The Pan-Galactic Amusement Park

By Alex Park

Arnold in his own inept way makes fun of us, our prejudices, sex, politics, the banking system, Vulcans, philosophy, and particularly religion. Good fun for mature YA readers too, and learn about satire while reading. Imaginative Logic supports the most convoluted and twisted solution to a problem as preferable, and Arnold leaves havoc in a fun way behind him. Later the beautiful android Cassandra is created for him, and naturally he forgets she is an android, much smarter than he, programmed to love sex--and him. He wants to ask the Creator some frustrating questions.
Ostensibly written by Igor Prince, the main character of Running From the Paranoids & Elephant Park, The Arnold Chronicles actually have a point too, and Cassandra is Allyson's doppelganger, Igor's girlfriend. Igor and Allyson, and The Scheme of Imaginative Logic, will soon be in four novels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Park
• Release date: May 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301003778

Alex Park

Raised in Upstate NY, I have lived in New York City at times, New Haven, Ct, Lenox, Ma, and Juarez, Mexico among other places. Bachelor's in history, English, and biology from the University of Buffalo. I come from a long line of writers stretching back several hundred years.I like to examine the unlikely but possible in fiction instead. I developed an eccentric chracter, Igor Prince, from an ex-pat German faimily, who lives in NYC. He is wealthy, dissolute, totally unfocused, has come up with the bizzare idea of trying to live his life according to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, a physics law. Igor can be pretty funny too. He is rescued in the first book of this trilogy by a struggling actress, Allyson. (Running From the Paranoids, 2004) She brings focus to his life while delighting in some of the absurdities Igor revels in. Without his knowledge, but with the encouragement of a wide group of friends, she writes a connective narrative for his humorous short stories, and publishes it, creating a huge success for each of them, The Pan-Galactic Amusement Park. In the last chapter they sail to Sweden and Finland.New York is the perfect setting for such a character, and I've always enjoyed my time there. Also, my writing incorporates the art world a great deal, and I'm an amatuer painter. I also enjoy long distance sailing, and would love to casually sail aroud the world, as I have Igor And Allyson doing in my newest book, Elephant Park.Humor is important to me, the relations between people, I try to make some political points because I'm involved with politics as much as possible. Ecology matters too, so that's included into Elephant Park, as well as current events. There is a hurricane in the Gulf Coast, the BP oil spill is in the background, returning war veterans, finacial hardships for the middle class, and my experience in real estate, specifically mobile homeparks.I am are well seved by reading whenever I can. Randomness is the Great Dictator of life.

Book preview

By Alex Park

The Pan-Galactic Memory Amusement Park

Copyright Alex Park 2013

Published at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. It is the property of the author and may not be reproduced, copied, or distributed for commercial and non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please see the author’s other works at Smashwords.

Note From Author:  The Arnold Stories are excerpted from the novel Running From the Paranoids, soon to be published. This novel proceeds Elephant Park, available at Smashwords and introduces the essential characters of Igor & Allyson. There will be 3rd & 4th books in the series too, including Skinny Dipping With Uranium.

You may contact the author or see his webpage at alexpark.net

Chapter One, Arnold on the Planet Arcturus

Chapter Two, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

Chapter Three, Arnold on the Planet Malthus

Chapter Four, Arnold on Here & Now

Chapter Five, Arnold Finds the End of Time

Arnold on the Planet Arcturus

Arnold, the famous Space Hero, traveled the accessible solar systems in his mighty space cruiser Consumption - an ultra-modern miracle of interplanetary engineering, by Arnold standards. But in reality, the Consumption was obsolete. Reaching his various destinations kept Arnold in cryosleep for so long that by the time he arrived, he was already forgotten, despite his reputation. His fame in itself was pretty ironic, since with the limited speed of communications, everyone was always out of date. But sometimes this worked in Arnold’s favor; he could shill out a holographic vid in one sector, gauge the audience response, make changes without trashing the whole thing, and before he reached the next solar system, he’d have a hit. Thus the adventure, Arnold & the Giant Swamp Nutria, about big rat-like creatures imported to a world that lacked animals of any kind and the fancy French furriers who followed with the goal of making them into fur coats, sucked in its first incarnation. Nobody had a distinct memory of the French anymore, except that they were annoying, so nobody got it. Arnold decided to make the provocateurs Chinese; everyone everywhere knew they would make fur coats, appetizers, or entrees out of nutrias, as they did cats and rats, and it became a huge hit. But usually, while Arnold slept, his fifteen minutes came and went. Other ships leaving light years after Arnold often beat him to his destination.

Arnold’s mission in life was to ask annoyingly obtuse questions that nobody had any patience for or interest in, since they were busy getting on with life. Even his crew was sick of his questions. They put up with him only because he was a Space Hero, and, as such, must be respected. To help make ends meet, Arnold usually wound up selling his old Heroic Tales to various galactic newspapers on his travels. The profits went for water and supplies. (The old Consumption used water for its primitive fusion engines.) The market for heroic tales was pretty steady, but all in all, it made for a bleak living.

Among others, he had two fundamental questions with which he pestered anyone who would listen. The first, his personal complaint, was why the speed of light equaled the speed limit of the universe. At 300,000 kilometers per second, it took a really long time to get anywhere, which was why cryosleep had become mandatory for space travel. Even after hundreds of years, Arnold was still pissed at some guy named Einstein for inventing Relativity, although all most people knew about him anymore was that he was Jewish. Since Einstein was responsible for slowing down the growth of the galaxy, there were a lot of anti-Semites around. The principal charge was inhibition of trade and unfair business practices.

His second question was, "Why are we born only to suffer and die?" Arnold, in all fairness, included every species in this conundrum, even the Jelly creatures of a planet called Acapulco, where sentient jellyfish guarded vast deposits of cool metals lying on the sea floor below them. They could electrify the ocean at will, and the only way of dealing with this very dull species was to trade them vids of reality shows, although Arnold was quite successful there selling his Heroic Adventures and third rate porn. Once he sold them a snuff film about the Lesbian Flipper Fish of Fiji, and they got so excited they electrocuted everybody within 50 kilometers.

Once Arnold was on a roll, the questions could get stultifying. Why was this Einstein character even born? How come everyone breathed plankton on the underwater planet of Gel? Why did almost everyone across the universe live pretty poorly unless they were the 1%, another term of uncertain origin, though usually credited to American financiers, famous for their perfecting fraud to an art level? Not that Arnold did anything about improving anybody’s lot in life (after all he was merely a Space Hero and Trader) but it still seemed terribly unfair, and he did try on occasion. Later, after meeting Cassandra, with whom he would share much of his adventures with, he became obsessed with romance and the nature of love. He wrote a great deal of poetry that was astoundingly, unalterably bad, for Arnold’s education wasn’t great for poets. His last known transmissions were garbled and erratic even for him, but appeared to confirm he had finally met It, The Creator of Everything, who had replied to Arnold’s questions by saying, "Sorry for the inconvenience."

One time, almost out of water, they made an emergency landing on the planet Arcturus, a place Arnold had visited before. After the Consumption touched down, he went to check in with the Arcturan authorities. He started down the long landing tube to the airlock. There was a warning sign:

Welcome to Arcturus, Land of Platonic Fun!

Enter Airlock for Decontamination:

Warning: 100% Fatal if infected with nanobots!

Click on accept terms and conditions

Arnold clicked instead on the part of the actual disclaimer, for as usual he found directions hard to follow. At the end of about 400 pages of legal nonsense, he was informed he accepted responsibility for anything that might befall him, up to and including dismemberment and death. Why didn’t they just say so? he mused, submitting to a retinal scan. Welcome! said the terminal, "Park Chung Hee of the Starship Kimchi Diablo. Say yes or no to confirm."

No.

No what? asked the terminal.

No, I’m not Park Chung Hee.

Yes you are. Your retinal scan confirms it.

Oh, just kidding! Yes, I am that Park character, agreed Arnold, recalling he had switched eyes with a Korean captain to avoid the bill collectors that were hounding him, getting rid of his astigmatism in the process. Arnold didn’t look the slightest bit Korean; he was of Irish and Dutch ancestry, which his Uncle assured him made it inevitable that he would be a drunken trader. He had red hair, a bad complexion exacerbated by radiation exposure, and had started out tall and gangly; but the constant acceleration of space travel had compressed him to slightly over five feet in height, and he looked like a primitive mesomorph. His sloping forehead denoted low cranial capacity, according to his Uncle.

Enter your email address and password for membership and entry, said the terminal.

Arnold entered [e-mail], as an address. He agreed to numerous charges should he purchase anything, and promised himself he would remember to cancel his membership before the trial period ended, which he rarely did. That habit, plus the fact he seldom paid bills, were why bill collectors followed him throughout the universe. What the hell are nanobots anyway?

Microscopic subcutaneous robots that build things and repair other things, said the terminal. But they tend to expand under low pressure so you explode from within.

I hope I don’t have any in me then, Arnold shrugged.

You do not.

Do I need them?

Your scan indicates a new liver would be a good idea, said the terminal conversationally.

Well then, I’ll take one. Hit me up!

Sorry Captain Park, your account has an insufficient balance. But you could get some nanites at our Superstore. They’re smaller, 100% organic, and will repair your liver from inside your body.

Fucking Walmart, muttered Arnold, wandering off, forgetting about nanobots, nanites, his trial membership, and his liver. He bought some Japanese scotch at a vending machine with a few leftover Deutschemark coins, accepted anywhere since the Euro collapsed after no one could remember what Euros were based on. The memory of Earth and its history had faded, although everyone everywhere knew about the Japanese. He started choking after a large swallow out of the plastic bottle. He noticed it tasted almost, but not quite, like real scotch whiskey.

The Arcturans were a generous people, as well as very logical and literal. After enough bribes, Arnold finally managed an audience with one of their leaders, an old acquaintance named Prefect Snarek.

Still asking the same old questions, Arnold?

What do you mean? I haven't asked any yet.

You're old news. Your ship is decrepit. I've been to Earth and back three times in the time you've taken to get here. Why don't you get a faster ship?

The Consumption is ultra-modern, replied Arnold, a bit miffed.

It's a Model T, sneered Snarek. Nobody knew what a model T was anymore, but it was still used as an expression of obsolescence.

Arnold decided to forge ahead. Why hasn't anyone repealed Relativity yet? Why isn't it obsolete?

Because they can't, you whining moronic pinhead!

Isn't that redundant?

"No, moron refers to a specific IQ level. Microencephaly is a congenital defect,