Chapter 2

Milton barely noticed the squirrel. It was rather amazing that he noticed the squirrel at all, given that he really didn’t notice much of anything. He didn’t notice the sky above him, nor the dirt below his feet. He didn’t notice the occasional passerby, all of whom actually stopped in their tracks to watch him pass. Neither did he notice the oddness of his surroundings. Not that there was anything wrong per se, but an observant person would have known that the sun was slightly muted, the breeze carried something of a musky scent, and the leaves didn’t crunch to quite the right frequency. But Milton rarely went outside—he had better things to do. Therefore, even had he taken the time to observe his surroundings, he wouldn’t have noticed that something was amiss, as he really had no idea how the sun was supposed to look, the breeze was supposed to smell, or the leaves were supposed to crunch.

Milton rubbed his eyes blearily, and glared at the world around him. (It wasn’t as if he saw the world, he simply glared at it.) He was The Grand Master Pinochle Champion of the World. No one could beat him, no one. He held every record there was for Pinochle. He had 2237 consecutive victories. He thought he would keep winning for forever. Until last night. In his entire career, and indeed in his entire life, he’d only lost one pinochle game. One.

Milton L. S. Pinochillio IV rubbed his eyes again. He saw another squirrel out of the corner of his eyes, and kicked a rock at it. The rock came nowhere near the squirrel, but still, the squirrel scampered off, and Milton felt slightly triumphant. He paused a second, and wondered if it was the same squirrel as the first one. Actually, now that he thought about it, he was sure it was the same one. He looked over his shoulder to see if he could see where it had gone—it was following him, why was it following him? Milton hurried his steps a bit to try to distance himself from the squirrel. It was, in fact, the same squirrel—except that it wasn’t really a squirrel. It was doing a credible imitation of one, though. It continued to follow Milton, but this time it made sure to keep farther away.

Milton continued to hurry down the path—the path that was rapidly becoming more deserted. It was nicely shaded with trees, but open enough not to seem dark or threatening. In fact, this would have been the perfect place for a nature lover to wander (but Milton wasn’t one of them). For the first time, Milton began to wonder what exactly he was doing, outside, in nature of all things. Disgusting really. All full of dirt, and bacteria, and…and, homeless people. Rabid dogs. Ebola. Poisonous spiders, and snakes. Ugh! He began to think of the night before. There was something odd about them, those foreign pinochle players—they had seemed normal enough then, but now he wasn’t so sure.

They had beaten him, somehow, those foreigners, those aliens. And Milton once again began thinking about the Hideous Occurrence of the Night Before. The game had lasted for 37 hours and seventeen minutes (which was, inconsequentially, exactly 23 minutes 16 seconds short of the world record for longest pinochle game, a record which Milton also held). But the game against the foreigners was the fiercest pinochle game ever played. Both sides used every bit of skill, knowledge, and talent they had—but somehow, in the end, it was Milton who lost. Lost!

(At this point, since this story is meant to reach out to a wide audience from all parts of the galaxy, it is important to point out a few things. First of all—although Milton didn’t like to think about it, pinochle is a partner game. Milton had a pinochle partner, Froiderick, who was almost, but not quite, as good as Milton. Secondly, for those of you who come from the far reaches of space and time, and have never experienced the game that is known by some as pinochle, it is all about chance. That Milton thought he had talent, and that he was the best pinochle player in the world through hard work and dedication, was due to the idiosyncrasies of human nature, and in part to bad upbringing.) This memory was still raw for Milton, so, instead of stewing about the Hideous Occurrence of the Night Before any longer, he resorted to thinking about his second favorite pastime: eating. He didn’t have a particularly varied diet: everyone knew that pinochle and crab cakes went together like Bonnie and Clyde, like Romeo and Juliet. He had always loved crab cakes, at least since he could remember, anyway. He guessed it was because he was destined to become the Grand Master Pinochle Champion of the World.

That was really where it all started: crab cakes. That was the reason that he was trouncing about in disgusting nature. This morning, when Milton finally pulled himself out of bed, still utterly defeated from the Hideous Occurrence of the Night Before, and stumbled into the kitchen, he noticed something odd. It wasn’t until he was polishing off his last crab cake (eaten during his ritualistic breakfast of three blue dyed crab cakes, one small bowl of vanilla and chocolate swirl tapioca pudding, and two small containers of cappuccino soy milk) did he realize what was different. There, in the middle of the table, no more than eighteen inches in front of his nose, was a three and a half foot tall African Peace Lily. Pinned to the plant was a note that read:

“ To The Grand Master Pinochle Champion of the World—

The Intergalactic Council on the Welfare of all Creatures Moral, Proper, Discriminated, Underrepresented, Hated, Abused, Loved, Overpopulated, Extinct, Extant, Carbon-Based, Sodium-Based, Argon-Based, Based on Nothing at All, Blue, Green, Peanut Butter and Jelly Colored, Bilingual, Trilingual, Unlingual, Intelligent, Dumb as a Brick, Harrison Ford, etc. (the IGCWACMPDUHALOEECBSBABBNABGPBJCBTUIDBHFetc), cordially demands your presence for a very important event. Please don’t think about ignoring this ever so polite mandate. If you do not come, we will be most distraught. We insist upon your attendance—if you think of avoiding us, we will be compelled to politely hunt you down and bring you to the ceremony ourselves. Please RSVP

immediately.

Sincerely, the Grand Equusasinus of the IGCWACMPDUHALOEECBSBABBNABGPBJCBTUIDBHFetc. Now, if Milton had ever received hate mail—he might have expected a prank. But just as he had never once, in 28 years of professional pinochle playing, received one piece of fan mail, neither had he received a single piece of hate mail. Perhaps it was his defeat of the night before that made him just a bit out of sorts—but somehow the moment his eyes reached the bottom of the page, he found himself mysteriously heading out of his door, without even taking the time to notice that the note contained neither a meeting time nor a place. Yet somehow he knew just where to go. What Milton didn’t know, and indeed, what he had no way of knowing, was that there was something of a compulsion placed on the note. The IGCWACMPDUHALOEFECBSBABBNBGPBJCBTUID -BHFetc. committee did not go by such a cumbersome name for nothing. That particular stream of letters formed a slight mind altering complex that put readers into something of a trance. Any command issued after the name of the committee would be followed, regardless of present circumstances. Poor Milton didn’t have a chance to fight the compulsion, as he was completely unaware that such things even existed.

Milton stubbed his toe, causing him to break out of his reverie. He began walking forward again—there was something he had to do, something important. Yet through the compulsion, Milton began feeling a bit nervous about this whole adventure: it seemed big somehow, important—even though as far as he could tell, he was just walking down a path in the woods. He saw a park bench, and it suddenly occurred to him that he might like to sit down. And that by sitting, he could try to puzzle out exactly where he was going, and exactly what he was supposed to be doing once he got there. However, the moment he sat down on the bench to ponder the meaning of all of this, things began to go wrong. First off, Milton began to feel something sticky trickling down his back. He turned around, and realized that, where he could have sworn there was no tree before, there was suddenly a tree behind him. It was growing. Four feet tall, then six, then eight. And it was leaking sap. At first it was just a trickle, but the trickle was rapidly widening into a river. Nature hated him. It really did. Milton tried to shift over a foot or two to avoid the sap, when suddenly he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He looked down in horror to see a vine creeping toward him. And it had thorns, yeugh! The vine reached his feet, and began prodding him, as if to make him get up, as if to keep him moving. Milton began to shift to the far end of the bench, in the vain hopes of avoiding both the sap and the vine, but then suddenly, the squirrel was sitting there, staring up at him with evil, beady eyes. The squirrel yawned a bit, displaying very un-squirrel like canines, and looked at him with almost human intelligence.