Szarglopian Cuisine ©2011 Chapter:12
Chapter 12: Terra-Toga Ralley
High on a soft blue slope, under the shade of a miniature Parthenon, a cluster of Terra-Togas gathered about a podium preparing to make an address to an eager and chaotic congregation. The figures were, in a frenzied bustle, sorting out clear graphic plates that looked similar to glass. The plates were animated with tickers, symbols, and holographs that represented the Szarglopian media.
One Szarglopian, her back to the crowd, was hunched over a series of partitions, going over last minute preparations for her speech. She was a meek and ordinary Terra-Toga, according to Szarglopian standards, but her reputation on this planet was half-bête noire, half-icon, and with no doubt galactically-apocalyptic. Her name was Elzwa, and she was the chairman of a special collegiate organization called the Szarglopian Zlib Zoftnans, which interpreted meant: Glopian Life Regals, but for this story they will just be referred to as the Regals. This particular group was here to present an organized rally to raise awareness and stop the consumption of various black-market meats. The most discerning product they were committed to obstruct was none other than Processed Human.
The mob at the stand carried out tedious details such as; attending Elzwa's wardrobe, cleaning the aqua robust leaves on her wreath, placing holograph projectors at each end of the stage, adjusting the drapes on the podium and tapestries of the eaves, shuffling rally-criers back on the top steps, and adjusting a small transparent microphone wire around Elzwa's neck. The scrambling staff began to slither apart when Elzwa rotated toward the rally, and a roaring volley of raspy alien cheers exploded across the campus.
Her thin branchy Szarglopian arms reached up, and she placed her hands on the polished concrete podium. Her well-read eyes looked on with conviction at the chanting snaky humanoids, not revealing the slightest twitch of flattery. After two large holographic projections of her, from the shoulders up, beamed out over the left and right corners of the Parthenon, she began the delivery.
"My friends!" her voice echoed over the mall.
The rumbling chants were still vivacious, but soon began to dwindle, as she continued.
"My friends! You know why we are here today."
A rogue radical scurried across the steps screaming with a holographic picket in his hand. In Szarglopian it read: "EAT MORE WAMBERTS FROM GALOO! HUMANS HAVE SOULS LIKE YOU!"
The student was immediately gripped by the toga and dragged off the steps by gargantuan Terra-Togas.
"This is our fourth annual rally to stop the consumption of human meat, and what has changed?"
The crowd, a veritable earthquake, racked the air with discontented howls.
"Four years on our planet. 5,655 days, and nothing has been done to stop the trade and commerce of human flesh."
Another eruption.
"It's time for us to take action. It's time for us to do what we as Szarglopian's rarely have to do. It is our nature to confide in the higher officials and policies of the galaxy. It is our nature to demonstrate against any immoral practices of our world and that of the galactic order. But I am afraid that our voice and our demonstrations are not enough. No, my friends. We are being beckoned by tens-of-thousands of innocent Earthlings every year to do something. They are obviously incapable, and lacking in the advancements we possess to resolve this insidious and illegal activity. That is why it is going to require all of us to put an end to the nightmare for these poor creatures."
More thunderous cheers, and when they died she continued.
"I want you to watch the following recorded documentation of an interview I recently had with a human that escaped the Zept Meat Processing facility that is currently operating in a secret bowel of our planet. Please remain quiet, and pay attention to my transaction with the being."
The giant holographic images on each side of the venue flickered, and Elzwa's interview began. The Terra-Togas were silent, and the swaying crop of their hammerheads gazed up.
"How long were you in captivity?" the program echoed across the campus.
"I don't know," answered a frail young sobbing human girl. She sat in a small red toga. Her head was shaved, and all the hair of her body had been removed.
"Can I see the tag that's in your ear?" asked Elzwa.
The girl wept silently, and turned her bald head.
Elzwa lifted the blinking metal cone that was stamped into the rim of the human's ear. She looked at the recording device, as if she were addressing the crowd in person.
"Can I see your arms and your neck?"
The girl, although traumatized, was very compliant. Elzwa lifted her limbs and pointed out dashed marks on her skin.
Elzwa paused the program, and spoke into her microphone, "These are the marks the processors apply to the humans before they are sent to the saws."
The program resumed.
"Where did they take you after you were marked?"
"We were," the girl's respiration refluxed. She spoke into a tiny device that translated her speech, "we were taken to an area where they…"
"Go on! You're so brave. Go on!"
"They locked our wrists and our ankles into some cold metal cuffs."
"Were you locked onto a table or a belt of some kind?"
"No we were suspended in a ring."
"Suspended?"
When Elzwa asked the question, the large holograph on the left of the stage changed into a graphed image of a human suspended in a ring almost resembling a crucifixion, with the exception of the ankles being spread apart.
"What then?"
It became more complicated for the girl to relive the scene, but she mustered the strength to continue. "And then we were rushed through a series of tunnels and we went through a strange red room that was full of steam."
The image paused. Elzwa addressed the crowd, "This is to soften the skin for cutting."
It continued.
"Then we were rushed through a giant room."
"How big?"
"There were hundreds of us."
"Hundreds?"
"Yes. The cuffs on our ankles were released."
The image on the left showed the diagram of the human's feet dangling in the ring.
"What happened then?"
"We were being sorted somehow on a track that took us into either an exit at the top, or an exit at the bottom."
"What happened next?"
The girl doubled over in agony as she reminisced.
"It's O.K. You're being so brave. Please, when you feel ready, tell us what happened next."
After a moment, the girl continued, "The next room was the last one." She relapsed as before, but soon found some strength to carry on, but it came out of a frightful lobe and heightened hysteria; the fluctuation of a buckled mouth that dripped with mucus and tears.
"What happened then?" Elzwa asked tenderly.
"There was a laser. They cut us in half!" she burst into a jerking cry.
"Down the middle? At the waist? Where?"
"The waist," the words spit from one of her choked sobs.
The graphed image on the left showed the suspended human run through an open socket like a piece of wood through a band-saw.
"Did they put you to sleep? Did they use some method of killing or numbing you before they began cutting?"
"NO!! NOOOO!!!!" the young victim was beyond her realm of control, and the program stopped.
The crowd was stunned, and a dismal morbid silence seemed to penetrate the lime green sky. After a long moment; a sad suspension-of-disbelief, Elzwa re-approached the podium, wiped her eyes, and went on with her address.
"This girl's name is Kindra Cole McNichol. She is an inhabitant of Earth, and was illegally uprooted from her home and human family by the Marmells of Marmellia, the covert operators of the Zept Processing Facility. Her wrists slipped from the cuffs, and she fell from the ring into a waste slide that emptied into an exterior facility of the processing complex. She was then pushed by a large runner in the discarded bowels, limbs and bones of her fellow human beings into the ocean. The plant keeps a large school of Zeptol Sharks in a contrived bay to get rid of the evidence. How she escaped the sharks, we're not clear on yet, but as you can see, this creature suffered an unbearable trial, and to let this continue, or even worse, continue to buy processed humans, we may as well be assisting these fiends. My fellow Regals! I ask you as a living breathing being, and bearers of your beloved children. Would you let this happen to them? Can we let this insidious and unacceptable practice carry on in the world we love?"
Still stunned from the presentation, in a realm of intake and impregnation of stupefied enlightenment, the campus sat in a warm contemplating breeze, absorbing Elzwa's stone-faced glare in the massive holographs. Hollowed hisses moved the trees and seemed to prelude the Regals, as sonorous rolling waves followed with loud radical expressions of passion and outrage; a deafening collective and thunderous howl.
The cratered ghost of Szarglopia's ringed moon could be seen secretly crouching behind the variation of college structures.
At the back of the rally, in a pointed tower, high in a dark, airy, ivy covered loft that was draped by a tuft of tropical foliage, sat a powerful and devious entity. His name was Beelz, one of Szarglopia's most respected economic advisors. This was the same Terra-Toga that purchased Gabe and the children at the depository. His reputation, stature, and careful demeanor had been rarely challenged by the representatives of Szarglopia, save the Regals. This protective shell that encompassed his existence gave him leisure to maneuver and manipulate the surrounding collegiate and media moguls. But the percussive outbursts and rippling enthusiasm of the masses he was witnessing started to concern the seedy bureaucrat. He turned to an assistant in the shadows and gave some very quiet but particular orders.
"Have my table ready to leave for the compound as soon as you can. Contact the concierge, and inform him that I won't be able to make the Regal Gala. Tell him that I had an urgent call from the Treasurer, and that I had to get away on Intergalactic matters."
"Yes master," a demonic whispering reply came from the dark.
"When you are done with that, contact Szarglo Zept and tell him to maximize production. We may need to execute the emergency evacuation. Notify the Marmellians and have all drone capsules on standby."
The cryptic wrinkled face of the scowling hammerhead turned toward the bright teal and aqua colors of a borealis sunset that seemed to bathe Elzwa the Regal, as her congregation looked on at her with loud loyalty and devotion.
"Go now!" said Beelz to the silhouette behind him.
High on a soft blue slope, under the shade of a miniature Parthenon, a cluster of Terra-Togas gathered about a podium preparing to make an address to an eager and chaotic congregation. The figures were, in a frenzied bustle, sorting out clear graphic plates that looked similar to glass. The plates were animated with tickers, symbols, and holographs that represented the Szarglopian media.
One Szarglopian, her back to the crowd, was hunched over a series of partitions, going over last minute preparations for her speech. She was a meek and ordinary Terra-Toga, according to Szarglopian standards, but her reputation on this planet was half-bête noire, half-icon, and with no doubt galactically-apocalyptic. Her name was Elzwa, and she was the chairman of a special collegiate organization called the Szarglopian Zlib Zoftnans, which interpreted meant: Glopian Life Regals, but for this story they will just be referred to as the Regals. This particular group was here to present an organized rally to raise awareness and stop the consumption of various black-market meats. The most discerning product they were committed to obstruct was none other than Processed Human.
The mob at the stand carried out tedious details such as; attending Elzwa's wardrobe, cleaning the aqua robust leaves on her wreath, placing holograph projectors at each end of the stage, adjusting the drapes on the podium and tapestries of the eaves, shuffling rally-criers back on the top steps, and adjusting a small transparent microphone wire around Elzwa's neck. The scrambling staff began to slither apart when Elzwa rotated toward the rally, and a roaring volley of raspy alien cheers exploded across the campus.
Her thin branchy Szarglopian arms reached up, and she placed her hands on the polished concrete podium. Her well-read eyes looked on with conviction at the chanting snaky humanoids, not revealing the slightest twitch of flattery. After two large holographic projections of her, from the shoulders up, beamed out over the left and right corners of the Parthenon, she began the delivery.
"My friends!" her voice echoed over the mall.
The rumbling chants were still vivacious, but soon began to dwindle, as she continued.
"My friends! You know why we are here today."
A rogue radical scurried across the steps screaming with a holographic picket in his hand. In Szarglopian it read: "EAT MORE WAMBERTS FROM GALOO! HUMANS HAVE SOULS LIKE YOU!"
The student was immediately gripped by the toga and dragged off the steps by gargantuan Terra-Togas.
"This is our fourth annual rally to stop the consumption of human meat, and what has changed?"
The crowd, a veritable earthquake, racked the air with discontented howls.
"Four years on our planet. 5,655 days, and nothing has been done to stop the trade and commerce of human flesh."
Another eruption.
"It's time for us to take action. It's time for us to do what we as Szarglopian's rarely have to do. It is our nature to confide in the higher officials and policies of the galaxy. It is our nature to demonstrate against any immoral practices of our world and that of the galactic order. But I am afraid that our voice and our demonstrations are not enough. No, my friends. We are being beckoned by tens-of-thousands of innocent Earthlings every year to do something. They are obviously incapable, and lacking in the advancements we possess to resolve this insidious and illegal activity. That is why it is going to require all of us to put an end to the nightmare for these poor creatures."
More thunderous cheers, and when they died she continued.
"I want you to watch the following recorded documentation of an interview I recently had with a human that escaped the Zept Meat Processing facility that is currently operating in a secret bowel of our planet. Please remain quiet, and pay attention to my transaction with the being."
The giant holographic images on each side of the venue flickered, and Elzwa's interview began. The Terra-Togas were silent, and the swaying crop of their hammerheads gazed up.
"How long were you in captivity?" the program echoed across the campus.
"I don't know," answered a frail young sobbing human girl. She sat in a small red toga. Her head was shaved, and all the hair of her body had been removed.
"Can I see the tag that's in your ear?" asked Elzwa.
The girl wept silently, and turned her bald head.
Elzwa lifted the blinking metal cone that was stamped into the rim of the human's ear. She looked at the recording device, as if she were addressing the crowd in person.
"Can I see your arms and your neck?"
The girl, although traumatized, was very compliant. Elzwa lifted her limbs and pointed out dashed marks on her skin.
Elzwa paused the program, and spoke into her microphone, "These are the marks the processors apply to the humans before they are sent to the saws."
The program resumed.
"Where did they take you after you were marked?"
"We were," the girl's respiration refluxed. She spoke into a tiny device that translated her speech, "we were taken to an area where they…"
"Go on! You're so brave. Go on!"
"They locked our wrists and our ankles into some cold metal cuffs."
"Were you locked onto a table or a belt of some kind?"
"No we were suspended in a ring."
"Suspended?"
When Elzwa asked the question, the large holograph on the left of the stage changed into a graphed image of a human suspended in a ring almost resembling a crucifixion, with the exception of the ankles being spread apart.
"What then?"
It became more complicated for the girl to relive the scene, but she mustered the strength to continue. "And then we were rushed through a series of tunnels and we went through a strange red room that was full of steam."
The image paused. Elzwa addressed the crowd, "This is to soften the skin for cutting."
It continued.
"Then we were rushed through a giant room."
"How big?"
"There were hundreds of us."
"Hundreds?"
"Yes. The cuffs on our ankles were released."
The image on the left showed the diagram of the human's feet dangling in the ring.
"What happened then?"
"We were being sorted somehow on a track that took us into either an exit at the top, or an exit at the bottom."
"What happened next?"
The girl doubled over in agony as she reminisced.
"It's O.K. You're being so brave. Please, when you feel ready, tell us what happened next."
After a moment, the girl continued, "The next room was the last one." She relapsed as before, but soon found some strength to carry on, but it came out of a frightful lobe and heightened hysteria; the fluctuation of a buckled mouth that dripped with mucus and tears.
"What happened then?" Elzwa asked tenderly.
"There was a laser. They cut us in half!" she burst into a jerking cry.
"Down the middle? At the waist? Where?"
"The waist," the words spit from one of her choked sobs.
The graphed image on the left showed the suspended human run through an open socket like a piece of wood through a band-saw.
"Did they put you to sleep? Did they use some method of killing or numbing you before they began cutting?"
"NO!! NOOOO!!!!" the young victim was beyond her realm of control, and the program stopped.
The crowd was stunned, and a dismal morbid silence seemed to penetrate the lime green sky. After a long moment; a sad suspension-of-disbelief, Elzwa re-approached the podium, wiped her eyes, and went on with her address.
"This girl's name is Kindra Cole McNichol. She is an inhabitant of Earth, and was illegally uprooted from her home and human family by the Marmells of Marmellia, the covert operators of the Zept Processing Facility. Her wrists slipped from the cuffs, and she fell from the ring into a waste slide that emptied into an exterior facility of the processing complex. She was then pushed by a large runner in the discarded bowels, limbs and bones of her fellow human beings into the ocean. The plant keeps a large school of Zeptol Sharks in a contrived bay to get rid of the evidence. How she escaped the sharks, we're not clear on yet, but as you can see, this creature suffered an unbearable trial, and to let this continue, or even worse, continue to buy processed humans, we may as well be assisting these fiends. My fellow Regals! I ask you as a living breathing being, and bearers of your beloved children. Would you let this happen to them? Can we let this insidious and unacceptable practice carry on in the world we love?"
Still stunned from the presentation, in a realm of intake and impregnation of stupefied enlightenment, the campus sat in a warm contemplating breeze, absorbing Elzwa's stone-faced glare in the massive holographs. Hollowed hisses moved the trees and seemed to prelude the Regals, as sonorous rolling waves followed with loud radical expressions of passion and outrage; a deafening collective and thunderous howl.
The cratered ghost of Szarglopia's ringed moon could be seen secretly crouching behind the variation of college structures.
At the back of the rally, in a pointed tower, high in a dark, airy, ivy covered loft that was draped by a tuft of tropical foliage, sat a powerful and devious entity. His name was Beelz, one of Szarglopia's most respected economic advisors. This was the same Terra-Toga that purchased Gabe and the children at the depository. His reputation, stature, and careful demeanor had been rarely challenged by the representatives of Szarglopia, save the Regals. This protective shell that encompassed his existence gave him leisure to maneuver and manipulate the surrounding collegiate and media moguls. But the percussive outbursts and rippling enthusiasm of the masses he was witnessing started to concern the seedy bureaucrat. He turned to an assistant in the shadows and gave some very quiet but particular orders.
"Have my table ready to leave for the compound as soon as you can. Contact the concierge, and inform him that I won't be able to make the Regal Gala. Tell him that I had an urgent call from the Treasurer, and that I had to get away on Intergalactic matters."
"Yes master," a demonic whispering reply came from the dark.
"When you are done with that, contact Szarglo Zept and tell him to maximize production. We may need to execute the emergency evacuation. Notify the Marmellians and have all drone capsules on standby."
The cryptic wrinkled face of the scowling hammerhead turned toward the bright teal and aqua colors of a borealis sunset that seemed to bathe Elzwa the Regal, as her congregation looked on at her with loud loyalty and devotion.
"Go now!" said Beelz to the silhouette behind him.
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