The Celebrated Singing Cactus of the Yucca Desert

Ninten awakens from a wonderful dream to find a big day ahead of him... which includes plenty more walking through a miserable desert, more deadly alien-controlled robots, a kooky old-timer with a tank and a method of keeping trespassers off his property that's banned by international law, and worst of all, the grand entrance of their most formidable foe yet, the terrible gargantuan Duncan bots!

And guess, dear reader, what it does NOT include? Any sign of that stinkin' singing cactus ANYWHERE!

Will Ninten and his companions find their needle in a cactus stack after all? Will Teddy get all those thorns out of his mouth? Will Lloyd find the courage to board a... what?! That's a World War TWO plane?! Oh, nonononono. No way, ho-zay! Just think about the metal fatigue, and that radial piston engine, and pulleys and cables attached to the control board, if just any one of those breaks down...

Erm, well, anyway... find out on this week's episode of... The Podcast Against Giygas! No crying until the ending.

Transcript

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You’re listening to… The Podcast Against Giygas!

Episode nine: The Celebrated Singing Cactus of the Yucca Desert

*

Every night, Ninten Elliott goes to bed while carrying a big heavy rock in his stomach. It’s the same one he carries when he walks around and talks to people and lives out each and every day of math homework and chores and bland microwave dinners and bitter medicine from his inhalers. If he’s lucky, he has a dreamless night, or he has a dream that’s just boring, where he obsesses again and again about an algebra problem that stumped him the day before, for example. Usually he just has nightmares, a long miasma of dull amorphous terror. But every so often, once every two or three months, he has that happy dream where he once and for all lets go of that rock, and lets out a sigh of relief. Thank goodness, it’s all over, I’m back to normal. 

And then he wakes up, and there is that rock in his stomach once again, ready to burden him for a brand new day. 

The rock came back this morning as well as any other night, but the night’s sleep before was different in a way he couldn’t put his finger on. He actually felt well-rested when he woke, energized, contented even. As if to really drive the point home, he saw Ana cheerfully approach him as he stretched and lazily rolled out of his sleeping bag, and wasn’t instantly put off by her this time.

—Good morning! How do you feel, sleep well?

—Um… yeah. It’s weird but, I kinda feel like we have a big day ahead of us…

Ana smiled and patted Ninten on the back. Strange, there must have been something in that water.

Meanwhile, Teddy was apparently up with the dawn and once again in the lotus position. Nothing could have snapped him out of his morning meditation, not even the voices of his dear companions. Nothing, of course, except the voice of one man who very often did snap him out of his morning meditation.

—…master? Is that you?

Teddy opened his eyes and saw him, resplendent in his pure-white diamond-studded jumpsuit, large sunglasses blacker than the night is right before the dawn obscuring his deep unknowable eyes, and a golden halo adorning his perfectly-gelled pompadour, teased high and ever reaching toward the very empyrean. He forever had a song in his heart and upon his lips, and he was always honing his already formidable skills in karahtay. 

Teddy put his hands together in deferential salute to the heavenly man, bowed his head and knelt on the desert ground.

—Master, it’s hopeless. They think I’m a fool, they hate me. What do I do? 

The great man looked down on his disciple, deep in thought, and then spoke.

(Ah humina humina humina thanyaveramuuuu)

—…yes. Yes, I see now… of course! Thank you master!

The heavenly man nodded, struck a pose toward the rising sun, and strutted his stuff toward the undying light of the world. 

—Hey, Teddy, let’s get a move on!

The voice of Lloyd snapped Teddy out of his reverie, he turned to find his companions fully dressed and packed, ready to go.

—Who were you talking to just now?

—…I spoke to no man. 

No, Teddy said to himself, amid the blank stares of his friends. I spoke to one who sings with angels, who walks with God, and who has transcended the eternal cycle of only twenty four hours of a day in Las Vegas.

Ninten sighed and shrugged. 

—Come on, it’s not like this stupid cactus is going to walk up to us and start singing. 

Though that morning neither of the Chosen Four were to find any trace whatsoever of that elusive fourth bar of the melody, Ana did find something rather interesting. She ran off a few paces away from their trail and picked something off the ground. Rejoining the others, she revealed the find with a little smile. 

It was a full set of dentures, big ivory-white teeth jutting out of dull-pink squishy gums, still sticky, the sand grains and pebbles coating the thing like sprinkles on an ice cream cone. Ninten grimaced and recoiled from Ana.

—Eugh! Put it back! What’s wrong with you?

—There’s probably someone out there who’s missing their teeth. It would mean the world to them if we could return them somehow. 

—…WHO else do you think is out here?

—There could be someone out here! It’s not impossible. 

—Yeah, and it’s not impossible that they come in riding a tank! 

Ana grumbled, for perhaps the first time since they took up the journey, and glared at Ninten. 

—Well, I’m the one holding on to them, it’s no skin off your back, is it? Just leave it be, if it bothers you that much!

She sharply turned away from the grumpy boy, cradling the sticky thing in her hands like a kitten, as they all resumed the march onward.

—Guys… do you notice anything really strange?

Without stopping their pace, the other three humored Ninten’s question and looked around the desert, shrugging, glancing at each other.

—…no?

—…not really, um…

—Me neither! In every place we've been so far, we've been attacked by aliens, by robots, by zoo animals and street signs and lamps! We've been out here for three days, and nothing. Maybe the aliens know better than to come here, because there's nothing here worth their time… what?

Ninten noticed the look of terror on Ana and Lloyd’s faces, and turned around. As suddenly as they were not there a second ago, there appeared before them a mob of robots, fresh out of the old Duncan factory. Samurai bots unsheathing their electrified katanas, Metropolis bots readying their mounted death ray weapons from their wrists and glowing red eyes, and miniature flying saucers hovering overhead. 

—Oh yeah! I’m JUMPIN IN!!!!

Teddy cracked a wicked grin, clenched two fists, and rushed the lead samurai bot, and knocked its head off with one massive punch. Ana regarded Teddy with a warm smile, and said to herself looks like he’s back up again! before a laser blast from a nearby metropolis bot made her wise up and join the fray with her friends. 

They were formidable, and there were a lot of them, but somehow facing these robots wasn’t as scary to the young ones as it was back in the factory. Ninten made short work of many of them with death rays of his own, and deflected the samurai bots’ katanas with his own powered bat. Ana kept her friends safe with strategically-placed force fields, even deflecting the bots’ attacks back on to them at times, and used the detritus from the wrecked foes as telekinetic fodder against the ones still standing. 

Even Lloyd was pulling his weight now. He took potshots against the mini-saucers with his dual laser pistols and got them more often than he didn’t. The fully-humanoid combatants were a different story, they seemed to resist the blasts off their metallic hulls, and so Lloyd resorted to a few rockets from that precious pack from way back in the Twinkle High School science labs, which made a decent amount of fireworks among them.

—Way to go, little man! Remember your war cry!

Lloyd already forgot most of the war cry, which they more or less settled on the day before, but did the best he could to humor Teddy while also paying attention to incoming fire from above. 

—I can… punch your face… like a dragon? No… I can, fly… like a… ugh, bears don’t fly! 

There was one samurai bot left among the bunch. Lloyd planted his feet, bent his knees, squinted his left eye, lifted his weapon and aimed straight for the head. 

—Because I… I’m, I’m…

A second later, the bot exploded into smithereens… from Ninten’s death ray. Lloyd sighed and holstered his gun to his hip. 

There was not much time to celebrate the victory, for that group of robots was just the landing party. The real force they were to reckon with, the dreadnought of the robot force, couldn’t sneak up on them if it tried. It was as big as one of the mesas looming over the Yucca Desert way off in the horizon, it was as loud as a jet plane flying overhead at supersonic speed. Eventually, it hovered over them and landed right before them, kicking up a whirlwind of dust that made them cough. 

There before them loomed the first of the massive Duncan Bots. 

I AM DUNCAN-BOT DESIGNATION R-7037. PREPARE TO BE ANNIHILATED. ALL HAIL GIYGAS. 

The Chosen Four raised their weapons, knowing in the moment that their powers were futile against such a mountain of death-dealing technology, but what choice did they have except go down arms and psionic powers swinging? But Lloyd, of all people, ran ahead and placed himself in between his three friends and the giant robot before them. 

—Wait! I have an idea!

Turning to the Duncan bot, and placing his hands up in supplication, he said,

—You’re not allowed to harm us! It’s the law! You don’t want to break a law, do you?

The robot was silent for a moment, and then the eyes of its giant head began to glow a bright red. Ninten didn’t wait for the great big thing to answer, he ran to Lloyd and dragged him away, just as the monster let loose a massive explosive ray that left a crater where the four were standing. 

—Shoot. I guess it read The Naked Sun, too. 

All the children could do was run as the giant thing hovered in the air and fired blast after blast of hopelessly large red destructive energy. They kept this up until, whether it was the sand in the air or the sheer exertion, Ninten came down with an asthma attack. Collapsing to his knees, the others stopped running and went to their friend. Too late to pick him up and keep going, they helplessly stood and clenched their eyes shut as the Duncan bot caught up to them and prepared a final decisive blast. 

A deafening explosion rang out, but amazingly, the children found themselves not disintegrated into mere atoms. 

They cautiously opened their eyes and saw the robot before them with a massive hole in its chest, still smoking. From behind them, another wild explosion rang out, making them hit the deck at once. Two more mysterious blasts erupted from behind them and made the robot crumble into a pile of junk. 

They slowly rose to their feet, and after Ninten took the inhaler from his backpack and gave himself the life-saving medicine, they regarded their savior. It was a big, rusty, clanky, old-fashioned World War Two-era tank. 

*

A lid on top of the tank creaked open from the cockpit and a man in camouflage and flak emerged. He appeared to be rather advanced in age, as if he was one of the original pilots of that armored vehicle during that one Great War from years ago, when such things were actually invented. 

—Mfwdhjweouhgwejgdjldgwworhuwoeiuhqwjnewfn.

As shell-shocked as the children were to even escape from that encounter alive, they were just as baffled by the mush of words that came out of the man’s mouth. They shrugged to each other, until Ana’s face lighted up with a bright idea. 

—Oh, sir! We found this on the desert floor, could this be yours?

She presented the disgusting false teeth to the old timer, who bongo-slapped his head as if to say, oh, there they are! Without hesitating, he snatched the things away from Ana and glommed them into his mouth, sticky dust and all. 

—Much obliged to ya, young lady, I’ve been lookin for these dangnabbit things a week now. 

Ninten watched the whole thing in utter disbelief. As it transpired, the old-timer wasn’t the only one who had his jaw dropped all the way to the ground.

—Well, golly… thank you so much! You really saved our skins!

—Oh, not at all, little girl. I simply cannot suffer that Duncan trash trespassin and traipsin all over this man’s property. 

The man leaped out of his tank and hobbled over, with a distinct limp that looked rather war-inflicted, and pointed to Lloyd’s laser gun holstered to his hip, right on the prominent rainbow-colored D logo it bore on the side of the barrel. 

—See, now that’s your problem right there. Nothin but fancypants design to hoodwink folks into not hardly noticin the lack of quality behind it. “Be an Apple Kid,” fer cryin out loud. I’ve been through World War One, World War Two, World War Three, the Eastern-Chommo Under War of ’63, the Western-Chommo Over War of ’64, and a secret government-backed coo day tot the whereabouts I am not at liberty to reveal, and I’ve been through them all with one hunderd percent FRANKLIN gear!

He pointed to the side of his tank with a proud flourish, and there, even amid a spray paint job from years ago that was all but disappearing now, was emblazoned that familiar logo of the man in a wig flying a kite. 

—Say, mister. Do you know a lot about the desert? We’re trying to find a cactus, you see, and we’ve been out here for a few days and haven’t seen a single one!

—Well, now, you ain’t gonna find any cactuses out here, without you head down over to that cactus patch a hop skip and a do-si-do from my hangar.

The last word from this old-timer made Ninten finally perk up. 

—Did you say hangar? You have a plane?

–Sure. I give flying tours of the desert to good-paying desert tourists, so’s I can put a tv dinner or two in the old gas tank, ya know what I mean.

Just in case any of the four didn’t know what he meant, he smiled and patted his stomach. 

—Can you fly us to Ellay Town? We can pay you. It’s an emergency, we have to-

Ana, incensed by Ninten’s interference, stamped her foot and put herself between the boy and the old man.

—No, we don’t! We have to get to that cactus patch first!

—Tell y’all what, before you start pullin each other’s hairs out one by one, howsabout you do watchu gotta do at yonder cactus patch, then you come round to my compound, and we’ll talk turkey about flying y’all to those well-dressed vultures in Ellay Town. Deal?

Deal. After explaining that their destination was about a click away from their position, and after explaining that a click is about a good point six two one or so miles, the Chosen Four walked just a little bit longer and reached the cactus field at last. 

Teddy, like someone who had been wandering for days at a time with no water, fell to his knees and immediately sunk his teeth into the first little succulent plant there was on the ground. Though the thorns dug into his face, it was worth it all for the sweet nectar from which the plucked cactus poured forth. He greedily sucked water from the husk of that plant as the others looked on in bewilderment. 

—…Teddy? You know we still have our canteens full from the oasis yesterday, right?

Teddy looked to the others, then dropped the cactus husk and spoke through clenched teeth. 

—…erm, yesh… that wash a tesht… and you pasht. 

While Teddy hung back and plucked individual thorns out of his lips and fingers, Ninten, Ana, and Lloyd went deeper into this veritable desert forest. A menagerie of all kinds of prickly succulent plants, some that clustered into many minute bunches, some that were a big bulbous dome no higher than their knees, some with elaborately curling thorns, others that bore their thorns like many drawn knives. And there, deep in the patch, they spotted their man. A large saguaro, the largest of the bunch, with two arms that looked as though it were raising them to the sky in prayer. 

—Well, it’s big, but does it have a good baritone?

Ana disregarded Ninten’s sass and approached the thing, easily three times as tall as she was, and looked up to it in awe. 

—We’ll never know unless we ask. Excuse me, Mr. Cactus sir. Are you the cactus we've been looking for? The one with the melody? You know, for her Majesty Queen Mary of Magicant? 

The cactus failed to reply. 

—Hm… maybe it’s nervous.

—Or, and just hear me out… maybe it’s a cactus!

—Why don’t you try talking to him? You’re the only one here not willing to give him a chance.

—Is that a fact? Lloyd, you don’t buy into all this nonsense too, do you?

Both Ninten and Ana sharply turned to Lloyd, who mumbled and dissembled and folded his hands in and out.

—Erm… well… we’ve already seen aliens, and robots, and… fish that swim in the air, and talking frogs, so… I mean, at this point, yeah, why not?

—You see? It would be a nice gesture if you said a kind word to him. Maybe compliment his voice, maybe that will help him with his stage fright…

—Stage fright?! You are insane. Do you hear what you’re saying out loud right now?

—Are you going to speak to him or not?

—NO! Absolutely not!

Ninten walked a few paces away from Ana and Lloyd. 

—I can’t, don’t you understand? I can’t just humor you, I can’t just do it to be nice. I cannot allow something so ridiculous and absurd and wonderful any room in my heart. I can’t stand here and steel myself to believe that something impossible like that is going to happen, only for it to inevitably not happen. I can’t bear to have the universe take that tiniest modicum of whimsy that I’ve allowed for myself and just slap it out of my hands and stomp on it into a pulp, and just point and laugh at me and say you idiot, how could you think that something like that could actually happen in the real world? Are you out of your mind? I can’t bear it, it would just, crush my whole entire soul. And then once I pick it back up and stuff it back inside me, you’re gonna say oh, maybe it just wasn’t the right one, and you’re gonna make me do it again and again for all the other ones here, this one? No! This one, no! This one?! No! For days, and weeks, until we get to the very last one in the patch, and maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t, but by then aliens have completely blown up the whole planet! 

During a lull in his tirade, Ninten began to dig a line in the ground with the heel of his shoe. 

—There. I’ve drawn a line in the sand. That’s it. You dragged me out to this godforsaken place, I baked in this awful sun, I got rocks in my shoes, I smell like a donkey, and now that I finally got all the way here, I’m done! Whatever you want to do, you do it on your side!

Ninten and Ana stared each other down, both furious with each other, as Lloyd stepped back, nervous and hopelessly caught in the middle of their spat. Ana’s eyes suddenly went flat white, and ring chimed loud in their minds.

A second later, Ninten went flying face-first past the line in the sand and landed on his stomach, right before Ana’s feet. She lifted a finger in the air, and in response Ninten floated right in front of her suspended in midair, hanging like a rag doll but unable to move.

—You listen to me, you big jerk! Ever since we started you've been nothing but rude, and sarcastic and defeatist! You constantly act like this whole thing has only happened to you! Nobody here wanted this to happen,  but it has. It’s happened to all of us! We have to help each other, and we have to let each other help us, or we don’t have a chance of making it to the end of this! 

Ana hesitated, pursed her lips, and stammered a little bit. After getting her genuine feelings off her chest like that, it was a little hard for her to be threatening for literally the first time in her life. 

—Now you talk to that cactus! You apologize for being so rude, and you ask him to sing for us! Or so help me I'll... I can do things, Ninten! I can do other things with my mind, that… that you don’t wanna know!

Ana lowered her hand and deactivated her power, dropping Ninten to the ground like a sack of rocks. He grunted as he rose to his feet and dusted off his pants and shirt and put his hat back on. Then, he took his time approaching the cactus, and after even more hesitation upon reaching the thing, cleared his throat.

—Erm… Mr. Cactus, sir? If you can hear us… Look, we don't understand what's going on, but we're trying our best, and we could really use your help. So… if you have a song to sing, we'd really like to hear it. 

The very second Ninten finished speaking, the cactus revealed himself. As suddenly as it was a second ago just a plain old tall plant out in the desert, a second later it had a big wide smile on its face, big googly cartoonish eyes, and it took a bow with its two thick arms. 

—Well, all you had to do was ask! 

And with that, the cactus put an arm over its heart and began to sing.

🎶 🎶 🎶 🎶

Once the cactus finished its song, it put away its face and animated arms, and was once again a tall, proud saguaro taking pride of place among the only cactus patch in the Yucca desert for miles and miles around. For the second time that day, Ninten’s bottom jaw was nowhere near the rest of his mouth. Ana, with a little chuckle, as apparently all was forgiven now that he did what she told him to do, tapped the bottom of Ninten’s chin with her finger and brought his agape jaw back up again. 

*

The short walk back to the compound was uneventful, especially compared to the time spent in the cactus patch. They arrived to find the old timer reclining on a rocking chair on the porch of his ramshackle hovel, his feet up on the banister and sipping from a just-cracked-open bottle of sarsaparilla.

—Welcome back, younguns. I take it y’all concluded yer business with that there cactus patch. Come on in, take a load off. 

The four of them headed toward the porch, with Teddy still not being much for conversation as he had a thorn or two left to pick out of his mouth. Only Lloyd seemed to be puzzled by the twigs placed with care in the ground surrounding the man’s compound, each with a little red flag on top. He bent down and reached for one.

—What’re these all for, anyway?

—Oh, those? They’re the markers I put down so’s I can keep track of the land mines. 

Lloyd screamed, flinched his hand away from the little flag, and jumped back from the thing. Fortunately, there was no such marker for him to land on butt-first, which he duly did. 

—Land mines?! Are you crazy? 

—You’re darn tootin! You never can be too sure with the old home security.

—But they’re banned by international law! They’re illegal everywhere, even in… North Chommo!

—Yessiree bob, and that’s how I figger no one trespasses onto my property, seeing as how I’m the only old coot still usin em!

Lloyd was still miffed by the scare but slowly began to recover. There were a couple stray rocks at his feet, and he kicked one or two away from the compound to let off steam.

—…coulda killed me. Rogue mines account for almost six percent of all worldwide fatalities. It’s not a lot out of a hundred, sure, but when you figure just the sheer number of things it’s possible to die from-

One of those rocks landed on a spot a decent distance away from the mine patch, and exploded. Lloyd screamed and backed away onto the porch, at this point the only place he was sure to be safe. Meanwhile, the old-timer took a sip of his sarsaparilla and looked off to the smoldering crater up ahead.

—Aw, shoot. Thought I got em all…

Nonetheless, the four younguns made it safely to the man’s front porch, where their host offered them their own bottles of sarsaparilla and a cube each out of the icebox. Neither of them, especially Ninten, refused the refreshing soft drink after subsisting for so long on stale oasis water, and even he seemed to understand why Teddy liked them so much back at the Live House in Merrysville. 

—Well, thanks again for all your help, sir. You’re very kind.

—…why are you helping us so much, anyway?

—You mean, other than y’all done relocated this man’s teeth back to safety? Well, in a word, it’s cause I know what you’re up against. Specially on account of that great big Duncan heap over yonder.

—You mean, you know about the…

—Yessiree, Bob. Aliens. Lights in the sky. Mind control… I encountered em back in ’63, and the brass made me sign all such papers and nonsense to keep my trap shut on pain-a court-marshall. But I think we’re well past that point, ain’t we now? Here.

The man reached into the front pocket of his ratty overalls and produced four nickel-sized orange knickknacks, and distributed them one each. Ninten inspected his for a long while, but it was Lloyd who spoke up first.

—Holy cow! Franklin badges! Are they real?!

—You betcher. Real, and the only ones that won’t make you break all five of your banks when the old antique roadshow comes to your town. Now, every ‘lectrician worth his salt of the earth knows that all ya gotta do is pin it to your person and it keeps you safe from all kinds a sparks and zaps and crackles. But there’s a different ‘lectric signal entirely that it’s just as good at keepin out: telepathic interference. 

Ninten immediately pinned his badge to his shirt, and Ana gently tapped her finger on Ninten’s head.

—It’s true, I can’t read his mind at all! 

—And neither will those alien freaks, so’s long as you wear those good quality Franklin badges high and proud.

Having seen to that, it was time to get the old lady up and purring for the long flight to Ellay Town. The sight of which, as the plane gently taxied out of the old-timer’s hangar and kicked up even more sand and dust as it approached the runway, making Ninten cover his mouth and nose with his scarf, made Lloyd tremble. 

—Lloyd? What’s the matter?

—…well, erm… I have a um… a profound fear of flying. 

Ninten groaned a nd slapped his forehead.

—I’m sorry I didn’t say anything until now. But… look at that! It’s a Franklin plane from the Second World War, and the FAA of Eagleland decommissioned all planes from the third world war and back! I mean, just think about the metal fatigue alone, sitting in there for what, fifty years now, and corrosion from any moisture buildup in the wings and fuselage? You’d need special x-ray equipment to tell! 

—Yeah, but Lloyd…

—And that’s a radial piston engine, you could fry a whole dozen eggs on one once we’re in the air, and if there’s any old oil leaks? It’ll fry us in the air, too! And that’s of course assuming we don’t hit any humid patches and the carburetor isn’t susceptible to ice formation and chokes out the engine’s whole air supply and causes a complete power loss! A fireball in midair or a fireball when we hit the ground, take your pick!

—Lloyd…

—And don’t get me started on the pulleys and cables connecting the control surfaces! One of those snaps, bon voyagee! The propellers generating all that torque, one bad pull of the throttle and I hope you like your drinks shaken and stirred! 

—Lloyd…

—Or heck, if the pilot does accidentally overstress the stick, that’s assuming we even have the stinkin’ wings anymore! The wings, Ninten! Off the plane!

—Lloyd! 

—Look, face it, guys. There’s only one thing more statistically unsafe than flying one of these… actually attempting suicide!

—Come on, it’s not gonna crash-

—Oooooh, well if you say so. Gee, I didn’t know you were a certified aviation engineer.

—Look, you heard it from him yourself, he flies tourists around on this thing  all the time.

—Around the desert for an hour or so is one thing, but cross country? Over the ocean, all the way to the other side of Eagleland? Forget it!

—Well, what do you suggest, we walk back? 

—…honestly, I’d rather take the tank.

There was nothing Ninten could say to Lloyd that would persuade him. He was so close to the end of the Yucca Desert, only for it to come to this. Just when it seemed hopeless, Ana stepped forward and got between them both.

—I have an idea. Lloyd, give me your badge for a second. 

Lloyd unpinned the badge from his shirt and did so. 

—Thanks. Now, Ninten, you stand over here.

She gently ushered Ninten so he faced behind Lloyd. Then, approaching Lloyd again, she closed her eyes and placed a single finger on his forehead.

—Save yourself the trouble. Even with your mind powers, there is nothing, no telepathic message you can beam directly into my brain, that is ever ever ever in a billion trillion years gonna convince me to flaaaaaaaaaa-

Lloyd’s eyes rolled, his speech suddenly slurred mid-sentence, his head slumped back, and as he fell backwards Ninten, taken by surprise, caught Lloyd in a trust fall before he could hit his head on the ground. Gently putting him on his back, they found the boy grinning ear to ear and snoring. The other two conscious boys looked up to Ana, who smiled back at them.

—I’m giving him the best dream he ever had. I figure I owe him that much.

—What’s he dreaming about?

Ana’s smile suddenly faded away.

—Um… legos. Lots, and lots, of legos.

*

You’ve been listening to The Podcast Against Giygas. The Podcast Against Giygas is an audiobook written and performed by me, Garrett McMahon, based on Mother, the 1989 video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System directed by Shigesato Itoi. With production by William Pawlowski, thumbnail design and art direction by David Peters, and musical selections from the recent Earthbound Beginnings remake hack, with arrangements by livvy94, Snyderman, Bluestone, Pinci, and Mary Strawberry.

This podcast is a guaranteed masterpiece! It is also a fan-made project affiliated in no way whatsoever with the Nintendo Corporation or Mr. Itoi. This podcast is free to listen to, ad-free, and always will be. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and if you did, a rating and review on your podcast service of choice is always appreciated. Well, I’ll see you back next Monday, but until then, no crying till the ending!