Orion's Testicle

Chapter 21 - Staying With The Rockult

After the meeting, The gang was invited to stay inside the rock stone. Patrick initially refused, as he had left the tap on in the hotel. However, he was soon convinced that it would be far funnier to leave it on and see what had happened over the next few days.
Whalley found them a lounge to stay in, whilst he had another urgent meeting with some science boffins and eggheads to find a way to broadcast a 5 minute long show across two entire hemispheres simultaneously.
Patrick was disappointed that the lounge had been built to be havoc proof. He tried to knock a glass over, but the glass simply bounced up off the floor, caught the water back into itself and slid onto the table again.
He pushed against the table to knock it over with the glass, but to his horror found the table had been bolted down, and he was thrown to the floor.
Patrick however, was not to be discouraged. The room may have been havoc proof, but he, of course, had other ways.
He sat up straight, took a deep breath, and emitted a high pitched “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”.
The noise was terrible and atrocious. It hurt the ears just to be near him, and he allowed himself a smug victorious smile.
Em slapped him in the face till he stopped.
“Shut it.” she ordered. “I’m sitting here. Anna and Scottle won’t stop playing rampant squid mouth, and Meg’s gone to the loo.”
Patrick grudgingly gave way to Em, and looked the other way unconcernedly.
Em was slightly miffed. She had hoped she could have taken this opportunity to get to know Patrick, since he was the only one out of the band she hadn’t got to know very much.
She figured that it was best to know the whole band if she was part of it now, not only because her first gig would be to an entire planet. She tried to make conversation.
“So…what did you think of that Whalley fellow?” She asked provocatively.
Patrick sighed exhaustively.
“Chickens.”
Em blinked at his statement but decided she wasn’t going to be put off by it.
“I think he’s hiding something from us, I reckon he’s got connections with something.”
“Chickens.” Patrick replied.
Em was starting to get frustrated, but let it go.
“I don’t think it’s a bad connection, but he hasn’t exactly informed us of what’s going on. And why is it so important that we do it, you know? He looks like he can play guitar, probably just as well as Anna. Earth doesn’t have anything to do with us, does it?”
Patrick sat back against the seat thoughtfully, taking in what Em had said. He clicked his fingers, as if he had a spark of genius, and turned to Em.
“Chickens.”
Em by now had had enough. She turned away from Patrick.
Patrick realised this and turned to her again.
“Em?”
Em turned enthusiastically.
“Yes?” She smiled.
“Chickens.”


* * *

“I wonder where Anna is….” said Pip, Anna’s father.

* * *

Just as Em was about to kill Patrick, Meg returned from the loo with a shocked look on her face.
“Did anyone bring the lyrics to Cuttlefish?”
The gang froze with horror.
“No….” came the anonymous answer.
Everyone silently swore a good hundred times in there head. They really had screwed up. Not only could they not play for the Earth, but they had lost the one song that was their sure win in the Battle of The Bands.
They hadn’t written anything other then that one song. Anna’s dream was shattered.
Anna’s dream was in fact her being a rock princess, and having lots of men queuing up to ogle at her perfect figure, and having trained monkeys serve her breakfast every day in a large mansion where she didn’t feel any guilt about not getting dressed in the morning and where her butler was Scottle and she had disallowed her staff to were any shirts. Still, now she couldn’t have the rock princess part, and she really liked that.
“Only pulling your legs. Got them here. Do you think I’d lose something as great as this?” Patrick said, producing the paper from his pocket.
Anna looked scornfully at Patrick.
“How unfunny.” she said angrily.
Patrick was in hysterics at her annoyance.
Anna went back to kissing Scottle.
Em went back to talking to Meg. Patrick tried to join the conversation. He eavesdropped for a bit, but realised they were talking about things that uninterested him such as the Military Profile and Weapons listings of the battleship ‘Death Penguin‘, why people write from right to left, and a lot of talk about birds.
Patrick decided he was going to go into the next room and get some ice.
He left, and moments later he returned, and placed one ice cube down Megan and Em’s backs, one ice cube down the back of Anna’s pants and four hundred and twenty five ice cubes on Scottle’s groin.
He especially enjoyed the sounds each gang member produced immediately after this. It had a perfect harmonising effect.
He tried to see if anyone was interested in the fact that cuttlefish ink was widely used in the early stages of this planets photography technology and was known as Sepia, but Anna punched him in the stomach, so he shut up.
As Patrick, winded, fell to the floor Whalley came through the door and tripped over him. He quickly dusted himself off and addressed the gang as a whole. He seemed very smug.
“We’ve cracked it. I know how we’re gonna do it now.”
Completing a feat such as designing a way to communicate across entire planets in a few hours is a surprising thing, so Scottle looked rather shocked.
“How?”
“By superimposing a continuous frequency across every broadcasting unit on the entire planet we should be able to play the sound from it. Utilising the northern lights, we should be able to form an image of you and your band by tampering with the slight ozone concentration there.”
“Northern lights…I think we have something like them on the Accoustan continent back on Orion’s Testicle…except they’re called ‘Lights That Will Not Go Off No Matter How Hard We Yell We Want A Good Night’s Sleep’ .” Anna contributed. “But don’t they only happen occasionally?”
Whalley nodded. “Yes, I’ve just sent one of our boffins to check the times for the next one. Should be coming back any time now.”
At that moment, as if by a strange turn of coincidence or merely the fact that the boffin had rushed his task in order to get home early to a nice hot bath, Whalley’s pager went off.
He looked at the pager casually for a second, but his face immediately turned to the sort of look one might get if they dropped a hot iron on their cat.

“Holy Hell. Tonight.”