The Word

For centuries the Buddhist Monks of Tibet had guarded their secrets to Universal Enlightenment with the casual nonchalance of: "What, me...? Hold the secrets to astral self realisation and inner conciousness? You reckon...? Do me a flava....!"

However, in the late 21st century their monopoly was finally broken and the true commercial potential began to be realised as - to begin with - those investing in deep space haulage began to wonder whether there might be method in this madness. Eventually it was realised that not only could sentient beings achieve a higher state of conciousness (TM: Josh Wink) but heavy goods also.

In a nutshell, the long sought after faster-than-light "hyper drive" turned out to require no more than expanding the conciousness of thinking machines, and with the advent of A.I. it once again came down to having the latest software.

Now, althought highly dangerous due to the extremely high levels of concentration required and the potentially disasterous - not to say existentially hazardous - consequences of "fucking up" as the dialect of the day had it and faltering at the incredibly highly focused level of meditation required even for an instant, the practice of using transcendentally advanced monks to contact deep space trawlers by - telepathically speaking - crossing a few wires and stepping across the live rail of reality to a higher plane of existence remained, although illegal in just about every plane of existence, a cheap and easy way for starship crews to communicate with home and with their employers on the other side of whichever galaxy they happened to be happenning in at the time.

In Beefheart's Ready Room, the captain contemplated the floating naked apparition before him.

"Are you sure the clothes don't come with you...?" he complained, wincing and attempting for the fourteenth time to get his head around what the astrally projected form of Taoski was telling him. Telling him, that is, whilst hovering naked several inches above the deck.

"I told you, it's hard enough to envision the sound of one's skin flapping in the breeze, I can't astrally project every piece of clothing that happens to be nearby, can I? Anyway, forget that - you've got far more tangible problems to get to grips with matey! The word is, someone's after you and it's not for the stash on Blogadoon, it's for the fact you've even started looking for it in the first place, numb nuts. I don't know who they are but a fuck of a lot of people have started not being there any more where once they might have commented upon the fact that someone knew about something that was looking for you, if you get my snowman."

Beefheart flapped his jaw unsuccesfully a few times whilst trying to engage his fractured memory and get it to cough up a name of someone whom he might have pissed off enought to have some grievance against him. The list was far too long to be of any use so he turned to Taoski's astral projection once more, trying very hard not to stare at his penis.

"Wh-" he began, just as a mighty jolt rocked the ship and temporarily sent the artficial gravity into emergency override mode trying to compensate. Beefheart sagged to his knees with his mouth flapping open whilst Taoski calmly observed the furniture sliding around his field of view.

At that moment, intending merely to report upon the hourly status of the U.S.S. Beefheart but with an unintentional and perhaps unnecessarily dramatic flourish, Ubermilf burst through the door of the Ready Room.

"Sir, I - OOH..!!!"

Ubermilf was brought up short by the sight of her captain on his knees in front of a floating naked man. Beefheart was lost for words.

Taoski, on the other hand, was not and giggled like a schoolgirl which only served in Ubermilf's eyes to add to the impression of impropriety.

"A second, once you've finished - I mean - you're free to come - I mean..."

Ubermilf turned and left, and Beefheart looked sullenly up at his informant's astral self.

"Very funny. Most risible..." he muttered.

"Looks like you're on your own, Butt Captain!" grinned Taoski as he rolled his eyes back into his head closed both eyelids and prepared to slip down a few planes of astral conciousness to his "fleshy meatbag" as he referred to his body, currently residing in suite 492 of the Beverley Hills Room-a-Rama. Just then, however, and quite unexpectedly for all parties involved, nothing happened.

After a few seconds Taoski opened one lid, slid his eyeball back to the horizontal and scanned his surroundings whilst frowning uncertainly. The penny dropped and his other eye opened slowly, gradually sliding into allignment with its orbital brother.

"Bugger..." he muttered to no one in particular.

"Oh dear, " smirked Beefheart unpleasantly. "Lose your train of thought, did you...?"

"Fuck off," said Taoski's naked astral form, testily. "I'm paying for this room by the hour you know..."