Fur Wars - Chapter 29

The grinding of heavy metal machinery was all he could hear, the odour of oil and rotting flesh was all he could smell and intense heat was all he could feel. Lord Vimto didn’t know whether it was completely dark or whether he was blind, he didn’t know whether he was alive, awake, dreaming or dead.

Although, not especially spiritual, he was more than aware of a wide variety of religious beliefs including prophecies of an eternal afterlife to be spent according to one’s actions during the main event or being reincarnated on a sliding scale from cow down to worm, once again according to one’s prior karmic output. But having spent the past 165 million years having his brain implanted into the body of various creatures throughout evolution he hadn’t really considered that process ever coming to an end.

“Am I in heaven or am I in hell?” he asked himself out loud.

“Neither,” came a response that Vimto had not been expecting. It was the voice of a young woman. He recognised the icy tones. “For me this place is heaven, while for you it could be considered hell.”

“Dale Harden,” said Vimto. It was not a question, but she answered regardless.
“Very good Lord Vimto,” she said, “do you have any more questions before I make your position redundant?”
“Redundant?!” exclaimed a somewhat surprised Vimto, “but you can’t, I mean, I’m the first Admiral of the Imperial Fleet, I’m Lord fucking Vimto for fuck’s sake, I’m Emperor Mong’s only son.”
“Well, you know as well as I do that nepotism is frowned upon in the Empire. And besides, you’re not his only son are you?”
“Yes, but Albert ran away in 281071. Dad disowned him, and besides I’ve just seen him, I asked him to join me, but he tricked me into this trap. Hang on. You’re not in on it with him are you?”

Harden laughed so hard that a small amount of pee escaped.

“In on it with him?” she cried through tears of incredulous mirth, “that’s priceless, absolutely priceless. He’s been gone 165 million years and you think we’re in on it together.”
“But what is this place?” asked Vimto.
“This is the Workplace Vimto. It’s what became of Jud after you helped Albert to escape. Your father, Norman, a lovely man, was crippled with rage when Albert left, he too could see what was becoming of Jud. The place was on the verge of self-destruction. So he helped it on its way.”
“I know, I know all that, but how can this be Jud?”
“Your father took you away, through time and space you travelled, transplanting your brains into the bodies of those creatures and races that you conquered, building your Empire. All the time, this barren, forgotten corner of the universe continued to grow. Eventually a species of creature known as man came along. They called this place Earth.

“Your father kept a watchful eye on Earth’s progress through time and he heard tell of this species and he came to admire its resilience, but much more than that, he came to admire its ability to show almost limitless cruelty not just to the other creatures, but also to its own kind.

“Eventually, as with the Judy before them, the humans became technologically advanced, too technologically advanced for their own good, they were on the brink of destroying the planet. But rather than wipe them out, as he had the Judy, Mong conquered them and took them prisoners. He built them a place to live and subsist, he gave them a job of work, he gave them a Workplace.

“The Empire has been controlling life on Jud by persuading its so called earthling residents that they were all Employees working in the Workplace. At first Mong simply created something that he called a Career. He called it this because the humans simply careered through their pitiful lives from pillar to post not ever knowing what the point of anything was.

“In the end though, he decided they needed a purpose. So he turned the whole Workplace into a massive fur factory that supplies the entire universe with coats, scarves and earmuffs made from the pelts of the Bunnies. Jud is covered with Bunny farms feeding the factory. Every day the creatures hold a Sacrifice and a single Bunny from each farm is fed into the machine, they are not burned, they’re placed in a fireproof space shuttle from which they are beamed into the Workplace for processing.

“But we need to relocate, the sun is dying and with that, our supply of Bunny pelts will run dry. We’re going to blow the place to smithereens using the Def Jam Super Star Hipperty Hopperty Annihilator Beam. And when the loss adjuster finds out that you planned the entire thing due to an obsession with some hair-brained prophecy regarding the reappearance of your 165 million year old long lost brother, we’ll collect on the insurance. HAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

“You’re mental,” said Vimto, “that’s bonkers.”

“Am I? Is it? Is it really Lord Vimto? Well, maybe it is a bit mental, but it’s the truth, and sometimes there’s nothing stranger. And now that I have taken the completely unnecessary step of explaining at great length our evil plans in their entirety, I can kill you using a time consuming and pointlessly complex method. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!”