I've got it so fascinating in here that the carpet cleaners came back the whole goddamned week! Pull it over. You got to pull it over - the garbage bag. Pull it over, start a little bluff, and then a rumor sets in. They say if you don't wake up ready for a chart ... you're nobody. It was the fourth day of transmission. I thought I was ready. Kids don't touch these places. She pulled the alarm! Call the robber barons. I've been stabbed in the study. I saw a light out of the corner of my eye; bit my tongue. It got me. It got me! Do you have a pan? Yeah but I can't bring it on the plane. You know it's not like me. They wouldn't let me on. You'll have to find another containment beam.

They were soon ankle-foot deep in all the world's children. Maybe get off, change the channel, put your t-shirt back on first. Well I tried but I was leaning forward at an angle. I almost slipped off the balcony. Drooled on myself. Drooled on my fingers. Hallucinating, drinking invisible cans of soda. She was there, watching me, laughing at me. That's because of the rules. Here's the visions these arcades do: jealousy. Jealousy, perhaps.

Some of them were held captive for twenty years. Twenty years they did this to my friends. Think about it.

We brought them some sandwiches. I could do that without too much trouble, just had to prick each knuckle, just a small sacrifice. I could handle it. It wasn't enough. They didn't need food, they needed explanations. I couldn't give them any. Their kids were all gone.

They got them. I don't know how. They deserved the best, Romeo, and we failed them. Same look on their faces. Frozen in stone. Nothing could break the gaze. We had to leave them to die. We didn't have a choice.

I'm enclosing the last known photograph. Maybe it'll shed some light on the situation.

I still jump in my sleep. Wake up every few minutes. I'm not sure what's happening to me.

Take care of yourself.

And so once upon a time, the bird creatures of Ransom could not communicate with the volcano god either, as he didn't know their language, and they couldn't read any of the ones he tried to use. Ransom wasn't called Ransom back then. In fact, they didn't have a name for their planet, and they were quite distraught about it. "What will other civilizations think, if we can't even name our own planet?"

"Maybe that we had better things to do, like, science?"

"Yeah Carl, I'm sure they'll think that."

"Shut up! My ideas are fine!"

Many people - er, birds - had ideas for how to name their planet. "Birdia" was the best they could come up with. The other ideas were things like "Seed" and "Awesomeplanet". Until a routine observation mission above the volcano planet went awry. Five birds were lost in an explosion. One survived, and fell to the surface.

Now, the thing you should know about the volcano planet is, it was dead and lifeless. It wasn't really that hot, in fact it was quite moderate in temperature. It still had an atmosphere, though it was mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The ground was dusty and solid rock. The one active volcano remained, where the lava creature lived at its base. It was a shield volcano, and didn't really erupt lava - it just sort of ... oozed it once in a while.

The lava creature had been looking up towards the ship when it exploded. He knew by now they couldn't understand him, but he still wished he could communicate. That was when one of the ship's fuel lines decided it had grown tired of life, and exploded. Then the rest of the ship thought that was a mighty fine idea, and also exploded. And Henry, the sole survivor, went hurdling towards the ground.

His name wasn't really Henry, it was something like CHIRCHIRRUP, but that's hard to type. Anyway, as Henry was hurdling towards the ground like a nursing home resident on acid on the side of a cliff, the lava creature saw him and went into action. Suddenly, he moved across the surface at such a high rate of speed that mission control lost sight of him.

"Oh my god."

"What's he doing? Where'd he go?"

"That poor bastard. I can't watch this."

And sure enough, when Henry was ten feet from the surface, the lava creature was below, waiting to catch him.

Now, if you've never taken a bath in lava, let me set the picture for you - it's hot. Usually a couple thousand degrees. Not something you want to step in, or touch, or be next to. Let alone fall into at terminal velocity. Which, since the volcano planet's gravity was twice that of Earth, was quite a lot.

There was nary a sound. Henry disappeared into the lava creature. He looked up, kind of swirled around a bit, and went back to the base of his volcano. Much slower than he'd left.

"It ate him. That motherfucker ate him!"

"Calm down. Maybe he was ... trying to help."

"Trying to help?! He's made of fucking lava! How is that supposed to help?"

"I don't know! That poor bastard.. what are we going to tell the people about this?"

After a few more minutes of arguing, the creature had returned. A probe at the base of the volcano, sent years earlier in an attempt at communication was turned on.

"Hey! Hey you, what's the big idea!"

The volcano god seemed startled, as much as a pile of lava can seem startled. Then, he slowly turned to face the probe and wrote something on a sign, in the native language of the bird people.


I HAVE YOUR MAN

"What? He what? Don't ... don't tell me he's alive in there! How did he learn our language?"

"Oh god he's holding Henry for .. for ransom? Boiling alive in lava!? I'll kill that son of a bitch!"

"Calm down Carl, take your goddamned pills!"

"I will not calm down! What the fuck kind of ransom do you pay to lava?"

Then Carl grabbed the mic and shouted at the creature. "Give him back you son of a bitch!"


I CAN'T

"Fine, what do you want for him?"

WANT? NOTHING MAN

"Oh, playing hardball are we?"

WHAT'S HARDBALL

"It's .. shut up! Give him back or I'll come down there and make you wish you had!"

I SAID I CAN'T, CAN'T LEAVE PLANET

Just then, the lava creature ... spit Henry up. He was covered in lava goop, but seemed no worse for the wear. He brushed it off, and it seemed to rejoin the lava creature on its own. Henry looked around, saw the probe, and waved. "Hey guys! I'm ok!"

"See Carl? I wish you'd relax. Jesus, lava holding somebody for ransom, I swear ... let's get a ship out there to pick Henry up.

Hey uh .. vol.... l... hey you, what's your name?"

The lava creature stewed for a bit, and slowly wrote

DUDE, CAN'T REMEMBER

Then Henry piped in. "Hey, thanks for catching me over there!"

NO PROB.

"Okay uh ... volcano god, I guess, can we call you volcano god ... "

YEAH BUT I'M NO GOD

"Okay well .. is there anything we can do for you? We have a ship coming to pick Henry up."

The creature thought for a minute, and then responded:

YOU GUYS GOT ANY GOOD BOOKS

One day I was up in the forest when I saw a gnome. "Hey gnome, what's up."

"Nothin."

"Oh. Okay. ... "

"....."

"............you ever hear about the volcano god?"

"Listen bud, do you mind? I had a rough day."

"Oh. Yeah."

There was a third planet called Ransom. At least they called it Ransom in their language. A lot of aliens sound like gargles or blips or bleeps but these guys chirped a lot, like a fuckstrucken hummingbird or cockateel, maybe a whippoorwill. The Ransom guys didn't communicate much with the Frapshavers or the Sporktonians, mainly because they couldn't understand the grunts or the ice scratching. But they knew about the volcano god. They even had a weekly call in program. People could call up and ask the volcano god questions, and he would - slowly, since he was writing it on a sign made of lava, made of himself - answer their questions. A lot of times they were useless, but such is life. Sometimes they were profound. Sometimes they were eerie. Sometimes they were stupid. But whatever. He was chill, man. Probably got boring hanging around for millennia by a volcano, so answering some weird questions was probably .. fun?

"Yes, uhh I have a question for the volcano god?"

"Yes caller you're on the air, go ahead, he's listening."

"Yeah um ... my husband wants to ... "

"Ooookay we had to edit that out. Oh, he's writing something anyway .. "


YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE


"Heh, haha. There you go. Okay next caller, you're on the Lava Dance, what's your question?"

The Lava Dance was a Ransom expression that turned out to be a delicious pun. It sounded something like "CHIRRUP CHEEP CHIP", and was like a fireside chat or something. I don't know. I don't speak that ching chong shit.

"Yes umm, have you spoken to the other creatures on those other planets? What are they like?"


WEIRD FUCKERS, MAN

"Really? Weirder than us?"


TOTALLY

"Oh, he's writing something else ... "

THEY LIKE, OOZE ALL OVER

"...Ooze? Like .. they just leak fluids all the time?"

YEAH MAN, ITS GROSS

"Alright next caller, squirt out your hambone!"

I'm not even going to try to explain that one.

"Heh h ehh ... hey man, do you like .. eat? WHIRRRUP WHIRRRUP WHIRRRRR WHIRRRUP"

"Enough of that .. please, that was old 10 years ago ... hey he's answering anyway"


NOT ANYMORE. UNLESS LAVA COUNTS


"We will totally count lava. Alright, we'll be right back with more questions for the volcano god here on the Lava Dance after these messages .."

HEY GUYS

"Yeah? What is it?"

NO MORE SPORKTONIAN QUESTIONS

"Spo....what's that word? Sporktonian? What's that?"

THE OOZERS

"...That's a weird name. Okay but .. why no more questions about them?"

This was the first time the volcano god had made such a request. Actually, it was the first time he had made any request, other than for people to "be cool", or "party on".


THEY ARE EVIL


"Evil?? Should we be worried?"

YEAH MAN. THEY DON'T CARE

"Care about what?"


TRUTH. OR ANYTHING BUT THEMSELVES



"We're .. we've got to go back on air ... "


JUST DON'T CONTACT THEM


"O .. okay ... aaaand welcome back the Lava Dance. Um ... I ... next caller ... "

"Yes .. I've got a question? Uh .. hey. Besides absorbing knowledge, do you have like, any other like super powers?"


DON'T THINK SO.

"So you can't like, see the future?"


ALL I SEE IS A DAMN VOLCANO