Brother Abdul walked away to a place called 'Animal grave', where many
grazing animals had died of apparently no reason, to pick his mushrooms.
While Abdul was away Olivia talked to Jesper:
"I have this weird psychic feeling that Brother Abdul is trying to
hurt you."
"Give me a break! He is a monk for heavens sake. A monk will not harm
me."
"I know that, but I still have this feeling. Maybe my psychic powers
is out of order, due to the interplanetary jet-lag I'm suffering
from."
Roberta looked at them and said with a frown:
"Excuse me for asking, but I just got to know. How come your voices
suddenly sounds so dark and strange, almost like you inhaled an oxygen
balloon."
"What do you mean?? Should our voices be strange?? Just look who is
asking; the one with the cartoon character voice.", Jesper replied
without understanding that on a 'helium planet' a 'helium voice' was
considered a normal voice, and that a robot without any vocal cords
had the same voice independent of atmosphere.
"Well, never mind that now. Let's instead focus on the homicidal
monk. I know a way...", Roberta begun.
"Shut up stupid robot! Monks are nice. Don't ever accuse the monk
again!", Jesper interrupted.
Since Roberta was programmed to obey her master, she could not reply.
Instead she decided to save Jesper from being poisoned,
without him knowing anything. The strategy she should use to save
Jesper was to test all the food intended for Jesper before he ate it.
She could do this since she had a build in ability to make an instant
food analysis just by testing a small potion of the food.
As they stood there waiting for Brother Abdul to come back smiling
with a basket filled with strange mushrooms, he did just that. He
said:
"Follow me to my private room for your supper. It is private, so no
monk will come and bother us or witness what we are doing..."
"Oh, how very nice of you to go to all this trouble just to fix us
some dinner.", Jesper said.
"The pleasure is all mine.", Brother Abdul smiled, and showed them to
his room and asked them to wait there until he had compounded their
meals. A short while later he returned with a large saucepan filled
with food. Before anyone else had the chance, Roberta grabbed the
saucepan and took a little bit to taste, or rather to
analyze. However, after swallowing it, she, much to her own surprise,
could not analyze any results from it. She assumed that the piece was
to small, and hastily ate another larger bit.
"I think our dear friend Jesper also would like to have some food to
eat.", Brother Abdul said to Roberta.
"Yes, I really would like that.", Jesper nodded.
However, Roberta, who didn't seem to listen, took larger and larger
bits of the food, and took them more and more frequently. She begun to
be extremely frustrated that she still couldn't analyze if the food was
poisonous or not. The (other) persons around the table looked stunned
at Roberta, as she in less than a minute had emptied the large
saucepan. She then looked at Brother Abdul, and said:
"This saucepan seems to be empty. You don't have anything more for me
to taste, do you? I'm sure I need just a little bit more."
"No! And young lady, have you ever considered to actually chew the
food before swallowing it. When you eat like that, it wouldn't
surprise me if you'll get really sick.", Brother Abdul said aware of
that Roberta just had eaten enough poison to kill ten elephants and a
zebra, but trying to invent another possible explanation to her
forthcoming illness that didn't reveal that he was trying to kill
them.
"Roberta, I'm shocked! Your table manners are no better than my
brother's, and just slightly better than Darren's.", Jesper said
giving Roberta an accusing look.
"I'm sorry. I usually just need a mouthful, but obviously I need much
more here on earth.", she whispered shamefully.
"Obviously! Brother Abdul, is there any Mc Donald's or any other fine
gourmet restaurants near hear, so I can get something to eat.", Jesper
asked.
"No, there is no Mc Donald's near hear, at least if you define 'near'
as something closer than 5.000 km away.", Brother Abdul said, finally
getting some sympathy for Jesper. A person that considered Mc Donald's
to be a fine gourmet restaurant, couldn't be all bad. He in fact begun to
like Jesper so much that he decided that he could live for
another hour or so. Thus, he said:
"The other monks are right now having their supper in the main hall.
And, since our motto is that we should give food to the hungry, it
wouldn't surprise me if you could get some food there, if you begged
them."
"I'm quite good at begging.", Olivia informed Brother Abdul.
"Well, then I guess that you will be able to get some....", Brother
Abdul begun. He, didn't finish since he was alone in his room,
the others were running away to get some food.
While they were running to the main hall something bothered Roberta. A
red and a blue lamp inside here head were twinkling like crazy. She
slowed down to investigate her built in users manual. She soon found
that the red lamp indicated that her food storage was overfilled and
needed to be emptied. This was no surprise to her. However, the
message that she got from the blue lamp --- 'Can't use non-existing
function', puzzled her. She walked outside, and opened the little door
on her stomach, and took out the food and put it under a pear
tree. As soon as she had done that, the red lamp switched off, but the
blue lamp still lit. Obviously there was some technical error on some
of her circuits. Even though she was a very intelligent robot, she was
not good at fixing technical gadgets. The only machine that she ever
manage to fix was a television with a rolling picture. She decided to
use the same technique now as she had done then, and banged herself
hard on the head with her fist.
One of the things that broke in her head was the blue lamp. Pleased
with herself for again manage to fix something she continued to look
for the main hall.
Two minutes later a cute fat cat came strutting. She was the favorite
pet among the monks, and not just because she was their only pet. The
cat, known as Cute Buddha, came to her favorite tree to do some
manuring. However, when she was at the tree, she noticed some food and
did quite the opposite. She ate the food, and it didn't take long
before she was an ex-cat.
Before any worms had the chance to take advantage of Cute Buddha's
misfortune, Darren came walking. He had mixed feelings. He was of
course glad over getting rid of the space-craft that he used to wear
around his neck, but sad that everybody now seemed to neglect him. But
most of all he felt one thing -- hunger. He had done half of an hour of
food haunting without any success, when he finally noticed some food; a
mushroom omelet with a raw cat. Without any hesitations whatsoever,
Darren ate the food. What Darren didn't see was that Cute Buddha's
owner was, as always, keeping an eye on his darling and had witnessed
the whole thing. Shocked over what he had seen, he said to himself:
"I curse you huge green monster, for killing my darling. May you
suffer the death of the million pains!"
After he had said that he noticed that the dragon was lying down on
his back holding his stomach and screaming from pain. The (former)
owner
of Cute Buddha, Brother Jacob, stared at Darren for a minute, then he
said:
"Holy shit! It worked!!"