Radio Specific Homo

"RADIO SPECIFIC HOMO," my latest novel-length collection of stories.

Amoeba on the Terrace

Chapter One

Custer Underfund, the central character in the book you are about to read (if you do read it, which means reading all the way through and not stopping after this sentence or merely skipping around) was thirty-five years old, slightly overweight, and constantly coming up with new approaches to his life. His current dream was to build a high-ceilinged structure in his backyard in which to put an artificial environment much like a stage set, complete with a little house, fake trees, and blue sky in the distance. As a child, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood had been a profoundly formative experience for Underfund, one that he now sought to pay homage to by building something like its Kingdom of Make Believe and living part of his life in. You would be right in assuming that Custer Underfund was at least half-crazy.
He had been driven half crazy by being extremely intelligent, self-aware, and artistically inclined, yet never having had the opportunity to fully express those attributes. He had been stuck in the same town since the day he was born, forced to perform manual labor for a living. As I have said, he was highly self-aware. Thus he knew that at least half of his predicament was his own fault. He had never had the courage to go to a big city and try his luck. I am sure that you have heard the expression “It’s never too late.” Well, you can take it from your narrator that thirty-five years old is too late.
Of course, Custer Underfund isn’t the only character in this book. Let us move on to Underfund’s wife, Rhoda Macmillan. She had kept her maiden name after getting married. Underfund had had no objection to this. He, like his wife, was a Liberal in most things, especially when it came to social issues.
In contrast to her husband, Rhoda had traveled extensively and had seen a measure of success in her endeavors, which mainly concerned meeting people and getting involved with their endeavors in turn. In her idealistic youth this had led her to smuggle what she had thought was a load of antiviral medicine into some place in Africa. When she discovered that what she had actually brought into the country was a small, but powerful bomb to be used by friends of the American CIA, she retreated from such activity, returned to her hometown, found Custer Underfund, and married him.
Now the mother of two small children, Rhoda’s current role was homemaker. She could see her husband through the window over the sink as she washed a few dishes. What was he doing out there, she allowed herself to wonder over, but not for long. He couldn’t possibly be interesting himself in landscaping at this point in their marriage. Underfund hated yard work. Only a year before he had bought Rhoda a riding lawnmower so that he might never again hear her complain about her having to cut the grass because he wouldn’t. She had never admitted that the main problem was having to use the push mower. She understood, though again she hadn’t mentioned it, how Underfund might hate having to push that thing around the yard after having spent all night pushing heavy containers of mail at the postal facility where he worked.
When Underfund reentered the house he was annoyed to hear the radio playing. Neither he nor Rhoda listened to music on the radio. They were strictly NPR people, though they never gave any financial support to NPR. Underfund was annoyed because he wanted to tell Rhoda his wonderful new idea, the fifteenth wonderful new idea he had had that year, which was only two-thirds over. Habituated to his wife’s indifference, he wanted no distractions when he spoke. She might not care what he had to say, but he had to tell her anyway. She was his best friend and the only person he could tell such things to.
“I think this time I’ve really got it.” He enthused, rubbing his hands together.
“What’s that?” Rhoda rinsed a plate and placed it in the dishwasher.
“I think… the big idea.” Underfund glanced at the radio. He wouldn’t bother turning it down. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be standing there long.

I am trying to have fun, but my belief that I should be accomplishing something leads me to second guess everything I do. I’m supposed to be writing a book, or at the very least some sort of piece, however long. In my drawing and painting I have been forced to just have fun, being seemingly unable to make a grand statement or to express myself in one of the commercially established formats. Why then can’t I just slip back into the groove of writing stupid short pieces for the fun of it? My imagination is balked by my craving to do something like some famous person’s work. This is a problem as well in my drawing and painting. If I look at a book of cartoons I get self-conscious about my cartoons. I can’t draw for days, sometimes weeks, until the effects of the other man’s work wears off. The same is true of books of paintings. I just read The Ginger Man and Sneaky People, and I now seem to be laboring under the idea that I must write something big, important, and cohesive. In truth, what I am currently best suited for and conditionally able to do are short, absurd pieces. (Lord spare me from the burden of being funny.)

Nails being in short supply, the old bear assembled his boat with an adhesive made from corn. As he showed his neighbor around the boat on Saturday afternoon while waiting for the glue to dry, he proudly mentioned his used of the glue as an example of his talent for improvisation.
“Corn-based, you know.” He kicked at the empty can with his sneaker.
“Corn?” The neighbor, a supervisor with the Financial Inhibitions Board, repeated. His eyebrows were lowered and his mouth hung slack. “Don’t you know we’re supposed to be conserving corn for the production of ethanol?”
“Oh, this glue is old.” The bear explained. “It was made long before the ethanol craze started.” He waved a shaved paw dismissively.
This did not impress the neighbor, whose name was Hickey. Like an anti-fur activist who deplores even fur coats made a hundred years ago, he felt that any waste of corn, past or present, was an affront.
“Don’t you care about the earth?” He demanded.
“Sure. That’s why I’m sailing away.” The bear nodded.
“Sailing away?” Hickey repeated.
“To another world.” The bear traced the tops of the surrounding trees with his outstretched paw.
Hickey puzzled over this bear. Was he crazy? Did he think one could get away from this planet in a homemade boat? The question he asked aloud, however, was a different one.
“How is abandoning the earth helping it?”
After his neighbor had gone, the bear, known as Dinkum Tooter by his fellow members of the neighborhood watch committee, mused over the attitude Hickey had displayed. How could he have made the man understand that only by doing exactly as he, Tooter, said could the earth’s utility to all sentient creatures be preserved.
“And it’s not just because I’m an animal.” The bear intercepted the objections of his own sense of perversity.
“Yes it is.” The perverse part of his brain replied. “You’ve bought into the human’s idea about animals being closer to nature, more in touch with the rhythms of the earth.”
“I haven’t ‘bought into’ anything.” The bear told himself firmly, as he tested the side of his boat with a de-clawed fingerling.
The bear knew that he was just as full of crap as any man.

Another of Dinkum Tooter’s neighbors, now that I come to think of it, was Custer Underfund. As the bear’s boat grew in size, the idiosyncratic nature of its design became more evident until Underfund was forced to admit (to himself anyway; Rhoda hated bears) that there was another singularly-minded visionary living on otherwise benighted Turnipsalad Road.
One Saturday when Underfund was having trouble finding the motivation to work on the book he had sworn to everyone that he was producing, he crept down to the tiny creek that separated his property from Tooter’s to get a closer look at this boat.
“It’s so ugly it’s beautiful.” He said to himself. Unlike his wife, who probably would have boldly hailed the bear despite her hatred and struck up a conversation, Underfund was cautious. The last thing he needed was to venture recklessly into an acquaintanceship with some weirdo who might ask him for favors or bore him to death. He watched from his hiding place in the weeds as Tooter climbed aboard the craft by means of a ladder that appeared to be equally homemade.
Underfund wondered if the boat had a name yet. Might it be painted across the stern, he asked himself, remembering the term “stern” from an episode of “I Love Lucy” in which Ricky taught it to Little Ricky.
“He’s a Christian Pop singer now.” Underfund recalled as he crawled to his left, trying to get a look at the boat from a different angle. “I could have been his guitar player.” He added irrationally.

I may have gotten off on the wrong foot here. Let’s go over what we have so far. We have me narrating, of course. We have a number of people living on Turnipsalad Road in a pitiful little town in the rural South. One of these is Custer Underfund, a confused man who wants to achieve something artistically. His wife is Rhoda Macmillan, a woman who has forsaken a life of activism in order to raise two children, Mike and Henrietta. Next door to them lives Dinkum Tooter, a bear of all things, who is putting the final touches to a sloppily built boat. Further down the road lives Tooter’s neighbor, Hickey, about whom we know little at the moment.
I think that is quite enough from which to build a whole book. At any rate, I will try.
When I broke off to get things straight (if only to myself) it was a Saturday, perhaps the same Saturday as the one on which Hickey had paid his annoying visit to Tooter. Custer Underfund had furtively made his way to the property line to take a closer look at Tooter’s boat. Now he came back into his house and told his wife what he had discovered.
“He’s named his boat Tooter’s Tater.” Underfund announced in a tone that demanded, “Well, what do you think of that?”
“Who has?” Rhoda asked, not taking her eyes off the button that she was sewing on one of Henrietta’s skirts by the method she had learned in her Home Economics class at college. Rhoda had a master’s degree in Political Science Education Science. That is; the science of how to teach people Political Science. Her husband had no degree. Oh, he had gone to college; it’s just that he hadn’t gotten very far. In fact, he had quite a lot of credits, but added together, they pointed to no particular career path.
“Our neighbor the bear. Underfund announced. “You know he’s building a boat?”
“Yes, we discussed it.” Rhoda tested the button by pulling on it. “Our daughter’s gained a little weight. I had to move this button back so the skirt would still fit.”
“Why don’t you just buy her a new skirt?”
“I’m trying to save money per your instructions.”
“‘Per my instructions?’” Underfund repeated. “You make me sound like a dictator.”
“Well, you are the boss.”
“No, Rhoda, you are the boss. Just ask the kids who the boss it; they’ll tell you.”
“‘It’s Daddy.’” Rhoda sang. Actually, she knew better. The kids would certainly say that she was the boss.
I don’t know if I’m doing a good job conveying the exact atmosphere of the relationship between Underfund and Rhoda. There was usually a measure of tension between them. This disturbed Underfund, who knew that there must be married couples out there that lived in perfect synchronicity with each other. He didn’t understand why he and Rhoda couldn’t be like that.

What I Eat For Lunch

For the past year I’ve been bringing a can of beans, an apple, and a banana to work for my lunch. I used to vary the kind of beans, but now I only eat Bush’s brand red beans, as I have found them to be consistently flavorful and their texture just right. Some beans can be too mushy, like great northern beans. Some can be too chewy, like dark red kidney beans.
Recently I started bringing a can of greens as well. I like spinach, mustard greens, turnip greens, and collard greens. As in the case of the beans, however, I am narrowing down the selection. The Allen’s brand of Seasoned Southern Style turnip greens and collard greens are extremely tasty. Eaten with the red beans and a banana for dessert they make a satisfying lunch. The healthiest I eat all day is probably at lunch.
The year before I ate a package of baby cut carrots every day. I can’t remember what I ate with them. Probably an apple. Before that I went through a phase where I kept a jar of peanut butter and a box of saltines in my locker and stuffed myself on peanut butter and cracker sandwiches. Someone asked me about that one day and I, not wanting to explain the irrational vagaries of my brain, replied, “Yeah, it’s cheap.”
I try not to carry any money with me to work because if I know I have any I’ll be tempted to buy a honey bun out of the vending machine. You’d be surprised just how often I give in. If I don’t have the amount needed, I’ll get on my hands and knees and look under the machines, crawl around on the breakroom floor until I find enough. I usually don’t feel guilty—about the eating of the honey bun, I mean, not the scrounging—because no man puts in a harder day’s work up here than I. All the sugar and grease in the honey bun is soon converted to heat and evaporates out the top of my head.
I have it down to a convenient routine. I carry a spoon and a fork in my backpack. They never get washed, just wiped off. The banana peels go into the empty cans and thence into the trash. I open the cans with the wall mounted electric can opener. The day the opener breaks I’ll be desperately scrounging around for two honey buns.




Why the Structure of this Book Has Changed

Circumstances dictate to me what I do and how I do it. I fight back as much as I can, but in order to remain sane (and that means producing a lot of work) I mustn’t allow myself to become to principled and stubborn.
Of course I’m not abandoning Custer Underfund and the others. In order for me to append the word “novel” to this work it is necessary that I maintain some grasp of narrative form. As much as I am attracted to the idea of writing a novel, however, I am also attracted to the idea of writing a collection of short pieces a la Russell Baker or Andy Rooney. Why not do both, you ask? Because I’m too impatient to do one thing while waiting to do another. I want to do both at the same time. Also, as I said, circumstances influence what I can do. I’m an old man forced to work at the post office for a living. I can’t take six months off to hole up in a cabin somewhere to write a big, money making novel. Knowing me as you must by now, do you really think anything I do will ever be marketable to enough people for it to earn me a living?

Usually I have no idea what I’m going to write about when I pick up my Pilot Precise V7 pen. I think of a word or two and proceed to build something from that. Today, however, I know exactly what I’m going to write about. I am going to tell you about an idea I have for a novel that I probably will never write. Should you like to try your hand at fleshing this idea out into a book, feel free. Of course, you’ll have to change the names of the characters, but this is easily done by randomly leafing through the phone book.
The novel begins with the main character, Custer Underfund, taking a bath in his crudely built house. His wife, Rhoda Macmillan, lies on her bed in the next room, reading a book recommended to her by her husband. As Underfund soaks he thinks about his wife reading the book. How would it feel, he wonders, for Rhoda to read a book that he had written?
What an idea! He squeezes a washcloth of hot water over his chest, staring up at the ceiling. Could he write something that Rhoda would be willing to read? He thinks he could. Of course, taking on such a project would mean putting his plans for building the artificial world in his backyard on hold.
He realizes, not without some chagrin at his having already announced to everyone he knows his intention to build the little world, that writing a book would be comparatively easier. And cheaper. Plus, wasn’t winter just around the corner? He would have to check the calendar, but he was pretty sure it was. Doing all that hammering and sawing in the cold would surely be a drag. Writing could be done inside.
That clenches it for Underfund. He rises from his bath determined to inform Rhoda of his decision. What will his book be about? He has no idea.
Meanwhile, Underfund’s neighbor Dinkum Tooter, an anthropomorphic bear, is building a boat that he hopes will carry him away to another world. Underfund’s jealousy of Tooter, fueled by stories delivered by their mutual acquaintance Hickey, is now soothed by the indefinite delay of the artificial world.
I have no idea how the book (mine, I mean) would end.

What Price the Gathering Storm?

Enid challenged the Stalwart Champion to yet another game of checkers.
“You can watch if you want to.” Harold folded the paper containing the names of the characters in the comic strip Foxtrot neatly in half and stood up. He had directed his statement to Betty, who lay at his feet. “As for me, I am going to sleep.”
Betty watched Harold pad down the central corridor towards the sleeping chambers. He had been a good companion these past few weeks. How long, she wondered, before he realized the depth of her disgust?
“And this time,” Enid cackled in her mad old bird’s voice, “We won’t have any of that ‘you have to take your jumps’ crap!”
“Southern tradition demands that one always jump one’s opponent if an opportunity is presented.” The Stalwart Champion replied monotonously.
“That’s crap!” Enid bellowed. “There’s nothing in the rules about having to take your jumps!” She flapped the checkers box lid in the air. “My mama taught me and we never played that way!”
“Perhaps your mother was trained in another regional school of checkers playing.” The Stalwart Champion, a welded barrelful of gears and plungers propped up in one of the chairs at the kitchen table, offered this as an explanation.
“My mama was a saint!” Enid threw the box lid at the checkers-playing automaton.
“Do you play any other games, Champ?” Betty asked the machine from her spot on the floor, an oval she had worn into the synthetic linoleum.
“In addition to checkers, I play chess, backgammon, Stratego, Camelot, Othello, and snodgee.” The Stalwart Champion’s voice was deep and authoritative, yet cold and metallic.
“What’s that last one?” Betty asked. “Snodgee? I’ve never heard of it.”
“It is a drinking game.” Came the Champion’s answer.
“A drinking game?” Enid repeated with enthusiasm.
“Yes, a drinking game.”
“Well, let’s play that!” Enid swept the checkers off the table on the opposite side from where Betty lay. “You want in on this?” She asked Betty.
“What do we do?” Betty got tentatively to her fingertips.
In his alcove Harold tucked the piece of paper into a book. Space was limited on the Gamma Scow; his personal library consisted of no more than a handful of volumes. He had chosen well, however. Besides an anthology of the most beloved poems of western culture and one of short stories selected by Dick Cavett, he had The Colorblind Moose, The Villainy of Sport, and Ethereal Reflections. As he wriggled into his accustomed sleeping position, he wondered at the wisdom of Captain Bates in bringing the game-playing robot on board. Since the girls’ discovery of it, they acted differently. Neither had shown any further interest in Harold’s phenomenal memory for trivia.

RADIO SPECIFIC HOMO

A Gallon of Extra Neck Fat

I knew a man in the old days of my reign over the sea who carried a pint-sized tapir in his shirt pocket. Not always, you understand, but in his daily rounds among the public. I cannot say that I was ever close to this man, whose name was Mussli, but I knew him well enough to feel obliged to say hello if we should cross paths.
The tapir’s name, printed on a small tag pinned just below the top of the pocket in which he rode, was Medford. When I first met Mussli, Medford stared impassively at me while his owner and I told each other about dreams we had recently had.
“Do you have anything you want to add, Medford?” Mussli asked, jiggling the tiny creature slightly by thrusting forward his shoulder.
The tapir glanced at Mussli and back to me.
“Umg umg.” He grunted. His finger-like nose danced rudely.
Mussli chuckled.
“What did he say?” I asked, pretending to be amused, but really on guard for any threat or affront.
“He says your smell reminds him of my Aunt Gladiola.” Mussli explained. He said it flatly, with seemingly no awareness of the retaliatory potential coiled in my powerful fingers and elbows.
“That a lot of data to be conveyed in two nearly identical syllables.” A passerby, a stranger to me, commented as Mussli and I parted company.
“Mmm.” I acknowledged noncommittally, as is my habit with strangers, busybodied or not. However, the man’s words did get me to thinking. As I sat musing over a cup of peppermint tea in a nearby shop, I decided that I agreed with the stranger. The next time Mussli and I met, things would be different.
A few weeks later came the next time. I was consulting with a tree dweller about the possibility of working some electric eels into my crown when who should come stumbling up from the root cellar at the base of the tree but Mussli. His tapir was not onboard.
“Your majesty!” He cried, catching hold of the knot at the end of the rope hanging from my belt.
“Mussli.” I acknowledged the man’s presence, though in a businesslike way that I’m sure left him in no doubt about the distance my feelings had traveled since our last encounter.
“I’ve been hoping to see you again since last time.” Mussli sounded relieved to be saying this. “A diabolical little man didn’t accost you after our talk on the street, did he?”
“As a matter of fact…” I admitted.
“Medford’s former owner.” Mussli explained. “He doesn’t like the attention Medford is receiving now that he is in my pocket. He follows us about, bad-mouthing him to everyone. I hope he didn’t say anything offensive to your royal person?”
“Oh, nothing I took seriously.” I hastened to deny it. “Where is Medford today?”
“My mother is giving him a bath.” Mussli told me. “Do you know she thinks he’s a pig!”
“Do you want some electric eels or not?” The tree dweller, a pocketless fellow, interrupted, having waited as long as he could, I guess.

And Yet I am Grateful for the Purchase

I could sit in front of the computer for days. My thirst for trivial information is unquenchable. The internet, no matter how much I may fear what it is leading to, has made me so happy by providing the answers to questions I have carried around with me for over thirty years. Questions like, what was the name of that cereal I ate as a child with the diagram of the building on the back of the box showing the cast of cartoon characters that supposedly made the cereal; which episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 have Joel and which have Mike, and; who played the drums on Aja?
One of the aspects of the internet experience that I don’t partake of and don’t see the appeal of is the communicating with total strangers. The so-called “chat.” Oh, but they’re no longer strangers once you’ve spoken to them, you object. They’re friends now. No they are not. You can’t make friends, not real friends, with somebody through an electronic box. Friends are made through walking with them, inspecting their hairline, and watching them eat a sandwich. Besides, who needs more friends? Yet more timewasters is how I see them.
I imagine a situation in which a college professor, intrigued by the insightful and friendly note that I sent him through the medium of electronic mail, finds out my real space address and travels to meet me.
“Mr. Toadsgoboad,” He extends his hand to me in the front yard of my home where I am searching for loose change under the seats in my car. “I was so intrigued and, yes, I must say it, inspired by the friendly…”
“And insightful.” I add, for I know what he is talking about.
“Yes, and insightful note you sent me regarding my audio commentary on the Blow-Up DVD, that I had to meet you in person. Like you, I find strictly electronic relationships lacking.” He looks like Alfred Molina and sounds a good deal like him too.
“How did you know I felt that way?” I ask.
“I did my homework.” The professor, slightly older than I, responds. “I bought one of your charming publications from the local comic book store.”
“Ah.” It all makes sense.
“And therein discovered more of your opinions.”
“Yes, obviously.” I stare at him for a moment, wishing I could grow a beard like his. “Well, do you want to come in?” I invite, gritting my teeth.
Of course he accepts. We go inside the house, which is a relative mess, but as my wife is not there, it is OK. Now, the problem is how do I get rid of him?
Does the above situation, imaginary to be sure, justify my mistrust of the internet, despite appreciating it as I do? I don’t know. Perhaps the answer can be found online. It certainly justifies my faith in people’s consistent ability to annoy me.

Turning over and seeing Jerry Lancaster sitting in the seat on the other side of the compartment, I felt failure at its most familiar. Back with this loser again, was I? It seemed that despite all of my high-minded goals and fancy conceptions I would never achieve anything more than the same types of things I had already done in the past. It was strange to me that I should have so early have stumbled onto the methodology that was to be the template for everything I would ever do.
But then, I reflected, you are 38 years old. What did you expect at this age, in spite of your late start? Endless experimentation leading to endless breakthroughs? Truly a laborer and a fool.
“Wake up, Jerry.” I shouted.
“Good morning.” My friend greeted me as he opened his eyes.
“Indeed. Why are we still on the train?”
“We’re not. This is the spaceship.”
“The spaceship?” I queried. “You mean earlier I thought it was the spaceship, when it was actually the train, and now I’ve confused this for a train when we actually are on the spaceship?”
“That’s right, but don’t feel too bad about it. They’re very similar.”
“I don’t feel bad about that.” I said. “It’s just funny, that’s all.”
Jerry observed me closely for a moment. He nodded. “Well, perhaps you’d like a look at the map?”
Now it was my turn to study him. “Sure.” I said.
Jerry reached into his bag on the floor.
“When did you start carrying a bag?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He answered as he rummaged within the stained canvas bag. “About a year ago.”
I made a mental note to retrieve my bag at the first opportunity. Hell, why a mental note? Where was my pen and note card?
“Here you go.” Jerry handed across the thickly folded piece of paper.
Unfolding it, I discovered that the sum total of the universe in which we were now traveling looked like a pig with large human feet and an oversized, bird-like head wearing a bucket hat.
“So where are we now?” I asked.
Jerry motioned me to make room for him on the bunk. He sat down and consulted the map. He pushed out his jaw as he searched.
“Here we are. Approximately.” He put his finger on the map. “Somewhere just past this toe.” The toe he pointed to was the one next to the big toe on the universal pig’s front right foot. “We’re headed for this red dot.” He indicated a point just above the right front leg on the main body of the pig.
“And where is that?” I asked.
“The city of Illumea.”
“And why are we headed there?”
“Well, it seemed like a nice place to go. You were in no position to make the arrangements yourself; I had to do it; and I thought you’d appreciate that it’s far from home, but not too far, and it’s a big city, but not too big.”
I nodded. It was good reasoning. I sighed. “I just wish I had my bag.”
“You can get it.” Jerry said. He stood up. “We’ll go have dinner in the dining hall. You can figure something out through the ship’s postal connection.”
I wished I was in control of the trip. Everything had been so hastily done and I had been in such a state that I almost didn’t know how I had gotten started. The main reason, however, was clear. I had willed myself to set off. Prematurely, perhaps, but with great relief.
Out in the corridor, one tellingly wider than that of a train, I turned to Jerry,
“I want to thank you for everything,” I said. “But I’m in charge now, alright?”
“Whatever you say.” It’s your vacation.”
I snorted. “Vacation.”
“The vegetarian option is a little meager.” Jerry told me as we headed for the dining hall. “But you could stand to lose a few pounds.”
Everything works if you let it. Cheap Trick said that (they also said “reputation is a fragile thing,” and I’ve always been a man of delicacy and grace), but I personally never heard that song, big Cheap Trick fan that I am. The statement is true, however. (At least for the purposes to which I am putting it. Otherwise, who knows?) Having initially failed to get started with the book Amoeba on the Terrace, I turned to a more autobiographical work, but now see myself incorporating the earlier concept into the one you currently hold in your hands.
“Jerry,” I smiled, forked up a piece of steamed broccoli, and addressed my friend, “Have I told you about Custer Underfund?”

New Beginning

Before I begin narrating, I suppose I should make a few things clear about both myself and the universe in which the things that happen in this narrative take place. My name is Toadsgoboad. Just one word, Toadsgoboad. If pressed, by someone like the police (although they wouldn’t dare), to give a last name, I would say “Toadsgoboad Rectangular,” but that’s completely unofficial and I don’t want you to go running around saying “Toadsgoboad Rectangular” all over the place. Just Toadsgoboad will do.
Now, as for who I am, aside from my name, well, I am the center of the universe in which all these things take place. You are the center of your own universe, too. Sometimes our universes overlap, sharing people and events, but as we see these things from slightly different viewpoints, they aren’t exactly the same. This is what I mean when I say “my universe” and “your universe.” Each of us has a unique perspective and the one presented here is mine.
In setting foot in my universe, don’t be surprised if things don’t happen exactly the way they do in so-called “real life.” If there’s one thing I don’t want to spend any more time in than I absolutely have to, it’s “real life.” Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here talking to you, I’d be out digging ditches or sorting mail at the post office. For instance, if I should pull back the corner of the rug in my room to reveal a hidden door, just accept that that’s the kind of thing you are likely to encounter here. In fact, I did pull back the corner of the rug, revealing a hidden door. I opened the door and stepped down into it, thinking to get away from my duties here at the palace for a while. No one will be worried when they find that I’ve disappeared. They’re used to it by now. I often go traveling without notice and I always return, slightly changed, it is true, but I still remain Toadsgoboad, their leader and friend, so any slight alterations don’t matter so much.
My official title here is Master of the Tunnel System. These tunnels connect all of the worlds in this universe. I became Master of the Tunnel System by overthrowing the Universal Postal System many years ago, but that is another story.
Before I entered the hidden door beneath the rug in the corner of my room I had made my usual preparations for going on a trip. I had put on my large traveling coat, which has many pockets full of useful things, and I had put my hat, called the Gearender, on my head. The Gearender is actually a sentient animal that just happens to look like a Fedora. Inside its crown are six tentacles that, when I put it on, reach down and make what some people might call “psychic” contact with my brain through my skull. However, I won’t use the term “psychic,” because, no matter how crazy or weird the things that happen here are, there are no supernatural occurrences. Everything has a scientific explanation, even if I can’t tell you exactly what it is in every single instance.
So, I had just stepped down into the hidden door wearing my coat and my hat when I thought that it might be fun to have my friend Jerry along for the trip. Summoning Jerry was no problem. As he is imaginary, all I had to do was press the concealed button behind my right ear. As quickly as a florescent bulb flickers on, Jerry was standing beside me at the foot of the ladder down which I had climbed from the door above.
“Hello, Mike.” He said. “Where are we?”
Jerry has always called me “Mike” for some reason. His full name is Jerry Lancaster. Jerry is about my height. He has a pot-belly, a bald head, and a big, gray beard. He always wears a black and white striped long sleeve shirt and black jeans.
“We’re at the beginning of the tunnel beneath the southeast corner of bedroom number 13 in the palace.” I told him. “It’s also the beginning of a long trip. Do you feel like coming with me?”
“Sure. I didn’t have any other plans.” He smiled and started to walk along the corridor with me. When he isn’t with me, Jerry lives in an observation egg buried deep beneath the mountain in which the oldest part of the tunnel system lies. From the egg Jerry can keep an eye on the mysterious energy flow that is the apparent power source of everything, including me.
“Everything seemed to be running smoothly when I left.” Jerry told me.
“Good.” I wasn’t concerned. I didn’t let Jerry know, but there really was no reason to be worried about the flow of the mysterious energy. I had only set him up in the observation egg to give him something to do when he wasn’t wandering around with me.
“So, where are we going this time?” Jerry asked.
“As usual, I don’t know. We’ll just travel down to the end of this tunnel and see what we see.”

Some distance away from the tunnel through which Jerry and I were traveling, a young man named Mirk Apeldro was draining a teacup.
“Good?” Asked his friend Lucian Delgrif, seated on the opposite side of the coffee table.
“Tastes like tea.” Adelpro revealed.
“That’s the best that can be hope for.” Delgrif, stout to most observers, but positively portly when directly compared to the skeletal Apeldro, commented as he leaned back in the antique sofa. His eyes drifted up to the ceiling, where a mural entitled “Gaining One’s Own Permission” disturbed him for ill-defined reasons.
Apeldro looked at his watch.
“I’m tired of waiting.” He said, glancing at the antique clock on the mantelpiece to his right. The clock was dead. It would be six hours before its display matched that on Apeldro’s watch.
“If you want to go, that’s fine with me.” Delgrif’s eyes were wide. He pushed his fists into the velvet cushions to either side of his thighs, preparatory to rising.
Apeldro sighed.
“No, we’d better wait ‘til he shows up.” He decided. “But I’m going to need the bathroom soon.”

“Are you still documenting your adventures?” Jerry asked me as I fumbled with the egress mechanism on a portal we had found.
“Of course.” I replied. “Always.”
“I don’t know where you find the time.”
“Finding the time is easy. Finding the space, ah…” I opened the portal with a resounding ‘click.’ “That’s the hard part.”
“But aren’t they the same thing?” Jerry asked in a whisper, huddled behind me as we stepped through into the unknown. “I mean, didn’t Einstein…”
“Jerry, don’t you perceive time and space as being two separate things? Why do we have two separate words if not to describe two aspects of the space-time continuum? I know it’s the same thing, but to me…” I broke off (luckily, for I had no idea where I was going with my little speech) as we emerged from a thicket of weeds onto a poorly paved road. Ahead of us was a village of two-story dwellings and shops crowded along what I estimated to be a two-mile stretch of the road.
“On what do you base your estimation?” Jerry asked, peering dubiously ahead.
“I took a class.” I explained.
Ten minutes later we were standing before a pastry shop looking in. The village, I learned from a passerby, was called Mesothere.
“As good a place as any.” I commented to Jerry as I pushed open the pastry shop door. The smell inside immediately brought a smile to my face. I once had a job interview in which I was asked what my greatest weakness was. “Pastry,” I said.
“Were you also asked what your greatest strength was?” Jerry asked with a drawl as he examined the blueberry scones in the case.
“Of course. I’ll have one of these strudels here.” I indicated my choice to the shopkeeper, a thin woman in a red kerchief.
“And what did you say?” Jerry smiled at me and the woman in turn.
“I said my intelligence.”
Jerry’s smile widened.
“I take it you didn’t get the job.”
“I didn’t really want the job.”

Streakl, that lovable imp of dubious moral influence, considered the new color he wished to add to his hair. He sat before his dressing room mirror, looking back and forth between his reflection and an open book of photographic hair coloring examples.
“What will Snakl, your on-screen nemesis, think of your new look?” Asked Dredge Highgood, standing behind Streakl’s chair.
“He’ll be publicly derisive, of course.” Answered Streakl with a sigh.
“Have you decided yet?” Asked the hair technician, a heavy woman in a sea foam green smock, now crossing the room toward Streakl with her latex gloved hands upraised.
“I think I’m going to go with this magenta color here.” Streakl pointed at a photograph in the book.
“#3654.” The technician read aloud the coloring code. She began rummaging in her wheeled footlocker full of her supplies.
“Streakl, why are you doing this?” Highgood asked. He had moved to the chair adjacent to Streakl’s, the one once occupied by Knackinnip, but now empty since that worthy’s retirement from the show and Streakl’s usurpation of the whole of the dressing room.
“Because I’m tired.” Streakl answered.
“Bored, you mean?” Highgood wanted precision.
“If you want to call it that.”
“Bored with the show?” Highgood asked. Getting no immediate answer, he added, “It’s not just your hair color you’re bored with, is it?” He fixed Streakl’s eye in the mirror as Streakl felt the technician squirt cold gel onto his scalp. “Is it your life in general?”
“The show is my life.” Streakl stated. The tone in which he said this led Highgood to respond, “So that’s it,” also meaningfully.
“Alright, we can’t have any more talking while I work.” The technician demanded.
“I’ll talk to you more when you’re done.” Highgood said, rising from the chair. He went outside into the hallway, where he ran into Snakl, who asked him, “Is it true Streakl’s dying his hair?”
“Absolutely not.” Highgood returned haughtily. “He’s having it done by a professional.”
The show on which Streakl, Snakl, and their colleagues appeared, and on which Dredge Highgood worked as a producer, was called Clavos de Acabado. It concerned the lives of the residents of a place called Minskytown. This place was entirely contained within a large room in the backyard of Custer Underfund.
“Now, you mentioned that name once before, didn’t you?” Jerry asked me as we sat in the back of the pastry shop enjoying our snack and receiving input from the cartoon world
“Yes, during the abortive intro to our current adventure. Jerry, do you realize that everything is coming together? Not in the way I planned, although I haven’t really planned anything, but in a great locomotive crash of interaction? Why, the very fact of our interface with the world of cartooning is just one of the exciting developments here!” My strudel was good. Too bad I couldn’t have a cup of coffee with it.
“It’s all becoming cinema, isn’t it?” Jerry’s beard was remarkably crumb-free
“Oh, it’s beyond cinema. It’s a totally parallel summation of life’s panoply, but Lo-Fi.”
“You love the Guided by Voices aesthetic, don’t you?”
“And Trout Mask Replica.”
“But getting back to Custer Underfund—are we to meet him, in the flesh, as people used to say?” Jerry drank coffee; but then, he wasn’t as concerned with his health as I am with mine.
“If you mean, are we going to have direct, face-to-face dialogue with him? No, I don’t think so. But without too much trouble we can look in on his doings.”
“How will this be accomplished?”
“By the simple means of my glancing up at the ceiling for a moment,” I did so, “And saying, as I bring my gaze back down, ‘Custer Underfund, having erected the box, filled it with his own, energetic presence.”

Custer Underfund, dressed in a t-shirt with the words “Passionate Delivery” emblazoned on it beneath the image of a Chinese dragon in a business suit, sat on the top of the short flight of stairs that led down into Minskytown. What were his thoughts as he gazed out over the miniature trees and houses that he had caused to be built? Although many different things ran through his mind, the general idea behind the bulk of them was, “This isn’t what I intended.”
He sighed. Without expensive recording and broadcasting equipment this whole project would never be exactly what he had first envisioned.
“Also,” He said aloud, turning to Exeter, the puppet that served as the official go-between for the residents of Minskytown and their powerful, mysterious benefactor, “I had originally meant to have a place for myself in here. I wanted to be in the show.”
“You’re personally too boring.” Exeter replied. “You wouldn’t go over well on camera.”
“But as we’re not on camera, what difference does it make?” Underfund whined.
Exeter knew that Underfund had wanted to build a little house for himself in the middle of the room from which to oversee the activities of the Minskytown people, but had lost track of this aspect in his rush to get the box built before the worst part of winter set in. That afternoon, returning to his own home, Exeter spoke with a couple of his colleagues about Underfund’s (whom they called “The Old Man”) problem.
“Why should we care about him and his so-called problems?” Demanded Tintater, the grumpy, purple octopus-thing. “It’s his fault we’re stuck here.”
“Life isn’t all bad and you know it.” Exeter reproached Tintater.
“He has locked us into Hell for all eternity!” Tintater groaned. Everyone knew what his real problem was: he had lost an arm recently and though he had looked everywhere, had not yet found it.
“Quiet, quiet!” Insisted the third person present, Miss Tonker. “You say the Old Man is upset that he doesn’t have a place from which to directly interact with us?” She asked Exeter.
“That’s right.” Exeter answered. “And remember, the stairs don’t count.”
“Then why don’t we buy him a sofa?” Miss Tonker suggested.

The squalor of the surrounding camp did not depress Vegetel. With the accent on the last syllable of his name, he set about his immediate task: the passing out of the informative booklets.
“This is cheaply printed, isn’t it?” Derided one fellow into whose scratchy, poorly-moisturized hands Vegetel thrust a booklet.
“And the paper is cheap too!” Vegetel agreed.
“What were these booklets intended to be informative about?” Asked Vegetel’s nephew Gorbagel many years later.
“Well,” Croaked Vegetel as he pulled his pipe, tacky around the mouthpiece with saliva, from his mouth. “They were intended, by the Grand Governing Board, which had ordered their creation, to teach the basic principles behind the reading aloud of books to children.”
“Ah,” Gorbagel intoned as if he had suddenly made a great discovery and that discovery was that everything was someone else’s fault. “But can such a thing as that be learned from an unaccompanied book, learned uncle?”
“Certainly not. The reading of books does not necessarily imply the reading aloud of them.” Vegetel put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling where he had caused to be put a mural of the squalid camp.
“What?” Gorbagel demanded with a note in his voice that suggested he had seen a fairy tale castle rise into the air with no regard for his having never seen inside it.
Vegetel, however, was not to answer his nephew on this point, for the movers had come to load his possessions into their trans-lunar craft. Two of them picked up Gorbagel as if he had been nothing more than a fuzzy ottoman, which in truth he resembled, and would have packed him upside down inside an oversized butter churn had not the boy’s mother intervened.
“Vegetel,” She asked her recently unestranged brother-in-law as she rewarded Gorbagel with a lollipop, “What about the mural?”
The old man dismissed the subject with a flap of his smooth, soft hand. “Let the new owners discolor it with their foul cigarette smoke.”

An Amazing Display of Sound and Smell

“The beans are old.” Stated Frazeer after taking a bite.
“Put some hot sauce on them.” Manfred’s wife suggested from her cubbyhole.
“You’re not going to get sick again, are you?” Mr. Bruce asked.
“No, I’m not going to get sick again.” Frazeer was emphatic, frustrated. How much longer would he have to endure the uncomfortable conditions on this boat, not to mention the unpleasant company of his fellow passengers? As he poked the beans one by one down his gullet he turned the question over in his mind. Like any other question, it could be put to the small idol he carried in his meager luggage. He looked at Mr. Bruce, glanced towards Manfred’s wife’s place of concealment, noted with a shudder the sleepy-eyed form of Nilsback. He wondered what they would say if they saw him before the idol. As an educated man, he knew how silly he would look. Though contemptuous of these people, he would still feel embarrassment. Oh, that he had been raised among the indulgent, liberal rich!
That evening, still undecided about whether to consult the grotesque, yet admirably carved, five-pound chunk of basalt, Frazeer climbed to the bridge, where the youthful Captain Stillglitcher scanned the waters ahead for obstacles.
“Good evening, Captain.” Frazeer greeted the other man.
“I hope you’re not going to ask me when we’ll reach San Francisco again.” Stillglitcher warned Frazeer without taking his eyes from the window before him.
“No, no, I wouldn’t dream of it.” Frazeer insisted. “I’ve given up pestering you for information.” He walked over to the sailor at the wheel and examined the man’s hat. “No, I was just wondering if I could get one of these hats before we disembark.” He made a show of going over the quality of the stitching.
“I’ll see you get one.” Stillglitcher assured him with a heavily cynical tone. He glanced at Frazeer.
“Captain, look out!” The sailor cried.
Frazeer saw the menacing object, but only grasped a tenth of its potential malevolence. As ordered, he returned to the cabin he shared with Wilkes Lewiston and began quietly rummaging through his bags.



The Protodactylic Fortune Foster

Now that I have properly obtained your attention by means of the abstract core and its heartfelt dependents, I will tell you of the mass consumption of cheap paper and subtle guitar tones. Are these but the random musings of the half-crazed wanderer? Only those in the back of this handsome, youthful crowd holding the pejorative banners seem clear on this question.
As for myself, I have spoken with the robot glee club and am assured that the introduction of robots, puppets, and imaginary friends poses no threat to any existing order, where none is to be found. At this juncture I ask my friend Jerry to abscond with the donations.
Later, as Jerry and I left collegiate airspace in the hovering tentacular wolfshead, he asked me what I had been dishing out to those poor students back there.
“Poor students?” I repeated incredulously. “Did you know that each of them carries in his pocket a credit card from his father entitling him to whiskey; fancy, colored socks; and as much gasoline as his jeep can drink? Poor, my ass.” I grumbled and settled down in my seat to enjoy the plethora of cartoons in that month’s issue of Blast Furnace.
Jerry did not pursue the subject. He turned back to the book he was reading, Overeating the American Way. The main character, a farmer’s son named Belto, was said to be based on me, but I didn’t believe it. Jerry told me that the book’s narrator, a stork in a bellhop costume, quite clearly states that Belto’s hair was naturally blond. Mine only turns blond while I am in the midst of the interface with the Gearender. Thus, no one ever sees my hair in this state, thereby protecting me from the attentions of unrestrained women.
The wolfshead, piloted by its own reflexive tongue, was a gift from the Philosophy Department. Take it, the appreciative faculty had said to me, and fly away from here, knowing that you have made us happy.
“Ah, happiness.” I murmured, looking out the window.
“You’re lucky you haven’t been arrested yet.” Jerry commented.
“Well, my development certainly has been.” I countered.

Floozie’s Inertia

The walls of the house, without and within, were covered in sheets of stamped tin. As Custer Underfund looked at the wall before him and examined his own rising sense of inexplicable dread, the smell of fried fish wafted over him. Nauseated, he would have left, had he not urgent business with the man of the house.
“Helbert!” Yelled the woman who had allowed him into her home. “Get up! You’ve got company!”
Underfund noted the narrowness of the hallway down which she had directed her yell. The same ancient, framed photographs were hung along its length as decorated the walls of the room he stood in. They were all portraits of grim couples from the century before last, dressed in stiff, black formality, no trace of humor or humanity to be found in their blurry, crudely touched-up faces. Underfund was amazed that he wasn’t screaming in horror at being in the midst of this aesthetic nightmare. He was actually amused to see his dread made manifest and yet to be above reacting to it. Maybe he was finally growing up, he thought as the floor rumbled at the imminent entry of Helbert.
The man (of the house, as Underfund had described him to the woman) squeezed sideways through the door into the room with Underfund. As his colossal, cube-like head passed inside, Underfund caught a glimpse of the pictures along the hall swinging from Helbert’s having brushed against them. This view was cut off as the woman left, closing the door behind her.
Helbert collapsed onto a heavy, thickly cushioned chair. Puffs of smoky dust rose from the cushions. The man’s head was half as big as the rest of his body. His hands were enormous, nearly big enough, Underfund would have said, had he used sports metaphors, to engulf a basketball entirely.
“Who are you?” Helbert gasped.
“My name is Custer Underfund.” Underfund replied, taking a seat on the edge of a painted wooden rocking chair.
Helbert took two heavy breaths as he stared at Underfund. “What do you want?” He asked.
“Frances Featherwhip told me…” Underfund began.
“Frances Featherwhip?” Helbert repeated. His big cow tongue spilled out of his mouth like toothpaste from a slowly squeezed tube.
“Yes. Frances Featherwhip.” Underfund began again. “She told me you have a couple of antique puppets you might want to sell.”
“You know Frances Featherwhip?” Helbert asked.
“Yes.”
“And you want to know about the puppets?” Helbert’s head slowly shifted this way and that, like a pancake sliding off the top of a large, buttered stack. He pulled it back up each time with a phlegmy intake of breath.
“Yes. That is, I want to buy them.” Underfund kept the rocking chair perfectly still, held forward by his weight.
“Martha!” Helbert called. His voice although deep, was not powerful. He tried again. There was no response.
“Do you want me to get her?” Underfund asked, allowing his butt to rise an inch from the chair.
“If you would.” Helbert’s eyes rolled up at Underfund.
It shamed Underfund to call out the strange woman’s name, but he did it. He opened the door to the hallway and called out “Martha” as clearly and flatly as he could. The woman appeared around the corner at the terminus of the hall wiping her hands on the heavy canvas apron she wore. Before she could question his use of her name Underfund explained that Helbert wanted her.
Underfund returned to the rocking chair and watched Martha put her hand on the back of Helbert’s chair and lean over the man.
“What is it?” She asked with a modicum of impatience, as if she had something in the kitchen minutes away from boiling over.
“This fellow would like to see the puppets.” Helbert told her.
“Is that right?” She turned to Underfund and asked. “Well, why didn’t you tell me? I could have showed them to you.”
“I’m sorry.” Underfund hastily interjected with genuine contrition.
“That one is named Suteo Cuetik.” Helbert told Underfund as the latter pulled the puppet from the trunk Martha had dragged into the room.
“I guess it’s good I got you up after all.” Martha said to Helbert. “I wouldn’t have been able to tell him anything about them.”
“You know their names.” Helbert insisted.
“No, I don’t.”
“But surely you do.”
“How much is this one?” Underfund interrupted to ask.
“Well…” Helbert considered. Martha nudged his shoulder. He looked at her. By some cryptic look between them, authority to make the sale was transferred to the woman.
“Two hundred dollars.” She stated firmly, almost defiantly.
Underfund paid them the compliment of staring into a corner for a moment. “I’ll take it.” He said.
“I won’t need to see the other.” Underfund told Martha as he counted out the money.
“How do you know this is the one you want?” She asked.
“I just know.”
“We’ll do you a good deal on the whole trunk.”
“Maybe some other time. I just need the one right now.” Underfund slipped his hand into the puppet and made it look at him.
“You’re actually going to use it?” Martha asked. “But that’s an antique!”
“I didn’t buy it for nothing.” Underfund replied, but his eys remained on those of the puppet. “They’re ones to talk, aren’t they?” He thought. “Living in this horrible old house.”
Outside, back in his car, Underfund started the engine with the puppet still on his arm.
“So, Suteo, is it?” He asked.
“That’s right.” The puppet answered.
“Know how to drive a car?”
“I’ve never seen one before, but I’m willing to learn.”



Most Hot Sauces Contain Too Much Vinegar

The trapezoid, hailed by Anton La Vey as a uniquely disturbing shape, was yet deemed fit enough to support the weight of Mr. Power as he stood before the crowd intermittently pacing about as he delivered his message.
“Some claim that the coming digital union of all human consciousness will be greatest boon to mankind in history.” The tall, muscular man clad in a tight black uniform declaimed. “They claim that when ‘we’re all one,’” Here he paused to allow his contempt for this concept to reverberate. “Everything will be just fine. No more wars, no more disagreement, no more miscommunication. All will be equitable and peaceful. All of that…” He scanned the faces of those gathered to hear him. “Is probably true. But what they, the supporters of this technological utopia don’t seem to realize is: the worldmind will not conceive of itself as the idealistic ‘we,’ but as an ‘I,’ a single individual. This computerized nervous system will be a single entity!” He roamed about the eight by eight foot summit of the black trapezoid.
“Now, Mr. Power, you say, what’s wrong with that? Brotherhood, unity, the ultimate dream of human beings for a thousand years, finally achieved! What’s wrong with that? Well, you just think about it for a minute. One entity, trapped on this planet for eternity? No one else to talk to? It is a recipe for madness! These people advocating the ‘singularity’ are asking us to give up our own individual identities for loneliness, insanity, and boredom beyond belief! Imagine it: no more sunrise or sunset. The singular consciousness will perceive sunrise and sunset simultaneously forever!”
After the speech, which was concluded with Mr. Power directing the crowd’s attention to the free literature on offer to the side of the auditorium, a select few were invited to the post-speech party. Of course, a good number of these were journalists. One of them, Martina Turnip, asked Mr. Power if he had any plans to run for public office.
“I already enjoy the best public office of all: the summit of the trapezoid, directorship of the Human Awareness League.” Answered the intense man whom all eyes in the room watched stuff one deviled egg into his mouth after another.

The Pale and The Painful

The little catch in Nominy’s left ring finger worried him long enough for him to miss the snappy comeback that Miss Peletier directed at her current antagonist on the TV screen. The others in the room, mostly members of Count Nothgood’s literary club, roared at the electronically enhanced heroine’s words. Nominy started to ask the person sitting closest to him, an obese man with womanly hands, what Miss Peletier had said, but was distracted by the count’s eye-grabbing entrance.
Nothgood opened the door with a flaming bronze baton in his hand and stood for a moment surveying his guests. He wore a long cape of red felt and black slippers made of the skin of some offensive origin. Despite this display, only Nominy noticed him. The catch in his finger, however, worked loose at that moment with a small popping sound, so that he looked down at it and missed catching the count’s eye.
“The beast has been recaptured.” Nothgood announced. Reluctantly, it seemed, the others in the room turned their attentions away from the television toward their host.
Nominy rose first from his seat. He hefted the briefcase of documents and took a step toward the count.
“So we will begin the meeting of the discussion group at once.” Nothgood continued.
Nominy halted his progress with a sigh. He allowed the briefcase to swing back and forth.
As the members of the literary club filed out of the room the count stood to one side of the doorway. He winked at Nominy and held up a finger. After the last of the club members exited, only Nominy and two young ladies remained in the room with Nothgood.
“When will I get to discuss these plans with you?” Nominy asked.
“Please be patient. The meeting of our discussion group shouldn’t take long. We’re nearly finished read The English Patient.” The count said kindly.
“We saw that.” One of the young ladies announced with a smile. She indicated herself and her companion with a tan and painted finger bearing, so Nominy divined, no weird debilities.
The other young lady, reluctantly drawn from the TV, concurred.

Futuristic, Costumed Space Hero

After hiding a whole pizza in her locker, Miss Peletier, to the accompaniment of a droning oboe and the clatter of chopsticks on wood blocks, made her way to the so-called bowels of the ship. In her bag she still carried the secret information cube that we, the home audience, had seen her put there in episode one.
Approaching the defribulak unit with the intention of finally inserting the cube and getting some answers as to what the hell the death of her long-lost father had to do with that season’s story arc, Miss Peletier was stunned to find Probase, the cabin boy, sitting at the foot of the unit with a small, fuzzy creature of heartbreaking cuteness and marketability in his lap.
“What are you doing here?” She demanded of the four-eyed Probase.
“That is a question I wouldn’t mind asking you.” The boy returned, cuddling the creature close to his chest and turning away from the program’s star.
“There’s pizza in the breakroom. Go on and get yourself a slice before it’s all gone.” Miss Peletier urged. She glanced about. “I won’t tell anybody about your pet. I don’t care that by keeping him you’re breaking the hygiene rules.”
“He’s just a baby.” Probase whined.
“Yes, fine. And a sweet baby too. Now get along. Free pizza. Upstairs.” Miss Peletier shooed the boy with the backs of her hands.
“I will leave Zombo here.” Probase got to his feet and set the little ball of fur down in the gap between the corvinelator and the beratium.
“That’ll be fine.” Miss Peletier smiled. Again she glanced about.
“Miss Peletier,” Probase asked just before he exited the scene, “May I ask you, please ma’am—what is your first name?”
“It’s Corinna.” Miss Peletier answered indulgently. She watched the cabin boy scamper away, then turned to the defribulak unit purposively. From her bag she withdrew the cube. Just as she inserted it into the data portal a voice behind her frightened all of us.
“Well, well, Corinna.” The voice, that of a man, said. He now emerged from the darkness behind Miss Peletier as she turned with a gasp. “Now I think we know why you were willing to sign on to this voyage for such low wages.”
“My name is Miss Peletier, Aberton.” The woman in the orange cat suit sneered.

A Shirt to Wear to Work

The European doctor wore his hair parted in the middle, feathered back over his ears. Custer Underfund wondered if he wore his hair in this manner to indicate that he was European.
“It certainly couldn’t be to indicate that he is a doctor; his lab coat and stethoscope perform that function.” Underfund whispered to Suteo Cuetik, the puppet on his left arm.
“He’s blonde.” Cuetik made his comment, then returned to reading the tiny magazine he held in his surprisingly nimble wooden hands.
As the two sat on the giant sofa in the middle of Minskytown enjoying the sound of the constituent elements of the intricate mobile before them crashing together, the European doctor continued to deal with the many wounded that came into the hospital.
“And what is the problem here?” The doctor asked a nurse as yet another patient was wheeled in before him.
“Another gunshot wound, Dr. Prague.” The nurse explained.
“Ah, yet another gunshot would?” Dr. Prague exclaimed. He looked up at the ceiling and shook his fist in the air. “What are you playing at, you?” He bent to his task and soon had the patient patched up well enough to be moved to the next stage of the healing process, the hydrolizer tank.
Hours later, Dr. Prague emerged from the private entrance at the back of the hospital and put a short black cigar in his mouth. He looked exhausted, but after taking his first deep drag on the cigar and blowing the thick gray smoke skyward he seemed much invigorated. Turning to the camera he observed, “El Ropo small cigars are made from the finest Mexican blackweed. They satisfy as no other tobacco product can. Take it from me; I’m a surgeon.” He smiled his serious European smile.
“Excellent!” The director, a European like the doctor, as evidenced by the many-pocketed, light blue nylon vest he wore, commended Dr. Prague.
“Thank you, but I could have done it better if I weren’t so distracted by the suffering of my fellow humans.” Dr. Prague referred to the on-going riots in the streets from whence the many gunshot victims had come. “If only Underfund concerned himself with the situation into which he has placed us.”

The Tiny Magazine

The tiny magazine that Suteo Cuetik enjoyed reading was called Placatory Grub. The lead article in the most current issue was “After 24 Hours in the City My Snot Turned Black.” The author of this article was Vegetel LaBlunt. As Cuetik turned the last page of the article and began reading a cartoon feature, LaBlunt was preparing yet another article, this one tentatively titled “Open-Mouthed Kisses in the Terminal Ward.” He sat at a typewriter in a room whose sliding glass door was open to the sound of the sea and the breeze kicked up by the crash of waves and the slap of whale’s tails.
“Jesus, I surely can write!” LaBlunt enthused as he placed a period at the end of yet another ingeniously crafted sentence.
“What are you saying?” Gethera asked as she entered the room with two glasses of lemonade.
“I said I surely can write!” LaBlunt repeated, turning around on the swivel chair exuberantly.
“Lemonade?” Gethera offered.
“Thank you.” LaBlunt said, reaching for the glass. The symbol etched into the side was a solid oval sprouting fins on its upper right and lower left sides—the symbol of the Human Awareness League.
LaBlunt’s writing, little in volume though it was, enjoyed a brief vogue after his fatal poisoning. Cuetik, a fan of Placatory Grub, though not necessarily everything that ever appeared within its pages, did not consider himself a fan of LaBlunt’s.
“He thought too highly of himself. He makes out like he has all the answers.” Cuetik explained to Underfund.
“Within the world of which he writes, that’s probably true.” Underfund, distracted by the fires sweeping the radiovac district, could only give half his attention to what Cuetik was saying.
“Yes, but for his work to have any relevance, much less resonance. Within our, that is the readers’ world, there must be an overlap between the two.” Cuetik reasoned.
“Obviously.” Underfund answered curtly, rising from the sofa to intervene in the increasingly violent situation below.

There is a Man at the Glass Next Time

Improperly twisted by the dentist, the wires connecting Susan’s braces to the third and fourth anterior bicuspids formed the letters B-R-U-T when viewed under what the technical boys refer to as “strong light.”
“B-R-U-T.” Mused Scamp Pominochi, who used to be a technical boy, but was now a tit man. “Do you think it could refer to the after shave?” He asked Fulton Lake, the only other person in the office that cold January morning.
“I think it more likely,” Lake whipped off his horn-rimmed glasses and theorized. “That it is an acronym. Now please don’t bother me anymore. I have to finish documenting these ants.”
“Yes, but an acronym for what?” Pominochi asked.
“I told you I’m busy.” Lake snapped. A couple of ants, looking like two teenagers eloping, escaped over the rim of the upturned lid from the instant coffee jar. As Lake tried to get them back with their fellows, Pominochi moved to the window to muse further on his problem.
“B-R-U-T.” He said aloud. “Braces… Rust… Understand… This?” He wondered what it could mean. Down below the sight of the banana man assembling his retail appliance brought a smile to his jaded eyes. “Banana… Router…”
“For god’s sake!” Bellowed Lake, smashing the lid with his fist. “Why not ask the girl?”
“The girl?”
“The girl whose braces they are!” Lake stormed out of the office.
“Ah, Susan.” Pominochi’s eyes, so jaded, as mentioned above, opened wide. His phone call to the girl’s residence was made swiftly. His years as a technical boy had given him great facility with such devices.
“Hello, is Susan there?” He asked the elderly squawk that answered his call.
“No, she’s run off with the butcher’s boy. Left me a note to find.”
Pominochi returned the transmitter unit to its cradle, thinking he should do the same with his own rapidly aging body when it hit him: “The dentist!” he cried.



A Grace Jones Made of Duct Tape

Tommy ended his performance (“If you can call it that.” Muttered Dr. Shaver to his wife.) with a call to the members of the audience to come forward and register their names on a block of flawless white pine two cubic feet in size. He retreated into the large bathtub in the middle of the stage from which he had emerged at the beginning and watched (somewhat nervously, to tell the truth) most of those in attendance file down and use one of the pens provided to scrawl their names on the block. Dr. Shaver began to write “A waste of time,” but his wife pushed him angrily and hissed a warning.
Afterwards, helping to clean up the stage, Tommy exhulted in the block of wood now covered in names. He smiled with a dustpan full of peanut butter and hair in hand on his way to the trashcan and sighed, “Just look at them. My patrons!”
Eldon, one of the theater’s regular volunteers, paused in the act of sweeping. “Some pretty big names on there.” He said. “Merton Wasabi; Germinal, the mayor’s psychic; Michael Stipe’s grandson.”
“Who’s A. Waste?” Susan asked, standing before the block. She had mistaken a tiny discoloration in the surface of the wood for a period (I know I said “flawless” earlier, but I mean, my god, no piece of wood is perfectly flawless.) and read the resultant fragment as a name.
“Let me see that.” Tommy said. He slammed the dustpan against the inside of the trashcan and walked over to the block. “A. Waste.” He read. “Eldon, do you know who A. Waste is?”
“Never heard of him.” Eldon shook his head. He took the dustpan from Tommy and continued to sweep.
“Or her.” Susan reminded them all.
“Oh, come off it, Susan.” Tommy looked sour. He jammed his hands into the pockets of his bathrobe and frowned. The name intrigued him. Ultimately, they asked Old Ray, who had taken many a lead role on that very stage in days gone by, before his knees had gotten too bad.
“A. Waste?” He mused. “Must be Alex Waste, the industrialist.”
“The industrialist?” Tommy’s eyes grew large at the thought.
“Your future’s assured, my boy.” Ray told him jealously.

Finicky Master is Forgiven

“I felt no brotherhood.” I described my feelings to Jerry about my visit to the comic book show. I had sat there for the hour allotted to me, my handiwork laid out on the table for all to see. No one spoke to me, neither the visitors, nor my fellow artists. No one looked at my work.
“It might have helped if you had spoken to someone first.” Jerry suggested. We had stopped by a koi pond in the midst of tall hedges that bordered the winding path between the houses of Beansmack, a district in Minskytown.
“And said what?” I sat down on a bench. “‘Howdy, I’m a goober. Your stuff surely is more professional-looking than mine.”
Tactful Jerry shifted the focus of our conversation.
“Where was this show?” He asked. “Not in the tunnel system, I presume.”
“No, obviously I had to do a thing like that among my ‘peers.’ It was at the Red Party.” I hoped Jerry wouldn’t start whining about how I never took him there. Instead he wondered at what I had told him.
“The Red Party must be desperate if they’re hosting shows of work by self-publishing comic book auteurs.”
“Oh, the Red Party’s changed.” I explained. “Or possibly it was always like this, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s not just an on-going function anymore; it’s its own interlocking macrostructure.” My words were not adequate. “It’s…”
“The whole world outside your head.” Jerry supplied a description.
“Well… not exactly.” I demurred. “It can’t be. By its very nature, the Red Party is exclusive.” I stared at the damned fish. “It’s just bigger than I thought.”
“More inclusive.” Jerry laughed. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have had you there as a comic book maker.”
“Well, they might as well have excluded me.” I brought things back to my immediate grief.
“Did you really want to feel ‘brotherhood?’”
“No, I guess not.”
“What you really wanted was praise and sales.”
“Jerry, your insight is humbling to me.”
The sun was warm where I sat. Here in Minskytown, the seasons were revered. It was late summer.

What the Basketball Means to Me

Around the corner Jerry and I came upon a group of grown men playing basketball. Their grunts together with the scrape of their shoes on the asphalt sounded relaxing to me somehow. Perhaps relaxing isn’t the right word. Reassuring might be better. Reassuring, that is, until one of them accosted me.
“You wanna play?” He implored.
“Apparently, there aren’t enough of them for a proper game.” I shouted to Jerry as we ran away. “Much as I agree with the notion that Europeans are increasingly desirable as players due to their greater emphasis on fundamentals and team play, I can’t say that I would make a positive addition to their game.”
“You’re not European!” Jerry snapped as we caught our breath before a fortuitously located konditorei. He said it as if he had caught me in a lie.
“I didn’t say I was.”
“Your remarks would lead a stranger to conclude such.” Jerry followed me inside the establishment. I got in line and examined the pastries behind the glass.
“Jerry, I must make every effort to obscure my origins as much as possible.” I said without turning around. Our turn at the counter was coming. After I gave the attendant my order, Jerry asked him, “Tell me, where would you say my friend and I are from?”
“Aren’t you going to order a pastry?” I asked.
“Where are you from.” The man behind the counter repeated, turning the question over. “Well, I’d say Bitter Whelk, if I had to guess.”
“Bitter Whelk, eh?” Jerry smiled. “Cultivated place, is it?”
“Jerry, you’re embarrassing me.” I smiled and threatened.
The attendant frowned and bobbed his head from side to side, waggling his hand back and forth.
“The basketball,” I said through my mouthful of blueberry scone, “Represents a world that I will never be a part of.”
“You hate sports.” Jerry, sucking on a dinner mint, replied.
“Even the Buddhists will be surprised at the insights into consciousness that science will make in the next few years.”

The Transfer of the Remaindered Fossil

“How do we know it’s remaindered?” Demanded Wolf Pettish, chief welder at the fair.
“See this notch?” Nilsson Nils pointed to the side of the petrified wing bone assembly, down near the floor where the dust unceasingly collected. Nils looked about at the dozen beautiful young people over the top of his glasses. He remained hunched over, still pointing.
“Yes, we see it.” Beautiful Sandra answered.
“That means it’s been remaindered.” Obviously Nils was having a trying day. Hell, thought Bonard, slinking around at the back of the group, he’s been having a trying month! All these dead-eyed goobers at the fair and not one to help shoulder the burden, none to understand the unique problems of authority.
“Doesn’t that lower the value significantly?” Pettish asked.
“Well, of course it does.” Nils sounded exasperated. “It’s been remaindered.”
“Yes, but why cut a notch in it?” Sandra wondered. “Why not just have an official document stating…”
“My dear, the fact of its being remaindered means that it has already been devalued. The notch is just a visible symbol of this.” Nils had finally stood up straight. The badge on his jacket, reading “Fair Committee General,” hung slackly from a child’s having grabbed at it weeks before, tearing the jacket’s material.
“So the notch is the fossil’s punishment for nobody wanting it.” Pettish concluded.
Yes, thought Bonard, Pettish would understand that. He looked like a man who believed in the necessity of punishment.
“The notch,” Nils took a deep breath. “Does not make the fossil any less valuable. Even the appellation ‘remaindered’ does not, in itself, render the fossil less valuable. It is the fact that is has not sold in the past seven weeks that has made it clear that it is ‘not valuable,’ and therefore relegated to remaindering and therefore to be notched as evidence of this.”
“The people at this fair are idiots!” Bonard shouted. He kept his eyes on the ceiling, his back turned to Nils and the fossil that had once graced the body of a Protonoptotryx cyana.

Schizoid Beefcake

Wolf Pettish’s neighbor in the parking lot full of trailers housing fair personnel was the seldom-seen Mr. Prunedragon. As a deafening downpour kept the visitors away on the next-to-last day of the fair, Mr. Prunedragon sat alone in his allotted trailer reading a biography of John Lydon.
“He’ll always be Johnny Rotten to me.” Mr. Prunedragon told the plastic dog statue with the bobbing head which he thought of as a pet. “Yes, yes, he’ll always be Johnny Rotten to me.” He muttered, settling back on the bench seat to fall asleep to the sound of the rain.
Hours later Prunedragon awoke. The rain had stopped and the setting sun, at last free to shine on the fairgrounds, was coming in the open door. Why is the door open, Prunedragon asked himself. He had lurched almost to the door when the subconsciously noted absence of the dog statue made him turn around.
“Thieves!” He hissed.
Wolf Pettish was just returning to his own trailer as Prunedragon began circling about outside, looking for clues.
“I’ve been burgled!” Prunedragon howled at Pettish.
“I’m sorry.” The mighty welder answered. “Have you called security?”
“Security!” Prunedragon seized the word and dashed back inside.
“Who’s that man next door?” Pettish asked his diminutive wife Andorra. He used his thick, scarred thumb to indicate which neighbor he meant.
“That’s Mr. Prunedragon.” Andorra replied. The book she held dwarfed her tiny hands. “He’s supposed to be analyzing data for the fair committee, but he’s been hiding in his trailer for weeks.”
“A slacker, eh? Why, he’s nothing but a thief.” Pettish hung his welder’s hat on its special rack and pulled a beer out of the soggy paper sack he carried.
“And he makes good money too. Look at this dog statue.” Andorra nodded at Mr. Prunedragon’s pet, now sitting on her kitchen table.
“Andorra, what have you done?” Pettish belched.
“I just exacted a little punishment.” Her voice matched her wee frame.
“Punishment, eh?” Pettish mused. For the first time since coming in he noticed the book his wife was reading. Who the hell was John Lydon?

What Happened to Your Arm?

The conclusion satisfied no one on the board of inquiry, yet all were so sick of discussing it that they let it stand. When released to the public the conclusion was, of course, printed in the latest issue of Placatory Grub, that periodical having recently expanded its readership some hundredfold. Staunton Ryan read aloud from the grotesquely illustrated pages containing the board of inquiry’s words.
“‘The arm, therefore,’” He read to his wife as they sat at the kitchen table, the prehensile stainless steel hooks at the end of his prosthetic grasping the magazine as delicately as a rhinoceros’ lips on an acacia thorn. “‘Was irreparable from the moment Mr. Ryan chose to try to arrest his fall in such a foolish manner.’ Foolish!” Ryan’s hooks tore into the slick paper.
“You’re tearing it!” Mrs. Ryan remonstrated shrilly.
“I don’t care!” Ryan closed the magazine and glared at its cover. Johnny Depp’s ageless features stared back, the eyes as enticing as big dollops of top quality chocolate.
“You and your little moustache.” Ryan sassed through his downturned mouth.
“Give me that if you’re just going to tear it up.” Ryan’s wife held out her hand.
“Who cares?” Ryan released the magazine with a neurotronic whine from the motor in his prosthetic.
“Well, obviously I do.” Mrs. Ryan smoothed out the magazine on the vinyl tablecloth. “I didn’t pay twenty-seven seventeen for a subscription just to have the issues torn up.”
“Those bastards are saying this is my fault!” Ryan barked, holding aloft his replacement arm, menacing despite the flower stickers up and down its length.
“Last month you crumpled it up because Thom Yorke was on the cover. Now it’s Johnny Depp.” Mrs. Ryan continued to smooth.
“I didn’t tear it because of fucking Johnny Depp!” Ryan got to his feet abruptly.
“You don’t have to leave.”
“Oh, I think I do. I’m getting no sympathy here.” Ryan left the mock kitchen and retreated deeper into the set. The designers had done and admirable job selecting artworks that represented the kind of man Ryan wanted the public to see him as. “Fucking Coldplay.” He muttered.

Proboscis Miasma

“Surely you weren’t that disturbed by the findings of the so-called board of inquiry, were you?” I asked Kurdly as he packed an armload of clothes into his case without regard for their ultimate state three days’ traveling time hence.
“I don’t just read Placatory Grub, you know.” His voice was thick with the gurgly sound that comes of drinking Pepsi all the time.
I said nothing, merely sat and turned the desk lamp on and off.
“I read something in Proboscis Miasma.” Kurdly stood with his hands on his whipcord-clad hips. His apartment always smelled like bacon to me. I wondered if he could smell it.
“Something that disturbed you?” It was too bad I had to drag everything out of him as if in a cross-examination.
“Yes.” He went back to his packing with a huff.
“Do tell.” The lamp was priceless, ceramic, a classic moose hunting scene painted about its girth. The shade, however, was a tawdry mismatch stolen from a motel.
“I read that you wish your nose was smaller.” Kurdly snapped his case shut and fell upon it, burying his face in one of the rejected sweaters.
“It’s true.” I said, switching the lamp one last time to the off position. No need to waste electricity.
“You told me you liked prominent noses.” Kurdly lifted his head to glare at me.
“I do. Especially on women. And the key word here is ‘prominent.’ That doesn’t necessarily mean large. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean wide.”
“I think the key word here is ‘women.’” Kurdly compressed his lips together as if the word had been sour indeed.
I looked about the room for a moment as if following the flight of a fly.
“I’m not gay.” I said at last.
“Well, what are you doing with me then?” Kurdly pounced.
“Sitting here talking, watching you pack.”
“No, it’s more than that. At least,” He threw back his head proudly, each hair moving and falling perfectly. “It was.”
“Kurdly, the time has come for you to know the truth.” I rose from my stool, revealing the hole through which we can all see the next page.



False Steamboat in Pinker Libation

The crummier analyses of the situation all pointed to our inevitable sinking, but I had developed secret hopes to counter their negativity. I sat nervously in my deck chair and watched the old-fashioned warning signs on the distant bank flash even as I struggled to work on my book. A few of the other passengers had discovered what I was doing and disapproved.
“Who is he not to participate in the social activities that have been arranged for our amusement?” I had one of them say in my book. It was inevitable that the circumstances surrounding the book’s composition should find their way into it, else what kind of writer would I be?
“Certainly not a real one.” Dolores Giles, one of the major characters in my book denounced Floyd Candler, author of such unpublishable nonsense as Workingman’s Nerd, Party Atmosphere, and The Co-ed’s Friend.
Perhaps she was right. One of the other passengers asked me to tell her about my book as we waited for the captain to come down from the bridge and give us our daily briefing on the state of the boat.
“It’s a collection of small pieces connected by a thin thread of… narrative.” I mimed drawing a thread through my fingers.
“But what is it about?” She asked. I glanced at the door through which the captain would appear.
“I don’t really know yet.” I told her. “I’ll figure that out after the bulk of it is written and I begin adding the explanatory material.”
She nodded tersely, examining my eyes and the scruff on my chin that indicated I was fourteen years old.
“And what is it called?” She asked, half out of politeness and half out of the desire to find reason enough not to speak to me again.
Where was the captain? Surely he should be out by now.
“Um… The Burden of Satisfaction” was the title I gave her. It had originally been the title of a soap opera I wanted to do, but I never had the money to buy a movie camera, much less the circle of acquaintances from which to acquire the necessary actors.
“The captain’s gone! The ship’s sinking! He’s left us!” A costumed flunky burst from the bridge and cried.

Hairs Garner

A sampling of my doodles included in the collection Pasty Boy’s Hideous Gut apparently sparked some interest in the big cities where the best people live and work, for I was subsequently asked to put together a massive compilation of them for publication. I had barely finished reading the letter from Taschen when I began thinking of a title.
“How about Hairs Garner?” I asked my wife with an enthusiasm I hadn’t shown since she asked me if I would like to eat at Taco Stand a week earlier.
“What does that have to do with a compilation of your doodles?” She asked.
“Does it have to have anything to with it? It’s just a title, and believe me, titling things is the most fun part of what I do most of the time. I think it’s quite evocative of the material.” I refolded the letter and put it back in its envelope. This was going straight into the plastic crate where I kept all my most memorable correspondence and ephemera.
“A book of doodles?” She demanded. “I can’t believe that someone is even offering to publish such a thing.” She added parenthetically, as if confessing this to her own reflection. “Why not just call it Doodles by Toadsgoboad?”
“Because you can’t be blunt about things. You can’t be so straightforward.” I drew a highway through the desert in the air with the edge of my hand. “That’s the fundamental idea behind art. My art, anyway. That’s why Norman Rockwell can never be firmly fixed among the greats.” I might have reminded her that she hadn’t approved of my signing my work with the name ‘Toadsgoboad’ when first I suggested the idea, and now she loved it, went around putting up little cards with “Toadsgoboad, Artist” and our phone number on them all over town.
A picky reader might at this point bother me (telepathically, understand) with some such question as, “So, Toadsgoboad is not your actual name?” My response, as you might predict, would be to quibble over the insertion of the modifier ‘actual.’ Undeflected from her investigation, however, psychic reader asks, “Who is this who is ‘Lord of the Tunnel System,’ then?”
It is Toadsgoboad, of course. It is he, also, who is the author of Hairs Garner, should it ever actually get published.

The Green Appellate of Corn

Fulton Lake took the frustrations of his job out in his vigilante persona, the Orange Klaxon. He personally did not consider himself a vigilante, however, as he had a commission from the Green Appellate of Corn, an extraterrestrial farmers’ collective.
“The aliens that make up the appellate,” The Orange Klaxon (AKA Fulton Lake) explained to his new prospective assistant, Jack Bonard (“We’ll come up with a nom de guerre for you later,” The Orange Klaxon had told him. “If you work out.”) “Have secret crops planted under the very noses of the people of this planet.”
Bonard sniggered, imagining aliens shaving off moustaches in the night.
“It’s no laughing matter, Bonard.” (The) Orange Klaxon remonstrated. “I can’t tell you any more about it right now, but these crops are vital for the continued survival of their economic system and in exchange they provide us with certain useful resources.”
“Such as?” Bonard asked.
Orange Klaxon turned down the corners of his mouth and tapped his nose meaningfully. Bonard laughed again, reminded of moustaches.
“This is serious business, Bonard.” O.K. (As he would like his fans to refer to him) cleared his throat. “If you’re the right man for the job, you’ll understand that.”
“OK, uh… O.K.” Bonard controlled himself. “What do we do first?”
“Alright, I’ll tell you.” O.K. tapped a blackboard that he had attached to the wall of his secret underground base. “Tonight we’re going to pay a visit to some guys who think they’re tough. Right here where I’ve marked this ‘X.’”
Bonard peered at the blackboard, trying to make sense of it.
“You’ll drive the car.” Orange Klaxon instructed.
“The car? Isn’t it the Klaxonmobile or something?”
“No jokes, Bonard.”
An hour later, Bonard at the wheel, the Orange Klaxon’s car pulled into a lower class neighborhood known as Pasteboard Estates. Orange Klaxon leaned out the window, his grappling hook in hand, searching for his prey. At the end of one street they were surprised to see a couple of aliens.
“What are you guys doing here?” O.K. asked.
“I’d like to ask you the same question.” One of the multi-legged lifeforms returned.

Wizened, Wary Wombat

The old poem ran through Custer Underfund’s mind as he turned the overhead lights off in the box containing his miniature world. Was he in truth a “wizened, wary wombat?” Of course, none of us down in Minskytown knew what was running through that pioneering man’s head as we were left with only the multi-colored Christmas lights for illumination, but I could guess.
“The riots seem to be under control.” Jerry observed to the old lady who owned the bed and breakfast we had chosen.
“Yes, but the city’s still a powder keg.” She answered as we signed our names in the register. To me, preoccupied with my almost cinematic musings, their exchange sounded like two spies offering each other code phrases. “I hope this whole thing won’t ruin your visit.”
“I doubt it.” I answered, wondering if she would recognize my name when she read it. “But tell me, won’t this darkness encourage more lawlessness?”
“Oh, no, on the contrary. When the colored lights are on, everyone treats it as a kind of party.” The old lady grinned fiercely and rubbed her hands together.
“She didn’t recognize my name.” I told Jerry as we climbed the narrow staircase.
“Does that bother you?”
“No.” I said. “It’s just interesting, that’s all.”
Outside outside, unshrunk and underappreciated, Custer Underfund flopped down on the sofa beside his wife.
“Do you know ‘Wizened, Wary Wombat,’ by Boyd Stome?” He asked her.
“Never heard of it.” She kept her eyes on the magazine she was flipping her way through.
“It talks about the prematurely aged man.”
“What does the wombat have to do with it?”
“I don’t know. The poet describes himself as a wombat.”
“Look at this.” She showed him a two-page spread in the magazine. “What do you think of this room?”
“It’s great. It’s nice.” Underfund told her.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m a powerless nobody playing with toys.”

Rod’s Beguiling Source of Tripe

“Of course, we knew that once we had discovered where Rod got his tripe from, nothing he said from then on would seen as interesting or, dare I say it…”
“Oh, go on. Say it.” Billy interrupted the worthless old man.
“Sage.” The old man, worthless though he might be, sighed with exasperation at such impertinence.
“Excuse me,” Tomlin, head of special intelligences, set his teacup down on the family bible and leaned forward. “But are we talking about tripe, the food product made from the stomach of a pig or cow?”
“No.” Billy and the old man (Colonel Sumter, if you want to know his name) said at the same time. They giggled and offered to let the other to continue. The old colonel was the one to do so.
“No, we’re talking about tripe, meaning nonsense or stupidity.” He explained. His division, despite being comprised of mostly office workers, had suffered heavy losses in the war before last.
“OK, I got you. Go ahead.” Tomlin leaned back. His homburg brushed the tassels hanging from the lampshade. Some child or dimwit with a bulging forehead had drawn crude figures in crayon on the classic moose-hunting scene.
“Well,” Sumter considered. “There’s not much more to tell.”
“Maybe we should tell him what the source of the tripe was.” Billy suggested.
“Yes, why don’t you tell him that.”
“You won’t believe this, but…” Billy began.
“Hold it.” Sumter interrupted. “Would you like some more tea, Mr. Tomlin?”
“No thank you.” Tomlin replied, turning and hefting his cup. “I don’t think I’ll be able to finish what I’ve got.”
“Very well.” Sumter’s eyes were kind. He smiled, grandfatherly, though he had no descendants.
“You ready?” Billy inquired, his own eyes a mockery of kindness. “The source of the tripe was a book.” He looked expectantly at Tomlin.
“A book? What book?”
“It’s called Workingman’s Nerd.” Colonel Sumter told him, spoiling Billy’s pleasure at revealing the name of the fictitious book.

Myron Flatfield, Ryan’s Thing

Adjustments to Staunton Ryan’s mechanical arm gave his calligraphy a marvelous fluidity and crispness of edge that some said amounted to an unfair technical advantage. Calligraphy, however, at least in the Windward territories where Ryan had moved following his wife’s incorporation, was not yet a competitive sport.
“Where was I?” Asked the prosthetic technician. He had just thrown his chewing gum in the trash and now turned back to Ryan, a puzzled look on his face.
“You were adjusting this ligament bolt here.” Ryan indicated the bolt in question.
“Ah yes.” The technician, a young man with many piercings on his face, did not inspire confidence. What gave Ryan the confidence to sit there and allow the procedure to continue was the framed document on the wall. It was the young man’s certificate of accomplishment in the field of prosthetic technics from Nothgood College. Ryan could relax. No matter how stupid the young man might appear, he knew what he was doing. Ryan, feeling he must say something indicative of these feelings, complimented the young man on his choice of frame for the certificate.
“Why, thank you.” The young man replied. “That’s real mahogany. And the carvings of the skulls are by a friend of mine.”
“Ah.”
After one more turn of the wrench, the young man stepped back.
“And I’d like to say, I really admire that thing you’ve got there.” He said, nodding at the lump of green and purple putty and thin, bamboo-like projections that sat in Ryan’s man-bag, its tiny black eyes peering over the edge.
“Thank you. That’s Myron Flatfield.” Ryan smiled. “He’s my friend.”
“It’s a ‘he?’” The young man asked.
“I guess so.” Ryan shrugged. “Yes, I think so.” He pulled the bag up onto his lap. The thing named Myron Flatfield shifted about like a half-formed gelatin and groaned a soft, high-pitched groan in a vaguely Slavic voice.
“What is… uh, he?” The young man asked.
“He’s a bag filler.” Ryan said in a childish voice. “Aren’t you, sweetie?”

For the Mushroom Gravy

The first line in For the Mushroom Gravy, the most recent book from Floyd Candler, is the key to unraveling what little of plot it has. “I have no idea what goes on in the kitchen,” the intermittently present narrator begins. The kitchen here, so I am told by a surprisingly voluble secretary at the usually secretive Batman House, long-time publishers of Candler’s works, represents the publishing world itself. “That explains it,” I said to myself before I had even finished that first page.
The narrator, Mr. Willoughby, alternates between telling tales of his ramblings through space and time with tales of other characters’ ramblings through space and time, the only connections between them being the use of the same words or the mention of the same objects from one story to the next. Does this constitute a ‘novel,’ as the book’s cover claims? I don’t think so, and I’m hopeful that the dozen or so people out there who are expected to buy this thing don’t think so either, because if the idea gets popular that any writing project of 40,000 words or more is suddenly a “novel,” then that will be, literally, the collapse of literature as we know it.
Another thing that bothers me about this wretched piece of shit of a book is the illustrations. Purportedly drawn by the invincible Mr. Willoughby (even though they are all signed “F. Candler”), and supposedly “illustrating” the adventures contained within the book, in actuality they have nothing to do with anything in it! Then there is their extreme crudity of execution. They make Jean Dubuffet look like Neal Adams, for Christ’s sake.
How Candler continues to get his work published is quite beyond me. For the Mushroom Gravy is his fourteenth book. Doing the math, I find that that means he writes an average of three a year. I suspect that he uses every page he fills without regard for any standards of editing. Further, I now suspect that he is the owner of Batman House and, in all probability, the sum total of its staff. The secretary I spoke to on the phone? Candler in disguise.
All that being said, I did enjoy Workingman’s Nerd, his second book. I took it as a joke at the time, something deliberately written poorly, an exercise in nonsense. Little did I realize then that that was how Candler actually writes. The man belongs in a home for the mentally retarded.



Tea or Ted?

“Well?” Broger asked Kurdly. “Have you decided?”
The latter man, tall, thin, and effeminate, sat at an eighteenth century writing desk by the window. He looked up calmly and considered. His big, round eyes went to either side of Broger before moving to his face.
“I’ve decided.” Kurdly told him. “But not because of any rational process. The fact is I can’t decide. Not really. There’s nothing to base my decision on. The decision I’ve come to is basically a random one.”
“Well, that’s not good.” Broger sounded slightly worried. “I wouldn’t want you, us, to have any misgivings about this down the line.”
“Oh, I don’t have any misgivings.” Kurdly assured him.
“Yes, but a month from now.”
“I won’t have any then. I know that there is no rational basis for making the decision and therefore whichever way I go I can’t be blamed for it.”
Broger sighed. “Very well, What’s it to be?”
“Tea.” Kurdly said distinctly.
“Tea.” Broger repeated in exactly the same tone. “Very well, tea it is.” He went to the bookshelf on the far side of the room. A small door, like the ones in the restrooms of doctors’ offices through which one passes one’s urine sample, was set into the middle of it, between the works of Italo Calvino and Brett Halliday. He opened this door and reached within to rap on the door on the other side of the little interior chamber.
Kurdly heard Broger exchange words with the muffled voice on the other side. As he waited, Kurdly drew stars and curlicues about the head of the cartoon character he had drawn earlier. If only he could consistently replicate his cartoon characters! He might be able to come up with a comic strip. Wouldn’t that be great? What a sense of accomplishment he would feel! It wouldn’t even matter if he never made any money at it, as long as…
“Your tea, Kurdly.” Broger interrupted Kurdly’s dreams. He handed him an eighteenth century cup and saucer, steam rising from the dark fluid within. A classic rabbit-hunting scene decorated the cup. Kurdly considered the drink.
“I’ll have to let this cool.” He said apologetically.

Groover

She was a groover. All her friends said so.
“You’re a groover.” Ted informed her with the sly, Caribbean smile he had inherited from his mother.
Her own mother, embarrassingly, received the information from Lisa, another friend.
“Susan’s so cool, Mrs. Stovetop. She’s a real groover.” She was told.
“Lisa stopped by today.” Susan’s mother announced at dinner.
“What did she want?” Susan halted the forkful of macaroni and cheese midway between her plate and her mouth. Terror of the unknown showed in her eyes.
“She was dropping off some paperwork for the Ladies’ Auxilliary.” Mrs. Stovetop explained. Stabbing primly at her sweet potato, she added, “She said you were so cool. ‘A real groover.’”
Susan sighed a guttural sigh of exasperation and embarrassment.
“A groover? What’s that?” Mr. Stovetop asked.
“Does it mean you’re groovy?” Mrs. Stovetop tried to supply the answer.
Susan’s fork completed its journey, but everything indicated that it might have made its last trip of the evening.
“A groover?” Susan’s grandfather, her mother’s father, suddenly awoke to the topic. “That’s what we used to call someone who grooved the interstices on metal joists in the roofing trade.”
“Are you secretly working in the roofing trade, Susan?” Mr. Stovetop asked his daughter.
“I’m through eating.” Susan declared. She did not look up from her plate. As she rushed out of the dining room, Mr. Stovetop called after her.
“You get back here and finish this delicious meal your mother busted her ass to cook!”
“We’re only joking with you!” Mrs. Stovetop insisted.
The three adults resumed eating, the older man slightly before the others.
“Groovers made good money.” He commented to no one in particular.
Mr. Stovetop glanced at him. “There’s little chance of that for her unless she gets that head of hers screwed on straight.”
In her room Susan opened the false bottom in her footlocker and stared at her secret treasures.



White Paper

All communications from Giant Nomenclature were to be issued on white paper. However, the document stating this directive was itself printed on imperial yellow cardstock from the storehouses of the Bureaucratic City and therefore confusing to some people.
“It’s a trick.” One of them stated authoritatively as he poured a cup of coffee.
“Yes, it’s clearly an invalid directive.” Another agreed, yet felt that the first man’s statement had missed the point.
“No,” One of the old timers shook his head at the foolishness of these new men. “They’re just using up paper left over from the last regime.”
“But the paper—it’s yellow.”
“I wholeheartedly approve of their frugality.” The old timer took refuge in the aphorisms of his youth. “Waste not, want not” had been a big one in those days.
“I think we should get confirmation.” Someone shouted from the supply room. “Otherwise we won’t know which communications to believe.”
“And what if the confirmation shows up on yellow paper?”
“Well… it’s still from Giant Nomenclature, isn’t it? They make the rules, I guess they can break them.”
“That’s not right.”
“Look, it means that henceforth all communications will be on white paper.”
“That’s not what it says.” A man visiting from the floor below argued, looking the directive over.
“You think that was the last piece of yellow cardstock they had and they just had to use it up?” The man with the coffee cup with Garfield on the side asked.
His amenable comrade waved a dismissive hand at the old timer. “Don’t listen to him. His sympathies are with the old empire.”
This was too much for the old timer. He caught sight of the nearest person of his generation, the cleaning woman, Martha.
“Martha, come here and tell us what this directive means.” He called. The woman shuffled over, disappointment already foretold on her indifferent features.

Great for Pigs

“What’s the program called?” Berkal asked as he settled into his chair, clipboard in hand. He was clearly anxious to get started, tired after long day. He’d probably reviewed six shows since that morning.
“‘Themelda’s Dopes.’” Jackflap wiped his nose with a paper towel as he read from his own clipboard.
Berkal sighed at the tile, but dutifully wrote it down. “Alright, roll it.”
“Wait a second, Berkal.” A man in the darkness, standing against the wall to Berkal’s left, spoke. “We’ve got a representative from the show’s production company here. He’d like to make a prefatory statement.”
“Yes, fine.” Berkal maintained his poise despite his impatience.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Berkal.” Said a jowly little man in glasses, scooting forward in a chair. “I’m Travis Fermin from Deadeye Productions. It’s great to meet you.” He offered his hand. Berkal took it perfunctorily. “Now, we think we have a real winner here.”
“Of course you do.” Berkal replied. His equanimity was wearing down.
“Yes, as you know, the programming menu is expanding beyond the traditional…”
“Sir,” Berkal cut him off. “I’ve had a long day and I’ve heard enough marketing rigamarole to drown myself in. Could you just summarize, please?”
Fermin cleared his throat. “Very well. In a nutshell, ‘Themelda’s Dopes’ is great for pigs.”
“Great for pigs.” Berkal’s lips could be heard pursing.
“Yes, for their growth and development.”
“So you mean pigs as in farmyard animals.”
“Oink oink.” Fermin answered with a short chuckle.
“OK.” Berkal drawled, turning away. “Roll it.”
The program began with an animated garden hose descending from the heavens. To the accompaniment of a jolly theme song about defying authority and conventional thinking, the principal characters emerged from the end of the hose one by one. They skipped across a lawn littered with pumpkins to a tiny house.
“Has anyone seen Themelda?” Asked Father upon entering the living room.
“I think she’s out back.” Replied Mother. Going to the window, Father looked out and saw the great snout.

Big Orange Planetary Patrol

The Big Orange Planetary Patrol was a fleet of orange balloons that constantly circled the globe. The leader of the costumed heroes that manned these lighter-than-air ships was Madame Mars, an old lady with long, gray hair. On her command the Patrol turned westward at the edge of the pink fields of Modman Glauder’s farm.
“What are we looking for?” Angrus, one of the elite Panic Squad, asked Madame Mars. The two stood on the observation deck of the old lady’s flagship, Stressful Thirst.
“Something purple.” Madame Mars replied, placing an orange booted foot on the rail. Angrus noted with pride and other feelings too disturbing for him to dwell on that his leader’s butt was still firm and shapely.
“It is perhaps a trifle too large to fit exactly in with my standards for a woman’s butt,” He wrote in his diary later. “But it is still a remarkably fine butt to adorn the backside of one so old.”
“Something purple.” Angrus repeated with an emphasis on each syllable as he scanned the fields of pink below.
“Yes, Angrus. Something purple.” Madame Mars shook her magnificent mane of gray hair. Did she thrill to the wind whipping over the deck? It is unknown. Certainly she reveled in it, for she admitted as much in her own diary on many occasions, but to thrill? Again, I must repeat it is unknown.
“How large is this purple object?” Angrus asked.
“Large enough to be seen from the vantage point of our commanding heights.” Madame Mars answered, her own pride evident in her words.
“Madame!” One of the trainees on the deck, distinguished by the tall, pointed hat strapped to his head, called out. “Look!”
The old lady and Angrus followed the direction of the trainee’s outflung index finger. Coming up over the horizon was a large purple tractor.
“That’s it!” Madame Mars declared. “Good work, Jackflap.” She praised the trainee, a man in his early thirties obviously proud of having landed such a good job after years of low pay and purposeless existence.
“I should have never started drinking in the first place.” He remonstrated with himself. “All that time wasted!” He shook his head, promising himself that he would start keeping a diary.

Mexican Pretzels

“I don’t think these people have the slightest idea what Mexico is.” I told Jerry after finishing the last of the so-called Mexican pretzels.
“What did you expect? Chilies and cumin?” Jerry looked up from his magazine. He had removed his feet (they were removable) to lie on the bed comfortably.
“Yeah, something like that. Something Mexican, anyway.” I admitted.
“Ever been to Mexico?”
“No. Probably never will, either.” If I sounded a little depressed, it’s because I was. Doomed to little more than a peripheral role in my own story, I perceived myself as a tragic figure.
“Why not? With your powers, can’t you just crawl under the bed and turn up in Mexico?”
“It’s not as simple as that.” I felt disgusted at myself for having eaten the whole bag of pretzels. “‘Crawl under the bed.’”
“Well?” Jerry demanded.
“It’s not part of my universe.” I told him. “It’s not part of my direct experience.”
“You’ve heard of it. You know it exists.”
“I haven’t directly experienced it. I know nothing in reality about it.”
“You mean you’d have to go there first, before you could go there now.”
“If I were to go there now, it would be to arrive in a place that was a parody of Mexico, a kind of Cartoon Mexico.” I tried to explain.
“What’s wrong with that? You’ve always wanted to be in a cartoon.”
I considered the matter.
“Are you tired of this place?” I asked.
“Minskytown? I think we’ve seen about all we can see.”
“And we’re not about to interact directly with Custer Underfund and his circle of acquaintances.” I rubbed my forehead. This helped me feel that I was thinking. “We’re not crawling under the bed.”
Jerry began screwing his feet on. “What are you going to do?”
I looked about the small room. “We’re… going to… leave… through… there.” I pointed to the old dresser.
“Through there?” Jerry asked. Turning the dresser around, I showed him the small door awaiting our egress.

Slack Traveler

If you ever got to see the roadside amusement park called South of the Border as it was back in the seventies, you will have some idea what the Mexico that we arrived in was like. Another good idea of its appearance and flavor is the Disney movie Three Cabarellos. You might want to reread the Mexican portion of On the Road for good measure. Not that Jerry and I got stoned at a whorehouse, but the general attitude towards Mexico expressed in that book informed the development of this Mexico that we visited.
“A diet rich in beans has been demonstrated to be most beneficial to good health.” Jerry read aloud from A Guide to Your Mexico as we rode along on the backs of our burros.
“Good to hear it.”
“We should make the Temple of the Sun by noon.” Jerry stowed the book away in his knapsack and adjusted his sombrero.
“That thing looks like its made of tortilla flour.” I said.
“I think you’re jealous. Or maybe the Gearender is.”
“A nonsensical statement.” And thus we bickered in a friendly way until noon, when, as Jerry had estimated, we rode through the concrete arch bearing the words “El Templo de la Sol” across its top. The keystone was stamped with a lively stylization of our common star.
To our left stood a small stand from which Dr. Sleephard did business.
“My friends, you would like a guided tour, yes?” The old man in the white suit came forward, directing his assistants to help us down from our mounts.
“You are German?” I asked, wondering at his accent.
“That is correct.”
“All my Mexican fantasies come true.” I told Jerry in an aside.
“Who better to guide you about the Temple of the Sun, the only authentic Mexican pyramid built in the twentieth century?” Dr. Sleephard asked, knowing that there could be no answer to this question.
“How much?” I asked.
“Seventy-five American dollars.” Came the prompt response.
“Toadsgoboad,” Jerry jostled my arm as I passed over the cash. “Those bills have Ernest Hemingway’s portrait on them!”

I Just Now Went the Other Way

The temple, a stepped pyramid approximately three hundred feet tall, was not visible from the place where we hired Dr. Sleephard and left our burros. It stood at the bottom of a small, rounded valley an eighth of mile from the arch. We followed Dr. Sleephard to this valley and were in turn followed by the old German’s assistants, each carrying a tray full of soda pop in cans, candy, and trinkets that we might wish to consider purchasing.
“I get a chill each time I approach the temple.” Dr. Sleephard confessed, eyes briefly wide open, “As if it were my first time. See, goosebumps!” He pulled back the sleeve of his jacket, but I saw no goosebumps, only a few marks suspiciously akin to old injection scars.
“When was the temple built?” Jerry asked.
“Some say as early as 1916, but another school of thought places it at 1932, but certainly no later than 1957, for that is when tourists first started coming to the site, taking with them indisputable photographic evidence of its existence.” Sleephard recited.
We reached the edge of the steep walls of the valley and looked down. The temple, painted pink, purple, and orange, rose to a height almost equal with the ground where we stood.
“Is it not magnificent?” Sleephard begged, taking off his hat and flinging it below.
“Perhaps the señors would like to celebrate their awe with a Pepsi or perhaps a small ceramic cactus?” Suggested one of the assistants.
“How do we get down?” I asked
“The Stairs of Tranquility.” Sleephard pointed. “So called because of their role in the ancient ceremony of Divergent Mindsets.”
“Uh-huh.” This time I led the way. My many years of service in the Correspondence Corps had given my legs a musculature that allowed me to reach the bottom with relatively little fatigue. I did not need to refresh myself with the Pepsi and Tylenol that were again offered to me.
“Who built this?” Jerry asked. He wasn’t much put out by the long descent either; imaginary people with removable feet usually aren’t.
“No one knows.” Sleephard intoned as mysteriously as he could.
“I do.” I informed everyone. I could see the stylized pretzel carved into the pyramid’s base.

Workingman’s Nerd

Each year it seemed that someone in Hollywood attempted to make a film out of Workingman’s Nerd, arguable Floyd Candler’s best-known novel. These efforts usually failed because of the discursive nature of the book, although occasionally it was because no one could find any movie stars willing to participate in a project with such a disjointed narrative.
The year before the bulk of our narrative takes place, however, an effort was made by the celebrated director Fran Bandage to film the impossible book. Of course, he would be using his usual stable of actors, thereby circumventing the problem that so many big stars like Wynona Ryder and James Spader had balked at: the lack of anything resembling a central role.
Bandage and writer Martina Turnip started turning the book into a screenplay in June. By August Bandage was ready to start doling out parts. The financing was to come from a group of literature-conscious rock stars.
“How are we going to film the building-of-the-pyramid scene?” Asked Scout Webbing, one of Bandage’s production assistants and an occasional actor.
“I thought claymation.” Bandage, portly, bearded, and usually wreathed in pot smoke, answered. He had rented a cabin high atop Lumbar Peak, located in the midst of Whiteman’s County, where most of the filming would take place. This is where he and Webbing now conversed.
“Claymation. That’s bold.” Webbing kneaded his pointed chin.
“Thank you.” Bandage answered. Somewhere in the room a girl, some hanger-on, laughed.
“Also expensive.” Webbing added.
“Don’t worry about the expense. With the money we save not having to worry about whether the movie makes ‘sense,’” Bandage stabbed the air with his index and middle fingers, “We’ll have plenty left over for all the visuals we want.”
Webbing mused over the crude storyboard Bandage and Turnip had worked out.
“The pyramid scene is key.” He said.
“I agree. I don’t know why it’s key, but I agree: it is the lynchpin of the whole thing.”
This was about as far as they got before the project collapsed.

Party Atmosphere

The central premise is that Gifford McCloud, head of the House of Slaw, is so intent on mastering the art of making comics that he misses out on many opportunities for sex. His friends, Prawn Digby and Lewis Boogerbear, although in full agreement with McCloud that comics are extremely cool, cannot fathom his seeming lack of a normal sex drive.
“I do have a sex drive.” He insists during a late night visit Digby and Boogerbear pay to his secret laboratory. “It’s just that don’t let it control my life.”
When pressed to reveal the nature and time of his last sexual encounter, however, McCloud uncomfortably shifts the conversation to his latest attempt at a “real” comic strip, Wicked Pussy.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the forces of nationalism are once again on the rise. Under the banner of a united continent, Arno Zeebrugge and his Vocal Front have gained control of the little-known but viral Wind Tunnel Propagation Committee. By using forged studies relating to the kinetic forces of North Sea turbulence, Zeebrugge manages to quadruple the budget for the committee. This money is used to finance the creation of a private army loyal only to Zeebrugge and the Vocal Front. Only the fortuitous arrival of Mr. Power’s Human Awareness League and its European viceroy Lincoln Strasser prevents Zeebrugge from seizing control of the Interstate Commerce Committee, which, as you could have predicted, was the next logical step in his plan for complete domination of Europe and its legacy of amoral civility.
Rita Carluvin, as sexually enticing a woman as ever wore a simple sundress and went barefoot on the white sands of Spinach Beach, catches the eye of Gifford McCloud. Strangely enough, though he begins a deeply satisfying physical relationship with her, his word does not suffer. Watching her get dressed after a hot bout of love in the windblown room with the open sliding glass doors at his uncle’s beach house, however, McCloud begins to have doubts about the worth of his comics.
“If I can both so easily fall in love and continue with the zany adventures of Hank and his friends, perhaps I’m not trying hard enough.” He asks himself. Remembering the advice of Prawn Digby, he considers refining his oral sex technique.

The Co-Ed’s Friend

Nobody expected Amber “Voodoo” McCall to reject the ways of her ancestors and live as a disreputable hippie, but that’s just because they, her parents, her friends, the people at the Apple Grove Social Organization, don’t know what real hippies are, or what they stand for. The day she starts college, Amber stops wearing the makeup her mother has so laboriously taught her to apply, and let the golden hairs on her long, luscious legs grow freely. She has not yet decided what to do about the ones that pullulate in her once-powdered armpits.
“That’s a word I thought I’d never write.” Admits the author in an all-too-frequent intrusion into the narrative. From this he goes on to detail many of his personal horrors regarding the human body, including how he went through a phase as a child in which he could not say the word “meat” because it made him nauseous. Somehow this segues into a story about the author’s Uncle Miles (one is left to assume that there is a connection) in which that unfortunate is beaten unconscious by a jealous husband.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the growth and development of the Procurementist art movement proceeds with only the forces of every major critic on the continent to stand in their way. The author apologizes for having to use the plural, but he is, as he admits, “a stickler of what grammar (he) can remember.” Aside from this intrusion, the novel moves in a fairly straightforward manner to its climax, which finds the three principal characters, Amber, Josephine, and Murray, standing in the snow outside Uncle Miles’ house watching the giant snowman slowly melt before the tower of burning bales of pot.
“I’ll never smoke that shit again.” Amber swears.
“I will.” Josephine counters. “I’ll never give it up.”
Murray glances at Josephine out of the corner of his eye. Is she joking? Over the course of the previous three hundred pages he has learned to take everything she says with a grain of salt. As for the other girl, the one who has promised to return to the ways of her ancestors, Murray is not sure. She seems genuine in her attitudes. His thoughts are interrupted by the sudden reappearance of Turk, the dog that went missing in chapter thirteen.

The Burden of Satisfaction

The project was originally conceived as a parody of soap operas, but the longer I lived with the characters the more real they became to me, until I began to care for them. Of course, at that point I could no longer subject them to the kind of callous treatment that a parody would necessarily entail, so the project ostensibly became a “real” soap opera.
The leader of the family around which the program was centered is Colonel Brady O’Loon, an alcoholic whose purpose in life seems to consist of little more than roaming about the slowly diminishing grounds of his ancestral estate, drink in hand, waiting to be asked for money by one or another of the scheming neurotics to whom he is related by either birth or marriage.
His wife, Inez, a hot-blooded Latino woman O’Loon plucked from the degradation of a battlefield brothel, plays at a career as a potter, all the while plotting to get her daughter, Orchid, married to a genuine member of royalty. The daughter, however, has plans of her own. Over the course of the ten years initially allotted to the growth and development of the show, Orchid conducts romances with, in succession, a hobo twice her age, a quadriplegic singer-songwriter in the Livingston Taylor mold, a potter whose god-like skill at the wheel puts her mother’s feeble efforts to shame, a dishwasher who is actually the son of the king of Plugrostan in disguise, and a deaf mute who dresses as a nun.
There are, of course, various peripheral characters. The O’Loon’s maid, Delvigia, has her own set of problems with her extended family, including two sons whose devotion to guns and chemical refreshment “will be the death of (her) one day,” as she frequently says. Her ultimate, shocking, actual death was intended for the show’s tenth anniversary episode. In addition, there was Dego, the loopy inventor, whose madcap antics would bring a much-needed dose of humor to what would eventually become quite a grim watching experience, as grim and pointless as life itself. Too bad I never got around to producing the show.
In keeping with the traditions of the soap opera, I wanted to have an actual soap company sponsor the show. Negotiations with Transworld Detergent Amalgamated broke down, however, because I refused to tell them exactly what would happen on each episode. They said I wouldn’t come clean.

The Cub Diction Show

“Enough of these phony shows!” Cub Diction barked, slamming his chubby fist, bristling with thick, black hairs that wouldn’t look out of place on a fly, on the desk in his office. “Let’s do a real one!”
Mahomet Bruckner, stroking his moustache as if it were a lazy cat, listened to Diction’s display of emotion and responded. He was not the chief of programming, but he had the ear of the man who was.
“Yes.” He said. “Yes, let’s do a real one. And you’ll be the host.” He pointed at Diction. “I see it all now.”
“Me?” Diction’s eyebrows, two wolverines compared to Bruckner’s cat, arched away from each other.
“Yes, I see you in that magic box. I’m going upstairs and tell Chuck.” He turned to leave.
“But I never… well, if you say so.” Diction watched Bruckner wave a reassuring hand before exiting and then turned to the window and looked down on the gray streets of New Fabulosa, wondering what he had set in motion.
Bruckner’s access to Chuck’s ear paid off: “The Cub Diction Show” went on the air within a month of that initial, inspiring outburst. The budget, modest by the standards of the day, was still more than adequate for a show in which the host say in an office chair on a completely shag carpet-lined, though otherwise bare, set.
“My first guest,” Diction said on that memorable first episode, “Is the Orange Klaxon, the costumed vigilante who has done so much to create a name for himself in this city.”
There was no applause, for “The Cub Diction Show” had no audience. The Orange Klaxon (Fulton Lake) stepped out of the hidden gap in the carpeted wall to the left of Diction and took his seat.
“Before we start,” The Orange Klaxon said, smiling, “I’d like to congratulate you on this new show. I’ve admired your work for years and I’m very happy that you’ve finally gotten the opportunity to directly demonstrate your talents to the people with your own show.”
“Well, thank you, Orange Klaxon.”
“Call me O.K.”

While Watching What I Say

I approached my speech before the Human Awareness League’s 1954 convention in Miami Beach much the same as I approached my speeches on the streets of New Fabulosa: I made little preparation other than to write down a few key words on an index card. As a respected member of the anti-clergy (to use the League’s terminology) I was told I could speak on any topic I chose. Merely to fulfill the terms of that agreement, as it did imply that I actually would have a topic, I titled my speech “Deliberations on the Nose and its Relation to the Frontiers of Human Evolution,” although I had no knowledge of whether that title would tally with anything I might say.
I dressed conservatively, as Lyndon Johnson or one of his staffers might in the first years of his administration (although the convention took place in the slack, indifferent early days of the twenty-first century), and slicked my hair down with one of the new gels developed for the space program. Mirkin Gifted, the convention’s chairman, greeted me at the hotel with an autographed portrait of Mr. Power, the League’s reclusive, enigmatic founder.
“Do you know Mr. Power personally?” I asked.
“I have that privilege, sir.” Answered Gifted, holding his chin high.
“Is he… a good man?” The League had provided me with a suite. I turned to look about at the unnecessary accumulation of furniture as I asked my question.
“Mr. Power is, as he is teaching, leading us to be, beyond good or evil.” Gifted replied smoothly. He was a smooth talker. He later became governor of South Carolina.
“What does he think of my speaking before your convention?”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” Gifted invited. “He’ll be arriving on the last day.”
“I’ll do that. I look forward to meeting him.”
But it was not to be. My speech, a rambling tale of two anthropomorphic squirrels frolicking up and down an artificial tree, interspersed with cutting observations about the mediocrity of today’s mass entertainment, was not well-received. As I was hustled out to my airport-bound can, Gifted’s goons rummaged through my bags for the portrait of Mr. Power.

Residual Massage

Residual Massage, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a euphemism for the kind of unstinting devotion to one’s own particular art, with all the attendant idiosyncrasies, that a fellow such I have displayed over the years in the teeth of lectures from knowledgeable acquaintances and every book in the library on How-Not-To-Do-It. Sentences such as the previous one are fine examples of the manifestation of this devotion. Despite all setbacks, the work must go forward!
“But, Toadsgoboad,” A young woman attending one of my impromptu lectures recently interrupted me to ask, “Where does this term ‘Residual Massage’ come from?”
“Ah, still focusing on that, are you?” I smiled slyly, like Fred Thompson scheming out the logistics of his next nap. “My dear, if you…”
“Please don’t call me ‘dear.’” The young woman sighed.
Our meeting place was a disused classroom in a condemned building on the old navy base. Nearly two dozen young people, most of them students at the nearby university, sat cross-legged on the floor before me. I looked about at their tan, smooth faces and despaired.
“Does anyone else object to being called ‘dear?’” I asked. A couple of the women raised their hands. A couple of the young men chuckled knowingly. The rest sat there patiently, waiting for me to return to the topic at hand, which wasn’t residual massage, per se, but how to build up one’s unconcern to outside influences on one’s art.
“No? Well, then let’s get back to what I was saying earlier about standards either being imposed from without or within.” I began again.
“Aren’t you yourself heavily influences by Captain Beefheart, Beachcomber, and Mister Rogers?” One curly-headed youth spoke up.
“Look, I can’t get worked up into a good flow of words with all these interruptions. Why don’t you…” The door to the classroom was flung open and several policemen and dark-suited men burst inside.
“You’ve been warned about trespassing before.” One of the men in dark suits barked. “The kids can go, but you’re coming with us.”
“Remember:” I called out as they led me away. “Unstinting devotion!”



Precious Feelings on the Barrelhead

“I can’t just snap my fingers and suddenly feel happy.” Becky let Burt know. Her voice was sharp. She had been testy all day. Burt wasn’t helping mattes.
“What if I paid you?” He suggested.
“Paid me?”
“Paid you to be happy. Or just to act happy. A cash incentive.”
“Oh, you just want me to put on an act.”
“If you act happy long enough, you’ll feel happy. It’ll be same thing.”
“Get out.” Becky pointed to the door, the back door, strangely enough.
“A cash incentive.” Burt showed her his open palms. He had read that this was sign of honesty. Maybe subconsciously she would accept his words.
“Out!” She shrieked.
Burt left. He opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the high concrete patio that overlooked the back yard. A year ago the pond had started to increase in size. He wasn’t sure why. Now it nearly engulfed the entirety of the back yard. “Soon we’ll be able to dive into it from this porch.” Burt thought. He heard the TV through the wall. “She’s just running from her problems with that damn box.” He criticized Becky silently.
There were no stairs leading down from the porch. It was surrounded on its three open sides by tall hedges. There was a gap in the hedges, however, large enough for Burt to make it over the side. Once he got his legs and torso over, the drop was only about a foot. There was no way he was going back inside the house for a while, not with Becky so unreasonable.
He walked down to the water’s edge and contemplated constructing an island in the middle of the pond. In his fantasy he built a shack on the island. He could sleep out there, have a rowboat to take back and forth. Without much shock he actually saw a rowboat the moment he thought the word. An older man, dressed in traditional outdoorsman’s garb, was rowing it towards him.
“Hello there!” The man hailed him over his shoulder, coming closer.
“Hello.” Burt replied, gathering his courage to say, “This is private property.”
“I’m a little lost.” The man said. “Is this part of Lake Fulton?”
“No, it’s…” Burt began, but was interrupted by a scream from the house. Becky stood in the open door holding a dirty frying pan.

Woolen Camaraderie

The three men were each wearing woolen shirts. Good friends since grade school, they were gathered together for the last time. Mikey was moving to Denver to work in the experimental rain forest being set up by the Department of Labor.
“Probably won’t see you guys ever again.” He said matter-of-factly. There would be no tears. These were three men who had cried too much over trivialities in their youth to now go to pieces over even something as supposedly wrenching as a permanent parting of ways.
“That’s what my ex-wife promised,” Jack cracked. “But, hell, I ran into her at the bra store just last week.”
“What were you doing at the bra store?” Flip asked with a laugh. He glanced at Mikey, who grinned.
“Just looking around.” Jack answered coolly. “But you know, I think we should take stock of Mikey’s leaving.”
“Oh, god.” Mikey groaned.
“We should. We’ve been friends for thirty years and not the group is finally breaking up.”
“We should have broken up twenty years ago.” Flip observed. He hadn’t said anything, but he resented the wearing of the woolen shirt. He felt like an outdoorsman, when he was the furthest thing from one.
“What do you mean?” Jack looked shocked.
“I mean we’re retarded developmentally, and in part it’s due to this infantile clinging to each other.”
“You told me once, and I believe you meant it, that friendship was the most valuable treasure a man could possess.”
“Let’s not get sappy.” Mikey begged. He looked worried.
“I must have been stoned.” Flip dismissed Jack’s recollection.
“We’ve been a part of each other’s lives for thirty years and I think that…”
A knock on the door of the shack halted Jack in mid-sentence.
“Who is it?” Flip asked in a bold voice.
“It’s your father.” Answered the old man outside. Entering the shack, Flip’s father chuckled at the sight of his son’s long-time friends. “I can’t believe you three still hang out. What do you have to say after all this time?”

Grizzly Purse

The purse held the hand-carved key to Dinkum Tooter’s boat as well as a memory book of inspiring images and a set of ritual totems. The outside of the purse was decorated with cowrie shells and fox teeth forming the shape of a camel, symbolizing travel. To Dinkum Tooter, the purse was as vital a part of the upcoming journey as his supplies of food and even the boat itself.
Dinkum Tooter had not intended to fall in love. He met Roberta in the final weeks of construction on the boat. Perversely, for the first time in his life he felt the overwhelming forces of romantic attraction just as he was preparing to leave his homeland forever. Of course she must come with him!
“Although the boat is really designed for one, I’m sure we could make room.” He added to Roberta immediately after proposing that she join him.
“Oh, Dinkum, I don’t know.” She whined, adjusting her psychedelic-type headband.
“Roberta, I love you.” Dinkum Tooter the bear said seriously. “But I’m committed to this journey. All my work this past year has been for this.”
Then Roberta saw the purse.
“I love it!” She exclaimed.
“Thank you. I made it myself.”
“You made it? Fantastic!” She slipped it over her shoulder. “This is as good as anything you’d find at Taurine Seasons, my favorite head shop.” She opened the purse, to Tooter’s irritation, though of course he did not betray such an emotion. “What have you got in here?”
“The key to the boat, some totems related to my religion’s rituals, and this book, containing pictures of things important to me. There’s a picture of you in here.” Tooter managed to get the purse away from Roberta, using the pretext of removing the book to show her the picture.
“That’s sweet.” She said. “But don’t tell me you intend to use this purse yourself?”
“Yes. Why do you think I made it?”
“I assumed it was a crafts project, like the boat.”
“Tooter’s Tater is not a ‘crafts’ project.” Tooter was stern, but not aggressive.
“But, Dinkum, men don’t carry purses!” Roberta laughingly remonstrated.
“Roberta, I am not a ‘man,’ and for a hippie wannabe, you are remarkably hidebound.”

Double Cricket Correct

Florida expressed trepidation, but Reinhardt ignored her. He opened the door and led the way into the Double Cricket’s office.
“May I help you?” An extremely wrinkled, but youthfully coiffed, woman in a pale green cardigan looked up at the couple.
“We’re here to see the Double Cricket.” Reinhardt told the woman.
“He has a name, you know.” The woman informed Reinhardt, a man in his late thirties with a gray moustache.
“I’m sorry.” Reinhardt quickly apologized. Florida had nudged him.
“Master Zeronose isn’t too busy this morning.” The woman said, feeding a piece of paper into an electric typewriter. “What do you want to see him about?”
“We want to buy some land in the styracosphere.” Reinhardt calmly said the words that Florida feared to be heard.
“OK.” The woman pushed a button on her desk. “Master Zeronose?” She spoke into a funnel at the end of a flexible rod.
“Yes, Andrea?” The voice that answered was ancient, precise, and lofty.
“I’m sending a man and woman back.”
“Very well.”
Andrea gestured to Reinhardt and Florida to enter the Double Cricket’s private chambers.
Sitting behind a heavy, old-fashioned desk was a monstrous creature wearing spectacles and a sort of vest with holes in it for each of the creature’s six legs. The chair Master Zeronose (for it was he) sat in had a padded recess in its seat for the Double Cricket’s abdomen to repose in. This enabled Zeronose to sit upright, a posture necessary for him to conduct business with people like Reinhardt and Florida.
“Good morning,” The Double Cricket greeted the couple. “Redos Zeronose.” He announced, extending a gloved “hand” to them each in turn. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m Bill Reinhardt. This is my girlfriend Florida.” Reinhardt felt no fear or uncertainty. A look of wisdom behind the Double Cricket’s spectacles reassured him. Florida, on the other hand, was afraid. She could not look away from her own reflection, multiplied a hundredfold in the eyes of Zeronose. “We would like to buy some land in the styracosphere.”
“Indeed. And why come to me?” The Double Cricket asked.
“You are a real estate agent, aren’t you?” Reinhardt asked in return.
“No, I’m a cartographer.”

Am I the Only One that Disagrees with Hud’s Judgment of its Title Character?

Redos Zeronose had lunch that day with his friend Nilsson Nils from the building next door. As they are they discussed films. Hud came up.
“I liked it,” Zeronose said, “As a film, but what irritated me was the way, at the very end, just in case you’re still undecided about the character of Hud, they throw this at you: ‘He dodged the draft! In World War II, of all things, the most unambiguous (supposedly) of all wars!’ It’s bullshit.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but you’ve got to remember the period in which that film was made.” Nils was eating charbroiled toes. Of what animal, I do not know. “Vietnam hadn’t yet become a quagmire and the public’s consciousness wasn’t ready to forgive draft evasion.”
“It’s a cheap way to hammer the point home. First of all, it’s just tacked on at the end, like ‘Oh, maybe the audience is too stupid to figure out that this is a selfish character; we’ll make it clear with this bullshit about the war;’ and second, who cares if he avoided going to war? I know I would.” Zeronose took a long swallow of wine.
“We know the character has some values, because he reproaches himself over the attempted rape of Patricia O’Neal.” Nils, who saw no reason to get so worked up over a perceived error in a film, said this merely to say something. He wanted Zeronose to calm down so they could move on to discussing what a flop Cloverfield was.
Before they could do so, however, another man approached the table. He touched Zeronose on the shoulder.
“Master Zeronose!” The man hailed the Double Cricket with a smile. “What are you so excited about? I heard you say ‘bullshit’ clear across the room. Never known you to use language like that before.”
“That’s because you don’t hang around with me enough.” Zeronose replied. “Fulton Lake, meet Nilsson Nils. Nilsson, Fulton Lake.” The Double Cricket pointed back and forth between the two men with his butter knife. As they shook hands, Zeronose explained their occupations to each other. Nils was a paleontologist; Lake an entomologist.
“Would you like to join us?” Nils offered.
“No thank you.” Lake replied. “I’m a bit occupied.” He rolled his eyes in the direction of his table, where sat as good-looking a woman as one might find in one’s imagination.

Garlic Prunes

Despite the presence of so beautiful a woman, Fulton Lake ordered garlic prunes for dessert.
“You’ll love them” He assured Princess Jalabry, his luncheon companion.
“I doubt that.” The princess replied cynically. Lake chuckled at he stubbornness. “So tell me,” She said, putting her pointed elbows on the table. Her large gold bracelets jangled down from her wrists. “Why are you so interested in the Dinkum Tooter documentary?”
“Two reasons.” Lake was ready for her. “First, I too am interested in leaving the planet and traveling to another world. A flying boat would be ideal for me, since I’m afraid of airplanes. Of course, I can’t do such a thing—not now, anyway, because of my work.”
“And the second reason?” Jalabry, daughter of Cowhuto, prince of Sarto, asked.
“From what I’ve read, I understand that Tooter is a follower of Loath Procurement, that weird religion. I’m also interested in that.”
“Why?”
“It fascinates me.” Lake raised his eyebrows to show how honest he was being. “I suppose as a follower of Raabu you find Loath Procurement heretical.”
“Please, Mr. Lake, I’m college educated. I have learned to appreciate the beliefs of others. I wouldn’t be involved with the documentary otherwise.”
Fulton Lake smiled into the princess’ eyes. She was not only beautiful, she was exceptionally intelligent. In another life he might have afforded himself the luxury of falling in love with her, but his duties as the Orange Klaxon were paramount. They precluded such luxuries. As if to remind him of the reality of his situation, his assistant, Jack Bonard, broke in at that moment on the communicator strapped to his wrist.
“Call for Fulton Lake.” Bonard’s voice came over the fancy watch, accompanied by the innocuous logo for Floozle Industries, Lake’s ostensible employer.
“Damn.” Lake swore.
“Other interests?” Jalabry asked with a smile.
The garlic prunes arrived as Lake rose from the table. “I’m sorry.” He said. “I must take this call in private. Help yourself to the prunes.” As he walked away the princess pushed the platter to the far end of the table.

Into the Zee Box

Following Orange Klaxon’s instructions, Jack Bonard, now known as Shovelman, raced to the fabulous Zee Box, a technological marvel located in one corner of Orange Klaxon’s operations room, next to the kitchenette. Costumed as Shovelman, Bonard climbed inside the Zee Box and manipulated the controls as he had been taught by his employer. In moments he was peering through the heliscope at a small house somewhere on the outskirts of the city.
After verifying the house by means of a heliconic scan, Shovelman zoomed in closer, passing through a wall and emerging in the small den. The man of the house sat before the television in a threadbare white t-shirt, his swollen tick’s abdomen distending the material. He was unshaven and bleary-eyed. Shovelman threw the engager lever, subpolarizing the heliscope. Now he was able to reach through it into the space before him. His hand, gloved in green, slowly moved towards the back of the man’s head.
“Halt!” Came a sharp command from somewhere to the left. Shovelman snatched his hand back and swiveled to face the trouble. In the hallway that led to the more intimate portion of the domicile stood an alien, clearly recognizable by his silver and blue garments and his turtle-like head.
“What are you doing here?” The alien demanded. “Identify yourself!”
“I am Shovelman.” Bonard said boldly, though inwardly feeling foolish. “I am the Orange Klaxon’s assistant.”
“Well, Shovelman, if that’s true, then you ought to know that this man is part of our agricultural project in this sector.” The alien approached the man and cradled his bulk protectively.
“The aliens are my friends.” The man managed to enunciate.
“This man has betrayed you.” Shovelman replied. “He has attended a ceremony at the local House of Raabu.”
It was hard for the alien’s face to register shock, as he had no eyelids or brows. Still, he did his best, opening his mouth and looking down at the man.
“Subby, you didn’t!” He lowed.
“They made me feel guilty. Through the TV. The man explained shame-facedly.
“You naughty boy.” The alien scolded gently. “Only one thing for it.” He said, drawing a weapon from the holster on his hip.

Hearkening Cracker Creak

The bell indicating that the poisonous air of earth had been replaced with the mixture of gases native to the planet of Frusal sounded. At this signal Deems Cracker, a level 4 with the alien patrol, removed his helmet. He stepped from the airlock into the corridor that led to the flight deck of the ship.
“How’d it go, Deems?” Mugey Limpit, a fellow level 4, asked.
“Fair.” Cracker was tired. He wanted to make his report to the commander and then take a nap. He sensed, however, that his reply had been inadequate. To be polite, he added, “The harvest will be a good one.”
“Excellent.” Limpit, a younger alien, was easily excited by the details of the patrol’s missions. “They’re serving charbroiled toes in the commissary.” This, too, was a source of excitement.
“OK.” Cracker nodded, smiling. He continued on to the flight deck. There he found Tod Mackamo, the commander.
“Any problems, Cracker?” Mackamo asked on seeing him.
“No.” Cracker replied. The Frusal patrol was not exactly military in nature. Relations between the different levels of rank were informal.
“Good. We have your day report. Go on and get some sleep.”
“OK. Thanks.” Deems Cracker waved wearily and headed back the way he had come, towards the dormitory units. He had just begun undoing his boots when the alarm rang out. With a Frusal swear word for shit, Cracker snapped the boots back in place and returned to the flight deck.
“Cracker,” Ordered Mackamo, “Man the cosmograph.”
“What’s going on?” Cracker asked as he seated himself at the cosmograph next to Hedwy Bruar at the delta wave emitter.
“That damn bear.” Bruar replied.
“What?”
“That bear in the flying boat. He actually managed to slip past our lixanon net.”
Cracker said nothing. He had suspected that management had placed too much faith in the net. Stopping the bear from exploring space would be harder than they had thought.
“Ready the zombopones.” Mackamo ordered.

A Big Stock in Drop

“What’s going on?” Roberta screamed as she lurched into the wheelhouse of Tooter’s Tater.
“We’re under attack!” Dinkum Tooter yelled. He clutched at the wheel of his little homemade boat and glanced frantically into the various mirrors that showed him the pursuing Frusal ship.
“Who’s attacking us?” The young woman in the knitted vest and bell-bottom jeans asked.
“Aliens. In that ship.” Tooter spun the wheel wildly. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep dodging whatever it is they’re firing at us.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do?”
Tooter turned to Roberta. “Maybe there is.” He said. “You take the wheel…”
“Me?”
The bear placed her hands on the wheel. “Just steer back and forth like crazy. Zig-zag. I’ve got to get my purse.”
“Your purse?”
Tooter was gone only about a minute, but Roberta was nearly in a panic by the time he returned.
“Take the wheel!” She screamed.
“No, you’re doing fine. Keep it up while I get set.” Tooter dumped the contents on his purse onto the navigation ledge. The totems he carried; the toy car; the plastic goat statue; the anthropomorphic bean figure; the wooden beads on a knotted string, these things he now arranged on a piece of paper. With a marker he outlined them each and then drew another outline around the four outlines. Saying a Procurement word catalyst, he flung the paper out the window.
“And?!” Roberta demanded furiously.
“Give me the wheel.” Tooter pushed her away. “And now we wait.”
“Wait for what? Death in space?” Roberta stared out the window at the tiny piece of paper drifting away.
“Wait for my servants of Loath Procurement to do their job.”
“Oh my god!” Roberta’s voice was hushed as she watched.
“Your god has nothing to do with it.” Tooter replied. He could see in the mirror what she saw.

Your Expert Functions Alone

Burmese Spatula, summoned from the aesthetic aether, went to work immediately. Transformed from Dinkum Tooter’s hastily marked piece of paper into his third form, Burmese Spatula appeared as two squat cylinders of red bound together across their bottoms by a long flat board from which depended five orange feet. From the top of one of the cylinders protruded his head, a lordly dome, blue and bald, that gnashed a thousand tiny teeth at the oncoming Frusal ship. From the other cylinder sprouted a large tree of some celery-like vegetation. Although initially comical-looking, there was something dreadfully menacing about that big celery, especially the myriad black objects that hung from its branches.
“What is that?” Tob Mackamo asked aloud, his turtle-like beak open wide.
“It just appeared out of nowhere!” One of the interns shouted.
“Tob!” Deems Cracker cried. “It’s firing something at us!”
“Fire the rest of the zombopones!” Mackamo commanded.
The black objects hanging from the celery were whipped towards the alien ship while the zombopone projectiles were handily caught by two immense webbed hands that emerged from Burmese Spatula’s sides. As fast as he could stuff them in his mouth he gobbled them down. The black objects, meanwhile, attached themselves to the hull of the Frusal ship and tore into it.
“You and your monopoly!” Deems Cracker vented his anger at the way his whole life had turned out. He directed this outburst at Mackamo, whom he didn’t actually blame; it’s just that he was the only authority figure present.
“What?” Mackamo began to say just as the ship tore apart, ending both their mission and their lives.
“Did you guys get that?” Dinkum Tooter asked the members of the film crew onboard.
“I think so.” The director replied hazily.
“Thanks for helping out, by the way.” Roberta snapped.
“You know we can’t interfere in any way. Rules of the documentary, you know.” The director reminded her.
Tooter waved goodbye to Burmese Spatula before the latter vanished.

Dodd’s Lean

The supposition that Dodd is lean lingered in the minds of the support staff for some time after Mr. Habris, whose father had first made the supposition, and who had passed it on to his acquaintances among the support staff, had been moved to a more prestigious route with the vending machine company. As Wolf Pettish advanced on the coffee dispenser, coin in hand, like a farmer heading for the chicken coop, he kept up the discussion of Dodd’s supposed leanness with Mike Fourier, who was selecting a bag of Funyons from among the salty snacks on display.
“I don’t see how he could possibly be lean.” Pettish said. He spun his coin down into the machine’s tiny mouth and punched the button for a large, dark coffee. He did not hear Fourier’s reply because he was bent down, checking to see that the paper cup had fallen properly into its slot, ready to receive every drop of coffee that Pettish had paid for. “What?” He asked as he straightened up, for he knew that Fourier must have said something.
Fourier was nowhere to be seen. Several of the tables in the break room held people, but Pettish could find Fourier at none of them.
“Where’d he go?” He asked aloud, expecting no answer and getting none.
The machinery within the coffee dispenser lurched to a halt with a noise that was Pettish’s signal that his coffee was done. Carefully he raised the little window and removed his chosen product. For his amusement, as a valuable customer, a cartoon had been printed around the circumference of the paper cup. Pettish held the cup up to his eyes and turned it about, reading the cartoon. It was one he had seen before (there were only five varieties), yet he read it anyway.
“‘Well, then you’re the hypocrite!’” He read the final panel aloud with a little chuckle, lowering the cup to blow a cooling breath on the surface of the coffee.
Fourier reentered the break room, shaking the upturned bag of Funyons into his mouth.
“Getting every last crumb, eh?” Pettish called out to Fourier.
“Yeah.” Fourier laughed in acknowledgement.
“You’ll never get lean that way.” Pettish joked.

Cube Kings of Old Bologna Cologne

Every effort had been made to ensure that Mr. Habris’ induction into the Kingdom was in strict accord with the ancient traditions. Of course he was made to shave his ridiculous moustache (“You can grow it back later,” Jessie told him). His tools were placed upside down in his bucket caddy. His black shoelaces had been replaced with white ones. On his left arm, however, he wore not the traditional band of gold cloth, but a strip of yellow rag held on by a safety pin.
“I don’t like it.” Oxley grumbled to Geefus after Mr. Habris had been led into the induction chamber deep within the most ancient part of the vending machine company’s headquarters.
“It’ll be OK.” Geefus was tired of hearing it. “My god,” he thought. “Am I going to be that way when I’m that old?” The two men stood on either side of the chamber’s entrance, on ceremonial guard duty during the induction. As Oxley continued to grumble, moving on to more disparate areas of discontent, Geefus fell to calculating the difference in his and Oxley’s ages, eventually concluding that Oxley really wasn’t that much older. This made his earlier thought all the more frightening, as if there were some arcane threshold approaching, across which he would suddenly find himself in senile territory.
“When I was twenty, for example.” He patiently explained to himself, “Oxley was thirty-five. Not a big difference, really.” Although when he thought about it more, he realized that he found the twenty-year-olds he knew at the company to be silly simpletons whose lives were devoted to trivialities.
“Wasting their lives on video games and music generated by machines.” Geefus was shocked to hear Oxley say. The older man’s bottom lip protruded like a weathered window box and his sagging jowls were covered with white stubble. Geefus looked away, trying to think of something positive about the younger men.
The door opened. Out stepped Mr. Habris, accompanied by his induction sponsor, Dieter Templeton. The latter clapped Mr. Habris on the shoulder as he drew the door shut behind him.
“Tradition.” Templeton said heartily. “That’s what it’s all about.”
“I can’t wait to grow my moustache back.” Mr. Habris muttered uneasily as he rubbed the naked skin under his nose.


Sensationalist Rabble Engender Rendition

Each expensive firebolt that Mr. Power launched at the Orange Klaxon was neatly disarmed by the latter in a thrillingly display of heroic prowess. As the two supermen battled each other in the deserted courtyard between the Physics and Chemistry buildings, a crowd of onlookers gathered. Mostly composed of members of the Human Awareness League, the crowd yet contained a number of the Orange Klaxon’s fans. These last kept their thoughts to themselves, however, as Mr. Power’s followers discussed the ongoing fray.
“Those firebolts cost as much as a brand new Volvo each!” One person gasped in awe.
“At the rate he’s using them, we’ll be selling cookies throughout the coming year to raise the funds to pay for them.” Someone else prophesied.
“Shut your mouth, you long-winded fellow!” A third man ordered on hearing what he felt to be an opinion disloyal to his leader.
“They’re Mr. Power’s to do with as he likes.” The previous speaker admitted. “And I’ll willingly sell cookies to enable him to buy more. I’m not questioning his use of them. I’m just saying it’s going to take a lot of cookies to replace them.”
“I’d die to sell cookies for Mr. Power.” The third man orated, clutching a small banner bearing the Human Awareness League’s logo, an orange trapezoid inside of which was a stylized image of Mr. Power’s head.
“Come on, Orange Klaxon,” silently wished a young man in a parka, “Use your skullkicker unit!”
As if telepathically divining the wished of his fans, as expressed by the example above, the Orange Klaxon cried out, “You’ve expended a lot of force, Mr. Power! Let’s see if you can handle this!” The costumed vigilante then activated his aforementioned skullkicker unit, sending a wall of energy towards the bald man in the black turtleneck sweater.
As Mr. Power struggled to maintain his stance using a diverter cone of his own design, he noted the faces of those in the crowd. The energy from the skullkicker was causing them pain. Some were beginning to collapse. Exploding one more firebolt, this time just in front of where he stood, Mr. Power was able to run away. As the Orange Klaxon searched for his vanished adversary, Shovelman drove up in the new Klaxonmobile, angry at having missed the action.

Fey Wizard’s Jackpot Revealed

An illustrated book, purportedly created by the madwoman living in the bunker, was credited to Desmondella, a fictional character appearing sporadically throughout its own pages. The book was titled Radio Specific Homo, and its introduction into the Shiffertik Household was a source of much anxiety to Burdon Shiffertik, the Household’s current alpha male.
“It disturbs me that this book has not been published by a reputable publisher.” Burdon confessed to Morfek, the holy man whom the Household had relied on for counsel for some years now.
“Why not ban it from the compound?” Morfek suggested wonderingly.
“I am loath to do so when I think of the low esteem in which my predecessor’s predecessor, Hyram the Censor, is today held.” Burdon slopped a measure of brandy into a heavy tumbler and held the drink just under his nose.
“Have you read the book yourself?” Morfek asked.
“Part of it. I stood over young Jeffrey’s shoulder as he perused it.” Burdon swallowed the brandy in one gulp, biting down hard afterwards. “It’s actually most diverting, surprisingly enough. And that’s,” He paused as Queen Anne, the Household’s dominant cat, entered the chamber. “What’s so damn frustrating about it. If it’s as good as I suspect it is, why has it been ‘self-published,’ instead of being put out by one of the great publishing houses?”
“Perhaps the madwoman has no contacts with those establishments.” The bearded old man put forth the supposition.
“‘Madwoman.’” Burdon scoffed. “I put little credence in that theory.”
“Really?” Morfek shifted his staff from his right hand to his left. “I consider it quite likely that the madwoman is the author and illustrator of this rather remarkable…”
The holy man’s observations were cut short by the entry of young Jeffrey into the room. “Did Queen Anne come in here?” The boy asked in his little girl’s voice.
“She’s right there.” Burdon pointed to the regal feline lying on the rug before the fireplace. The boy thanked the head of the Household and approached the cat. He picked it up and took it away, speaking in baby talk to it. After he left, Burdon said gravely, “The putative heir.”

Mullet Affinities

Some of the boys from Mullet Affinities, that sterling company, were sitting around grousing about things in general.
“I try.” Grupnall groaned. “Lord knows I try.”
“I don’t know why you bother.” Koblenz replied. “I’ve been trying for forty years and it’s never gotten me anywhere.”
“Man in the paper says we’re not trying hard enough.” Dribbet summarized what he had just read in the Minskytown Garland as he crumpled the paper contemptuously.
“Not trying hard enough?” Grupnall repeated. “My god, how much harder do I have to try?” He held up his hands to his co-workers. “Look at my hands. I used to have beautiful hands. This girl I used to date said she’d never seen such soft, pretty hands on a boy.”
“I got news for you.” Koblenz said. “You’re not a boy anymore either.”
“I know that. All I got to do is stagger to the toilet each morning to know that.”
“It also says in the paper that we eat too much meat.” Dribbet announced.
Both Grupnall and Koblenz flapped their hands at Dribbet as if they were shooing away a cat from a fresh-baked loaf of bread and made noises like “Awhh” and “Bahh.”
Interrupting their session around the tiny table in the middle of the workroom floor, Miss Amerine, a vision of daintiness in her spotless white sundress and anachronistic hat, emerged from behind a stack of unsold merchandise and approached the three men.
“Excuse me,” She said in a voice as clear and resonant as a firmly bowed violin string. “I’m looking for Mr. Willoughby.”
Koblenz was the first to speak. Dribbet had contemplated answering, but decided that there was no point. Grupnall was determined to answer, but wanted to say something suggestive and clever. While he desperately tried to think of something, Koblenz simply said, “Through that door,” pointing the way.
“Thank you.” Miss Amerine smiled. Her teeth were as white as the whole milk that had fostered their clean, strong, perfectly straight development. She walked away, calf muscles proclaiming that this was no idle girl, pampered and spoiled, but one that knew the value of exercise.

The Novelty Livestock that Trashed Checkbook’s Ruins

Only a point of pride kept me working on the novel after it had become all too obvious that my audience had abandoned me. My previous book, Pygmy Rhino, had disappeared into the void like objectivity at one’s seventh birthday party.
“What’s the current one called?” A visitor to the cabaña asked.
“Overdraft.” I was taking a break from my place behind the desk. The visitor, a man said to be researching writers’ methods, had been invited by my wife.
“Try to appear eccentric.” She had advised me. So, I sat in an overcoat and fedora on the studio couch, sipping peppermint tea and flashing the drawing on my left hand (a rabbit in a bowl) at my visitor while answering his questions.
“Sounds intriguing.” He lied. “What’s it about?”
“Well…” I drawled, looking to the framed portrait of Robert Benchley on the wall behind my desk for help. “It’s really about my understanding of other people. You see, when Custer Underfund came home from work that Thursday and saw that Dinkum Tooter’s boat was gone, he fell into a deep depression. Now, I don’t actually know anyone named Custer Underfund, but I can imagine what it must be like for a man like that, a poor loser trapped in a dead-end job whose only outlet is a homemade game of fantasy. I’m not really a ‘people person.’” I finished rather lamely.
“I see.” My visitor nodded, his eyes on the varnished wooden floor of my “office.”
Despite my lack of people skills I helped him out.
“Did you want to ask me about my working methods?” I suggested.
“Oh, yes. Please.”
“Well…” I drawled, looking to the framed portrait of Robert Benchley on the wall behind my desk for help. “Basically what I do is come up with a batch of titles and then I write a one-page story based on each title, trying to make them link together into a ‘novel’ as I go. I keep writing until I have a 40,000-word thing and that way I can legally claim that it is a novel. See?”
“Yes, I see.” He glanced at the door.
“Lately, however, I’m considering just going for it and writing a really long piece.”

I Faked a Thousand Pumpkins

In violation of the founding principles of Minskytown, a significant number of the population was leaving. Loaded into large, genetically engineered, biological conveyances, the emigrants had already exited the box in which their former town was located and were traversing the wilderness outside. In one of the vehicles in the great train a man reiterated the reasons for the migration.
“After all, if this Toadsgoboad fellow can come in from another world, why can’t we go out into the worlds beyond?” He told the reporter sitting before him.
“How can you be so certain that this Toadsgoboad exists?” Asked the reporter. “After all, the government has it on the authority of Custer Underfund himself…”
“Listen, we’re no longer under the authority of Custer Underfund. He’s history. Besides which, my cousin met Toadsgoboad while he was in Minskytown. Got his picture taken with him.”
“What did your cousin tell you about him?”
“He said he was a great man, everything you’d expect from what you read about him.”
Flattered though I am by the words of the anonymous man above, I must make it clear that I do not remember his cousin ad certainly do not recall having posed for a picture with a stranger. Of course, I feel slightly ashamed at being the supposed inspiration for so many of Minskytown’s residents leaving their homes, but one can never be sure how people will interpret one’s works. My only responsibility is to do what I do and to do as much of it as possible. In this way, maybe one day I’ll get it right.
“What happened to Custer Underfund?” A redneck version of Heather Locklear asked me after having consumed this story up to the point just before she asked me her question.
“I regret to say I have no more information on this person. He and the world he lived in are now beyond the purlieus of my concern. I’m sorry.” I added as she gathered her books and stomped huffily out of the lecture hall.
The remainder of the students, perhaps expecting more in the way of spectacle than had been presented so far, remained in their seats, watching me. I scratched my head and smoothed my eyebrows. Taking a calming breath, I cleared away the texts and illustrations littering the countertop and set up a small black machine in their place.
“I shall require musical accompaniment for this next demonstration.” I informed the precious young people. “Imagine The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady together with Trout Mask Replica, garnished with tabla and sitar.”
Leaving my audience to their imagination, I cranked the little wheel on the end of the machine’s nose, producing the following obfuscation.
Friday Mr. Dybbukus, emerging from a cloud of steam emitted by a small black machine, followed the long-haired killer past the ice cream store where most of the town’s children were gathered and into Post-Annuit’s, a modernist retailer with a dubious fascist affiliation. John Scofield’s new album was prominently on display just within the entrance and, it must be admitted, it was this that distracted Mr. Dybbukus and made him lose the trail of the long-haired killer.
“Not just that advertising display alone.” Mr. Dybbukus countered the charge in a recent BBC rebuttal. “At the same time that I found myself confronted with John Scofield’s pleasant visage, I was also hit by the fantastic smell of fresh, hot Chinese food.”
Where this alleged food smell came from is unknown. The manager on duty that day, Alphonso Deprex, swore to the Board of Inquiry that there was no food, Chinese or otherwise, being cooked within the confines of the store on the day when Mr. Dybbukus threw his little fit at having lost the trail.
“My sole purpose in life!” The be-hatted Dybbukus cried, throwing up his clenched fists to the imaginary god above.
“It was most embarrassing.” Deprex, the wearer of a shiny, tightly formed moustache, confessed to the Board of Inquiry.
Rabberson, a senior member of the Board, agreed. As he reflected afterwards to a colleague, “It certainly must be difficult to maintain one’s poise in the face of such a display.”
“Post-Annuit’s is known for their bold advertising.” Replied the colleague, a retired admiral, evidently confused as to what display Rabberson was talking about.
Later, Mr. Dybbukus consoled himself by sitting down to a vegetable potpie and attempting to draw a picture of the long-haired killer. He made three or four attempts, depending on how you looked at it, before becoming as close to satisfied as he was going to get. He titled the last picture “Aramis Televick,” for this was what he suspected to be the long-haired killer’s name, and filed the other drawings away between the pages of a book by Newton Minow. He took his picture and his empty potpie container into the kitchen.
“What do you think of this?” He asked Conrad, the grad student boarding with him. Mr. Dybbukus showed the young man the drawing.
“You drew this?”
“Yes. Just now.”
“It’s pretty good.” Conrad judged. “What are you going to do with it?” He asked, handing the picture back.
“I don’t really know. I thought about buying a frame.”
“Well…” Conrad finished the orange Dreamsicle he had been eating. “Before you go spend all that money, why don’t you submit your drawing to the Cartoon Character Contest down at the old mill?”
“Cartoon Character Contest?” Mr. Dybbukus asked. He had clearly never heard of such a thing.
“Sure. I think it’s good enough to win first prize.” Conrad was serious. He knew nothing about art, being a chemistry student working towards a PhD.
“Where is this contest at now?” Mr. Dybbukus betrayed his usually deeply hidden southern heritage with the use of that “now.”
“The old mill.”
“The old mill.” Mr. Dybbukus repeated uncertainly.
“You know, down by the big river.” Conrad’s fingers made a gesture like running water. “Next to the sock factory.”
“Oh, I think I know where you’re talking about. Used to be a fish place down there called the Hungry Crabber.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about that.” Conrad hadn’t lived in the area long. He was from the north, a place Mr. Dybbukus tried desperately to make people assume he was from.
That afternoon Mr. Dybbukus heeded Conrad’s advice and took his drawing down to the old mill. He was surprised to see what a big deal this Cartoon Character Contest was. There was a large banner hanging over the disused water wheel proclaiming the contest’s existence and nearly a hundred cars parked outside the old stone building.
“I’d like to submit this drawing.” Mr. Dybbukus told the obese woman sitting behind the folding table just inside the door.
“Take a form and fill it out. There’s a twenty dollar entry fee.”
“Twenty dollars!” Mr. Dybbukus thought. He had had not suspicion that there would be an entry fee, much less a twenty dollar one. He said nothing, however, took the form, and sat down at one of the many folding table in the room. He filled it out, but before signing his name to the form, he checked the contents of his wallet. Apparently, twenty dollars was the extent of his finances.
“Hey, buddy,” He asked a man sitting two chairs over, also filling out a form. “What’s the grand prize?”
“If you win, your cartoon character will be added to the cast of Give Me Your Dough and you’ll be paid ten thousand dollars.” The man told Mr. Dybbukus. He was unpleasant to look at and Mr. Dybbukus hoped that he wouldn’t have to engage in further conversation with him. He had found out what he wanted to know.
Mr. Dybbukus returned to his little red automobile with a hopeful outlook. The winner of the contest would be announced in two weeks. Surely he could keep from killing himself that long.
Back at the cabaña, Conrad, having drank the triphonoglycoline, felt the chains of inhibition evaporate like so much steam from a small black machine. He ransacked Mr. Dybbukus’ private quarters for valuables and anything that would increase his information about this mysterious man from whom he rented his room. For a year now he had lived in Mr. Dybbukus’ house, but, now that he came to think of it (and thinking was coming very hard indeed under the influence of the triphonoglycoline), he had only for the first time laid eyes on Mr. Dybbukus that morning.
“Strange that I shouldn’t have noticed that until now.” Conrad said aloud as he dumped the contents of Mr. Dybbukus’ cuff-link case on the bed and swept the assorted cuff-links into the pockets of his pajamas, and giggling insanely.
What was this? Conrad spied a leather-bound journal hidden between the boxes of Monopoly and Easy Money. Surely this little item would be full of insight into the would-be cartoon character creator. He tucked the journal under his arm and climbed out the window. Even in his chemically altered state, his keen graduate student’s mind had figured out the best way to ensure that the theft would be blamed on an intruder. Midnight found him sleeping off the effects of the chemical in a clump of weeds under the Earl Hugson Memorial Bridge.
This bridge, later to be destroyed by the Frusal warlord Pectus during his invasion of the district, was the site of an unusual ceremony on Saturday morning. Dave Hugson, son of the late legislator, read a proclamation before a group of about fifty people welcoming the Green Dog Production Company to town and wishing them well in the making of their new film. Everyone applauded. Hugson posed for a photograph with a representative of the company and traffic, much to Aramis Televick’s relief, began moving again.
“What’s this film going to be about?” Televick asked his companion, Delia Harbor, as he put the car in drive.
“Well, you heard the title, Taxacter’s Limbo.” Delia said this as if it explained everything.
“I heard it, but I don’t know what it means.” Televick said evenly. He thought he was being amazingly calm, considering how badly Delia was annoying him. He drove with his knee while he adjusted his ponytail.
“How long have you been in town?” Delia asked.
“I’ve lived here almost a year now.” Televick turned the car onto the road that would take them to the town’s small airpor.
“And no one has mentioned Taxacter?” Delia was incredulous.
“No one, Delia. Until you came along.”
Delia sighed.
“Taxacter was a killer.” She told Televick.
“Indeed.”
“Earl Hugson was the district attorney who caught Taxacter and put him in jail. He later became a state senator. That bridge back that was named for him.”
“And they’re making a movie about the killer?” Televick sounded confused. However, his frustration in hunting for a parking space may have been affecting his tone.
“Well, you’ve got to understand, the people at the time formed a romantic fascination with Taxacter…”
“That was his name, Taxacter?” Televick interrupted.
“Yes, Chris Taxacter. They made him into a kind of folk hero because the people he killed were all bad people in the area. He’s become a kind of legend.”
“Bad people.” Televick scoffed. He pulled into a space between a white can and a dune buggy. “Nice.” He commented on spying the latter vehicle.
“Well, they were. Apparently.” Delia added, realizing that she, too, had been influenced by the legend over the years.
“What happened to him?” Televick asked.
“He escaped. I guess that’s why the movie is going to be called Taxacter’s Limbo.”
“I guess.” Televick agreed, now thoroughly uninterested in the subject. “You ready?” He asked.
Delia said that she was. Together they left the car and walked to the airport terminal.
It was only about ten minutes later that Suteo Cuetik stepped off his plane and into the terminal. Being a puppet, he would not normally be able to walk under his own power, but a special device called a manostano, which he was utilizing, negated this limitation.
“Been waiting long?” He asked Aramis Televick and Delia Harbor, meeting the two in the middle of the terminal. He shook hands with both.
“We just got here.” Televick replied.
“It’s great meeting you.” Delia gushed. “Aramis has told me so much about you.”
“That’s most flattering.” Cuetik was somber. “Especially since we’re meeting now for the first time.” He nodded at Televick.
Delia looked at Televick, confused.
“We’ve corresponded.” The long-haired man explained.
“I wish we could take that dune buggy.” Cuetik said as Televick started up the car, the puppet securely in the place in the back seat.
“Sorry.” Televick grunted, easing his mother’s car out of the space.
The dune buggy sat where it was for another six hours, until a large, bearded man emerged from the pampas grass on the edge of the parking lot and climbed into the driver’s seat. He was dressed in cut-off khakis, a tank-top, and a baseball cap. He was sunburned the color of tomato flesh. Inserting a key into the ignition, he turned it, but did not start the engine. Instead, the buggy’s onboard computer came to life, as evidenced by the green light in the middle of the speedometer dial that came on.
“Initiate identity verification sequence.” The computer spoke through the buggy’s stereo speakers.
“Chuck Manley, password is Mishmash one nine two eight.” The man with the beard responded.
“Identity verified. Proceed.” The computer’s voice was not a cold monotone. If anything, it sounded grandfatherly.
“Where can I go to get a shower, clean clothes, and something to eat?” Manley asked.
“The nearest safe house is at 301 East Clayton Street. It should meet requirements.”
“Excellent.” Manley pronounced, starting the engine. He turned right out of the airport parking lot only to hear the computer tell him he was headed in the wrong direction.
“Computer off.” The man instructed.
Under the terms of the Ovoid Furtherance Protocol Mr. Dybbukus was bound to vacate his domicile should he receive ay one of approximately a dozen special signs. As he drove over the top of Sycamore Hill and saw the town spread out before him he noticed several green circles on the back of his left hand. This was a sign.
“A special sign.” He said aloud sarcastically. “Only one thing for it.” He continued. “I must go to one of the safe houses for the night. In the morning I can make arrangements to take some menial employment to keep me going until the contest winner is announced.” Consulting a laminated card in his shirt’s second pocket from the top on the right side, he discovered that the nearest safe house was at 301 East Clayton Street.
“Excellent.” He pronounced, as sarcastically as before.
The woman who answered the door at the Clayton Street address was satisfied with Mr. Dybbukus’ expression of secret pantomime #16 (“The Flogger”) and allowed him entry. For purposes of this story their conversation, conducted originally in the ancient machine tongue of the Depressors, has been translated into a form that the reader can understand.
“Have you been traveling long?” The woman asked as she led Mr. Dybbukus through the bead curtain at the end of the narrow hallway.
“Several weeks, I think.” Mr. Dybbukus replied. He paused to note a framed photograph on the wall. Where had he seen that exact arrangement of elephants before? He shook his head wonderingly and followed the woman.
“Do you require a shower before sleep?” The woman asked him. They had arrived in a large room, one wall of which was lined with small cubicles containing the sleep chambers.
“I don’t think so. I’m not really dirty.” Mr. Dybbukus sounded pleased with himself.
“You’ll be in room three.” The woman pointed at the corresponding cubicle. Its door was marked by a large number ‘3’ cut out of wood and covered with glitter.
“Do you have anything to read?” Mr. Dybbukus asked.
“Each room is fully stocked with reading material.” She answered.
Mr. Dybbukus nodded. He went to #3 and entered. Inside he was confronted by a range of choices.
The book he chose, a novel by Rastus McCreamer, was titled The Flinty-Eyed Old Maverick. In it, the titular character, Andy Cohut, is a sculptor living in a dystopian near-future. Famed for his sloppily executed portraits of his favorite celebrities, Cohut still has trouble making ends meet and is forced to work at the Central Sortation Center. In the following classic scene from the book, Cohut fakes an illness at work in order to go home and spend more time on his statue of Mark Hamill.
“My dear fellow,” Cohut apologized to his supervisor, Mr. Gifford, but, “I do feel that I must go home, don’t you know.” He patted his stomach, his trained sculptor’s hands instinctively measuring the slope, the curve, the angle, and the texture of the patted area. “I fear I’m coming down with a little something.”
“I can’t stop you from going home, Andy.” Mr. Gifford snapped. “If you say you’re sick, then you’re sick.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you. I shall go straight home and rest up for tomorrow’s renewed struggle to serve our customers. Thank you.” Cohut bowed and nodded, his palms upraised like a supplicant before an idol.
“Lazy bastard.” Mr. Gifford muttered to one of his favorite team members, a woman, as he watched the aging sculptor lope towards to exit.
“He’s an ‘artist.’” The woman sneered, her enormous earrings catching the harsh, pink lights overhead.
Mr. Dybbukus fell asleep with the book open to an illustration of the famous scene in which Cohut is savagely beaten by a rival, a younger sculptor who has actually attended art school. Did this illustration color Mr. Dybbukus’ dreams? Under ordinary circumstances we would not be able to answer this question, dreams being both private and subjective, but due to a recent breakthrough in the narrator’s (read “author’s”) approach to the material, we can now peer into Mr. Dybbukus’ brain and watch the dream as it unfolds. It is an exciting time we live in, is it not?
The dream began, as most do, indeterminately. Perhaps it was some dimly remembered quote from a passerby during the preceding day that triggered it, but Mr. Dybbukus found himself sitting on a bench in the town’s largest park watching the ducks and lesser dinosaurs cavort in the lush grass.
“We had a good time together.” A woman he had not seen in a long time said from her end of the bench.
“Don’t come any closer.” Mr. Dybbukus warned. “I don’t want to smell you.”
“You remember my scent?” The woman asked.
“It has bad associations for me.”
“Mr. Dybbukus?” A man suddenly blocked Mr. Dybbukus’ view of the park.
“Yes?”
“It’s him. He has confirmed it.” The man spoke in to a communicator strapped to his wrist.
“He’s not Mr. Dybbukus!” The woman spoke up.
The man grasped Mr. Dybbukus by the arm. “Come with me.” He said.
“His name is Larry! Larry Roamer!” The woman jogged along behind them shouting. “Larry! Larry, tell them who you are!”
“I don’t know this woman.” Mr. Dybbukus took immense satisfaction in telling his abductor.
The woman, however, continued to follow, first on foot, then on a series of increasingly improbable conveyances, and the dream deteriorated into a frantic, bizarre chase scene until Mr. Dybbukus woke up. I leave it to you to decide how much coloring the illustration in the book provided this dream. However, knowing you as I do, I forecast that you will declare the illustration’s influence to be nil.
That doesn’t bother me. I can wait without too much impatience until you and I are ready to resume the relatively relaxed pace of this narrative. As you can well appreciate, we must both be in the right mood for the task ahead and right now I’m a little shaken, I must confess, by the above dream being, as it is, completely without merit for inclusion in this narrative. I apologize for that, but you see, I had this new insight into the unfolding of narrative and I simply had to make use of it, no matter the consequences for my little tale.
Now, let’s see; how can we get back on track? The immediate aftermath of Mr. Dybbukus’ awakening was that he had to pee, but I don’t see much value in detailing that event. Better, let me tell you about an event occurring in the safe house as Mr. Dybbukus left room #3 and made his way to the bathroom on the opposite side of the larger room.
As Mr. Dybbukus awkwardly made water with his pre-cancerous prostate gland slowing things up, a meeting was taking place in one of the front rooms. Aramis Televick, Delia Harbor, and Suteo Cuetik were paying a cal on the woman who ran the safe house. She was, of course, Televick’s mother.
“I didn’t give you permission to take my car, Aramis.” Mrs. Televick scolded her son.
“Aren’t you glad I did, though?” Aramis countered. “Suteo wouldn’t have had anyone to meet him at the airport. Who knows what might have happened to him.”
“I am most grateful to your son, Mrs. Televick.” The puppet told her.
“Well, it’s alright now, of course.” Mrs. Televick replied. “It’s just that he should have told me what he was doing.”
“There wasn’t time.” Aramis insisted.
“Yes,” Suteo Cuetik soothed. “But the important thing now is that I have a place from which to conduct operations.”
“The Network can provide that.” Mrs. Televick assured him. “You’ll spend the night here and in the morning we’ll get further instructions. Do you require any… special arrangements?” She hinted at his puppetude.
“I don’t, but my manostano needs to be recharged. I need to plug it into an electrical outlet overnight.”
Mr. Dybbukus had just reentered his room as Mrs. Televick (“Call me Barbara”) led Suteo Cuetik to room #6. The puppet lay on the bed while his host plugged his machine into the wall socket. Mr. Dybbukus heard the noise, but did not investigate. He once again fell asleep while reading the McCreamer novel.
Conrad’s body was discovered by a couple of people with a volunteer group picking up trash. The journal, one of the few items found on the body, was turned over to Detective Smarms.
“I smell something big.” Smarms confided to his assistant, Weebler. The detective flipped through the journal. “Absolute gibberish, of course, but that’s to be expected with a hippie like this.”
“What does the last entry in the journal say, sir?” Asked Weebler.
“See for yourself.” Smarms handed over the book. Weebler found the page he wanted and read over it.
“‘Told P.Q. to look into Fillet’s Warm. Coached her in the intricacy.’” Weebler read aloud. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Smarms sniffed heavily. “As a I told you.”
“But you suspect something big?”
“Look at the quality of that journal, Weebler. Do you think some disreputable bum would be carrying something like that? No, this fellow…”
“Excuse me, Detective,” A voice called from above. “But there’s a couple of reporters here.”
“I’ll tell you later, Weebler.” Smarms began climbing up to the bridge.
“Detective, do you think this murder could be related to the press conference held on this bridge yesterday?” One reporter asked.
“I more than think it; I know for a fact it is. Some big shot movie studio comes to town with the openly expressed intention of glorifying a killer, they’re bound to stir up trouble.” Smarms, a big man with an ample belly, adjusted his pants by running his thumbs inside the waistband.
“What do you think the connection is, Detective Smarms?”
“I don’t know yet, but believe me, I will. And soon, too.”
“What’s our first move, sir?” Weebler asked Smarms as the two got into their official car.
“Head back to the office, turn that book over to forensics for analysis, and then get some lunch.” Smarms replied, gazing out the window as Weebler drove. He noted the old mill as they passed by. The Cartoon Character Contest banner was being taken down. He could remember when the place was still a functioning mill, grinding corn from the local farmers’ fields into meal. This was back when he was but a boy, still dreaming of playing professional baseball. Well, that was another dream that had been vaporized by the harsh light of reality, he thought bitterly.
Aramis Televick and Delia Harbor were gone by the time Mr. Dybbukus awoke the next morning. He met Suteo Cuetik, however, as they were both, along with the two other current residents, being shown to the kitchen for breakfast.
“You’re a puppet, I see.” Mr. Dybbukus noted after they had introduced themselves to each other.
“Yes.” Cuetik confirmed.
“What will you be eating?” Mr. Dybbukus was curious.
“A special blend of fortified gases. Mrs. Televick is getting it now.”
“Mrs. Televick?” Mr. Dybbukus could not conceal his astonishment.
“That’s right.”
“She is our hostess at this house?” Mr. Dybbukus brought himself under control. He poured milk over his cereal. Cuetik affirmed that she was indeed their hostess.
“I must have missed her name last night.” Mr. Dybbukus explained his befuddlement.
Mrs. Televick entered the kitchen, pushing a trolley upon which a cylinder of pressurized gas rested. “Hungry?” She joked.
“Indeed.” Cuetik humored her with a half-hearted laugh. As she assembled the breathing mask, the puppet said, “Mr. Dybbukus here explained some surprise that your name was Mrs. Televick.”
“I told you to call me Barbara.” She reminded him as she fitted the mask over his face.
“I must have missed your name last night.” Mr. Dybbukus explained again.
“I’m sorry. I was very sleepy when you arrived.”
“I used to know someone named Televick.” Mr. Dybbukus began cautiously. “Aramis Televick.”
“My son.”
“Your son.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“Don’t tell him.” Cuetik’s voice was muffled by the mask.
Mr. Dybbukus stared at the puppet.
“Mrs. Televick,” Mr. Dybbukus turned back to his hostess. “We share a loyalty to the Network. We all do.” He spared a glance for Cuetik. “Is your son a member?”
“Not yet. He’s still at the recruit stage.” Mrs. Televick sat down. “What is this about?”
“My purpose in life is to catch your son. He is the Long-Haired Killer.” Mr. Dybbukus said bluntly.
Artificial smoking agents were included in the gas mixture for flavor and psychological buttressing. The puppet choked on these so hard that the kitchen ruptured, leaving only the two not-yet-described guests at the safe house sitting amid the monochromatic rubble.
“What did you do?” One asked the other.
“Me?” The other, a wiry man wearing what looked like an old-fashioned bus driver’s hat, demanded indignantly. “He doesn’t even know me,” he thought, “And he’s accusing me of causing an abrupt scene change!”
“Just a joke, old boy.” The first man chuckled. He had a neat Van Dyke beard and spectacles in heavy black frames. “My name is Bowers Malock, by the way.” He extended his hand across a squiggly mass of debris. A gold bracelet flashed at his wrist.
“Pegeethedy Hovover.” The man in the bus driver’s hat returned. He shook Malock’s hand and was pleased to find it not an unpleasant hand to shake.
“Excuse me?”
“Pegeethedy Hovover.” He repeated.
“‘Pegeethedy Hovover.’” Malock sloshed the name over his tongue like cognac. “Irish?”
“Close.” Hovover nodded. “It’s from the Ontaric Isles.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” Malock sat back in his chair and mused for a while. “Are you… a member of the Network?” He gestured at the debris and gave humorous emphasis to the word ‘network.’
“No.” Hovover dismissed it with a laugh. “You?”
“No.” Malock cleared his throat. “No, I was just pretending. Damned useful, though, having a place to stay whenever one found oneself… out somewhere.”
“Yes, but… I guess that’s over with now.” Hovover’s guess was somber.
“Well, over with for now.” Malock corrected. “One never knows what’s coming around the next bend.”
Hovover considered. “Are you one of those fellows who uses the word ‘one’ in that way?”
“Oh, yes, I suppose so. Is that a problem?”
“No, I’m just curious.”
“Good.” Malock did look pleased. “Because I think we’ll have to stick together for some time yet. Shall we go?” He eased himself up from the chair.
“Where to?” Hovover also stood.
“Oh, I don’t think it matters much, do you?” Malock looked about. Except for a few thick black lines of demarcation and a scattering of squiggles on the ground, all was a wash of white, bone, and pale beige.
“I see some light blue as well.” Hovover remarked, also looking around.
“Yes, but there’s so little of it.” Malock sounded speculative. His mother had been a philosophy major in college.
Together the two men descended a treacherous slop to a single iron rail that ran away from them in two directions.
“See how the horizon is vaguely suggested by those distant trees?” Malock asked.
“Yes.” Hovover as much as said, “So what?”
“Interesting.”
And it was interesting to see those trees in the distance moving about, each one easily distinguishable from its fellows by its distinctive crown.
“They are the kings of the valley.” Malock thrilled.
“Crowns?” Hovover questioned. “Or hats?”
The difference was in one’s perception, of course. To the trees themselves, their headgear was as ordinary as hats, symbolizing nothing more than their membership in the society of Trees of the Valley.
“My mother worked her way through college by waitressing at the club house at Trees of the Valley.” Malock explained to his new friend, who had already guessed as much.
“It was easy.” Hovover later told his cousin Barney. “He reminded me of a guy I used to know. His mother also worked as a waitress at a country club.”
“Ah, yes, your theory that people who look alike, act alike.” Barney handled the big car expertly, like the pro he was.
“Your expert handling of this car is a source of reassurance to Bowers.” Hovover conveyed the information calmly.
“I’m so glad.” Barney acknowledged somewhat uneasily.
Hovover held an index finger to his right cheek, apparently listening to something intently. “Bowers wants to know if you really are a pro.” He said.
“Well, you know the answer to that.” Barney growled gently. “Why don’t you tell him?”
“He is a pro, Bowers.” Hovover said aloud.
“Peg,” Barney spun the wheel hard to the left. “How do I know this Bowers guy is really in your head?”
The answer to that, of course, was to be found in the pamphlet I had printed up for just this occasion. As soon as they passed a point beyond which the robotic driver could take over, Hovover handed Barney the pamphlet.
“Read it.” He instructed.
Barney complied. In doing so, he was given insight into the inner workings of Hovover’s brain. He saw clearly that Bowers Malock had indeed somehow become imbedded within Pegeethedy Hovover’s head, able to communicate with his host, and able to hear and see what he did, but unable to make himself known other than through Hovover’s interpretation and, of course, writings such as the pamphlet.
“It could only have been written by a master of the English language.” Barney admitted, handing the flimsy piece of paper back to his cousin.
“I agree.” Hovover sighed. “If only I could communicate directly with the author, I feel certain that many things could be cleared up.”
“Or away.”
“What do you mean?” Hovover was instantly suspicious. All the old doubts about his cousin surfaced like enemy submarines in a large bathtub. Where exactly was Barney taking him?
“You might be able to get Mr. Malock out of your head.” Barney made one last turn to the left and pulled into the mouth of Ned Murmage’s Knothole.
“Bowers says he likes it in there. Here. There.” He considered once more. “Here.”
Barney shut off the big car’s engine. “Now,” he said softly, “We’ve got to be very careful in here.”
“There.”
“Shut Up. Listen. Ned Murmage is very particular about his knothole.”
“I suppose we all are.” Hovover mused.
“He doesn’t like strangers, so we’ll have to wear disguises.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Well,” Barney turned around and rummaged about in the back seat. “I have these.” He handed Hovover two plastic masks, one of Mark Hamill, the other of Carrie Fisher.
“This is it?”
“Take your pick.”
Who took which mask is, I think, immaterial, for they wer greeted at the bridge over the moat by someone in a Harrison Ford mask.
“It’s probably Ned Murmage.” Bowers Malock whispered, forgetting, in the undiminished novelty of his situation, that he could not be heard.
“Carrie, Mark.” Ford greeted them warmly. “So good of you to come.”
“Thank you, Harrison,” Hamill returned the greeting. Flashing the tattoo inside his lower lip that each of the principal actors in Episode IV had secretly received during the filming in Tunisia. “I’m sure we’ll be able to clear up these problems together.”
“How’d you get your mask to do that thing with the lip?” Malock asked, but no one answered him. Feeling ignored, Malock wandered through the great read expanse of Hovover’s brain. For years he had longed to be free to shave his body without the encumbrances of societal norms. Now, he realized, he had that freedom. “No more celebrating Christmas either!” He shouted with relief.
Searching for a bathroom where he might begin the depilation process, he came across a room marked with a large #3 covered in glitter. Inside, Mr. Dybbukus sat on the bed looking through a magazine. This magazine, All Attendant Sub-Species, contained detailed illustrations of the process by which Bowers Malock and Pegeethedy Hovover became enfolded within each other.
“For of course, there is also part of Hovover inside my head as well.” Malock made small talk with Mr. Dybbukus.
“I don’t read this magazine for stuff like that.” Mr. Dybbukus told Malock. “I like the cartoons.”
“In a way, the illustrations of the enfolding process were a kind of cartoon.” Barney, having removed his mask, pointed out.
“Yes, but not a very funny one.” Ned Murmage, relaxed now within the innermost depths of his knothole, had also removed his mask.
The discarded masks were hung on pegs on the wall. While Barney and Murmage discussed the secret clearance plan, Hovover examined the wall. Many trophies of Murmage’s long life were there. Hovover was most intrigued by a mirror that reflected the back of his own head.
The necessary corollary to these events is the unceasing noise of the television, so that no matter where I turn I cannot focus. Maybe one day I’ll have the courage to turn the fucker off.

Starry-Eyed Declension

“You’re nothing but a miserable failure.” Is how I berated myself over my inability to stretch the preceding piece out to the end of the book. I shrugged off such criticism as irrational. As my success is self-determined, obviously I’m not going to let some random stranger (even if he is me) make me feel bad.
Now, with no real insight into what Starry-Eyed Declension means, I proceeded to wander from room to room, each one full of places to sit and things to look at, unsure of where to stop.
An animatronic, goat-headed biped graciously offered to exchange places with me.
“I’ll take over from here.” He said, taking me by the shoulders and steering me to a sofa.
“Thank you.”
“Shh.” He advised.

Ammonia Puerile

Wherever the occupants of the van checked, they found no one who had any recollection of a Custer Underfund.
“Well, I’m tired of this.” Brad announced after all his fellow youths, each colorfully costumed, had reseated themselves within the van’s custom interior. “I say we give it up.”
Sammy agreed and said so.
“But,” protested Michelle, “We’ve been paid to do a job. We can’t just quit.”
“Sure we can.” Sammy insisted.

THE END

17 Pages of Supplemental Material

Maybe The Contusions Were Deliberately Placed

“The thing that confuses me,” Junior Detective Weebler began, a little more freely than usual, thanks to the glass of whiskey that his superior, Detective Smarms, had allowed him, “Is the way the bruises on the victim’s chest spelled out the word ‘thief.’”
Smarms, sitting behind his desk with his tie loosened, belched without remorse. “Maybe the contusions were deliberately placed.”
Weebler blinked. “Contusions?”
“Police lingo, Weebler. You need to learn the terminology. Contusions are bruises.”
“Rounds are bullets.”
“Exactly.” Smarms belched out the word. He shuffled through some papers on his desk.
“What’re you looking for, sir?” Weebler asked.
“I’m not telling you all my secrets, Weebler.” Smarms rumbled like a bowling ball teetering on the edge of the gutter. “Why don’t you go out in the hall and see if you can find Sergeant Noodleman?”
“Yes sir.” Weebler got to his feet. In the hall, he noticed everyone bustling about, straightening chairs and desktops. “What’s up?” He asked Dave Perky, a junior detective like himself.
“The chief’s downstairs. He’s coming up.” Perky told him.
“Oh, shit.” Weebler started to go back into Smarms’ office to warn him, but turned back to Perky. “Hey, have you seen Noodleman?”
“No, I haven’t.”
Before Smarms could reenter the office the chief of police, “Prickly” Joe Canning, emerged at the top of the staircase. At his side was Sergeant Noodleman, not only the toughest woman on the force, but also the best looking.
Weebler paused at the door, wondering what to do. The chief came closer.
“Good morning, uh…” Canning greeted him.
“Weebler.” Noodleman offered in a whisper.
“Weebler. Smarms in there?”
“Yes sir.” Weebler stepped aside to allow the chief to enter. Canning did not knock.
“Smarms, Sergeant Noodleman here has an interesting story to tell.” Canning announced without preamble to his old friend.

She Roamed the Compass Points Freely

On the back of the excamel she, the spiritual predecessor and literary mentor of Sergeant Noodleman, wandered throughout the white, interstitial wastes. Her name, for those of you unfamiliar with the legendary figure for whom the excamel is the obvious corollary to those of us raised on the ancient stories, was Laughing Franny.
Now, Laughing Franny, who also figures as the titular character in a later story in this volume, smelled of buffalo wings. No one knew why this was so, but the sworn testimonies of the approximate dozen persons who met her in the wastes are on file at the Department of Death and, with stunning similarity, most of these testimonies make some mention of her peculiar buffalo wing-like scent.
“Perhaps she ate a lot of buffalo wings.” A young Chet Smarms speculated on first being introduced to the legend.
“Ah, Chet,” Wilbur, the so-called Dean of Hypothetical Criminology, croaked indulgently, as he placed an unwanted hand on the boy’s already broad shoulder, “Ah, Chet.”
And so it would have remained, generations of broad shouldered boys worrying more about the mythic heroine’s strange odor than what exactly an excamel is, had it not been for the May 1946 discovery of a cache of primitive film in a cave near the Azimuth Sea. This film, once cleaned of centuries of grime and cleared by the government’s internal Censor General, gave definitive answers to both mysteries.
“Gentlemen,” Dr. Hamlung opened the conference by declaring, “We can see here in frames 48 to 547 that the excamel is, in fact, an ex-camel. That is to say, a beast that was once a camel, but, through surgery, accident, or intense psychological pressure, perhaps, has ceased to be one.”
“No hump?” Someone at the back of the lecture hall shouted.
Dr. Hamlung joined in the ensuing laughter as much as his inflexible, bookish demeanor permitted. “No. No hump.” He admitted. “Not anymore.”
Those sitting there unmoved by this outbreak of levity were those who impatiently awaited the answer to the other mystery.
“What about the smell?” One of this second group called out, firmly but politely.
Dr. Hamlung pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and blushed most unacademically. He glanced about the hall as if hesitant to address this question.



In the Various Rock Samples

Along with the primitive film canisters taken from the cave by the Azimuth Sea, some two hundred pounds of rock samples were also taken.
“To lend verisimilitude to the whole undertaking.” Nancy Snodwillow conjectured.
“Well, of course.” Concurred Edith Caltion. “After all, the lending of credence to the old myths was ostensibly based in science, and what better way to proclaim science to the world at large than by a gargantuan display of old rocks?”
Nancy, bored after Edith’s lengthy discourse, tapped nervously on the side of her teacup with a length of bamboo she had lately taken to carrying.
“You summoned me, madam?” A waiter in the traditional horns and tassels of the Pilaf Brigade appeared at Nancy’s side.
“Oh, yes, of course.” Nancy replied, not wanting to appear ignorant. “Please take these scones away; I don’t like the way they look.”
“Very good, madam.” The waiter discreetly dropped a rag over the plate of scones and whisked them away to some far off laboratory for analysis at least as cursory as that to which the cave rocks were subjected.
“You could have let me eat them.” Edith complained once the waiter had gone.
“Oh, no, Edith. You didn’t see the way they looked. They were giving me the evil eye, I swear.” Nancy dared Edith to disagree, although Edith was never to know this as the dare was but a mental thing, along with Nancy’s unspoken hatred of rednecks and her unconfessed shame over her double chin.
“Tell me: Do you believe this whole white, interstitial waste business?” Edith asked, leaning forward the better to indicate the confidential nature of her inquiry.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Nancy asked, again tempted, in her nervousness, to tap against her teacup with that piece of bamboo she had found in the dumpster behind Red Lobster. While Edith rattled off the various reasons for her doubts, Nancy glanced around the abandoned saloon.
“Edith,” She suddenly interrupted. “What do you think would happen if I were to tap this teacup?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Edith replied. “I suppose that waiter would come back.”
“Yes, but back from where?”
Edith stared. “Nancy.” She said severely. “Not the white wastes, surely!”


The Nosebleed Legion

With no warning, other than that extraordinary piano figure that usually preceded the sudden arrival of a threatening new element, the Nosebleed Legion suddenly arrived. Harold, their inflexible, bookish spokesman, stepped to the front next to the twins, Gilbert and Mahmood.
“We are the Nosebleed Legion. My name is Harold.” He announced in a brittle tone.
Nancy and Edith, encased in the thin gelatin-like bubble of alternative time, could but vaguely see the newcomers and, in turn, be seen but vaguely.
“The sound is off, too.” Gilbert added to the above information, which raced through the minds of the Legion like some magical, otherworldly narrative.
“It does not matter.” Mahmood declared, drawing his half of the sword of leadership that he and his brother had inherited from their father, Dr. Kilter, the founder of the Legion. “Give them the ultimatum and let us be done with this intrusion!”
“Can you hear me?” Harold spoke in a loud, deliberate voice.
“He doesn’t sound so brittle this time.” Edith whispered to Nancy.
“No, but I still can’t make out a word.” Nancy looked at the smoke-like images of the surrounding men. “Are they ghosts?”
As Mahmood hefted his sword half to strike, Gilbert intervened.
“Wait, my brother! Perhaps they are ghosts!”
“Do ghosts eat scones then?” Mahmood countered. “Besides, even ghosts must pay the penalty for trespassing in our saloon!” He struck at the sticky bubble surrounding the two women.
As Nancy parried the blows of Mahmood with her length of bamboo, Harold stepped back amid the rest of the members of the Legion.
“Mahmood has been enveloped by the gelatin-like aura that surrounds the intruders.” He commented to Black Mackie, the Legion’s typesetter.
“I can see that.” Growled the massive man in the owl’s head helmet.
“I’m just making small talk, Mack. You don’t have to be so mean.” Harold shook his head and looked at Ragged Tom on his opposite side.
“The woman fights well.” The latter noted.
“You hear that?” Harold said to Black Mackie. “The woman fights well. Can you see that too?”

Another Landing Craft is Tossed to the Corgi

Not even the white, interstitial wastes could go on forever. As even children now know, having watched enough cartoons adopting this very idea, the wastes were bordered on their meridional side by the Azimuth Sea. It was from this direction that the invasion came.
“If we can make it to those caves I think we can hold out until Farley brings in the forty-two inchers.” Colonel Knickem stood on the deck of the Banner-Herald and speculated to his aide, Skip Ruggles, a bat-like creature with rows of plastic forks protecting his delicate gills.
“Yes sir.” Ruggles agreed readily enough, though he had little idea what the boys of Z Company were in for.
At the colonel’s command the hydraulic systems went to work, opening the Banner-Herald’s cavernous mouth, and allowing the landing craft to set out on its mission of conquest. Z Company, thirty-two untested recruits from all over the backwoods metropolises of Chicken Ditchwater, blinked uncertainly at the sky that ominously changed from the familiar blue overhead to a limited palette of white and faded bone in the distance.
“What are we getting ourselves into, Sarge?” Amelia Grump asked in a quavery voice as the relatively tiny shoebox floated inexorably towards its destiny.
“I don’t know, Grump, but the men in the propeller hats wouldn’t have brought us all this way if they didn’t have some clear indication of what was in store for us.” The sergeant, bristling with a cactus-like growth of manly black hairs, squatted casually in the back of the craft, reading a pamphlet on the inevitable death of all humans on this planet.
“On what do you base that extraordinary assumption, Sergeant?” Dekool, the “intellectual” of the group, asked with a sneer stamped on his four-eyed face.
“Leave him alone!” Chico interceded angrily. He raised his machete to strike the hated figure of doubt, but halted, staring at the sight looming over them all.
“And was it truly a corgi that ate them up?” Little Tyler asked from his usual spot before the shrine, but there was no answer for him.

A Gelatin Selector Program

“Thus far the program has achieved the modest goals set out for it by the committee,” Dr. Flinder drawled as he led the muzzled bear up to the observation deck, “But I’d like to see it do more. As you know, The Singular Adventures of the Style Council was a greatest hits package.”
“He sure is brave.” Meredith warbled to Stanley. They stood watching from below as the children lined up to receive their free hats nearby.
“Surely.” Stanley corrected.
“Eh?” Meredith’s jaw cocked to one side with hostility.
“He surely is brave. Not ‘sure.’” Stanley reiterated.
“He ‘surely’ is brave? That sounds stupid.”
“It’s proper grammar, Meredith, something that you should place an emphasis on if you want to get ahead here at Flugel.”
“You strutting peacock!” Meredith sassed, waggling her hips back and forth in an inept imitation of the peacock’s ungainly stride. “You think you’ve got such a bright future here, don’t you? Well, let me tell you: you don’t have half the guts of that brave man up…” She had extended her index finger to point up the observation deck, but there was no reason now, for Dr. Flinder had fallen into the hopper of the free hat dispenser.
“My god!” Stanley howled. “He’ll contaminate the apparatus!”
“Do something, Stanley!” Meredith screamed. “Do something!”
Stanley seized her heavily painted face in his six-fingered hands and gave her the kind of kiss she had been waiting for since the eighth grade. Overhead, the now forgotten bear removed his disguise, revealing himself to be none other than Baron Schmild, head of Flugel House and a staunch advocate of global capitalism. As he chuckled silently, scratching his belly with the six magnificent claws on each of his upper extremities, the vista to be seen from the observation deck changed. The pink mist that had for so long obscured the ancient towers of Targossos were blown away by unseen fans of enormous proportions, revealing, not the expected towers, but a vast and variegated range of appliances, each with its own electrical cord to wind about the necks of those opposed to the company’s programs, should such a need arise.

3rd Grade Stumbler

Third grade was the last grade I attended public school. I had a lot of problems that year, problems that, in retrospect, don’t seem to have warranted the actions taken by the adults in my life. Among other things, I was taken to see a psychiatrist named Pat White. She cooked up a scheme by which I signed a contract stating that all the toys and books in my room were to be removed and, if I failed to complete all my work at school each day, I would be confined to my room after school until bedtime with nothing to do.
Of course, I don’t have the chronology of that year fully fleshed out, but I remember most of it, even if not in order. At some point in there I was told to fill out a questionnaire full of questions like “Why are you such a bad person?” and “Why can’t you get your act together?” I started off trying to answer these honestly, but after a while I started writing the word “stumble” in for every answer. This was my way of saying that sometimes I made mistakes. It seemed relatively straightforward to me, considering my embarrassment over having to answer such questions. However, when I turned it in, the teacher Miss Mabry (whom I actually liked, even though she could be irascible. I remember one time seeing an illustration of a person pulling a disintegrating shirt out of a washing machine. The accompanying caption said something about this is what happens when you use too much washing powder. I took the book in which this illustration was found up to her desk and asked her what happened when you used too much washing powder. Meaning, what is the process by which holes appear in a shirt, why does this happen? She snapped, “Well, you can see what happens!”), told me that I had not filled the questionnaire in properly. She was angry at my bullshit use of a nonsensical word for nearly every answer.
Her response was akin to the time she stopped me from entering her classroom and told me, “If you can’t do your work in my room, you’ll do it somewhere else! Go to Ms. Crane’s room!” So, I had to go on the other side of the building alone and find Ms. Crane’s room. There I was greeted Ms. Crane and two boys from the fuckup contingent. I was made to do my work at a desk that had been placed inside of a refrigerator box.
The following year I transferred to a private Christian school where my problems continued, only they were different problems.




He Shamed Me With His Boldness

In reading of the adventures of Clyde the Fevered Stag one is put in the position of wanting to close the book and not learn what comes next, despite the government directive that the book be read before harvest time. Clyde the Fevered Stag, with his boldness, induces embarrassment again and again. Each of the myriad short stories in the book (The Adventures of Clyde the Fevered Stag) end with Clyde doing some unexpected thing out of keeping with normal concepts of good behavior. For example, attending the final moments of his mother’s life as she lays on her deathbed, Clyde deliberately farts.
Most of those under government order to have the book read before harvest began found it a tedious assignment. In the main this was because the majority of them abhorred reading. However, there were a few, as I said, that found the contents of the book disturbing. Jackson was one of these.
“Just after being married, he turns to the guests and announces that he and his new wife have already had the ‘honeymoon.’” Jackson complained to his wife.
“Meaning they’ve had intercourse.” His wife commented as she carefully arranged her many spatulas.
“Yes, Barbara.” Jackson sighed with exasperation.
“Don’t snap at me like that.” Barbara returned sharply.
“I didn’t snap at you.”
“Yes, you did.” Her eyes flashed their warning of danger just beneath the surface.
Jackson thought it best to drop the subject of whether or not he really had “snapped.” Besides, they were getting further from the topic at hand.
“I wish I was reading your book.” He moaned.
“You wouldn’t like it any better.” Barbara switched the red spatula with the blue. Jackson’s mate’s assigned book was Doctor Hit Man, a political thriller with a heartening romance at its core.
“Probably not, but anything’s got to be better than this.” Jackson’s moan grew.
“Have you ever thought of not finishing the book and telling them you had?” Barbara asked as she helped herself to a glass of buttermilk.
“Oh, Barbara, you know that won’t work. They test you with the brain monitor.” Jackson was disgusted that she would suggest such a thing. His disgust grew as he watched the undrunk buttermilk stream down the sides of the glass.

Laughing Franny

Boyelton, Laughing Franny’s excamel, may have lost his hump (how, we cannot say, for he would never talk about it), but he had been compensated by the addition of a voice box and vocal adaptor circuits. As he and Laughing Franny sheltered beneath an outcropping of battleship gray from an atmospheric discharge very similar to the rain of your experience, Boyelton made use of his relatively recently acquired power of speech.
“Laughing Franny, why do you smell like buffalo wings?” He asked.
“Why do you smell like a camel?” Came the deathless heroine’s sharp reply.
“Because, though deprived of my hump, I am still a camel.”
Laughing Franny considered her old friend and steed for a moment through those extraordinary eyes of hers, so full of both kindness and steel in equal measures.
“Well then.” She said finally.
“Are you saying,” Boyelton paused to allow a “thunderclap” to roll out over the vaguely sketched in plain, “That you are a winged buffalo?”
Laughing Franny turned to stare out at that “rain” soaked plain. “The atmospheric discharge is clearing up.” She said. “I think we should be going.” She stood up as Boyelton gaped at her.
“But you’re a woman!” He protested. “A human! Aren’t you?”
“You’ve often wondered why I carry so many razors.” Laughing Franny smiled.
“I thought you just had some kind of neurosis.” Boyelton also stood up. “But… where are your wings?”
“Like you, I made a deal with…”
“Do not say the name!” Boyelton cried, drawing back in terror of a memory he would rather not have. He blinked his eyes several times as I do when some unbidden reminder of a past embarrassment springs into my consciousness.
“Very well, Boyelton.” Laughing Franny agreed somberly. “But now you know.” She offered the excamel a treat from her pouch. As he chewed it she asked, “Well, shall we go now?”
“Yes.” Boyelton began to reply, but was cut off by the sudden intrusion of the great snout of the corgi.
“It’s the end!” Laughing Franny roared prophetically.

Saturdayscope

Invented by an anonymous birdman in the employ of the King of Siamerica, the Saturdayscope was both an ocular device and a vehicle of modest reliability. Its transformation from a secret tool of the palace staff to a publicly available product was effected by a shrewd advertising campaign developed by the legendary Cansgo Reglamar.
“The first thing that we did was to come up with a cartoon character to star in all of the short films and stories that were made to extol the benefits of the saturdayscope.” Reglamar recalled in an interview a few weeks before his execution last winter.
This cartoon character, Shafty, was said to have been based on Hyram Host, the prime minister at the time. His costume, a red jump suit with the image of a fork skewering a soft light bulb emblazoned on the chest, did little to dissuade the public that Host was not the basis for the character.
“But the prime minister isn’t a giant skunk.” Bob Chocolate remembers objecting when he was but a child, watching the first of the saturdayscope short films. “That always bothered me and I think it’s the reason I never wanted one of those damn things. I must have been the only kid on my block that didn’t pester his parents for one. They thought I was so mature, but really it was my objection to this false characterization of the prime minister.”
Who Bob Chocolate is remains one of the great mysteries surrounding the whole saturdayscope saga. How as a mere child he recognized Shafty the red jump suited skunk as a stylized vision of Hyram Host is, perhaps, not so great a mystery, but it certainly isn’t one that will be unraveled here. The scope of this piece extends only to the saturdayscope itself and its impact on the burgeoning (and ultimately doomed) anti-cell phone movement. The Pickle Bras, as the members of the movement were known, campaigned to have people carry their saturdayscopes about with them at all times the same way they carried their cell phones. However, as each saturdayscope was about as big and heavy as an industrial fire extinguisher, the idea gained little acceptance.
“So, we developed the saturdayscope harness.” Bob Chocolate’s sister Eurea recalled.
Her appearance, of course, added only more mystery to the previous one surrounding her brother’s exact involvement in these matters. But, as Shafty always said, “Who cares?”

No Rush to Complete the Ceremony

Basil folded his hands on the desktop and peered kindly at the young guitarist.
“I understand, son. You’re nervous.” His avuncular tone was calculated to reassure.
Standing on the other side of the desk, the young guitarist, Rockin’ Tom, in full heavy metal attire, his flashy guitar slung low about his lean torso, wept copiously.
“I practiced all day!” He managed to blubber through his tears, as if complaining to the cruelest of gods.
Basil nodded. “Probably practiced too much.” He said softly. “Don’t worry about it, son. You tell my secretary to reschedule you. It’ll be OK, believe me.” He rose and guided Rockin’ Tom to the door with a fatherly hand on the young guitarist’s leather clad shoulder.
“Thank you, Mr. Knox.” Rockin’ Tom snuffled.
“You’re very welcome.” Basil smiled. After the door closed, he went to his desk and punched a button on the intercom. “Vera,” He spoke into the unit, “Hold the nest applicant for a few minutes.”
“Yes, Mr. Knox.” Came Vera’s efficiently nasal reply.
Basil crossed to the window and, with some difficulty, opened it. He coughed as a cloud of smoke entered. Fanning the smoke away, he put his head outside.
“Max!” He called. “Max, where are you?” He fanned furiously at the smoke that intermittently continued to billow up from some unknown source. “Max!”
“Here I am!” Came a muffled reply.
Basil craned his head to look above him. “What are you doing up there?” He demanded. “Get down here quick! I haven’t got all day.” Basil waited until the strange creature named Max clambered down to his window. He helped Max climb into the office. “I haven’t got all day.” He repeated as he shut the window.
“You sure act like it.” Max sighed, stretching his back. He was humanoid in shape, but covered in short, matted brown fur. His face was dominated by a large yellow beak. On his head he wore a pair of blunt yellow horns.
“I’m in no rush.” Basil replied. “I just don’t want the window open.”
“Yes, the smoke. Well, it will take some time for the fire to be put out.”
“Do you want to do this now?” Basil asked.
“Sure. Whenever you’re ready.” Max nodded.



Mountain Man Knows What He’s Doing

“I expect great things from you.” Had been the last words Torvag the Snug One said to Borgis before crawling inside the hollowed out trunk of the sledgenut tree to hibernate through the coming bad time. Although Borgis had said nothing in reply, all who had worked with him in the downsizing knew what he must be feeling.
“He is like an elephant that has grown a second trunk.” Said Old Kathy to no one’s elucidation, although many were see to write this statement down for future reference.
A year later Borgis was the front line manager at an Aunt Friendly’s biscuit franchise in the deadly and disputed Ophran Pass. He sat down to an interview with our nominal reporter Blaze N. Thurst in the tiny breakroom in the basement of the establishment. As he clawed through his thick beard with one hand, he held a hand-rolled cigarette in the other.
“Is that the last vestige of your old life?” Thurst asked, pointing at the crude drug delivery device burning in Borgis’ gnarled fist.
“No, there are still others.” Borgis answered, depositing on the table a live insect he had dug out of his facial hair.
“Do you feel you let your old kinsman down?” Was the next question.
“Not at all. Did you know that Aunt Friendly’s makes more biscuits each day than the combined households of central Brazil? And this franchise is tops in its sales division?” He stabbed the insect on the table with his forefinger. “I feel proud to be a part of the Aunt Friendly’s team.”
Old Kathy’s magic, passed down to her from a long line of hags, was the only thing powerful enough to wake Torvag the Snug One from his slumber. As the immeasurably old primate uprooted himself from the frozen ground he croaked. “Why have you awoken me? Is the bad time over?”
“No, Snug One.” Old Kathy responded, putting away her yak skull and EEG monitor. “Borgis has betrayed your trust and the legacy of our tribe. He’s selling biscuits at a fast food place down in the Ophran Pass.”
“This is Hell.” Torvag the Snug One moaned, rocking back and forth on his duck’s feet. “You have brought me to Hell.”
“No, Snug One. This is still Father Mountain, but the Beast of Seven Eyes still walks. You must help me to persuade Borgis to slay our ancient enemy!”

Fat Man is Muscular

“He is fat,” Roland concurred with the team’s assessment, “But you can see that he has muscles underneath.”
“How much do you think he can lift?” Patsy, deferential to Roland’s structural engineering expertise, asked.
Roland glanced at the woman, then back to the projection on the barn wall. “Hard to say.” He equivocated. “I wouldn’t want to say without knowing the specifics of the gravity involved.”
“Oh, come now, Dr. Schlieffen,” Victor Togs broke in gruffly, using Roland’s official title, “Surely you can give us some sort of general estimate?”
“Well,” Roland drew out the word. He glanced at Patsy again. She was smiling, a barely concealed sneer it was. “A ton?” He estimated as casually as he could.
“A ton?” Togs repeated.
“Come on.” Patsy laughed.
“No, I think he could do it.” Fred Klondike came to Roland’s defense. “A ton isn’t all that great of a weight.”
“It is about the weight of a Volkswagen Beetle.” The Martian Elder, up until now a silent observer in these proceedings, informed the team through the translator box strapped to his chest.
“I’ve seen a man lift the back end of a Beetle.” Roland mused, little concerned now with whether his estimate was taken for valid or not. He had just remembered that Alison was supposed to be making beef stroganoff tonight. He hoped he hadn’t ruined his appetite with the jelly doughnuts Victor had brought.
“But not the whole Beetle.” Patsy pointed out. She fiddled with the old rake she had found against the wall. Was it an unconscious indication of her unexpressed hostility to Roland and his vaunted college degree?
“It was at the beach.” Roland continued, nervous over the upcoming dinner, heedless of the meeting’s topic. “God, that was a long time ago.”
Victor Togs cleared his throat. “Well, regardless of all that, are we agreed that the subject is strong despite his obesity?”
Most of the team members nodded. Roland raised his eyebrows noncommittally.
“Then the question becomes should we take extra precautions?” Togs asked.
“If this thing goes down the toilet, it’ll be Roland’s fault!” Patsy suddenly burst out.




Alone Goes It, This Mechanized Tree

By one in the afternoon the mechanized tree known as Fripper could definitely be said to be heading for Doc Pierson’s property. Who knew what mental processes went on inside the leafy entity, driving it towards its goal?
“The tree translators hadn’t been perfected at that time.” An employee from the National Institute for the Preservation of Tracking Techniques and Lore explained to the author during a somewhat haphazard telephone call made in preparation for this piece. Research is paramount in this business, but other factors, subjective and random, also play a role.
Fripper, late of the Quoto Woods, left only a 400 page manuscript, sketchily detailed for all its bulk, as any kind of clue to its motivations in setting out for the old doctor’s goat farm.
“Besides its distinctive tracks.” My source at the Institute added. “The tracks of the mechanized tree are among the most fascinating in all the known world.”
When it became apparent where Fripper was headed, the cast and crew of Tourniquet, the youth-oriented draw being filmed at the goat farm, set up an impromptu welcoming celebration for the mechanized tree.
“I really loved the family feeling everybody had that day.” Recounted Tala Tizmopusam, one of Tourniquet’s most promising stars. Perhaps one day her career will recover from the tragic events of that afternoon.
As Fripper the mechanized tree neared the crude, lichen-covered fence that marked the eastern boundary of Doc Pierson’s property, a couple of the people from the TV show decided to make it easier for the tree to pass by disassembling a portion of the fence. This in itself angered the old doctor, who was alerted to the goings on by a couple of the local children. As he was pulling on his boots, however, things had already reached a crisis point.
In the distance fluttered a homemade banner reading “Welcome Tree!”
“I helped make it.” Tala sobbed. She played Zammi on the hit show.
Ignoring the gap in the fence, Fripper slowly tore through a segment ten feet to its left. On being approached with cake and imported beer by Kent Ramish, the semi-literate man-child who played Barney, Fripper unleashed its deadly barrage of sledgenuts.
“Sledgenuts are notoriously lethal.” The Institute employee told me in confidence.

Nine Fingered Intermediate Sloth

The crudity of the bower that the sloth had constructed to hold the phony eggs was matched only the ill-fitting vest the sloth wore. A button pinned to the vest proclaimed his membership in the Army of the Checkerboard Dragon, a fan club for viewers of the obscure children’s television program.
“They’re threatening to take it off the air.” The sloth fretted in conversation with his neighbor Ned Radon.
“Who is ‘they?’” Radon, a commonplace birdman from Popcornus IX, asked as he poured them each a cup of peppermint tea.
“The forces of industry. The heartless technocrats who think nothing has value if it doesn’t generate a profit.” The sloth selected a confectionary choo choo train from the plate of like offerings.
“I guess it depends on how you define ‘value.’” Radon appeared to be sage, but was actually noncommittal, a grievous flaw in one aspiring to be a great Jazz guitarist.
The sloth said nothing to this, as he thought nothing of it. He chewed the cowcatcher in the masticative silence of a sloth. After swallowing, he continued to speak of the Checkerboard Dragon program, explaining its gentle, but anarchic nature.
“Anything can happen,” He said, “But it isn’t manic.”
“Relaxing?” Radon wanted confirmation.
“But inspiring. Or perhaps I mean invigorating.” The sloth fell into a reverie, the psychedelic vagueries of which were bordered with worry.
A knock on the door of Ned Radon’s fortress brought the sloth to attention. He gulped down his tea as his neighbor went to see who had knocked.
“Is the sloth here?” Asked Mr. Heatre, another inhabitant of this part of the volcano’s mouth.
“Yes?” Answered the sloth, rising.
“I was passing by your bower on my way to the Flangeworks and I heard a distinctive noise issuing from within.” Mr. Heatre sang.
“Oh my goodness!” The sloth looked about for his hat.
“I think your phony eggs are hatching.” Mr. Heatre smilingly watched the sloth dash out the door with a hurried request for excuse to both the birdman and the flangemonger. As the sloth drew nearer the bower he too could hear the telltale sound.

Combine As He Sees Fit

Bandelson had no concern one way or another as to how the constituent elements of Bluetard were assembled. “Providing, of course,” Bandelson made it clear to his secretary, “That the directing intelligence behind the assembly is that of Bluetard himself.”
“I think it will be.” Answered Zappow, as efficient and loyal a secretary as a man like Bandelson could hope to find. “It is my understanding that Clodo’s influence in such areas has waned considerably in the past two weeks.”
“Well, I hope so.” Bandelson growled as he reached for the box containing the direct link to Goopgurk’s consciousness. Using the special probing fork, Bandelson poked about inside the box until his experienced wrist met with exactly the right resistance. “This is it.” He gasped as the psychometric energy began to flow up his arm. He nodded to Zappow just before his eyes rolled back in his head with the full strength of the connection to indicate that the secretary knew what to do at the appropriate time to break the link.
Zappow, however, seeing that his boss was fully submersed in the link, exited the room and locked the door behind him. He hid the key in a terrarium full of cacti and scorpions before descending to the basement of the old building. Behind a stack of outdated pornography he had hidden his own direct link to Clodo, a link less immediate and complete than Bandelson’s Goopgurk, but less risky for all its clumsy technology. He picked up the paper cup and pulled it away from the wall, stretching taut the string attached to its base.
“Clodo, can you hear me?” He shouted.
“I hear you, old boy. What have you to report?” Came the reply through the line.
“Bandelson is going to allow Bluetard to combine as he sees fit.”
There was a pause.
“I see. Well, good work. I’ll see you on the first, as arranged.”
“End transmission.” Zappow dropped the cup and replaced the bale of moldy magazines. He returned upstairs. He didn’t look forward to having to pick the key out of the terrarium, but when he entered Bandelson’s outer office, he found he no longer had to.
The door had been smashed open. Emerging from the office, Bandelson’s limp body in his arms, was Bluetard, his tertiary head mounted between his microwave oven and his scowling suggestion box.

Phantom Rental

“Did you stop by the video store?” Muck asked Luther as the latter entered their shared domicile laden with groceries.
“Yes I did.” Luther replied, depositing the first load of bags on the kitchen table.
“What did you rent?”
“I don’t know yet.” Luther told his housing partner. He headed back to the car for the second load.
“What do you mean?” Muck put down his newspaper and followed Luther outside. Together they carried the remainder of the groceries into the house.
“I got a phantom rental.” Luther explained.
“What’s that?”
“It’s kind of like a grab bag. You don’t know what you’re going to get. But it only costs fifty cents.” He added, seeing the look of consternation on Muck’s face.
“Well,” Muck sounded somewhat mollified, “That’s a good deal, but it depends on what you get.”
Luther found the film he had rented and handed it to Muck. It bore no label.
“I guess we won’t know until we put it in.” Luther suggested.
They waited until they had put away the groceries that demanded immediate care, the milk, cheese, eggs, and frozen goods. Selecting items to snack on while they viewed their phantom rental, Muck and Luther then went to the parlor, where their friend the television awaited their pleasure.
The film was called Radio Specific Homo, something Muck groaned at on reading the title flash on the screen in letters designed to look as if they were knife-edged projectiles of import cutting into the wind.
“What are we getting into?” He asked without hope of answer as the sound of a thousand armored horsemen accompanied their visual counterparts up a hill strewn with skulls of obvious non-human origin. Topping the rise the leaders, two men distinguished from their companions by the elaborate silver inlays on their breastplates, the red sashes about their abdomens, and the long, red banners to either side that framed their heroic posture, stared ahead at some vision of daunting dread.
“What is it?” One asked the other.
“The Castle of the Rental Phantom.” Replied the other, awestruck.
“Then our quest is nearly over.” Said the first.



Squid-Eye Samson

The letter Squid-Eye Samson received that morning stated that, as his recent submission to the Blunder House’s Art Contest had won one of the top prizes, he was being honored with a title granted by the mayor, that of Painting Lord.
“‘Only you among the top prize winners are to be so honored.’” Becky, Squid-Eye Samson’s long-time girlfriend, read aloud from the letter. “Oh, Sam, this is wonderful news!” She beamed with pride.
“I’m declining this ‘honor.’” Squid-Eye Samson stated flatly.
“What do you mean?” Becky demanded, the hand clutching the letter dropping against her denim-clad thigh.
“I mean I don’t want their paltry title.” Squid-Eye Samson, nervous despite his bold declaration of principle, turned moodily to the window.
“Are you crazy? Why not?”
“It’s too little too late.” Squid-Eye Samson stared into the space between the window and the screen outside, wondering at the half-dozen dead bugs in there. How did they become trapped?
“Too little too late?” Becky’s voice was shrill. “You’re only forty! And Lord Painter, that’s… unprecedented!”
“They must be made to pay, to understand, to feel the frustrations that I have felt during my years of struggle.” Squid-Eye Samson tried to put his heart into his words, so that they weren’t merely bombast.
“You’re playing, right?” Becky hopefully smiled. Seeing he was not, she burst out, “You’ve only been painting ten years! You’re lucky to have gotten as far as you have in such a short time!”
“Becky, I wanted to be a rock star.” This was limp following his previous statements and Squid-Eye Samson knew it. He retreated from the parlor, his eyes welling with tears of self-pity, a self-pity that felt fully justified, yet, as he knew too well, could not be objectively, rationally demonstrated.
Becky found him sitting on the toilet beneath the crappy painting of an anthropomorphic tree he had done his first year as a painter. He hated it, but Becky had thought it so wonderful she had framed it and hung it up.
“You’re a fool if you don’t accept this title.” She said. “You took the money earlier.”
“That was different.” Squid-Eye Samson sighed.