Esk parted ways with Sam when they were approximately halfway back to Sam’s cabin. 

“There are things I must do, Sam, but I will be back this evening,” Esk said.

“Yer okay, ain’t cha’, Esk? I mean, that church service was the most horrible, rotten thing I ever seen done to a person visitin’ an’ I don’t want ya’ to not come back,” Sam replied.

“I am fine, Sam. Do not worry. I will be back in a few hours.”

Sam walked the rest of the way back to the cabin dragging his feet and kicking the occasional stone along the way. His suit was dirty. His polished shoes were scratched and scuffed by the time he returned home from all the dust that he had dredged up. 

“I’ll have ta’ get it dry-cleaned by one of them ole’ biddies now, I s’pose,” Sam sobbed and muttered. 

At the same time, Esk was preparing to approach the Council about the Deacon Pritchard and the Bandersnatches. He had serious business to discuss with the collective consciousness.

The Council convened. Esk, in his armor, stood before them with arms crossed and a fierce scowl.

 “I would be pleased to address the Council,” he said as respectfully as he could.

“Please tell us of your progress, Esk,” they said.

“With the Council’s permission, I would first like to address the trauma done to the Deacon Pritchard. He is in a catatonic state on his way to a mental institution due to the trauma done by the collective Council’s examination and reprogramming. As the Council itself has decided, it is unacceptable to cause this level of trauma, or any level of distress high enough to cause said trauma to occur in these instances. I ask that the Council grant me permission to attempt a repair of the Deacon Pritchard’s neural connections.”

Many sound vibrations stirred in the chamber, and Esk did not listen to any in particular. He simply waited for the hushed chaos to die down so that he could receive an answer. “Esk, the Council grants you permission to proceed with the repair of the Deacon Pritchard’s mind.”

“Thank you, Council. A second issue that I need to bring before you is that of the Bandersnatches, both the Reverend and the Chief Gossip. It appears that the Chief Gossip Bandersnatch remembers the examination and reprogramming in its entirety. In addition, the Reverend Bandersnatch is hostile toward our kind. He requires reprogramming. I ask the Council’s permission to perform a second reprogramming on the Chief Gossip and an initial examination and reprogramming on the Reverend.”

“Granted,” the Council said without discussion. 

Esk’s mouth hung open for a moment, but he realized it and thanked them. He backed out slowly as not to show his shock at their quick collective reply on the matter.

“Now I’ve got to do some neural research,” said Esk under his breath as he translated himself back to Earth. 

He found Sam sitting in a lawn chair outside his cabin staring at the bright full moon. Esk noticed a second seat set up next to Sam’s and lowered himself into it.

“Beer?” Sam asked.

“Yes,” Esk said, taking the sweating can from Sam’s hand. 

Esk had no idea what beer was, but he was about to find out.

“Bottoms up!”

Later, every fiber of Esk’s DNA screamed in dull yet persistent pain. What is going on? How can my genetic material burn so? Esk was tempted to lower his armor to relieve the pressure, but he dared not so long as he was in Sam’s house lest he inadvertently be found out. Was it that drink—that “beer” that makes me hurt? Oh, this is unbearable. I must find a way to get to the bathroom and purge myself of this poison… Esk began pulling himself up to a sitting position on his bed, however the moment he did, he found himself reaching for a shiny metal pan that Sam had left for him at the side of the bed. As Esk was retching pure alcohol into the container, Sam heard him and ran into the room.

“Ya’ okay, Esk?” Sam asked.

“No. No, I am not okay, Sam. I seem to have voided my stomach contents into this bowl-shaped steel pot. I am sorry,” Esk said, vomiting again. 

Sam helped Esk crawl to the bathroom, where he instructed Esk to simply vomit into the toilet. 

“Is this not where we void our other bodily excrement, Sam?” Esk asked between bouts of sickness.

“Yeah, Esk, it is. Everything bad goes in this here toilet and we flush it away. Just flush it whenever ya’ need to, okay, buddy? I’m terrible sorry you’re in such a state. I shouldn’t’ a’ let’cha drink so much last night, but’cha seemed awful uptight.” 

Sam went to fetch some water for Esk so that he would not get dehydrated. When Sam returned, he found the toilet full of green strands of goo and no sign of Esk. Sam decided to flush the toilet. Unfortunately for Esk, Sam did not know what he looked like without his armor. Esk went for the ride of his life through the plumbing of the cabin and into the sewage pond. In short, he ended up disoriented behind and down the hill from the cabin. Esk now knew much more than he cared to about plumbing and how the humans rid themselves of their own waste.

Sam looked high and low for Esk to no avail. He seemed to have just vanished. Sam was exceptionally worried about his friend’s well-being after finding the sticky green gooey strands of what he thought were stomach contents in the toilet and Esk’s pajamas on the floor.

While Sam looked for Esk, Esk searched for a suitable place to clean his DNA. He was, after all, covered in toxic sludge. Esk found a nearby pool of stagnant water with lily pads and the croaking pairs of legs that hopped from one of these floating plants to another when disturbed. Esk slithered into the cold mossy depths to cleanse himself of the human filth. There he discovered an entire underwater world of life that fascinated him so much that he barely remembered why he was drowning himself in this environment. Having discovered such beauty and wonder, he was no longer angry about having been flushed down the toilet. 

I should not be angry, anyway. Sam did not know it was me.

Esk reinstated his armor and walked back to Sam’s cabin. Sam was in the nearby woods shouting Esk’s name at the top of his lungs. 

“Sam, I am at the cabin!” Esk called out.

Sam came running as fast as his legs moved and eyed Esk carefully.

 “You okay? Why’re ya’ all wet, Esk? Did’ ya’ go for a swim down at the slough or somethin’?”

“Um, yes. Yes, I went for a swim, Sam,” Esk said, not knowing what exactly a slough was, but assuming that he had been to one in the last hour or so.

“Well, ya’ shoulda’ told me and I’d a’ gone with ya’. I could use a nice cool dip down in the willows with the tadpoles. We’ll go agin’ sometime when ya’ want to. How’s that sound?” 

Esk nodded in agreement. 

Thinking intently upon the creatures that he had encountered there, he hoped that none of them would or could tell Sam what he really was. He doubted that Sam could understand their language from what he knew of human linguistics thus far.

Esk left Sam in the cabin to nurse his own hangover, as the humans called it, and went to intercept Deacon Pritchard before he was taken away to the mental institution. Mental institutions were particularly difficult to extract human beings from for some unknown reason. The State, whoever that was, insisted that most of the humans who went to these prisons remain there indefinitely, and not without being medicated quite literally out of their minds. Esk translated the Deacon Pritchard out of the acute inpatient unit to the examination and reprogramming room inside the moon. Upon realizing his surroundings were all too familiar, the Deacon Pritchard began thrashing about and screaming as if he were going insane (and might have been), but Esk came to him in his armor and calmed him immediately. 

“Yer…yer…Sam’s friend, right?” Deacon Pritchard asked.

“Yes. I am Sam’s friend,” Esk said to the terrified man.

“Get, get me outta here, please,” he whispered to Esk in a hushed yet urgent tone, “whatever your name is. I don’t care what’cher name is right now. Just please get me outta here. I’m beggin’ you.”

“I assure you that I will release you as soon as possible, Deacon Pritchard.” Esk left the room in his armor and came back in his native form so that the Deacon Pritchard would not associate Esk with the fluorescent green ball of DNA strands inching toward him in the now darkened room. Muffled yelps could be heard clear over in the Council chambers.

Esk took a different approach to reprogramming the Deacon Pritchard this time. Instead of entering his brain entirely through his oral, nasal, and auditory cavities, he decided to enter through all the pores and follicles of the man’s head and neck for a more diverse examination, hoping that it would be more rapid and immediately revealing. As a pleasant surprise to Esk, it was indeed a better approach, and he intended to share it with the Council so that all the visitors could be trained in the technique. Perhaps this would not be so traumatic to humans. Esk rewired the memory connections of the Deacon Pritchard so that he would no longer have access to them, essentially killing the root to his memories of all examinations and reprogramming by the visitors. Satisfied with his handiwork, Esk translated the human back to the psychiatric ward, where he was found by baffled doctors and staff to be sane as sane could be. The Deacon Pritchard was released (after much imaging, poking, and prodding) the next day back into the community with the medical providers scratching their heads the whole time. Esk knew that the Gossips, and specifically the Chief Gossip, would have rumors flying about the Deacon Pritchard by nightfall.

Image by Chouaib Saoud via Pixabay