TheBanyanTree: Sheep may safely craze

[Gail Richards]

I really need the rest of this story please, Peter!  As soon as possible!

-----Original Message----- 
From: Peter Macinnis
Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2014 5:18 PM
To: BanyanTree
Subject: TheBanyanTree: Sheep may safely craze

Something I dredged up to play with while we are away for four days.
Draft intro, untweaked.

* * * * *

Eric Blair was awakened from a dream about strippers. He woke up,
because even in his sleep, he could smell lanoline.

Now before anybody gets the wrong impression, it was more of a nightmare
than a dream. The strippers that danced in Eric's mind were asset
strippers, and they were reducing his computer to scrap. This was a
horrible thing to contemplate for any rocket scientist, even a rocket
scientist who had gone over to the Dark Side, to work in Financial
Derivatives.

To be fair, Eric had quickly realised that in the world of Financial
Derivatives, he felt like a fish out of luck, breakfast and water in
that order. The good thing is that while it lasted, he had been a very
well-paid fish, so now he was "resting between jobs", living in a shared
house with some other people who thought as he did.

But even in that calm and geekish atmosphere, he was haunted every night
by troublesome dreams of the demons of his former trade, the asset
strippers, merchant bankers, the day traders and the Marketing Division
of Mega Global Limited.

The Marketing Division were the worst, because they all looked the same
and behaved in the same way. Many sane people (there were several in
MGL) wondered if they were cloned, but Eric dreamy once that there were
numberless hordes of them, produced by spontaneous generation. That was
always the worst sort of dream, but dreaming about asset strippers was
even worse.

>From a nightmare like that, it was almost a relief to open his eyes and
see a smiling bright yellow sheep in a Viking hat sitting on his pillow.
It seemed like a better dream, but a smell of lanoline hung in the room,
and the sheep's eyes were beginning to glow.

This, he realised, had all the makings of a Force 9 nightmare, the sort
you got from eating deep fried curried strawberries, the sort that come
with extra cream, chocolate sprinkles and a cherry on top. This looked
likely to be worse than three Marketing Divisions.

He yelped in dismay and flipped the covers over his head. Safe beneath
the duvet, Eric mentally compared the sheep with some of the other
things he wasn't expecting to see on his pillow, like a brass band, a
mob of kangaroos riding pogo sticks because they were out of bounds, or
an erupting volcano.

None of those comparisons helped much, because those things weren't
there in his room, while the sheep was, or had been, sitting on his
pillow. Smiling at him. Smelling of lanoline—and he could still smell
the lanoline.

Thinking back later, he could recall no behaviour the previous night
that would cause any hallucination, and certainly not one involving a
yellow sheep, the size of a very small dog. Especially a lemon yellow
sheep, complete with smile, smell, and gold Viking hat, a yellow sheep
with glowing yellow eyes. Logically, he concluded, somebody was playing
a joke on him. He raised the covers very slightly and peeped out.

The sheep was still there, so it had to be a joke somebody was playing,
but what happened next did not help him at all. The sheep winked at him,
and he noticed its long eyelashes. Then it spoke in a rich contralto
voice. "I think he can see us," he heard the yellow sheep say.
As he ducked back beneath the covers, Eric wondered why any sheep, but
especially a yellow sheep in a Viking hat would choose to speak with a
Welsh accent. It had to be a joke, so he allowed his head to emerge
again, looking for whoever was operating the sheep.

He glared at the sheep, as only a rudely-awakened student of physics
could glare at a hallucination. "You don't exist. Were you talking to me?"

"See, we knew he could see us—but he can hear us as well. Yes we do, and
no, of course I wasn't talking to you, I was addressing Dougal."

"That's me, laddie," came a gruff Scots voice behind his head. Eric
rolled and looked around, half expecting to find a talking dog but saw a
second sheep, also with a Viking hat, but this sheep was a pale blue,
while the helmet was purple. "It's guid that you can see us because…"

Eric cut him short. "OK, now where's the third sheep with the other
funny accent?"

"There's no third one," said the yellow sheep. "We only ever send in two
of us in a contact team, it saves time, see?"

"I don't know about seeing that, but I can see what's coming. This is a
setup for some sort of hoax. You're going to tell me a tale about how a
Welsh sheep, a Scots sheep and a something sheep walk into a baaaa … right?"

"Ooh, I like this one," said the yellow sheep. "You pass, you'll do,
very nicely. Now, that's settled. You've met Dougal, I'm Myfanwy, and we
need your help. Get up, get your clothes on, we have to fly!"

Eric was no fool, and he saw what was going on. The house included
several post-graduate robotics people, and clearly they had put two
robotic stuffed toys on his pillow while he slept. One or both of the
sheep robots had to have a camera in it, or there was a camera somewhere
in the room, filming his reactions. He decided to play for time.

* * * * *

He goes on, among other things, to steal the Crown Jewels.

-- 
Peter Macinnis, Manly, the birthplace of Australian surfing
feral word herder, also herbal remedies, bespoke fish
hooks, umbrellas mended and budgerigar requisites
http://oldblockwriter.blogspot.com/