The Karmora Papers

Chapter Thirty-Three

BEGINNER’S EPILOGUE

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The Naugahide Room was pure 21st Century nostalgia and was a favorite of the boys, who had learned to teethe on the soft and pliable walls. Dried slaver around the baseboard had created sort of an Art Deco frieze.

This evening, the youngsters -- toothed and appreciably taller -- were out to make a more graphic artistic statement. Standing on chairs, the three Luigis stretched up high where they vigorously began to gnaw huge chunks out of the ceiling. Dad watched the entertaining carryings-on for a while, and then countered with some of his own.

Pulling out his electro-wand, he gave each son a firm prod, which brought them all tumbling to the floor, yowling in discomfort.

"Boysa," said Dad Luigi, "it’sa higha tima you got outta an’ maka name for youselfa, anna thesa daysa da only way you canna do dat issa by conquering da whola universa. Naturally, I expecta you starta small, witha da solara system firsta, thena galaxy here an’ thera. But you bea surpriseda how fasta thosa conquests adda uppa. Before you knowa, you canago on to newa cosmosa anna leava me here to taka charga. Any questions, eh?"

Tad wriggled a little and piped up. "But Dad..."

That was as far as the youngster got before the elder Luigi thwacked him hard with the full charge of the electro-wand. Young Tad sizzled unhappily as his brothers watched in consternation.

"No questionsa!" yelled Dad Luigi. "You gotta dat? No questionsa! Ever! Looksa like your brudder wasa chickena. No chickensa! Ever! You gotta dat?"

The youngsters cringed as Dad menaced them with the hot wand. Tad continued to smoke and crackle, the fumes staining the Naugahide Room ceiling. Together with the gouged topology, it produced a novel style of room texture, destined to be copied frequently in the next two centuries.

Mad and Cad, though, accepted their mission -- or plight...they weren’t keen on the project initially -- and began a wave of terror and destruction which led to their virtual unchallenged conquest of the solar system. They even found a way to stir fry ol’ Dad’s molecules when he wasn’t looking. Cad soon retired to Terra to make new lotteries, but Mad had gotten the bug... universal subjugation it was! Thus, he commenced his piecemeal onslaught in earnest.

The planet Saturn had broken up and formed the beautiful rings which now gracefully surround Jupiter. (Flustered that the Wadk-newts had destroyed all prospects for High Command Summer Palace bathmats, the Wadks had unleashed a wave of W-rays onto Saturn, causing immediate sterility to all living creatures whose name started with a W. Angrily, the ’newts proceeded to tunnel frenetically through the entire planet. After only an Earth-week of this madcap molework, the giant heretofore ringed planet had collapsed, crumbling into the previously mentioned rings.)

On Venus, an enterprising Vegetoid Scholar had located Mad Luigi’s Front Door Proximity Key to the fortress and was in the process of converting it into a cosmic health spa.

The outer fringes of Sol System, meanwhile, had been threatened by a gigantic cloud of Dicrodetergent, originating from the impossibly distant Clean Galaxy, 30m-M2. Already Pluto and Neptune had been enveloped, scrubbed, vacuumed, and left to drip-dry.

And on Terra, a daredevil band of anti-kar-refrontal humanoids had seized control of The Wonder Computer and had reprogrammed the daily Pneu Alien Intergalactic Lottery drawings to spew out quasi-political limericks and a misleading list of winning cosmobingo numbers.

Did such actions spell the doom of the entire interstellar community? Was nothing sacred any longer? Is this finally the end of the author’s patience?