The Dog Grill Rip #3

Day 1,117, 11:35 • Published in USA USA • by weasel2

with apologies to Daniel Quinn


THE STORY OF BETA


The_Man traveled to New York on the ticket of his Very High Supreme to ‘check out’ a citizen who was said to be some sort of jag. Arriving in Connecticut, he began his search. At the end of a memorable night and day of excess, The_Man ran down in a run down bar with few other sit down patrons, flat. As The Man was getting to his feet (no small feat), home bound, he tripped on a guy standing at the bar. From the floor he peered at the stranger, who announced

“I am Beta. I’ll buy everybody here a drink”.

The_Man was immoderately intrigued and decided to follow the interesting fellow and discover what more he might say. And as the night wore out, he came to realize that he had stumbled over the very thing he had been looking for.

Midway in the slow crawl from the bar to his flop The_Man discovered he had butt-pressed the recorder in his cell on. Not unmindful of his duty, with two clicks he sent the entire two terabytes to the Very High Supreme. Then The_Man rolled over and slept the sleep of the virtuous.

In the next week, he stalked Beta and his followers. The people who were with Beta before The_Man showed up were extra jelly. After all, there was only so much Beta go around. But every where that Beta went The_Man was sure to go. He waited on every word from Beta, not forgetting his cell recorder about half the time. The_Man began to understand Beta’s other words as well.

Then Beta disappeared! Night and day and night The_Man looked for X until he ran into Xlair.

Xlair had been very, very close to Beta. When Xlair sadly told The_Man that Beta had been hacked and was dead, The_Man had a brainstorm and realized three things: that he, himself, had looked up at Beta and that he had a really, really good chance with Xlair.

That evening, sitting in that same run down bar in New Jersey, The_Man gathered his ego, sent a ragequit message to the VHS, and announced

“I am Beta...”

That night witnessed a reel to reel recorder VHS to Beta conversion.