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Next day.

Tudor tells you about the moon and its hidden face. The moon has a brilliant emerald eye, which you can apparently see on alternate Sundays if you have a neutron telescope. Sunday can't come quickly enough, and you trek over to Laura's house as soon as dusk settles in. She has the finest neutron telescope you've ever seen, perched precariously off the edge of her roof and looking suspiciously like a mad scientist's lab. "I stole that telescope from NASA one day when I was bored," Laura announces proudly. You am proud of her.

You take turns looking through the contraband telescope and your eye is nearly seared by the overwhelming greenness of the moon's hidden orb. You must have it. You must have the green bead for your bead-girl! Tudor and Laura make out lustily and roll off the roof into a finely pruned hedge below. Ignoring the scuffling below, you take the chance of a lifetime (how often does one have access to a neutron telescope, really?) and look directly in the face of God. He has brilliant blue eyes, but - "Don't even think it," He says. "These aren't blue beads, and even if they were, I need them to watch human suffering until the End of Days." He checks his watch. "Coming soon to an Earth near you." God has a dour sense of humour. You suspect him of being British, and tell him as much. He laughs and decides not to blind you for, you know, looking at him. You are thankful in a detached kind of way.

Tiring of God's antics, you roll off the roof army-style and land in the hedge, narrowly avoiding entangling myself in a three-way. Laura and Tudor have apparently been greasing themselves up with raw hot dogs. They smell like pork-sex. You say farewell to their glistening bodies and wander onwards.

Kyle once told you that they're building a great Space Elevator, bonded with stretchy molecules and fueled by lasers. This Elevator will stretch halfway to the moon - or three-quarters, whatever - and greatly reduce the amount of rocket fuel necessary for spacegoing craft to escape the Earth's voracious gravitational pull. You ponder. Anyone looking to steal a magnificent green bead from the moon's eye would likely do well to take the elevator up and hop-skip-and-jump their way up to the surface! The plan is foolproof.

The elevator isn't done yet, so you wait, and then you wait some more as the newly-constructed elevator takes thirty fucking days to get to the top. Laser technology is highly disappointing. You punch one of the technicians in the stomach as we reach the top. It's kind of like the NASA equivilent of those feedback cards at Wendy's - these science-types need our opinions on how well they're doing. Not very well, your punch says, we need teleportation. None of this conventional physics shit. The technician, doubled over, says he'll get right on it.

You jump on over to the moon, which is so mundane and uneventful that I won't presume to bore you with the minor details like How? You must begin my search for the perfect green bead. Bryn is there, cheerfully barbequing some kind of lizard over a fire in the middle of an immense crater. You are surprised to see him here, in the desolate airless wilds, only not really surprised at all. You're most impressed with his fire, which burns prettily without any oxygen or tinder whatsoever. Bryn is on the moon to protest Pepsi Corporation's revived plans to project their logo onto the face of the moon for every consumer in the world to enjoy.

"Oh honey, the Pepsimoon looks just as full and romantic as the night we first *did it* in the backseat of your Corolla!"

"Why yes dear, staring at the Pepsimoon bought me an extra five minutes that night. Every time I see the Pepsi logo on television or on a billboard or in my dreams, I think of you. And drinking a delicious ice-cold Pepsi, of course."

Bryn does both parts of the dialogue with great exaggeration. You laugh mightily, and snap the tail off the space-lizard he's cooking. It tastes like chicken. Space-chicken.

"This story is getting unexpectedly long," you tell Bryn. "I mean, I meant to write a couple of paragraphs and then all this fucking crazy shit just started going off... I always had problems with word limits though, you know that." Bryn knows. It's time to go, in the failed interest of brevity. You wish Bryn good luck in his protesting and he vanishes over the far side of the crater to shoot another space-lizard with a space-harpoon. Everything's space in space.

In the depths of the deepest space-crater on the space-moon, you trace rays of emerald light to a rusty-dank crevasse. In a world with no colour, green stands out quite nicely and you crawl downwards, reaching, grasping for the glow. You see the brilliant green bead and it's flawless. So perfect. So green. It is a left eye, waiting to grant my bead-girl the much-needed gift of sight. You are tired of watching her fall down - it's not attractive in the slightest. It reminds you, uncomfortably, of the time you accidentally fell in love with the girl from the short-bus.

You reach for the remedy and it asks you, in a green-bead kind of voice, just what you might be up to. You explain that, well, you need to jam it into a bead-girl's eye socket so she can see. You flatter the bead with tales of its bravery and beauty.

"I've heard this shit before," the bead responds crossly. "Do you think you're the first person to think about building a girl out of beads and then coming to the moon to find me and use me as a crowning jewel? I had three come just last Wednesday. I'm a popular bead, you know."

"NOW," the bead declares grandly. "We will test you to see if you are worthy, we being the ROYAL we, of course. I'm the hottest badonkadonk on the moon and must be recognized as --

You grab the emerald bead and roughly shove it into a sack that you had handy. It was probably going to ask me something ridiculous, like "What is the meaning of life?" and seriously, you just don't know those kind of answers. What you do know is that beads fit in sacks, and fit nicely. Muffled cries from within the burlap are most likely shouts of approval for your logic.

Back on Earth, in your room, you give my bead-girl a shining green eye. She smiles dazzlingly and looks around in awe, her newly installed eye sullenly performing its new duties without so much as a peep. You're sure it will have plenty to say about its so-called kidnapping eventually, but right now you are just happy that it's finally shut the fuck up.

Bead-girl smiles and takes first one step, then a second. You hold your breath - this is the furthest she's ever walked without falling to pieces across the floor and under the bed. Vision was clearly the missing piece of the puzzle.

Suddenly your smile vanishes. Bead-girl is walking straight into the corner of the desk, seemingly without any clue that its sharp edges will slice her bead-body to ribbons. Before you can shout a warning, bead-girl catches her hip on the desk and - with a mournful wail - shatters across the room. You are heartbroken.

From under the desk, the green bead eyes you gleefully. "Depth perception, motherfucker! She can't judge distance correctly without two eyes."

You sigh and start rebuilding your bead-girl, beginning with internal organs this time. You like to mix it up or the whole thing starts to get boring.

Posted by Chris at 02:18 PM >> Commentations (6)