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.What's love got to do with it?	By : keithcompany Category: Titles in the Public Domain > Gulliver's Travels Views: 2192 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work fiction, based on Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift.

Chapter List
- 1-What's Love Got To Do With It Part 1
- 2-What's Love Got To Do With It Part 2
- 1
- 2
Loolilenda was a sociologist from Mildendo, studying humans. She’d decided to take a trip across the State as a start to a world tour of human society.
“I figured to hitchhike,” she told Mark and Anta. The Lilliputians were relaxing on the port roof as Mark drove. Anta sat up in her lounge chair to stare at her new roommate. Lile blushed. “I know, I know. Everyone told me it was going to be a horrible mistake, but I went ahead.
“The trucker out of San Francisco was fun, and the truck stops were informative.”
“Aren’t they weird?!”
“Yeah! It was great.” Mark sat quietly as the other two cataloged the oddities of American Humans in their Highway Habitat. Anta chewed him out for neglecting to take her through an authentic roadside gift shop once she learned they existed.
“Anyway,” Lile continued, “she got to the end of her run and turned around. She hung out for a day until I found someone headed in my direction. A family of four took me in for the leg to St. Louis.
“Half an hour down the road, the parents gave me…GAVE ME to their two sons. Thought I’d be more fun than a new Nintendo or something. They got a travel cage from a pet store and locked me up!”
“That must have been horrible,” Anta sympathized.
“Sure was. They listened to Country music!” Lile laughed and the others joined her. Mark marveled at the mercurial nature of the little people. He’d have gone bonkers in a similar situation, and stayed that way for a while.
“So, did we file a complaint?” Antanda asked, wondering just what she’d slept through.
“No, I’ll wait until you drop me off at the Lilliput Embassy in Vegas. I memorized their names, license plate, home address, and I can identify a birthmark on the dad’s…uh, inner thigh.”
“EUGH!” Anta exclaimed.
A few miles further, Mark saw another truck stop and hit the turn signal before Anta could say anything about the gift shop. Minutes later he was reminded of trips with his mother.
“Why do you need a chrome cowboy boot with a clock in it? You’re not even big enough to wind the damned thing!”
“You have NO SOUL, Mark! It’s a thing of beauty and your national history! I love it!”
“It’s from Taiwan! Cowboy boots were leather, and if they had a clock, it was a pocket watch.” He looked down at her and sighed. “Alright, fine, don’t stick your lip out. It’s your money, and Lord knows you can afford it after the casino.”
“What? Oh, yeah. How much did I end up with?”
“Enough. Excuse me? We want the boot. Don’t ask why.” Lile caught his eye, writing something in a notebook Anta gave her. “Am I an observation now, or is the boot?” She just smiled and went on writing. Mark issued a long-suffering sigh and collected their purchases.
-----
The road into Vegas made Mark giggle for a bit, then burst into laughter. Anta and Lile looked around and around, but couldn’t find the source of his amusement.
“Oh, nothing, we’re just near a military base.”
“How do you know,” Lile asked, pen poised.
“Well, even for this town, the signs are clear. All the bars, the density of pawn shops, and the used car dealerships offering ‘free credit.’ " The discussion of the economic dynamics of the immediate vicinity of young men in uniform carried them well down the road. The Naval air station he predicted passed by and Lile was still writing down observations.
The Lilliputian Consulate was two blocks from their hotel, so they checked in, had dinner, and walked her over. Anta stayed just long enough to catch up on the latest news, gossip and fashions from home.
----
Las Vegas was far and away the complete opposite of sensory deprivation Mark had promised. Anything and everything was available as a theme, from human history, Brobdingragian epic poetry, Lilliputian operas and the myths of all three races.
The human society variety she’d noticed before was magnified three or four fold here. Every race, society, language, accent, height, and tattoo seemed to be on formal or informal display.
In a quiet spot between the crowds, Anta wondered aloud what the addition of Hounyhymn sources would do to the city, if they were ever found?
“Just a few horses on top of some buildings, looking around at the stupid yahoos getting excited by bright and shiny things,” Mark guessed. Then they were back in the throng.
There’s been a Lilliputian presence in Nevada almost from the day of their rediscovery. Anta saw little people here and there, in pockets, on shoulders, inside one hairdo. She wasn’t the attention grabbing spectacle she’d been elsewhere.
Mark seemed headed in a particular direction. “Headed somewhere specific?” she called up. He nodded.
“Someplace Cudd suggested.” Anta wasn’t sure she liked that.
It turned out that there was a human performance of “The Man Mountain and the Woman Hiker.” Cudd’s email included the reservation number for a pre-paid ticket at the window. As with most human entertainments, Lilliputians weren’t required to pay, it was too easy to smuggle them in. The markup on concession stand chocolate more than made up for it.
He settled into the box seat with her in his pocket. She was anxious about any sort of ‘revelation’ from the plot, but also kind of interested in how humans would see, and perform, the cultural icon from home.
The costumes seemed rather simple; she was used to a lot more pageantry. The Gulliver character was different, though. Traditionally, there were two legs operated by teams of puppeteer. More recently, the performances in the capital had included human actors in the role. For Vegas, she was kind of expecting some impressive animatronics.
When the legs shuffled on stage, though, she thought that even her high school had managed more realistic pants and shoes. Anta was about to air her disappointment to Mark when the knees bent and a Brobdingrag actor leaned down and started to sing.
Despite her worries, Mark seemed to enjoy the opera as entertainment, with no sign of any self-aware introspection. Anta wondered if that was a good thing or bad.
Dinner was a ‘crunch’ bar on the strip. An authentic Lilliputian menu was provided for Lill’s looking for a taste of home. Humans were invited by Lilliputian invitation only. The ‘crunch’ was from the fact that the animals were much too small for humans to separate the meat from the bones and had to eat a turkey, or a side of ribs, whole.
Anta sat at the bar, watching Mark in the mirror. The only two other humans in attendance were women. They joked with their host that the Lilliput diet allowed them to eat an entire cow and still be within Weight Watchers guidelines. The miniature woman laughed politely, ancient as the joke was.
Mark was taking great care to cover his mouth as he ate, to avoid flashing a gaping maw of chewed foods to the other diners. The server behind the counter caught her eye and gave a brief nod of approval for Mark. She’d be welcome to bring him back. She nodded thanks.
“How’d you housebreak that one?” The question was from the woman seated next to her, asked only slightly above a whisper.
“Not my doing,” she admitted. “I think it was a trip to Brobdingrag, he probably saw enough offensive giantry to keep him in line for life.”
“Ah,” the woman nodded. “So he knows what it’s like. Maybe I should send my employees to the Lorbrulgrud office.”
“Do ‘em a world of good,” the next man down contributed.
----
The walk back to the room was a bit slower. Anta leaned out of his pocket and watched him watching the streets and crowds go by. His eyes seemed to linger here and there, and she finally figured out what was catching his attention.
“You can eat something, you know,” she shouted up to him. “No one expects a man-mountain to get full at a crunch bar.”
“It’s just for the experience, then?”
“Yep. Same way you don’t expect me to finish anything at a diner.” He arrowed towards a fast food shack. “You should know,” she went on, “that my countrymen were very impressed with your manners.”
“Is that what all of you were laughing about at the bar? I wondered, but didn’t want to intrude. So, did you tell them how you housebroke me?”
“Yeah, I told them all about the whips and the choke collar.”
“Ha!” His laugh drew the attention of several people waiting in line, but he ignored them. They turned back to their own concerns. In a lower voice he spoke to his pocket. “Even if you hung from it, you couldn’t even make a choke chain uncomfortable on my throat.”
“Who says it has to be around your throat?” She sank to the bottom of the pocket and pretended not to hear him gasp and sputter.
------
Two mornings later, Mark was in the shower while Anta burrowed through the ‘things to do’ folder on the hotel dresser. There were a number of places that catered to Lilliputians, but several of them were clearly ‘No Englishmen’ establishments.
She wondered how to ask for a day or two to pursue her own interests, without seeming to be ungrateful for his bringing her along, or offering any other offense.
Her mental rehearsals weren’t getting very far before he came out of the bathroom. She watched him sit on the foot of the bed across from her, a strange look on his face.
“Hey, uh, I had a thought.”
“”Yeah?”
“Well, there’s a couple of things I was interested in that you probably wouldn’t be. And, as much as I enjoy your company, I couldn’t really enjoy something I liked, if you were being miserable watching it. I mean, it’s your vacation, too, so maybe we could each take a day…”
“Tuesday,” she said, glad that was over.
“What?” His glower told her it wasn’t, though. “What do you mean?”
“Tuesday would be great. I have a few things I want to do, too. Places you wouldn’t like, or can’t get into.”
“Oh, yeah?” He stood up, raising his voice ever so slightly. She really had no idea what his problem was. “Well, if you’re that hot to go off on your own, maybe we should start NOW?!”
“No, no,” she assured him. “We had plans. They looked good. Get ready. Let’s go.” He still seemed miffed. “Oh, Yolks… Look, you probably just spent ten minutes in the shower trying to figure a way to say ‘Hey, we have different interests, let’s go different ways for a day,’ without offering offense, or without hurting our friendship, right?” She earned a brief nod from him.
“Well, it WORKED! I spent those ten minutes pretty much the same way. I already AGREED with you before you started. So get over it, okay.”
His anger ebbed, slowly. “Okay, you’re right. It’s like we’re having our first fight, but it’s our first heated agreement. I’m sorry. Shall we go?”
“Really? Right now?”
“Yeah. Now. The fight’s over, I was stupid, I apologized, what else is there?”
“Pants?” she suggested, pointing. “Or am I making an honorary Lilliputian out of you?”
----
In the lobby, she was in his jacket pocket, reading from the guidebook when he suddenly turned to the gift shop.
“What do we need?” she asked.
“It’s one of those ‘my own interest things’ we agreed on.” A huge finger gently but firmly pushed her fully inside the pocket, then shut the zipper. She was flabbergasted for a moment, then started kicking. She felt him move around a bit, whisper something, then he was striding quickly again. He opened the zipper.
Anta stuck her head out and looked around. They were headed for the elevator. “What? We forget something?”
“Something like that,” he replied. She looked around but couldn’t see anything different about him or his jacket. In the elevator, though, she spied something in his reflection in the steel door.
“What’s in your hand?”
“Just something for you,” he answered. He lifted it up to show her a beautiful red rose. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“Oh, it’s lovely. And I already forgave you, but this certainly doesn’t hurt.”
She sniffed it on the dresser while he went into the bathroom. Mark returned with a glass half full of water, to find her ripping petals off and stacking them neatly.
“What…what are you doing?”
“I’m taking the petals off,” she answered matter-of-factly.
“Um….why?” She blew air out her lips towards her bangs. He was getting huffy again.
“I put them in a pillowcase, then I can sleep on rose petals. What did you think I was going to do with it?”
“Put it in water,” he said, gesturing with the glass. She stared back, open mouthed.
“Then my sheets would be soaked.”
They were laughing about it by the end of the drive. Mark found a space fairly close to the Encounter Building. The squat block was imposing, even for Vegas. It could have used the old Astrodome as a lobby.
They found at the ticket booth that the Encounter Experience was half off for groups spanning at least two scales. Antanda’s wave from his pocket was sufficient for the discount.
They had no real interest in the dioramas, so quickly passed the long lines. Evidently lots of people wanted to see what it was like to be a Lilliputian or a Brobdingragian in human settings, or a human in a ‘real’ Lill or Brobd city.
The memorabilia from Gulliver’s travels held some interest, as well as the exhibits from the Rediscovery. Anta found her great grandfather in one of the pictures of the Assembly.
The Encounter Hall, though, drew them deeper into the building like a magnet. He placed her at the Lilliputian entry, which was in the riser of the steps to the Human entry, which was in the riser of the steps to the Brobdingragian entry.
Once inside, she ran to the Little Ladies’ room for a quick check of hair and makeup, then entered the Hall. The exhibit wasn’t terribly crowded, but there were still more than enough people to make a search difficult. She wandered around the blue-floored area, glancing at the faces in the yellow zone.
She almost missed him. Suddenly Mark was there, a proper six inches tall, standing on tiptoe to scan the crowds.
Anta managed to make it within about two arm’s length before he recognized her. His body was somehow off, she thought; squatter, thicker than she expected, maybe. Gravity seemed to work harder on humans. The differences were subtle, hard to see from most perspectives. Here, though, the projection allowed direct comparisons.
Just beyond him, a Brobd was projected in the red zone. He was noticeably thicker and wider than Mark was. There were differences in how he walked, too. She wasn’t sure if ‘ponderous’ was quite right, but to her Lill eyes, he looked like he was walking around hurt.
She glanced back at Mark and found that he’d found her. They grinned at each other and stepped to the exact border between their zones.
“Wow. You look…” he faltered.
“I look what?” she asked, not letting him off the hook for a second.
“Skinny? Tall? Elfin? Radiant?”
“Is that all?”
“Well, what about me?”
She considered. “Well, from HERE, your mole isn’t nearly as distracting as it has been.” She laughed as he raised a finger to his face. “No, over…” Anta almost reached over to point it out, but hesitated. She wasn’t sure what crossing the boundary would be like, but she didn’t want to risk spoiling the illusion.
Her hand turned around and pointed to the spot on her cheek. Mark found his mole. “This is that bad?”
“Not from here,” she smiled. “So, how do you think they do this?”
“I don’t know. I’m the wrong sort of engineer.”
“You’re supposed to say something, I dunno, romantic?” She sighed. “Like magic, or moonbeams or…”
“I don’t care. I’m too busy memorizing what you look like. No matter what happens, I want to always be able to see you, like this.”
Her smile died and her face clouded. “That’s what you want? A woman this tall?” For me to be like this?” For once, he didn’t quail in the face of her anger. He wasn’t embarrassed.
“No. Not ‘like this’ as in five foot ten. Like this as in I can see you, really see you. All of you. And even if you end up a blur in my bifocals, this view, this mental picture, where I can see the freckles on your nose and the dimple in your cheek, this is what I’ll see.”
Her smile came back, twice as radiant.
-----
When Tuesday came, there was a little tension between them as she readied a backpack for her outing. He sat patiently on the bed.
“Ready to go?” he asked as she slung the pack on.
“Are you in a hurry to get rid of me?”
“Hey, this was as much your idea as mine,” he reminded her. She raised her hands in surrender.
“It’s okay. You can’t fit where I’m going, and I expect I’d dislike where you’re going.”
“You would?”
“Sure. It’s okay, human males do that sort of thing and this is the town to do it in.” He started nodding his head in agreement. “I’d be uncomfortable. And you’d be uncomfortable, and I’m not really prepared for drool.” He froze in mid-nod.
“Drool?”
“Sure. You’re going to a titty-flop bar, aren’t you?”
“Uh, no. Why did you think that?” Anta stared at him in surprise.
“Isn’t that what men do? Go drool at chorus girls and strippers?”
“Uh, no, I was going to go to a Science Fiction convention.” She was stunned, and not a little embarrassed. She’d never suspected he was into that sort of thing. The tiny woman realized how prejudicial her assumptions had been and started to apologize.
Halfway through her apology, her eyes were drawn to a certain suitcase. She continued talking, but remembered how carefully, even lovingly, he’d carried that case, and how he’d never opened it yet.
“You’re dressing up, aren’t you?”
Mark popped to his feet, scooping her up to carry her out the door. “It’s called ‘going in costume,’ not dressing up. Time to put you on the Trolley. Let’s go, nothing to see here. Burn eye’s before reading.”
“WAIT!” The shout froze him in mid-step. “Can I see it?” He walked on. “What are you going as? Can you at least tell me what show? Is it a show? Movie? Book? What’s the genre?” Her questions carried on as he traversed the hotel halls and found the Trolley station in the basement.
As he placed her down on the lobby floor, she was well into a sulk. He smiled down and winked. “Just think. Who’s the coolest engineer?”
“Scotty? Geordi? O’Brien? B’Elanna? No, you couldn’t be B’Elanna. Or Kaylee. Harper? The guy that died at his post, when the trainees ran?” He shook his head and walked away. “Broots?” she shouted after.
Other Lills on the platform joined her, shouting suggestions. “Joe? Bender? Vorik? Sargent Siler? McKay? That Czech I can never remember?”
More than a few didn’t quite understand the game. “Hoss? Papa? Mother Goose? Basil Fawlty? Emma Peel?” Mark smiled back as he rounded the corner, then he was gone. She turned and boarded the car, apologizing to the crowd because she couldn’t tell them who’d won.
The day went quickly. Everything she did was underscored by the list of things she wanted to squeeze in before meeting Mark for dinner. At first she resented the pressure, but then she realized that she was really looking forward to it. She wanted to tell him about her day, and hear about his.
She really wanted to see who he’d been ‘costumed’ as. Hopefully he took pictures.
Finally, she finished her mouse skewer, stepped off of the Trolley, and looked around the waiting area. Mark was late, so she found a bench and sat down.
Across from her, an old human leaned in his own bench, pulling out a cigar. Anta’s nose wrinkled at the thought of the smoke, but perhaps he was far enough away it wouldn’t bother her. Perhaps Mark would show up, any damned second now. She idly watched as the man cut the tobacco, pulled out a lighter….and jetted flames up to the ceiling.
As the pocket flamethrower illuminated the waiting room and the hall and the tunnel and the stairwell, realization struck.
“You’re Q!!!” she shouted, smiling wide. Mark smiled back, beating out the flames on his hat brim.
-----
Thursday was the perfect evening. She got tickets to a three-scaled production of a Shakespeare play. The scene of a giantess Juliet searching her pockets and between the sofa cushions for her human lover (“Romeo, Romeo…wherefore art thou got to, Romeo?”) had them paralyzed with laughter.
For dinner afterwards, he’d found a restaurant with a Lilliputian menu. After dinner, they moved to the ballroom, where she danced on the table, arm and finger with his hand.
They talked on the walk back to the room, then sat on the balcony and talked until 3 AM. They moved indoors when the winds made her cold. She sat and he lay on pillows and they talked until they fell asleep. He placed a hand beside her, she hugged his finger and drifted off.
The next morning, though, Anta woke up in mid air, flying across the bed. She bounced off the foot of the bed and landed in a piled up comforter, screaming for all she was worth.
The maid dropped the pillow she held and rushed to see where the noise was coming from. Mark burst through the door, with a paper and a bag of pastry, shouting “What’s going on?!”
Eventually he fished Antanda out of the sheets and drove the maid out of the room. He made double sure the ‘Do Not Disturb’ and ‘Lilliput Lodger’ signs were visible and slammed the door shut and locked it.
Then he knelt beside the bed and stroked her soothingly. Eventually, she stopped shaking and twitching. He went on sitting silently beside her until she calmed. Then, in a flat, even voice, she said, “I want to go home.”
“Okay. Sure. I understand,” he said mistakenly. He was packed in half an hour, checked out ten minutes after that, and accepted the profound apologies of the manager. Then they were on the road again.
“Okay,” he started estimating, “we’re starting at…nine o’clock, we can probably get as far as…”
“Take me to the airport.” She said. It was the first time she’d spoken since asking to go home.
“What? You…wanna fly back?”
“I’m going home. Home-home. Mildendo. I quit.” She stared out the window at the street. She couldn’t see him, but could imagine the look on his face.
“To Lilliput? But, I thought…I mean, I was…We were….weren’t we?”
“No,” she said flatly. “We aren’t. We can’t.” He was silent for several blocks.
“Antanda, I love you.”
“Oh, what’s love got to do with it?” she shouted. Anta stood and faced him. He tried to look at her and drive, and finally gave up. The car turned and slid into a parking lot. She was almost tipped over the side when one tire hit the curb.
“I thought love was everything!” he replied. He reached over to scoop her up, holding her before his face. “I thought you loved me. Didn’t you?”
“Oh, Mark…It’s all an illusion.” She waved her arms around, indicating Vegas. “It’s like this city. All the pretty stuff is fake, all the real stuff is ugly. We can’t be together, it’ll never work.”
“We could try.”
“Sure. Until someone stepped on me, or pet me too hard, or dropped a dictionary on me. Or decided I was a souvenir, or a door prize. Or you knocked over my parent’s house when we visited them. It scares me to think this way, but it scares me more not to.”
“Well, we could…” He faltered, she struck.
“You want kids? I want kids. We’d have to adopt. And either you break our daughter’s leg trying to change a diaper, or our son ends up taking me to show and tell in a bird cage.”
“We could get a nanny…”
“You want to have a child who can’t hug you until it’s safe? Until they’re fully trained on how to not hurt me, or how to tell you they’re scared? Of you?” She sank down to sit in his palm. Maybe he couldn’t see her freckles, but he must see her tears. His were certainly visible, welling up in his eyes.
“You’re right,” he finally agreed. “Maybe. Maybe we don’t have a full life ahead of us, not one together. But you don’t have to leave. Maybe we’re like Las Vegas.” She looked up, wiping her eyes.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, we don’t live here all year. We just come…every so often. To see the sights. To live the illusion. Maybe...maybe you’ll never be my wife. Maybe you’re not really my girlfriend. But maybe, just maybe, every so often…we can pretend?”
Antanda stared up at the man for a long moment. She really did care about him, but didn’t see where the relationship could work. She was just thinking of her own protection, physical as well as emotional.
“You’re just hoping that I’ll come to love you so much, the problems will seem surmountable, aren’t you?”
He nodded, and gestures to indicate the city around them. “That’s another similarity between our relationship and Vegas. I’m willing to gamble for those stakes.”
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.What's love got to do with it?