Excerpt: Seedit & Shut Up & Steak

Seedit - From Chapter 1

After his long rant, he found that his machine was already built, which was fortunate because he didn’t feel himself working and the author didn’t need to explain the technical side of the machine.

“And now I must find the suitable seed to become my talking plant.”

He went over to his shelf full of seed packets and picked on at random, “Sunflower seed, interesting choice, it’ll have a warm and bubbly personality to contrast my angsty whining. I think this could be a perfect character dynamic.”

And he placed on sunflower seed inside the Algometric Geoflogger, and did the lever voodoo that he did in such a bizarre fashion that it looked like some creature had possessed his soul, only to discover that he wasn’t a very good target for possession and leave unbidden.

The machine clicked and whirred and whooped and moved to the music of its own design. Then a ping similar to a micro wave oven pinging pinged and he looked up from the machine, “Ah, my tea’s ready. I’ll leave my stupendous machine to carry on while I enjoy a fine meal.”

And he did enjoy his fine meal of lasagne, which was perfectly made according to the instructions on the back of the packet.

Then he cleared his table quickly and went to see how his new friend was coming along.

Just then the machine began to slow its frankly violent attempts at analysis, and a slow, steady beep filled the room.

He tore a print out from the printer, “Of course, this machine was built to analyse the seed for it’s worthiness for becoming my new friend and not actually create said friend, I’d forgotten. Shame I was so excited about having a nice new friend around the place. Oh well, guess I’ll build the real machine now.”

And that’s exactly what he did, but with a little more haste and a lot more speed, because he found a packet of speed that he’d forgotten about which he’d intended to consume after his walk which had been hours ago and he consumed it anyway even though it would mean he’d be up all night and probably be fairly rude to his new friend on their debut in the talking world.

The machine was built in less than two hours, a personal best in the insane machine making category, “Its fortunate that I found the speed otherwise I may never have decided to make this machine.”

Then he put the sunflower seed into the machine and pulled another lever, the new machine which he’d decided to name, “The Make Plant’s Talk To Humans Machine,” began it’s super velocity, high speed, intense philosophical desecration.

Then he fell asleep.

He was awoken hours later by a steady, “beep beep boop badoop doo,” from the machine that would allow him to talk to plants.

“Finally, a talking plant friend. I’ve been waiting for this for over 12 hours.”

The machine, bright and luminous in the cold, harsh dark of the lab, beeped again and Guy lent impatiently over the machine.

He tore open the outer casing to get to whatever he was going to find inside the machine. There, bathed in the machine’s heavenly glow was his seed; a mouth had formed on the white strip between the two larger, black areas. But it was the two larger, black areas that caught his attention. A lopsided pair of googly eyes looked up at him.

“Its alive,” he said, then reformed his statement because it had been alive before, “Its sentient,” he screamed into the night.

“Hello,” said the talking sunflower seed.

Guy nearly choked with pride as his creation said its first word in a delightfully squeaky voice.

“Well, hi little seed. How’s it going?”

“I am very well, thank you. How are you?”

Guy pondered this, “I’m pleased that we can finally communicate.”

He went upstairs to his lounge, figuring that the seed would follow him, but it couldn’t walk because it had no legs so it just sat there in its seedy innocence and waited for him to return.

Guy was so tired that he went straight to bed and dreamed his usual dream about winning X-Factor, which was always going to be a dream because he’d been turned down within minutes of being in Simon Cowell’s presence. But in his dreams he won X-Factor and became a massively successful singing sensation and was beloved by the entire population of Venezuela.

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Shut Up - The entire Chapter 9

They awoke the next morning; Sir Harrington had slept on the couch because of the limited amount of room in Gyppo’s house. After a quick breakfast, they continued the argument from the night before.

“We’re going back to the castle,” said Sir Harrington.

“We’re going to Hennecia,” said Princess Katherine.

Gyppo laughed, “Looks like I’ve got the deciding vote.”

“Oh no,” said Sir Harrington, “I’m the one with orders to take her back to the castle. I have a duty to do so.”

Then Princess Katherine said, “I’m the Princess of Almerius, I should be able to order you around.”

“I have direct orders from the king himself, I won’t break them.”

“Then bring her back to the castle,” said Gyppo the Grey, which made Sir Harrington smile. Then Gyppo added, “After we’ve gone to Almerius.”

This made him grimace, “We have to go back to the castle.”

“Are you going to force me?” The Princess asked.

“I don’t think I will. Will I have to use force?”

Gyppo laughed, “Do you think you can get away with using force?”

This confused Sir Harrington so he went outside for air. Then a brilliant idea came to him from nowhere.

But he wasn’t sure if he should act on it. So he called Gyppo out to the garden for council.

“I have an idea how we could go to Hennecia without me betraying my duty to the king.”

“Will you do it if it’s done that way?” Gyppo asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

Gyppo patted him on the back, “It’s clearly what the young lady wants and needs to do. Perhaps it would also be your way of honouring her independence.”

And then they went inside.

“You know,” said Harrington, “I could go out for air and if the two of you have gone I’d be honour bound to follow you to Hennecia.”

Then he went out for air again, and took a long time just taking in some air.

Then the sound of hooves going to Hennecia rode into the distance.

So he got on Anadin and started to ride after them, “Looks like we’re going to Hennecia.”

Then he laughed to himself, remembering Princess Katherine’s affliction and the fact that he didn’t have to put up with it.

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Gyppo the Grey and Princess Katherine kept pace in front of Sir Harrington. Gyppo the Grey on Fleetstar and Katherine on her horse, called Mooneyes.

“Do you know the Hennecia well?” Princess Katherine asked the aging wizard.

Gyppo rode silently on.

“I said…”

“I heard you my dear,” said Gyppo, “But I’d rather not talk about Hennecia for the moment.”

Princess Katherine briefly wondered why Gyppo was reluctant to talk about it but then an overpowering urge to talk about anything gripped her, “Well we’ve got to talk about something, I can’t stop remember.”

“Then let’s talk about something, but not Hennecia.”

“Florrie said,” began Katherine because it was a long speech, “That Sir Harrington said that he’d let you down before and he told me that it was true but it was before any of this stuff with me happened.”

“And,” said Gyppo even though he knew where this was going and didn’t want to talk about it either.

“What did he do to let you down?”

Gyppo rode in the same silent fashion that had come after the question about Hennecia.

“That’s another thing I don’t want to talk about, your highness,” Princess Katherine said to herself in a mock Gyppo voice.

Then Gyppo the Grey stopped Fleetstar, “He didn’t let me down, but won’t believe it.”

“Why,” she said, bringing Mooneyes to a halt.

“He’s a complicated young man, as you should have guessed by now.”

Katherine sighed, “I have guessed that, but surely he’s open to reason.”

Then they carried on with only the trampling of hooves and Princess Katherine’s mumbling to herself as a distraction.

So they came to rest several miles, but not too far that the horses were exhausted, from Gyppo’s cottage.

They sat and had a nice lunch and Sir Harrington came along a little later.

“There you guys are,” he said, “Thought I’d lost you.”

And he sat and had lunch with them.

“This is a rather nice spot,” he remarked, and it was a rather nice spot because the grass was short and didn’t contain any of the spiky weeds that tend to be a part of untended grass. The trees gave ample shade but it was still dreamily warm and the three of them slowly drifted off to sleep. Luckily the horses were tied up.

Then Sir Harrington thought that they might not be tied up and this stilled him from the sleepy area so he could check them.

The fact that an area could make them all sleep so soon after they had woken up perturbed him, so he shook Gyppo the Grey, who gave him a frosty gaze that implied that the old wizard was rather enjoying his nap.

“What,” he said gruffly.

“This area perturbs me,” Sir Harrington replied.

“Why?”

“Because it shouldn’t be that we all fall asleep in the same place for no apparent reason so soon after waking up.”

Gyppo saw sense in this and got up, he used a spell to check the area, “Ah, wake her up. This is not the kind of place we should’ve stopped at.”

“Can’t you wake her up?”

“No,” said Gyppo the Grey, brave wizard who laughed at dragons and scared ice monsters to death with his steely gaze, “I’m not having her be mad at me all day.”

So Sir Harrington woke the Princess up.

“You are very rude, waking a princess from such a lovely dream.”

He laughed, “That’s what knights do,” and then he had a thought, “What was it about?”

She became coy and blushed. Then she mumbled something under her breath, mumbled it so low even Gyppo the Grey couldn’t hear.

They got back on the road, “There should be a town in a few miles,” said Gyppo.

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Steak - Opening

The dim light in the restaurant gave my date a mystical, smoky look. I could see the waiter bringing my peppered steak when someone shot me. Shame, I was really hungry. If I hadn't reached for another piece of bread, my brains would've ruined her Couture dress.

She rode in the ambulance with me; I thought that was sweet of her. While I was staring up at the bright lights, feeling the emergency services poking about in my wound, I resolved to give her a call if I was lucky enough to pick up phone ever again.

Then I passed out.

I awoke the next morning; she was asleep in the chair next to my hospital bed.

“Ungh,” was the only sound that I could make come out of my mouth.

She stirred and woke up, “Ow,” she said.

I laughed weakly, “You think you got it bad.”

“You’re up,” she said with a smile, and ran to hug me.

“Ow,” I said.

She let me go, “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” I said, “Listen, why don’t you go get some real sleep. I’ve got your number; I’ll call you when I can pick up a phone.”