Clownworld

"Human made better in my time than in past time!" Jarack walked on.

"Constructed is more like it!" Martin jogged to catch up, but Jarack always maintained a distance between himself and Martin.

"All is constructed, all is made! Some survive, some do not!"

"The naked Darwin speaks!" Martin pulled the pelt closer to his body. "Say some more but make it about these Pod people."

"Meaning Slusluslunet?"

"Yeah, if that's what the Sluslunar call them, to me they're the Pod people! I can't keep up with all the new species those greedy slugs send us. All those sentient beings that just want to have fun!" Martin and Jarack walked along a narrow dirt path between the giant oak and maple trees that contained the tree houses that composed their village. Rope - slat ladders ran up the sides of the largest members of the forest town. The wooden dwellings were small and inconspicuous among the high branches.

"Slusluslunet only technologically advanced colonial beings space flight capable recorded in Sluslunar database." Jarack walked on.

"At least, in the database that they let us get at."

"Need no saying! Pod beings' technology based on chemical compounds secreted from body. Propulsion of colony enclosure pod results from ignition of colonial by-products. Only history in database for Pod beings reports the discovery of propulsion mechanism. Sexual activity in colony produces volatile reagents."

"Ha, and one night they were having an orgy, things got so hot that they blew up and when they woke up they found themselves in outer space"

"Precise paraphrasing of recorded events."

"It figures, those slugs would put that story in their computer records. They just loved those dirty ditties I first sang to them when they revived me." Martin laughed. Jarack climbed a ladder into an ancient looking Sugar Maple. Martin stood at the base of the tree and laughed. "I can just see an inter stellar flight with the Pod people, one exceedingly long gang bang! What a crazy universe we woke up to! Not like the twenty-first century at all."

Jarack's face was expressionless as always. He just looked up as he climbed.

At the top of the tree, a large dark skinned woman in a white fur pelt stood on the platform, she yelled down at Martin, "What da hell are ya laughin' at? Get your white ass up here." She turned and proceeded back into the wooden structure. "That bastard's always foolin' 'round. I hate this place!"

"Are . . . are they here yet, Ruthy?" Said a short, thin woman in a dark cotton dress. She stood at a log table in the center of the room. She held her arms tightly crossed over her chest. The top of the table was taken up by a blunted conical construct, a Pod. The Pod had a very rough, grey exterior with an opening at the top of the cone.

"Yeah, Beth those lazy shits are here. Martin seems ta be havin' a jolly old time with hisself." Ruthy climbed into one of the beds against the wall. "We have ta do all da dirty work 'round here, while they screw off with that piece of junk space ship those slimy pimp slugs left us!"

"Come on . . . Come on, you guys!" Beth grabbed her face with both hands, almost immediately pulled them away with a jerk then rapidly walked out of the room to look over the edge of the platform. Jarack stopped on the ladder some distance from her.