creepy and hatboy – the borgonomicon

the creepy of no-project-waity

today i finally flipped my floppy disk.
that is, i’m sick of waiting for hatboy to finish his project of big-borg-cube-buildy. sure, he still denies that’s his project, but i refuse to believe him.
anyway, i’m going to get my own cube.
i thought about my green whirly whirly thing. i could jump into it and hope it takes me to a cubeyard, or some other place of borg-buildy, but somehow i don’t think that would be a very reliable thing to do.
besides, i’ve found a way which looks like it would be a whole lot more fun.
but first, i’d need to borrow some tools.
i knocked on hatboy’s garage. “hey, hatboy? can i borrow your spiderman outfit?”

wednesday’s advice

“you’ll need a wand.”
“a harry potter wand?”
“for you? i doubt it. try a stick of licorice. that’s more your style.”
“not a bad solution, if i can keep hatboy from smelling it. otherwise i’d lose it mid-ritual to one of his yoinks.”
“yoinks?”
“it’s a sound he makes when he steals stuff from me.”
“oh. well, maybe you could wrap it in something he doesn’t like.”
“vege-meat burgers?”
“perfect.”
“done. anything else i should get?”
“well, you’re going to need your own grimoire.”
“and where do i find one of these grimwhatsits things?”
“any book store will have one. you’re going to need a special one of course. one suited to your intellect, combined with your obvious super-magical-sidekick powers.”
“of course.”
“just ask for anything by dr. seuss.”

ramen noodle

we eat ramen for dinner.
ninjagirl and i watch the friday night rugby game while hatboy fiddles about in his garage. most of our former roomies and squatters hated rugby. ninjagirl can’t get enough. she squeals every time a try is scored and bounces over the coffee table to get closer to the screen.
sometimes she abuses the referee.
“are you blind!? stupid man! you have ping pong balls for eyes!”
at half-time, we sip our coca-cola goodness and discuss the game’s progression.
ninjagirl always asks questions.
“who are we going for, again? what’s the score? and why do they always pass backward?”

the back of the fridge

searching for spooky paraphernalia, i went where no man has gone before.
i trekked to where the stars were still unborn.
i boldly went where hatboy refused to gnaw.
in other words, i shifted the half-empty bottles of mouldy sauces and searched the dreaded twilight zone that is the back of our fridge.
i found a jar with no identification marks on it and a use-by date set somewhere in the negatives.
my super-sidekick shuffled into the kitchen as i worked. he looked at the jar with interest. “what you got there? is it edible?”

goals and stuff

i wandered back to the stairs to my room, my arms full of stuff from the back of the fridge. behind me, hatboy munched on whatever was in the jar of unnameable evil.
he made nummy noises.
at least, i think they were nummy noises.
he didn’t scream or anything. i didn’t turn around to check his health.
ninjagirl sat on the bottom stair and i had to squeeze past her.
“creepy,” she said. “don’t you have any goals in life other than to weird people out?”
i thought about it for a minute.
after a while, i nodded. “i want to be the voodoo king of the underworld.”

the voodoo king of the underworld

i dropped the jars, cans, bottles and bags onto the bed beside the spiderman suit, the vege-meat-burgered-up wand of licorice doom, the cat in the hat grimoire, and tiki tiki.
“now,” i said to tiki tiki. “let’s see what we’ve got here.”
tiki tiki grinned at me. he did that a lot.
skulls usually do.
i looked into the first jar. it looked evil.
the second jar was just as bad as the first. one of the bottles had a yellow lid. its contents were a murky brown with flecks of black and green swimming like bubbles of evil in it.
after taking a complete inventory, i read my grimoire.
i didn’t understand the bit about the new hat old hat, so i decided to skip the ritual of the cat.
instead, i just threw all the contents of my collection into an old cookie jar.
then, on my wall, i drew a very lovely imitation of a pentagram.
sure, it only had three sides, but it still looked pretty spooky.

biscuit rituals

the pentagram hung on my wall for ages.
it didn’t look like it was doing anything.
i read my grimoire at it.
nothing happened.
i guess it didn’t like dr. seuss.
i tried some roald dahl.
it didn’t like that either.
finally, i read from the back of a biscuit packet and the pentagram burst into flame.
tiki tiki grinned at it.
“wow,” i said. “that’s pretty slippy.”

pentagram of nine

she fell through the pentagram with a heavy thump.
“what th-”
i helped her to her feet. “hello,” i said.
she raised her fist at me and a couple of wires wiggled at me from her wrist. i shook them. it seemed the polite thing to do.
she frowned and snatched her tubes away. “where the hell are we? you will return this drone to the collective immediately,” she demanded. “and what did you do with borg cube of five?”
“hatboy!” i called through the door. “forget your stupid project, i’ve finished it for you!”
“what are you screaming about?” he yelled back as my guest studied me with her laser eye.
“i’ve got us a borg cube.”
the drone scowled at me.
“well, okay, i don’t quite have the cube yet. but i have a borg drone and i’m pretty sure she’d love to show us her cube!”
“creepy, have you gone nuts?” he trotted into my room and blinked at her. “who’s this?”
“this, my super-sidekick pal, is seven of nine. seven of nine, this is hatboy.”
his eyes did this real funky goggly thing. “she’ll assimilate us! she’ll do dastardly things to our immune system!”
i shook my head and smiled at seven, who was glaring at hatboy. “don’t worry about him. he’s just mad because i summoned the borg and he couldn’t.”

your biologoical and technological integrity won’t be added to our own

“creepy, are you mad? this is a borg drone! they could be on their way here this minute! they’ll destroy the world!”
“no they won’t. they’ll just mess it up a little. no one will notice.” i looked up at seven, who was busy assimilating most of my bedroom. “hey, seven. you’re not going to destroy the world, are you?”
she shook her head and assimilated my newest vampire general. after a second, she unassimilated it. “this is not worthy of my assimilation,” she said. “what? your planet? destroy it? of course not. we will not destroy your world.”
i grinned at my super-sidekick. “see?”
“we’ll just assimilate it.”
“oh, dear skanky god of horrendous horror-filled horrorstuff!” hatboy groaned. “what have you done this time? we’re going to be assimilated in our beds!”
“no, not you two,” seven growled. “you two most definitely will not be assimilated.” she pressed a finger to my bookshelf. “when was the last time you dusted, creepy?”
“dusted?”

borg cube of five

we used the green whirly thing in space and time to zip back to seven’s cube.
hatboy didn’t want to go, but i told him he’d enjoy it.
that didn’t work, so i told him there’d probably be all sorts of wacky technogadgetry for him to filch.
he grabbed a shopping bag and pushed a taser into his belt. “okay, fool. let’s go.”
“please don’t say that,” i said. “you don’t have the gold chains for it.”
the cube was very green.

borg festival

“why did we bring them here, seven of nine?”
“they left this drone no choice, fifteen of twenty-three. their green whirly thing was this drone’s only ticket back.”
“seven, they’re not supposed to be here unless they’re getting assimilated, and there’s no way the queen would like it if we started assimilating super-sidekicks.”
“we know that! what else could we do with them?”
“we could’ve zapped them with something zappy.”
“just try zapping them. they’ve got zap-proof underpants!”
“damn their super-sidekick cleverness. very well, we might as well find a room to put them in. don’t leave them in the lobby, they’ll steal our pot plants.”
“this drone sent bellboy of three to get their luggage.”
“bellboy of three? that drone’s a bit intolerant of unassimilated inferior species, isn’t it?”
“yeah? so? we don’t want them to enjoy themselves.”
“seven, lighten up. invite them to the festival. they might as well taste some local hospitality while they’re here.”

borgo

the borg festival was slippy.
it began with a parade in which borg of all species shuffled down the central corridor of borg cube of five, dressed in a wide variety of costumes.
seven waddled past in a yellow duck costume.
after the parade, we followed a group of nines to a circus.
inside the big tent, borg drones juggled photon grenades while others performed mad acrobatics high above them.
hatboy was too nervous to enjoy the borg clowns, but i giggled until it hurt as borgo the clown of six produced bunch after bunch of assimilated flowers for the audience.
he did a slight stumble to his left which could have been some kind of borg stunt.
he tossed a bucket of water into the crowd, who all flinched from the wet stuff. audience of eight screamed, “beware the rusty-maker!” and the rest of the borg giggled as the water turned out to be glittery nanoprobes.
then borgo flicked his wrist and a green plastic toy appeared in his hand like magic. it was a strap-on borg eye-implant.
he tossed it at me. “enjoy,” he snapped, in clipped borg speech. “you will comply.”
i complied.

don’t make me get implants

as we wandered out from the big tent, hatboy pointed at the assimilated lions, tigers, and other unidentifiable assimilated beasts who lounged about outside the tent. “look!” he cried. “don’t you see the horror?”
“is that what it is? i thought it was an elephant.”
my strap-on eye implant kept falling off. i looked around for something to stick it to my head with.
a nailgun gleamed in the green light of the borg ship’s interior.
probably not a good idea.
“it’s been assimilated, creepy! if we’re not careful, we’ll end up like that!”
i pointed out that the elephant didn’t look at all annoyed. it wasn’t even chained up. i told him all about the freedom of assimilation. “you won’t have to worry about how poor nicole feels now that tom so cruelly left her a couple of hundred million dollars and a condo in miami.”
“that’s not the point,” he said.
a borg drone ambled up to us. he waved a cup of assimilated coloury stuff of much-creepy-intriguey at us.
“keep back!” hatboy howled. “you will not give me those implants of much hatboy free-will-destructy!”
i told him to calm down and took the cup from the drone. i plucked a coloured thing from the cup’s generous belly and sniffed it.
“be careful,” hatboy hissed. “it could be some kind of weird and tasteless assimilation bug. it might drill into your hand. sprouty bits will erupt from your flesh!”
i bit into it. “failing that,” i said. “it could just be assimilated candy-coated strawberry fondue. want one?”

plastic eyepieces and drunken borg simming techniques

we found seven of nine in cargo bay fourteen point three, level twelve.
she was sprawled between three large barrels, apparently regenerating without the aid of a cubicle. eighteen of twenty-three was plopped against the wall and joe of ninety was shivering at the drone’s metal feet, mumbling about his strings.
he looked up as we entered. “you’ll do it, won’t you? you’ll cut our strings!”
“what strings?” i asked.
“these strings which force us to dance. oh, how cruel they make us dance. they force us to do the jitterbug. we don’t want to jitterbug no more. oh, please say you’ll let us free!”
i said i would and he passed out in gratitude.
seven’s eye, the one without the lasery eyepiece of borgy-doom, looked up at me. “oh, god of two,” she said. “please, don’t say we assimilated you!”
i touched my hand to my plastic eyepiece. i had taped it in place with a few strips of gaffa.
good old gaffa.
“we are borg,” i said.
she reached for another cup of whatever had once lived inside the barrels. “now what are we going to do?”
i grinned at her. “we will adapt.”

we love you, man

seven gave us a cup each.
now that we were borg, she said, we might as well all get stinking irrelevent.
hatboy sniffed the drink, shrugged, and downed it in one gulp.
“what the hell,” he said. “when in borg cube of five, do as the borg do.”
i took a sip.
“strawberry smoothie! yum!”
seven threw her borgy arms around my super-sidekick and wiped tears from her eyes. “we love you, drone,” she cried.
he struggled to get free, but she kept him close and breathed fumes into his face.
green borg-like fumes of much no-nice-smelly.
she twisted around to growl at me. “we don’t like you at all, creepy of nine,” she said. “but we love this drone! he’s our bestest, bestest unimatrix buddy ever!”
and then she, too, passed out.
she had a pretty snore.

home is where the whirly thing is

before leaving through the green whirly thing, seven of nine gave us a gift of parting.
it was more a gift of relief that we weren’t really borg drones than anything else.
“this identifies the biological and technological integrity that is the donut terrorist,” she said, handing hatboy a scribbled note on the back of a weeties packet.
he thanked her and she asked him why he put up with me.
he told her about my skills of good-curry-makey.
she said she’d visit us soon.
as we jumped into the green whirly thing, she pointed her finger at me. “you will make us curry. you will comply.”
“it’ll be in the fridge, waiting,” i assured her.
“your proposal is accepted. depart this vessel immediately.”

curry

travelling through the wormhole thingy seems to make my feet dizzy and my head bouncy.
i started on the sauce as soon as i could stumble into the kitchen.
hatboy watched me stir the pot. “this one smells new. what do you call it?”
i sprinkled a few more nanoprobes over the gluggy brown concoction of much-curry-steamy.
“curry of nine.”

Tags: borg, creepy and hatboy, star trek