From: mcirvin@scws35.harvard.edu (Matt McIrvin)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
Subject: EPIC!!
Date: 19 Nov 1994 02:03:18 GMT

Grogan fired.

The man slumped, spat flames from his bullet wound, exploded. Grogan looked at the cylinder of his Gun and saw that of the six bullets-- the Marshmallow, the Harmless Popping Noise, the Confetti, the Other Confetti, the Instant Homing Deadly Exploder, and the Toilet Paper-- only the fifth chamber was now empty.

He withdrew a new Instant Homing Deadly Exploder from the ammunition belt hanging vertically from the other ammunition belt that went diagonally between the ammunition belt that went over his right shoulder and the ammunition belt over his left, and reloaded the Gun. Another Non-Killer had been destroyed, someone who dared disobey the law that everyone must kill somebody once every hour--or risk a fight to the death!

He looked approvingly at his Gun. Guns like this one had once been the terror of towns with names like Zarzon 46, Vetrox, and Q635XE, back in the lawless days of the 21st century, when people had to commit murder every five minutes and dance on the victim's twitching body. The pistol's barrel was a full two feet long, and two inches wide, so that the Marshmallow could emerge unimpeded. It was made of blue steel and dripped with oil harvested from seaweed in the cities of the Pacific. Its handle was inlaid with human skin.

Grogan decided to drop all his ammunition, so as not to attract attention. He had only what was in his Gun.

Above him, the lights of the city gleamed. Suddenly Grogan had a thought.

Maybe it might not be a good thing to kill people! He banished the thought from his mind. Everyone knew that murder was good. It was the basis of his hypnopaedic sex-instruction in his apartment in the vast Fun Complex lined with glittering aluminum foil.

But what of the rumors of a place where nobody killed anybody? The place called Refuge? Some people said it didn't exist; most of the stories about it were told by senile teenagers. The mythical paradise where people were only killed once they reached the ancient age of 21, their implanted palm-bulbs went dim, and they were harmlessly euthanized by the Zero Population Authority! It sounded like heaven... except that there was no hourly murder! And what would it be like to be as old as 21?

Grogan himself was eleven.

He decided the place had to be destroyed. He would find it! He would be a hero, the man who finally destroyed the only place slightly better than the benevolent hell the entire world had become! He went down to Second Level and hailed, by pushbutton, a sleek, pneumatic CorpseCar. The streamlined coffin opened and he got inside. Suddenly he saw that the CorpseCar's Lottomatic had been activated--that jar of air-blown ping-pong balls that determined if the rider lived or died. He quickly fired a Harmless Popping Noise at the jar, and it shattered before the DEATH ball could enter the pneumatic receptacle.

A young woman clad in spandex longjohns got into the CorpseCar with him. "Mind if I share your CorpseCar?" she said. "I'm Sally 5, official clone organism." She pointed to the letters OCO stamped across her ample chest. The door of the CorpseCar closed, and Grogan sent it toward the mysterious Refuge by pushing the button marked REFUGE.

Unbeknownst to Grogan and Sally 5, a tiny crustacean had eaten part of the button, removing the embossed word NOT.

The CorpseCar filled with water, which instantly froze!

Grogan and Sally 5 had arrived in Iceville!

Iceville!

The city constructed in the ocean beneath the frozen North Pole! Originally intended as a meat-packing plant, the acronym Iceville stood for International Seaborne Experimental Meat-Packing Plant. None of science and society's best planners had realized its one fatal flaw: that it was hard to get meat at the North Pole! Thirty thousand inhabitants had died of unemployment in the 1990s. Grogan and Sally 5 could vaguely see a frozen banner reading WELCOME TO ICEVILLE encased in the solid ice that immobilized them completely.

Grogan fired a Confetti, which lowered the melting point of the ice below his body temperature, so he and Sally 5 could get out of the CorpseCar easily. Through the freezing water they swam, tendrils of ice boring into their skin, bringing screaming hell to their sensory nerves. When they emerged from the surface ice, they found themselves surrounded by monstrous shapes. They were all fighting... to the death! Some whacked others with vacuum-cleaner hoses; some poked at each others' eyes with paper clips; some brained each other with clubs made of purest diamond!

"This is Iceville Over," said a huge, fur-clad man to him, "where we have to fight to the death at all times! We are forbidden to merely kill the defenseless as they do in civilized areas!" He slapped a glove across Grogan's face. "You cannot defeat me," said the man. "I am Voxeb, part man and part machine! I am deranged and immortal! For failing to kill ten thousand schoolchildren, I was sent here and sentenced never to die! I consider myself an artist. I braid human intestines into attractive garnishes for dinner or buffet! What will it be?" he said. "Guns, clubs, swords, or enormous blocks of ice sliding down greased ramps?"

"Cunning wiles!!" screamed Grogan and fired the Other Confetti in the huge man's face. Blinded, Voxeb thought himself to be trapped in polar whiteout and decided to lose all sense of the local vertical. Arms and legs flailing, he stumbled and began to spit fat sparks! His logic circuits destroyed by the absurdity of his situation, Voxeb's ears belched smoke and his head flew off, propelled by a cylindrical actuator.

Grogan and Sally 5 grabbed the nearest emergency escape copter and headed for Robotland!

"Where are we?" asked Sally 5.

"Robotland," said Grogan. The copter landed them in the midst of a vast grassy hillside, covered with men with faces of metal, all dressed like Abraham Lincoln. They stroked their whiskers and delivered the Gettysburg Address as they tottered about creakingly. They went in and out of enormous, crumbling statues of Abraham Lincoln, which dotted the land.

"There is a particular robot here," said Grogan, "one known as Abraham Lincoln. He lives in an enormous statue of Abraham Lincoln. He is said to know where Refuge is."

Several Abraham Lincolns danced in a circle around them, singing:

We eat humans!
Grind up humans!
Burrito! Burrito!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

To buy time, Grogan distracted them by firing the Marshmallow.

"I think that's the one," said Sally 5. She pointed to an enormous statue of Abraham Lincoln. From a crack in its side poured ghostly, greenish light. "Isn't that the supercomputer that controls the rotation of the earth?"

They squeezed through the crack. Good thing I don't have my ammunition belts on, thought Grogan. I'd never be able to get through.

The interior of the statue shone with the strange light. It came from a vast array of blinking lights that covered the consoles that filled the cavernous room. The scale was so large as to defy comprehension. Storm clouds collected near the ceiling, and small moons orbited above. An Abraham Lincoln robot strode up to them.

"I must kill you, Grogan and Sally 5," it said.

"Really?" asked Sally 5.

"No," it said. "I had to say that to deceive the computer that inhabits this hall. Only people who do not wish to kill the two of you are real to it. Robots, and people who wish to kill you, pose no danger to it, so to the computer they do not exist. So all of us disguise ourselves as robots, when actually we are perfectly human. And I professed a desire to kill you so the computer would not recognize me as human when I removed my robot disguise." The robot removed its silver, whiskered face, and revealed itself to be Grogan's best buddy, Brad!

"Brad?" said Grogan.

"Yes," said Brad. "It was I who lured you here, and I who must now use you to destroy the computer."

"Why us?" asked Sally 5.

"Because to you, the computer does not exist!"

"It doesn't?" said Grogan. "Then this won't cause any harm to the earth's rotation." Grogan fired the Toilet Paper into the open, wiring-encrusted door of a dead-looking console.

Suddenly the earth stopped rotating!

-- 
Matt            01234567   <--  Indent-o-Meter
McIrvin         ^               Harnessing tab damage for peaceful ends!