High Steaks: A Bjorn Trilogeé Adventure

Chapter 9: Bjorn

Bjorn was flying. He looked down upon the red rocky terrain of an alien planet below him. Above the purple skyline rose a large green planet with rings like Saturn, the stars were of no constellation that he understood and looked more like a random assortment of Christmas lights.

He flew down close to the surface, his hands outstretched, his fingertips barely touching the ground. Standing before him stood a large golden ziggurat. Choosing to fly towards it, Bjorn began to feel compelled by some unknown force. Upon closer inspection, the structure seemed far less majestic and more like a scale model with some random objects hastily hot glued onto it. It was spray painted yellow. The cyclopean front doors opened before him and he entered.

It appeared as if he was in a completely different building than the one on the outside. The inside of the structure resembled the Ducal Palace in Italy during its restoration. The forces of gravity reclaimed their hold upon him as his feet landed on the marble floor. His eyes looked around in awe of the arched ceilings.

While currently in a run-down state, the Palace still looked glorious. Bjorn gazed around at all of the various types of beings, many of them clearly non-human, it seemed as if some kind of party was going on. A large stop-motion clock-work waiter came up to Bjorn and offered him a drink. Bjorn just shook his head, no. He felt drunk enough without having to partake in the strange bubbling blue elixir.

No one seemed to notice him as he walked amongst the revelers. To his left he noticed (without trying to stare) the conjoined brother/sister twins Lord-Lady Hemophone of Reigel Seven. Fused at the spine with two pairs of arms and two pairs of legs, each facing the opposite direction, they mingled amongst the party goers. They could never quit agree on which way to go, but when they did they always went there in a very crab like manner. The sister half was sitting and talking to a midget (little person, thought Bjorn ... not a midget). The little person's face was painted red and he had deer antlers glued to the top off his head. The brother half, facing away, raised a sterling silver tea cup to his mouth and took a drink. Then a few seconds later the sister half raised an empty cup towards her mouth and spat out the liquid. She handed the cup to the red faced 'be-antlered' little person who eagerly took a sip, his eyes rolled back into his head in ecstasy.

It finally dawned on Bjorn that he was in the movie 'Don Quixote in Outer Space'.

"What the hell did they give me?" he said to himself, thinking about that drug laced donut.

Regardless of the odd circumstances, Bjorn realized that this is probably his best opportunity to meet his favorite character Don Quixote! He gazed around the grand room and finally noticed Don standing in the corner speaking to a group of very wealthy alien nobility. He remembers this scene! It was when the nobles threw a party, just so they could invite the senile old Quixote and laugh at his outrageous stories.

Quixote was wearing an old NASA flight suit with a sword around his waist. It was basically Joseph Cotton during the bottom of his career talking to beautiful actress Sirpa Lane near the apex of her career. She was a pointy eared alien with plenty of cleavage in her odd combination of 80's new wave meets rococo fashioned ball gown.

Bjorn went up to Don Quixote. He desperately wanted to tell him not to trust these people ... that they were all laughing at his expense. Bjorn tried to tell Don that the beautiful Dulcinea wasn't a lost princess but a mechanic at a space station. Don merely said that he must be suffering from some enchantment from a Techno-Wizard.

"She doesn't love you," said Bjorn.

Then Bjorn heard a voice that seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere "all love is an illusion."

The scene froze and everything went from glorious Technicolor to black and white. Bjorn turned around and saw a blurry green blob slowly materialize around him. This wasn't a very good special effect he thought. The blob slowly transformed into a more humanoid figure. Standing there in a green World War I Prussian uniform was Lord Nothing; wearing a long coat, gas mask and a peaked military cap, all of which had been spray-painted green.

It was basically just a left over costume from another movie. The filmmakers just wanted a Darth Vader rip off character and needed one as cheaply as possible. As much as Bjorn enjoyed 'Don Quixote in Space', at the end of the day it was just a cheap copy of Star Wars that some Italian studio tried to get into theaters with the shrewd intention of cashing in on the public's demand for more sci-fi films. The director and writers knew very little about Star Wars, aside from promotional stills and the trailer ... and seemingly even less about the classic novel Don Quixote.

"I am the madness at the heart of all things" said Lord Nothing through his gas mask.

"Who are you?" asked Bjorn angrily as he slightly backed away.

"Look upon the face of your death." Lord Nothing removed his gas mask and Bjorn gazed upon the face of the man living in his mind, Abe Adguy. A smile slowly moved across Abe's long face.

Then Bjorn woke up.