The Less Lonely Planet

by Rhys Hughes

  In the days that followed I was left to my own devices, indeed I was practically ignored and only infrequently was a cup of coffee or slice of sponge brought up by a gaunt waiter. I created my archive nonetheless and this work afforded me plenty of satisfaction, but man cannot live on that alone: he requires yoghurt too.

  Every time I moved in that little room, scraped the leg of my chair on the floor for example, or rattled a teacup on a saucer, a pounding of immense force would begin on the ceiling of the room directly below. The occupants of that room, whoever they were, had oversensitive ears or else temperaments of extreme grumpiness. I felt trapped, forced to move like a zogboo, tiptoeing to the door whenever I needed to stretch my legs in the outer corridor. Once I deliberately knocked over an ornament and hastened down to peer through the keyhole of the lower room. It was full of people hitting the ceiling with broom handles. I wondered if that was their sole pastime, waiting for me to make the slightest sound. My employer was one of them. I vowed vengeance.

  This is how I proceeded to get even:

  First I stole another time machine. Easy enough to do so because time machines were one of three items these people carelessly left lying about, the others being apples and trousers. Then I retraced my voyage in reverse and picked up for real all the players and instruments I had recorded, the sun being the major exception. I also made a brief visit to Swansea in the early 21st Century to recruit some additional musicians I knew could work impossible instruments. Then I returned to the institute and crammed every one of them into my little room.

  On the count of three they began playing together and dancing. There was Lok and his nugurrugh, Birhurturra and his ghunky, the Vulcan’s Limp devotees, the merchant who blew the jars of the Lady of Shallot’s pickles, the aeolian harps of Central Asia, Napoleon’s zootalor, the instruments of the leprechauns and gherkinfolk, the massive variety of personalities and musical devices of Happenstance and many, many, many more, all impossible, all accompanied by dancing. Even the Woollymonster and the Moo Moo danced again and I wondered if this was taking my revenge too far, but I was born in a time before restraint, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. We played all day and night without pause.

  The point of my revenge was this: the musicologists downstairs wouldn’t be able to hear the music but they would be all too aware of the dancing. They would be suffused with an unbearable sense of missing out on a party, the greatest party in the entire history of our solar system! Missing your own eighteenth birthday is mild in comparison. Even missing your own birth would cause less bitter regret!

  When the players were exhausted and even the tireless Huw Rees (one of the Swansea musicians) wanted a break, I called a halt and we packed up the equipment and I prepared to return everybody and everything to its own age. On the way out, I passed the room directly beneath mine. The door was closed but unlocked and I tugged it open. The room was empty of people but a flood of tears gushed out and flooded the corridor. My erstwhile mentors had wept themselves away! Or maybe they just went out for a curry and left a pool of brine behind to give me a false sense of regained honour. An odd way to behave but they do live many centuries after you and me and I can’t put anything past the future.

  The Juice of Days

  Squeezing juice from oranges and grapes is easy enough, and with adequate pressure even apples and pears will release their sweet fluid, but only the mad inventor Karl Mondaugen ever managed to make a refreshing drink from the days of the week.

  His laboratory is a chaotic place, because he likes to work on many different projects at the same time, and frequently the scattered components of abandoned prototypes will accidentally join together on the floor and form something new. These random creations are mostly useless but occasionally a miraculous device will be spontaneously generated.

  This is how the juicer of days came into being. Karl Mondaugen glanced down and there it was, an ugly thing but remarkably original.

  Original, yes, but would it prove useful? The answer to this question depended on whether days tasted good or bad. With only one way of finding out, the mad inventor lost no time in extracting the juice of the day he stood in.

  He raised the glass to his lips, sipped and grimaced...

  In the evening he went to take a stroll along the esplanade. He was mildly cheered to encounter his friend Izaac Spoilchild fishing for messages in bottles with a large net. Karl joined him and asked pleasantly, “Anything new?”

  Izaac shook his head sadly. “But you should have seen the one that got away! An enormous green bottle big enough to hold a man. Can you imagine what sort of message that might contain? In fact the glass was so opaque there might well have been a man inside. At one point I thought I heard a voice but it was probably just the crash of waves. I trust your day has been more productive than mine?”

  Karl snorted and answered, “Not at all. I squeezed the day and sampled the juice but it wasn’t very nice. I would welcome a second opinion, however.”

  Izaac agreed to follow the mad inventor back to his laboratory and taste the experiment for himself. He swirled the liquid around his mouth for a whole minute before swallowing. “You’re right, it’s not too pleasant, rather muddy in texture. If it was a colour instead of a drink it would be brown, but in fact it’s completely transparent.”

  “That surprised me as well,” admitted Karl Mondaugen.

  “I’ve drunk nicer sea water. On the other hand I won’t describe it as ‘vile’. I can’t see much of a market for it, if your plan was to sell the stuff.”

  “No matter. I’ll dismantle the juicer and recycle the parts.”

  Izaac Spoilchild raised his hand. “Don’t be too hasty! Today is Wednesday and maybe it’s the worst flavoured day of the week. Why not try again tomorrow and see what Thursday tastes like? In fact I wouldn’t accept defeat until you’ve juiced all seven possible days.”

  Karl was impressed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  The following morning he rose early, ate a hasty breakfast and decided to finish his meal with a mug of something invigorating, not tea or coffee as was usual for him, but the juice of Thursday. True, it was still the morning and it might be argued that the day was not yet ripe, but the operation was so simple very little time or energy would be wasted if the concotion proved sour. He risked only disappointment and perhaps a stomach ache, not a major disaster.

  The juice of Thursday was also transparent and only a little fizzy.

  He sipped and swallowed, an ambiguous expression appearing on his face. Thursday tasted better than Wednesday, without doubt, but could hardly be described as delicious. “My doubts remain,” he told himself, “but my hopes are not entirely vanquished.”

  He remembered the comment Izaac had made and added, “If this drink was a colour it would be mauve.” Then he nodded and set the glass aside.

  For the remainder of the day, the dried husk of that squeezed Thursday, he went about other business, refining other inventions and scuffing together scattered components with his slippered feet but creating nothing viable either by design or chance. In the evening he wrote a letter to a friend in Munich, then settled on a sofa with a book and finally dozed off.

  In the middle of the night he awoke, staggered to his bed and slept away the crick in his neck that the sofa had given him, for it was a gift he did not want.

  The dawn of Friday did not rouse him. An hour passed and then he opened his eyes and yawned at the sun, which has never choked anyone, and swivelled himself to the ground and shuffled to his kitchen. Pumpernickel, sauerkraut, sausages: the same breakfast as always. This time he demonstrated patience, brewing coffee and waiting until noon before applying the juicer.

  Friday was far sweeter than the juices of the previous two days. He licked his lips, eyes bright, drained half the large glass before making a judgment. “Very nice. It tingles on the tongue with anticipation, with promised excitement, and would be electric blue in colour if it wasn’t clearer than the purest water. But in th
e final analysis, it’s not perfect. Indeed it’s hardly superior to pink grapefruit juice or a mix of lychee, papaya and passion fruit. I’m still not convinced!”

  Despite this little speech without an audience, he removed his slippers and laced on his boots and went for a walk along the esplanade. Izaac Spoilchild was in his usual place with his usual net and Karl offered him the half full glass. The fisher of bottles accepted it and sampled the liquid and made a smacking noise that might have been a wave striking the seawall. Karl wasted no time getting down to business and forestalled Izaac’s response by saying:

  “Not bad, the juice of Friday? But I suspect the juice of Saturday will be even better, utterly delicious in fact, for everyone knows that Saturday is the favourite day of the week. It should have occurred to me sooner than it did, but because I don’t have a proper job, I mean a job with a boss to answer to, I forgot how important the weekend is to most people. The same applies to you, my freelance friend. Saturday is sure to be uniquely refreshing!”

  Izaac digested this news. “All very well, but what part will I play in your project?”

  “Bottles!” chortled Karl. “Many, many bottles. My juicer is rather inefficient at the moment because it’s one of my accidental inventions. With a few minor adjustments, maybe only the tightening of a screw or two, its performance will surely be enhanced. I intend to squeeze every last drop out of Saturday and there’s certain to be a lot of liquid in total. I need your bottles to store it in.”

  “Shall I remove the messages first?”

  “That’s probably a wise precaution. We’ll open a booth on the esplanade and sell the stuff. I’m sure our profits will be considerable. The pure juice of Saturday!”

  “A business deal? I have no objections. Let’s shake hands on it.”

  “And drink a toast too...”

  “With the juice of Friday? Fair enough, there’s a little left. What colour will Saturday resemble? I’m tempted to say alternating bands of green and yellow.”

  “Not bands. Vertical stripes.”

  “You’re right, of course,” agreed Izaac.

  In fact both guesses were wrong. Saturday produced a juice no less transparent than earlier days but it tasted of golden stars in a silver sky. Karl had spent most of the morning making the necessary adjustments to his juicer and then wheeling it to the house of Izaac, which was a sort of private museum of seaborne bottles. They waited until early afternoon before liquidising the day. Only when all the bottles were full did they switch off the machine.

  Neither man enjoyed transferring the bottles to the chosen spot on the esplanade, but the final results were worth the toil. Their booth was little more than a table on which were arranged the bottles for sale. A sign proclaimed the simple truth about the contents of these glass vessels: FRESH SATURDAY JUICE! Customers were slow to approach at first but after a few brave souls sampled the drink the report of its excellence quickly spread. Every last bottle was sold.

  One customer was familiar to both of them, Paddy Deluxe from the far side of town, who remarked, “This day feels a little husky to me, so its juice is exactly what I need!”

  Karl and Izaac sniggered together when he had gone.

  “We’ve discovered the perfect formula for success in the soft drinks industry: make a day uncomfortably dry by squeezing it thoroughly, then sell the juice back to the people who live in that day. We’re the cleverest capitalists who ever existed! It’s a kind of tangy thievery, but wholly legal. As long as we choose a tasty day to squeeze we can’t lose. We’re destined to be rich!”

  Sunday proved to be not quite so delicious, thickest and creamiest of the days so far, too stodgy to be entirely refreshing, like yoghurt soured with piety. In fact both Karl and Izaac described its nonexistent colour as white. But some people liked it, mostly older folk, and it was clear that it held a real minor appeal. Monday, by contrast, was utterly vile, the blackest and bitterest of possible juices. And Tuesday was only a slight, slate grey improvement.

  “Now we have all the data we need,” declared Karl Mondaugen to his accomplice.

  “Yes,” agreed Izaac Spoilchild, rubbing his callused palms together in melodramatic glee. They decided not to waste time juicing Wednesday and Thursday, because they already knew what those days tasted like, nothing special. Better to wait and concentrate their efforts on juicing Friday, Saturday and Sunday. But in fact they soon decided to ignore Friday also and focus mainly on the two weekend days. Izaac explained that his number of bottles was limited.

  While he went to fish for more, Karl planned the precise way he would spend his money when he was a wealthy juice baron. Perhaps in the construction of an enormous laboratory. Or even better: a factory that made laboratories. He was happy to dream the remainder of the week away until Saturday arrived, and then he rushed out, slamming the door behind him harder than ever before.

  With Izaac he repeated the procedure of the previous week, setting up the booth on the esplanade and rapidly selling every bottle. But this time there were complaints.

  “What do you think you’re playing at?” demanded a man named Frothing Harris. “This juice is foul. I want my money back without argument or delay!”

  Other customers were quick to follow his example.

  “I don’t understand,” lamented Karl. “We juiced this Saturday in exactly the same way as before.”

  “We’re going to have to reimburse every single customer,” groaned Izaac, “which means we’ll make a loss. No money and no juice.”

  There was a little fluid left at the bottom of one of the returned bottles. Karl sipped it and twisted his face. “Disgusting! We should have sampled some before selling it. We assumed the juice of every Saturday would be identical. What a mistake!”

  “There are only seven flavours in a week,” countered Izaac, “and Saturday is the best.”

  Karl shook his head. “Not so. The cyclic nature of weeks is an illusion, a wholly artificial conceit. In fact every new day is entirely different from all the others that precede it. The pattern exists only in the imposed names, not in the days themselves. What fools we were to forget that! The flavour of any new day can never be predicted. The juice of that first Saturday is gone forever, every last drop drunk. Just because the Earth circles the sun means nothing: the sun is also in orbit around the centre of the galaxy, and the galaxy itself is constantly moving!”

  Izaac scratched his head. “You mean that our planet is always in a new location, at a point in space it has never been before, and that’s why each day is unique?”

  Karl wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I wish each new day had its own name. I’m sure there are enough objects in existence to make this feasible. Cupday, Laughday, Sockday, Jumpday, Drumday, Snakeday, Upday, Downday, Eyeday, Humbleday...”

  “And on and on,” said Izaac, before crying, “I have an idea!”

  Karl arched an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “There’s still a mouthful of the original Wednesday left, right? Remember how we described its colour as brown, a colour made of all other pigments mixed together? Maybe we did that because it potentially contains all other days. I mean, that was the same day your juicer accidentally came into being, wasn’t it? So the juice that remains contains the squeezed essence of everything that existed in that day, every object, including the juicer itself!”

  “Inspired,” agreed Karl, “but I’m not sure how that helps us.”

  Izaac hopped from one foot to another. “If you devise some method of reversing the polarity of your juicer, we can pass the remaining juice of that first Wednesday through it, turning the juice back into part of a solid day, a part that hopefully will include the old juicer. Then we can use that juicer to re-juice today. Don’t you see? With the juicer we already have we juiced this Saturday, but with a juicer existing more than a week in the past we can juice last Saturday again!”

  Karl spoke not a word in reply but rushed back to his laboratory, Izaac puffing close behind. It was almost
inevitable they would arrive to discover that the juicer of days had vanished. In its place stood something else, a different machine, also spontaneously generated, whose scattered components had come together on the floor in the breeze generated by Karl’s very hard slamming of the door earlier that day. At its base stood a glass of oily liquid.

  “This device is a juicer of juicers! It juices only other juicers. Our juicer is juice!”

  This outburst had caused Karl to dribble generously. Izaac used the subsequent pause to pluck at his friend’s elbow with his gnarled hands and whimper, “But what if you reverse its polarity?”

  “I simply can’t be bothered,” huffed Karl, lunging for the glass and drinking down its contents in a single gulp. Then he stood still and glowered.

  After a minute, Izaac ventured the question, “What does it taste like?”

  “The best part of a fortnight and half our combined futures!”

  “Anything else?”

  “A metallic tang. Like melted robot thumbs.”

  They regarded each other sadly.

  “Care for a beer?”

  “Yes.”

  The Path of Garden Forks

  The title of this story is some sort of feeble pun on a famous text written by Jorge Luis Borges called ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’ that is usually cited as one of his best tales. That’s what I believe anyway, but Flann von Ryan, the railway engineer who is the main protagonist of the exploit that follows, disagrees with my analysis. He says it’s just a coincidence. Down on his allotment is where he can generally be found these days, so let’s go there now and learn if he’s right.

  Flann retired from his career in disgust when one of his best ideas was rejected by the transport ministries of every government on the planet and his beautiful blueprints were savagely laughed at. He grudgingly realised he was wasting his energy and genius working for humans. Unluckily, no other species of employer was available at that point in time, so he simply gave up work to devote himself to his hobbies, of which the cultivation of edible plants is the most harmless.