Cow Chronicles Part 9: Squids. In. Space

(Note: This story might not be as good as you think. It had a very troubled production, with me having a ton of work to do outside of my blog, along with rampant computer trouble.

Farmer Bob’s voice came from behind a stacked pile of tables. Farmer Joe watched in shock as Farmer Joe emerged. His face was twisted into a maniacal grin. The only times a person would make that face were if they were about to destroy their opponent in a game, or if they were a mad scientist bent on destroying the world.

“I’ve done my end of the bargain. Now you fulfill yours”, Bob Jenkins told Farmer Bob.

“What was it?”, Farmer Bob asked, producing a handgun from under his hat.

“You agreed that in turn for me bringing Farmer Joe here, you would have to eat nothing but Bob’s Pizza for the rest of your life”, Bob Jenkins told Farmer Joe.

“What?! Absolutely not!”, Farmer Bob shouted. “I hate pizza! Gimme something else to do!”

Bob Jenkin’s screen switched over to a loading bar. After several minutes of the same noises the computer had made when it had been turned on, the screen displayed a crude, pixelated bar graph.

“Sales have been in decline lately”, Bob Jenkins explained. “We tried to force our employees to eat nothing but Bob’s Pizza, but they went on strike”

“Can we go now?”, Inspector Zachary asked Farmer Bob, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “If you and that computer can’t agree on anything, I’m flying back to-”

Zach was interrupted by a gunshot slicing through the air. Everyone turned to Farmer Bob, calmly putting the handgun under his hat. On the ground next to him, Bob Jenkins’ monitor lay, a heap of wires, plastic, and glass.

The butler was horrified. “You killed our leader!”, he shouted at Farmer Bob. “I shall inform the police of this, and you will be put to death!”

“I killed his monitor”, Farmer Bob told the butler. “You can just hook up another one”

“No we can’t!”, the butler told Farmer Bob. “The computer he’s in only works with that particular type of monitor. And it was the last of it’s model, so we can’t just buy a new computer”, he said as he pressed a button on the computer. A floppy disk slid out of a slot, labeled “B.J.” He slid the disk into his pocket.

Zach pulled a combat knife from one of the pockets in his trench coat, and held it to Farmer Joe’s neck. “I saw a pizza delivery ship parked in one of the rooms here. Let’s just go”

Zach and Farmer Joe walked through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. It was a large garage, holding three small space capsules bedecked in neon-orange paint. BOB’S PIZZA: DELIVERY FROM SPACE was stenciled on the sides of each capsule.

“I found a ring of keys on Jenkins’ desk”, Zach explained. “That computer’s not right in the CPU, or whatever, and I wanted a way to escape”, he said as he unlocked the capsule and helped Farmer Joe into it.

The capsule was small and cramped, with a single seat taking up two-thirds of the tiny cockpit. The other third was taken up by a fold-out table, covered with old newspapers and magazines. Zach brushed these off, and folded away the table.

“You’ll have to sit in there”, Zach said, pointing to the space behind the pilot’s seat.

Farmer Joe begrudgingly took a seat in that tiny crevasse. The space was so small that he had to rest his legs on the wall. It was going to be a long trip.

“Would you like to hear about the workings of this capsule?”, Zach asked Farmer Joe.

“No”, Farmer Joe grumbled as he tried to find the most comfortable space to sit.

“Well, too bad”, Zach said. “You’re my prisoner, and you have the right to remain silent while I tell my story. You see, this capsule was originally developed by NASA in 1996. The Poseidon-2 Space Capsule was designed for short travels between low Earth orbit, and the planet itself. You put in coordinates, and the Poseidon-2 uses its thrusters to put itself into an orbit that will eventually bring it over your desired location, and send you down. The genius behind such a marvelous innovation was-”

Whenever Farmer Joe was bored of hearing a person talk, he imagined himself tuning a dial, as if his mind was an old TV, and simply sifted through his thoughts.
He did this now, as Zach worked the capsule, while going into excruciating detail about how NASA had been divided over how many cupholders the Poseidon-2 should have.

“WHAT THE @*#$?!”, Zach suddenly exclaimed. Farmer Joe, who had been trying to get to sleep on a makeshift bed of newspapers and magazines, jumped awake.

Farmer Joe looked out of the canopy. What he saw made his blood run cold.

The spaceship had positioned itself over the International Space Station, dwarfing it like a condor next to a fly. The ship was a deep, gunmetal shade of orange, with ports glowing a brilliant white. At the end of the streamlined body were eight monstrous, mechanical tentacles, each of them flailing through space, making the squid-shaped spaceship look like it was swimming through the cosmos.

On the deck of the U.S.S. Squid, Squid Guy Bob gazed out over the murky, blue sphere that he had been told by Farmer Bob was Farmer Joe’s home planet.

“Such pathetic defenses”, he murmured as his crew members typed away at a large computer bank on a deck below him. The Squid was armed with a massive laser cannon, which could shoot to any interstellar coordinate in a 100 light-year radius. It was the first and only of its kind, and Squid Guy Bob’s prize possession. As of now, it was being used to destroy the tiny, bird-like spaceship below them. Squid Guy Bob ran to an orange, tram-like vehicle that he used to travel back and forth between the sections of the ship.

The tram quietly hummed along down the length of the ship. Inside the gunmetal orange hull was a seemingly endless row of massive grey domes. Inside each dome was a particular squad of employees, each squad with a purpose to keep the ship running. For example, the dome Squid Guy Bob’s tram was just passing was Molecular Formation, who was assigned with converting the ship’s hydrogen and oxygen reserves into the water and air needed to survive, and the one ahead was DNA Manipulation, where people who had a natural tendency towards dissent and rebellion had their DNA modified to remove those traits.
Squid Guy Bob kept all squads completely separate from each other, as he felt it improved worker morale. If the charts coming out of Statistics were correct, it did.

The tram slowed to a stop outside Dome 46: Camera Surveillance. Squid Guy Bob walked up to a metal door barring people from the domes contents. He rummaged through a satchel, and pulled out a disembodied squid tentacle. He pressed it into a scanner, which scanned every last atom of the tentacle, checking if it was indeed, a squid tentacle. It was.

The Camera Surveillance area was one of the strangest sights on the Squid. The members of the staff stood on platforms, surrounded by a rotating globe of screens suspended off the ground by antigrav projectors, each displaying a view from one of the hundreds of cameras placed throughout the ship. Observing it all was one of the most revolting creatures in the universe.

The mottled squid-skin was sloppily stretched across the humanoid figure, being stretched so thin in some areas that it was almost transparent, while in some areas there was so much of it that it hung limp in baggy folds. Where the arms should have been, long, slimy tentacle-arms hung to the floor, covering the floor in pools of slimy goop that smelled like a mixture of Sharpie and roadkill. The thing had no real legs, only shriveled stumps that ended in skeletal, titanium legs that looked like they had been taken from a metal dinosaur skeleton. Strapped to a lump on the top of the creature’s torso which appeared to be a head was a pair of binoculars, behind which were two camera lenses, which penetrated Squid Guy Bob with their soulless, unblinking stare.

A chill ran down Squid Guy Bob’s spine. The real reason he kept the teams of his crewmembers separate was that looking at just one of them made him scared.

“So. . .”, he stuttered, trying to find something to look at other than the monstrous squid-thing who seemed to fill his field of vision wherever he looked. “. . .would you mind if. . .uh, you could switch on that. . .that...thing that, uh, can make you see stuff that isn’t there. . .a camera! Yeah, could you switch on the camera that shows the laser?”

The squid-thing lurched over to a terminal, which had a screensaver that showed live feeds of the squid-things who watched the cameras. As horrendous as the squid-things looked alone, their scariness was increased tenfold when they moved. Their choppy, stuttery stumble, during which their tentacles flopped around, dribbling slime everywhere, made bile rise in Squid Guy Bob’s throat. He looked over at a beautifully painted picture of abstract art. He kept paintings in every room of the ship, as to give his eyes a rest from looking at his henchsquids.
The tentacle skittered around the keyboard, somehow inputting the correct serial number of the camera. A monitor floated out of a slot in the ceiling, descending down to Squid Guy Bob’s eye level. The monitor jumped to life, showing a view of the Earth space station that Squid Guy Bob guessed was the command center of the planets space army, as it was the largest object they had seen orbiting the planet.

“What are you waiting for?!”, he suddenly barked into his clip-on microphone. “Fire the thing already!” He couldn’t wait to step onto Earth. After ages spent with nobody but his henchsquids, a tax had been placed on Squid Guy Bob’s sanity.

So great was the power of the Squids laser, and so puny and pathetic was the space station, that not even any wreckage was seen. Squid Guy Bob thumbed away on a terminal below the screen. The terminals tiny screen showed a tracker of metals orbiting the planet. As he fine-tuned the lense, he saw a stream of titanium and steel particles slowly forming an all-but invisible ring around the planet.

“There. They’re dead. Can we go get the cows now?”, he mumbled into his mike.

A few miles away, a seventeen-year old pizza delivery spaceship was having its course changed.

The Cow Chronicles Part 8: Bob's Pizza

Farmer Joe ran for the police van, but stopped dead in his tracks as he opened the door. Someone else was already sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Hello”, the government agent who had been sitting in the back of the police van the whole time said. “I’m glad I can finally arrest you. You have no idea how boring it is, sitting in the back of a van for nine hours”, he said as he drove away from the Majestic Mesa.

“Wait a minute. Bovine County is back that way. Why are we going into Plugerville?”, Farmer Joe asked.

“None of your business”, said the agent.

Plugerville housed the global headquarters of Bob’s Pizza, Inc., the world’s largest chain of pizza parlors. The CEO, Bob Jenkins, was the third richest person in the world, and it showed in the streets leading to the skyscraper that dominated the Plugerville skyline. They teemed with armored cars, and soldiers holding assault rifles stood guard at every street corner. Military helicopters flew above the streets, and the buildings nearby were adorned with floodlights.

The police van arrived at the parking garage near the skyscraper. The agent guided it into an airlock, and two soldiers walked out. While one inspected the car for bombs, the other led them to a room, where the agent was given fingerprint and retinal scans.

“My friend out there will park your vehicle. We’ll take you to it when you leave”, the soldier gruffly muttered to Farmer Joe and the agent.

People were only allowed to enter the Bob’s Pizza headquarters by invitation. Facial recognition scanners controlled every door in the buildings, from the restrooms to Bob Jenkins’ personal chambers.

Metal detectors were placed every ten feet in the hallways, and surveillance drones flew overhead. All people in the building were required to wear microphones, which transmitted every spoken word to robots scanning for trigger words. There were floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere (Farmer Joe was unsure if the windows were for providing light or an area for the military helicopters circling the building to monitor the people inside), and neon strips ran down the wall, glowing in bright, vibrant colors. The headquarters of Bob’s Pizza may have been Orwellian, but it was colorfully Orwellian.

Farmer Joe stepped into Elevator 103. At least now they were in the upper fifth of the building, where the most prestigious executive of the company worked and lived, which meant that there was seating in the elevator.

The final 25 floors of the 196 story skyscraper surrounded a massive rotunda and plaza. It was ringed with Bob’s Pizza outlets, and massive glass plates that allowed workers to gaze out into the plaza. In the center of it all was a massive fountain, ringed by seven stone pillars, each of which had a previous owner of the company on it.

Sitting on the fountain’s rim was a man wearing a crisp, red tuxedo. Farmer Joe and the agent walked up to him.

“I expect you are the ones Mr. Jenkins requested?”, the man asked the agent.

“Indeed. My name is Inspector Zachary Sanford of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. I am escorting Farmer Joe to the chambers of Bob Jenkins, as he requested”, the agent replied.

“Wait, I’m seeing Bob Jenkins?!”, Farmer Joe half-shouted in surprise.

“Yes. Come with me”, the tuxedo man said. “I’m his butler, by the way”

The butler led him to a massive glass tube that stretched up out of the rotunda. He pressed a button, and a large glass capsule rose up. A small section of the tube opened up, allowing Farmer Joe and the agent to step in.

“Wait, we don’t need more security checkups?”, Farmer Joe asked in surprise.

“Nope. If anyone wanted to hurt Mr. Jenkins, they would have been caught by now”, the butler replied.

Farmer Joe, Zach, and the butler stepped into the capsule, and sat down in upholstered chairs. “Fasten your seatbelts”, the butler told them. At first, Farmer Joe and Inspector Zachary had no idea why. Then, the capsule began to accelerate.

Farmer Joe felt like he was being crushed, then stretched, then crushed again. It was unpleasant, but he got used to it.
The rotunda fell away in an instant. Suddenly, they were looking over the lights of Plugerville. In the distance, Farmer Joe thought he could just make out his home town. Lights slowly meandered down straight lines: cars on highways. In the distance, the flickering lights of planes shone. Suddenly, Plugerville only appeared to be a tiny, yellow dot, and even that disappeared. Before Farmer Joe knew it, he was looking at the whole of the United States.

They were in orbit.

Farmer Joe and Zach were too stunned and shocked to even speak. The capsule glided past a few old satellites, going towards what appeared to be a massive hunk of rusty metal. Suddenly, bright purple lettering flickered on. BOB’S PIZZA, SPACE STYLE, they read.

“I thought they shut this thing down ages ago”, Farmer Joe murmured in amazement.

Slowly, the capsule docked with an airlock stretching into the spherical pizza parlor. The butler led Farmer Joe and Zach through the airlock.

“You see, we thought that Mr. Jenkins would be too easy of a target on Earth”, the butler said. “He commands the company from here”

Unlike the exterior and airlock, which were filthy and deteriorating, the interior of the space pizza parlor was very clean. It was a fairly large, wood-paneled dome. A circular desk sat in the center, surrounded by holographic screens. Strangely, there was no chair at the desk.

“Where’s Mr. Jenkins?”, Zach asked.

“That would be me. . .”, a disembodied, sexless voice said. One of those boxy computer monitors people used in the 1980s and 90s rose from the floor. A hydraulic arm carefully moved the monitor onto the desk. The monitor displayed a bright green, pixelated image of an older version of the Bob’s pizza logo, the one the company had used from 1979 to 1997.

“I have much to tell you, Farmer Joe”, the computer said.

“I want to speak to Bob Jenkins. Also, how did you know my name?”, Farmer Joe replied.

“I-”, the computer began to speak, but was cut short as the screen glitched. The computer began making strange electronic noises, similar to the noises a computer made when using dial-up internet.

The butler looked horrified. He jumped over the desk, and plugged in a cable that had gotten loose. The moment he did, the screen displayed the text REBOOTING. . .
“This takes awhile”, the butler groaned.

54 minutes later, the screen switched back to the Bob’s Pizza logo.

“Sorry about that”, the computer said. “I need to find away to keep these cables from slipping out. As I was saying to Farmer Joe; I am Bob Jenkins, CEO of Bob’s Pizza, Inc.”

“You’re a computer screen showing an old Bob’s Pizza logo that takes forever to reboot”, Zach said, a hint of annoyance in his voice”

“No. You likely know that the head of Bob’s Pizza has always been called “Bob Jenkins”, ever since our 1906 founding”, the computer said.

“Yeah, but aren’t they just different generations in a family?”, Farmer Joe asked.

“No. As a human, I died in 1985. My mind was transferred into a computer, so that I may govern my company forever”

“That makes no sense! Then again, I’m talking to a pizza chef inside an 80s at an abandoned pizza parlor in space”, Zach said.

“Seen stranger”, Farmer Joe said. “Why did you want me here, anyway?”

“I didn’t summon you. Someone else wanted to see you, and at this particular location”, Bob Jenkins said.

“Who?”, Farmer Joe asked.

“Hello, Farmer Joe”, said Farmer Bob.

The Cow Chronicles Part 7: Farmer Joe's getaway

The sun lowered down over the fields, casting the shadow of a distant radio tower across the narrow highway. Telephone poles whizzed by, the wires seeming to rise and fall.

Farmer Joe gunned the engines. He had no idea where he was going. If somebody had asked him why he was driving at 79 mph down a rural highway in a police van with sirens blaring, he would have replied “away from prison”

Judging by the angle of the sun, he was driving north. As he did, he began noticing signs reading PLUGERVILLE, followed by a number of miles. Eventually, the rolling fields, farms, and tiny towns gave way to a massive divot in the ground.

Thousands of years ago, when Wisconsin was mostly rolling forests, and the only humans living there were Native Americans, a meteor had hit the future state, leaving a 25 mile wide crater. Years later, when European settlers “discovered”, the area, they came across the crater. After finding extremely valuable materials in the area, they decided to start a mine. As more people came to the area for work, a mine was started.
The people of Farmer Joe’s town hated the people of Plugerville. Although Farmer Joe was neutral on the issue, say a word of support for the local college football team: the Plugerville Plutonium Compounds, and you would be placed on a rung of the social ladder lower than even the people with no cows.

Plugervilles urban sprawl had spilled out of the crater, lining the streets into the city with bars, department stores, and cheap motels.

The neon refracted through the smudged windshield of the police van. Farmer Joe had switched off the sirens on the way into Plugerville, as to not attract attention.

The Majestic Mesa Motel had originally been built in 1953 in the New Mexico desert. Unfortunately, an accident at a science laboratory nearby had teleported the entire motel, and a seventh of the mesa the motel had been built near straight into Plugerville in 1983

Farmer Joe maneuvered the police van through the empty parking lot. The Majestic Mesa wasn’t a popular place to stay, due to local rumors that it was haunted. In addition, many questioned the legality of the business’ existence, as the property deed was for New Mexico, not Wisconsin.

“Come in, Wachowski. Joe’s gone to Plugerville. He’s at the Majestic Mesa Motel”, said the government agent who had been hiding in the back of the van since Farmer Joe had escaped from jail.

“Tell that to the Plugerville authorities. They’ve likely heard of who Farmer Joe really is”, Agent Wachowski replied. He was at an airbase 2 miles out of the unnamed town.

Mr. Chuckles sadly mooed as the cardboard boxes were transported onto the government jet.

Farmer Joe’s cows weren’t the sort of cows that you would see at a normal farm. The cows were as alien as you could get. Not only were they not from Earth, they weren’t even from the same dimension. How Farmer Joe came into possession of the cows is a long and complicated story.

These cows were from an alternate universe, and from a planet that does not exist in our universe. It was possible for them to gain super strength, and, although not all cows had this trait, laser eyes. However, Farmer Joe and representatives from the cows’ native dimension had agreed to deactivate the cow’s abilities, as to prevent the raising of suspicious by people in the area.

However, the cows had a fatal weakness. They were completely immobilized by cardboard. Thus, Farmer Joe had banned all cardboard from the farm limits, much to the annoyance of delivery people. He had even lobbied the city council to ban cardboard from the city limits, but that was quickly condemned by the townspeople, as much of the town’s income came from a cardboard factory.

Meanwhile, Agent Wachowski lay back in the airbase control tower. As he watched the radar for any suspicious activity, he radioed with the jet pilot. “How much of the cows are on board?”, he asked.

“Most of this load. We should be ready to take off in ten minutes or so”, the pilot replied. “There are still a few million still in custody, though”, she added.

“Roger that. I’ll have the team get most of them on the transports. We can take them to the airport at-”

Suddenly, the transmission cut out. Agent Wachowski wheeled around to face Farmer Bob, holding a pair of wire cutters.

“Farmer Joe specifically requested that I take control of the cows”, he spat at Agent Wachowski. “Why are you packing them onto a plane?”

Agent Wachowski’s face turned a deathly pale. “Uh, we were. . .going to take a few to Washington. Examine them. We think that the cows may have helped in the terrorism”

“Farmer Joe requested. . .”, Farmer Bob threateningly told Agent Wachowski as he walked towards him. “. . .that every last cow be taken to me”, He pulled a pen from a desk and pointed it at the government agent’s heart, as if it were a dagger. “Every. Last. One”, he enunciated.

“Carry on”, he said in a sarcastic, sing-song voice as he skipped out of the control tower.

Agent Wachowski watched in horror as the engines of the jet started. He grabbed some semaphore flags from the control desk, and ran out of the door, waving furiously the symbols for STOP STOP STOP.

The pilot gave him a quizzical look, and began accelerating. Agent Wachowski took off after the jet. He had no idea about how to stop the plane. Then, it hit him. He pulled his standard-issue 9mm pistol from the holster on his belt, and fired shot after shot at the engines. Nothing worked, and the plane rose higher and higher into the sky. To Wachowski’s horror, he saw wisps of smoke emerging from the left engine.

In the plane’s cockpit, a red light began flashing. Then a loud, obnoxious alarm began blaring. ENGINES CRITICAL flashed over the screen of the plane’s GPS in bright red lettering. The pilot dove the plane down, skimming over the cornfields as she searched for a place to land. Eventually, she came across a near-deserted highway, and turned the plane towards it.

The plane lowered closer and closer to the road below. Savage, orange flames had begun burning from the turbine. The pilot knew she had to find a landing spot sooner. After narrowly clearing a semi truck, she saw an overpass rushing up to the plane. Swearing under her breath, the pilot maneuvered the plane up again. If she couldn’t clear the overpass, she would die. The bridge rapidly grew in size. The pilot could make out the trash littering the sidewalk, and a government SUV crossing the overpass. It was probably headed to the airbase. The SUV screeched to a halt as the driver saw the terrifying spectacle of a jumbo jet flying 15 feet above your head.

Finally, the pilot found a stretch of highway where she was able to land. The plane thudded onto the rough country highway, leaving wheel sized divots in the pavement. The wheels let out a screeching wail as the plane slowed down. A wooden highway sign was ripped off its post and devoured by the engine. Down the road, the pilot noticed cars pulling to a stop.
Finally, she walked into the cargo hold, which was filled to the brim with panicking cows. She opened the door, and stepped into the sunlight.

“. . .narrowly avoided a catastrophic accident on Route 42, when a government plane caught fire mid flight.”

Farmer Joe lay on the pull-out couch in Room 13 of the Majestic Mesa Motel, watching the evening news. He had checked in under a fake name, and the news hadn’t published pictures of his face yet.

“We now go live to Bryson Air Force Base, where the flight took off”, the reporter said. The camera cut to another reporter, standing on the tarmac of the airbase outside of Farmer Joe’s hometown.

“Few were at Bryson Airbase when the plane took off, but the entire event was witnessed by a man who many here in Bovine County will recognize: CIA operative Rick Wachowski.” Agent Wachowski walked up to the reporter.

“So Mr. Wachowski, how did the incident play out?” the reporter asked Agent Wachowski.

“Well, it all started last night. I had decided to help the base staff out, and volunteered to watch the CCTV cameras”, Agent Wachowski began. “Around one in the morning, I saw a figure run out to the plane, and fiddle around with the engines. I figured it was just a mechanic working a night shift, but it was someone much worse”

“I see. Do you have any idea who might be behind the engine failure?”, the reporter asked.

“I know who the culprit is”, Agent Wachowski replied gravely. “You likely don’t know this, but infamous radical terrorist Farmer Joe has escaped from prison!”

“He’s done it again! If I ever find that son of a gun, I’m gonna-”, screamed a person in the room next to Farmer Joe’s. He turned up the volume on the TV.

“Tell me, Mr. Wachowski”, the reporter asked. “If such a dangerous criminal is out on the streets, ought the government to have notified us immediately?”

“There was some trouble. Anyhow, I had a team do a fingerprint scan of the plane engine. We discovered Farmer Joe’s fingerprints”, Agent Wachowski responded. “I believe Farmer Joe implanted a bomb in the plane’s engine”

“That’s horrible! Can you people at the studio get a picture of Farmer Joe onscreen? People outside of Bovine County need to know what he looks like”, the reporter said. A few seconds after, a picture of Farmer Joe flashed across the screen.

“Not again!”, Farmer Joe muttered under his breath as he ran out of his room. He knew that half of the people in America now knew what he looked like.

“Bye!”, he shouted to the motel clerk as he ran into the parking lot.

“Wait a minute-”, the clerk said, looking away from the TV news stream on his tablet.

Farmer Joe ran from the Majestic Mesa, searching for a getaway place. Alas, he was too late. . .

The Cow Chronicles Part 6: Two Plans

Farmer Bob’s house was atop a large hill that overlooked the countryside for miles around. His front porch extended off of the hill held up by a few narrow, metal stilts. Uneven, rough stone blocks formed a flight of steps extending down to the road below. Farmer Bob stood on this porch, giving a press conference to an assembly of reporters on the street below. As he was so far away from them, he had to shout for his voice to be heard.

“The age of Farmer Joe’s terrorist plots is at an end! We await a glorious future!”

“We wait laborious Luther? Speak up!”, shouted a journalist for the Wisconsin Informer.

Then, Farmer Bobs pig walked out of the door, carrying a microphone, which Farmer Bob took.

“Ashwa splok, dakoowza recoonig rito the phorm”, Farmer Bob told the reporters.

“Now you sound even more unintelligible!, the Informer reporter told him.

Meanwhile, in the solitary confinement chamber of the Bovine County Jail, Farmer Joe put his escape plan into action. He had considered picking up the small table in the corner of the room and using it to break down the door, but had discovered that the table was bolted to the floor. Then, he noticed the one thing in the room that wasn’t nailed down: a chair.
Farmer Joe picked up the small, metal chair. It was much heavier than he had anticipated. He slowly heaved it over to the mirror, where he knew Williams was watching him.

“Hey! Put that down right-”, Williams protest was cut short when Farmer Joe finally threw the chair at the mirror. . .

. . .and it bounced off. Farmer Joe jumped out of the way as the chair fell to the ground with a massive THUD!, which sent a small tremor through the room. A small web of cracks was visible on the mirror.

The door to the cell burst open. Williams dashed inside, holding a handgun.

“Get down!”, he screamed in Farmer Joe’s face. Farmer Joe jumped out of the way as Williams lunged for him. He fell flat on his face. Before he could get up, Farmer Joe had run into the security room and locked Williams in the cell. He went over to Willams’ computer, and began searching through the files. Surely, a map of the complex was somewhere.

Finally, he came across a file named “blueprint.jpg.”

Suddenly, the screen died with a tremendous bang. Farmer Joe facepalmed as he saw the bullet lodged in the computer. He had forgotten to take Williams’ gun. He threw open the door, and was hit with a blast of sunlight.

Bovine County was a very sparsely populated area. The unnamed community was the only town in the county, and the county was only seven acres wide. The only smaller county was the Insect Microcounty. It came into existence after the 1998 Wisconsin governor election. The state legislature had recently voted to allow insects to vote, and thus, a spider was elected governor. Upon taking office, Governor Spidey had ordered the creation of a microcounty where insects would be allowed to live without fear of being stepped on. Spidey died seven hours later, when an assemblyman accidentally stepped on him.

In any case, Bovine County was the least populated county in Wisconsin. The county maximum security prison had been built during the sociopolitical upheaval of the 1960s, when many had demanded the naming of the community. The town fathers, aghast at such blasphemous heresy, had decreed that any person who promoted the naming of the community would be sentenced to life in prison. Later, a solitary confinement chamber was stuck onto the jail for the detainment of some New Yorkers, who had tried to steal Farmer Joe’s cows in a scheme involving a cow-attracting tractor beam and ice cream bazookas. It was during that time that Farmer Joe had first built the tunnel to shelter the cows.

Next to the door into the solitary confinement wing, a prison guard was curled up against a parked police car, snoring. A rifle leaned against the wall. Farmer Joe slowly tiptoed towards him. He would need more than his fists to make it back to the farm.
The guards face was bespeckled with potato chip crumbs. A rumpled, baggy uniform bedecked her skinny body.

Slowly, Farmer Joe reached for the rifle. The sun glinted off the black metal. His finger slowly approached the wood of the gun, as he pulled up the weapon, and silently ran into the prison parking lot, where he considered his escape options. His plan was to shoot out the window of one of the vehicles, and then smash through the prison gate. At first, he considered taking one of the police cars, but decided that they probably couldn’t smash through the gate. The town’s one SWAT truck would have easily gotten out, but its windows were bulletproof. As he pondered over whether or not the driver of the police tank had left the keys in the ignition, he noticed a police van parked near the entrance to the mess hall. The driver had left the door open. Getting to it would be a risky move. There was a CCTV camera monitoring the area, and there was almost always at least one guard at the mess hall door. Farmer Joe would have to run up to the van, jump in, and drive out of the prison as fast as he could before the police could block off his escape route. He ran as fast as he could to the police van, and noticed something very odd. Not only were there no guards at all at the door, but there was no blinking light on the CCTV camera, showing that it wasn’t active. In fact, as a look around the area revealed, none of the cameras seemed to be active. Farmer Joe slammed shut the van door, and gunned the engines.

The guard towers that flanked the prison gates were empty. Farmer Joe clenched his teeth and furrowed his brow as he sped toward the gate. The gate was torn to shreds as if it was made of tissue paper. The few cars on the road skidded to a halt. Farmer Joe switched on the sirens, in order to clear the streets and appear less suspicious.

“I expect you ordered the police to stand down?”, Farmer Bob asked the Bovine County sheriff.

“Yep. Take a look.”, the sheriff said as he led Farmer Bob into the CCTV monitoring room of the prison. “Look at Camera 12”, the sheriff said, pointing to a smudgy, greenscale view of the street outside the prison. He tapped a few keys and rewound the footage to a few moments ago. A police van could be seen careening out of the prison.

“I need to go to the bathroom, said Farmer Bob as he locked himself in the supply closet. He pressed his left index finger against his wristwatch display. The watch’s cloaking device deactivated, revealing a device called a Communicatrix. It was invented by a group of people calling themselves the ABE scientists. He tapped a few buttons on the Communicatrix and a smudgy, picture of a person came up. It was too hard to see any of their facial features because of the poor camera quality.

“Farmer Bob. . .”, the person said.

“The plan’s going great. We’ve got Farmer Joe right where we want him. The only problem is that the cows are putting up a fight and we’re having a really hard time getting them to my farm.”, Farmer Bob replied.

“Nevermind. I can come to get them myself. In the meantime, make sure that Farmer Joe is brought to the detainment center.”

“Yes, Squid Guy Bob”, Farmer Bob replied as he left the supply closet.