Reciprocal
The universe stood on its head with its shoes on the wrong feet.
Oshet, James, and Rachel fluctuated between existence and non-existence as they sped through the dimensional warp. In what would forever be known as the Wooden Spoon Method, they traveled at pi times the speed of light into a calculated dimension.
When they crashed through the black field of dimensionalization, they hurtled through the air and landed on the ground of a tenth-dimensional world. Oshet got up, dusted himself off, and showed extreme consternation. It was his favorite facial expression, and it usually didn't mean anything. This time, however, it did.
"We've lost the trail of the duck. I could've sworn I traced it here. Well, kids, we'll just have to wait for it to get here."
"Will it ever get here?" James stood up and paced about, pensively. This world seemed devoid of life. It was a magnificently flat, cracked desert as far as the eye could see. The occasional cactus stood weakly in the scorching sun, increasing the sense of desolate isolation James had. There was no one around except Rachel and Oshet. He looked down at his arm. Dimensionalization had taken the shape of his broken arm and turned it into a very large pencil. Rachel laughed.
"James, going to wear down his arm writing me love letters!"
James went off wandering through the desert. Nothing else for the situation, really. He had become somewhat fatalistic; being stuck in a desert with no provisions can do that to a man. A pencil for an arm was a strange feeling.
Rachel looked at Oshet. She wasn't very happy about being stuck in the desert with this lunatic, and she actually preferred James' company. Off into the desert she went.
"James! Where'd ya go?"
James stopped. This was rich. She insulted and battered him through the entire trip, starting from the first time they met. Now, she was trying to use him as an escape from the prophetic duck hunter. He didn't like this woman at all.
"Hi Rachel!" rang out as James turned around. "Why are you following me?"
"I'm bored with Oshet! He's talking and talking and talking about that duck."
"I don't have any idea where I'm going, wanna come?"
Rachel was agreeable to that. She figured, as James had, that if one is stuck in a desert, one might as well wander a bit. She approached James quickly, and within a minute they were traveling together under the hot sun. After passing several cacti, and naming each of them, the sun set and night fell over the desert.
If anything happened that night, no one cares. The next morning, James and Rachel found a pleasant oasis, teeming with sparkling water and desert life. They drank of the water and picked some fruits. James inspected all of them very cautiously, pausing over every finite detail, then chowed down on ten of the fruits and berries.
Rachel watched to see if James died. He didn't. "Damn." She ate some of the same fruit James had had. The two of them sat down by the water's edge and were silent. Peaceful ripples from falling droplets off the plants came their way, and small insects were carried on their crests. Lizards darted hither and thither, munching the occasional bug. No noise was made in this peaceful retreat from the universe's constant dynamism. Two peaceful expressions of happiness viewed each other on the faces of Rachel and James.
A wooden spoon nailed James in the back of the head. Toppling forward into the water, he had time to let out a surprised "wha?" and plunge into the pool. Rachel harshly jumped to her knees and grabbed James' arm, pulling him up to the surface. He thrashed around wildly, scanning every which way with his maddened eyes until settling finally on the sight of his attacker. As Rachel pulled him from the pool, the only thing on his mind was Oshet Amhen Helle.
"You old dirty bastard, I'm going to take your wooden spoons and feed them to you! Come here!"
James, dripping with water that was evaporating as it fell from him, picked up the wooden spoon and held it high in the air with outrage.
"Argh!" James let out a weak cry of annoyance, as if to let everyone know that he was terrible at being angry, but he was going to try his level best.
"Muck! Parth! Raack! Feem! Wepooooooooooo! Ha ha ha!"
Rachel held back her laughter and let it come out as a slight, hand-covered smirk. Oshet pulled out another wooden spoon and held it up in the air right alongside James. A battle of witlessness ensued, in which each party attempted to repeat the same irrational patterns the other was adopting. Soon, the prophet and the freshman were dancing to some unheard music, and Rachel decided to cut it short by kicking them both in the shins.
A large, sphere-shaped object fell on her at that exact moment. She was sent to the ground under its force, and ended up with some partial cracking in her rib cage. James used his pencil arm as a lever and catapulted the thing off her. She lay prostrate, groaning in the type of pain that she didn't feel too much unless she moved. The object rolled itself up onto two small pods and began to waddle around. It was Dr. Poeingk. Oshet pointed urgently at the sky with his wooden spoon.
"Quick! After that duck!" He threw down the wooden spoon in the center of the circle around which all four were located. A warp opened up, and they were sucked once again into the vortex of dimensionalization.
Oshet steered the party through this vortex by way of his wooden spoon, which constantly sought the large blip they kept seeing in front of them periodically. When the blips stopped, Oshet did a sharp turn and crashed through a full-scale dimensional barrier, which felt like shattering through a greenhouse wall and falling. Rachel felt like she was being torn in two; both she and James were well beyond screaming. Dr. Poeingk felt nothing he hadn't felt before.
The party fell through a black space and landed on a large, soft cushion. Everything was pitch black except for this soft cushion.
"Wahnck!" It was the duck.
"No offense, Oshet, but your obsession with this duck is the saddest thing I've ever witnessed."
Dr. Poeingk had spoken these exact words after Oshet began trying to kill the duck with his wooden spoon. His ineffectual thrusts were no longer particularly entertaining. After a few minutes, they succeeded in causing the duck to ruffle its feathers and send the spoon flying into the darkness.
There is a branch of psychology that is preaching the odd idea that children are affected by things that happen to them. Their poster boy has grown into a cantankerous, stubborn old man. In his youth, his grandmother was an old witch. When he became a young man, his mother often attacked him with brooms, mops, and any other items at her disposal. Now, he too is elderly, and a paradimensional waterfowl is the target.
"And what would you do, Mr. Bally, if you met a creature like this?"
"Been there, done that. The only thing we can do now is wait until the duck decides to start flying again. I didn't come here to hunt some bizarre, paradimensional creature. I came here to seek knowledge."
"You tryin' to tell me you ain't found knowledge? Do you know what this duck really is?"
"It's not God and it's not a god. It's a gargantuan duck. I've learned more from life insurance salesmen."
"Don't make fun of life insurance salesmen! My Paw was a life insurance salesman. When he died, his agency flopped and we were forced to live on a farm. My Maw went nutty after that. Since I was 'abduckted' twenty-seven years ago, I've been hunting this creature. I've come to regard it as God."
"You need atheism," droned James from his laid-back sitting position. "I became an atheist, and I've never felt more independent. I gave up all my old obsessions, found Buddha, and then told him he doesn't exist. I disproved Jehovah by refusing to eat matzah balls. All other religions are either a joke or they're too not a joke. Your duck religion will never take off."
James grabbed the wooden spoon as it predictably flew at him. He snapped it in two over his knee and returned it to Oshet. "Here. Use the pointy end to get the duck moving."
As the sharp splinter was jammed into the flesh of the duck, feathers ruffled and slightly distressed quacking ensued. The duck immediately dimensonalized and flew at pi-light speed through the vortex, choosing a random dimension into which it would jump.
Unbeknownst to the unfortunate inhabitants of dimension 46.2238, the apocalypse was coming. Their small island was all that remained of a once-pround empire. There, they lived the simple life, tilling the earth and bringing forth fruits and vegetables. They were a happy, simple people, with no worries at all. This is why they stared up with pleasantness as the duck landed, crushing their entire stupid island.
The trio was now in no better a position than it was in a few minutes ago. Dr. Poeingk, the spherical being, jumped into the water and floated. He began to drift off, yelling out instructions to the crew of the duck.
"James, take care of Rachel! Rachel, don't kill James! Oshet, get over this bloody obsession! If I find a warp, I'll come back and tell you all!"
The duck began to swim around in the water of the planet. That wonderful substance covered the entire face of the globe. The duck glided around, occasionally picking at the odd fish that would come to the surface. The fish were huge on this world in this dimension.
Oshet Ahmen Helle had run out of wooden spoons.
Dr. Poeingk flopped about in the waves, over which he had no control. A squall had come over the water he was swimming in, and he bobbed around like a low-density ball, which in fact he was. He leapt and sank repeatedly, and it was an all-around miserable experience. The sea itself was lurching and surging. Thunder crackled and lightning menaced the sky, only slightly above the water. The horizon was engulfed in storm. Dr. Poeingk was buffeted until he fell unconscious.