The Planet Bingo

The Planet Bingo
Sure, I got a cool dream I can tell you all about. Don’t know if you’ll believe me, and you’d probably think I’m mad but I’ll tell you what happened just for the sake of it.

First, so you would understand the context of my dream better, I’m just an ordinary kid who wants to become a writer and makes a bunch of cash and make Tolkien look like a wanna-be. I’d daydream of this all the time, all through my Mr. Syphilis’ (my high school English teacher Mr. Kisilis) class and, dare I say it, Tonkovich’s. Screw admiring Cheever, Welty and everyone else, I had thought near the end of another three-hour class period, you’re just trying to turn me into a parrot. So what if I was a million light years away pondering another dream world on realm of ‘Bingo’ that just might be incorporated into one of my novels some day. Planet ‘Bingo’s’ with its three-tailed, muzzled Urnaraks are much more interesting to ride through the forests than droning about the old time Robert E. Lee loving South.
So you can imagine I was quite confuddled by the time class was over, while half-heartedly promising Tonkovich I’d have those papers (which I wish to remain unspecified) done in time. While walking back to the dorm, I actually did think it wouldn’t be that hard to turn in a five page paper in time. Besides, I love writing and all that and I had sat down onto my chair in front of my computer and….
Oh fuck…
I’d completely forgotten what the assignment was supposed to be about. Had it been about dreams? Was it that paper I was supposed to mail out to everybody? Was it about writing a piece of work that was the destruction of planet Bingo?
It doesn’t help that the screen on the Microcoft Word Document remained completely blank. Made my sick, and naucious, and made me wish I’d had taken my ADD pills that morning. For what seems like hours I stare. I need an inspiration that would get me going on the piece of writing. Hmmmm….
I open up the files, searching through the video games I’d hacked off the internet. Final Fantasy? Nah… too much like planet Bingo. Castlevania? Maybe if I were writing something about Edgar Allen Poe perhaps, but that’s kind of cliché (which itself is a cliché’d phrase). I search more, ignoring the antic going on around my dorm, until I find…
FIRE EMBLEM!! Yeah!! That’ll give me an idea that’ll inspire me to make up a dream!! Once I play through the whole game I’ll have enough ideas to write like ten million papers. So I follow the main character’s story, watching him grow from a brash, gung-ho lordling to the legendary warrior that defeats evil. I play from beginning to end, hoping it would inspire a paper, and I beat the game on Wednesday morning, sometime after 12:00am I believe. I revel in the victory, and it is then I realize it’s 12:00am and I don’t have a single word typed down. I try to rush all the inspiration I had received from the game, a good idea forms in my head.
I open up the empty word document!! Hmmm, what should I write about? Lifting the weight off my shoulders? Too O’Brienish… All the other ideas I had thought of turned out, to my dismay, to be related to that dreaded planet bingo so denounced by Tonkovich.
Fuck…
Now I ain’t gonna get the paper done. I sprawl myself on top of the covers on the lower bunk, preparing myself to take the inevitable 0. I close my eyes, curse you Mr. Syphilis, Tonkovich, for hating planet Bingo. I’d have written a great paper by now if only you’d allow me to go there more often. Can’t stay on planet Earth forever, gotta progress sometime to new realms… Cause…you just become stagnant.
Yeah, that’s right, I though as I feel asleep, I’m still one up on you because I can travel to planet Bingo in my dreams, you just don’t wanna see it. I dare you to try and destroy it…

Merely a second later, I wake up in a strange elongated bed, and find myself in the middle of a large theater. There are exotic creatures all around, the royal white scaled kappa guards, in striped ceremonial armor riding their giant, winged spiders, winged cats lodged on the podiums all around, and a host of other creatures that not even one with the most wild imagination can imagine. I pull shakily to my feet, this is the planet Bingo, I realize.
Yet I notice something is wrong, the denizens are shuffling about, crying, ‘Oh our lord Bmao!! What shall we do!! The Tonkovites are gathering their armies!!’
Alarm immediately shot through my body as I arose to the podium and took the stand. The crowd falls silent as they wish to hear the call of their leader.
“Great people of Bingo!!” I shout forcefully, “Again we face a moment of crisis!! The Tonkovites are indeed coming!!”
“But fear not my people!! For two hundred years, we have resisted against reactionary forces of the Profesorite Axis!! As in the War of the Highskul, we had held out against the Syphilese so we can now today pursue our freedom of imagination!! We still remember Lord Celios and Spikeimon, who had died in the onslaught. I fear that more sacrifice will have to be made to preserve planet Bingo, and I cannot guarantee victory, but if it comes down to the choice of living as slaves under the Tonkovites rather than being free to imagine what we want for the future, I promise not to be around to see that dark day!! VICTORY OR DEATH!!”
I pump my fist into the air; the crowd goes wild into quacks, whizzes, beeps and euphoria. I give a few more salutes, but inside I realize that this time planet Bingo cannot possible survive without sacrificing some of its ideals.
I, along with my other advisors (characters from my fiction stories) gather around in the situation room.
“Creator Bmao” one of my advisors, a man with wings named Thanatos, “I cannot believe we have any hope of resisting the Tonkovites if we do not remove some freedoms for the sake of the survival of Bingo” he cries.
“We’ll become just like the Tonkovites than!! If that happens they’d have conquered us anyhow!! I’m not taking that path!!” I shouted, pounding down my fist.
“Bmao” another advisor, a 7-foot stick of a man named Masamik, “Keep in mind that the Tonkovites are experienced in conquering planets, and are fanatically devoted to terraforming Bingo in their image. The situation is different to when we faced the Syphilese, whose forces were of low morale and whose tactics were suspect. Not only that, many of our allies have abandoned us in favor of the Tonkovites, and will fight to make us think like they as well. If we wage all out war, I don’t see any way we can possibly emerge victorious, as we do not have the resources nor the diplomatic influence for the moment”
I rear my neck back and sigh, “So you’re saying that if we don’t apply some Tonkovite measures onto planet Bingo we’d be left behind?”
“That is correct my lord” a council member cried.
The mere thought of the Bingoites, being corrupted by the ways of the Tonkovites violated everything I had lived for these people. Yet the Bingoites lacked organization; they wouldn’t survive period if they did not learn the structural technique the Tonkovites organized themselves with. They couldn’t afford to detach themselves from this conflict, as they’d done against the Syphilese back in the Highskul war; at times, ideals needed to be sacrificed to get things done. If you didn’t get things done, you didn’t survive, simple as that.
“It is inevitable then, our society will be influenced by the Tonkovites whether we wish it or not and must learn from them” I sighed.
“Surely this would be an unpopular move and sponsor protest!!” called Lord Deligos. “The people of Bingo shall endure this, any sector who does not support these new measures will have their supplies cut off. We must face reality as it is, not how we want it to be. Besides, is not embracing the ideas of others the spirit which planet Bingo is founded on?”
“Yes!!” the councilmen cried, though the populace may not have agreed. Yet what mattered was that they agreed, because were it not for my trusted council members, I would not be able to do anything over planet Bingo.
“Just remain patient my friends, our time will come where we shall ascend to grace once more, if not for us, then our descendants. Let us hope that down the road, the Tonkovites along with all the other peoples of the universe will see us as the guiding examples” I finished.
The council members all gave melancholy nods, and the meeting ended. Now that I realized just how I sat at my desk, up in the octangular presidential hall.
“Now to write the first measures for the survival of the planet Bingo into law” I sighed.
Suddenly, alarms started buzzing off, flashing red throughout the room. BEEP!! BEEP!! BEEP!! BEEP!! BEEP!! BEEP!!
BOOM!!
All of the sudden, the hall was blown to smithereens, as I found myself hurdled back onto my dorm. I hazily slumped out of the bed and staggered toward the alarm. 6:00AM, the electronic watch read.
It was only then I realized I wasn’t on planet bingo anymore, it was six o’ one AM, and I was inside room 318 in East Hall, and that I was attending the University of Redlands….. And…that I still had a paper due English class later that day.
Crap…
At first, I told myself, screw it, I’d promise to do it late and hope I stick to it.
Yet I remembered the crisis on planet Bingo, and realizing if I didn’t try to glean something from the Tonkovites…er, I mean Mr. Tonkovich, my imaginary world of planet Bingo would never come into fruition. What would the councilmen had thought of me? What would the Bingoites have done to realize their leader wouldn’t make sacrifices to ensure their survival? That perhaps hurt most of all.
I pulled up my chair, and restored that empty Microsoft Word Document.
So here I am, writing the essay that I had to do, knowing that at times we must sacrifice our desires, so we may persue them even more freely in the future. Maybe in the end, the Tonkovites did have some good on the planet Bingo.