blasting my way through the doors to the space ship, i found fourteen beautiful women wearing space bikinis. they asked if they could be taken out on some adventure, so i hopped in the seat and felt like buck rogers. i blasted off in a huff of laser blasts and cheers from the ladies, then charted a course for the “unknown country,” and found that there were no undiscovered countries left to deal with. there were these women in the back, a full tank of cyber-gas, and me up front trying to figure out my space map. then it hit me – there wasn’t anything i could do because it had all been done before. seek out new life, new worlds, to boldly blah blah blah? that had been done. travel through time? to learn what? people already did that was well. i decided to just turn the ship around and dump off the women in the hangar bay – no hard feelings, but i could tell they were pretty disappointed – and went looking for something no one really seems to look for: myself. i went out to some uncharted planet in the guadalupe sector and found a nice little chunk of land where the sunsets were dusted with mauve and the lakes were all yellow. they reflected the thirteen moons in the nighttime, and i could pee in the lake without anyone knowing otherwise. the cabin i built was, of course a space cabin, complete with a refrigerator and amenities for the space out-poster. like a dog. but, of course, it was a space dog. one day i realized there was a klurg outside my door and I asked what he wanted. he shrugged and didn’t say anything. i offered him a drink and he came in and sat down. well, he sat there for three days drinking everything I had for him, and finally, when he could really hold nothing in anymore, he told me that the ancestors of his tribe were looking to cleanse their planet of ill-mannered klurgs, and he was banished to this planet. he really wasn’t so bad a person, just burping every now and then. i told him as much. and again, he had drank so much that I really didn’t think anything of it. i burped. the dog burped. i’m sure those fourteen women at some point in their lives burped. anyway. i told him as much – his name was pork – and pork thanked me but then admitted it wasn’t the only reason . his father was the supreme chancellor of the honorary throne of the land of the klorks, and poor pork wasn’t fit enough to be a king. why? i asked, and he said it was because he didn’t have the abilities to find a woman. a woman suitable to bear children and be the queen and all that. you know, proper breeding, and such. the woman he picked was an insufferable bore and a bookworm. do you like books? i asked. yes, pork said, enthusiastically. well, I dug a few space books out of my space chest and gave them to him. he thanked me and began to rise. hey, you know what, pork, i asked, i think i just may have an idea. your daddy don’t like the girl you like, and so he tossed you out? yes, pork said. ok, then, i’ve got an idea. we split my cabin and hopped into my space cruiser and went back to round up the fourteen space-bikinied ladies that i left at quadro-deer and they were all delighted with the idea that i was taking them on an adventure. we went back to pork’s planet, and quietly found pork’s girl. a bookworm she was. anyway, we dressed her up in a space bikini and the ladies all did her hair, and then we got pork a little gussied up as well, and then tried it out, I had pork walk down the center of the main village with his fifteen women with “we are the champions” playing in the background (a little deal I worked with the town baker, the only person with a public announcement system) and soon, we were all at the chair of his father. opulence wasn’t a word I could use with effectiveness. his father glowered at his son and then lightened when he saw the women around him. apparently, pop was something of an aesthetics-guy. well, pork? his father said, i thought i banished you for disgracing your blood line. i know, father, but i did a lot of thinking, and i really tried. so i found all these fifteen women and thought i might have you rethink my banishment. you met all these women? pork’s pop swelled. where? in fifteen different spots in the universe, father. and then the ladies – the delightful, splendid women – all told a different, exciting story about how poor ol’ pork, who probably took a few weeks to fit the square peg in the round hole as a kid, had rescued, found, schmoozed, and tricked his way into their hearts. piracy, adventure, explosions, exotic locales, thrills, spills, space chases – those girls really poured it all out on the dad, who was quite shocked at the exploits of his seemingly lumberous son. then, when it came time for the women pork loved, she simply told pop that it was pork’s personality and charm, his kindness, his burping, his faults, his hair, the way he ate his kork-chow, how he looked all stupid in the morning when he first woke up, and how she would do anything for just a few moments of hand-holding and conversation with him. after her speech the whole place was silent in awe. i looked up at pork’s dad, who was crying. you remind me of pork’s mother, he said, but then pork stood and told his father that the gig was up. he told his father that none of it was true, except the story of the fifteenth woman, and the father acquiesced. you just liked these girls because of their space bikinis, not because of what’s really important. pork’s dad sat back and looked into the high, vaulted ceilings of his palace. true love, he said. i had it with your mother, pork, and since she has left us, glogro rest her soul, i have been spiteful. too spiteful. so he decided to let pork and mary-amme have their love. everybody in the kingdom was just bananas with happiness. pork’s dad? well, he had the fourteen ladies as his officially royal space-bikini-wearing story tellers, and he fell in love with darlaquag, and the fifteen of them had a merry old time. as for me? well, i still visit every now and then, but i’ve got my yellow lake, my space cabin, and my dog. i’m fine, thank you very much.
