Jurassic Zool Episode 11: by Mark Charsley After the carnage left by the last few episodes, let us perform a post-mortem on the plot: Our heroes the Penguin, the Beard (now back in an unpoisoned copy of her old body) and Molin-Cax have joined up with John Clute, the Men in Black and the previously villainous Tim/Gogromelgormoth and Mrs. Lord. They have been transplanted to Earth, and are now frantically trying to stop the villains (Lord Evil, Igor (still in the Beard's old radiation poisoned body) and David Icke), currently in their improbably driven Klingon ship, from finding the gigawatt laser cannon (now in the form of a herring) and using it to destroy the Earth. Unfortunately their plan to prevent this appears to revolve around the production of John Clute's 8 hour musical Battlefield Earth - On Ice. Meanwhile Glamorous and Sidekick appear to have thrown in their lot with the villains, and were last seen in a rather sordid bedroom scene with David Icke. Now read on_ On board the Klingon ship, the occupants were woken (well; all those that were asleep were) by an excited shout. "Eureka!" David Icke ran to the source of the disturbance, to find Lord Evil dancing around his laboratory giggling with glee. "What are you doing here? You're meant to be piloting this ship to Earth while I was, erm, interrogating those two galactic agents." "Earth, ha! What is a mere planet compared to the power of God?" "Oh god: he's been sniffing those chemicals again. What have you gone and done now?" "I have discovered_ the secret of life itself! I have created life in this previously sterile laboratory!" David looked around the laboratory: full of ancient slices of pizza, mouldy cups of coffee, and several indeterminate things dribbling out the fridge, but decided not to comment. Instead he asked, "Where?" "Over there." "What, behind that pillar?" "What pillar?" "That bloody great big grey pillar you idiot." "That's not a pillar," said a new, deep voice, "That's my leg." "You see," continued Lord Evil, "where all those scientists have been going wrong is thinking that life starts as little germs. It doesn't: it starts from dinosaurs1." "You mean to tell me instead of piloting this ship to Earth, you've been siting in here creating a bloody brontosaurus?" "Well not quite: I'm a conclavosaurus, but it is tricky to tell the difference. Pleased to meet you, by the way. My name's Barry," said the lizard in question, "no it's not, it's Andrew_ don't listen to any of that gibberish, my name is quite obviously George." David didn't say anything, but just quizzically lifted an eyebrow, and stared at Lord Evil. "Well, there's a small problem. I wanted him to be able to think and speak 'n' stuff, so I injected him with my serum X to boost the size of his brain: I just forgot he'd got three of them." "Brilliant: and I don't suppose you know how far off schedule you've put us while you created this Jurassic Schizoid, do you?" "By my calculations, it'll take you about a week to turn around and get back to Earth. That's, of course, assuming I let you, lover", said a voice from the doorway, "Now put your hands up, and turn round very slowly." They turned to see Marina MacDonald pointing a rather large gun at them, "Good. Now David: we've got a mule back here who wants a word with you_" _______________________________________ The ticket agent put down the phone with a puzzled frown. "Now that's odd. Why does the Church of Scientology2 want 20,000 tickets for the Brotherhood of Man concert?" _______________________________________ The Beard creeped out the building, her sanity dangling by a thread. The things she'd seen inside had been so dreadful, she could only remember fragments: and those were so randomly scattered that they made no sense. But once more the forces of good were in possession of the McGuffin Key: robbed from the very hands of the GLAM cultists. "Oil rig or not," she muttered, "next time Molin can do his own dirty work." _______________________________________ Back on the Klingon ship, Sidekick was comforting the mule. "There, there: it's alright. They're back in place unharmed and I'm sure they'll work perfectly. In a couple of days -," she broke off, staring intently out of the med-lab. "Excuse me a minute, she said to the mule, and then ran off down the corridor. "Hello Earth, can you hear me? I need to get in touch with the being you know as John Clute, can you hear me?" "I can hear you perfectly lizard. What the hell do you think you're doing?" The conclavosaur looked away from the communicator to see Sidekick pointing a gun at him. "Barry's trying to get in contact with John Clute, and tell him what's happening, the dirty little traitor_ No I'm not, Andrew was_ Ooooh lies, it was me, George_ no you tried earlier but that was in order to double-cross him_ Shut up Andrew you're giving away our plan_ Ha! Plan? I'm not on your side, I teamed up with Barry when you were asleep_ you what? but what about our agreement_" "Tell you what, I'll just remove this communicator, and leave you to get on with it shall I?" _______________________________________ Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, Kirk stared at the ice-rink, where a rather put upon actor in a brown leather jacket was rehearsing his lines for the role of Johnny Goodboy Tyler. "He must feel a right pillock doing that. How can he do it?" "Sometimes Jim," said Spock, from behind him3, "the needs of the plot outweigh the needs of the few_ or the one." _______________________________________ Instead of the usual `slap', there was a quiet `nnnnnnnnnnnyop!', followed by a loud crack as the air five yards away suddenly rushed into the sudden vacuum created. A second or so later, there was a small damp thud as the herring fell to the ground. _______________________________________ "Are you sure I need to do this?" asked the penguin studying his part in the play. "Look, all you 've got to do is dress up as a huge spaceship and jump out the window to represent it crashing. We'll be outside the window to catch you." said Molin. "But you're all over the other side of the set conducting sensitive neurological experiments with a blunt stick at that point." "Well, yeah, but I'm sure someone will catch you." "Look the only person around to catch me is the person in the clawed glove playing a Psychlo. Can't we get that chap in the brown leather jacket to do it?" "No, he's got the lead part in Battlefield Earth already, and he's also involved in virtually every play going around at the moment: he's too busy. Where's your sense of duty?" Before the penguin could reply, Clute rushed in, "The Klingon ship hasn't slowed down, it's not heading for Earth after all." "Brilliant! That means we no longer have to do this play!" "No you don't understand. The entire play was part of a grand unified improbability field. The sheer improbability of anyone willing to perform Battlefield Earth for eight hours was to couple with the unlikelyhood of it being any use in saving the world from the Forces of Turquoise, producing a field I'd manipulate with this plot device," he said waving the key the Beard had obtained earlier, "But if the ship isn't attacking us anyway, the whole variable space is altered! Anything could happen! We could have Hibbert space leaking all over the place!" WHAT will happen when the musical is performed? IS there now any reason for it to go ahead? WILL the narrative ever return to Zool death planet where the intractable criminals of 10,000 worlds etc.4? WHY are the scientologists5 interested in the Brotherhood of Man? ARE they a front for the forces of GLAM? WHO'S side is/are Barry/Andrew/George the conclavosaurus really on? WHAT happened with the herring just then? IS it important? WHO cares? If the answer to the last question is `me' then don't miss the next thrilling episode of_ Zool III! 11 Hey, if he can ignore fundamental principles of neurology, he can ignore basic tenets of evolutionary biology as well. 22 Boo! Hiss! 33 And no, I'm not going to say what he was doing there: this is not Slash Zool. 44 Crikey, I left that a bit late, didn't I? 55 Boo! Hiss!