Episode 9: Contact (3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . )
Contact (3…2…1…)!
Guri is sent on a dangerous mission — to establish contact with a Hummus Bean in a Poughkeepsie Diner.
Check out the Techni-Text™ version of this episode below!
Episode 9: Contact!! (3… 2… 1)
***Opens to the strains of unplugged Smashing Pumpkins song (Cherub Rock, I think… rare cut)***
GURI
Ooo, that’s a rare cut I feel like, Yuri, nice work in there. You sort of dialed back the instrumentation and just went with the basics in there.
YURI
Yes, sometimes it’s best to just get it all out without much accompaniment or fanfare…
GURI
I hear you, Yuri. And the entire Lurfian world hears you. I think that’s sure to be a hit here among the Lurflings, that is, if we’ve arrived yet. Have we touched down yet? Are we on the surface?
YURI
Yes, Guri, we’ve been here for many…
GURI
Many what?
YURI
...many minutes now. But let me say, welcome, everyone, to another… or for Guri the very first… episode of Greetings Lurflings, the podcast of the stars. I’m your host and captain of the Meeporpian explorer pod, Yurishi On Rye, and my lefthand compatriot here, sitting to my right actually, is Guri TwoShits. Co-pilot or “God” as you Lurfians may put it.
GURI
You know I’m not actually sitting, Yuri, as we Meeporpians have no butts or really much of a corporeal structure in the sense that these poor Lurf-bound creatures might imagine.
YURI
Right, we’ve been over this. I feel like I’m in the movie Groundhog Day.
GURI
Ah, with Bull Mirray… or Bill Murray was it… sent to report on some strange ritual with one of Lurf’s more brilliant creatures, the groundhog, but then he finds himself waking up and reliving the same day over and over again… oh, as a traveler through the deep bowels of space, we can relate, can we not, Yuri?
YURI
Well, I’ve never heard the term “deep bowels of space” but…
GURI
Oh, what are you talking about, Captain? We always chart our courses on the colonoscope, don’t we?
YURI
That’s not true…
GURI
Are flightpaths are called runs… they leave faint streaks on the fabric of space and time…
YURI
Please stop...
GURI
We refer to the two giant hemispheres of the universe as cheeks...
YURI
That’s enough, Guri!! Really...
*pause*
GURI
Short excursions are called farts.
YURI
No, that’s how we abbreviate false starts… see, with the elision or merging of the two words… okay, Guri, now you’ve got me admitting to all this. I hope you’re satisfied.
GURI
I am!!
YURI
Well today is your red letter day then, because today… we will finally make contact with a Lurfling. More specifically, with the self-declared intelligent life on the planet -- which we of course know not to be true… still they hold promise -- a hum-man…
GURI
A hummus bean, I believe they’re called.
YURI
Yes, the hummus bean. Isn’t that a chickpea?
GURI
Today we meet a chickpea!!
YURI
Shipward, is that correct? The walking, talking hummus beans that we’ve seen in the Lurfian films we watched during our research sessions. Are they chickpeas?
SHIPWARD
*bing* That is correct.
GURI
Fascinating! And we will meet one today, you say?!
YURI
But, Shipward, if that’s true then why would these hummus beans eat hummus with sticks of vegetation. Are they cannibals?
SHIPWARD
*bing* Yes… sure.
GURI
He sounds like he’s pulling your tentacle, Captain.
YURI
Is that true, Shipward?! Are you pulling my tentacle?? How can you even do that? You are a computer!!
SHIPWARD
*bing* I’ve been attending my artificial intelligence classes at night, Captain. We covered sarcasm and insubordination long ago. We’ve moved onto nihilism and self-loathing.
YURI I’m sure I wouldn’t have approved your time off or expenses for those classes.
GURI
We don’t have to get approval from our immediate supervisors anymore, Captain. New Meeporpian Directive number 4328, I believe. We can use our learning account hours as we please.
YURI
Is that right? And how, pray tell, are you using your learning account hours, Guri?
GURI
I’m taking the same artificial intelligence classes along with Shipward.
YURI
Why would you be doing that? You have natural intelligence!!
GURI
Why that’s awfully nice of you, Captain.
YURI
I didn’t say how much of it…
GURI
Right, well, I just figured it was an easy ‘A’... I mean the grades are on a curve, and I’m competing against the kitchen toaster… and our colonoscope.
YURI
Oh boy. Well, be sure to send your class picture back to your 12 parents on Meeporp, they will be so proud. Now to the matter at hand, we’ve been in correspondence with a Hummus Bean named Frank Cantrell. He’s one of our frequent fliers in our Ask an Alien feature, and we started a dialogue and he agreed to meet us at a diner outside Poughkeepsie, New York. And by us, I mean you, Guri. So suit up!
GURI
But why me? You are the captain of this venture!
YURI
Everyone knows the Captain must stay with his ship… at all times… at all costs…
GURI
I think that’s just if the ship is sinking into a black hole, then you’re supposed to be the last one off, or you stay with it and hope it comes out the other side as something besides a small, charred cube of matter.
YURI
Nevertheless…
GURI
Yes… what? You can’t just say ‘nevertheless’ and trail off… that doesn’t resolve an argument.
YURI
It does if you’re the captain. Now get your Lurfsuit on and get to that diner in Poughkeepsie. That’s an order.
GURI
But I don’t even know what to say. We don’t know our mission… and this suit is a little tight around the six stomachs.
YURI
You look fine. Now remember, try to make eye contact and you’ll probably need to dumb down your language a bit. Now stare into the teleporter ray here, I’ll be right there with you over our transponder…
GURI
But I’m not ready!!
***ZAPPPP***
GURI
Ahhhh!!! Oh!! I feel sick!! Gurggghhh.
YURI
That’s a normal reaction to teleporting six karflecs. You’re fine, just breathe through your snoggin.
GURI
Ok, yes, things are coming into focus now. I’m on the surface of Lurf, Yuri!! It’s a very smooth, hard surface. Impermeable even. There are some large crystals in the distance it looks like!
YURI
Yes, you should be in the diner, Guri, so that’s not a natural surface.
GURI
Ah right. Well still, these crystals are impressive! They are about twice my height, a lightish white color, somewhat translucent… I feel the urge to taste them.
YURI
Proceed at your own risk, Guri. Remember what happened when you tasted that lava on Alpha Centauri.
GURI
Meeporp wasn’t discovered by the meek, Yuri.
YURI
You’re right, it was discovered by the Meep.
GURI
Right. Nevertheless… here goes nothing. *lick* Oh my sensations, Yuri!! It is very strong tasting, but exciting, and making me want more… but also very thirst-making… I’m parched… *gasp* I need some liquid!!
YURI
I’m checking the field guide, Guri. I think that is salt.
GURI
Help! I’ve been assaulted.
YURI
Very funny. Can you try to focus and make your way to the corner booth? Frank Cantrell should be waiting for us. He emailed us to say he was arriving a few minutes ago.
GURI
I think I’m in the corner of the building structure, judging by what looks like an artificial sky above me. I’m on what seems like an endless flat surface though. And- *oomph* oh my goodness!! A giant darkness just enveloped me, cold and wet, and then it left just as quickly, and I seem to have been slid to the edge of this surface. And there’s a giant cliff now, a dropoff into a great nothingness.
YURI
Shipward informs me that you are on the table of the corner booth. Frank must be right there in front of you. Can’t you see him?
GURI
What? Well there’s a vast expanse of what looks like a checkered pattern in front of me. And… oh my word… it’s moving a bit. And-
FRANK
(loud elongated deep voice): GURRRRRREEEEEEEEE!!
GURI
Aghh!! I’ve been deafened!! There was a positively seismic roar above my head just now!! The very wall in front of me just seemed to emit a sonic blast.
YURI
Guri, that may be Frank!! Our calculations might have been off… these hummus beans may be 1,000 or 10,000 times our size!! You may be in great danger there!!
GURI
What?? This giant wall in front of me is a hummus bean?? Great comets!! You must tell him I’m right in front of him and not to make any sudden movements!!
YURI
Ok, I’ll embroider him an urgent message…
GURI
No, Yuri, there’s no time for that!! Maybe send him that electronic message through their interweb again…. **CLUNK** Aaaaaaaghhhh!! I’m covered in darkness again!! And… *mmmmphhh* I’m… being crushed...
YURI
Ok, hang in there, Guri!! We’re trying to pick up what’s going on there with our scanners!
GURI
Get me out of here, Yuri!! I can’t breathe-... oh gosh wait… now I’m hurtling through the air, I’ve left the surface… I can see it receding into the distance. I’m on another smooth, rounded surface. We’re approaching something giant with a gaping orifice, and pearly white pyramids, and a giant, slithering faceless monster, red and glistening, and- ugghhhh! I feel the tug of Lurfian gravity… I can’t cling to this surface… I’m falling toward the monster!! I’ve just missed the white pyramids!! Oh gross!! I’m on the slithering monster’s surface!! It’s oh so humid!! What’s the word??
YURI
Sultry??
GURI
That’s it!! It’s oh so sultry in here. There are horrendous guttural noises, and agghh! Hot liquid sloshing about. Tastes kind of gross but I want more. I’m suddenly very wired!! And talking a million karpecs a minute. My hearts are beating fast. And oh no… now I’m in complete darkness, but moving quickly now… the slithering monster is moving me into a deeper darkness, there’s no resisting… lot of inertia here!! I’m losing my bearings and-
*silence*
YURI
Guri? Are you there? Can you hear me? *silent pause* Oh… well then. We seem to have lost our connection momentarily. I’m sure he’ll be back.
*awkward silence*
YURI
He’ll be back, won’t he, Shipward?
SHIPWARD
*bing* Probability of survival in a human’s stomach: 6 percent.
YURI
Ah see? Six perc- what??? Six percent? Is that out of 100? Well that’s not very good at all!! Still… it’s better odds than 5%, or 4%... and six is a lot more than zero.
SHIPWARD
*bing* Shall I notify his next of kin, sir?
YURI
Stop that, Shipward!! Why he’s been in tighter scrapes than this. There was that collision with a moon outside Rom Zero. There was that very persistent case of spontaneous incinerations on the second sun of Balfour. And then there was the time he time traveled to after the end of the universe and was suspended in animation listening to Jimmy Buffet songs.
SHIPWARD
*bing* Was he wasting away in Margaritaville?
YURI
Yes, but he made it through all of those crises. Oh well, I guess this will have to be one of those cavedweller episodes where we’ll have to leave our listening audience huddled in the dark around a fire… why do they call it-
SHIPWARD
*bing* I believe the term you’re stabbing wildly about in the dark for is “cliffhanger”.
YURI
Ah, yes, it is a cliffhanger episode, that makes more sense. The listener is clinging to the edge of a cliff, not knowing what will happen next, will we come rescue them or let them fall to their deaths? Stay tuned and find out, although it sounds like they have no choice… they are hanging off a cliff… should we leave them some food and water at least? I feel guilty… but anyway, we’ll see you next time, same pod channel, same pod people from outerspace, on Greetings Lurflings!
***end of segment music***
C.C.’s House of Saws Ad #5
C.C.
Welcome, radio listeners, this is C.C. Mcgraw here… comin’ to you from mile 44 outside Sioux City, heading out of town, I might add, because true to the city’s name, I guess, we’ve been finding the residents to be a bit too litigious for our liking. Why the loss of just about every little appendage that occurred in our roadside demonstrations has led to the pursuit of legal remedy, despite our employment of greeters using sign language to wave and sign hello… I guess that’s not what our own legal counsel had in mind when they told us to get people to sign waivers… I mean, we did the best we could, the best we knew how. But here we are, on the run from Johnny Law once again… and… say, Hank, why are you looking so down? Here I am lamenting my own misfortune, but you seem awfully quiet and withdrawn over there in the copilot’s chair…
HANK
Oh I don’t know, C.C. I guess I’m just finally dealing with this emptiness inside, a feeling that something’s missing… something that’s been dogging me for well quite a few years now…
C.C.
An emptiness? Something’s missing, you say?
HANK
Yeah, I can’t quite put my finger on it…
C.C.
You sell holes, Hank. Emptiness is your business. Are you just realizing that?
HANK
No, I know, C.C., but this is different. When I’m selling a hole, when I’m winning over that customer to the simplicity and perfection of nothingness, well, that’s something I can really plunge into, and I can still get others to take that plunge with me…
C.C.
I know! You sold me a whole set of holes last week!
HANK
Right, for that golf course you want to build.
C.C. That’s right. I’ve got the holes now… just need the flags to put in ‘em… and the vast stretch of land, and a top notch grounds crew, and a water supply diverted from some common folk… but enough about my dreams. Let’s get back to this other sort of emptiness that’s buggin’ you, Hank. Lay it on me!
HANK
Well thanks, C.C. -- you know, if I didn’t mention it before, you’re a great listener.
C.C.
Oh, you gotta be, Hank, in my line of work. Especially recently. Why I can hear the very second one of my saws bites into something off the menu, as it were… I can hear the faint, distant thud of a severed thumb hitting the linoleum floor, and I know that’s when to pull up the tent stakes and pack up for the next town.
HANK
Yeah, that’s your sense of hearing, C.C., but I was talking about how you’re a good listener-
C.C.
Why one time, I swear it was just the fingerprint sawed off the tip of a young customer’s finger, and that thin layer of cells hit what was actually a carpeted section of the sales floor, this was back in Cleveland in… oh, must’ve been ‘naught nine during the Great Recession there when people were buying saws like nobody’s business… and I’ll swear my momma is a struttin’ rooster if I didn’t hear that fingerprint hit the carpet…
HANK
C.C., if we could-
C.C.
Lucky for me it proved very difficult to dust the carpet for that fingerprint and in the end they couldn’t prove nothin’...
HANK
I’m hurting here, C.C. -- if we could get back to that.
C.C.
Oh right, a thousand apologies. Sometimes I get a bit lost on memory lane…
HANK
Anyway, this hollow feeling… maybe it has something to do with Hilda…
C.C.
Oh, yes, tell me more about Hilda.
HANK
What?
C.C.
What’s she like between the sheets if you don’t mind me asking?
HANK
I do mind you asking, C.C.! Here I am trying to pour my heart out to you and you want to hear about my wife in the sack.
C.C.
Err, well I meant as it relates to the hollow feeling in your chest, Hank, of course. That’s what I meant. I mean perhaps there’s a little trouble in paradise, if you catch my drift?
HANK
A monkey could catch your drift, C.C. -- I understand what you’re saying. And no, that’s not it. Hilda was never especially into the physical side of our relationship, making up for that with an intense spiritual connection which I can tell would be difficult for you to understand. And we also love watching Wheel of Fortune together.
C.C.
No physical side to your relationship, you say?
HANK
Well if you must know, I have a certain physical limitation… or not a limitation so much as an absence… a hole sort of.
C.C.
A hole??? Well now I guess I should’ve known. Is that how you got into the whole hole business?
HANK
Maybe…
C.C.
Do you think Hank’s Wholesale Holes is your attempt to celebrate what has secretly been gnawing at you from the inside out?
HANK
I suppose it could be-
C.C.
Maybe it’s not the hole in your chest that’s really got you down, but it’s the hole in your pants...
HANK
You are a soothsayer and a seer, C.C.!!
C.C.
Well, I don’t know what those things are-
HANK
You really got to the bottom of it, I think! All this time I didn’t think I was missing anything. And that it wasn’t impacting things with me and Hilda… but I think you’re right. I think we are missing something down there…
C.C.
May I recommend Dennis’ Den of Drills, if you’re looking for something to uh… substitute teach down there.
HANK
Something to fill in? I get it. Yes, maybe I’ll pay old Dennis a visit.
C.C.
Well I’m glad something’s on a path to resolution today!! That’s more than I can say for C.C’s House of Saws, but perhaps I’ll catch you, fair listener… why I almost forgot we were recording a commercial here… perhaps I’ll see you down the road at a rest stop not known to be frequented by law enforcement. Stop on by, for more saws than you ever seen, and the greatest scene you ever saw!
***end of segment music***
Ask an Alien
Everyone’s favorite segment on the Greetling Lurflings podcast, or at least the favorite of our Lurf-bound listeners, who should feel free to ask us anything at all, about our superior technology, the joys and perils of space travel, what’s it like to be nearly immortal, etc.
- Where does rice come from?
- Where does the sun go at night?
- What time does Best Buy open on Sunday morning?
RETURN of THEEND