DAFFY DUCK MEETS HIS MAKER

Daffy the space duck sees an extraordinary deity in space

When Daffy Duck first went into space and set forth for the planets he did two things. He spontaneously emptied his bowel as weightlessness seemed to suck everything out of him and he started praying.

Daffy had never prayed before, largely because he'd had no believable force to pray to. But now, in the almost total vacuum of space he met his maker face to face. And, in a moment of almost insane madness, he grabbed the controls of his spacecraft and set course for that maker.

Being a duck he had to sing in a quacking sort of quavery voice, and had anyone been near enough to hear they would almost certainly have bashed him over the head in order to silence him, and shove him into the captain's microwave oven until he was nicely cooked through and through. Fortunately, though his quavering quacking to the tune of Red Sails in the sunset went unheard.

Now one thing we must come to terms with is the absolute hugeness of space. Daffy could see his Maker, but that Maker was a hell of a long way away and it took a hell of a long time to get anywhere near him or her or it.

In fact, by dawn the next day (I know there's no such thing as dawn in space but Daffy's spacecraft had a clock marked off with a sun face and he could tell when it was dawn by checking the time) he seemed to be no nearer than he had been when he'd first spotted that magnificent creator. Indeed, if anything and bearing in mind the way anticipation can exaggerate things, he seemed further away.

“Oh crumbs!” he snarled into the microphone that connected him to Mission Control back on Earth.

“What is it, Daffy One?” came the thin wavering voice of the Mission Controller.

“I have seen my Maker and he's gorn further away,” moaned Daffy. “All I want to see is the beauty of his/her/its face, and it's receded. I spent all night dreaming of what I would say, like your Majesty, take me to your leader, and when I woke up he/she/it was shrunken!”

“He/She/It, you say?” asked Mission Control, trying to keep its voice steady and strip any signs of mirth from it.

“Correct, sir,” responded the feathered astronaut. “Now excuse me while I have my breakfast, and then I'll work on which buttons to press next!”

“Hey, fella, don't you go pressing anything!” almost exploded Mission Control “Your ship's under control from here! Repeat, your ship's under control from here!”

“I'm going to meet my Maker!” babbled Daffy. “There he/she/it is! I can see the love shining in his eyes!”

“His or his/she/its?” asked Mission Control, barely suppressing a giggle.

“Whatever...” replied Daffy, and he started praying. Dear Big One, he prayed with the most sincere twitch of his beak that he could manage, dear big one, guide me as I surge into my destiny through the hugeness of everything… take me by the hand and show your love to me… for thine is the power and the glory, of that I'm so certain it makes all my feather tingle when I contemplate your hugeness…

Then he pulled the on-board telescope towards him and jammed his right eye against its brass eyepiece. That telescope had been bought from a charity shop in Lewisham because the various bits and pieces that added to the cost of his space mission added up to such a huge sum there was no cash left over for such luxuries as telescopes, essential as the casual observer might think them to be in space.

“I can see my Maker!” he squawked to Mission Control. “Oh, darling Mission Controller, can you see?” and he pressed a switch that transferred the image that he could see to the receiver back on Earth.

“I sure can...” came the staggered reply from the European Space Centre which houses Mission Control. “It looks like...”

“My Maker,” sighed Daffy Duck.

“No … it looks like a bloody big egg!” almost screeched the Mission Controller. “It's Jupiter! You're heading bang! splat! wallop! straight for Jupiter's big red spot!”

“My Maker, my eggness, my brilliant hugeness...” dribbled Daffy Duck, and the big red spot engulfed him, caressed him, slid tendrils of itself into the tiny Earth-made space-craft.

And there was a sudden silence.

A monumental silence that might have been built out of bricks of immoveable silence if such a thing was possible, and who knows what's possible in the vastness of eternal space?

The kind of silence that can only exist in the near vacuum of the Universe.

Then…

“Has anyone got any orange sauce?” echoed a cheeky little voice from nowhere and everywhere before whoever or whatever spoke it emitted a rather troubled burp.

© Peter Rogerson 11.07.16