGY, SHUT THE HELL UP." You're not getting anything here!! Go and ask Walt for ships, he'll give you all the ships you want, but get the hell out of my sight!!" was the Emperors response before he once again closed the channel, not one moment thinking about how Raggy could have possibly reached him if he had just put him on the ignore list of the communications computer.

Just as Greeny calmed down a bit again, Womble came dashing into the room, wagging his tail and holding something in his mouth. As he approached S117, he dropped it and when it hit the floor it started ticking in a very melodramatic way.

Womble sat down, still wagging his tail and panting, looking up with his big puppy eyes expecting to be petted.

"What the hell??!! That dog of yours brought the bomb here!!! It's ticking!!" Greeny shouted as he saw what it was.

At the same time, the view screen showed Raggy again: "Please Greeny, can I have a ship? Please, I won't ask anymore."

"Ohh!! Good doggie! Good Womble, yes, you're a good pet, aren't you?!" S117 started petting Womble, thinking that the Orfine had done good. Then he thought of something and asked to nobody in particular: "Ticking is good, right?"

"WAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!" Greeny started to fire his gun at the view screen, at the Terrans, at Womble, at anything, missing all and hitting nothing, making him loose his mind even more. He ran to the weapons locker and grabbed a rocket launcher, pointed it at the view screen, but held it backwards. He fired, and the rocket flew through the window. As later would be discovered, the rocket had randomly chosen a target somewhere in the galaxy, even though its sensors could not see beyond two miles around the rocket itself, and had destroyed that target.

Raggy, sitting in the Eltanin Pirate starbase, looking out of the window while crying that Greeny wouldn't give him a ship, suddenly saw a rocket coming towards him. Puzzled, he looked up, and called the other Pirates. Then, the rocket hit, destroying the entire starbase due to a mistake in the base' plumbing system.

At the same time, the bomb in Utopia was still ticking, and the Terrans became more and more frightened, cuddling up in the furthest corner of the room, convinced that the distance of nine metres would keep them safe from the all destructive blast the bomb would have - after all, its design was only to destroy an indestructible starbase.

The timer ran out of seconds to count off, and then all went silent for a few seconds.

Just as Greeny thought it was a dummy, smoke came from the bomb, and a repeating transmission appeared. It was Jasvecht, one of the leaders of the Preservers: "GOT YA!!"