Absurdity Ascendant

A Story by Freyaday

Words fail

I yawn and look at the clock. 2347. Wow. It’s late. I’ve been studying too long. My stomach yells at me, telling me to eat. I decide it’s best to obey its commands. Besides, food. I walk downstairs and open the refrigerator. A packet of ham stares me in the face. I open it up and eat it all. I was hungry, wasn’t I? And look, I still am! I make a sandwich and eat it. Now I’m full.

I walk back upstairs and climb in bed with my day clothes still on. I’m tired, so what? I lie there, waiting for sleep to take hold. It doesn’t come. I try counting sheep. I reach 127 sheep, and then I count -128 sheep. I knew I shouldn’t have used a signed byte as my sheep variable, as now my brain hurts from seeing -255 sheep jump over a fence. I shoulda gone 16-bit. Binary aside, I’m no closer to sleep than I was when I started.

I continue to stare at the inside of my eyelids, and then I drift off into sleep. Finally.

Then I wake up. Not because it’s that time of day or anything, but because a girl landed on me. How she landed on me, given that I sleep in a bunk, beats me. Beats me over the head with a girl, apparently.

“Hi!” Lady Mysterious greets me cheerfully, before wrapping her arms around me. She buries her face in my chest for a second, and then looks up at me with the most serious expression I’ve ever seen. “Hang on. Things are gonna get weird.”

“What”

~FZHOOT~

I wake up. Again.

“What. Is. Going. On.” I look left, and see the periods in between my words. I feel proud I had placed so much emphasis on each word. Wait, what?

Lady Mystery looks left in the same manner I had, and noticed that I had been calling her Lady Mystery in my internal monologue. “Whoops! I’m sorry, I forgot to introduce myself!” she rolls off of me, and sits up. I do so too. Minus the rolling. “I’m Harold!” I look up at the title, “Absurdity Ascendant.” Hoo boy. It’s gonna get worse, isn’t it? “Yup!”

“Harold, quit looking at my internal monologue!”

“But it’s right there!”

I sigh. “I’m Karen.” I extend my hand. Harold grabs it, and pulls me into a hug.

“Hi Karen!”

I barely manage, what with my face pressed against her and all, to eke out, “It’s gonna get worse, isn’t it?”

Harold chuckles. “You repeat that like it’s a bad thing.”

“That was the worst snowclone I have ever heard in my life.”

“You’re welcome!” I sigh at Harold’s response, and would have laid my head on the keyboard if I were the one typing this. Harold stands up, and runs off, dragging me along with her. I get up and run too, preferring to keep my shoulder in my socket. Trust me, it’s a lot more fun that way. We run along in silence for what feels like miles, although I’m probably exaggerating. It’s hard to tell when the author is this lazy.

Harold stops without warning, and I run into her. She turns around.

“I wanted to show you something. Come here.” She pulls me along, and I walk over to her side. “Look down.” I look.

A solitary flower. Surrounded by the omnipresent grass. It’s an ordinary flower, it’s not glowing or anything, but it’s not grass. And that makes it special. It’s structured like a rose, but it’s blue, with the odd purple petal. I look back up at Harold.

“Where’d you find this?” I ask.

“Right here!” Harold replies with her usual cheer. I facepalm in response.

“How’d you find this?”

“Oh, I was just walking around one day. I get to do that sometimes.”

“Huh.” And then the flower starts exploding.

I am not making this up. That Freyaday guy is.

The explosions knock Harold and I off our feet, and we separate as we roll down a hill. I can’t hear, and my eyesight’s blurry, and I hate this sentence and wish it had never been typed. I try to stand up, but my body is too tired to do so. I think about looking right to see what’s about to happen next, but realize that would just lead to me looking at a description of me looking at a description of me looking at a descript�"ARGH! Instead, I curse the author of this thing.

“Curse you Freyaday!” see? Just like that. I don’t know why I pointed that out. My ability to move returned, and I stand up. I can’t see Harold anywhere. “Harold? Harold?” I call out. No reply comes. Clouds roll in from nowhere and block out the sun, and lightning starts to play above my head. Well, that was contrived. I sigh once again and start walking. I don’t know where I’m going, and I don’t particularly care. As long as I’m doing something. Something to keep my mind off the fact that I’m never gonna get home. I look around me, and scenery pops into existence as the writer of this thing finally decides to describe them. I’m in a big, grassy area full of hills. There’s naught but grass ’til the horizon, where I find a moon. Wait, I thought the moon was on the other side of me. I look left, and there’s another moon. Wow. I’m not even on Earth. This is great. I’m the first person to ever meet an alien, and it just so happens she lives on a planet with an atmosphere that supports human life, and…actually, this may not even be her home world. Given that she looked human, she could have been another chosen one, plucked from her world�"and that world happened to be Earth. I may not even be the first human to come here.

Sigh.

And, before you ask, there are at least trillions of planets in my home galaxy alone. What are the odds there’s not at least one other breathable atmosphere? Hell, I may not even be in the same universe. I have no way of knowing! This sucks. I fall down onto the face of the hill I was climbing, and cry. Here I am, on another world, with a sun and at least two moons (both half moons, thanks for asking) and no way to go home. And no food. I flip over and sit up at the thought. I haven’t seen anything edible or potable since I got here. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die of dehydration on a world that is not my own. And I may not even be the first to do it!

Not like I can eat the words you’re reading. I swear at everything. Except Harold. It’s not her fault. It’s that Sareconi-guy-that-wrote-this-crap’s fault. And yes, I do think that is an appropriate use of hyphens. Something picks me up, but I don’t even care any more. All I want to do is go home. I fall asleep again because, really, what else can I do at this point?

I wake up in a bed, with an IV in my left arm. Huh. The presence of IVs makes sense. Like the wheel. It’s something rather universal. The fact that it’s in the same place they put it in back on Earth makes less sense. Much less sense. I look around, and more details pop in as I do. The room’s white. I guess to better see messes? Save on lighting? Who knows? The room is covered in white tile, except for the floor, which seems to be made of metal. Weird. The only object in here other than the bed I’m in is the IV stand and a red button on the bedframe underneath a hinged plastic box. I look up, and see a message in English on the ceiling above me. How do they know English? I read the message.

Hello. You are from Earth in Universe || >- /| |/|. You are on Zell, in Universe |}- ^/ ** `)-. We apologize for the use of punctuation instead of something pronounceable, but it was decided to use punctuation to avoid assigning universes with words, which, as you know, are assigned meaning by those who know the language. We didn’t want to offend anybody. We hope you understand.

We brought you here to help us out. We’re in a bit of a jam here. We’ve run out of food. You have two choices�"let us give you the ability to hop between universes�"a highly valued ability, as we are incapable of having it�"or you become food. Your choice.

Thank you, and have a nice day. J

PS: We believe J to be a standard representation of the || >- /| |/| human expression indicative of happiness and good will. Please let us know if we are wrong.

PPS: Press the red button once you are ready to inform us of your choice. By pushing the red button, you agree to obey any and all commands in the manner in which they were intended, as determined by the one issuing the command. You also give us the right to terminate you at any time for any reason.

PPS: The floor is electrified, so don’t try anything! J

Huh. I guess it is Harold’s fault.