"Uh Oh!" The picture and the story

"Uh Oh!"
by Karen Kay Remus, Copyright 2013
Colored Pencil on Paper, 11" x 14"

The situation depicted above should be self-explanatory if I've rendered the drawing accurately.  A picture paints a thousand words, right?  Are you picking up on these words, or do I have to spell them out for you?  If you get it, then stop reading when you see the next period.  If not, then read on and be enlightened.

Here we see two long time adversaries, Zid and Foo.  Foo is in the upper right hand corner having an anxiety attack.  You can see this from the way his eyes bulge and his mouth opens in a grimacing scream of fright.  When he shuts his mouth, and rests his eyelids, he somewhat resembles an earth creature known as an ostrich, except that he's 70 feet taller and has useless forearms as opposed to wings.  He is also much more colorful and has bristly stubble instead of feathers.  He is also much smarter than an ostrich--or a human being for that matter--and all he cares about is science, mechanics, and the mechanics of science.  He's a thinker, not a fighter.  He solves problems rather than creates them.

Zid, in the lower left hand corner, is Foo's diametric opposite.  Well not exactly.  That is to say, he is very smart, but all of his smarts go into cunning, predation, and getting what he wants at the expense of others.  To Zid, Zid is the only thing that matters.  When Zid looks at Foo, he thinks, "tastes kinda like crab."  He ate Foo's brother.

These two creatures are residents of the planet Urk, a gelatinous, gaseous, colloidal giant.  Sort of like Pluto, but bigger and with solid chunks of  matter and gas bubbles trapped in mush--sort of like tapioca.  Unlike Earth, the creatures of Urk live INSIDE the planet--not on top of or within the outer crust.  Urk has no atmosphere.  Urk IS the atmosphere.  It's like a big cell, and all of the material and life forms dwell within it like "organelles," except that they are just as independent as you or I--or think they are.

Some creatures are bound to live inside Urk, like fish are bound to the water on Earth.  These are the Inurks.  Some Urklings can actually leave Urk's surface and travel through the vacuum of space, like birds flying over Earth, or human scuba divers entering the ocean--except they don't need artificial equipment if they're only out for a light year or so.  These are the "Inandouters."  Zid is an Inandouter, and he's got it in for Foo.

To be continued...