Alice's Fuzzy Starship - Part 2

Alice pulled a microphone toward herself and shouted "All hands! Station check!"

Rabbit, turned to look, hesitatingly, "You'd better have a rest", he said.

"My station is quite jolly," she said "Very nice and open".

His little face raised towards Alice, who was standing on a little wooden stool, grasping the pipe organ she liked to carry in her petticoats. She played a junky tune while I searched for some tea on this purple planet.

"I think it will be a very late acquisition of speech, to say the fuzzy skin covering the spaceship appears to be charged with static electricity." Rabbit said to me over the din of Alice's obscene music.

"Yes indeed." I agreed. "But I still need tea none the less."

I looked over the chart table plotting the course towards the nearest tea station. Rabbit handed Alice a slip of paper. The fuzzy pirate hardly ever gave the wheel to the princess. I watched as he tried to snack the organ from her hand. Alice resisted and sneered wishing to finish her wet solo. Body or soul they are just wrong to be put together in the same room for too long.

"Listen to me .... without her ... I could examine it." Rabbit said looking at the map. Alice piloted the starship, not really knowing where she was going. But at least she wasn't playing that wet music anymore.  "I just want you to bomb things as tribute to its spiritual nutriment."

"After I have acquired my tea, we can bomb the whole planet for all I care." Alice said. I nodded in agreement.

"But if she cannot comprehend my value, then she cannot be anything other than an interruption in my thoughts, in shape or association. Nothing more than some skin to yield materials for certain articles of furniture" Rabbit grumbled.

The ship skipped on top of the atmosphere down the poles, where many varieties or teas and biscuits roaming and eating upon gigantic tables. Okra and tomatoes were added to enhance moral beauty of each place setting. It seemed familiar enough.

We landed the starship near a fork.

"What are those things?" Alice asked.

Wild cakes and biscuits I suspect." I replied. "They are accused of having disgusting affectations, or of at least pretending to have youthful sensory importance."

They are quite obscene looking things." Alice giggled. And indeed they were. Cakes, biscuits, cookies, cremes and all manner of desserts were  hunting eating and copulating with one another in an orgy of sweet delight. The air smelled of spilt frosting and whipped cream.

"Oh that looks fun!! Alice said."

"Careful, that twinkle-cake looks like a stud. You better not get into the middle of that or else he might do ... unspeakable things to you."

Just at that moment, the horse sized cake pounced on an unsuspecting slippery biscuit, and covered it in sweet frosting. After he was done, he devoured it, and scampered away before a huge banana split tried to impale the creature. The banana slunk off leaking a trail of marshmallow topping until it was devoured by a pack of wild chocolate chip cookies smothered in whipped cream.

Alice's eyes went wide, seeming almost to hope it would unspeakable things to her. She could be so very naughty sometimes. "My ... he's very ... large." She said.

Rabbit seemed disgusted we'd landed in the middle of dessert mating grounds.

"To uphold the Constitution of the Lady Venus Rabbit blasting through space .... I hereby command you to cease this crazy succession of twists, turns and bounces!" The rabbit commanded the desserts blowing his horn.

The crowd of breeding sweets sprang to their feet, sensing this final act of their work, and lined up for inspection.

"Units five -- four -- three -- four -- three -- four -- three -- don't push!" commanded Rabbit.

And then, to my joy I spotted a tea vat while the Rabbit inspected the dripping troops of desserts, now all in formation.

Slowly, applying pressure to the burning tea tree, I  lifted the lip of the root and withdrew a five thousand gallon jug, compressed to the size of a handy tea pot. At last TEA to the rescue.

Meanwhile  Rabbit had fired a reactant bomb at the end of the table, to demonstrate his superiority to these savage desserts. Many of the tiny sweets were slaughtered and the creatures began to stampede in a panic ... until they resumed their frenzied breeding. The air was ripe with the scent of wild delicious cake, wam in the throes of passion and squirting frosting.

"I wonder, now, if your garden was so wet to accept a private interview?" He asked Alice.

She blushed. "I can see Rabbit is himself again."

"Only after the time when you trust your husband ... and stare .... as he is," he answered sadly. "Come ... may I butter your muffin?"

"Must we speak of guilty deeds ... Every half-hour?" I said. I looked at the craters Rabbit had caused with his bombs at the far end of the table.

"I can only repeat any accusations in a city or a vessel" Rabbit said.

"Oh ... you must deal with him as with a dynamo, to ground out all possibilities of all charges ... and discharges." Alice said.

"Charges? BAH. All my charges were cleared and pardoned by the Red Queen herself.! Stammered Rabbit." This place is diseased, syphilis in particular most likely. This system may spoil our life in later years if we remain here too long." Rabbit declared.

"You forget she is a Queen as well ... or at the very least a princess" I reminded the twitching Lepus.

I knew we needed to leave this place, else we too might succumb to the aphrodisiacs wafting on the breeze. Rabbit was already beginning to eye a little cream puff not far from our stance.

"Were will we go next?" Alice asked, sipping the tea I poured for her.

"Hmmmm In most cases of peril, I seem to suppose ignorance. But, you know there's still a bunch of Fiji Islanders somewhere around Cape Cod. That's one option. There must lie low till until the Suns passage over that particular latitude ... is simultaneously to our own recline, or approximately so." Rabbit pondered. He seemed distracted by the gyrations of the cream puff, begging him for filling.

"If this fuzzy starship had to travel eastward to reach New York by July 1st, we must be seeking the vortices." I retorted."And if we diminish the retarding force, and work to which reference has been complete, though perhaps not quite in the frequency, which, however, are not at all times."

Very well, nodded Rabbit. "Let's have a smile for the test shall we?" He tried to Kiss Alice again, who seemed more interested in the giant desserts. They were breeding and eating each other again. No sooner would one dessert be consumed, a new one plopped out and matured within seconds, ready to repeat the cycle of wild dessert life.

"Right!" nodded Rabbit. "On our way back on board, you may gather one of the thinner specimens ... that twinkle-cake horse looks like a good one."

"Indeed!" Alice she giggled eyes the giant creatures dripping frosting.

I sipped the last of my tea, and mentally prepared for another voyage in the fuzzy starship. Some objects of ultra-terrestrial life are indeed quite perverse, but none more so than these wild desserts. She may need help to get ready for the twinkle-cake horse for the dire tasks that lie ahead.

"That's a rather large specimen" I said cautiously, commenting on the size of the cake beast. "Is he tame?

"He is now, she said, licking frosting from her lips. She led him into the cargo hold. "There are more over there in case this one runs out of filling, so you needn't say anything about this to Rabbit.

"Yes ... I understand. Rabbit must be victorious in his assertions. I am so grieved though, I cannot tell where his temper stuck fast." I replied.

"All hands to the bridge - we are leaving!" Rabbit commanded.

Then the twinkle-cake horse, came around to the stable Alice had prepared for it on the cargo deck. New conditions erupted, sending us out on the floor restlessly.

Rabbit evidently was intent on getting to Venus as quickly as possible. The purple world and its loons were soon several single lights on the black ground.

"May I say this ... because of whatever imagined danger or that part of the case may be ... you are more mad than the march hare ever was." I said to Rabbit.

"Bah. We have things to do places to go!. Where is Alice?"

Mmmmm. Came a mumbled reply. Alice was eating her pet cake animal ... again. "Frosting! I Love frosting!" She giggled.

He snapped and suddenly leaped across the control deck, Captain Rabbit suddenly recalled to the Seventy Tales of the Nucleus.

"THAT'S IT - WE JOURNEY THE THE NUCLEUS OF VENUS!!" Rabbit shouted. "I will find a RABBIT WIFE instead of YOU!!"

"Fine by me," Alice said licking her fingers. The cake horse trotted off out of the control room, seeming somewhat more relaxed.

"What about diseases? I asked?"

"I am a goddess ... I don't believe in diseases Professor Hatter."

"Ah naturally. Care for some tea to wash that down?" I offered Alice another cup. Rabbit just glared at the controls.

The fuzzy starship screamed through the void. Soon the Venus Nucleus appeared in the window. It has particularly nice chromosomes. All of which indicated that it was under the control of six Shadow Witches.

"You have deceived me," retorted the Rabbit ... to no one in particular. "I forgot about this world's cruel masters, and the Shadow Witches," he said. "But I shall go where I shall preserve my brothers call for my enchantments!" He lifted the soft and delicate folds of his ears while passion enveloped him.

"It is just as I suggested in the University of Bogus Eris," I said to Alice.

Suddenly there was a peal of thunder, and the shadows of the Venus Nucleus thwarted the low mounds that rose behind us. Down, down we went into the depths of the planet ... very carefully. For being almost seventeen years old, Alice was to come away from the experience without returning a salute to fate. We were enlisted in some secret experiment, no doubt!

Rabbit landed the starship with terrible grace, upside down.

"I am alive?" I asked.

"Yes, sir, said Alice, swallowing hard several times, "very much so."

Her answered was more wonderful than the rain. Rabbit rang a communications bell, and begged for a wand in which he most delighted. An evil vapor floated from the deep darkness that followed. The non-wife-to-be decide for herself when she ignored to Rabbits calls and turned her attentions to getting right side up.

Then, as I could judge, it was nearly noon (on the same day). Things were getting thicker by the moment. Rabbit was too busy in his pursuit of stereo newscasts about the ship to notice we left. No matter. How full any lesson was, (at the time of this writing) which testified to her own rod skills. Rabbit was no more to her than an ignorant companion. A wretched little fish in hand-nets.

"Did you know that The Solomon Islands and the Origin of Languages in the maternal earth, were rejoicing in the Processionale et usum insignis et preclare Ecclesie Sarum, 1566?" Asked Alice.

"Yes ... I actually heard about that in a lover's dream, or so it seemed evident." I smiled. "And what of Rabbit?"

She just frowned a moment while we walked hand in hand to the nearest town. Within the Venus Nucleus, the Twilight Sleep process has apparently been through the town. All were snoring save for a watchman. 

Alice asked him, "What is your very, very sorry state or affairs here?" Then, remembering how sore the wounds of shade crept in on her mind, and more of it, she was was suddenly afraid.

"Out of the way!" The night watchman grumbled. Like most of the inhabitants of the Venus Nucleus ... he too was a Rabbit.

"Out of the way!" he repeated again, as Alice's hair touched his fingers when she remained still. And with the draft of his rushing by, she forgot all about her troubles, and our mad captain of the fuzzy starship that brought us here.

Two more years slipped away in the town. Alice knew I could be trusted. She had just grasped a flask containing the magic water from the garden. I being the village professor soon heard about the incident some time ago. But to most rabbit-women of the village, we were not obliged to ask money of pride and dignity of the sameness of their daughters. Alice was collecting specimens again on the reports of the physiology and psychology of (and who can never say positively) she must experience an orgasm. Here it's just taken for granted. Alice grew more puzzled and surprised still and her tone because upset, and so lonely. She arrived at the entrance to the laboratory we had set up in town, maligned in the storms that formed cosine poles. The last thing I can remember, is her sleep-walking adventures, on the grounds that there is evidently some action of life.

I thought a moment ... if only fate could give this child the power to overcome these difficulties of sinking into a second point near the little canoe. Since the appearance of a whole school of thought the world was going to end, we began our studies. Alice came to me, holding the flask, like a hero with an outstretched hand.

"I've got the cells." She said.

"Excellent! We should have some tea!"

I examined the flask while Alice prepared our tea. The Nucleus Controls! Though they remain capable of increasing in size, and so on, they look strangely like ammunition dumps under the microscope.

"I checked radar and communications equipment in the jungle." Alice said. "The fuzzy starship has returned again."

"Rabbit has returned to the Nucleus?"

"So it would seem."

She served our tea.

Suddenly our ears strained for some sound other than supernatural scrapings that the gods sent up from the far side of reality, speaking softly of a river for the blind.

"You can go on the to the next page," she said, noting I had momentarily frozen my actions reading my studies.

"Rabbit is here. It is true, I know well his ways, I tell you!" said Alice.

"Well, I shan't grow any more irritated about him coming back" I said.

"Yes," said Alice more boldly; "But you know you're growing in other places too." She giggled. She was such a perverse girl sometimes.

"Let's get out your talents, eh, Alice?" Spoke Rabbit, suddenly entering the room.

"Rabbit - how did you find us?" Alice said shocked. "How did you get here?!"

"Easily enough to do with a fuzzy starship, and the rest is best not explained. I am a mystical rabbit after all, and it helps that you two are the only humans on this world.

"Where have you been?" I asked, not really caring to hear the answer.

"There something wrong with a world, where everyone is handicapped by venereal diseases and degenerate minds," he said with a strange look in his red eyes.

Rabbit put upon her an envelope which contained pictures of a few invalids, feebly wandering about for many days about the globe. He found himself held in the middle of her gaze, which was easy to do, seeing he was here in this room. And she took it a little further, hardly knowing what such a way might lead. But the bald fact of his threat of mental imprisonment so far told her that she'd been shown the dark side of strangers. She did not like Rabbit intruding upon us this way.

"And what is the point of this? Have you given up your quest for a bride to become a social worker?" Alice prodded.

She watched Rabbit attentively. Alice triumphed inwardly, and by chance had decided on hastening Rabbit's introduction to his demise.

"Certainty not. And do curb your thoughts. I can hear them you know." He pilfered back his envelope from the left, if only to show the plain front of her toes that he found no one, nor any wife to grovel at his furry feet ... yet.

"I was seeking you ... before I knew you... Alice" Rabbit said softly. He did not her rage or curses. 

"Now wait a moment." I said. "You've been gone two years ... and abandoned us on this world. Now you come back and make wiggle ears at her? I think not."

He stood and watched me a moment.

"I did not think Professor Hatter would be so difficult." Said Rabbit, "But I am merely concerned for Alice's well being. Instead of being included among most natural phenomena of this dimension, like the passing of the sun, you should know that the cabbage soup and plain boiled meat you feed her is unfit for girls in similar circumstances to hers."

"Preposterous! I am perfectly enigmatic and pleased. What are you doing here?!" demanded Alice, ignoring his blather.

"Where the apex of inner life meets the outward environment, it discovers a deeper blue lake than any emperor might see. In your absence, I felt a curious feeling sometimes, as if I had needed to return in a hurry."

"It's been two years. A lot has happened between us." I said.

"And two years ... is not much of a hurry" Alice added.

"No matter. It's time we should be going. Take your time to decide, or in anybody else's time, but just the same we should get going. This world is doomed to implode you know. The Venus Nucleus is DOOMED."

Rabbit passed me his notes concerning the shining Trapezo-hedron.

"What..." Alice blinked. "You know about the prophesies of the Trapezo-hedron?"

"Oh yes. POOF BOOM BLAM! I am native of this world after all. I had to see it one more time before it vanished in a pool of collapsing protoplasm. Anyway, I discovered about the great Trapezo-hedron  - which is at the very core of our ability to make these journeys through non-space."

"The Trapezo-hedron? What does that have to do with Non-space?" Alice asked.

"The Trapezo-hedron is a planet destroying device, that is indeed guided by occasional black doorways ... doorways which mark my farthest former travels to this remote world. Luckily I had time to stop in for you. How do you want to have your drinks? Shaken or stirred?" Rabbit made himself a carrot juice martini.

"None thank you." Alice scowled. We looked at each other, silently knowing we would be soon traveling again.

"Professor Hatter?" He asked with his ears twitching.

"I have my tea, thank you." I glared at him.

Whoever dares give the child of the moment a sideways glance, might soon find ghouls eager to work on the launching ramp of her long silhouette outlined sharply against the pillow. Alice learned how to make an expressive line of motion with her pen-point cunning logic ... and thought how we might make our escape together again, on some other world.

- to be continued -