Diary of a Traveling Creature
by Tom Brown (MONKEY)
It was a terrible, terrible storm blowing outside. The wind howled through the spaces in the wall and the Monkey and Piggy sat close to the heater with their jackets wrapped around them.
“Pretty cold”, shivered Monkey.
“Could be worse”, said Piggy.
They were camped in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in Warp-world-9, which is very much like this world only different. They were waiting for Uncle Gismo to come back with news of the Prayenalpayusa sabhya kalav asmin yuge janah. They were motor-cycle dudes who all sold their bikes in the Winter and had enough money that way to rent cabins until Spring. They would all hang-out at the Bog-of-a-Tom and nurse a bottle or two of Crème Soda. When the Spring came there was always work on the farms getting the machines back into shape and then they could buy a bike and hit the road for about six months.
“Yes”, said Uncle Gismo, as he came into the cabin and hung his great-coat on the coat-rack.
“Really”, said Monkey!
“Really”, said Uncle Gismo.
“Amazing”, said Piggy.
UG also crowded close to the heater and rubbed his hands together.
“Does it make any sense”, enquired Piggy?
“Lots”, affirmed Gismo. “First, that place is still a Bog and there was a very unusual Tom-cat who used to live there. He was the pet of an old colored couple who had a little cabin on the edge of the Bog, but whose family was really up near Shellbyville. The tradition was that first you’d give the cat a saucer of milk and then put your options on two pieces of paper, sometimes three, in front of him. He would look at them and then slap a paw on one of them like he was catching mice.”
“Was he always right”, Monkey?
Gismo, “Always, as far as the stories go. Often he would just look at the papers and just purr, or lick himself or just get up and stretch and go away, but when he made the slap, it always turned out to be correct”.
“How could he do that”, Piggy?
Gismo, “Some say he was old Fetch Step-it come again as a cat, and people who knew Fetch said that there were too many things same for anyone to just pass by the idea without thinking on it carefully”.
“How did they take to the pictures of Lord Nrsmha-deva that you took with you”, Piggy?
“They were friendly. They were sipping Ginger-ale and Crème Sodas, playing darts and keeping coins in the juke-box. A few siddled on over to where I was sitting and said hello and asked, “What’s your story, where you from”?
“I explained we were from Texas and we were looking for Srimati Radharani and Lord Nrsmhadeva was the family Icon that she had worshipped as She grew up”.
“Several of them took an interest in His picture and invited others over to take a look at it. They asked if Her family was India, China, and I explained, ‘Yes’, None of them had any immediate leads, but they agreed that this was the place for ciphering, and to keep up our efforts and was a really good chance we could catch a good trail to find the bandits who had captured Her and find Her for this Lord Rama. That was about it and they went back to their games and music, and I came back here.
“Ciphering has always been our main source of leads, inept a search party as we are, and here there is so much chance to do it. So let’s stick with it. They’re right. There is so much facility, subtle and gross here. Seems that one of the greatest things is to cast all of our search systems to the wind if necessary and go hog-wild after any leads that cyphering offers us”.
“I like that idea. Has a nice ring to it”, said Piggy, “Hook-up the Apparatus and let’s dig into the cypher-space. We gotta an ‘Upadesamrta’ to deliver”!