WHATTA I’MA GONNA DO?

ad Luigi settled back from the ineffectual controls of his no-longer-spaceworthy armed space trawler, floating helplessly in the grimy Catafaulk Sea. Mokus 5 was now only a memory as cooled clouds of soot began to settle on the engulfing ammoniweed liquid, while hundreds of Curious Carp, the bane of any Saturnian settlement, swam up to look into and suck on his space trawler -- Luigi’s carefully detailed, accurate, full-scale replica of a Mad Italian Ice Stand.

"Whatta I’ma gonna do?" thought Mad Luigi. "Mamma mia, I shudda lissena to Momma, she’s asezza me, ‘hey littla Luigi, ya littla bumma, whenna yousa gonna grow uppa anna become a bigga boy?’, and she squeeza my cheek.

"An’ I sezza ‘Momma hey Momma, whenna yousa gonna shuddup? Momma, I’ma lova you!’"

And as the mad Italian whimpered an unknown incantation shrouded inside his words, the disabled space trawler began to shudder hummingly, and Momma’s long-lost image appeared before him, face drawn, skin tight around hollow cheeks, and long gossamer sheets flowing about her frail form.

"Momma!"

The Preserved Entity Imagocaster was fully operational despite the wide-angle battles raging throughout the galaxy, and the figure of Mad Luigi’s momma drew gillful applause bubbles from the hundreds of Curious Carp who had gathered to watch the unexpected and disheveled new arrival from deep space and his major parental thread.

It was amazing to the Carp (who could somehow sense that Guan-o-bombs and Charbeams were even now tearing at the surface of Saturn, home of their legged ancestors) that such perfection of Preserved Entity transformission was occurring not a thousand kilometers from where Mokus 5 had been reduced to mounds of glowing embers.

"Momma!" cried Mad Luigi. "Whatta I’ma gonna do, Momma?"

But with that, the Preserved Entity Imagocaster switched into energy-conserve suckmode (a requirement in galactic war zones), and the image of Momma popped away with the speed of a champagne cork flying towards the ano-ceiling at a cosmowedding reception. Flashes of childhood images tunneled through Mad Luigi’s confused brain, and the hundreds of Curious Carp swimmeled with percurious undulation about the space trawler -- which was taking on ammoniweed liquid quite rapidly, and steaming with reverse-nasal infarction.

With the strength of one striving heroically to avoid imminent death, Mad Luigi drew himself painfully atop the trawler, carefully wrapped a dozen multi-colored wires about various parts of his anatomy, snapped what seemed like electrodes onto his skin-grafted exosensors, and lay down upon the rubbery surface of the trawler wrapfoil that remained above the skin of ammoniweeds. The hundreds of Curious Carp clamped their collective gills in anticipation -- as with an act of sheer will and bravado, Mad Luigi telekined his thoughts, his clothes, his olive oil, his portable wine keg collection, and eventually his own battered and bruised body, back to that astropizza parlor on Terra. From there, he concluded, all things were to be possible.

But what he did not know, poor Luigi, was that the astropizza parlor had been sold to Honest Marvin, the Used Astroblimp Clone, who had turned it into an all-night synthetic sheet metal works. And, even more sadly, there was not enough time for him to recognize and assimilate this information before the drill press plunged mercilessly into his brain.

Out in the System of Deneb, the Wadks burst into torrents of gleeful merriment as they watched the instant replay loops on their two-color Kinevue in the High Command Aura Chamber. They sent for Mad Luigi’s remains, special transmission. This was one specimen they didn’t mean to lose.

The Karmora Papers is Copyright ©1976,1993,1996 by Dennis Báthory Kitsz and David Gunn. All rights reserved. If you enjoy this book, an appreciation fee of any amount may be made to Dennis Báthory-Kitsz or David Gunn at Malted/Media Productions, 176 Cox Brook Road, Northfield VT 05663.

Please offer your comments.

Web pages by Malted/Media.