08-29-2005, 02:20 AM
Here's a short story I wrote for my Mysteries class final exam. It's entitled "Zeeqon5 and the Mysterious Burger". I don't know if I'll make a series of short stories about Zeeqon5 and his friends, but I might. This is the only one so far. It's my first full-length short story, so it's probably not great, but I like it.
_________________________________________________________
It was a chilly day in the city of Klookthrein, on the planet Ploorbatothe. The normally brown sky was overcast with fluffy mauve clouds. Zeeqon5 was walking through the rerkrorn forest outside of town. He was translucent, bloblike and vaguely human shaped, like the majority of the members of the three most intelligent species that lived on the small planet in Andromeda. He was of a bright, vivid green hue, and his golden eyes shifted aimlessly around, watching his surroundings. Above his head, the bright red leaves rustled on the deep blue branches of the rerkrorn trees. He glanced at the ground, and noticed a half-eaten rerkrorn burger sitting on a patch of dark red moss. Curious, he picked it up and examined it. It didn‘t appear to be moldy, and it contained no bodily fluids. ‘Why would someone throw away this perfectly good burger?’ he wondered. He decided to take it to his best friend, Choerton3.
“I HAVE NO CLUE! I'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE!” yelled Choerton3 when he showed the burger to it. Choerton3 was of a different species than Zeeqon5. Its species periodically reproduces asexually, and exchanges genetic material through conjugation, like many species of bacteria on Earth. Choerton3 was a dull shade of yellow, and taller than Zeeqon5.
“Are you sure?” Zeeqon5 asked.
“I SAID I DON’T KNOW! Go ask the Professor or something. Just get it as far away from me as possible!”
Zeeqon5 took its advice and paid Professor Jelko14 a visit. The Professor was short, pudgy, and violently orange. He was busy building a large, complicated apparatus, with heated flasks full of chemicals, which traveled through tubes that led through filters into other flasks. It was quite marvelous to look at. Quietly, Zeeqon5 said “Hello.” The Professor jumped, hit his head on the apparatus, and knocked the whole thing over with a deafening crash.
“I t’ndid od ti!” he shouted, with all the words backwards, as he usually did when startled, frustrated, angry, or feeling any particularly strong emotion. "Oh, Zeeqon5! It's just you! Scared me half to death!"
"Was that thing important?" Zeeqon5 asked. "It looked big and complex and fancy."
"Oh, I was just developing a more efficient way of converting rerkrorn wood into rocket fuel..."
"Oh, okay, so it wasn't important. But this is! Look." He showed the Professor the burger, who got a peculiar expression on his face. "Any idea where this came from?"
"Why does it matter?" he asked. "It doesn't seem important at all!"
"Because there's obviously a food-dropping litterbug on the loose!“ Zeeqon5 shouted. “Whoever it is needs to be punished! So can you help me find out where it came from?"
"Okay, I'll help..." the Professor said, although he seemed reluctant. "First, we should examine the sandwich to determine what restaurant it came from."
"But how do we even know it came from a restaurant?" Zeeqon5 asked. "Shouldn't we just analyze the genetic sequence from the saliva on the burger and compare it to the local database?"
"No! No, that would take too long! Just do what I said! I'm the professor, not you!"
They went into the Professor's kitchen and placed the burger on the table. They stared at it, taking in the details. Then they took it apart and lined up the different ingredients. "Maybe it's from Wethleev46's Bar and Grill. It's got ketar seeds on its bun," Zeeqon5 suggested.
"No," said Professor, "that's a nice expensive restaurant. This patty is spongy. It's obviously fast food."
"Well," I said. "There's only four fast food restaurants in town who use ketar seeds: Girikk12's Grill, Putarp432's Restaurant, Mirijuq Brothers' Quick Meals, and O'Riley's Burgers."
"O'Riley's is disgusting,” he said. “That Earth creature is absolutely nuts. I hear they’re deporting him back to the Milky Way next month. Honestly, he puts bits of picklebugs in his patties! But there’s no picklebugs in this patty as far as I can tell, so it can't be from O'Riley's.”
“True. But he did bring those ‘tomato’ things from Earth. ‘Ketchup’ is tasty. Speaking of which, this patty has ketchup on it,” Zeeqon5 noted. “That eliminates Mirijuq Brothers’. Mirijuq Brothers‘ is too cheap for ketchup.”
"Hmm... I just had a thought," said the Professor. He left the room, and came back a minute later with a ruler. He measured the thickness of the patty. “This patty is 20 blifs thick." (20 blifs is approximately 1 cm.) "Girikk12’s patties are only 16. That means this is from Putarp432’s Restaurant.”
“Hey, Choerton3 goes there a lot..." noted Zeeqon5. "Let’s go ask the waitress if she remembers who ordered this patty.”
They went to Putarp432’s Restaurant. The average height, orange, apparently bored waitress was serving food to people seated in small blue bludglups. (Bludglups are gooey bloblike objects made from processed rerkrorn sap; plornin, which is to Ploorbatothe what water is to Earth; and various other chemicals. Bludglups are used for sitting, sleeping, storage and refrigeration, and various other purposes.) Zeeqon5 and the Professor approached her with the burger. “May I take your orders?” she asked.
“No thanks,” Zeeqon5 said. “We’re looking for a food-dropping maniac. Do you remember who ordered this patty?”
"I'm very busy," she said. "I don't have time for this."
"But we need to know! Please, just look at it!" begged Zeeqon5.
"Come back later," she said, and went back to work.
"Okay, fine. We'll go to City Hall to compare the genetic sequence in the saliva to the profile bank," said Zeeqon5.
"Can't we just wait and come back here later?" said the Professor.
"No!" said Zeeqon5. "We need to catch this insane criminal before they strike again!"
Zeeqon5 and the Professor went to City Hall, a massive building made of stone of an even brighter green than Zeeqon5. "We just go in, put a sample of the saliva in the machine, and wait. It's not that hard," said Zeeqon5.
"No, it really is hard!" said the Professor. "You have to fill out a million forms first while standing on your head! Now let's go home."
"I think you're still afraid of your ex-wife, and that's why you don't want to go in," said Zeeqon5. "Stop being such a baby. We're not even going into the wing she works in. Now let's go in." He was about to push open the door, when he heard a crash and shouts coming from across the street. He turned around, and saw a tall pink man lying on the ground. He ran across the street to help. He was severely injured and leaking the gooey contents of his arm onto the ground. "What happened?" asked Zeeqon5.
"I was just walking down the street," the man said, "and suddenly a rock hits me hard in the arm and knocks me over!"
"I'll call for help," said Zeeqon5. He dialed the hospital on his telecommunication wristband. "They're on their way. Now I have to go. I have a criminal to catch!" He ran back across the street to where the Professor was standing. There was a sign on the door in crude handwriting,
CLOSeD UNtIL
NeXT TUeSDAY
"Well, they're closed," said the Professor. "I guess we can't go in."
"Closed?" said Zeeqon5. "But they can't be closed now! We have a madman to stop! This is horrible!” He sighed. “Well, maybe the restaurant isn't so busy now. Let's go back." They went back to Putarp432's Restaurant and approached the waitress again.
"It's you again," said the waitress. "I have time now. Give me that burger and I'll see if I can remember who ordered it." She examined it. “Well-done patty, extra sauce, no pickles... Well, two people that I remember ordered burgers like this recently. There was an man with a big bushy mustache, and Choerton3 orders this a lot.”
“Of course! Let’s go, Professor!” Zeeqon5 exclaimed. They ran to Choerton3’s home, and found him looking thoughtfully at a hologram of an elderly couple on a large, pearly white park bludglup.
“Choerton3!” Zeeqon5 shouted. “Are you absolutely sure you don’t remember this patty?”
“I’VE NEVER SEEN IT! GET IT AWAY!” he screamed.
“I think you have!” Zeeqon5 said. “Because the waitress at Putarp432’s Restaurant said you ordered it! What’s more, you’ve been screaming at me whenever I bring the patty near you!”
“But it’s not mine, I swear!" cried Choerton3. "I’ve been screaming at you to get it away because I’m... I’m...”
“You’re?”
“I’M ON A DIET! There, I said it! I haven’t eaten one of those patties in a week!” Choerton3 seemed proud of his achievement, yet at the same time was barely keeping himself from grabbing the burger and swallowing it.
“Hey, Professor,” Zeeqon5 said. “Didn’t the waitress say the other guy who ordered it had a big bushy mustache?”
“Yes,” he said nervously. “Why?”
“Because nobody on Ploorbatothe has any hair!” Zeeqon5 exclaimed.
“What about O’Riley?” noted the Professor. “He has a mustache.”
“True,” Zeeqon5 said, “but he would never throw away a half-eaten patty. He’d sell it! Let’s go back to the restaurant!” Zeeqon5, The Professor, and Choerton3 went back to Putarp432’s Restaurant and approached the waitress again.
“Excuse me,” Zeeqon5 said, “but I believe you said somebody with a mustache ordered this burger?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Could you imagine that man without a mustache?” Zeeqon5 asked.
She closed her eyes and concentrated. “Violently orange, short...” She opened her eyes. “Just like him!” she said, pointing at the Professor.
“Professor? It was you?” Zeeqon5 said, shocked at this discovery.
“Yes! It was me! I’m yrros!” he cried. “I wore the ehcatsum because I was hungry and I didn’t have yna money, so I tried to laets a burger, but then she asked for money, so I ran for ti and hid the evidence!”
"Well, you obviously didn't hide it very well if Zeeqon5 found it," said Choerton3. "Why didn't you just finish eating it?"
"I didn't think of it," said the Professor.
"So you did it. I would never have suspected you, especially after you helped track down the culprit," said Zeeqon5. "And I bet you threw that rock that hurt that man!"
"No! I didn't do that!" said the Professor. "But it was pretty convenient. When you ran across the street to help, I put up the sign that said City Hall was closed."
“Well, you should pay for the burger now,” said Zeeqon5.
“Okay...” said the Professor, and he paid. Zeeqon5 treated the three of them to burgers, and they were delicious. Not as delicious as burgers from Wethleev46's Bar and Grill, but they were fast food, so that was to be expected. They were good nevertheless.
_________________________________________________________
So what do you think?
_________________________________________________________
It was a chilly day in the city of Klookthrein, on the planet Ploorbatothe. The normally brown sky was overcast with fluffy mauve clouds. Zeeqon5 was walking through the rerkrorn forest outside of town. He was translucent, bloblike and vaguely human shaped, like the majority of the members of the three most intelligent species that lived on the small planet in Andromeda. He was of a bright, vivid green hue, and his golden eyes shifted aimlessly around, watching his surroundings. Above his head, the bright red leaves rustled on the deep blue branches of the rerkrorn trees. He glanced at the ground, and noticed a half-eaten rerkrorn burger sitting on a patch of dark red moss. Curious, he picked it up and examined it. It didn‘t appear to be moldy, and it contained no bodily fluids. ‘Why would someone throw away this perfectly good burger?’ he wondered. He decided to take it to his best friend, Choerton3.
“I HAVE NO CLUE! I'VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE!” yelled Choerton3 when he showed the burger to it. Choerton3 was of a different species than Zeeqon5. Its species periodically reproduces asexually, and exchanges genetic material through conjugation, like many species of bacteria on Earth. Choerton3 was a dull shade of yellow, and taller than Zeeqon5.
“Are you sure?” Zeeqon5 asked.
“I SAID I DON’T KNOW! Go ask the Professor or something. Just get it as far away from me as possible!”
Zeeqon5 took its advice and paid Professor Jelko14 a visit. The Professor was short, pudgy, and violently orange. He was busy building a large, complicated apparatus, with heated flasks full of chemicals, which traveled through tubes that led through filters into other flasks. It was quite marvelous to look at. Quietly, Zeeqon5 said “Hello.” The Professor jumped, hit his head on the apparatus, and knocked the whole thing over with a deafening crash.
“I t’ndid od ti!” he shouted, with all the words backwards, as he usually did when startled, frustrated, angry, or feeling any particularly strong emotion. "Oh, Zeeqon5! It's just you! Scared me half to death!"
"Was that thing important?" Zeeqon5 asked. "It looked big and complex and fancy."
"Oh, I was just developing a more efficient way of converting rerkrorn wood into rocket fuel..."
"Oh, okay, so it wasn't important. But this is! Look." He showed the Professor the burger, who got a peculiar expression on his face. "Any idea where this came from?"
"Why does it matter?" he asked. "It doesn't seem important at all!"
"Because there's obviously a food-dropping litterbug on the loose!“ Zeeqon5 shouted. “Whoever it is needs to be punished! So can you help me find out where it came from?"
"Okay, I'll help..." the Professor said, although he seemed reluctant. "First, we should examine the sandwich to determine what restaurant it came from."
"But how do we even know it came from a restaurant?" Zeeqon5 asked. "Shouldn't we just analyze the genetic sequence from the saliva on the burger and compare it to the local database?"
"No! No, that would take too long! Just do what I said! I'm the professor, not you!"
They went into the Professor's kitchen and placed the burger on the table. They stared at it, taking in the details. Then they took it apart and lined up the different ingredients. "Maybe it's from Wethleev46's Bar and Grill. It's got ketar seeds on its bun," Zeeqon5 suggested.
"No," said Professor, "that's a nice expensive restaurant. This patty is spongy. It's obviously fast food."
"Well," I said. "There's only four fast food restaurants in town who use ketar seeds: Girikk12's Grill, Putarp432's Restaurant, Mirijuq Brothers' Quick Meals, and O'Riley's Burgers."
"O'Riley's is disgusting,” he said. “That Earth creature is absolutely nuts. I hear they’re deporting him back to the Milky Way next month. Honestly, he puts bits of picklebugs in his patties! But there’s no picklebugs in this patty as far as I can tell, so it can't be from O'Riley's.”
“True. But he did bring those ‘tomato’ things from Earth. ‘Ketchup’ is tasty. Speaking of which, this patty has ketchup on it,” Zeeqon5 noted. “That eliminates Mirijuq Brothers’. Mirijuq Brothers‘ is too cheap for ketchup.”
"Hmm... I just had a thought," said the Professor. He left the room, and came back a minute later with a ruler. He measured the thickness of the patty. “This patty is 20 blifs thick." (20 blifs is approximately 1 cm.) "Girikk12’s patties are only 16. That means this is from Putarp432’s Restaurant.”
“Hey, Choerton3 goes there a lot..." noted Zeeqon5. "Let’s go ask the waitress if she remembers who ordered this patty.”
They went to Putarp432’s Restaurant. The average height, orange, apparently bored waitress was serving food to people seated in small blue bludglups. (Bludglups are gooey bloblike objects made from processed rerkrorn sap; plornin, which is to Ploorbatothe what water is to Earth; and various other chemicals. Bludglups are used for sitting, sleeping, storage and refrigeration, and various other purposes.) Zeeqon5 and the Professor approached her with the burger. “May I take your orders?” she asked.
“No thanks,” Zeeqon5 said. “We’re looking for a food-dropping maniac. Do you remember who ordered this patty?”
"I'm very busy," she said. "I don't have time for this."
"But we need to know! Please, just look at it!" begged Zeeqon5.
"Come back later," she said, and went back to work.
"Okay, fine. We'll go to City Hall to compare the genetic sequence in the saliva to the profile bank," said Zeeqon5.
"Can't we just wait and come back here later?" said the Professor.
"No!" said Zeeqon5. "We need to catch this insane criminal before they strike again!"
Zeeqon5 and the Professor went to City Hall, a massive building made of stone of an even brighter green than Zeeqon5. "We just go in, put a sample of the saliva in the machine, and wait. It's not that hard," said Zeeqon5.
"No, it really is hard!" said the Professor. "You have to fill out a million forms first while standing on your head! Now let's go home."
"I think you're still afraid of your ex-wife, and that's why you don't want to go in," said Zeeqon5. "Stop being such a baby. We're not even going into the wing she works in. Now let's go in." He was about to push open the door, when he heard a crash and shouts coming from across the street. He turned around, and saw a tall pink man lying on the ground. He ran across the street to help. He was severely injured and leaking the gooey contents of his arm onto the ground. "What happened?" asked Zeeqon5.
"I was just walking down the street," the man said, "and suddenly a rock hits me hard in the arm and knocks me over!"
"I'll call for help," said Zeeqon5. He dialed the hospital on his telecommunication wristband. "They're on their way. Now I have to go. I have a criminal to catch!" He ran back across the street to where the Professor was standing. There was a sign on the door in crude handwriting,
CLOSeD UNtIL
NeXT TUeSDAY
"Well, they're closed," said the Professor. "I guess we can't go in."
"Closed?" said Zeeqon5. "But they can't be closed now! We have a madman to stop! This is horrible!” He sighed. “Well, maybe the restaurant isn't so busy now. Let's go back." They went back to Putarp432's Restaurant and approached the waitress again.
"It's you again," said the waitress. "I have time now. Give me that burger and I'll see if I can remember who ordered it." She examined it. “Well-done patty, extra sauce, no pickles... Well, two people that I remember ordered burgers like this recently. There was an man with a big bushy mustache, and Choerton3 orders this a lot.”
“Of course! Let’s go, Professor!” Zeeqon5 exclaimed. They ran to Choerton3’s home, and found him looking thoughtfully at a hologram of an elderly couple on a large, pearly white park bludglup.
“Choerton3!” Zeeqon5 shouted. “Are you absolutely sure you don’t remember this patty?”
“I’VE NEVER SEEN IT! GET IT AWAY!” he screamed.
“I think you have!” Zeeqon5 said. “Because the waitress at Putarp432’s Restaurant said you ordered it! What’s more, you’ve been screaming at me whenever I bring the patty near you!”
“But it’s not mine, I swear!" cried Choerton3. "I’ve been screaming at you to get it away because I’m... I’m...”
“You’re?”
“I’M ON A DIET! There, I said it! I haven’t eaten one of those patties in a week!” Choerton3 seemed proud of his achievement, yet at the same time was barely keeping himself from grabbing the burger and swallowing it.
“Hey, Professor,” Zeeqon5 said. “Didn’t the waitress say the other guy who ordered it had a big bushy mustache?”
“Yes,” he said nervously. “Why?”
“Because nobody on Ploorbatothe has any hair!” Zeeqon5 exclaimed.
“What about O’Riley?” noted the Professor. “He has a mustache.”
“True,” Zeeqon5 said, “but he would never throw away a half-eaten patty. He’d sell it! Let’s go back to the restaurant!” Zeeqon5, The Professor, and Choerton3 went back to Putarp432’s Restaurant and approached the waitress again.
“Excuse me,” Zeeqon5 said, “but I believe you said somebody with a mustache ordered this burger?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Could you imagine that man without a mustache?” Zeeqon5 asked.
She closed her eyes and concentrated. “Violently orange, short...” She opened her eyes. “Just like him!” she said, pointing at the Professor.
“Professor? It was you?” Zeeqon5 said, shocked at this discovery.
“Yes! It was me! I’m yrros!” he cried. “I wore the ehcatsum because I was hungry and I didn’t have yna money, so I tried to laets a burger, but then she asked for money, so I ran for ti and hid the evidence!”
"Well, you obviously didn't hide it very well if Zeeqon5 found it," said Choerton3. "Why didn't you just finish eating it?"
"I didn't think of it," said the Professor.
"So you did it. I would never have suspected you, especially after you helped track down the culprit," said Zeeqon5. "And I bet you threw that rock that hurt that man!"
"No! I didn't do that!" said the Professor. "But it was pretty convenient. When you ran across the street to help, I put up the sign that said City Hall was closed."
“Well, you should pay for the burger now,” said Zeeqon5.
“Okay...” said the Professor, and he paid. Zeeqon5 treated the three of them to burgers, and they were delicious. Not as delicious as burgers from Wethleev46's Bar and Grill, but they were fast food, so that was to be expected. They were good nevertheless.
_________________________________________________________
So what do you think?