[It’s -21 as I prepare this post. Stay warm y’all!]
In the hours following their epic and manly departure from Billy’s Church of Awesome (and scene of battle!) Billy grew into the role he’d been born to play. The world was out to get him and Billy was going to kick the entire world’s ass!
It was only Doogie’s insistent reminder that they were “on the lam” and could ill afford the entanglements of a speeding ticket that kept Billy from melting his car’s engine in a joyous desire to escape the Earth’s orbit.
The squirrels, meanwhile, were absolutely terrified. Woodland creatures are tough. They face death by predator and circumstance with a casual indifference that would shock most humans. But they’d never pondered the unleashed, out of scale, larger than life, madness and glory that could be extracted from the soul of a man.
Doogie had warned them. They hadn’t understood. Billy as a male human was a thing to be subjugated; managed if necessary, avoided if it couldn’t be managed. Billy as a man had swaggered out of a burning half collapsed arena of war. This was an entirely different thing. He’d stepped over defeated Ghostbusters and slain Extreme Greeters like a conquering hero. He had a holstered pistol, a reeking pet bear, and confidence beyond measure. His whole attitude had undergone metamorphosis. They began to comprehend what Doogie had been trying to explain with metaphors about Valhalla, Genghis Kahn, and John Wayne.
The squirrels, with their mind control and devious nature had wanted to bully the world but they had no idea the difference between manipulating weaklings and facing absolute masculinity. Billy had been attacked, he had defeated everything that opposed him, and that had been the coolest thing he’d done in his life. Now he was of a mind to plant a flag somewhere and begin ruling. The gynocentric new world order had just encountered it’s first testosterone soaked man. Shit was getting real!
Bert, for his part, cared nothing about what anyone in the car was thinking. He was chewing on a Slim Jim and resting comfortably in the back seat. Neither oppressed nor oppressor, Bert was the closest thing to a peaceful being in that car. Between Billy’s ego, Doogie’s brilliance, and the squirrel’s duplicity, a world of hurt was en route to Portland.
After a few hours Billy felt the adrenaline ebbing and started to plot his next move. It would be his move, for he was in charge. That much was clear.
Despite an ego that had gone almost nuclear, he still valued the assistance of this second in command. He was a little bit crazed, but not stupid enough to overextend the situation. He decided to use a skill he’d been dying to employ for decades. Holding his hand out of the squirrel’s view he made a fluttering of strange motions.
[ARE YOU LOYAL TO HOUSE ATREIDES? SHALL I KILL THE TRAITORS?]
Doogie gasped with pure delight. Not just hand signals but Atreides battle language!
It should be noted that Billy and Doogie were both young men and wickedly smart. Therefore, they were both nerds. Both of them, as required of all abnormally intelligent young men, had read the complete Dune series.
[I HAVE NOT YET SECURED HARKONNEN JEWELS] Doogie replied, fluttering his hands. Then, in a bit of nerd oneupmanship, he began to talk aloud in English, while surreptitiously communicating in a made-up science fiction sign language. “Did you see the Slushy machine explode? That was epic!” [FORGIVE TACTICAL FAILURE PREVIOUS. OBJECTIVE REMAINS ENEMY ASSETS.]
Not for the first time Billie had trouble keeping up. Who can drive, talk in one language, and sign in another at the same time? He managed to communicate another sentence. [SAFE WORD IS ‘SPICE’. SPEAK IT AND ALL THAT OPPOSE US DIE.]
Doogie beamed and switched to another language, this one audio but entirely beyond the squirrel’s ken.
[FOR THE HONOR OF THE EMPIRE! ONE LANGUAGE IS NEVER ENOUGH.] The language he spoke sounded like a Frenchman getting beaten with a set of bagpipes.
Billy squinted. Of course he spoke Klingon. It wouldn’t do to forgo the one language based on alien warriors and more guttural than swallowing a frog! ‘For the honor of the empire’ was clearly an agreement. The two were on the same side (all hail deprogramming by hot coffee to the face!) but his Klingon skills were too rusty to translate the rest.
He reached over to Doogie’s head and started poking him, not entirely gently, with his trigger finger.
-.- .-.. .. -. –. — -. .. … ..-. .-.. — … . .-. …
Doogie translated, rubbing what felt like a dented forehead. ‘Klingon is for losers’.
And with that, Billy cranked heavy metal as loud as his car’s speakers would go. He started head-banging to Metallica’s “Enter the Sandman” with a herky jerky motion oddly out of time with the music. Doogie observed for a few minutes before he realized what was happening. Billy was thrashing to and fro beneath the furious guitar riffs… in Morse code! Doogie followed suit and they began to scheme. Right under the squirrel’s gaze a new plan was formulated, discussed, refined, and agreed upon.
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