It was my first and last "live" interview with a glowsnake handler. From then on, it was all studio all the time. CG is my friend. It's been my life since to never trust a tosspot handler with more pockets than a kangaroo.

ã 2002 Evan Myquest

September, 2002

Deadly Little Rainbows

It isn't usual for me, Jimmy Jenks of the "JJ's Wide Wide Uni-Zoo" TV show, to worry about my safety during an interview but this season opener with the chimeric glowsnakes, otherwise known as shims, their handler-in-khaki-shorts interplanetary type had me going. I'd been warned about them by most everybody at the port. "Don't trust'em as far as you can toss'em." They were talking about the handlers I learn.

"They'll have you on and not think a bit o' it. They got stories and ways, them handlers does." Mostly they said don't provide drink as it "makes 'em cleverer" than a backswamp fellow ought to be. "Just don't if you haven't had it up with them before. Especially ol' Shine-On Pike, and his missus."

But I like the drink myself, and always carry a good sized flask to assure a quality quaff. I'm easy enough with it to share with a type with stories that needs a little drama priming, a little situational lubricating, mood-coaxer. But I find this more than loquacious friend, Handler Pike, one-half of a recommended mom and pop handler shop, at the moment has his own supply and we are availing. Mightily. His missus was around cataloguing captures somewhere in their warehouse. It had been a glorious hunt day for Pike and his cages were well occupied as we sit to drama-fy the details. I didn't go with the man on the hunt though my audience will think so as the show airs.

Here it is around twilight when the light is at an angle all of its own. The Ganelian sun liquid slants into us and the warehouse at just the right angle to illuminate the strange denizens of the warehouse cages. They certainly do glow. Deadly little rainbows. Great TV. Just great.

At least, by now, the sweat is as real on my brow as it is, well, sort of real on his, too. When there are animals around that exist as shimmers, mere prismatic warps in the light and who can still kill you if you're not totally aware, comfort isn't an option that is really in the cards. I am not brave. I am well paid.

Damn right you perspire. Alot. When you're doing the post hunt interview live from Ganelia, glowsnake capital of the universe. The production crew is RV'd on one of the moons for all I know, but I am here with my interview going full wow, gee whiz, snikes, kids. Dine-gerous life in the outworlds. I pad the dialogue with as much dine-ger as I can.

Hah.

I'm talking to him, paying out the open ended questions like marshmallow baseball pitches, this khaki-shorted, multi-pocketed shirt-sleeved and vest credentialed glowsnake handler, upping the danger he conveys in his chat. I make a note to have my tailor add another pocket. And is he good at the voice. I hear ratings ring up like they have for every strange, offworld snake story I ever do. And there are no stranger snakes than glowsnakes, let me clue you. Of course, they're prohibited onworld. They're obviously hard to find and dangerous as get out to capture. And they're a first on my program at this moment. We're kicking off the second season with this rarity thing.

Getting the usual why, when, how long and what's your closest call stuff out of the way, when he starts to glance over to the right and above, or to the right side of, my head. He says, "You're pretty comfortable where you are right now, mate? Don't want you to move a muscle, that's a good man… Can I get you another glass of something? Don't move a feckin' muscle…just don't. I'll take care of everything forya, mate."

He continues to look past my right ear, and I notice the growing little beads of perspiration on his face. Believe me, I'm not moving a muscle. It isn't that I see anything out of the corner of my eye but everything has a shimmer to it at this time of day and I am comfortable right where I am because I think if I move anything there's a Chimeric Black Mamba could get very upset and interested in puncturing my whole day, not to mention what's left of my whole well-bankrolled life. I sputter quietly, "no problem."

Don't want any Chimeric Black Mamba Shimmershades getting upset, now do we?

He didn't say there was a poisonous glowsnake anywhere near me, but he starts this soothing speech about "not knowing when or where the danger is" or "life's not just worth living without a little risk" or "boy you can sure sleep better when you've risked everything and won, know what I mean, know what I mean."

No, I did not know what he meant and I sure as hell did not want to know. My contract calls for complete and utter "wall of safety." Insurance premiums, you know. But I was playing the ear thing like life or death, that's for sure. If this turns out to be glowsnake handler humor, I was going to…I was going to do a few bodily functions and then get the hell off Ganelia planet as fast as possible.

He just kept looking at me, or rather past me at something that has him riveted. He's glancing around himself, I think for his equipment but it's beyond grasp.

So my questions become, "What could possibly be riskier than handling these snakes except maybe for counting cages and snakes and being, say, minus at the end? Or, perhaps, let's just perhaps for a moment, that say, one was imminently going to be bitten by a…glowmamba say, and in order to prepare for it, should one relax, or should one tighten every muscle on the, say, right quadrant of one's body in the hope that a set of fangs couldn't penetrate a taut musculo-skeletal structure, far enough to do dire damage?"

He just kept looking THERE. Past me. The drops of perspiration were really visible now. I'm not kidding. He was experiencing a dehydration purge on the order of Wickram Yoga. And I was not about to move any way shape or form.

"By all means, I'd think, if there were something that could possibly put a fang in me, I think I'd go pretty crikin' tense, mate. But it's an each to his own thing, ya know. I nevers just knew what it'd be like."

No help. Just looking.

"So, if one was to think in terms of mortality on just a teeny weeny fang prick, you'd say the bloke was going to be just a teensy wee bit under the weather for awhile?" I ask.

"Oh quite." He grimaces and I about leap skyward on the order of a slingrocket. But no muscle moves on me except maybe the wringing of several internal organs by their "protective" musculature. I'm feeling some pressures if you know what I mean. And I'm not exactly arid dry myself, at this point. "In fact," says Pike, "a teeny tiny fang accidentally just touched with a glancing brush could easily result in a paralysis that creeps over the entire body. Just works its way to the brain, ya know, mate."

"Pity the poor devil in such a situation, eh, mate. Certainly wouldn't want to be him, eh." He took a long pull on his drink at that thought.

"Right bloody not, I'd say," he says. I think I see his eyes close for an instant, and just a little tightening of the facial muscles on their way to a grimace, like a multi-car accident is about to happen to a herd of wheel-chaired seniors crossing the street.

"And if one's attention were on the members of the reptile kingdom, perhaps the object of the moment would be say, shim-black?"

"Oh no, there are plenty of deadly species right in this room that are green. Or white. Or coral. You get the prism effect quite handily at many different frequencies. Youse just have to know what to look for."

I could swear though that his voice went upscale at the word coral.

"Don't have to be no shimblack at all to be spittin' final doom right in yer ear, mate."

Right in my ear. He says, "right in my ear." I hear that, and I am not supposed to move? I am not supposed to jump clear over the moon at what could be instant death. As each second ticks, I think I am more and more committed to remaining right as I am. Fixed. Immobile. Shallow of breath. Showing no fear. Bucking up.

It isn't easy with him trying to calm me down with "then again, 'at's not a worry when you've 'andled 'em as long as I 'ave, guv."

Sure. Easy as smiling at children in blueberry pie up to their eyes for him to say while I'm thinking I'm going to see dead childhood Spot again. Up there, together at last. Spot was a good dog, a great dog on the Kodak moment scale, and when he passed during my childhood, I resolved to be an animal friend for life. That I turned out a pretty decent TV talking zoologist was financial gravy in my boat. On the screen, I am that dude in waders and handling the LONG stick and sensors that keeps the snakes from biting my arse each and every show. Doesn't really matter that it's someone named…well, whatever his name is, he's always there for me though I wouldn't want his hospital bills.

Only here I am, no stick with that little curve, crook, and sonic field generator with an offworlder sweat factory staring past my ear at sudden death, mine.

I lean lightly against a bamboo divider wall here in the port warehouse. The bamboo is not tightly woven or laced. Plenty of room for one of mother nature's bad boys to slither and barber pole itself at just the point of one's right ear. Or buttock.

Oh my God, I think, if it's only at my ear and I have to wait for it to crawl or shim-slither all the way to the floor…I'll go mad. But first, butt first, I'll be very wet, especially in my general buttocks area. I need a plan. Pike's advice isn't doing me much good, staying in "character" for the X-10s.

Conversation definitely takes a less genteel turn at this point.

"So, you've made your risks, your affairs are in order, and they send you out to talk to expert dangerous shim-reptile handlers, eh?"

"Oh, my affairs are certainly not in order," I say. If my affairs were in order I'd have spent all that money in my accounts.

After all, I'm only going out to TALK to offworld reptile handlers, not hunt with them--except from safe distance and a series of walkie-talkie conversations as they do the hunting. My tele-exploits for the most part have been spliced into the broadcasts. Like those interviews where the reporter is being filmed nodding understandingly and he's two hours removed from the conversation. Magic of the medium and all that, you understand? It's called Computer Generated cut and paste. I look like I'm with you, and the audience thinks I'm with you, but I'm standing in front of a mono screen back onworld nodding in one like my feature is all knowing, all wise. Or I'm hanging in harness from a limb, or jumping back from a charging croc, or bagging some substitute simplastic wriggler or, well, one gets the picture.

My tipsy friend is doing his best to absorb my tension. "Say mate, whyn't ya take this drink but try to savor it, ya know, don't toss it down WITH ANY SUDDEN MOVES…" Emphasis is mine here. And I'll damn well as I please emphasize anything at all I want, yes sir, it is emphasizing time. Past it, maybe.

Emphasizing and clenching. That is me. You'd like to think you could be in shape enough to just clench a quadrant of your body without straining something. But not to be. How do those painting class models do it? Hour after hour? Okay, maybe fifteen minute stretches. I have the feeling they put themselves in my present position and it helps immensely…

Well, I strain something. I feel/hear a tear and pop. I for the life of me do not know what it is but I am numbing very quickly in that quadrant of my body past which the handler stares in what I think is stark terror. Sheer category type file it under turning-white-haired terror.

Perhaps it is just my imagination. I think: Nothing like this is real, here, going on about me. I am in my bed having done a narco. A good deep REM snooze. A power sleep of a sleep. In fact, my imagination is working itself frothy over the dream material. A couple parts terror, a couple parts "could be" verisimilitude. A couple parts TV memories and journalistic ambition. Voila'. You've got yourself a nightmare of a horse collar choking you while your neck glows where glow shouldn't glow. I mean go. I mean glow, yes, I mean glow.

Sure. It is surreal in the highest possible way. All I have to do is wake up. Or maybe just have some fun with it.

"So we're in the path of death at any moment in this life and there's not a bloody thing we can do about it except surrender our souls at the moment?" I am getting glib just for the fun with it. Good'n glib I tell you. Confident that it is all just surreal nocturnal subconscious jokesterism.

I don't expect my what's his name, khaki bwana offworlder interviewee to go green in the face. Obviously, skin really can go green on a moment's churn of the abdominal muscles. I didn't know it beforehand, but I do now. Very now in fact. So much for having fun with it. So much for the surreal. So much for the light conversation, too.

This is getting heavy. My last chance at life rescuer/handler passes out. Lock, stock and freaking piss-happy passes out. He hits the warehouse floor with a thud and a groan, and then appears to be out cold.

The noise of his falling off the crate brings his wife into the warehouse. She looks at him, and then at me. "Well, are you just going to stand there? Help me sit him back up so's he can screw with ya some more. 'e's always doin' it to you questionin' types."

"Madam, if you don't mind, I'll just kind of slump right here." I do with a butt whapping whoosh. Nothing bites me. Nothing slithers invisibly away from me. Not even a rustle in the bamboo. But the pain from the pop in shoulder muscles is now back with a remember me fire.

I shut down the little X-10 that is always on me. It isn't going to be hard to turn me into a bloody hero saving this handler's miserable life with a little help from CG, but first I have to find my legs and make them work. Just so I can kick this khaki man's bollocks as hard as I can.

Except for the non-imagined shimmer by Handler Pike's pants cuff, I would have, too.

"Mrs. Pike, would you consider yourself, eh, comfortable? And could I get you anything to drink? I don't think you ought to drop his body or do anything sudden in nature. You know what I mean?"

Jimmy Jenks, dine-ger man, doing everything sudden, like signing off and running for his freaking life.

Evan Myquest

September, 2002