So, in exchange for a few peeled grapes and a virgin now and then he’ll have his toys build a pyramid. After all yer basic pyramid isn’t rocket science. May as well have some fun as long as yer stuck on this godforsaken place.

And there’s no sense in building yer basic battlements and buttresses because these yokels are wetting their pants over a simple pyramid. And a statue of a lion I screwed up. They would just crap if I threw in a flying buttress. What hicks!

I’ll bet I could wander around a while speaking gibberish and start a religion. Pull the ol’ ‘born of a virgin’ and cross trick, and wait 20 generations and see what happens. Those pregnant virgins are so damned happy I come along with an explanation they’ll never tell. And then I’ll come back after 200 generations and tell ‘em they haven’t cleaned up their act and are condemned to keep living on this hell of a rocky outcrop. It’s all their own fault. If they haven’t done their own selves in first. They could – there are a lot of nuts in that bowl.

That’s just too dirty a trick. I felt terrible the last time I did that. I can’t do it. My brother could, but he’s not here, I don’t think. Oh, god, I hope I get to go home, soon.

I charter a flickership from Lou’s Interstellar, and me and the family head out that backwater planet everybody talks about. I strut around in front of the dazzled natives, and maybe show them how to build something. Okay, I’m an accountant. I don’t know shit about building stuff, but my old Army Slizzer can cut blocks of rock if I tune it up to high, and hell, everybody knows how to work a gravlifter. How else would you get your luggage around?

I don’t know about smelting metal, engineering, or anything else. Somebody else builds the cool things where I come from. I just buy or rent them.

Nobody on that stupid planet ever wonders where double-entry bookkeeping came from. It’s not impressive.