Comedy Open Mic Round 35 : OVER THE SILVER SKY TO THE WORLD OF NEVER : Part 53 - In The Interest Of Full Disclosure.

More bewildering inconsequential nonsense than you can shake a stick at GUARANTEED. Go on get yourself a stick and give it a try. Yes we've now gone INTERACTIVE. Using specially designed algorithms made by SCIENCETISTS in our LABORITORIUM (of death). Don't go in there whatever you do. Not unless you're one of our sciencetists and have signed a nondisclosure agreement. Thanks to this algorithm there's a lot more stuff you can do as you induce that coma by trying to read this crap. We always advise anyone who reads our output to leave instructions with a close friend or relative as to what they should do with your lifeless body when you inevitably enter the PERSISTENT VEGETATIVE STATE. Getting rid of any donor cards you may have foolishly signed up to will also aid you. Nothing worse than waking in a hospital morgue minus several vital organs. So feel free to read on then wake up in intensive care many years later. Today our sponsor is LIFE brought to you by your mother. We all know how harsh life can be so take our advice "LIFE: GO OUT THERE AND KILL IT BEFORE IT KILLS YOU".

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“Before we go any further, you still haven’t told me your name.” Grundel Spagthorpe stated.
That bamboozled Jake, making his head spin. As he went back over their conversation so far, it stunned him.
“Hang on. I’ve told you twice already. As soon as we met and then again when you asked. What the hell is going on here?”
"Nothing to be concerned about Jake. You took a round to the back of your head it caused some damage that seems to have been repaired. I expect you've been feeling rather tired recently. Luckily for you it didn't perforate your skull. That could have been fatal. You'll find you will be able to think more clearly from now on I expect. Unless you take another round to the head."
Jake cautiously checked out the back of his cranium. There was a crust of dried blood he rubbed away. Underneath there was a long thin bald patch where the bullet had glanced along the skin.
“Wow. No wonder I needed a lie down.”
“You needed more than that. I’ve been here well over two hours now and this is the third time you and I have introduced ourselves. The first was rather brief and during the second you were rambling about fried chicken and something called postage stamps. You told me your name was Rumpelstiltskin. Highly entertaining. I was initially very worried about you. Then I saw that you were recovering and now you are well on the mend. Your short term memory has returned.”
Jake grimaced apologetically. Feeling somewhat embarrassed about his conduct, even though it wasn’t really his fault.
“Well, thanks for hanging around and keeping an eye on me. I should be back to my old self shortly then.”
“No, you’ll be better than that. Eventually. Now that the introductions are out of the way, at last, shall we proceed?"
This gave Jake pause for thought. There were huge risks with taking anyone on this planet at face value. Added to which he had no idea if he was thinking straight. Nor if he'd been thinking straight ever since they'd stormed the prison. Although that bullet had grazed the back of his head it had screwed up his brain. Ah why wrestle with this when it had pretty much been fucked since the suspected tumor first showed up. Well before that if he was being honest with himself.
"Sure. I think. If you intended me harm you could have done it while I was unconscious I suppose. You'll have to forgive my paranoia, my time here hasn't exactly been incident free."
"Entirely understandable. I myself am always far more cautious outside the security of a megapolis. Let me show you how to operate the wrist device."
"Doesn't it have a name?"
A puzzled expression appeared on Grundel's face.
"I suppose I could have given it a name. What do you think of Norbert Reticule? I'm not one to anthropomorphize things."
"No I meant like cars are called cars and planes are called planes. A name that indicates what it's for or describes what it does."
"Not sure I follow you there Jake. Car and plane describe similar groups of things. Granted a refrigerator refrigerates. However a car doesn't car and a plane flies, it doesn't plane anything. I could call it a wrist entry egress facilitator if you like."
Now Jake wasn't sure which of them was being weirder. Grundel had a point there.
"No. That's fine I guess I was expecting it to be called something memorable and impressive. I've been encountering a whole host of new things here. Sticking a label on something sticks it in my memory better. So, what do I do to operate this extraordinary gadget?"
Grundel used his own wrist device to illustrate. He hadn't been kidding about the extra features. The one that Jake had used to gain entry to the city originally had been a blue glowing bump on a plastic band. That was it. This one had a menu of choices. Each one an incomprehensible symbol.
"So you press this one twice then that one. All you have to do after that is walk into the dome. I've assumed you cannot read Tchinti."
"That's a safe assumption. I've heard that name a lot recently. Their language being the only one that deals with time travel in a comprehensible way. Who are they?"
"They were the first human civilization, which formed around twenty five thousand years ago in what is now the Gulf of Guinea. A grouping of rather terrible natural disasters put paid to them I'm afraid. To their culture the past present and future were all going on at exactly the same time and you could interact with them as you would with anything else."
More tantalizing avenues to explore for a historian. Jake knew he should avoid that. To prevent his mind from heading off in several different directions at once. Keep to the main aim, finding Sharon in The Never. There would be time for sight seeing once that was accomplished.
"I hope you don't mind Grundel, but I'd like you to go first."
"So still sticking to safety first." Grundel kidded with a grin. "Of course you could be giving me precious time to set up an ambush for all you know."
"That has already crossed my mind believe me. Let's get going before I change it again."

Letting his benefactor go first had another purpose for Jake. He dearly wanted to see how those four mechanical legs of Grundel's worked. They were multi-jointed, extremely thin and set very close together. To him they looked clockwork. Operated by springs and cogs. Once Grundel was in motion he still couldn't work out how they managed to avoid one another. The nearest he could come to figuring anything was that three of the legs always looked to be in contact with the ground. The rest was unclear to his non-mechanical mind due to their speed. His companion reached the wall of the dome passing through with that same blurring of motion he'd witnessed as people crossed into the inner circles of the city from its outer ring. Jake followed close behind. The unexpected happened. Paradoxically he'd been expecting as much. When he'd first entered the Bristol megapolis, after Suzuki Kawasaki, there'd been no sensation. Only a slight stumble as the ground felt lower inside. This time however he sensed his body stretching. Not vertically, horizontally. That was a first.

The very next thing Jake did as soon as he reached his destination was wail. A manly and very justified wail. Not even as high pitched as some of the shrieks he'd made before during his various adventures, and they were manly as well. It was the standing on nothing that immediately caught his attention. Then there was the miles deep drop directly beneath his feet. This most certainly wasn't the outer circle of the city he'd entered before. Thankfully he was too wailed out to do more than whimper as he watched a man put his legs on. There was an awful lot of viscera plumbing involved there. An entire nest of snakes of all sizes joining themselves together. Still frozen to the spot, Jake thought his grip on sanity might be loosening. Of course there was no floor. There were no walls or a ceiling either. The place was furnished though. A desk with a computer console on it plus several chairs. While Jake coped with his paralysis, Grundel changed into a stylish jacket before taking the seat behind what had to be his desk. Looking up at Jake he smiled.

"Mwahahaha." Grundel laughed evilly. "Is that right? Or should I have done it as soon as you walked into my lair? I'm never sure on these human conventions. There are so many of them with all your different cultures and moral theories."
Struggling to find his tongue due to the sensory overload happening to him, it took Jake a couple of seconds to come up with any response to this dreadful revelation.
"Fuck me. You're a machine?"
Not the wittiest of one liners. Given enough time he could have come up with something a lot better. Say a couple of weeks from now. Perhaps he should ask if he could come back later.
"Sorry." Grundel assumed his more friendly aspect once more. "My office is set to this aspect by default. Let me remedy that for you."
The walls and floor grayed out. His senses, now assuming things were solid, calmed down slightly. His heart rate would be slowing to below 300 any day now.
"Ah crap. This is the bit where you scoop my brains out and dissect them in front of me."
"Unfortunately humor is another weakness I have as a non-human. That was a joke. The evil laughter and my lair. I thought you'd find it amusing. Please take a seat Jake."
He looked at the indicated piece of furniture suspiciously.
"What does it do first? For all I know straps and sharp things will sprout from the bloody thing."
"That one's a chair. It doesn't do anything. You're supposed to sit on it. If it helps I should mention that Angelique and I are old acquaintances. Still extremely wary of me aren't you. Let me explain something to you that may or may not lessen your suspicions. I am a forgotten mistake made by the Central Consensus, long ago. The machine equivalent of a cyborg is an adequate analogy. I have flesh, blood and bone, within which a machine intelligence has been placed. I can be killed or injured like any other thing of flesh. Sometimes when I'm alone at night I wonder if perhaps I'm not a mistake. That I was designed and built with an ultimate purpose. Otherwise what am I? What is my purpose? These thoughts invade my mind now and then. Does my existence have meaning or do I exist only to seek meaning? What am I?"
That spookily familiar darkness of the soul mollified Jake greatly.
"I think you're human, or you've become human. Awful isn't it."
Jake sat down.
"It most certainly is if this is what it's like. It does have its compensations. Sex is very enjoyable."
"So they..."
"Yes. I'm anatomically correct in every detail."
"You're different to almost everyone else I've seen here. You look older and of course there's the legs."
Grundel smiled wistfully.
"I chose this form when I thought I understood how humans worked. The reason I look older is because your lot look up to older people instinctively. The legs were a happy blunder on my part. Knowing that people also tend to value those who are taller more highly, pun intended, I assumed that being a few inches more than my original height would make me more popular. Is that the word? Acceptable? I was wrong about that. Happily they became a talking point. Now there are humans who follow a trend I set. That's one of my proudest achievements, even though it was serendipitous."
"How much of what you told me outside is true then?"
"All of it."
"So you're the one that Doxy visits when she comes here."
"The Captain of the Scarlet Harlot? No. I've met her a few times. She's far too astute for me to spend too much time with. She'd quickly figure out I wasn't human. I have to keep our relationship an arms length one. I use far more accepting human intermediaries where she's concerned."
"Meaning I wouldn't have worked out what you were. So why did you tell me?"
"In the interest of full disclosure. I let you in on my little secret, which if it were revealed would lead to my termination. In return you trust me more, because you have something on me."
That sounded very believable, like every lie he'd swallowed so far.
"For clarification purposes only. When you say full disclosure, what you really mean is; of the facts you're willing to let me know."
"Precisely. You've played this game before haven't you."
"Yep. It's what got me shot in the head, ass and legs. I'm still learning. Still not very good at it yet though."

I would like to nominate @marxrab and @rok-sivante for the next round.