The World Idiot by Rhys Hughes Page B

evolved into a panic that he would never return to Earth. He became obsessed with the idea of reaching Montevideo but he did not know which buttons to press in the correct order. Another worry dominated his mind: the inevitability of eventually landing on a world with a hostile population. This drove him to greater efforts to find Earth again, blind efforts, a desperate faith in chance.
    Finally it seemed his nightmare had come true. One morning he heard a pounding on the walls of his house. A force was breaking down the shell of bricks. He lunged for the remote control to propel his abode to safety but something had gone wrong. The device no longer worked. The pounding continued. Now he realised how facile his former views about violence were, how acutely different the threat of genuine pain and injury was. He did not care to imagine what limits would be set by any act of brutality on his person and how this would preclude something more extreme. He cared only about the integrity of his physical body.
    He took refuge under his writing desk.
    Something shattered at the front door. Daylight flooded the rooms. His friends found him shivering and begging for mercy. They lowered the hammers they carried and lifted him up.
    “Your month of exile is over,” they said.
    They were astonished at the ferocity of his tears, the thanks he gave them and the delight he expressed at being once more on his home planet. He was weary beyond belief, a man who had returned from the stars alive and full. They blinked at each other.
    “Show us what you have written,” they suggested.
    He did not seem to hear and so they picked up the papers on his desk. The pages were stained with food, the remnants of a month of daily meals, but they did not contain words. So they berated him for wasting their time and betraying his own ambition.
    “I was too busy travelling,” he protested.
    He told them every detail of his adventures, describing the many worlds he had visited, the cultures and marvels, and insisted the stained pages were a superior record of his experiences, that they should be published just as they were. At first they listened as if suspecting a deliberate joke, then they decided that delirium was the answer. They carried him to the couch, trying not to laugh openly. Gently they explained the obvious truth.
    “We prepared those meals and took the responsibility in turns. We are from many different nations. Therefore you received a variety of ethnic dishes. For instance, on the first day we gave you Szechuan date pancakes, seafood stew from Somalia on the second day, Dukunoo from Jamaica on the third, and so on. Because you formerly ate only at steak houses — like an honest citizen of Uruguay — you did not recognise those dishes as originating from your own world.”
    He shook his head and showed them the remote control. “This device is my proof.”
    They examined it and smirked. “When you invited us around to tell us about your scheme we removed your television without telling you. We knew it would prove too much of a distraction and prevent you from writing. Now you may have it back.”
    They carried the contraption in and lowered it into place. They stayed with him for another hour before they were convinced he had fully regained his sanity. When he was alone he blushed with embarrassment and turned the set on. The remote control switched channels, nothing more. He had been a fool. He watched for the remainder of the afternoon but perversely his homesickness grew more intense and by the time he had sampled every channel he was more confused than ever and simply could not tell what planet he was really on at all.
     

Ten Grim Bottles
     
    I want to tell a story about the cannibal who lives under our old stone bridge but first I need some characters and a pot — I mean a plot. Not much is known about him. It is almost certain that he has lived there since the beginning of time and answers to the name Toby. Aside from that, he