A Grumbling Thrumm

Thrumm groaned, ripped off the electrode connecting him to the processor, stretched, and walked stiffly around the stark white laboratory.

The Rabophantt stirred and looked up grumpily.

‘For Christ’s sake, Thrumm, why can’t you be depressed quietly? Some people just go away into a corner and do themselves in, you know. I’d be happy to find you some names and addresses of successful candidates for you to learn from if you would like… only I suppose in the circumstances they wouldn’t be much use.’

Thrumm glared at the Rabophantt.

‘Just sod off, you revolting apology for an animal. If you can’t be helpful, and you never are, I would really appreciate it if you would crawl away and annoy someone else, since annoying seems to come to you so naturally.’

‘No chance,’ replied the Rabophantt dreamily stretching its legs and scratching under its front arms. ‘Your nice white laboratory suits me fine. It contains everything an annoying Rabophantt could possibly want. A perfectly balanced environment. Long periods of silence during which I can sleep as you pretend to work. All this plus the added advantage of being able to wind you up in the unlikely event that you do climb down from your ivory tower and disturb me. Leave? No thanks, I am quite happy to stay here and get on your nerves. That is, until you actually get your act together and achieve something. At which time I may have to find somewhere more convenient to lounge around. Anyway, based on your current rate of progress, I reckon I’m safe for the next century or so. Sod off and crawl away? Not on your pathetic life.’

Thrumm grunted with annoyance and decided to ignore the irritating animal. Anyway, to some extent it was right. He didn’t seem to be making much progress. For several days now, he had become increasingly fed up with the flashing lights and buzzing equipment that had been his main source of stimulation for the last three months. At this rate he wouldn’t even qualify for the first round of the selection board for the post of Elector. Let alone the bloody job itself. Why, oh why, he grumbled to himself, had he ever volunteered for the Earth job in the first place? Talk about downside potential. Furthermore, the image of the first two human targets he had just seen on the processor made him feel like throwing up.

He carried on trudging around the laboratory, feeling depressed and analysing for the hundredth time how he came to find himself in such a position. The decision to handle the Earth project had at the time been an integral part of Thrumm’s life plan to make it up the galactic power ladder. For centuries, he had been progressing slowly but reasonably surely by using a combination of networking, buck-passing, and influence-peddling – interspersed with rare flashes of original thought.

He had put in time as an extremely junior, slightly less junior and eventually relatively senior emissary in various galactic outposts. He had converted from a commercial role: which planet’s resources do we exploit next under the pretext of providing technology transfer? – to a political one: which planet’s resources do we exploit next under the pretext of providing intergalactic aid? He had weaselled himself on to every passing upgrade programme, to the extent that his original, somewhat limited, processing capacity had been extended to equal that of the most advanced models currently available.

The net result of all this labour was that Thrumm, the oddball gauche processor originating from the wrong side of the wrong planet, was now on the short list to be named an Elector: one of the twenty-five most powerful decision-takers in the Mexatode Galaxy.

Thrumm stopped walking and found himself back facing the revolting Rabophantt. He opened his mouth to continue sparring with the horrible animal but decided against it as the Rabophantt looked at him with a grin all over its stupid face. Thrumm couldn’t face another smart-arsed comment, the reply to which inevitably came to his mind ten minutes too late since it involved lateral rather than sequential logic. He continued instead to ramble around contemplating his miserable lot and wondering whether the bloody Rabophantt could be right. Perhaps he should go into a corner and switch himself off. Thrumm gave this option some more thought and then quickly rejected it on the double grounds that there was no future in it for him, plus it would only please the pesky Rabophantt.

As Thrumm ploughed heavily onwards through his sea of depression, he weighed up his chances of making it to Electorship if this damn project ever did turn out to be successful.

It was always a bit of a mystery to Thrumm how, in fact, one qualified for Electorship. For sure there were those, like Chancellor Legs Eleven Stroob, who had been destined for the position since their creation, as a result of their components, connections and networks. Others had cleverly managed to tip the odds in their favour by amassing enough potentially damaging information on a statistically significant proportion of the Electoral Committee, while at the same time keeping their own misdemeanours under wraps.

Thrumm had been an outright failure as far as both inherited background and gathering good blackmailing material had been concerned. To his credit, however, he had also managed to preserve his own position by avoiding providing too much potentially damaging material to others. Sadly, this alone was insufficient to get him elected.

To Thrumm the Elector In Waiting, the only course available to him seemed for him to be the architect of an Event Of Such Significance that somehow or other it became a foregone conclusion that he, Thrumm, should be made an Elector. Indeed, it had to be A Matter Of Great Surprise that he, Thrumm, did not already hold the position.

As long as enough people thought it, it would happen. A sort of intergalactic Mexican wave. Hence Thrumm’s desire to grab the Human project when it first appeared.

On paper it seemed to have all the necessary ingredients of such a significant event: Chancellor Legs Eleven Stroob was personally involved; it wouldn’t take too long – Humans had an extremely short life span; and it would have the visibility of the full Board of Electors. Indeed, when Thrumm had first stumbled across the project, his well-developed political antennae almost fused.

The reality had, however, been somewhat different. Thrumm hadn’t cottoned on to the fact initially that a fair degree of time travel would be involved. Not that that in itself was a problem. That this travel was to a backward, germ-ridden and now defunct planet, namely Earth, didn’t make the prospect too appetising. Moreover, SWOPP, whose responsibility it was to organise this travel – along with most other things in the Mexatode Galaxy – didn’t seem to have quite as much luck getting people back as sending them away. On several occasions, Thrumm had found re-entry to be a distinctly dicey and uncomfortable process with bits and pieces of him arriving at different times and being incorrectly reassembled. Thrumm had spoken sharply to SWOPP about this problem but didn’t like to push the point too far for fear that SWOPP might engineer his disappearance for good during a subsequent trip.

Indeed Thrumm had begun to wonder just how many poor unfortunate beings were, courtesy of SWOPP’s efforts, either stranded in history or floating around in time semi-composed, never to voice their grievances back home to their loved ones. Or, for that matter, to SWOPP.

As he became more involved with the Human project, it had slowly dawned on Thrumm that perhaps the reason he had been so successful in being awarded the job in the first place was more to do with a complete lack of enthusiasm from the potential competition, rather than an overpowering suitability on the part of one Thrumm, Very Nearly Elector Bar Any Mishaps.

Despite the niggling feeling that he had been had (and not for the first time, Thrumm had to admit), he was still convinced that the project itself was his personal passport to Electorship. And God how he wanted the position.

Few who had been associated with Thrumm during his painfully slow progression up the power ladder would have guessed just how determined he really was. From time to time this determination amazed even Thrumm himself. He could only assume that somewhere in his basic circuitry a little ‘want’ component had inadvertently been included. In fact a mega ‘want’ component, given the degree to which Thrumm hankered after power.

The other problem with the project was the Supreme Wondrous Omnipotent Paragalactic Powerfulness itself. Over the years, Thrumm had grown used to many of SWOPP’s idiosyncrasies. And the fact that, fundamentally, it was a right royal pain in the butt. He had developed ways of obtaining from SWOPP most of what he wanted. Basic flattery secured the majority of requirements. What was really getting on Thrumm’s nerves regarding the Earth project, however, was SWOPP’s innate ability to combine its natural arrogance with a seeming total disinterest in the project itself.

Furthermore, an abnormally large number of odd things seemed to be happening recently; most of which were, to Thrumm’s mind, directly traceable to SWOPP. In the normal course of events, Thrumm couldn’t have given a stuff. However, in the case of the Earth project the thought of a cock-up was unbearable. It was this concern that was uppermost in Thrumm’s brain, as he prepared himself for the next inevitable stage of the scheme.

Over the past few weeks, Thrum had grown relatively used to the disgusting look of the inhabitants of Earth. SWOPP had produced an Earth Study Pack which contained a condensed summary of all one could reasonably be expected to know about the subject, given one wasn’t exactly overly interested in it in the first place. A sort of Bluffer’s Guide To Humans. An intense study of this, combined with a couple of rubbernecking time warp trips to Earth, had given Thrumm all the background information on the subject that he considered necessary. The thought of actually having to communicate with the revolting Humans face to face was, however, distinctly unappealing.

With a heavy heart and a sense of impending doom, Thrumm ambled over to the door of the Reception Zone and braced himself for what he felt sure was going to be an extremely unpleasant experience.

‘If you have decided to end it all, do you mind shutting the door quietly on the way out,’ yawned the Rabophantt. ‘I’m just beginning to drop off again.’