Everybody Does the Pudge
Life Among the Three Dimensionals, Chapter 11
I had emerged from my cocoon barely four weeks ago and three of those had been spent with Szofia "on the run" from the earthlings' police authorities... and from the four dimensional "Branch" bounty hunters who were looking for her.
There had been no response - not one! - to my urgent reports and pleas to Pioneer Central to send me replacement location buttons and to extract me from this incomprehensible three dimensional world. I didn't know whether any of my missives had been received or, if they had been received, whether anyone had answered. I was despondent. I gave up trying to make contact.
In any event, my research project had become meaningless. I had been inserted into this world in order to study the lives of the three dimensional quasi-intelligents otherwise known as "humans." Instead, I was forced to depend on, and learn more about, four dimensional intelligent vegetables like Szofia who, I had since concluded, was hardly 'normal' even in her slice of the Multiverse!
Worse, instead of an anthropological study of the Earth's three dimensionals' culture, everything on Earth was now rapidly changing to mirror Szofia and me!
I suspected that Szofia had a lot to do with this because every time we stopped to "change horses" (as she described the process of dumping, hot-wiring and borrowing various cars, trucks and motorcycles) she would furiously "post" things to her SubStack, Tweezer, XYZ, Faceplant, YuBoob, WeSplat, TickleTockle, Telegramp, and Red-Itch social media platforms. She claimed that she had millions, maybe billions of followers "... or maybe even trillions and decadillions, who knows?" she said chortling.
Szofia said that all of her followers were now - wittingly or unwittingly - enlisted in helping the two of us to "hide in plain sight." Thus, it seems, that Szofia had launched a transhandedness social revolution along with the viral fashion to wear heavy oven mittens outdoors. It had also become à la mode for young men and women to imitate my appearance! They called this "the pudge look."
Now, everywhere we turned, there were young (and not-so-young) people wearing various colors of thick kitchen mittens 24/7. All of them had a perpetually 'startled' look on their faces. All of them had cultivated pudgy "dad bods" like mine. All of them sported the same kind of electrostatically charged, unmanageable hair. Not surprisingly, most of them had also dyed their hair green, just like Szofia au naturel!
Szofia denied that she had anything to do with this. "No sir," she told me with a sly smile. "Don't know nothing 'bout it, Monsieur Hugorino! These folks just decided on their own that the 'fugitive' 5D look - inverted hands, big gloves, green hair and that perpetually goofy expression of yours - were bad-ass cool! And there you have it, Hupiedoopy! We're cult heroes, now. And what's better," she continued, "we can now walk about wherever we want to without standing out, like, you know, the giant pink carrot that you usually are!"
Indeed!
Transhandedness, as they called it, had, virtually overnight, washed over the planet like a tsunami. The Transhanded Liberation Movement had sprung up out of almost nowhere... although I suspect it sprang from little Szofia's head! Demi-miniature humanoids around the planet were now demanding the right to express their true back-handed personalities by surgically reversing their left and right hands, thus making them look more like me! Medical and social-psychology professionals, realizing the enormous waste and expense of these surgical procedures, piled onto the bandwagon and urged everyone to give full surgical license to peoples' inner backwardness. Germany, Sweden, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the United States were among the leading countries where children, without their parents' permission, could now request immediate hand-swap surgery and post-procedure adaptation therapy.
"I always felt emotionally frustrated and trapped by my ordinary right-handedness," said a prominent social media influencer who had recently undergone 'the swap.' "Now, with my hands inside-out and upside down, I can release the true 'me.' Now, I can also finally indulge my life-long dream to play the guitar backwards and behind my back," the prominent social media influencer said.
"Unleash Our Maximal Oppositionality," became a college rallying cry of the transhanded revolution. Overnight, a crusade was underway... I suspect the source was, again, the media postings of Szofia, my intelligent vegetable colleague... to reexamine the significance of many historical Earth figures who, the revisionist historians asserted, had perpetuated an oppressive culture of normatively oppositional thumbs via traditional left/right handedness. Protesters gathered around many stone and bronze statues in humans' cities, including those of saints and apostles in various cathedrals. They demanded that the statues' hands be sawed off, reversed and reattached backwards to support the equalizing objectives of the transhanded movement.
Transhanded student activists additionally demanded that all languages be purged of words and phrases that might trigger the sensibilities of the transhanded community, including patently illiberal 'dominant hand' descriptors such as "sleight of hand," "handsome," "handyman," "acting underhanded," "putting one's hands up," "thumbs up/thumbs down," "hands on the wheel," and "hand-outs." The movement condemned as a micro-aggression the social imperative to identify oneself as left or right-handed rather than even-handed.
Moreover, the activists protested all "clapping," "waving," "finger-tapping," and "hand-shaking" in public because these practices discriminate against the transhanded whose palms faced outward and upward, not down and inward, and are unable to clap.
In response to the growing TLM protests, reactionary forces (orchestrated by the owners of the media) launched a counter-propaganda campaign that blamed "Antifa" for the transhanded phenomenon. This was utterly silly because "Antifa" is no more than a domestic iteration of the international "terrorists" - like ISIS and Hamas and Al-Qaeda - created, coordinated and funded by the selfsame states that denounce them.
Notwithstanding our celebrity status, Szofia and I had been identified as "dangerous terrorists" subject to apprehension and vilification. Szofia, for the moment, seemed mildly amused by the "manhunt" for us because neither one of us could properly be called a "man."
I, however, was not amused.
My medical condition was rapidly deteriorating. I suffered from extremely high gas pressures and early symptoms of radiointoxication due to extraordinary amounts of high and low frequency radiation emitted by local dominant quasi-intelligents. I wondered if the dominant three dimensional species released all these toxins into their world as a misguided deterrent to extra-dimensional exploration. No other rational explanation was possible for their otherwise irrational behavior.
The life of a fugitive was trying. Neither Szofia nor I needed to "eat" or "sleep" in the human senses of those terms, but we each had our own needs. Because, as she told me, the bounty hunters from the Branch can detect four dimensional anomalies that would betray her presence, she made every effort to "hide out" in "little girl form" among the three dimensional flora and fauna of this small planet. She told me that she had been dodging the Brancher posse for tens of thousands of years across numerous galaxies and stellar systems.
Szofia explained that, in her 4D world, all the vegetables were destined to be lined up in large industrial-scale plantations as identical row crops all the same height and width, repeatedly sprayed with chemical fertilizers and growth hormones, trimmed, pruned, weeded, staked and harvested. "It's one gigantic and incredibly boring monoculture," Szofia moaned, and she got a bit teary-eyed describing the fate from which she had escaped.
Periodically, Szofia would flit in and out of 4D in order to "borrow" (a term that she liked to use) one electronic appliance or another. “Word up,” she told me, with some exasperation at my ignorance of local customs. “Liberating other people's assets” was something everybody did on planet Earth, she assured me, to a greater or lesser degree. There are big crooks and little crooks, big rackets and little rackets, she explained to me. The whole planet was just mafias all the way up and mafias all the way down. She said that the big crooks own all the financial institutions, manufacturing, medical, entertainment and communication industries and they, in turn, own all the crooked politicians. The little crooks then emulate what the bigger crooks do just on a smaller local level. Then the big crooks blame the little crooks for making everyone's life miserable, thus distracting everyone from what the bigger crooks are up to.
“Some folks got cheese, and some folks got no cheese, but everything's a hustle. Are you down with that?” she lectured me as she lightly patted my head like I was a slow learner.
Szofia “liberated” a smart phone for me to hold in front of me and to "network" with. I explained to her that I didn't have any friends to “network” with nor did I have anything I wanted to 'share' with quasi-intelligent 3Ds. Szofia replied impatiently that it was crucial for me to walk around with my face to the phone whether I used it or not. If I didn't do face time with the phone, she assured me, I would stand out like the proverbial “pink carrot,” even more so than I usually did.
Moreover, she told me, with a coy smile, that if I didn't have any “friends” to network with, then I could always send text messages to her!
When I told Szofia that it made no sense for me to send text messages to anyone standing right next to me, she huffed that I was hopelessly ineducable and it would serve me right if the police caught me and pounded me into pesto sauce. "Be cool, okay?"
But how could I be cool, I replied to her, when I was simulating a warm-blooded mammal, not a reptile?
“Never mind! Ne-ver MIND!” she uttered in exasperation.
The life of a fugitive was not easy. Szofia, in her 3D configuration, still required some shelter from the elements as well as periodic opportunities to sunbathe, hydrate and compost.
It was also necessary to curb my own exposure to the intoxicating atmospheric, ground and water pollution that permeated the local environment. Consequently, for the preservation of our health, we entered various business and public establishments after they had closed. Szofia assured me that "squatting" was as much a local custom as shoplifting, and that it was nothing to be concerned about.
Our modus operandi (as Szofia called it) was that, after dark, she would siphon herself into the fourth dimension and walk into a congenial establishment like a flower shop or garden store. As she unlocked a back door from the inside, I would emit a bio-electric impulse and disable the primitive security systems. Szofia would then twist one leaf of every plant to verify that they were real and not some Brancher surveillance device planted in the plant stores.
Every night, before retiring, Szofia would (for “fun and relaxation,” she said) spend hours with her digital devices launching DDOS attacks on politicians and on pornographic websites, stealing and disseminating the identities of identity thieves, crashing the web portals of banks and government agencies, posting highly provocative anonymous comments at on-line newspapers, and unliking thousand of businesses on social media world-wide. Then, cheerily exhausted with her handiwork, Szofia would curl up under a grow light and vegetate through the night.
But no matter how hard we tried to "lie low" (as Szofia put it), our notoriety grew. We became regular topics of discussion on the so-called "talk shows" and the "evening news." Watching on Szofia's liberated communication devices, we viewed terrorism experts circularly interviewing other terrorism experts, and journalists circularly interviewing journalists who circularly interviewed the terrorism experts who had been interviewed by other terrorism experts.
They all had these supremely self-confident expressions, unblinking eyes, perfect complexions and carefully coiffed hair. They talked about how they knew what Hugo Nash was "up to," what my tactics were, where I was likely to "strike" next, how they were "hot on my trail” and how I would be "brought to justice" in a body bag.
This was particularly odd because I was already, in a real sense, living in a body bag.
A few times, my "ex-wife" - that is, the real Hugo Nash's ex-wife - was interviewed by reporters. She also had unblinking eyes and a perfect complexion. Szofia watched her interviews and told me in no uncertain terms how unimpressive “my ex-wife” was.
“Boring,” was how Szofia described her and “dumb dee-dumb dumb dumb dumb.”
But I learned something about "myself" from watching my "ex's" interviews. I learned that ‘my former wife,’ once named Carol Nash, now called herself Carol Twuinbargh – the name she used before she had married “me.”
During one interview at her house, my ‘ex-wife,’ Carol, denied that she had had any idea about her ex-husband's criminal proclivities. But, she disclosed confidentially (to everyone who was watching on television), that she always thought that Hugo Nash had led a secret life, that he always was up to no good and that he spent far too much time playing computer games, watching television sports, viewing TickleTockle videos and drinking beer. And, no, Carol (the former Mrs. Hugo Nash) had never noticed her ex-husband's odd-looking non-opposing thumbs and upside-down palms-- but, come to think of it, did he, perhaps, wear his wedding ring upside down? But who really remembered because, you know, men, are very peculiar that way!
During one of my ex-wife's interviews, she was joined on camera by none other than Hugo Nash's daughter – my daughter!!! Yes, my own daughter, “Jenny,” was the brown-haired girl whose photograph I had found in Hugo Nash's wallet only a mere four weeks earlier! Oh, Omphalalala!
But Szofia was even less impressed with “my daughter” than with my wife.
“So that little runt is your pseudo-spawn?” Szofia snorted. “Maybe you should leave your replicating twin in the Mezzanine, Hugh, so he doesn't reproduce again, eh?”
I watched in complete horror as these humanoids – yes, my double's own genetic family – disclosed to everyone the most private aspects of their lives. That was most un-five dimensional, because we plasmoidics value our privacy very highly! In this strange 3D world, however, privacy seemed to count for nothing. Everyone was a voyeur or an extrovert, and all of the governments and big businesses were harvesting and archiving everyone's personal habits and information all the time. Nobody seemed to care!
So, to my shock, there was Jenny, my daughter, bawling with reddened eyes and arms outstretched to the camera - yes, she was wearing large 'designer' kitchen mittens, too! - sighing for "Daddy" to come home and to give himself up... so that she and her mommy could collect the reward money!
With the reward they would receive for "turning Daddy in," Hugo Nash's own "daughter" said she could buy more fashion-ware such as rainbow colored and diamond-studded Vendi and Gucci oven gloves to add to her collection along with the red ones she was wearing during the interview! Oh, and she also wanted the reward money - the reward for capturing me, her erstwhile father - so she could buy front-row tickets to the latest Taylor Swift concert, throw lots of cool parties for her friends, and start her own social media channel where she could recommend sneakers and dance steps and music videos.
"So, let me show you my latest version of 'Doing the Pudge!'" cooed Jenny to the television cameras. "One and a-two and a-three... "
She proceeded to dip and pitch and kick her feet out from side to side, singing lyrics softly to herself while bouncing, slightly off-balance, and fanning her hands and knees in a way that resembled a "Roaring Twenties" flapper dancing the Charleston!
"Do the Dad-dy Pudge! Do the Dad-dy Pudge! Everybody's Daddy gotta do the Pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pu-pudge!"
“Oɥ ɯʎ ƃɐɐɐʍʍp' ʍɥɐʇ ɐ loooooosǝɹ¡”1 groaned Szofia watching the televised interview with ‘my daughter’ while standing upside down on her head.
There were more revelations during that television interview with Jenny (my "daughter!"). Jenny patted the head of an animal, a little dog. Yes, it was the mysterious dog with the white fur whose picture I had also found in Hugo Nash's wallet! During the interview, "my daughter" (who looked like she was about Szofia's size and age, give or take 78,238 years) was chastising her pet: “Fluffy, stop barking! Fluffy, don't pee on the cameraman! Fluffy, go back in the house! Fluf-fy!!!!” The whole while, Fluffy ignored her and barked and peed all over the cameraman.
Szofia watched these scenes while standing on her head and said it was so hysterically funny that she might barf.
On another television program, the reporters actually interviewed Szofia's adopted parents – that is, the people she had adopted.
They seemed like a very nice elderly couple who apparently made a living selling marijuana cupcakes, home-brewed kombucha and recycled compostable condoms. They thought Szofia was a Hungarian orphan who they may have adopted, but they were not too sure exactly when, maybe two or six or fifteen years ago. But she might have been just a street kid who dropped in from time to time to smoke some weed. Which was okay with them, because they believed in peace and loved everyone and everybody regardless who they were. She had green hair you say? School grades? Well, they were not sure about that. Whether she studied or not was alright with them - they just wanted the "kids" to be "free range," so to speak, because "the children," and so forth.
Szofia laughed so hard she could barely breath and said while upside-down, “∀ɥɥɐɥɐɐɥɥɥɐɥɥɥɥɐɥ' ɐɥɥɥɥɐɥɐɥɥɐɥɥɐɥɥ˙˙˙˙ ɐɥɥɥɐɥɐɥɥɥɐ˙˙˙˙˙ Oɥ' I,ɯ ƃoᴉuƃ ʇo dnʞǝ' ɐɐɥɥɐɥɥɐɥɥɐɥɥ¡”2
Well Szofia might have been delighted by all of this nonsense, but I felt totally alienated; which, I guess, was normal, because I was an alien.
Among the strangest events I watched, however, was the "news conference" that the "President" of the local dominant political entity hosted one day for television reporters.
For the sake of my research, I begged Szofia to stop "channel-surfing" for a few minutes so that I could watch it closely on one of Szofia's liberated smart devices.
[Introduction by off-camera person]: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
Good Evening.
My fellow Americans; I have called this press conference to update the American People about our efforts to keep your children and loved ones safe. Let me be clear: no one is in any danger and your families and retirement accounts are perfectly safe. However, eternal vigilance is the price of the free market system. And, things could be worse, like when my uncle in World War I was shot down by the Russians while flying an F35 stealth biplane and was eaten alive with chopsticks by communist Chinese cannibals who, as you know, had invaded Japan and dropped atomic bombs on Berlin, Paris and San Francisco.
I am joined tonight by the Vice President, the Speaker of the House; the Senate Majority Leader; the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; all the members of the Federal Reserve Board; the leaders of the EU, NATO, the World Bank and the IMF; Prince Harry and Meghan Markle; Pope Francis; the chairs of the New York and NASDAQ Stock Exchanges; the Directors of the CIA, DIA, FBI, NSA, BATF, MLB, AFL, NBA, WTF, IMO; Beyonce, Dua Lipa, Drake, Ariande Grande, the Boston Philharmonic and Ed Sheeran; all of the Kardashian family; the winners of this year's World Series; the New York Knicks basketball team; Stormy Daniels; Homer Simpson; and all of the Muppets to show our unity and resolve in these circumstances.
It is important for the American People to understand that the events of recent weeks confirm that this country continues to be vulnerable to evil, freedom-hating, child-porn peddling criminals. Although we have the situation under control, the terrorist currently roaming the country, Hugo Nash, is but one member of a larger sleeper cell. These evil operatives are well-trained, highly dangerous and, like all sleeper cells, spend a lot of their time sleeping. So, folks, if you see someone who seems to be spending an inordinate amount of time sleeping, do not attempt to wake or apprehend this person yourself, but immediately call 911 and have the sleeper awakened by professional special forces teams.
Huey, Hugh, HUGH, dammit, are you listening to me??? Pay attention, okay? I've got more important things to say than this guy! So, look, Hugh... HUGH! C'mon, don't take this stuff so seriously. Pure farm fertilizer! Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...
In the interest of protecting The Rule of Law, Energy Independence, Good Jobs and the American Way, and in furtherance of some of our constitutional values, I am declaring today a state of emergency by which the Bill of Rights will be indefinitely suspended, along with the right of Habeas Corpus. The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th Amendments of the Bill of Rights will be subject to reinterpretation by a secret panel of the FISA Court. In order to safeguard your privacy, until further notice, I am, by executive order, retroactively authorizing 24/7 harvesting of the Internet, the Web, all social networks, all phone conversations, the Post Office, all electronic banking, all digital medical records and surveillance of all hotel and residential bedrooms.
Additionally, I have ordered the forced sale of the non-American and highly profitable media TickleTockle because they out-compete us and because they won't share its data harvest with our secret surveillance agencies. I have further authorized the use of armed artificially intelligent drones programmed to liquidate on sight terrorists, political malcontents and drivers who exceed the speed limit.
I want to reassure the American People that these measures are undertaken solely for the purpose of preserving intellectual property rights, as well as The Rule of Law that we hold so precious because the American Way of Life is not negotiable, and that means more fracking, more nuclear power and leaky shale oil pipelines, so just get over it. Meanwhile, I have ordered our brave men and women of the armed forces to liberate all nations world-wide that do not have any weapons of mass destruction and that have any petroleum, uranium, water, gold, nickel, copper, bauxite resources, and/or have gone off, will go off, or conceivably are thinking about going off the US Dollar as their reserve currency.
The Amer-i-can Pee-Pole, the evil free-dumb hating Hugo Nashhhhh..... Barf! C'mon, Hughey, baby, can we watch something more interesting than this, you know, like, what's on the gardening channel, huh?
Or maybe there's some old 'Leaf it to Beaver' reruns? The Tree Stooges? C'mon, Hughey baby, lighten up, okey dokey?
Although no direct links with China, North Korea, Iran, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Julian Assange or Bolivia have been uncovered so far, we are determined to find them; and we have cautioned that all options are on the table if we determine that any of these non-free-worlders seek to interfere with our economic exploitation interests.
Because this Hugo Nash character might also be a vector for a dangerous and highly contagious virus we ourselves created, we have implemented at warped speed a public-private partnership that will, with absolute immunity from liability regardless of disabling or fatal side-effects, develop overnight, with absolutely no laboratory or field testing, a thrice monthly mandatory MRNA vaccine regimen to immunize everyone from the illness we haven't yet identified, but which will boost our stock markets with every booster shot we require you to get.
HUGH! I could write a speech like this! Good gawd, Hugh, its all about jo-obs, the Amer-i-can waaay, the rule of laaaw, cold slaw, mothers-in-law, lawdy law daw... Bor-ing! Duuh, let's just round up the usual suspects, Allons enfants de la Patria... Play it again, Sam! Hoo-ah!
Duuuh, Hugh, can you just shut this junk off already? HUGH, are you listening to me? What a bunch of hooey, Hughie, I'm going to go hang out under a grow light and smoke some weed, okay? Want some? Yo?
By executive order, I have also exercised my unconstitutional prerogative to authorize Israel, our close ally and major reelection campaign contributor, to kill another 30,000 or so Gazan women and children for thinking that from the River to the Sea, Palestine must be free. I have also directed the Pentagon to immediately transfer the entire Sixth and Seventh Fleet to the government of Ukraine, along with several nuclear aircraft carriers, the entire U.S. Marine Corps, the Starship Enterprise and 700 trillion dollars, to be used only for humanitarian purposes like building bio-warfare laboratories, blowing up undersea gas pipelines, triggering a nuclear world war, funding proxy armies and terrorist attacks on civilians in Russia and Syria.
So, mindful of the need to create competition for low-paying jobs, protect us from the Basket of Deplorables while promoting American style uni-party democracy, increase defense industry profits, preserve portions of the Constitution and some of the Bill of Rights, as we choose to interpret it, I remind you that, so long as you have nothing to hide… in your past or on your cell phone or on your computer… then you have nothing to fear...except us... and one another... and who or whatever might be lurking under your bed or in your closet... or what's in the darkest recesses of your own mind.
Thank you, God bless those who matter, and don't forget to go shopping!
Szofia had been chattering throughout the President's speech until the very end when, uncharacteristically, she suddenly blanched a lighter shade of green. She pointed a tattooed finger at the screen. “Oh my gawd," she groaned. "They're here!!”
Szofia began to siphon herself back and forth between 4 and 3D, as though she could not make up her mind which dimension to be in.
“It's them,” she repeated.
She pointed her shaking finger at some shadowy figures wearing dark sunglasses and standing in the background near the red curtains behind the president's teleprompter.
I looked, but I saw nothing amiss. “... Szofia, those must just be the President's cabinet and security team...”
“No they're not. They're BRANCHERS! They can siphon back and forth like I can, but if you look closely, you can see the shadows of an extra dimensionality just behind the other three. It's the way they stand, the way they walk. It's the shiftiness in their eyes even through the sunglasses. See how seedy they look? I can almost smell their spores right through the screen. Look closely, Hugh! See what I mean?"
I stared at the shadowy figures.
Indeed, I did see the fourth dimensional shadow. And these men with the dark sunglasses certainly did look seedy. Could Szofia have been right? The posse of the Branch might well have arrived!
And was there something else, perhaps? A trace of yet another dimension beyond the fourth? Although I didn't smell any alien spores like Szofia had smelled, was there just a faint trace of a hint of a whiff... of transuranic methane and ignoble gases?
Szofia was already headed out the door. She grabbed me by the arm. “Drop everything,” she begged me. “We gotta get out of here!”
We did.
The street was dark and wet. The streetlights cast our furtive shadows on the brick walls of the city.
We walked fast, almost running.
Every few blocks, we stopped to test the air - she sniffed for Branch spore and I for the telltale scent of a 5D gaseous life-form.
We both could sense it.
We were not alone.
* * *
[Life Among the Three Dimensionals is a serialized sci-fi novel. Dazed and confused? For earlier chapters click HERE.]
“Oh my gaaawwd, what a looooooser!”
"Ahhahaahhhahhhhah, ahhhhahahhahhahh.... ahhhahahhha..... Oh, I'm going to puke, aahhahhahhahh!"