The Wallomen

It was in an abandoned Silent City-brand ship's store that was far, far below the surface of the mysterious planet Murloch -- covered mostly with marshes and forests and swamps, on a Tuesday, with a slight fog setting in and the pleasantly annoying aftertaste of cinnamon candy in her mouth -- that Susan Meerson of the Jethromundanian OOBMSDP happened to run into some Wallomen for the very first time.
They were strange wallowing creatures, always seeming to be in all sorts of hurries and things. They lived inside a lost section of the wrecked Superperverticon battleship because that was where they were born and had not moved or evolved within very much in the millennium since.
They had been trapped in this section of the Superperverticon for perhaps a full one thousand years all alone and by themselves except for each other and some plastic furniture for warmth and emotional support.
Which may have explained why they had become so incredibly normal and insane.
Susan, however, at this point, wasn't aware of either their incredible normality, or, of course, of their incredible insanity -- and instead decided to get a good long look at them for a bit before speaking because it did appear on the surface that they were incredibly interesting.
So she stared at them for a few seconds without saying anything.
And this is all that she saw:
The first Walloman was big and round and obviously on good terms with the ship's robotic cafeteria staff.
The second Walloman was not as round and not as big as the first Walloman but far more obsessed with the cafeteria's artificial cheesecake and casually strewn-about fanatical religious pamphlets.
In turn, the two weird Wallomen looked back at her as well. However, Susan wasn't sure how she herself looked to them from their point-of-view situated on the outside of her body -- which was perhaps a fortunate thing.
She shook her head and decided to stop thinking and do something.
She stepped forward confidently to greet them with a friendly, "Hi, there!" and then extended her hand for a shake.
The two Wallomen looked at her hand, and then looked at each other, and then at her hand again, and then back at each other until they were soon gazing very deeply into each other's souls. Since there wasn't much to see there they quickly stopped doing that and instead started grinning wildly and then turned back to face Susan again.
They opened their mouths as if to speak -- but Susan cut them off before they even had a chance.
"Why hello there. Can I, uh, help you?" she asked.
"--Ack-thpff!!!" exclaimed the first Walloman.
And "--Slppppbbbttt!!!" the other Walloman calmly declared, in loose accordance with all relevant multi-galactic customs concerning polite public oral intercourse. The spoken kind.
"We're looking for the Meaning of the Unyverse," said the first.
"Is it orange?" asked the other. "Does it walk? Will it fly? Can it talk?"
"These things and more are ways in which we wish to know much more of," said the first.
"After all -- ideas are just words with wings," said the second.
"And words are cheap," said the first.
"You know they make the best building materials," said the other.
"Yes, I ... see," said Susan, flabbergasted. And this was coming from a lady who wasn't often gasted -- flabber or otherwise -- until the weekend.
"Do you really?" they both asked simultaneously.
"Well, ah, maybe sometimes I do," she replied.
"Doubtful!" said the first.
"Highly improbable-istic!" said the other.
"Especially if it's sometimes five-times or more!" said the first.
"How?!?!" yelped Susan, blushing. Then she shook her head slowly and narrowed her eyes at them inquisitively. She immediately worried and thought, "How could they know it sometimes happens to me five-times or more on the weekends?"
She shook her head from side to side for a bit and decided not to worry about it.
The second Walloman started to explain anyway.
"It's because--"
"--Oh. Fine, fine," interjected Susan, cutting him off before he could really begin. "Soooo, why, ah, exactly are you, uh, are you looking for the meaning of the Unyverse?" asked Susan. "Are you bored? Are you going for your Ph.D's?"
The two Wallomen looked at each other for a moment. Staring deep into each other's eyes, unblinking, ungrinning, quietly, for a few seconds. Then they turned back to look at Susan directly.
"Answers!" said the first.
"Answers, we need answers!" said the second.
"Answers, you see, taste better, they do, which means that no matter how many and no matter how few that they will always taste much better with gravy than any maybes do! So answers it is and answers it will be, for if it was and if it is, and if it sometimes soon just might possibly be, then the only end to every question is the answer to this trick question: which is... what is the essence of those guessed-at phrases known as the one or more supposed Meanings of the Unyverse?!?!" said the first.
"It is no more -- and neither is it last! -- or less than this ethereal sense of that which the most thoughtful thinkers of things among us seek and wish to know with utter certainty in perpetuity!!!" exclaimed the second.
"Ahhhh... I get it... you're post-docs," said Susan.
The first Walloman nodded but the second shook his head.
"And now we must depart..." said the first.
"Yes, that's true!" said the second.
"Our neck is in the noose but, alas, our prey is on the loose," said the first. And then he bowed low and said, "Good-day!"
"Goodnight!" said the second before spinning around on his and Susan's feet.
"Goodbye," Susan said, pushing him back and grabbing her foot. "Ouch," she mumbled softly to herself.
And then the Wallomen ran off with hardly a huff or a wham: they ran out of the store and down the corridor and around a corner and promptly disappeared from view.
Susan herself snooped around and in between the mostly empty shelves for a few minutes afterward without finding where the interesting-looking shoes had went but then began to wonder more and more if Richard had any more cinnamon sticks left.
So she headed back to camp and promptly forgot all about the shoes and the two weird Wallomen of the Silent City-brand store.