A SNN Christmas Carol

Stave III: The Ghost of Christmas Present or How Deanne Got Her Ghost Back

Ballway sat half-up in bed, with his blankets about him. He was ready and quite afraid for an encounter with any new Ghosts, and wished them not to appear. When the chronometer announced 0100, he cowered under his sheets. Then came 0105, then 0110, and soon 0115. Still no spirits showed up.

"Hmph!" pronounced Ballway, "they have a sense of timing like a WeBBSights writer!"

He got out of bed and moved towards the door, and as soon as his hand was on the panel next to it, a light shown through the crack betwixt the doors; a strange voice called him by name and bade him enter.

It was his house, that was for sure, but it was alive with such a light as to make everything appear more alive in turn. The fireplace was blazing with a fire, and there was food, oh was there food!

Plates of gagh, Delovian soufflé, caviar, gallons of Earl Grey tea and Aldebaran whiskey (it’s green). To the right were fifteen feet of yamok sauce and an equal fifteen feet of self-sealing stem bolts (which were not foodstuffs, but the companion to this reference from Deep Space Nine.) Saurian brandy, Owon eggs, rokeg blood pie, potato casserole and plankton loaf, the things there were to eat!

And sitting in the middle of it all, in pink bunny slippers and a bathrobe, was a woman smoking a pipe. "I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Ghost in between puffs. "Look upon me."

Ballway was staggered. "You’re . . . you’re Deanne Morgan!"

"Quite correct," said the Spirit, getting up from its chair, "and I held supernatural powers in life as GMDir, but opted for a few more powers as well. Come forward!"

Ballway came forward, and gazed upon the bathrobe. It was not one of those Starfleet-issue robes, seemingly made from tin foil. It was lavish -- green velvet with white trim. And she wore a wreath of skulls upon her head.

"Those skulls represent all those I have killed as a GM. Now, then, Ballway, have you never seen one like me before?"

"Well," said Ballway, "there is Greg Hertzsch, Owen Townes, they’re GMs . . ."

"I mean ME!"

"Well, Colin Wyers was GMDir for a while..."

"Silence! It was a rhetorical question!"

"Have you any siblings, Spirit?" questioned Ballway, nervously changing the subject.

"More than twenty-three hundred. Now let us take leave of this place and the fruit of Kindness it displays. Touch my robe."

Ballway went to touch the robe, and was stopped.

"Use a moist towelette! This is a rental!"

He touched the Robe with a moist towelette (pre-moistened lemon-scented paper napkin for you Hitchhikers), and soon he, Ghost, and towelette were transported away.

They arrived in a section of town that was black with char, and bleak in its feeling. There were light on in a few of the houses, but for the most part it was dark. The Sprit lead Ballway to one of the houses, pausing to note how dank this area was, and how it was in need of some repair.

"Certainly you, Mr. Ballway, have the money to fix this place up."

Ballway laughed. "And why should I want to? What do these people have that I would want?"

Deanne Morgan gritted her teeth. "Character, you imbecile! Generosity! A fraction of humanity! Why, were this a ship, I would have had you sucked into space . . ."

"Blown into space," corrected Ballway. "You see, if you examine air pressure texts, you discover that . . ."

"Fine! Blown into space! I would have had you blown into space long ago! Now, here we are."

Ballway looked at the house. "Fine place to stop," he said. "What is this place?"

"Don’t you recognize it?" asked the Spirit. "It is the home of your employee, Larry Garfield!"

Ballway was taken aback, then he returned the back to its rightful owner. "I knew he wasn’t rich, but I didn’t know how rich he wasn’t!"

"So you mean to say that you knew how rich he was?"

"Well, yes, but I prefer to negate that statement. It just sounds better."

Inside, Mrs. Garfield was preparing a dinner with all the trimmings for the hungry children. They were dressed in what could be considered a step above rags, and the interior of their home left much to be desired by Ballway.

"No, no," she said when the children began to eat. "We must pause while anticipating the arrival of he who has contributed half of his genetic makeup to you, and also pause for the arrival of Tiny Seamus."

One of the children spoke up. "There they are, mother!"

Larry Garfield walked into the room, and with him was a boy, with a crutch, a cripple, perhaps. It was a sad sight, and yet somehow it concerned Ballway, as unconcernable as he was.

They all sat down at the table, to a feast of Ferengi tube grubs, topped off with several varieties of small vegetables. The family didn’t have much, and yet they were happy. This puzzled Ballway.

"They are happy with nothing?"

"They have each other, and they have their health," said the Spirit. "One needs not money and pithy material things to be happy."

"What about Bill Gates? He’s pretty happy."

"Shut up," said the Spirit, slapping a trout around a bit with a large Ballway.

Larry Garfield stood up. "I dedicate this dinner to he who has provided it for us. To Mr. Ballway!"

Mrs. Garfield protested. "To Mr. Ballway, indeed! To he who has believed you to be some substandard form of life and not compensated you with pay in the form of paper or coined currency! To he who has, indirectly by not compensating you with ample pay, given us no other alternative but to live here, for an eternity!"

"Come now," said Larry, "without him we would have even less! Nothing, still!"

"Very well," grudged his wife, "I will perform the act which is superstitiously designed to give good luck to Mr. Ballway, but only because you want us to."

Tiny Seamus, neglected at this point, threw in his two cents. "God bless us, every one. And God bless Aye on the WeBB! Someday, Dad, I’m going to overthrow the tyrannical SNN empire with Aye on the WeBB, despite the fact that WeBBSights referred to it as the MAD magazine of STF! Oooh, I’d like to get that . . ." And Tiny Hughes stopped, seized by a fit of coughing and sputtering.

"Spirit," said he, "what is wrong with Tiny Seamus?"

"I’m afraid all of those kickings have rendered him a cripple. That smoking doesn’t help his health either. Did you hear that cough? He is very sick, and he could indeed use the medical treatment money could afford, but sadly, the Garfields have not money, nor even a physician, I hear."

"Spirit," questioned Ballway, "isn’t Tiny Seamus’ last name ‘Hughes’?"

"It’s a tricky situation," said Deanne Morgan, "there’s a custody battle going on between the Garfields and STF President Mike Bourdaa. But if these shadows remain unchanged, I see an empty chair where Tiny Seamus now sits. Yes, without the money for a lawyer the Garfields might lose Tiny Seamus to Bourdaa altogether. But better Tiny Seamus leave now, and decrease the surplus number of names in the database!"

Ballway looked down at the snow and was smacked by Deanne Morgan. "Come now, we have but one more sight to see."

They walked a ways back the way they came and soon stopped outside a house of medium size and adornment. "Do you recognize this place?" said the Spirit.

"Indeed! This is the home of my nephew, Mike Barclay!"

"You may walk inside," said the Spirit, "for they cannot see us."

Ballway and the Spirit entered the house, as they were all laughing around sine Telluridian synthale. Barclay, Ballway’s nephew, was talking.

"He said ‘Bah! Gubmuh!’ and he believed it, too! He cares not for Christmas in the foggiest!"

"More shame for him, Mike," said Ballway’s niece, indignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything by halves. They are always in earnest.

"He’s rather comical in his ways," continued Ballway’s nephew, "but I’m sure deep down inside there’s someone pleasant trying to get out."

At this the party laughed up a storm, for they knew Ballway, and knew that if there was a bit of pleasantness in him, it had packed its bags and headed for Florida long ago.

"You tell me he is very rich," said Ballway’s niece.

"Yes," said Mike Barclay, "but he has nothing to do with his wealth but have it sit around him and slowly strangle him with its weight and greed."

"I have no patience with him."

"I do," said the nephew, "and I think that someday he will crawl out of his shell and wake up to the world with a hearty ‘Merry Christmas!’" The party laughed again and they began some more partying and dancing and singing and laughing. But they didn’t do this all night. They soon began a game of Sí o No, where one player imitates something, and the others ask him sí or no questions about it.

The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in Cleveland Heights, and walked about the streets, and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and didn't live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a t'stayan, or a Beneriam hawk, or a targ, or a corvan gilvos, or an M-113 creature, or a Klabnian eel, or a mugato, or a tribble, or a Markoffian sea lizard. At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:

"I know! I know who it is! It is your Uncle Ballway!"

Certainly it was. And some thought that the answer to the question "Is it a Markoffian sea lizard?" should have been "yes."

Ballway was stunned that people could treat him with so much contempt, and looked to the Spirit for advice, and discovered that the Spirit had aged remarkably over the course of the night.

"Are Spirits’ lives so short?"

"Mine is. My life in this galaxy ends tonight."

"Tonight!"

"Yes, tonight at 000 hours."

"Forgive me, Spirit," said Ballway quizically, "but what is that protruding from your robe? A claw? A foot? A poorly finished plastic surgery?"

"Look here," said the Spirit. From the folds of its robe, it brought out two children: wretched, feeble, frightful, hideous, miserable. "Oh, Man, look here! Look, look, down here!"

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meager, ragged, having lost their youth, yet gained humility, somehow. Certainly nothing had been concieved of by nature (with the exception of New Coke) that was such a perversion, so horrible, so dreadful.

Ballway started back, appalled. He tried to express some sort of compliment, "They are fine children," or "A bit on the slender side," but such a great lie stifled itself in his throat.

"Spirit, are they yours?"

"They are STF's. The boy is Petty Politics. The girl is Wanton Hostility. Beware them both, but most of all beware the boy, for on his brow I see the writing of Doom, unless it is erased."

The town chronometer soon struck 000 hours, and the Ghost of Christmas Present faded away, with a loud and hearty cackle that only GMs could produce. And then, slowly walking towards Ballway, was a figure, hooded in black.