image [https://i.ibb.co/KrcRbc0/ICchapter02new.jpg]

"Where’s the balnut butter, Uncle Karl?" asked Soda.

Soda’s uncle looked out of the one of the projection booth windows while he peddled his stationary exercise bike. They called it the projection booth but there were no projectors, the drive-in’s enormous TV was hooked up to a VCR. In addition to the bike the booth also featured a smallish martimmy bar, a battered old desk covered in books, zines, audiotapes, and dusty action figures, a couple of bean bag chairs, a one thousand year old pinball machine, and dozens of stacked sideways iguana milk crates filled with videotapes. The walls were covered in old movie posters and promotional stickers. A pair of hammocks hung in one corner.

"Where’s the balnut butter, Uncle Karl?" repeated Soda, calling from the theater’s concession stand.

Karl stroked his long periwinkle beard. Then he dismounted, walked to the door between the rooms and shook his head.

"Isn't," said he.

"Isn't any balnut butter? That's too bad. Where's the kumquat jelly then?" inquired Soda, standing on a stool so she could look through all the shelves and cabinets of the concession stand. But Uncle Karl shook his head again.

"Gone," he said.

"No kumquat jelly, either? And no popcorn or iguana pot pie or scabbage chips or quiggly quiche or scab scrapples? Nothing but raw alien feces? Is that really all we have?"

"All," said Uncle, again stroking his beard as he gazed out the window.

The girl brought the stool and sat beside her uncle. She started eating the purple shiny shampoo-like alien feces out of the bucket with a large wooden spoon. Uncle Karl was silent. Soda realized tonight was the first night they hadn’t watch a feature film motion picture before dinner in years. Soda could hear the cat clock on the wall ticking.

"I’m sorry I forgot the anti-cacaroach Spray," said Soda.

Karl turned and looked at his niece Soda. He had kindly eyes, but he hadn't smiled or laughed in so long that the girl had forgotten that her uncle could look any other way than solemn. And her uncle never spoke any more words than he was obliged to, so his little niece had learned to understand a great deal from one word.

"What are we going to do about the roachberries?" she asked. "The cacaroaches didn’t leave any seeds! Are we going to get more seeds?"

"Yep," said Uncle Karl.

"From where?"

"Mountain."

After a beat Soda said: "Are you going on a trip to a mountain? You know, uncle,you have traveled on your bicycle so much you must’ve seen so many amazing things.But me, I’ve never seen anything cuz ever since I could remember anything we've lived right here in this lonesome drive-in. When you go to get more seeds can I come with you?

Karl didn’t say anything.

"When you say mountain do you mean Mount Whole?"

"Yep," declared Uncle.

"Oh, yes; I remember, you told me a couple live there, the Wankensteins. That's the Chimpanzee Alchemist and the Puffy Beaver. One year you told me about them; I think it took you a whole year, uncle, to say as much as I've just said about them. Wasn’t the chimp your roommate in film school? They live high up on the mountain where all the alchemistical herbs and berries grow."

Karl didn’t say anything.

"Then let's go away and visit the Wankensteins. I’d love to go to Mount Whole with you."

"Little," said Uncle.

"Too little!? Why, I'm not so little as I used to be," answered the girl earnestly. "I think I can bike ride as far and as fast as you can, uncle."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Uncle Karl didn’t say anything for a while. Then he got up and sat in one of the two camp chairs outside the projection booth door, for the sun was sinking behind and the sky was a really cool shade of blueish-pinkish-purple.

By and by Soda lit a bonfire in a rusty old garbage pail. The two sat in the firelight a long time- the middle aged, periwinkle-bearded Schlingian and the little black-haired, bespectacled Schlingian. Both were thinking. When it grew quite dark outside, Soda said:

"Eat some alien feces, uncle, and then go to bed." Soda got up and walked slowly to the Murdermobile.

But Uncle Karl did not eat the feces; neither did he go directly to bed. Long after his little niece went to sleep snuggled up in her rusty old vanbus the old man sat thinking by the bonfire until it went out.

Just at dawn next morning Uncle Karl laid his hand tenderly on Soda's head and awakened her.

"Come," he said.

Soda dressed. She put on her favorite T-shirt- illini blue with a picture of two crossed sticks with flaming marshmallows impaled on them. The marshmallows were uranian blue, the flames on the marshmallows were cerulean blue. Then she put on her favorite jeans- black- and zipfront hoodie- black, of course. The hoodie had a patch of the Schling icon (phthalo blue) stitched on the back but it was obstructed by her dark blue backpack. Her backpack was covered in buttons and patches featuring icons and logos of her favorite feature film motion pictures and feature film motion picture directors, including a pin of Tarantella the Quartz Tarantula’s head. Her squishball sneakers were prussian blue. Uncle Karl wore his embarrassingly tight blue biking shorts (majorelle blue) and shirt (celestial blue).

The young teenager noticed that her uncle had not eaten the alien feces from last night, and supposed he had not been hungry. Soda was hungry, though; so she divided the feces upon the table and ate her half for breakfast, washing it down with some warm cloudy yellow water from the nearby stream. Uncle Karl put his half of the alien feces in a jar and put the jar in his light blue backpack, after which he again said, as he walked out through the doorway of the booth: "Come."

Soda was quite pleased. Although she loved watching feature film motion pictures on the drive-in’s gigantic TV, she was dreadfully tired of living all alone in the Schmahoning and wanted to travel and see other humanoids and yokai and robots. For a long time she had wished to explore this beautiful continent of Pus on which they lived. They put on their helmets (his pale azure blue with sparkles, hers black with a nitrate icon pattern) and got on their bikes and started pedaling. No one would disturb their little theater.

After a few days of nearly silent cycling the duo parked their bikes in the woods, chained them to a leathertree, took off their helmets and hung them on their handlebars. They were at the foot of Mount Whole. The path divided: One way led to the left and the other to the right- straight up the mountain. Uncle Karl took this right-hand path and Soda followed without asking why. He knew it would take them to the home of the Chimpanzee Alchemist, his old film school roommate.

All the morning they trudged up the mountain path and at noon Uncle and Soda sat on a fallen leathertree trunk and ate the jar of alien feces which the old Schlingian had placed in his backpack. Then they started on again and two hours later came in sight of the spherical home of the Wankensteins.

It was a giant inflatable transparent geodesic dome. It was one giant room that served as bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, screening room, library, gym, den, alchemy workshop, living room, gaming room, taxidermy studio, sauna, man cave, woman cave, and rumpus room. There was also a conversation pit. The place was in a clearing on the mountain, but a little way off was the grim forest, which completely surrounded it.

Uncle Karl knocked at the door of the dome and a puffy, plump, pleasant-faced, five-foot-tall, fluorescent pink, hairless, veiny beaver wearing a garish purple shirt patterned with clams and gravy opened it and greeted the visitors with a smile. The Wankensteins were the talking animal type of yokai. Yokai were the nonhumanoid creatures of Sifillis, said to be the mutant descendants of forest spirits and aliens.

"Um, hello," said Soda, nervously; "you must be the Puffy Beaver, the partner of the Chimpanzee Alchemist."

"Hello. I’m Sheila Wankenstein. All strangers are welcome to my dome."

"We are not strangers, not exactly. My uncle was the Chimpanzee Alchemist’s roommate in film school…? May we see the famous alchemist, ma’am?"

"He is very busy just now," the beaver said, shaking her head doubtfully. "But come in and let me give you something to eat."

Soda and Karl entered the dome. On the far side they could see a balding chimpanzee wearing a hideous patterned shirt even uglier than the Puffy Beaver’s (yellow with a pattern of chocolate bars and figs). He also was five-foot-tall, hairless, and veiny but he looked emasciated and his skin was more of a beige color. The alchemist was stirring four molybdenum kettles at the same time, two with his hands and two with his feet. Everyone oddly pretended that they couldn’t see him.

"You two must have traveled far in order to get to our lonely dome," remarked Sheila.

"We have," replied Soda, as she and her uncle entered the chalet. "We have come from a far lonelier place than this."

"A lonelier place! In Schling Quadrant?" she exclaimed. Soda told her about the Schmahoning Drive-In Theater that no one ever came to any more. "Dear me!" the beaver said, looking at the man, "You must be Karl Olheiser, known as the Silent One." Then she looked at the girl. "And you must be Soda the Cursed," she added.

"Soda the Cursed!?" said Soda.

image [https://i.ibb.co/DMv8Dg6/102small.jpg]